# Think Tank > Political Philosophy & Government Policy >  The Fundamental Principles of Liberty

## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Note*: I have written a different take on the subject here. Please check it out: The Law of Justice



And this is the original article:
The Fundamental Principles of Liberty
*
The Science of Liberty*
 

Liberty is science, and Justice is science. Their laws are Natural Laws, and are not subject to opinions or conjecture of politicians, and can neither be made nor unmade by them, any more than politicians can legislate away the law of gravity, or of electricity, or of mechanics. These Natural Laws of Liberty and Justice are absolute. They determine the proper use of force if liberty is to exist. Discovering these laws and living in harmony with them ensures peace, liberty and prosperity of any society. Violating these laws will inevitably lead to destruction of Liberty, and if unchecked, to the destruction of the society itself. 

The fundamental principles of Liberty and justice are these:

First and foremost, is the one from which all other principles derive:*
Private Property is not to be violated, it being Justice and Liberty. 

Private Property is defined as something that you own, that belongs to you and none else, so that you:
a) do not have to ask anyones permission to use it, but 
b) others must obtain your voluntary permission to use, because it is yours, and 
c) you can do with it whatever you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.
A just owner of a property is either:
i) the first user of it, or 
ii) the recipient of it from the previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale.*
Your Private Property, thus defined, includes, among other things: you, your body, your mind, your ability to make choices, your ability to move, to speak, to act, the fruits of your labor, your natural, unalienable rights, etc. Thus, obviously, the ownership of Private Property is based on your self-ownership, and is the natural extension of it. 

This is why Private Property and Liberty are one and the same. Therefore, you cannot violate or diminish one without violating or diminishing the other.

It is actually the case, that all rights and virtues derive from the concept of Private Property, and are, in fact, entirely meaningless without it.

To prove this, lets look again at Liberty and Justice, for example. What are they?

They are nothing more or less than Private Property.

What is justice but Non-Aggression of Private Property, with the implied right to use equal force to offset/neutralize the aggression of another against your property? And what is Liberty if not the right to do with your own property whatever you please as long as you do not violate the property of another? Both Justice and Liberty, therefore, are attributes of Private Property and have exactly ZERO meaning without it. This is why I say that Justice and Liberty are two sides of the same coin, which coin is Private Property; in other words, Justice and Liberty are one and the same as Private Property. You cannot violate or diminish one without violating or diminishing the other. They are the same thing.

In fact, the definitions of both Justice and Liberty are directly found IN the  definition of Private Property itself. And Private Property is found IN the definitions of both Justice and  Liberty. Which means these three are inextricably and permanently connected, and in fact, are meaningless and self-contradictory without each-other. 

In the section (c) of the  definition of Private Property we find:*
Liberty* = the right to do with your own property what you will as long as you do not violate the property of another; and
*Justice* = non-violation of property of another. 
Thus, both Justice and Liberty are the key subset of the definition of Private Property itself, and do not exist without it. They are inseparably connected, and in fact, are one and the same. Therefore, you can rightly say: 

*Private Property IS Liberty and Justice.*

Which is a VERY profound and  important thing to realize!


_A Right is nothing more or less than ownership of property.
_
 And natural, unalienable rights are the rights/ownership everyone are born with. These rights/ownership come to you by the fact of your existence, or in other words, they come from God.

_Example:_ If you have a right to live, it is because you own your body. The same is true for your right to speak, to move, to think. Now, do you have the right to move across the property of your neighbor? No. Why? Because you do not own it. So, your rights are intrinsically connected to the concept of ownership of property.

_All rights are statements of ownership of property._ 

You have a right to travel on a public road because you have an equal claim of ownership in it, etc. Without ownership there are no rights, because rights are nothing more or less than ownership of property.

And since _all rights are derived from OWNERSHIP of property_, therefore, _you have rights only over the things you OWN, and nothing else._


Interestingly, the First Fundamental Principle of Liberty is also known as, and is equivalent to, the Non Aggression Principle, because "non-violation" is "non-aggression."

Significantly, The First Fundamental Principle of Liberty is also exactly equivalent to Gods commandments:

_"Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not steal."_ 
Thus God reaffirms Life, and the right of Private Property, as well as defines Liberty and Justice. 
From this also, we can see that God is a Libertarian, because he lives by, and is indeed the source of, the central and defining principle of Libertarianism, which is the Non-Aggression Principle. 

These great commandments apply to individuals and to governments. Any society that lives by these two commandments HAS TO BE a strictly VOLUNTARY society, because otherwise, if aggressive violence of coercion is permitted, it would instantly violate these two commandments. 

Incidentally, this is also the very reason why the FIRST plank of Luciferian/Illuminati/Communist Manifesto is to abolish Private Property, because thus they abolish Justice, Liberty, and consequently Life itself through aggressive violence of coercion.

The opposition here is clear as night and day!

The very concepts of good and evil themselves, can be defined in terms of, and have the only meaning in context of Private Property:_
Good is private property. 
Evil is a violation of Private Property._
It is that simple.
*
Note:* Now, Jesus defined Good as doing unto others as you would have them do to you. Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets. (Matt. 7:12) 

How is that compatible with our definition of good as Non-violation of Private Property?
Perfectly. In fact, one principle is directly derived from the other:
Would you like that someone violated your property? No? Then dont do it to others! Because whatsoever you are doing to others you are doing it to yourself. Thus, the Law of Justice itself is a simple statement of cause and effect, because we are all fundamentally one, and whatsoever you are doing to others, you are, in reality, doing it to yourself!

Non-violation, or non-aggression principle, i.e. the principle of private property, is the logical consequence of doing unto others as you would have them do to you. The two principles are in PERFECT harmony with each other. In fact, as I said, one is directly derived from the other, because they are ONE principle. 

The First Fundamental Principle of Liberty is the only law that governs Private Property in a society. Any other legislation on the subject of private property is completely superfluous and unnecessary, and indeed dangerous, because it is running the risk of violating this Fundamental Natural Law of Liberty. Any legislation that contradicts this Natural Law is immoral and unjust, and if unchecked will lead to the destruction of Liberty and ultimately the destruction of the society itself, because no society can long endure without Liberty and Justice. Thats why it is best that all legislation regarding private property be abolished, and replaced with this ONE law.

Second Fundamental principle of Liberty (derived from the first):*
Private property is not to be violated by a group. 

If no one, individually, has a right to violate his neighbors property, or to initiate force upon him, neither does the group, whatever the size, because the group derives its authority from individuals, and no one can delegate an authority he does not have.* 
In other words, if it is unjust for one person to rob an individual, it is also unjust for many persons to rob him. A group being nothing more than a collection of individuals, therefore, if neither of them, individually, has a just claim upon someones property, neither does the whole group, no matter how large the group is. 

The same can be stated in terms of delegation of authority:
If you, as an individual, have no moral right to force your neighbor to do or not to do something, or to violate his property, you cannot rightly hire anybody else to do it for you, because you cannot delegate an authority you do not have.

And since representative government is nothing more than a group of individuals hired by other individuals to do for them only what they have a natural right to do for themselves and nothing more, therefore, the only proper role of representative government is to do for individuals what they have a natural right to do for themselves, and individually, asked the government to do for them, and nothing more, for none other authority could have been delegated to the government, because no one can delegate an authority he does not have.

In other words:
Since a representative government derives all of its legitimate authority by delegation from the governed, and no one can delegate an authority he does not have, the only proper role of such government, is to do for individuals only what they have a natural right to do for themselves, and individually asked the government to do for them, and nothing more. 

Thus with regards to private property of your neighbor, if you have no right to violate it or to use force upon him, you cannot ask your government to do it in your behalf, because the only legitimate authority that the government has is what you delegated to it, and you cannot delegate an authority you do not have.

_Example:_ If you, individually have no moral right to point a gun at your neighbor and force him to give money to the poor, you cannot rightly ask the government to do it either, because the ONLY legitimate authority that it has is delegated from YOU, and you CANNOT delegate an authority you do not have. This, among other things, irrefutably proves that ALL public taxation of Private Property is THEFT by definition, and is IMMORAL.

Thus, participation in any representative government must be strictly voluntary, meaning: you cannot force people to pay for government services if they do not wish to use them, because, again, government is nothing more than a group of individuals hired by other individuals to do a service for them, which they have a natural, unalienable right to do for themselves, (that is to protect their property), and you cannot force anyone to buy services they do not wish to use, for no such authority could have been delegated to the government, because no individual has such authority, therefore he cannot delegate it to the government, because no one can delegate an authority he does not have.

So, in essence, every individual must be treated as a sovereign country, all associations with which must be on strictly voluntary basis. Its good to be king (of your domain)!

This also shows that the principles of Liberty and Justice are intrinsically and inseparably connected: _A just society must necessarily be a free and voluntary one_ (otherwise it would not be just, because any aggressive/coercive social order, is, by definition, unjust); and inversely, a free and voluntary society (in order to exist) must necessarily be a just society. Thus Liberty and Justice are the two sides of the very same coin, which coin is peace, freedom and prosperity, that is Private Property.

This relationship between voluntarism (non-aggression) and justice can be expressed in a short formula:_
Justice = Voluntary Society
Voluntary Society = Justice_
 
Thus all forms of coercion (i.e. aggressive violence) are unjust, by definition. In fact, injustice IS aggressive violence. Thus in the words of Ron Paul: "The only thing we should prohibit is violence." That is the definition of liberty and justice.

Note: The Second Fundamental Principle of Liberty is also known as the Benson Principle.

Third Fundamental principle of Liberty is (derived from the first two):*
If there exists public property, that is property to which all who reside within certain geographical area have equal claim of ownership, it can be managed by the voice of the majority, provided that: 
**
a) everyone is treated equally, since all have equal claim of ownership in it, and

b) property of no individual is violated.* 
This means, among other things, that a majority cannot rightly deprive someone of the use of public property completely without compensating him in some way, because that would violate his share in it, neither can they treat anyone differently in the use of it, since all have equal claim to it.

These are Natural Fundamental Principles of Liberty, and no society can enjoy Liberty, prosperity and peace if they violate them.

Application

To square the United States Constitution with these Fundamental Principles of Liberty (without which Liberty cannot exist and must unavoidably perish), I proposed these seven amendments, the first amendment being the core, and the other six derived from, and amplifying the first.
*Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)* The Fundamental Law Constitutional Amendment Honest Money Constitutional Amendment Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Taxation No Judicial Monopoly Constitutional Amendment (NJM) Nullification - Constitutional Amendment  Constitutional Amendment: Abolishing Copyrights and Patents 
Note: All 7 limit the power of government back to its proper role.

From these principles it is obvious, that the proper role of government is to manage public property, and perhaps, non-exclusively, protect Private Property, and nothing more!

Also check out these essays: 
The Correct Principles of Liberty and The Errors of the US Constitution
The Science of Liberty (A short essay)


Please check out another take on the same subject here:

The Law of Justice

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ok, I elaborated it, and derives 2nd and 3rd from the 1st.

What do you think? Did I get it right?

Thanks.

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## Xenophage

"Liberty is science, and Justice is science. Their laws are Natural Laws, and are not subject to opinions or conjecture of politicians, and cannot be either made nor unmade by them, any more than politicians can legislate away the law of gravity, or of electricity, or of mechanics. These Natural Laws of Liberty and Justice are absolute. They determine the proper use of force if liberty is to exist. Discovering these laws and living in harmony with them ensures peace, liberty and prosperity of any society. Violating these laws will inevitably lead to destruction of Liberty, and if unchecked, to the destruction of the society itself. "

This is all stated dogmatically, with no supporting argument.  You haven't made a case for liberty or justice at all.  I could just as easily say the opposite from what you said, and my argument would be just as valid.  You also crudely define liberty, with a lot of circular reasoning and bombast, and fail to define justice.

I commend your philosophic introspection, though.  I think you should start by examining what your primary value is, and what ethical principles in turn promote that primary value logically.  Following this line of reasoning you might discover an entirely new and more logically defensible argument for liberty and justice, and the political application of those principles.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> This is all stated dogmatically, with no supporting argument.  You haven't made a case for liberty or justice at all.  I could just as easily say the opposite from what you said, and my argument would be just as valid.


Let's take geometry for instance. Is it science? Yes. How does it work? You have Fundamental Principles (a.k.a. Axioms) which are taken as self evident truth needing no proof, from which you derive all other laws (a.k.a. Theorems). The 1st principle I listed is such an axiom; it is self evident and needs no proof. The 2nd principle is logically derived from the 1st one. So is the 3rd. That's why I call it science.




> You also crudely define liberty


Really? I think what I gave is the most precise and exact definition of Liberty I have ever seen. Liberty is Private Property. 




> and fail to define justice.


Justice is the application of the correct natural principles I just stated.



> I commend your philosophic introspection, though.  I think you should start by examining what your primary value is


I think I have done that. See principle #1.




> and what ethical principles in turn promote that primary value logically.  Following this line of reasoning you might discover an entirely new and more logically defensible argument for liberty and justice, and the political application of those principles.


Would you care to elaborate and illustrate your point of view please? Thank you.

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## osan

> Ok, I elaborated it, and derives 2nd and 3rd from the 1st.
> 
> What do you think? Did I get it right?
> 
> Thanks.


I applaud the spirit of the effort, but the structure is lacking and I think your assertions are not quite right or complete.

In order to build a formally correct corpus of your argument you must begin with a premise.  Said premise must be acceptable either on its face (primitive and axiomatic) or it must be acceptable as the result of having been previously proven (complex and axiomatic).  In your case, the premise is complex and must therefore be proven before it can be used as the premise to another argument.  Your premise may or may not be true.  There is no indication either way, though I suspect that it  may be lacking in some way - I've not given it close scrutiny.  Until you have proven its truth value, the rest of your work remains unsubstantiated.

Try this as an example, excerpted from http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...ee-living.html:

The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty

The natural and self evident status of each Individual Man is that of a Sovereign Being. This truth is particularly important where questions and considerations of the Individuals existence with and about his Fellows arise, for if he is alone, there is no other to trespass upon him. Mans sovereign status derives directly from a single fundamental postulate that is at once elegant and intuitively obvious such that little analytical consideration is required in divining its truth value.  Once accepted, this single assumption leads promptly and axiomatically, to the Body of Principles that apodictically demonstrate and enshrine the complete basis by which One arrives at a more complete Truth. This assumption is the Cardinal Postulate (AKA The Postulate Of Equal Claims) and it states:


        0. All men hold equal Just Claims to Life.


It serves well to note the reference to Just Claims. Whereas, Men may endeavor to confabulate all manner of arbitrary claims upon Life that are of an ill-reasoned and therefore unjust and illegitimate nature that at times borders on the idiotic, there exists a small set of Claims to Life that are just and proper, and are shared equally by all People. A Just Claim, being a Right, the equal Just Claims to Life shared be All are otherwise referred to as their Equal Rights.


From the Cardinal Postulate follow the Cardinal Principles of Just Claim:


        1. Each Individual holds sole and absolute Title to his Life


This is the Principle of Self Ownership. No man may own or exercise ownership rights over another.


        2. The absolute right to think and act in accord with one's Will


This is the Principle of Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Action.


        3. The right to acquire, keep, and dispose of Property


The Principle of Private Property


The Cardinal Prohibition, the single restriction by which All must abide states:


        -1 No One may initiate force against, or otherwise trespass upon Others


The Principle of Non-Aggression.


Thus Endeth the Canon.



Note how the argument is based on a primitive and axiomatic postulation, "All men hold equal Just Claims to Life."  The postulate is intuitively easy to grasp and accept.  Anyone with trouble doing so need only assume its converse, "Some men hold superior Claims to life over those of others."  Acceptance of the former raises no further question, other than perhaps the trivial, "why?", which is again readily explained by offering the converse and asking the same question.  The converse postulation, on the other hand, raises a potentially infinite litany of questions whose answers are _necessarily_ arbitrary. large bodies of issues with arbitrary answers lead to inelegance and gross over-complication, which in turn leads in non-compact, inefficient, abstruse, inferior, and otherwise objectionable results whose truth value is all but guaranteed to predicate to "false".

The rest of the principles follow directly, simply, elegantly, and intuitively, from the initial postulate in unassailable fashion.  The simple act of accepting the Postulate of Equal Claims leads one automatically, axiomatically, and apodictically to the truth.  This is simplicity and elegance itself and I assert that the instrumental reasoning is unbreakable.

Anyone arguing against the Canon is required to demonstrate how and where the reasoning fails.  If you can get an opponent to accept the Cardinal Postulate, such a demonstration becomes impossible and you have him by the noots as he will not be able wrest himself free from the jaws of unbreakable logic by any means and maintain a shred of credibility.  

This is how one constructs such bodies of reasoned thought.  Keep it as simple as possible without leaving out anything essential.  This is especially key in choosing your opening volley, which is your premise.   Keep your premises to as few in number as possible and as primitives if possible.  If you can keep it down to one as I have here you will have a much stronger structure, all else equal, though greater complexity does not necessarily mean weaker logic, but only greater difficulty in assuring an unassailable foundation.


Keep it as intuitively clear as possible - not always an easy order.

Make sense?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Osan,


You are a genius! Your post is superb!

The only thing I can say is that my system of three principles with last two derived from the first is equivalent to the Canon you cited here. It asserts essentially exactly the same thing.

Whereas the Canon starts with this axiom:
"All men hold equal Just Claims to Life;" 
 
mine starts with:
"Private property is Liberty and ought not to be violated. 

The owner of a property can do whatever he wants with his property as long as he is not violating the property of others. "

Both are just as obvious and intuitive. One can ask: Why do all men hold equal just claim to life? Are not some men better than others? etc...

So, your starting axiom is valid, and I believe it to be true, but I would say it's just as persuasive as mine starting axiom.

Next, the Canon's principles 1, 2, and 3 are embodied in the notion of Private Property, when it is taken in the broadest sense possible, meaning: Private Property includes you, your body, your mind, your actions, your speech, the fruits of your labor, etc.

The cardinal prohibition of the Canon, i.e. the principle of Non-Aggression is contained in principles 1 and 2 of my system. "Private property ... ought *not to be violated*," and "Private property is *not to be violated* by a group." The principle of non-violation is the principle of non-aggression.

But, in addition, my system clearly shows the limits of the authority of the group, which is key in combating the lie that is collectivism, the lie that is the core of all our social ills. You know, that lie that says "even though it's not Ok for you individually to do that, it is Ok if the group does it." That lie is directly addressed and soundly terminated by my 2nd principle (derived from the first). I see one of the main benefits of my system in this, plus the simple, un-ambiguous and concise definition of Liberty: "Private Property IS Liberty" appears very valuable to me, because one does not exist without the other, and it is good to know what Liberty exactly is.

My third principle addresses the proper management of public property, which is also vital in a society. 

So, I think, my system, though in essence of principle exactly equivalent to yours, is better adapted to creating robust legislation that is in harmony with the Natural Principles of Liberty and Justice. 

Thank you for your wonderful post.

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## Conza88

I think that's what you were trying to get at maybe?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Brilliant! Great video! Thanks! I especially like this quote of his (in the article you posted State or Private Law Society?, which is an utterly Brilliant article!):
_"Indeed, the solution to the problem of social order has been known for  hundreds of years. The solution is the idea of private property."_ 

Thanks!!!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Law without Government

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## noneedtoaggress

Here's Part 1:

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## noneedtoaggress

> Brilliant! Great video! Thanks! I especially like this quote of his (in the article you posted State or Private Law Society?, which is an utterly Brilliant article!):
> _"Indeed, the solution to the problem of social order has been known for  hundreds of years. The solution is the idea of private property."_ 
> 
> Thanks!!!


Hoppe gave a speech on this, too:




Part2, Part 3, Part4, Part5

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Non-Aggression Principle




The Non-Aggression Principle corresponds to the First Fundamental Principle of Liberty. (See the top of the thread).

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Hoppe gave a speech on this, too:...


Thanks! Excellent!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*A Private Law Society (by Hans-Hermann Hoppe)*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DN_t...eature=related

*State or Private Law Society? (by Hans-Hermann Hoppe)*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6V0X...eature=related

*Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis | Hans-Hermann Hoppe*  - brilliant! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DIFV...eature=related
PDF  http://mises.org/journals/jls/9_2/9_2_5.pdf


*The Failed God: Democracy*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k12te...eature=related


*Freedom vs. Parasitic Government - Judge Napolitano*
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ6tD...eature=related

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

There are many and contradictory definitions of government:
One such definition that violates principles of liberty and justice is: Government is a monopoly on the use of force over a given territory. As I said, that violates Fundamental Principles of Liberty including Benson Principle, and I am against such a "government," as it is a usurpation, tyranny, violation of Justice and is a legalized plunder. 

The definition of government that consigns government to its proper role is this one: 

_Government is management of public property._ 

Such a government is beneficial inasmuch as public property exists. Note: this definition does not signify a monopoly on law-enforcement, neither presumes any control over private property whatsoever, because that would be unjust.

To summarize:*
**
Private Property is Liberty.
Management of public property is government.
*

These last two do not have to contradict each-other as long as management of public property obeys the Third Fundamental principle of Liberty: "a) property of no individual is violated and b) everyone is treated equally."

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Brilliant! Just like the earth is spherical and not flat as was believed for hundreds of years, so None Aggression Principle will eventually be acknowledged as the true and correct way to build a society!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

But Wouldn't Warlords Take Over? (by Robert P. Murphy)




Article Text: http://mises.org/daily/1855

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Lew Rockwell*Alex talks with *Lew Rockwell* and *Gary Johnson* on the Thursday, June 14 edition of the Alex Jones Show. Lew Rockwell is an anarcho-capitalist, the president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the editor of LewRockwell.com, and former Ron Paul congressional chief of staff from 1978 to 1982. He is the author of numerous books, including _Speaking of Liberty_ and _The Left, The Right and The State_. Gary Johnson is a businessman, a former Governor of New Mexico, and the Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States in the 2012 election. Alex continues his exploration of the Rand and Ron Paul firestorm sweeping the patriot movement and also covers other important news stories. Listen Now  Windows Media  Podcast


I like Lew Rockwell!

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## linux07ster

http://www.fee.org/media/audio/seven...blic_policy-2/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Larken Rose on Dangerous Myths

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Message to the Voting Cattle - Larken Rose




If you vote for any politician or for any "law" that violates the Fundamental Principles of Liberty, you are voting for tyranny, enslavement and destruction of the human race, whether you realize it or not.

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## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> The Fundamental Principles of Liberty
> *The Science of Liberty*
> 
> 
> Liberty is science, and Justice is science. Their laws are Natural Laws, and are not subject to opinions or conjecture of politicians, and can neither be made nor unmade by them, any more than politicians can legislate away the law of gravity, or of electricity, or of mechanics. These Natural Laws of Liberty and Justice are absolute. They determine the proper use of force if liberty is to exist. Discovering these laws and living in harmony with them ensures peace, liberty and prosperity of any society. Violating these laws will inevitably lead to destruction of Liberty, and if unchecked, to the destruction of the society itself. 
> 
> The fundamental principles of Liberty and justice are these:
> 
> First and foremost, is the one from which all other principles derive:*
> ...


Social communists also mention such high ideas as liberty, the rights of individuals, and of equality; however, they never talk about the Civil Purpose of the people and their quest to seek out a happier life for themselves beyond just the cruel business of survival.

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## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> Message to the Voting Cattle - Larken Rose
> 
> 
> 
> 
> If you vote for any politician or for any "law" that violates the Fundamental Principles of Liberty, you are voting for tyranny, enslavement and destruction of the human race, whether you realize it or not.


There is no way you are I can be made into a slave.  That is a fallacy.  Enslavement happens over a long period of time.  When Columbus attempted to enslave the Native Americans in his quest to find gold, they didn't want to do it.  So, he gave up on the idea.

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## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> The Non-Aggression Principle
> 
> 
> 
> 
> The Non-Aggression Principle corresponds to the First Fundamental Principle of Liberty. (See the top of the thread).


Liberty will never be achieved unless it is viewed as a mere prerequisite of a greater Civil Purpose.

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## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> "Liberty is science, and Justice is science. Their laws are Natural Laws, and are not subject to opinions or conjecture of politicians, and cannot be either made nor unmade by them, any more than politicians can legislate away the law of gravity, or of electricity, or of mechanics. These Natural Laws of Liberty and Justice are absolute. They determine the proper use of force if liberty is to exist. Discovering these laws and living in harmony with them ensures peace, liberty and prosperity of any society. Violating these laws will inevitably lead to destruction of Liberty, and if unchecked, to the destruction of the society itself. "
> 
> This is all stated dogmatically, with no supporting argument.  You haven't made a case for liberty or justice at all.  I could just as easily say the opposite from what you said, and my argument would be just as valid.  You also crudely define liberty, with a lot of circular reasoning and bombast, and fail to define justice.
> 
> I commend your philosophic introspection, though.  I think you should start by examining what your primary value is, and what ethical principles in turn promote that primary value logically.  Following this line of reasoning you might discover an entirely new and more logically defensible argument for liberty and justice, and the political application of those principles.


The power of a natural right not only reduces literally on the physical level, but it also works on the level of the conscience.  The problem is getting the message to the drunkard in such a way that it can't be misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misconstrued as just another theory.  In regards to this drunkard, I'm speaking of the one who has been intoxicated by the false powers of manipulation.  After delivering him or her the message, from that time on, their consciences are held to a higher judgement and to a greater penalty.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Liberty will never be achieved unless it is viewed as a mere prerequisite of a greater Civil Purpose.


Translation, please...

Liberty is an end in itself, because it is the ONLY thing that produces the purpose of life, which is joy.

Any "Civil Purpose" that violates Liberty in any way, is not "Civil" at all, but Evil Purpose. Note the difference: similar spelling, but very different meaning.

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## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> I applaud the spirit of the effort, but the structure is lacking and I think your assertions are not quite right or complete.
> 
> In order to build a formally correct corpus of your argument you must begin with a premise.  Said premise must be acceptable either on its face (primitive and axiomatic) or it must be acceptable as the result of having been previously proven (complex and axiomatic).  In your case, the premise is complex and must therefore be proven before it can be used as the premise to another argument.  Your premise may or may not be true.  There is no indication either way, though I suspect that it  may be lacking in some way - I've not given it close scrutiny.  Until you have proven its truth value, the rest of your work remains unsubstantiated.
> 
> Try this as an example, excerpted from http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...ee-living.html:
> 
> The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty
> 
> The natural and self evident status of each Individual Man is that of a Sovereign Being. This truth is particularly important where questions and considerations of the Individuals existence with and about his Fellows arise, for if he is alone, there is no other to trespass upon him. Mans sovereign status derives directly from a single fundamental postulate that is at once elegant and intuitively obvious such that little analytical consideration is required in divining its truth value.  Once accepted, this single assumption leads promptly and axiomatically, to the Body of Principles that apodictically demonstrate and enshrine the complete basis by which One arrives at a more complete Truth. This assumption is the Cardinal Postulate (AKA The Postulate Of Equal Claims) and it states:
> ...


Liberty and justice are not science.  Right off the bat, it is very sophist but wrong.

----------


## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> Translation, please...
> 
> Liberty is an end in itself, because it is the ONLY thing that produces the purpose of life, which is joy.
> 
> Any "Civil Purpose" that violates Liberty in any way, is not "Civil" at all, but Evil Purpose. Note the difference: similar spelling, but very different meaning.


A prerequisite is something just assumed.  It isn't the prepared dish but just a necessary ingredient involved in the cooking.  When you need to add an apple into your dish, the law will legislate that one must aim directly at the apple to achieve it instead of aiming for the higher purpose of the blue sky.  
Ain't no way you will ever shoot an apple out of a tree with an arrow by aiming directly at it.  The same is true of liberty.  It has to be a prerequisite of a higher Civil Purpose.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Message to the Voting Cattle - Larken Rose




If you vote for any politician or for any "law" that violates the Fundamental Principles of Liberty, you are voting for tyranny, enslavement and destruction of the human race, whether you realize it or not.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Liberty and justice are not science.  Right off the bat, it is very sophist but wrong.


You provide no evidence or reason to support your assertions, "right off the bat, it is very sophist but wrong."

----------


## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> You provide no evidence or reason to support your assertions, "right off the bat, it is very sophist but wrong."


I'm saying though it sounds like a pretty thing to say, liberty and justice are not science.  It is more sophist and eloquent than being right.  Any opponents will feel threatened to challenge it because they would appear to be challenging the virtues of liberty and justice as well.  
But remember that the flag can be burned, the pledge of allegiance and the star spangle banner banned, the capital of Washington D.C. burned to the ground, the U.S. Constitution ripped to shreds, and even the very head cut off, and, yet, the Civil Purpose of what is the true American way will still exist in the hearts of the disadvantaged people.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I'm saying though it sounds like a pretty thing to say, liberty and justice are not science.  It is more sophist and eloquent than being right.  Any opponents will feel threatened to challenge it because they would appear to be challenging the virtues of liberty and justice as well.  
> But remember that the flag can be burned, the pledge of allegiance and the star spangle banner banned, the capital of Washington D.C. burned to the ground, the U.S. Constitution ripped to shreds, and even the very head cut off, and, yet, the Civil Purpose of what is the true American way will still exist in the hearts of the disadvantaged people.


What are you talking about? I am talking about Fundamental Principles of Liberty (see the top of this thread.) And yes, they do exist independent of government, politicians, or thieves. They exist INDEPENDENT of even your opinion of them, much like the laws of mathematics, or mechanics, or electricity exist independent of your opinion of them. 

Am I understanding you correctly?

Thanks.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

I believe that liberty is more fundamental than property rights.  Oh, I know this will get me on the bad side of the Miseseans and the Rothbardians who say property rights are the most fundamental substructure of liberty, but I attach liberty to the core conscience, and whatever rights (including property rights) flow from there.

To me liberty is:

The right to -

Self-Possession
Self-Direction
Self-Determination

Property rights flow FROM this, you can't have self-possession if you don't own your own body.  You can't have self-direction if you don't own the tools you are using, and you can't have self-determination if you don't own the proceeds you develop.  You can technically own all these things and not have liberty, but you cannot have liberty and not own all these things.  Therefore property rights are a subset of liberty, and liberty is not a subset of property rights.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> I applaud the spirit of the effort, but the structure is lacking and I think your assertions are not quite right or complete.
> 
> In order to build a formally correct corpus of your argument you must begin with a premise.  Said premise must be acceptable either on its face (primitive and axiomatic) or it must be acceptable as the result of having been previously proven (complex and axiomatic).  In your case, the premise is complex and must therefore be proven before it can be used as the premise to another argument.  Your premise may or may not be true.  There is no indication either way, though I suspect that it  may be lacking in some way - I've not given it close scrutiny.  Until you have proven its truth value, the rest of your work remains unsubstantiated.
> 
> Try this as an example, excerpted from http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...ee-living.html:
> 
> The Canon Of Individual Sovereignty
> 
> 
> ...






> 0. All men hold equal Just Claims to Life.
> 
> 
> It serves well to note the reference to “Just” Claims. Whereas, Men may endeavor to confabulate all manner of arbitrary claims upon Life that are of an ill-reasoned and therefore unjust and illegitimate nature that at times borders on the idiotic, there exists a small set of Claims to Life that are just and proper, and are shared equally by all People. A Just Claim, being a Right, the equal Just Claims to Life shared be All are otherwise referred to as their Equal Rights.
> 
> 
> From the Cardinal Postulate follow the Cardinal Principles of Just Claim:
> 
> 
> ...


Self Possession




> 2. The absolute right to think and act in accord with one's Will
> 
> 
> This is the Principle of Freedom of Thought, Conscience, and Action.


Self Direction




> 3. The right to acquire, keep, and dispose of Property
> 
> 
> The Principle of Private Property


Self Determination





> The Cardinal Prohibition, the single restriction by which All must abide states:
> 
> 
>         -1 No One may initiate force against, or otherwise trespass upon Others
> 
> 
> The Principle of Non-Aggression.


It is just as wrong for you to violate another's liberty, as it is for another to violate yours.




> Thus Endeth the Canon.
> 
> 
> 
> Note how the argument is based on a primitive and axiomatic postulation, "All men hold equal Just Claims to Life."  The postulate is intuitively easy to grasp and accept.  Anyone with trouble doing so need only assume its converse, "Some men hold superior Claims to life over those of others."  Acceptance of the former raises no further question, other than perhaps the trivial, "why?", which is again readily explained by offering the converse and asking the same question.  The converse postulation, on the other hand, raises a potentially infinite litany of questions whose answers are necessarily arbitrary. large bodies of issues with arbitrary answers lead to inelegance and gross over-complication, which in turn leads in non-compact, inefficient, abstruse, inferior, and otherwise objectionable results whose truth value is all but guaranteed to predicate to "false".
> 
> The rest of the principles follow directly, simply, elegantly, and intuitively, from the initial postulate in unassailable fashion.  The simple act of accepting the Postulate of Equal Claims leads one automatically, axiomatically, and apodictically to the truth.  This is simplicity and elegance itself and I assert that the instrumental reasoning is unbreakable.
> 
> Anyone arguing against the Canon is required to demonstrate how and where the reasoning fails.  If you can get an opponent to accept the Cardinal Postulate, such a demonstration becomes impossible and you have him by the noots as he will not be able wrest himself free from the jaws of unbreakable logic by any means and maintain a shred of credibility.  
> ...


Just another demonstration that property rights ARE a fundamental expression of liberty, but liberty _itself_ is a little bit deeper, Mises and Rothbard notwithstanding.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I believe that liberty is more fundamental than property rights.  Oh, I know this will get me on the bad side of the Miseseans and the Rothbardians who say property rights are the most fundamental substructure of liberty, but I attach liberty to the core conscience, and whatever rights (including property rights) flow from there.
> 
> To me liberty is:
> 
> The right to -
> 
> Self-Possession
> Self-Direction
> Self-Determination
> ...


I think we basically agree. As mentioned at the top




> Private property, of course, is taken in the broadest sense possible: it includes, you, your body, your mind, your actions, your speech, your natural unalienable rights and the fruits of your labor, etc.


This means that the way I use the term "Private Property" INCLUDES "Self-Possession," and therefore "Self-Possession" is a part of private property, because you own yourself. So there is no contradiction between our views, if you define the words properly. Thus we agree. 

Thanks.

----------


## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> What are you talking about? I am talking about Fundamental Principles of Liberty (see the top of this thread.) And yes, they do exist independent of government, politicians, or thieves. They exist INDEPENDENT of even your opinion of them, much like the laws of mathematics, or mechanics, or electricity exist independent of your opinion of them. 
> 
> Am I understanding you correctly?
> 
> Thanks.


The Truth shall set you free.  What does this mean?  Well, we aren't free today because of any form of political manipulation.  The reason we are free is because we have derived at a truth within us.  
So, why keep pushing liberty as a goal?  Seems to me we should be more concerned with holding as a foundation those certain truths our Founders delcared as self-evident and unalienable.

----------


## Uncle Emanuel Watkins

> I believe that liberty is more fundamental than property rights.  Oh, I know this will get me on the bad side of the Miseseans and the Rothbardians who say property rights are the most fundamental substructure of liberty, but I attach liberty to the core conscience, and whatever rights (including property rights) flow from there.
> 
> To me liberty is:
> 
> The right to -
> 
> Self-Possession
> Self-Direction
> Self-Determination
> ...


Jesus performed miracles to make His disciples fear Him.  He then used that fear to make them serve the multitude (of many nations) when the time came about.  In other words, by natural right, when Jesus told the people to recline back where they stood, He was Willing all the property and wealth to them.  At the same time, when He commanded His disciples to serve them, He exposed that it was they who were the true trespassers. 
By natural law, it is Tyranny, the necessary evil, that is the real trespasser; meanwhile, the disadvantages people are the ones who really own all the property and the wealth.
Think of a national dinner table.  At the head of this table sits a king who doesn't need any property or wealth because, well, he or she is the king.  As the king can will whatever he or she wants, He, the supreme one, chose to will all the property and his wealth to his wife, the church, or the people.  
This is what happened on the side of the mountain.  When Jesus fed the multitude in the most destitute of places, He Willed to them all the property and the wealth.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> The Truth shall set you free.  What does this mean?  Well, we aren't free today because of any form of political manipulation.  The reason we are free is because we have derived at a truth within us.  
> So, why keep pushing liberty as a goal?  Seems to me we should be more concerned with holding as a foundation those certain truths our Founders declared as self-evident and unalienable.


Liberty is a divine principle. Its author and ultimate champion is God. Any "truth" that violates Liberty is a lie. Man must be free like God is free, because Jesus said: "I would that you should be even as my Father and I are."

----------


## osan

> S
> Just another demonstration that property rights ARE a fundamental expression of liberty, but liberty _itself_ is a little bit deeper, Mises and Rothbard notwithstanding.


Agreed.  Freedom, however, pretty well subsumes property rights and in so doing implies them in a very direct fashion.

BTW, your self-possession and self-determination wording is very well chosen.  I may have to borrow those - not sure why their use did not occur to me sooner, but these are perfect for conveying the notions.

I will add that the NAP is woefully inadequate as it is commonly expressed.  More is needed - like a very arduously rigorous discussion of the precise metes and bounds of "nonaggression".  I am tempted to replace the word with "non-trespass".  Initiating aggression to forestall an imminent attack is eminently justifiable, so the blanket prohibition on not initiating force is bull$#@!.  If I am approached by a couple of guys on a dark empty street at 3 AM and they don 't look kosher in their attitudes toward me, I am not going to wait for the action to start before taking defensive action.  Screw that.  Some will say that the definition of "nonaggression" accounts for this, but I do not buy it as I find it to be a stretching of the definition such that the term takes on a distorted meaning, whereas "non-trespass" implies something VERY different and far and away more suitable, IMO.  My knocking two guys out preemptively because I am certain they intend on mugging me is no trespass of their rights, but it IS initiation of aggression.  Again, I do not buy into distortions of terms, so to say that two guys eyeballing me suspiciously and following me as I walk those empty streets in the wee hours does NOT constitute aggression, but it does constitute dangerously unwise choice of behavior and that can be plenty of justification for taking material action to neutralize a perceived threat.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Agreed.  Freedom, however, pretty well subsumes property rights and in so doing implies them in a very direct fashion.
> 
> BTW, your self-possession and self-determination wording is very well chosen.  I may have to borrow those - not sure why their use did not occur to me sooner, but these are perfect for conveying the notions.
> 
> I will add that the NAP is woefully inadequate as it is commonly expressed.  More is needed - like a very arduously rigorous discussion of the precise metes and bounds of "nonaggression".  I am tempted to replace the word with "non-trespass".  Initiating aggression to forestall an imminent attack is eminently justifiable, so the blanket prohibition on not initiating force is bull$#@!.  If I am approached by a couple of guys on a dark empty street at 3 AM and they don 't look kosher in their attitudes toward me, I am not going to wait for the action to start before taking defensive action.  Screw that.  Some will say that the definition of "nonaggression" accounts for this, but I do not buy it as I find it to be a stretching of the definition such that the term takes on a distorted meaning, whereas "non-trespass" implies something VERY different and far and away more suitable, IMO.  My knocking two guys out preemptively because I am certain they intend on mugging me is no trespass of their rights, but it IS initiation of aggression.  Again, I do not buy into distortions of terms, so to say that two guys eyeballing me suspiciously and following me as I walk those empty streets in the wee hours does NOT constitute aggression, but it does constitute dangerously unwise choice of behavior and that can be plenty of justification for taking material action to neutralize a perceived threat.


I am about 95% with you on NAP vs NTP.  It is a touchy line, I mean, if you have good situational awareness, then there comes a point where you KNOW you are about to get aggressed against.  For sake of easy example take the Colorado thing.  Dude jumps in and charges an AR and starts reaching for whatever improvised CS canisters.  He has done nothing specific to aggress...yet...but it's blatantly obvious that he will.  If I wait until he starts pulling the trigger to stop him then I will probably be the first to die.  Nevermind the legal implications, we are talking philosophy.

Anyway, from another presentation I am working up:

*What Is Liberty?*

A practical guide on the meaning of Liberty.

--------------------------------------------------

_Liberty Is:_

Self Possession
Self Direction
Self Determination


_Self Possession_

I Own My Own Body
I Decide What To Eat & Drink
I Control My Own Healthcare
I Am Free To Defend Myself
Nobody May Own Me


_Self Direction_

I Choose My Own Employment
I Choose My Own Activities
I Travel As I Please
I Do Not Need Permission
I Associate With Whom I Please
I Do What I Want - Nobody May Make Me Do What I Do Not Want To Do


_Self Determination_

I Keep What I Earn, It Is Mine
I Alone Decide My Faith
I Alone Decide My Education
I Choose My Own Friends
I Will Not Be Enslaved

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Eminent threat is an aggression. 
A gun pointed at you is an aggression.
A gun pointed at you with a request "give me your wallet" is an aggression.
A gun pointed at you IS an initiation of force.

So NAP is not violated, if you defend yourself in such cases.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> Eminent threat is an aggression. 
> A gun pointed at you is an aggression.
> A gun pointed at you with a request "give me your wallet" is an aggression.
> A gun pointed at you IS an initiation of force.
> 
> So NAP is not violated, if you defend yourself in such cases.


OK, what if you think someone is following you so you duck into a narrow alleyway, as soon as the guy turns the corner to follow another guy comes out in front if you.  Both are looking right at you, no weapon is in sight, and they start closing directly on you, they 'look' aggressive in the eyes, and one of them raises his hand --- could be a high-five, could be planning to smack you.  You don't know.  Everything 'aggressive' thus far has been completely subjective...

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> OK, what if you think someone is following you so you duck into a narrow alleyway, as soon as the guy turns the corner to follow another guy comes out in front if you.  Both are looking right at you, no weapon is in sight, and they start closing directly on you, they 'look' aggressive in the eyes, and one of them raises his hand --- could be a high-five, could be planning to smack you.  You don't know.  Everything 'aggressive' thus far has been completely subjective...


So humans are imperfect. Is that your point? It does not invalidate a correct principle (i.e. NAP).

----------


## osan

> I am about 95% with you on NAP vs NTP.


I think we are indeed on the same page.

As for freedom: http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com  The initial post discusses this in some detail.

----------


## GunnyFreedom

> So humans are imperfect. Is that your point? It does not invalidate a correct principle (i.e. NAP).


I think the point is if I am 98% confident that 'ruffian x' is about to try and accost me, I'm almost certainly going to take action.  I think a pure academic reading of the NAP requires 100% confidence.  I don't want to get into a foot-ball type discussion of 95% vs 90% vs whatever, but it would be easier to draw outsiders into the philosophy if there were an easier way to draw a clear bright line...

----------


## osan

> Eminent threat is an aggression... 
> 
> A gun pointed at you with a request "give me your wallet" is an aggression.


What about asking for your wallet with no weapon apparent?

What about demanding your wallet?




> So NAP is not violated, if you defend yourself in such cases.


Language is important.  Crucially.  The language of the NAP affords insufficient comfort of meaning and specification of metes and bounds.  These are centrally important because we are talking about how people may respond to  the actions of others based on this principle.  People go to prison or are perhaps executed based on this principle and because of that it must be abundantly rigorous.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I think the point is if I am 98% confident that 'ruffian x' is about to try and accost me, I'm almost certainly going to take action.  I think a pure academic reading of the NAP requires 100% confidence.  I don't want to get into a foot-ball type discussion of 95% vs 90% vs whatever, but it would be easier to draw outsiders into the philosophy if there were an easier way to draw a clear bright line...


The "clear bright line" is the principle itself. _Private property must not be violated_. We must approach this principle as closely and as perfectly as possible if liberty is to exist. Yes humans are imperfect. Yes they make mistakes, but the principle is perfect. Apply it as closely and as accurately as you can, and that is the beginning and the end. You either strive for perfection, or forever slide into darkness. The choice is yours, but so are the consequences. Good luck.

----------


## osan

> I think the point is if I am 98% confident that 'ruffian x' is about to try and accost me, I'm almost certainly going to take action.  I think a pure academic reading of the NAP requires 100% confidence.  I don't want to get into a foot-ball type discussion of 95% vs 90% vs whatever, but it would be easier to draw outsiders into the philosophy if there were an easier way to draw a clear bright line...


I believe this is in the ballpark of right - I have noticed that the elements of this issue appear somewhat elusive in terms of being able to pin them down in a clearly qualified fashion.  I am going to ha ve to apply my efforts to clarifying this issue because it is truly important to rationally specifying the parameters of proper action.

I have mentioned this before and will repeat it: the feudal Japanese had this question answered correctly and very neatly.  Any behavior lacking in sufficient care on the part of one person toward another may subject the actor to ultimate consequences (death).  People are generally unable to know with great certainty the intentions of others.  It therefore behooves each of us not to act in ways that may be misinterpreted as a trespass against our territory.

This is why the feudal Japanese, particularly the warrior class, were so mindful of every act - anything that could be misinterpreted as aggressive (or discourteous, particularly to a superior) could get one killed in an instant. From this did the strict formalisms of the culture arise and stems from their uncompromising respect for the rights of the individual, however paradoxically it may have been so.  Any action that _might_ be interpretable as aggression would  likely precipitate mortality for someone.  Therefore, every act was carefully considered prior to being carried out.  I personally agree with this view of things.  Most people, I believe, will find it unreasonable because it demands one live his life in a state of continual mindfulness of his behavior and most folks are simply too damned lazy and careless to accept such "restrictions" upon them.  Such people appear to demand the right to behave carelessly and as imbeciles without responsibility or consequence.  I see nothing unreasonable about it.  Just as those around you owe you the respect, care, and mindful courtesy to not trespass upon your territory, equally do you owe them the same.  I will point out that when people are truly equals, onus rests with each person on a practical level not to behave in ways that may be perceived as threatening to his fellows because if they perceive one's actions as posing threats to them, bad things may ensue.  Key here is the recognition of the individual right to respond to careless behavior in such ways because it is generally not possible for one person to know the intentions of another and therefore onus rests with each of us not to telegraph wrong messages to our fellows.  This right is very actively denied to the individual in many places in the USA, not to mention places like the UK and so on, the often tacit assumption/message there being that "the state" is the only entity holding the authority to decide what is threatening and what is not.  This, of course, is ridiculous and a telltale of rank tyranny.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Good points, osan.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Lew Rockwell: Gov’t is Far Worse Than The Mafia

"Government murdered infinitely more people than the mafia." 

Start at 4:21

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty



----------


## ZenBowman

A law is only a scientific law if it cannot be violated.

You cannot violate the law of gravitation, no exceptions. If you could violate it, it wouldn't be a law.

Hence, none of the laws you listed are remotely scientific.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> A law is only a scientific law if it cannot be violated.
> 
> You cannot violate the law of gravitation, no exceptions. If you could violate it, it wouldn't be a law.
> 
> Hence, none of the laws you listed are remotely scientific.


You are wrong. 2+2=4 is a scientific law. You can violate it and FALSELY claim 2+2=5. 

Plus, the laws of Liberty are the laws of cause and effect. If you violate them, you will destroy the condition of Liberty and bring in the condition of tyranny. So it is VERY scientific. 

Example: There is a law of buoyancy which says: The body will float if its density is less than that of water. So it is a scientific, verifiable law of cause and effect. If the density of the body is greater than that of water, it will sink. It is scientific, verifiable, repeatable, etc.

So are the Laws of Liberty. Live in harmony with them and you have Liberty, violate them, and you will have tyranny, and if unchecked, destruction of the society itself.

So in a way, you are right: You CANNOT violate the Laws of Liberty and still have Liberty. This law cannot be broken. It is absolute!

----------


## Uriah

> You are wrong. 2+2=4 is a scientific law. You can violate it and FALSELY claim 2+2=5.


You cannot violate a scientific law. If you could violate a scientific law and the violation in and of itself is false then that is a contradiction and no violation at all. Further, if you could violate a scientific law then it is not a law at all.

Edit:The rest of your post sounds good to me.

----------


## heavenlyboy34

> You are wrong. 2+2=4 is a scientific law. You can violate it and FALSELY claim 2+2=5.


That is a scientific theory (and part of a larger mathematical theorem).  In controlled experiments, it is true.  However, when we start making these abstract numbers represent something real, we can get all sorts of answers.  Astrophysics, for example, turns a whole bunch of elementary maths into knots.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> You cannot violate a scientific law. If you could violate a scientific law and the violation in and of itself is false then that is a contradiction and no violation at all. Further, if you could violate a scientific law then it is not a law at all.
> 
> Edit:The rest of your post sounds good to me.


That is exactly my point. By violation of a scientific law, I mean a statement of falsehood. It's just a way of saying, "You are violating a principle of truth (a scientific law), i.e. you speak falsehood." So I guess, we agree!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Who You Really Are

----------


## ZenBowman

> You are wrong. *2+2=4 is a scientific law.* You can violate it and FALSELY claim 2+2=5.


No, it isn't.

The law of conservation of matter is a scientific law. If you observe a violation of it, at any time, it would be invalid.

Please at least study what you are talking about.

----------


## wgadget

I'm SO glad this came back to the top of the forum!  I was thinking about posting my TWO RULES TO LIVE BY as a libertarian.  They are:

1.  I will do all that I AGREE TO DO.
2.  I will NOT ENCROACH ON OTHER PEOPLE or their property.

These two rules are rules that Our Hero lives by, and to this day they affect his actions.  I use them to bring up my kids, and they're a LOT EASIER to remember than the Ten Commandments.

----------


## wgadget

AND...To this effect, the GOP HAS NOT FOLLOWED THEIR OWN RULES, and has thereby encroached on the VOTING RIGHTS of We, the People.

If I were Ron Paul, I'D BE PISSED.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> No, it isn't.
> 
> The law of conservation of matter is a scientific law. If you observe a violation of it, at any time, it would be invalid.
> 
> Please at least study what you are talking about.


There is no contradiction between what you and I are saying. We only disagree in the use of the term "violation." You mean PHYSICAL violation of a law. I mean LOGICAL violation of a law. So you are right, natural law cannot be PHYSICALLY violated, otherwise it would not be a law. At the same time, FALSE statements can be made about nature that LOGICALLY violate its laws, such as 2+2=5, etc.

Do you see the difference? We use the word "VIOLATE" in DIFFERENT contexts, LOGICAL vs. PHYSICAL, where it means DIFFERENT things. Once this is understood, there is NO contradiction between your position and mine. WE AGREE!

Do you get this?

Again I say, *it is PHYSICALLY and LOGICALLY IMPOSSIBLE to violate the Laws of Liberty, herein stated, and still have Liberty*. So again, your criteria for truthfulness of a natural law, as being impossible to violate, holds up here. We agree, if you understand the word "violation" in its PROPER context. 

Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Johnny Carson Show*
Interview with Ayn Rand





Ayn Rand was utterly brilliant. She understood correctly the Fundamental Principles of Liberty. This is a great discovery! *Enlightened self interest is a true and divine principle,* the same that exists in God himself. Private property (broadly understood) is Liberty. The Benson Principle. The Non Aggression Principle. The ridiculousness of the claims of collectivists ("Let us destroy your Liberty now so you won't lose it later") etc... She got it all!

Her only flaw is ignorance of the existence of God, but she embraced most of the principles that come from him. And how fitting that she is from Russia, the home of socialism, to present the correct principles of Liberty. (Just like brilliant Frederic Bastiat was from France, the country that originated socialism, and he exposed the flaws of it!)

*Ayn Rand First Interview 1959 (Full)*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Ron Paul:* 
*The U.S. is a Republic, NOT a Democracy!*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., Author of "Rollback," at FreedomFest 2012





The fundamental principles of Liberty described at the top of this thread are the solution.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Judge Napolitano on the Virtues of Private Justice


*
...
Daily Bell:* You are a libertarian. Are you an anarcho-capitalist?*

Judge Napolitano:* Well, it depends how you define those terms. I am a Randian, as in Ayn Rand, on economics. I am a Rothbardian, as in Murray Rothbard, on most philosophical principles, specifically the morality of government in our lives. Some of the younger producers who worked with me on the late, lamented, now-missed "Freedom Watch" used to say that I was an anarcho-capitalist. I don't know what the term means, but I am always the most libertarian person in the room. (Laughing)*

Daily Bell:* Rothbard was. How can one believe in representative democracy as an anarchist?*

Judge Napolitano:* Representative democracy presumes that those who receive power from the voters will respect the natural law and will respect the Constitution. We rarely have seen in our era that both the natural law and the Constitution are respected. Majority rules obviously means the rights of the minority so only a government tempered by the natural law, and in America tempered by the Constitution, has a moral one. That's why I said earlier almost all federal law is unconstitutional because it's either not grounded in a power granted to the Congress in the Constitution, or even if grounded there, violates the natural law. Beyond that we'd have to get into specifics. Under the natural law, the government only has two purposes, and those are to preserve, protect and defend our rights from fraud and force and nothing else.*

Daily Bell:* Is representative democracy a positive choice? Or does it always lead to despotism eventually?*

Judge Napolitano:* It usually leads to despotism because it usually draws to it people who suffer from _labido dominandi_, a Latin phrase that St. Augustine used, which is the 'lust to dominate' and the government doesn't usually draw people who think the way Ron Paul or Gary Johnson or I do. When I was in the government, in the judicial branch – we are really exceptions. The vast majority of people who are drawn there are busybodies, nanny-staters, bed-wetters and do-gooders who think that somehow they have the power to tell us how to live our lives differently than how we choose to live them.So yes, representative democracy will lead to despotism without a judiciary seriously committed to constitutional principles and natural law principles. We do not have a judiciary today. Occasionally we hear it from Justice Thomas; sometimes we hear it from Justice Scalia; occasionally we hear it from Justice Kennedy. There is a smattering of lower court federal judges, but only these arguments are appointed by Democratic presidents. But for the most part, the Judiciary presumes to be constitutional whatever the legislative branch has done, and thus finds ways to uphold legislation.Von Mises said that government is essentially the negation of liberty. I believe he is correct. From that it follows that whatever the government does should be presumed unconstitutional and violative of the natural law. Rather than the challenger having the burden of saying why the legislation or the government behavior is wrong, the government should have the burden of saying why the legislation or the government behavior is consistent with the Constitution and consistent with the natural law. Simply switching that presumption would radically change the ability and the inclination of the courts to invalidate much of what government does in deference to our individual choices.*

Daily Bell:* Is modern law made to include natural law and economics? If not, why not?*

Judge Napolitano:* It doesn't matter. Natural law is part of our humanity and modern law is subject to that. The creature is subject to the creator. The creators of law are human beings and we all are subject to the laws of physics, the laws of economics, the laws of nature. 'Some men say the Earth is round and some men say the Earth is flat but if it is round, let the kings command flatten it, and if it is flat by an act of parliament, make it round.' Of course, the answer to both questions is no because all governments are subject to the laws of nature as are human beings. So the government ignores the natural law but it is ultimately subject to the natural law just like we are all subject to the movement of the Earth around the Sun and to a flat Earth or a round Earth, whatever the case may be.*

Daily Bell:* We've argued for common law here – not British common law but real common law, pre-Babylon, common law as it existed within tribal contexts for tens of thousands of years. Can you comment on that?*

Judge Napolitano:* That's a very complicated observation on your part. The common law that we inherited was the common law in Great Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries, which is essentially judge-written law based upon notions of fairness and tradition in history. For the most part it embodied the natural law and for the most part it has been irradiated by positive law, by the statutes that have been enacted by Congress, for instance, and by state legislatures. You remember that TV commercial, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature?" Whenever the government violates the natural law, there are unintended consequences to it. I believe that we were created by an omnipotent, Supreme Being. Some people call him Allah; some people call him as do I, the Father. Now, I believe he made us in his image and likeness and he doesn't have a body but we do; he's not going to die and we are. But the one thing absolutely in common between the creator and the creature is freedom. When the government takes away human freedom, it takes away that one aspect of our humanity that is closest to the creator. There are inimitably adverse consequences to such interference.*

Daily Bell:* Follow-up: Why does the state need to be in charge of law? Why can't people pursue justice privately?*

Judge Napolitano:* Because as a token of all this, government doesn't share power. It would take a government of Ron Paul's, Rand Paul's and your humble correspondent here to shrink the government radically and to repose into the hands of individuals the ability to address injustice on their own. It truly goes back to the Middle Ages when people transferred to the government the right to punish.Think about it. If my house is broken into and they steal my favorite book, what business is that of the government? Well, the government has decided that they have the right to prosecute and punish but in a different world, I would have insured and have insurers' authority to pursue the thief, and it wouldn't cost my neighbors any money to bring about justice. But we live in a world where the right to punish exists only in the hands of the government because it was perceived as fairer and more convenient at the time it was transferred. It's not fairer or more convenient today; it's politically subjective today. The greatest lawbreaker is the government itself so how could we possibly rely on the government to give us justice?*

Daily Bell:* What is justice?*

Judge Napolitano:* Depending on each individual, justice is different in different cases. Justice is certainly not the government taking property from us against our will. I mean justice is a series of voluntary transactions which, when interfered with, are made whole again on the basis of fairness and principles of morality. I can give you thousands of examples of injustice; most prosecutions are unjust because they tax the general populace for what is essentially a private dispute.*

Daily Bell:* Wouldn't private justice with its duels and vendettas be far preferable to public justice that in the US has incarcerated up to six million or more people, many of them unfairly, for long prisons sentences that doom families to separation and poverty?*

Judge Napolitano:* I don't want to get into duels and vendettas but if you are at home one night and you hear a knock on the door, and you answer the door and a guy standing there points a gun at you, and says give me your money, I want to give it away in your name, and you think the guy's crazy and you call the police, and you find out he is the police, come to collect your taxes ... if you don't pay them they come with a gun. What do they do with the money? They give it away.This is basically the system we have today and it is the system that we accept because we have come to the perverse belief in government, which can't deliver the mail, which can't run the school system, can't manage roads without potholes in them but somehow it can keep us safe and keep us prosperous. It can't. It is the perverse reliance upon government's delivered goods and services that has proven for hundreds of years, or at least 120 years, that it cannot deliver. The continued refusal to examine the proper role of government in our society that has brought us to where we are today and to the point where we can see change in people's thinking, for the government to be shrunk.


Read more: http://www.thedailybell.com/4257/Ant...rivate-Justice

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Libertarians and the Purpose of Life



Ethics of Liberty are in perfect harmony with God's Plan for his creations. It is the ONLY JUST and moral system in existence. It is the system of God, -- the source and the ultimate champion of Liberty!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Six Myths About Libertarianism
by Murray N. Rothbard


This is a great short essay by Murray Rothbard that talks about what Libertarians really believe.

It deals with myths like:
1. We're isolationsists
2. We're libertines, and have no morals or ethics
3. We're atheistic and don't deal with spirituality
...
5. We're 'Utopians' and believe that no government is necessary
...


"LIBERTARIANISM is the fastest growing political creed in America today. Before judging and evaluating libertarianism, it is vitally important to find out precisely what that doctrine is, and, more particularly, what it is not. It is especially important to clear up a number of misconceptions about libertarianism that are held by most people, and particularly by conservatives. In this essay I shall enumerate and critically analyze the most common myths that are held about libertarianism. When these are cleared away, people will then be able to discuss libertarianism free of egregious, myths and misconceptions, and to deal with it as it should be – on its very own merits or demerits."
...

"Far from being immoral, libertarians simply apply a universal human ethic to _government_ in the same way as almost everyone would apply such an ethic to every other person or institution in society. In particular as I have noted earlier, libertarianism as a political philosophy dealing with the proper role of violence takes the universal ethic that most of us hold toward violence and applies it fearlessly to government. Libertarians make no exceptions to the golden rule and provide no moral loophole, no double standard, for government. That is, libertarians believe that murder is murder and does not become sanctified by reasons of State if committed by the government. We believe that theft is theft and does not become legitimated because organized robbers calltheir theft "taxation." We believe that enslavement is enslavement even if the institution committing that act calls it "conscription." In short, the key to libertarian theory is that it makes no exceptions in its universal ethic for government."
...

Keep reading:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard12.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Tom Woods Talks Agorism on FOX Radio

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Obama Family and Staff Cost Taxpayers $1.4 Billion in 2011
Read more.

This is financed at a point of a gun (as all taxation is). ALL taxation is theft.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

ReasonTV: Freedomain Radio's Stefan Molyneux: 
The Inevitable Growth of the State





The state grows until it destroys society because its proper role is misunderstood.

The state has ZERO moral right to establish a monopoly on law enforcement or judiciary system or anything else pertaining to *private* property. 

The ONLY proper role of representative government is to manage *public* property, and that only in strict obedience to the third principle of Liberty that limits that management according to the laws of justice (see the first post), and nothing else. 

Everything else, pertaining to *private* property, can only be rightly done by voluntary actions of Free Market. It is the only MORAL and CORRECT way that results in Liberty and lasting prosperity.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Eeeek, an Anarchist!*

Watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdDCa...hannel&list=UL

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Gospel According to Government

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Part-Time Libertarians

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Undeniable Truth - Larken Rose

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Call the Cops at Your Own Risk





> Your average person in the USSA still probably labors under the illusion that the police are actually there to help them, and that the public police option actually is superior to the customer-service based private options. That's a very dangerous illusion.
> ...
> [For the police] Their own safety is far more important to them than your safety. After all, they are the sacred praetorian class, defenders of the law and the lawmakers, while you're just a subject who is forced at gunpoint to pay for their salaries. You'd be far better off being a voluntarily paying customer.
> 
> 
> Read more: http://lewrockwell.com/berwick/berwick65.1.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Peter Schiff: Presidential debate analysis

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Tom Woods:
The Libertarian Speech I Would Deliver to the Whole Country
Brilliant!!!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

When Did I Sign This 'Social Contract'?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Here is a simple chart that shows more dramatically than a thousand words that the so-called War on Drugs is a miserable failure.* [Most people know that without seeing this chart, but the question is _why_ is it a failure? This chart shows the answer. Hint: It has something to do with money. When people are being paid handsomely to conduct a war on drugs, do they really want to *win* that war and put themselves out of work?]_
YouTube 2012 Oct 20



From_ http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

On Us vs. Them
_October 28, 2012
By eric_

The movie, _The Matrix_, explains a great deal

.

Most people are brought up from birth within the system – “the matrix” – and psychologically and socially and culturally conditioned to accept it as their world. And more, the world as it is _supposed_ to be. What separates people like those here from everyone else? Somehow, for whatever reason, we_questioned_. And we saw a flaw in the pattern (the green screen with zeros and ones, if you like, as in the movie). Something clicked – and we _knew_. The curtain fell away. We began to realize how _thoroughly_ we’d been lied to about almost everything. Saw the fundamental violence of the system. The lie behind the facade of “democracy” and “consent of the governed.” Once you see, you cannot _un_see. The pattern becomes obvious, transparant. And all of sudden, things make sense. A bleak sort of sense, to be sure. But for the first time, you truly _understand_.

But the downside is you are now an outlier, more or less alienated from the society in which you live. Other people are like zombies – because in a way they are. Just as in the movie. As in real life.

I have noticed two qualities that separate the people like us here from the Clovers out there: First, the habit of conceptual thought. Of reasoning from (and accepting the necessary consequences of) principles. Thus, we understand why it is so profoundly dangerous to countenance such things as “safety” checkpoints in order to (ostensibly) “get dangerous drunks” off the road. Because it follows that if the state arrogates unto itself the power to detain (that is, to arrest) people and search/interrogate them (no matter how cursorily) for no specific reason, without actual probable cause, then a principle has been accepted – ceded – and much more and worse will _inevitably_ follow. Clovers cannot grasp this. They only see “safety” – and “getting dangerous drunks off the road.” The same point can be applied almost universally. For instance, “taxes.” A Clover will turn up his nose at a person who stuffs a Snickers bar in his pants at a 7-11 and walks out the door with it. He sees this as theft, which it is. But he does not see that it is also theft when he (and others like him) band together at the ballot box and _vote_ to take much more than merely someone else’s Snicker’s bar. The Clover mind is unable to make the conceptual connection. Theft is somehow transformed into not-theft when it is done under the auspices of the state.



Second, Clovers have an under-developed (or crippled) sense of empathy. Though superficially, they often posture as the caring benefactors of their fellow men, in truth they have more in common with sociopaths who, like them, view other people as cardboard cutouts to be manipulated and controlled. The proof that they do in fact think this way is revealed by the fact that they will not or cannot confront the _violence_ that is always at the end of their professed benefactions. The gun pointed at someone else’s head. The rough men in costumes who _will_ come. Even the most petty-seeming failure to Submit and Obey will inevitably result in violence – possibly, lethal violence – being applied. What sort of human being countenances that? A human being who has lost – or never developed – the capacity for empathy. True empathy. Not the _faux_ empathy of “helping” by _controlling_ – and _threatening_. An empathetic man sees a fellow human being having difficulty and offers to help – himself. A Clover points a gun at someone else (or has men in costumes do it on his behalf) and forces that someone else to “help” – in the manner the Clover deems appropriate. In this way, the Clover satisfies his urge to control and direct – _to apply force_ – and do to so under the guise of the humanitarian, even as his victims feel the boot on their throat, hear the handcuffs being locked.

They are asleep – or evil. There is no middle ground.

Empathetic humans see others suffering and feel terrible about it. But they feel even more terrible about the idea of official, state-sanctioned predation – violence codified and legitimized. The utter perversion of the concept of “help” which flows from the barrel of a gun. The utter perversion of _humanity_ thereby. The warping of natural instinct – of goodwill – into something corrosive and yes, evil.  Because what else can be said o people who pit man against man, group against group?



It is either – or.

Either you take the position that no person has the right to use violence against another except in self-defense – and all that follows from that principle. Or, you take the position that it is acceptable to use violence against other people for reasons you deem appropriate. The trouble with that, of course, is that your fellow Clovers will have their own ideas as to what constitutes “appropriate” reasons for restraining and controlling other people – _you included_ – with violence or its threat. And the result of _that_ is what we have -  a hell on earth in which mutual parasatism is the essence of our politics. In which _no one_ is secure, either in their persons or their effects (let alone their property) because all these things are subject to “the will of the majority” – as expressed by the vote of Clovers, the representatives of Clovers or the duly constituted agencies and bureaucracies of Clovers.



That is our Matrix.

A few can see it. Most cannot.

But_ some_ can be awakened. And that is where our efforts should be concentrated. Because if_enough_ of them can be awakened, the Matrix will lose its power. And then it will lose its_control_. And _that_ day, when it finally arrives, will be the day of humanity’s liberation.
It’s a goal worth working for – even if none of us now alive will live to see it.
_Throw it in the Woods?_

*Related posts:Winning ArgumentsEnd-Running CloverWhy Won’t They Leave Us Alone?Dealing With Clovers….The Return of Clover, Mark I

*Read more: http://ericpetersautos.com/2012/10/28/on-us-vs-them/

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Winning Arguments
_August 17, 2012
By eric_

The speech Morpheus gave to Neo in the original _Matrix_ was elegant – and eloquent. But we’re not in a movie – and most of us are not masters of verbal ju-jitsu any more than we are masters of actual ju-jitsu. So, how do we – we being those of us who believe in non-aggression, voluntarism and thus, human liberty – make our case to people who don’t think in such terms?



The other day I had a chat with a neighbor friend. He posed a rhetorical question, “You do believe _some_ taxes are necessary, right?” Rather than debate the merits of this or that tax, this or that function funded by taxes – I merely replied that as a non-violent person I am opposed to the use of violence, for _any_reason except in self-defense. I therefore oppose, I told him, the violent taking of other people’s property for _any purpose whatsoever_. That while I might prefer this or that outcome, I would rather people dealt with one another on the basis of persuasion and mutual free consent – and not at gunpoint.

This approach usually at least results in a momentary pause. It may even get your opponent _thinking_.
Most people – including most of _us_ – grew up with authoritarianism. It envelopes us, from womb to tomb. And so, we grow up accepting, implicitly, the moral schism that says violence is ok when it is done_officially_.
Or by a group, having so voted.

No. It goes much deeper than that. Because the violence is never – or rarely – spoken of openly. No politician running for office ever says, “I will threaten your neighbors with violence to provide money that I will use to provide schools for _your_ children at _their_ expense – and if they refuse, I’ll have them caged – even killed.”

Instead, the politician talks blandly about his “support for public education.” The lethal violence he is advocating remains in the background. He is thus able – of all things! – to posture as a “concerned” and “public-spirited” citizen, who “cares about the childrens’ future.”

Never mind the _present_ of his victims.

People talk about the “need” for this or that – never mentioning or even considering that what they propose entails threatening people who have done them no harm and who owe them nothing with murderous violence if they _disagree_ – and _decline_.

And so on.

The violence of our society is so pervasive, we swim in it as naturally – as obliviously – as fish in water.  We – most of us – literally cannot even see it. We merely accept it as the natural order of things  – and go about our lives accordingly. We vote – _casually_ – to put our neighbors into cages – unless they Submit and Obey. To send armed men to their doorstep. To control and micromanage them, with the ever-present threat of the fist, the baton, the Tazer, even the gun always in the background. To deprive them of property – even life.



And they, in turn, to us.

It is called by other things, of course. But this does not change the essential nature of the thing. The violence is there, just sublimated – and legitimated. Organized. Officialized. Euphemized. And so, accepted. Unquestioned. Acquiesced to.

But it is violence just the same.

Only, worse – because euphemized violence renders inert the moral sense. Those in its thrall lose the ability to separate right from wrong in _principle_. They are reduced to relativism – and utilitarianism. To “need” and ” want” rather than _right_ – vs. _wrong_.

You will never win an argument over taxes on real estate to fund the local government socialization/indoctrination center by complaining about “waste” in the budget, or that homeowners can’t afford another rate hike this year. But you can make a devastating moral objection to the notion that anyone has the right to threaten others with violence in order to compel them to provide funds for such an endeavor. It is not about being “against public education.” It is about being against the use of threats and violence as the basis of human interaction. It is about getting people to see that the ultimate kindness – the highest form of compassion one human being can extend to another – is to agree not to engage him with violence, but rather, persuasion. If people cannot agree, then let them disagree peaceably – and go their separate ways.



Violence  – except in defense against violence – must come to be regarded as the essential sinful act. The single worst thing one human being can do to another. Those who believe – and act – otherwise must come to be viewed as pariahs. Sick. _Evil_.

Social suasion will do the rest.

People _can_ live together in peace, without chewing each other to pieces, without reciprocal parasitism, enforced at bayonet-point. The world – our existence – does not have to be this way. It only requires getting enough of them to_see_ – and to _feel_ – the water all around them, the sea of violence in which they swim.
It is time we crawled out onto the shore and took a deep breath of fresh air.
_
Throw it in the Woods?_

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Individual preparedness, not Big Government ‘management,’ would have helped most

----------


## Odin

> Let's take geometry for instance. Is it science? Yes. How does it work? You have Fundamental Principles (a.k.a. Axioms) which are taken as self evident truth needing no proof, from which you derive all other laws (a.k.a. Theorems). The 1st principle I listed is such an axiom; it is self evident and needs no proof. The 2nd principle is logically derived from the 1st one. So is the 3rd. That's why I call it science.
> 
> Really? I think what I gave is the most precise and exact definition of Liberty I have ever seen. Liberty is Private Property. 
> 
> Justice is the application of the correct natural principles I just stated.
> I think I have done that. See principle #1.
> 
>  Would you care to elaborate and illustrate your point of view please? Thank you.


The problem is that whatever you say "ought" to happen in human relations is not a self-evident truth. First, mathematics is not science, the difference is that mathematics is "a priori" and science is empirical. That is, the principles of mathematics are independent of experience while the fundamental principles of physics, for instance, come from observation (F=ma, E=mc^2, etc, all these laws are empirical). 

Second, there is nothing axiomatic about human interactions. Axioms are true independent of experience, almost always by definition. Bachelor = unmarried male, Triangle = geometric shape formed by 3 intersecting lines, 4=2+2, etc. There's no axiomatic premise upon which to build a theory of liberty and justice, I'm sorry there just isn't, because whatever you say it is, is simply not self-evident in the sense that mathematical axioms are self-evident.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> The problem is that whatever you say "ought" to happen in human relations is not a self-evident truth.


I disagree. I think fundamental principles of justice are self-evident. It is self evident to me and to most people that you cannot take my or their stuff without permission. If you disagree, and act upon it, I will let my gun talk to you. The same principle is self evident and logically consistent to vast majority of humanity. Therefore, I take it as an axiom.




> First, mathematics is not science,


Really? Do tell! Mathematics is the quintessential science. It is the mother of all science!




> the difference is that mathematics is "a priori" and science is empirical. That is, the principles of mathematics are independent of experience while the fundamental principles of physics, for instance, come from observation (F=ma, E=mc^2, etc, all these laws are empirical).


False. It is an EMPIRICAL FACT that 2+2=4. Take 2 apples and add to them 2 more apples. You will get 4 apples total. Very EMPIRICAL. In fact, it is as empirical as it gets!




> Second, there is nothing axiomatic about human interactions.


False. As science can be self harmonizing by being built on non-contradictory and self harmonizing and true principles, i.e. axioms, so ought to be human relations, because it is all science, i.e. it is all reason, otherwise it is nothing. You, by writing your post, necessarily agree with me, because you use reason to communicate and write to me. Therefore, by communicating with me you automatically assert the viability and necessity of reason. That's what true science is. It is reason built on true facts. 




> Axioms are true independent of experience, almost always by definition.


False. True axioms are inextricably based in experience. They would not exist without experience; at least you would not know they are true without experience. So, you are wrong.




> Bachelor = unmarried male, Triangle = geometric shape formed by 3 intersecting lines, 4=2+2, etc. There's no axiomatic premise upon which to build a theory of liberty and justice,


False. The human experience and reason itself contradict you. The fact of your very writing of your posts contradicts you, because you used reason to do so. And reason is science. Reason applied to human interactions is the science of liberty and justice, and it is built on a system of self-harmonizing, non-self-contradictory principles, i.e. axioms asserted by thousands of years of experience. 




> I'm sorry there just isn't, because whatever you say it is, is simply not self-evident in the sense that mathematical axioms are self-evident.


False. As I've just shown you.

Good luck with your non-reason. (It is called madness).

----------


## osan

> The problem is that whatever you say "ought" to happen in human relations is not a self-evident truth.


Arguable either way.




> First, mathematics is not science


Very true.  It is art, which is why people earn BA degrees and not the BS.




> Second, there is nothing axiomatic about human interactions.


Also arguable, but I tend to agree... to a point.





> There's no axiomatic premise upon which to build a theory of liberty and justice, I'm sorry there just isn't, because whatever you say it is, is simply not self-evident in the sense that mathematical axioms are self-evident.


Here you are off the rails by a goodly margin.  see http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...ee-living.html

If, and this can perhaps be a big "if",  one accepts the Cardinal Postulate (aka the Prime Postulate, or First Postulate), then the rest of the theory follows axiomatically and apodictically.  There is NOTHING absolute in reason in terms of truth.  Truth is predicated on the standard of measurement used for any given proposition.  If an absurd standard is accepted as true, any ridiculous consequent may be "proven".  Truth and reason, therefore, is centrally crucial to one's ability to arrive at truthful conclusions.  The use of absurd standards was and remains the central basis of all authoritarian/collectivist models.  Communists, socialists, progressives... all use rotten premises and by that means justify their rotten conclusions.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Arguable either way.
> 
> 
> 
> Very true.  It is art, which is why people earn BA degrees and not the BS.
> 
> 
> 
> Also arguable, but I tend to agree... to a point.
> ...


I think I disagree with you. Truth is absolute and non-subjective by definition. It exists INDEPENDENT of your perception of it. To deny this is to deny REALITY. And when you deny REALITY, it comes back to bite you, so that suffering will force you, eventually, to square yourself with reality.

As for different standards being equal, and the truth therefore being relative. Baloney! Give me a system that has no internal contradictions, and I will give you the truth. False standards are false, because they produce self-contradicting conclusions that are based on those standards. Non-contradictory standards or axioms, i.e. standards and axioms that do not produce contradictions upon derivation from them, are true standards and true axioms. 

There is nothing relative about truth. It is absolute by DEFINITION.

Good luck.

----------


## osan

> I think I disagree with you. Truth is absolute and non-subjective by definition.


The definition as you posit it here is incomplete.  What you say MAY be true, or may not be.  We are limited by the constraints placed upon our ability to know that which exist outside of our skins by the very fabric of our senses.  Truth is neither the problem nor the question, but our apprehension of it is.  The very nature of our senses leaves "truth" of any absolute sort in question.  And so it should be, for if we apprehended absolute truth, our lives would be painfully boring after a short while.  All the greatly diverse elements of existence maintain their interest precisely because we understand them only to a point.  There is always an element of mystery to even the simplest things if one looks deeply enough into them.




> It exists INDEPENDENT of your perception of it.


And that is largely irrelevant to daily life because it is mostly beyond our ken of comprehension.  What counts is what we CAN and DO make of the world around us.  THAT is our perception of truth and is therefore the only truth that can be said to count in any practically meaningful way.  Metaphysical arguments go only so far in offering anything of use in our lives.  They are important, IMO, but have their limits because WE have ours.




> To deny this is to deny REALITY


Luckily, I've not denied anything of the sort.




> And when you deny REALITY, it comes back to bite you, so that suffering will force you, eventually, to square yourself with reality.


Agreed, and this is what awaits us at the hands of the psychotic "progressives" and those of a similar bent.  They are taking over and feeding us into a meat grinder pursuant to their stated beliefs that do not square in the least measure with reality.




> As for different standards being equal, and the truth therefore being relative. Baloney!


You need to improve your reading habit.  Nowhere did I say that standards were equal.  I specifically implied the diametric opposite when I wrote that acceptance of an absurd standard leads one perforce to accept absurd conclusions when the chain of reasoning from premise to finish is cogent.




> Give me a system that has no internal contradictions, and I will give you the truth.


You need some lessons in formal logic.  I would recommend "Logic" by Irving Copi.  It was the volume from which I was trained way back in the stone age times.  It is still in print and can be had at low cost from outlets such as abebooks.com .  It is fundamental knowledge in formal reasoning that a cogent argument, which is to say one of proper formal structure, can nevertheless be false.  A cogent argument is perforce free of internal inconsistencies, yet can be wholly false.

Conversely, an argument that is logically flawed may still bear true conclusions or other elements.  The purpose of logical formality is to enable us to distinguish between sound and unsound argumentation.  Assuming proper cogency, truth predicates upon the quality of premises set forth in foundation.

If you accept a premise and one presents to you a cogent argument based on that premise, you will be hard pressed to reject the conclusions reached unless, of course, those conclusions force you to then reevaluate the truth of the premise itself.  That is one of the utilities of formal reasoning and why it is important: it reveals inconsistency - disharmony - between premise and conclusion.  There are others of course, but that is discussion for another day.




> False standards are false,


Not all standards are so easily pigeon-holed.  In fact, I would bet my non-existent money against the fortunes of Gates and Buffet with confidence in asserting that most cannot be categorized as your words suggest.  There are virtually limitless examples of such standards being true for one and false for another.  If you wish to discover a few for yourself, I offer you the fertile ground of religion.  That hint alone should lead you to the truth of what I assert here.   If that does not convince you, then I suggest you take up particle physics, which I studied formally for 4 years.  If that also fails to illuminate you, then you need to give up such intellectual pursuits. 




> because they produce self-contradicting conclusions that are based on those standards.



See my short exposition on precisely this, above, and for God's sake get yourself a copy of Copi's book.




> Non-contradictory standards or axioms, i.e. standards and axioms that do not produce contradictions upon derivation from them, are true standards and true axioms.


No, they are not.  Formal logic 001.  But do not trust my word, go study for yourself.




> There is nothing relative about truth. It is absolute by DEFINITION.


Demonstrably false for truths of different natures, and yes, there ARE different sorts of truth.

Cogent reasoning is internally consistent and formally valid, but is not necessarily true.

----------


## Odin

> *Good luck with your non-reason. (It is called madness)*.


Lol you sound like Ayn Rand, I'm guessing that's where you've got all your ideas from then? If you start reading and studying real philosophy then you'll see how silly this all sounds. I've read most of Ayn Rand's stuff, that's how I can always recognize her followers online - you sound like one of the characters in Atlas Shrugged.




> I disagree. *I think fundamental principles of justice are self-evident*. It is self evident to me and to most people that you cannot take my or their stuff without permission. If you disagree, and act upon it, I will let my gun talk to you. The same principle is self evident and logically consistent to vast majority of humanity. Therefore, I take it as an axiom.


Tell us what they are then. If they are self-evident I will have no choice but to assent to them. But the problem is I can always say "I don't care" and move along. You may say I'm denying reality - but if you put an abstract idea like justice above your own interests and power, then you are the one denying reality. That is relying on a crutch to prevent other people from hurting you or taking advantage of you. Nietzsche called it "herd morality," because weaklings need justice and morals to guide them and condemn others, but powerful individuals believe only in their own values and not what some idiot has called justice or morality.




> Really? Do tell! Mathematics is the quintessential science. It is the mother of all science!
> 
> False. It is an EMPIRICAL FACT that 2+2=4. Take 2 apples and add to them 2 more apples. You will get 4 apples total. Very EMPIRICAL. In fact, it is as empirical as it gets!


The empirical instances of 2+2=4 (your apples example) are not the same as the axiom which _establishes_ it. You don't need objects to do math. You can use math as a language of sorts to refer to objects in the world, but you absolutely don't need 4 apples to know that 2+2=4. That is a priori knowledge. 

Now science is concerned with _inductive reasoning_, not _deductive reasoning_. Math and logic are both forms of deductive reasoning, which is a priori and based on the idea of validity (whether my conclusion follows from my premises by necessity). Science is inductive reasoning, which is basically observing something over and over and recognizing patterns in phenomena. Here we come to know things a posteriori, and every "law" of physics (which is the most fundamental science and from which all other sciences follow), is based on observation. F=ma is not something we can come to know a priori (like 2+2=4), we had to measure experiments over and over to discover it. 




> False. As science can be self harmonizing by being built on non-contradictory and self harmonizing and true principles, i.e. axioms, so ought to be human relations, because it is all science, i.e. it is all reason, otherwise it is nothing. You, by writing your post, necessarily agree with me, because you use reason to communicate and write to me. Therefore, by communicating with me you automatically assert the viability and necessity of reason. That's what true science is. It is reason built on true facts. 
> 
> False. True axioms are inextricably based in experience. They would not exist without experience; at least you would not know they are true without experience. So, you are wrong.
> 
>  False. The human experience and reason itself contradict you. The fact of your very writing of your posts contradicts you, because you used reason to do so. *And reason is science.* Reason applied to human interactions is the science of liberty and justice, and it is built on a system of self-harmonizing, non-self-contradictory principles, i.e. axioms asserted by thousands of years of experience. 
> 
> False. As I've just shown you.


Inductive reason is science. Deductive reason is mathematics and logic. You are conflating the two.

I'm not sure what you're on about saying 'science is self-harmonizing.' Maybe the world appears that way to you, but you had to evolve to see it that way. There is nothing factual about saying that nature or "science" is harmonizing, in fact the laws of the universe guarantee that it will one day "die." (Heat death it is called). 

We need to break this down: "so ought to be human relations, because it is all science, i.e. it is all reason, otherwise it is nothing. You, by writing your post, necessarily agree with me, because you use reason to communicate and write to me."

---You know there is a thing that uses reason more perfectly than any human being can - and that is a computer. A computer useslogic and math flawlessly. So why then is it me, and not my computer, who is writing this response to you? If it "is all reason, otherwise it is nothing" then my computer should be a superior being to me. But it's not - my computer has no desires and therefore has no motive to act. The computer's rational "mind"- so to speak, I know computers don't have an actual mind- is the slave of my passions and desires. Just as the rational faculty of MY mind, is the slave to my desires, passions, motives, and everything else that makes me human. It is not reason that makes me human - it is my human desires and passions. We happened to evolve a very advanced rational faculty, but it is only there to fulfill our desires. If you removed passions and desires from a being to have a coldly rational person, they would literally do nothing because they would have no motive to do anything. 

"False. True axioms are inextricably based in experience. They would not exist without experience; at least you would not know they are true without experience. So, you are wrong." 

Here you are conflating experience with consciousness. You obviously don't have knowledge of an axiomatic truth without consciousness, but it is not knowledge you come to through experience. Let me give you two examples - first, "the stove is hot." That is knowledge I learn by experience, it is not something I can know a priori. Second, "a bachelor is an unmarried male." That is something true a priori - true by the relationship of the terms, not by experience. To know this is true, you just have to be aware of the definitions of the terms to understand that a bachelor is an unmarried male. See the difference? It is very important in philosophy.

----------


## Odin

> Arguable either way.


Well of course it is arguable, but I happen to be right in this instance. 






> Very true.  It is art, which is why people earn BA degrees and not the BS.


I wouldn't call it art - that suggests a degree of subjectivity and creativity. Math is just math, it doesn't need to be put into any other category, nor does it fit anywhere else. If you want to call it something other than math, then "logic" would be appropriate. 




> Here you are off the rails by a goodly margin.  see http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...ee-living.html
> 
> *If, and this can perhaps be a big "if",  one accepts the Cardinal Postulate* (aka the Prime Postulate, or First Postulate), then the rest of the theory follows axiomatically and apodictically.  There is NOTHING absolute in reason in terms of truth.  Truth is predicated on the standard of measurement used for any given proposition.  If an absurd standard is accepted as true, any ridiculous consequent may be "proven".  Truth and reason, therefore, is centrally crucial to one's ability to arrive at truthful conclusions.  The use of absurd standards was and remains the central basis of all authoritarian/collectivist models.  Communists, socialists, progressives... all use rotten premises and by that means justify their rotten conclusions.


The key words are in bold. Sure, if you will accept whatever premise I give to you as self-evident, or at the very least true, I could prove anything to you that I wanted. Just insert a premise that is either subjective or untrue, and the conclusion you seek can be made through valid logic. I'm not sure why you say I'm going off the rails because it seems you agree with me here. 

Btw, Marx tried to form a political theory purely scientifically. Marx wasn't in the business of making big normative claims about what society "ought" to be. It was supposed to be a science of politics/socioeconomics. Probably one of the negative consequences of the enlightenment - to get people trying to turn every field of inquiry into some kind of 'science,' maybe it started out with good intentions but lately it has been to deceptively lend some kind of objectivity to a person's opinions (which is all they are), and even more ridiculously, some people recently have been claiming that their political and moral beliefs follow from REASON ITSELF!!!! Lol. There's nothing objective about moral or political beliefs folks, you need to get over it. Ask yourself if these theories would stop someone like Stalin putting a bullet in your forehead. You can tell him all you like, "these are my rights which are self-evident and rationally follow from axio....." and he will still execute you. Hopefully that shows that these "theories" make no difference to real life, even if they were true (which they aren't). 

Of course I'm not saying I advocate Stalin's execution of political opponents, but the point is that that a gun means far more than a political theory. Don't put your faith in ridiculous notions of what is objectively true or false in morality, politics, etc, because those who see things differently will not care, they have no reason to assent to what you are saying and if you say they are "denying reality," then you are a fool - because the ultimately denial of reality would be to assert your "rights" to such a person, as if that would make any difference. "Rights," "liberties" or "freedom"mean absolutely nothing until you take the power to assert them. That's reality.

----------


## Odin

> The definition as you posit it here is incomplete.  What you say MAY be true, or may not be.  We are limited by the constraints placed upon our ability to know that which exist outside of our skins by the very fabric of our senses.  Truth is neither the problem nor the question, but our apprehension of it is.  The very nature of our senses leaves "truth" of any absolute sort in question.  And so it should be, for if we apprehended absolute truth, our lives would be painfully boring after a short while.  All the greatly diverse elements of existence maintain their interest precisely because we understand them only to a point.  There is always an element of mystery to even the simplest things if one looks deeply enough into them.
> 
> 
> 
> And that is largely irrelevant to daily life because it is mostly beyond our ken of comprehension.  What counts is what we CAN and DO make of the world around us.  THAT is our perception of truth and is therefore the only truth that can be said to count in any practically meaningful way.  Metaphysical arguments go only so far in offering anything of use in our lives.  They are important, IMO, but have their limits because WE have ours.
> 
> 
> 
> Luckily, I've not denied anything of the sort.
> ...


Btw Osan, just want to say I really enjoyed reading this post, it is excellent. I don't agree with everything you've said here, but you're clearly someone who is philosophically well-versed, so it's nice to discuss these things with you.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> The definition as you posit it here is incomplete.  What you say MAY be true, or may not be.  We are limited by the constraints placed upon our ability to know that which exist outside of our skins by the very fabric of our senses.  Truth is neither the problem nor the question, but our apprehension of it is.  The very nature of our senses leaves "truth" of any absolute sort in question.  And so it should be, for if we apprehended absolute truth, our lives would be painfully boring after a short while.  All the greatly diverse elements of existence maintain their interest precisely because we understand them only to a point.  There is always an element of mystery to even the simplest things if one looks deeply enough into them.


  Agree to disagree. There is no mystery for me in cheesecake, yet I enjoy eating it over and over again. You dont have to be ignorant to enjoy life,  in fact the greater your knowledge, the greater is your enjoyment of it.




> And that is largely irrelevant to daily life because it is mostly beyond our ken of comprehension.  What counts is what we CAN and DO make of the world around us.  THAT is our perception of truth and is therefore the only truth that can be said to count in any practically meaningful way.  Metaphysical arguments go only so far in offering anything of use in our lives.  They are important, IMO, but have their limits because WE have ours.


Truth cannot be irrelevant to your daily life if you value life. Life without truth, is like a blind man in the traffic. Very unhealthy, and actually stupid. You sell yourself short, by thinking truth is beyond your comprehension. You do not know who you are. You, in your true self, are what God is, in fact you are his child. Your ability to comprehend truth and to love is beyond your wildest dreams. Truth is the only thing that helps you make something good of the world around you. You have no limits, only what you set to yourself. Truth shall make you free.




> It is fundamental knowledge in formal reasoning that a cogent argument, which is to say one of proper formal structure, can nevertheless be false.  A cogent argument is perforce free of internal inconsistencies, yet can be wholly false.


Fine, nevertheless, if an argument or a system is False, it means it contradicts observable reality or a known fact. It cannot be false without a contradiction. To be False is to have a contradiction.




> Conversely, an argument that is logically flawed may still bear true conclusions or other elements.  The purpose of logical formality is to enable us to distinguish between sound and unsound argumentation.  Assuming proper cogency, truth predicates upon the quality of premises set forth in foundation.


Sound argument cannot have a false conclusion, otherwise it is not sound, by definition. Sound argument must be logically correct, AND built on a true premise and principles. If it is not built on correct premise and principles, yet remains logically correct, it will inevitably produce a contradiction which will reveal the premise and/or principles at its base as flawed. 




> If you accept a premise and one presents to you a cogent argument based on that premise, you will be hard pressed to reject the conclusions reached unless, of course, those conclusions force you to then reevaluate the truth of the premise itself.  That is one of the utilities of formal reasoning and why it is important: it reveals inconsistency - disharmony - between premise and conclusion.


I like that.




> Cogent reasoning is internally consistent and formally valid, but is not necessarily true.


I want cogent reasoning based on correct principles, then the conclusions are always correct too.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Tell us what they are then. If they are self-evident I will have no choice but to assent to them. But the problem is I can always say "I don't care" and move along. You may say I'm denying reality - but if you put an abstract idea like justice above your own interests and power, then you are the one denying reality. That is relying on a crutch to prevent other people from hurting you or taking advantage of you. Nietzsche called it "herd morality," because weaklings need justice and morals to guide them and condemn others, but powerful individuals believe only in their own values and not what some idiot has called justice or morality.


The laws of justice are absolute. The tyrants who ignore them will have to learn them in hell, but learn they will, because Justice cannot be denied. It will find you either in this world or the next. No one gets away with anything. Whatever you do to others you in fact are doing it to YOURSELF. Everyone will learn that, some sooner, some later, but everyone will know it. They will be forced to see it. Such is the nature of the Truth. It cannot be overcome, as God cannot be overcome. Deny what you will, but you too will be constrained to acknowledge this truth.

As for what fundamental principle of justice is, see the first Fundamental Principle of Liberty. It can be stated thus: Private property shall not be violated. It is also equivalent to the Non-Aggression Principle, because non-violation, is non-aggression. Of course, as I stated before, Private Property here is taken in the broadest sense possible, it includes you, your body, your mind, the fruits of your labor, etc.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Probably one of the negative consequences of the enlightenment - to get people trying to turn every field of inquiry into some kind of 'science,' maybe it started out with good intentions but lately it has been to deceptively lend some kind of objectivity to a person's opinions (which is all they are), and even more ridiculously, some people recently have been claiming that their political and moral beliefs follow from REASON ITSELF!!!! Lol. There's nothing objective about moral or political beliefs folks, you need to get over it. Ask yourself if these theories would stop someone like Stalin putting a bullet in your forehead. You can tell him all you like, "these are my rights which are self-evident and rationally follow from axio....." and he will still execute you. Hopefully that shows that these "theories" make no difference to real life, even if they were true (which they aren't). 
> 
> Of course I'm not saying I advocate Stalin's execution of political opponents, but the point is that that a gun means far more than a political theory. Don't put your faith in ridiculous notions of what is objectively true or false in morality, politics, etc, because those who see things differently will not care, they have no reason to assent to what you are saying and if you say they are "denying reality," then you are a fool - because the ultimately denial of reality would be to assert your "rights" to such a person, as if that would make any difference. "Rights," "liberties" or "freedom"mean absolutely nothing until you take the power to assert them. That's reality.


  You either have reason, or you have nothing. If you do not believe in reason, why do your write this post? You contradict yourself. There has to be reason, or quit writing.

It is true that in the end it is power that decides. Where you are wrong is, you do not understand where ultimate power comes from. A tyrant like Stalin can execute millions of people, as he actually did, but in the end, he is dead, and the cause of Liberty reasserts itself, and ultimately will inescapably prevail. Why? Because it is free of self contradictions. It is the ONLY system that logically and rationally makes sense. This is why eventually people will be constrained to embrace it or perish. Such is the nature of truth. It is the ultimate power, a power above and beyond of any would be tyrant. All tyranny is self-destructive by nature. All societies that embrace tyranny inevitably destroy themselves. Why? Because the theory of tyranny is self-contradictory. The ONLY social system that is not self-contradictory is the system of Liberty and Justice. Justice is more than an arbitrary construct, it is an Eternal Reality. Any society that tramples upon it will inevitably self-destruct. These are the facts.

By fighting against reason, you fight against yourself, and contradict yourself, because you use reason to deny reason. You contradict yourself. I say it again: You either have reason, or you descend into madness, and thus destroy yourself. These are your options. The choice is yours, but so are the consequences of your choice.

Truth speaks for itself, and has its own convincing power. He who has ears to hear let him hear.

----------


## osan

> The key words are in bold. Sure, if you will accept whatever premise I give to you as self-evident, or at the very least true, I could prove anything to you that I wanted. Just insert a premise that is either subjective or untrue, and the conclusion you seek can be made through valid logic. I'm not sure why you say I'm going off the rails because it seems you agree with me here.


So IOW we agree as this is just a rewording of what I pointed out.  Good.




> Marx wasn't in the business of making big normative claims about what society "ought" to be.


The manifesto is almost entirely comprised of such statements.  The  very basis of the model is a set of ridiculous normative precepts that upon due consideration no rational human being would accept.  Not only normative in nature, but horridly reasoned to boot.




> It was supposed to be a *science of politics/socioeconomics*.


Oxymorons.




> There's nothing objective about moral or political beliefs folks, you need to get over it.


Objectivity predicates on what one accepts as fundamental truth.  Within a given frame of reference, morality can be as objectively defined as any other consideration you may offer up for discussion.  Your misapprehensions stem from an all too common condition of an insufficient both perception and reason.  Any sense of objectivity that we hold is the product of our senses and our language.  These shape perception to perhaps a 98% level.  They build our world almost entirely.




> Ask yourself if these theories would stop someone like Stalin putting a bullet in your forehead. You can tell him all you like, "these are my rights which are self-evident and rationally follow from axio....." and he will still execute you. Hopefully that shows that these "theories" make no difference to real life, even if they were true (which they aren't).


Your reasoning is fatally flawed.  The clear inference to be drawn from your argument is that because Stalin can put pa bullet through someone's head at will in a given circumstance, if follows that rights do not exist.  Rights exist and they can be demonstrated quite forcefully.  A logical analog of your argument may be found in  concluding that because a mugger stole your wallet, it was never yours in the first place.  To conclude that theories have no values is ridiculous on its face.  Theories have given us virtually every advance in technology more sophisticated than a stone ax.





> Of course I'm not saying I advocate Stalin's execution of political opponents, but the point is that that a gun means far more than a political theory.


The simple fact that you disagree should act as a clue that there is indeed an "objective" element in your own morality and that this element is shared by virtually every human being on the planet.  Try this: http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...s-freedom.html  - a bit wordy, but the good stuff is in there.  Also, this: http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...d-freedom.html




> Don't put your faith in ridiculous notions of what is objectively true or false in morality, politics, etc, because those who see things differently will not care,


Refusal or some other failure to "care" does not invalidate a theory.  I can refuse "gravity" all I want, it will not make it go away nor will it invalidate any theory of gravitation that, insofar as it may be complete, comports with and predicts real results with consistent accuracy.




> "Rights," "liberties" or "freedom"mean absolutely nothing until you take the power to assert them. That's reality.


Wrong.  They are there regardless because they are in our minds and our minds are PART OF OBJECTIVE REALITY.  However, power to defend them may, and usually is, required as you note.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Don't  put your faith in ridiculous notions of what is objectively true or  false in morality, politics, etc, because those who see things  differently will not care,
> 			
> 		
> 
> 			 		 	  Refusal or some other failure to "care" does not invalidate a  theory.  I can refuse "gravity" all I want, it will not make it go away  nor will it invalidate any theory of gravitation that, insofar as it may  be complete, comports with and predicts real results with consistent  accuracy.


Brilliant! Thanks.

----------


## Odin

> The laws of justice are absolute. The tyrants who ignore them will have to learn them in hell, but learn they will, because Justice cannot be denied. It will find you either in this world or the next. No one gets away with anything. Whatever you do to “others” you in fact are doing it to YOURSELF. Everyone will learn that, some sooner, some later, but everyone will know it. They will be forced to see it. Such is the nature of the Truth. It cannot be overcome, as God cannot be overcome. Deny what you will, but you too will be constrained to acknowledge this truth.
> 
> As for what fundamental principle of justice is, see the first Fundamental Principle of Liberty. It can be stated thus: “Private property shall not be violated.” It is also equivalent to the Non-Aggression Principle, because non-violation, is non-aggression. Of course, as I stated before, Private Property here is taken in the broadest sense possible, it includes you, your body, your mind, the fruits of your labor, etc.


Wait so now we're going from 'reality' and 'reason' to "God makes everything right eventually." That DEFINITELY can't be proven. There may be a God - I'm not sure what I believe about that but I would say I'm probably more inclined to believe in God than not to, but ironically it would be an inversion of justice for God to put a person in Hell for eternity. Even someone like Hitler. Their 'evil' motives were not something they chose to have, they are a product of their environment and upbringing.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Wait so now we're going from 'reality' and 'reason' to "God makes everything right eventually." That DEFINITELY can't be proven. There may be a God - I'm not sure what I believe about that but I would say I'm probably more inclined to believe in God than not to, but ironically it would be an inversion of justice for God to put a person in Hell for eternity. Even someone like Hitler. Their 'evil' motives were not something they chose to have, they are a product of their environment and upbringing.


God takes all that into perfect consideration. No one spends entire eternity in hell. Not one. God is just.

I have proven all with reason. God is God BECAUSE he IS reason, or in other words, he acts by perfect reason. There is ZERO contradiction here. All these are in perfect harmony. God would cease to be God if it wasn't. And he ceases not to be God.

As for people not choosing their motives, that is wrong. By asserting this you assert that humans have no choice, which is false. And if humans can choose, which they certainley do, they must be accountable for their choices. God knows perfectly to which degree men are accountable; it is the degree to which they know good from evil, and have a knowledge of right and wrong. Everyone is different in this regard, and God takes all that into consideration. Ultimateley, men are their own judges and their own tormenters, because whaterver you are doing to "others," you are actually doing it to yourself. This is the basis of the Eternal Law of Justice, and it cannot be denied. It always fullfils its course perfectly.

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## Odin

> The manifesto is almost entirely comprised of such statements.  The  very basis of the model is a set of ridiculous normative precepts that upon due consideration no rational human being would accept.  Not only normative in nature, but horridly reasoned to boot.


The communist manifesto was a pamphlet meant to bring people into their cause. Propaganda, if you will. But it is not a document from which to derive Marx's philosophy. I don't think he even mentions historical materialism or explains his "dialectic." 




> Oxymorons.


I agree, that's why I said 'meant to be.' 






> Objectivity predicates on what one accepts as fundamental truth.  Within a given frame of reference, morality can be as objectively defined as any other consideration you may offer up for discussion.  Your misapprehensions stem from an all too common condition of an insufficient both perception and reason.  Any sense of objectivity that we hold is the product of our senses and our language.  These shape perception to perhaps a 98% level.  They build our world almost entirely.


I actually largely agree with that but you are twisting my language a bit. In common usage, when someone utters the word "objective" as FOL has been doing some of iirc, they do not mean what you just described. They are either referring to something outside any frame of reference, or in a universal frame of reference. I don't think our minds have access to either of those if they even exist, but that is part of my point. 






> Your reasoning is fatally flawed.  The clear inference to be drawn from your argument is that because Stalin can put pa bullet through someone's head at will in a given circumstance, if follows that rights do not exist.  Rights exist and they can be demonstrated quite forcefully.  A logical analog of your argument may be found in  concluding that because a mugger stole your wallet, it was never yours in the first place.  To conclude that theories have no values is ridiculous on its face.  Theories have given us virtually every advance in technology more sophisticated than a stone ax.


Let's not conflate scientific theories, which have led to virtually every advance in technology, with moral or political theories. On a side note, I thought it was really interesting looking at a graph of human population along with the dates of certain discoveries in physics, and it is obvious that human populated exploded after the discovery of Maxwell's equations. Thought that was pretty interesting. 

In meta-ethics, there is a condition for moral explanations called 'magnetism,' which I would say is pretty agreeable. That is, for a definition or explanation of 'goodness,' a condition must be that knowledge of that definition provides me with a motive/reason to act in accordance with it. If "goodness" doesn't weigh into people's considerations before they act, then it is basically worthless. In the same way, whether or not "rights" exist probably depends on how you define "rights" and "exist", but what gives meaning to that phrase is whether the proposed existence of rights alters the way someone would treat me. To someone who has no intention to hurt you or steal from you, you don't need "rights" because they already intend to treat you in the way you expect. The question then is do people who otherwise would harm you, choose not to because of "rights"? Do serial killers go through the following thought process: "Boy I really wish I could kill Bob, I would definitely get away with it and I would have no remorse in doing so, but darn Osan told me that Bob has a 'right to life' - whatever that is - so I guess I can't kill him." Maybe some really wacky person thinks that way, but I can't see any declaration of rights changing the minds of people who intend to violate them anyway. So what good do they do us? 

On another side note - the word "rights" have become a poisoned word. Look at the way people are using it today - 'right' to healthcare, 'right' to birth control, even the 'right to life' has been used to protect people who have snuffed out the lives of other people indiscriminately, to force the rest of us to pay for their life in prison, even for their sex change surgeries most recently. 

I've heard enough about "rights" - I would like to hear more about freedom and what that is. Freedom is a state of being while rights are a declaration. Freedom is at least a term that can have a pretty universal definition, no claims that freedom is a right, freedom is just a state of being and the way we convince people to embrace freedom is to show them that it is the best state in which to live, and most rewarding for the individual. 





> The simple fact that you disagree should act as a clue that there is indeed an "objective" element in your own morality and that this element is shared by virtually every human being on the planet.  Try this: http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...s-freedom.html  - a bit wordy, but the good stuff is in there.  Also, this: http://freedomisobvious.blogspot.com...d-freedom.html


I'm sure you know this, but even being shared by every human being on the planet does not make a moral feeling objective. My disagreement with Stalin is based on my values, the difference is that I don't pretend that I'm right and he's wrong. I don't need some moral or political theory describing 'ethics' and 'rights' to assert the strong feelings I have for my own values and aversion to those of Stalin. 






> Refusal or some other failure to "care" does not invalidate a theory.  I can refuse "gravity" all I want, it will not make it go away nor will it invalidate any theory of gravitation that, insofar as it may be complete, comports with and predicts real results with consistent accuracy.


Once again, don't conflate a theory of gravitation with a moral or political theory. The word 'theory' is being used in different ways. The existence of gravity has to affect how I act, but it doesn't change how I act - since it is always there. Knowledge of the theory of gravity does not make me more or less averse to jumping off a cliff. We didn't come up with the theory of gravity to convince people not to jump off cliffs and bridges, we did so to describe the motions of stars and planets, build better machines, etc. The problem is the whole purpose of a moral or political theory is to say that people must act in accordance with it. Why must they? The fact that the theory says so must itself provide a motive in that direction, which it plainly doesn't. It may have some propaganda value, but that is not what you are saying. If you wanted to argue that, I would point to the fact that "rights" have been distorted by left-wing people in this country and the world to mean a whole litany of entitlements, and so the word 'rights' is no longer beneficial to our purposes. 






> Wrong.  *They are there* regardless because they are in our minds and our minds are PART OF OBJECTIVE REALITY.  However, power to defend them may, and usually is, required as you note.


As pointed out above, "they are there" does not equate to "they mean something." As I said you can define these things in such a way that they exist if you want to, but the question is whether your definition is meaningful, and it is not, as I pointed out above.

----------


## Odin

> God takes all that into perfect consideration. No one spends entire eternity in hell. Not one. God is just.
> 
> I have proven all with reason. God is God BECAUSE he IS reason, or in other words, he acts by perfect reason. There is ZERO contradiction here. All these are in perfect harmony. God would cease to be God if it wasn't. And he ceases not to be God.


With all respect, it sounds like you are just making this up! There is no proof that God even exists never mind what his properties are. Most people think "God is love" or something of the sort. Love isn't reason. So God is _not_ reason, or rather is a combination of reason as well as other things. 




> As for people not choosing their motives, that is wrong. By asserting this you assert that humans have no choice, which is false. And if humans can choose, which they certainley do, they must be accountable for their choices. God knows perfectly to which degree men are accountable; it is the degree to which they know good from evil, and have a knowledge of right and wrong. Everyone is different in this regard, and God takes all that into consideration. Ultimateley, men are their own judges and their own tormenters, because whaterver you are doing to "others," *you are actually doing it to yourself*. This is the basis of the Eternal Law of Justice, and it cannot be denied. It always fullfils its course perfectly.


No you're just doing it to others. Btw Stalin lived a long and happy life - so "it always fulfills its course perfectly" is at the very least impossible to prove. If you're going to start talking about eternal laws of justice to help your argument I'm not going to continue this, it's not anything either of us can prove or disprove so we are just talking past each other. If you want to come down to Earth and start talking about things that can be observed or are provable, I'm all ears. 

The point about motives - if you did choose your motives, on what basis would you choose them? You would have to have other motives, in order to say "I want to have motive X and not motive Y." I never said you don't make choices on the basis of the motives you already have, but your motives are a product of your upbringing and environment. You don't choose who you are, you choose what you do (on the basis of who you are). You cannot blame a bad person for doing bad things, their actions have to be addressed in a practical regard but it is very naive to blame a person for turning out bad. People who were abused as children are often more likely to become "bad" people later in life. You can't blame them for that, they are a product of circumstances. That is very sad imo, and I know for sure that a wise God doesn't see them as deserving punishment.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I've heard enough about "rights" - I would like to hear more about freedom and what that is. Freedom is a state of being while rights are a declaration. Freedom is at least a term that can have a pretty universal definition, no claims that freedom is a right, freedom is just a state of being and the way we convince people to embrace freedom is to show them that it is the best state in which to live, and most rewarding for the individual.


Exactly. That's what "good" is. By acknowledging this you acknowledge the existence of good and bad, right and wrong. The Fundamental Principles of Liberty I listed are the natural laws that always existed. If a society chooses to live according to them they will enjoy JUSTICE, Freedom, and prosperity, in much greater quantity, than if they don't. These laws are universal, and they do work.




> I'm sure you know this, but even being shared by every human being on the planet does not make a moral feeling objective. My disagreement with Stalin is based on my values, the difference is that I don't pretend that I'm right and he's wrong. I don't need some moral or political theory describing 'ethics' and 'rights' to assert the strong feelings I have for my own values and aversion to those of Stalin.


Those "feelings" of yours are not accidental. They are hardwired into the being of all people, and are universal. Those "feelings" obey a certain law. That law is The Fundamental Principles of Liberty, of which I've been speaking. Those "feelings" are an expression of REALITY: if a society obeys the well defined principles of Liberty it will have Liberty, Justice, and prosperity; and if a society violates them, it will UNAVOIDABLY self-destruct. It is a FACT of existence, a universal truth. This is how Universe works, a.k.a. REALITY, as opposed to self-destructive madness that you are proposing!




> Once again, don't conflate a theory of gravitation with a moral or political theory. The word 'theory' is being used in different ways. The existence of gravity has to affect how I act, but it doesn't change how I act - since it is always there. Knowledge of the theory of gravity does not make me more or less averse to jumping off a cliff. We didn't come up with the theory of gravity to convince people not to jump off cliffs and bridges, we did so to describe the motions of stars and planets, build better machines, etc. The problem is the whole purpose of a moral or political theory is to say that people must act in accordance with it. Why must they? The fact that the theory says so must itself provide a motive in that direction, which it plainly doesn't. It may have some propaganda value, but that is not what you are saying.


The laws of Liberty and Justice describe a mode of operation of society, i.e. the proper use of force, which if followed will result in a condition of Liberty, Justice and Prosperity. Just like the laws of gravity PREDICT what will happen to you if you step off a cliff. It is cause and effect with mathematical precision. Get it?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> With all respect, it sounds like you are just making this up! There is no proof that God even exists never mind what his properties are. Most people think "God is love" or something of the sort. Love isn't reason. So God is _not_ reason, or rather is a combination of reason as well as other things.


My God is Reason. And yes He is also Love, which is the highest of all reasons. He is a person. A perfect person. But for the purposes of this discussion, my proof is in reason itself. You cannot disprove my reasoning displayed in Fundamental Principles of Liberty. So again, my appeal is to reason. Can you handle that, you who advocates non-reason, a.k.a. madness? Very sad.




> No you're just doing it to others. Btw Stalin lived a long and happy life


Really? Did you measure the level of his personal misery? Did you hold his hand and asked him if he was happy? Those close to him actually testified that he was a miserable man who literally went mad in the last part of his life. This is a natural consequence of defying reason, and is a foretaste of eternal misery to come unless you repent and treat your neighbor as yourself. These are facts, and natural consequences of choosing evil over good. Learn that sooner than later. You will be forced to learn it, but it is better for you if you learn sooner than later. But you WILL learn. It is inescapable as Justice itself. This is just a fact I know.




> - so "it always fulfills its course perfectly" is at the very least impossible to prove.


We have statistical, empirical evidence supporting that conclusion. People who do justice and love their neighbor as themselves are happier in this life. You will have to wait for the ultimate proof though, when "every knee shall bow and every tongue will confess." That will happen later, but not yet. So sit tight. But if you value your happiness even in this life, I suggest you deal justly and love your neighbor as yourself. If you won't, misery will be your reward even in THIS life. Mark my word. It is true. 





> The point about motives - if you did choose your motives, on what basis would you choose them? You would have to have other motives, in order to say "I want to have motive X and not motive Y." I never said you don't make choices on the basis of the motives you already have, but your motives are a product of your upbringing and environment. You don't choose who you are, you choose what you do (on the basis of who you are). You cannot blame a bad person for doing bad things, their actions have to be addressed in a practical regard but it is very naive to blame a person for turning out bad. People who were abused as children are often more likely to become "bad" people later in life. You can't blame them for that, they are a product of circumstances. That is very sad imo, and I know for sure that a wise God doesn't see them as deserving punishment.


Ultimately, it is YOU who choose what you are and what you do. Opposing forces are presented to you, and you are left free to choose for yourself which influence you will follow, good or bad. The choice is made according to your own desires, whether they be good or bad. Therefore, you are your own judge and tormentor. If you choose evil, you will be miserable here and hereafter. If you choose good you will have inner-joy and peace in this life and in the next. The choice is yours, but so are the consequences. Choose wisely. You have been warned.  

This is how Universe works. I can testify to that, because I have learned it for myself. 

Good luck.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul on the Importance of the Mises Institute




See more media from Mises here: 
http://www.youtube.com/user/misesmedia/videos?view=0

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

* Judge Napolitano agrees with Bill O'Reilly that      American values have changed dramatically, favoring entitlements and      welfare.*  [This is why Obama won the election. When the majority      can vote to plunder the minority (that's called democracy), prosperity and      freedom are doomed.] _Fox Insider_ 2012 Nov 8

From http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

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## osan

> Let's not conflate scientific theories, which have led to virtually every advance in technology, with moral or political theories.


That you draw a distinction between "scientific theories" and "moral or political theories" suggests you do not really understand the definition of science.  I am a trained scientist and engineer and do indeed know the definition.  Before making such flatly erroneous assertions it might do you well to get your nose into a dictionary and get your terms straight.  Once you do that, it should become glaringly apparent why your statement is utterly false.

I really ought not serve as your tutor, but I will make an exception here just to be done with this.  A Venn diagram showing a circle labeled "scientific theories" intersects with one labeled "political theories" and one labeled "moral theories.  The latter two might well also intersect each other, but I will not address that here.

The diagram tells us that some political theories and some moral theories are indeed scientific, while others are not.  As to what would define a scientific theory, I direct you to a dictionary and a 6th grade science text.  Look up "science" and "scientific method".

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## Odin

> That you draw a distinction between "scientific theories" and "moral or political theories" suggests you do not really understand the definition of science.  I am a trained scientist and engineer and do indeed know the definition.  Before making such flatly erroneous assertions it might do you well to get your nose into a dictionary and get your terms straight.  Once you do that, it should become glaringly apparent why your statement is utterly false.
> 
> I really ought not serve as your tutor, but I will make an exception here just to be done with this.  A Venn diagram showing a circle labeled "scientific theories" intersects with one labeled "political theories" and one labeled "moral theories.  The latter two might well also intersect each other, but I will not address that here.
> 
> The diagram tells us that some political theories and some moral theories are indeed scientific, while others are not.  As to what would define a scientific theory, I direct you to a dictionary and a 6th grade science text.  Look up "science" and "scientific method".


Wow ok I actually have degrees in physics and philosophy, so I know something about science, AND how it is applied in a philosophical sense, and I know how moral and political theories are formed. But I don't feel the need to strut my qualifications, perhaps because I don't feel like I need to in order to bolster my argument (as it seems your argument requires). 

I'm sorry but science does not deal with the concept of value, if you think it does then I doubt you are a well-trained scientist. So I'm guessing you are just being stubborn in this point. In science, everything is value-neutral. The reason a moral theory can't be scientific, is because it necessitates a premise or "axiom" that something is of intrinsic value. The utilitarians, for instance, believed it was 'happiness.' But to say good=happiness, is not scientific, it is just an observation of internal equivalency. And that's what it always comes down to - any moral theory is aimed at _creating_ a certain conclusion in line with our moral intuition. If we didn't have any moral intuition, there would be no reason to study it, or to think about it. Correct? The reason we create these theories is to satisfy our pre-conceived notions. And if you know anything about science (and I take your word for it that you do), then you would know that this is the exact opposite of the scientific method. In science, we are doing experiments mainly for the purpose of finding observational fault with a theory. That is not how our moral thinking works. Instead, we are always trying to see why we are right. And the problem is that if we didn't already have our conclusion in mind, there would be nothing to investigate. 

Political theories are a bit more ambiguous. But to me it seems like they have to be based on a moral premise. In most Western nations unfortunately they are based on the utilitarian ethic. Although once you have your moral principle in mind, some scientific analysis can be done to establish the best way of implementing it, or which political system will best uphold it, etc etc.

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## Odin

Sorry triple post, please delete.

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## Odin

...

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Although once you have your moral principle in mind, some scientific analysis can be done to establish the best way of implementing it, or which political system will best uphold it, etc etc.


Bingo! So if you value your joy and happiness, pay attention, because joy is the purpose of life, and the only way to maximize it, is to live the principles of Justice and Liberty. Empirical evidence and the eternal Truth testify to that. Ignore it and you will reap misery; embrace it and you will find peace and joy now and forever. The choice is yours.

Science is the study of cause and effect. Science is nothing more or less than reason itself. Science without values is dangerous and self-destructive, just like a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler. Love, i.e. valuing and treating your neighbor as yourself, is the greatest reason, and wisdom, because whatever you do to others, you ultimately do it to yourself (even if you do not see it yet, but you CERTAINLY will). It is inescapable, and is a fundamental fact of existence. It is true because on the most fundamental level, we are all connected. This is the reason for existence of the Eternal Law of Justice, and this is why justice works. It is a simple statement of cause and effect. Whatever you do to others, you are doing it to yourself. Stalin and Satan are learning this truth in hell, because they have done so much evil to their neighbor, and consequently to themselves. ALL will be forced to see this truth. Such is the nature of truth: it is IMPOSSIBLE to prevail against it, only with it. It is indestructible as God himself. Whoever fights against the truth, fights against himself, and will inevitably destroy himself, unless he repents and embraces the truth, and loves his neighbor as himself. These are the facts. Eternal Facts.

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## Odin

> Bingo! So if you value your joy and happiness, pay attention, *because joy is the purpose of life*, and the only way to maximize it, is to live the principles of Justice and Liberty. Empirical evidence and the eternal Truth testify to that. Ignore it and you will reap misery; embrace it and you will find peace and joy now and forever. The choice is yours.


From where have you drawn that conclusion? Joy is not the purpose of my life, although it is a nice thing. There are values in life which I believe are worth suffering for. If you want to look for a biological purpose of life, then it is reproduction. That is why the strongest love we have is reserved for our children. However that does not mean it is a FACT that we must act in accordance with this purpose. 




> Science is the study of cause and effect. *Science is nothing more or less than reason itself*. Science without values is dangerous and self-destructive, just like a loaded gun in the hands of a toddler. Love, i.e. valuing and treating your neighbor as yourself, is the greatest reason, and wisdom, because whatever you do to others, you ultimately do it to yourself (even if you do not see it yet, but you CERTAINLY will). It is inescapable, and is a fundamental fact of existence. It is true because on the most fundamental level, we are all connected. This is the reason for existence of the Eternal Law of Justice, and this is why justice works. It is a simple statement of cause and effect. Whatever you do to others, you are doing it to yourself. Stalin and Satan are learning this truth in hell, because they have done so much evil to their neighbor, and consequently to themselves. ALL will be forced to see this truth. Such is the nature of truth: it is IMPOSSIBLE to prevail against it, only with it. It is indestructible as God himself. Whoever fights against the truth, fights against himself, and will inevitably destroy himself, unless he repents and embraces the truth, and loves his neighbor as himself. These are the facts. Eternal Facts.


Do you have evidence of any of this, or is it merely your 'belief'? You may be correct, but you are not going to convince me by appealing to religion or God. Even if you are correct though, you said that no one suffers in Hell forever, so what if I am willing to accept my punishment in order to do what I want in this life? To me the logical thing to do would be to disregard these notions of justice, and do what I want instead. If I have to suffer in the next life temporarily, then fine, I will still have the rest of infinity to do whatever I want. But to make use of this life without the restrictions of morals or justice makes more sense, because ultimately neither of us know if there is a God or not, or if this God cares about justice. So I'm afraid that even if I grant that you are correct, which I don't, it is not enough to convince me that I should do what you say. If God punishes me then oh well, but he could just as easily reward me and punish you. In the end I am simply going to do what I believe is right, and I will see if I am punished for that (I doubt it). 

Secondly, you are partially right about science, but "deductive reason" or "logic" is not the study of cause and effect, it is about what _necessarily_ follows from given premises. In other words validity and invalidity. I think that is important to distinguish, because a valid argument does not need to refer to anything in the world. For instance: 

If A, then B
A
Therefore, B. 

That is a valid argument but it does not refer to objects in the world that are related in a cause-effect way. Science on the other hand has to refer to observations. It is a very important difference in philosophy and I just want to make sure it is clear.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> From where have you drawn that conclusion? Joy is not the purpose of my life, although it is a nice thing. There are values in life which I believe are worth suffering for.


Joy is not the opposite of suffering. In fact joy would be impossible without it. There must be an opposition in all things. You cannot know sweet unless you taste the bitter. There are values in life which are worth suffering for. Why? Because they bring us the greater joy. You would gladly suffer for your children if you thought it would help them. Why? Because their happiness brings you joy. There is no contradiction here. In fact, you can have a fullness of inner joy even in the midst of a fullness of sorrow and pain. Sorrow is NOT the opposite of joy. Misery is. Misery is defined as the absence of inner joy and peace. Therefore suffering is mandatory, and is the indispensable ingredient of joy, but misery is optional. If you live according to the truth you know, you will never be miserable; you will always have inner-joy offsetting sorrow and pain, therefore you will find peace in this world, and if you endure in truth unto the end, eternal life in the world to come. It is living against the truth that you know of, that causes misery. Truth is absolute, by definition. It is the opposite of subjective, because it is the FACT of REALITY.




> If you want to look for a biological purpose of life, then it is reproduction.


It is part of it, but not all. It is also living well. If what you said was the only truth, the earth would be covered with miles of ameba, but it is not the case.




> That is why the strongest love we have is reserved for our children. However that does not mean it is a FACT that we must act in accordance with this purpose.


The strongest love is reserved for people closest to us. It is true that you can choose to act evil and to hurt and abuse your neighbor treating him as you would not want to be treated, but if you do so, you are acting against yourself, because ultimately you are doing this to yourself, because we are all inseparably connected. This is the reason for existence of eternal Justice, and it is mere expression of cause and effect. i.e. "If you hurt yourself, you hurt yourself." If you good to "others," that is to yourself, you are good to yourself. It is a profound reality. Misery exists because people are YET oblivious to this TRUTH. But that's what truth is: all will eventually be forced to accept it or perish (i.e. self-destruct), because it is the ultimate REALITY.




> Do you have evidence of any of this, or is it merely your 'belief'? You may be correct, but you are not going to convince me by appealing to religion or God.


It is the empirical evidence of thousands of years of human experience, but beyond and above that it is the truth as it is revealed from heaven. I have a personal knowledge of that. It has been revealed to me, and I know it for myself, and I speak what I know.




> Even if you are correct though, you said that no one suffers in Hell forever, so what if I am willing to accept my punishment in order to do what I want in this life?


As I said, the choice is yours. But mark my word, even in this life you will be miserable if you do to your neighbor other than what you would have him do to you. This reality is immediate. You do not have to wait for it. It is NOW. This is the reason Stalin was deeply miserable and went mad even in this life. It is IMMEDIATE cause and effect, because of the nature of the REALITY, because you are doing to YOURSELF what you would not.




> To me the logical thing to do would be to disregard these notions of justice, and do what I want instead. If I have to suffer in the next life temporarily, then fine, I will still have the rest of infinity to do whatever I want. But to make use of this life without the restrictions of morals or justice makes more sense,


To disregard morals or justice is to disregard reality; it is to disregard cause and effect principles that connect your inner joy/misery to your own choices. To live life while ignoring the stark reality of these things is to be like a blind man who is walking through a highway traffic. Very unhealthy, and frankly stupid. But the choice, of course is yours, but so are the consequences. Beware though, you are likely to be run over by a Mack truck. If God cannot get your attention with a whisper, he will get it with a truck; but he will get your attention, because you cannot lie to yourself forever, neither can you run from yourself, nor from the consequences of your actions. They are affixed with an eternal law of cause and effect. You will see. I hope it will not be too late for you though. One can ignore REALITY only for so long, before he destroys himself. This is where you are headed, if you do not wake up and come to yourself. You will see.




> because ultimately neither of us know if there is a God or not, or if this God cares about justice.


You assume too much. And you assume WRONG. I know. And you WILL be forced to know, sooner or later too; for your sake I hope sooner, but be it as it may, you WILL know, and so will everyone else. You cannot ignore the laws of the Universe forever and not suffer the consequences of your willful ignorance, anymore than a blind man can walk in the middle of a busy highway for very long. You will see.




> So I'm afraid that even if I grant that you are correct, which I don't, it is not enough to convince me that I should do what you say. If God punishes me then oh well, but he could just as easily reward me and punish you. In the end I am simply going to do what I believe is right, and I will see if I am punished for that (I doubt it).


You punish YOURSELF. That is the truth of it. Men are their own judges and their own tormentors, because whatever you do to others, you are doing to yourself. It is a fact that ALL will be forced to learn. It is inescapable, because you cannot run from yourself. Hence, the hell that you will experience even in *THIS* life, if you disregard these principles. In time or eternity, there is no peace at all, but upon these very principles. You will be punished, by you, for as long as you violate these principles. Your punishment will end ONLY when you embrace these principles and begin to live by them. This is how it works. It is equivalent to saying: "You will be in torment for as long as you torture yourself." This is the ABSOLUTE law. Cause and effect. It is REALITY. Fight it if you will, but you will only hurt YOURSELF. That's how Universe works. Learn it. Learn it sooner than later. Do if for YOU!




> Secondly, you are partially right about science, but "deductive reason" or "logic" is not the study of cause and effect, it is about what _necessarily_ follows from given premises.


Sounds like cause and effect again: Logical cause and effect.




> In other words validity and invalidity. I think that is important to distinguish, because a valid argument does not need to refer to anything in the world.


True, but there is still logical cause and effect.




> For instance:
> 
>  If A, then B
>  A
>  Therefore, B.
> 
>  That is a valid argument but it does not refer to objects in the world that are related in a cause-effect way. Science on the other hand has to refer to observations. It is a very important difference in philosophy and I just want to make sure it is clear.


Science is reason. It is logic built on correct FACTS. Hence is the REALITY of cause end effect. It is all TRUTH, i.e. things as they REALLY are, and as they REALLY will be.

 Good luck.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

A Rational Proof of Ethics 

Brilliant!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Secession: The Right of Free Men




> the legal way for states to withdraw is individually,                state-by-state after conducting a state secession convention very                much like a state constitutional convention on 10th Amendment issues.
> 
>  Most of the                individual states originally joined the union through this process                and it is how individual states must lawfully leave the union. This                is the same method followed by the individual Confederate States                of America when they withdrew one by one following the election                of Abraham Lincoln.
> 
> 
> The right of                democratic state-by-state secession did not die at the point of                a bayonet at Appomattox Court House in 1865 after Lincoln's invasion                killed 600,000 Americans. The growing support for peaceful devolution                of government powers and services to regions and local jurisdictions                to allow citizens to control the power of politicians and government                is a positive advancement for the 21st century. In addition, the                right of devolution of states, geographic regions and groups around                the world promotes government competition and freedom.
> ...
> 
> 
> ...

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul: Secession Is an American Principle

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Secrets Of Secession? What The NWO Fears!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Added this paragraph to the top post:




> This also shows that the principles of Liberty and Justice are intrinsically and inseparably connected: *A just society must necessarily be a free and voluntary one* (otherwise  it would not be just); and a free and voluntary society (in order to  exist) must necessarily be a just society. Thus Liberty and Justice are  the two sides of the very same coin, which coin is peace, freedom and  prosperity.
> 
> It can be expressed in a short formula:_
> Justice = Voluntary Society
> Voluntary Society = Justice_
> Thus all forms of coercion (i.e. aggressive violence) are unjust,  by definition. In fact, injustice IS aggressive violence. Thus in the  words of Ron Paul: "The only thing we should prohibit is violence."  That's what liberty and justice is.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul Defends Growing Secession Movement
*
Retiring Congressman notes principle is “deeply American”*

*Steve Watson*
Prisonplanet.com
Nov 19, 2012



 In his weekly update, released today, Congressman  Ron Paul defends  those who have signed petitions in all 50 states advocating  secession  from the federal government, referring to the principle as “deeply   American”.

 Echoing comments he made back in 2009, Paul notes  “This country was  born through secession. Some thought it was treasonous to  secede from  England, but those “traitors” became our country’s greatest  patriots.”

 “…the principles of self-government and  voluntary association are at  the core of our founding….There is nothing  treasonous or unpatriotic  about wanting a federal government that is more  responsive to the  people it represents.” the Congressman adds.
 Explaining that the recent election only served to  further entrench  the political status quo, Paul urges “…our own federal  government is  vastly overstepping its constitutional bounds with no signs of  reform.”  He reminds Americans that “the first and third paragraph of the   Declaration of Independence expressly contemplate the dissolution of a  political  union when the underlying government becomes tyrannical.”

 Though he says he is not holding his breath that  any state will  actually secede, the congressman stresses that “If the  possibility of  secession is completely off the table there is nothing to stop  the  federal government from continuing to encroach on our liberties, and no   recourse for those who are sick and tired of it.”

 “If a people cannot secede from an oppressive  government they cannot truly be considered free.” Paul adds.
 Listen to the congressman’s comments on secession  in full below.

 In a separate development, Paul announced in an* interview with The Hill*  Sunday that although he is retiring from  Congress, he has no intention  of scaling back his speaking schedule and his  ongoing campaign for  liberty.

 “I’m excited about spending more time on college  campuses, not less.  College campuses will still be on my agenda. That’s where  the action  is.” Paul said.




  As we *noted last week*,  several detractors have  claimed that American citizens who signed the  secession petitions are  effectively advocating a new civil war, and can  rightfully be stripped of their  firearms.

 Some even argued that any American advocating  secession should be *stripped of their citizenship and deported*.

 As we described at length in our *editorial*,  Secessionists do not want to be  part of a separate country, they wish  to use the terms of the Declaration of  Independence to peacefully  reconstitute through the states and restore the  Republic.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Alex Jones calls for nationwide effort to take back America from occupying enemy force

“The purest American values, the purest essence of the United States was  secession from a corrupt, distant corporate empire backed up by  military force,” he said. “We are recaptured by the progeny; by the  literal and figurative offspring of those robber barons 235 years ago.  We are at the crossroads, and the entire enemy battle plan that we’ve  reverse engineered is designed to suppress states’ rights movements.  Because the states created the federal government and it is not their  right, it is not their duty, we the people that make the states, it is  an absolute imperative beyond duty. It is survival that we secede from  the New World Order that has conquered us through fraud; that we declare  the fraud null and void and then reconstitute the Republic with a new  Congress of the several states.”


Read more here: http://www.prisonplanet.com/alex-jon...emy-force.html

----------


## Sola_Fide

> A Rational Proof of Ethics 
> 
> Brilliant!



There are too many errors in this to be taken seriously.  One is at 5:00 when he says "reality is objective".  Really?  How do you know?  What _is_ reality?  How do you come to know it?  By your sensations?  

What is the proof that sensations are infallible?  How do you test sensations against the "objective world"? By another sensation?  That is just a ridiculous circular argument.  If you are an empiricist, how can you ever get past your sensations to this "objective world"?

It's impossible.  This is not a foundation of liberty at all.  It's philosophically absurd.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> There are too many errors in this to be taken seriously.  One is at 5:00 when he says "reality is objective".  Really?  How do you know?  What _is_ reality?  How do you come to know it?  By your sensations?  
> 
> What is the proof that sensations are infallible?  How do you test sensations against the "objective world"? By another sensation?  That is just a ridiculous circular argument.  If you are an empiricist, how can you ever get past your sensations to this "objective world"?
> 
> It's impossible.  This is not a foundation of liberty at all.  It's philosophically absurd.


So are you trying to say that objective reality does not exist? Keep thinking that next time you go for a walk in the middle of a busy highway. Good luck with that! What you advocating is madness!

It is true that we perceive the outside world through our senses. It does not however mean that the outside world is not real or not objective. I have a surprise for you: sensations ARE objective. If you disagree I suggest you stick your hand in a fire.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The U.S. Constitution: Tool of Centralization and Debt, 1788-Today




> The Constitution was from day one an instrument to consolidate  Federal power and expand it. The Constitution has proven to be a weak  reed in every attempt to slow down the expansion of Federal power. It  has proven utterly impotent to roll Federal power back as little as a  decade, ever.
> 
> Therefore, the following is just plain silly, politically speaking:
> If  Congress proves unwilling to force indiscriminate cost reductions on  government then it should apply constitutional principles to the budget  whereby government functions not enumerated in the Constitution are  abolished, privatized, or passed to the states.
> 
> I would  of course love to see this. But I am unaware of any fiscal year since  1790 in which such a roll-back of Federal employment and Federal  spending took place, other than after a major war, when the soldiers  were de-commissioned and taxes were cut. If we are talking about  civilian employment by the Federal government, I am unaware of any  permanent reduction, ever.
> 
> There should come a time when the  victims of a myth should figure out that they are the victims of a rich  and powerful ruling class, which hires the teachers and screens the  textbooks to keep the voters docile. But this dawning of enlightenment  has yet to come.
> 
> ...


The Constitution is an inspired but profoundly flawed document! It had the seeds of its own destruction firmly implanted in it. These are:
1) The power to tax (read the power to rob).
2) The power to coin money (read the power to counterfeit).
3) Slavery. (Read slavery).
4) Copyrights and patents (read government forced monopoly on information).

That's why I proposed the five amendments to rid the Constitution of these deadly flaws, and to square it with the Eternal Principles of liberty (see top post). Unless these corrections are implemented, the Liberty and consequently the society itself will inevitably self-destruct. No society can violate these eternal principles and not suffer the consequence, i.e. tyranny and eventual self-destruction.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Lew Rockwell: We Don’t Have To Put Up With This

Lew Rockwell is being brilliant again. One point I disagree with is that people should stay home and neither vote nor participate in politics. Those who ignore politics will end up as slaves to those who don't.  I voted for Ron Paul. We should ALL vote on principle, not for the one likely to "win" but for the one in harmony with Fundamental Principles of Liberty, rather than the one opposing them.  

Lew was right, voting for Romney would have been voting for slow and torturous death, voting for Obama was voting for a quicker death. Incidentally, voting for Ron Paul, would have been voting for life.

Listen here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwe...-up-with-this/

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul Likes Price Gouging
It's necessary to human survival.

"Governments fail to understand that prices are not just random numbers. Prices perform an important role in providing information, coordinating supply and demand, and enabling economic calculation. When government interferes with the price mechanism, economic calamity ensues. Price controls on gasoline led to the infamous gas lines of the 1970s, yet politicians today repeat those same failed mistakes. Instituting price caps at a below-market price will always lead to shortages. No act of any legislature can reverse the laws of supply and demand.

History shows us that the quickest path to economic recovery is to abolish all price controls. If governments really want to aid recovery, they would abolish their “price-gouging” legislation and allow the free market to function."

http://lewrockwell.com/paul/paul828.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Lincoln was a tyrant who did not want to liberate the slaves, but was forced to. 

In his own words: 

"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." -- Abraham Lincoln

Read more: You Can't Secede...Because We're Exiling You!

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not  either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without  freeing any slave I would do it" --  Abraham Lincoln


He destroyed the "Union" and created an empire. The difference between love and rape. Look it up.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

This is my response to Stefan Molyneux Book Against the Gods?

First of all, I want to say that I respect Stefan as a man who understands correct principles of Liberty, and is eloquent, passionate and effective in explaining and defending them. In fact, his brilliant treatment of the Non-Aggression Principle, is one of my favorites of all time!

My principal disagreement with Stefan is contained in his book Against the Gods? I will show that the main claim of Stefan in this book, namely that he has conclusively proven that God cannot exist, is false. I will show the logical error in his arguments by exposing false assumptions on which he bases them.

I do this for two reasons. First, I sincerely believe that true freedom is impossible without correct understanding of who we are. And we cannot understand who we are without understanding who God is. And secondly, the cause of Liberty is mightily strengthened when it is understood that God is a Libertarian, if by being Libertarian we take that He adheres to the Non-Aggression Principle, the central and defining tenet of Libertarianism.  In fact, God is the greatest champion of Liberty in the entire Universe, and is actually the source of it. Therefore, the cause of Liberty is Gods cause, and it will succeed because God cannot fail. 

Now that I have stated my reasons for engaging in this debate, I will pass directly to the logical arguments that Stefan made, and I will show errors in them:

Stefan writes: Rational thinkers accept standards of existence that at least involve logical consistency  and with any luck, empirical evidence. It is the first standard that beliefs in gods fail and  as a result, there is little point looking for the second.

I agree with the first sentence, but disagree with the second. It is true that many religious systems lack logical consistency and contain numerous self contradictions. It does not, however, mean that ALL religious systems contain self-contradictions. The analogy is: It is true that there have been many self-contradictory explanations about why the Sun rises in the morning, but it does not mean that ALL such explanations or theories are self contradictory. 

Stefan: Bertrand Russell argued for agnosticism by saying that there may be a little teapot orbiting somewhere in the solar system, but he considered it highly unlikely. This argument  with all due respect to Dr. Russell's genius  is incorrect. A teapot is _not_ a self-contradictory entity.  Gods are not like little teapots, or horses with horns, or very small Irishman with pots of gold  gods are entirely self-contradictory entities, the supernatural equivalent of square circles.

Again, though it is true that many descriptions or definitions of God are self-contradictory, it is not true that all of them are. This is an important point. 

Stefan: There is no possibility that self-contradictory entities can exist anywhere in the universe.  The Aristotelian laws of identity and non-contradiction deny us the luxury of believing that self-contradictory entities exist anywhere except in our own unreliable imaginations.

I agree.

Now, Stefan tries to explain why Gods are self-contradictory. Lets examine his arguments.

Stefan: At the very minimum, a god is defined as an eternal being which exists independent of material form and detectable energy, and which usually possesses the rather enviable attributes of omniscience and omnipotence.

At this point, I must reiterate that it is true that many self-contradictory definitions of God do exist. And this is certainly one of them. It does not, however, mean that ALL definitions of God are self-contradictory. Therefore, to prove my point, I will provide a none self-contradictory definition:

A god is an eternal being which possesses the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence.

Stefan: First of all, we know from biology that even if an eternal being _could_ exist, it would be the simplest being conceivable. An eternal being could never have evolved, since it does not die and reproduce, and therefore biological evolution could never have layered levels of increasing complexity over its initial simplicity. We all understand that the human eye did not pop into existence without any prior development; and the human eye is infinitely less complex than an omniscient and omnipotent god. Since gods are portrayed as the most complex beings imaginable, they may well be many things, but eternal cannot be one of them.

This argument is based on an incorrect assumption that complex beings cannot exist without biological evolution. Since Stefan likes math so much, I will use an inductive proof to prove his assumption wrong. By proving the underlying assumption wrong, I will have, by extension, proven this particular argument wrong, as it is built on an incorrect assumption. 

An inductive proof requires you to show that a statement is true for one number, and also that if it is true for one, it must be true for the next. If these two conditions are satisfied, then the statement must be true for all numbers.

So, here is an example of a complex organism: a baby. It came into existence by being born of its parents. You may say, but the babys parents came into existence as the result of biological evolution. I say, this is an assumption, and perhaps a plausible one to some, but it is not a necessary assumption. The parents of the baby were themselves born as babies to their own parents, and then grew up. The parents of the parents had parents of their own, and so on. This thing has no beginning, like real numbers have no beginning, nor do they have any end. The ASSUMPTION of biological evolution is not necessary to explain the existence of a baby, because it can be explained, much more simply, by the known FACT of birth to parents.  As it was UNNECESSARY to employ the assumption of biological evolution for one baby (it was not born from a pair of monkeys, but from human parents), and as it is true that one baby, after it grows up, can give birth to another baby, so it is obvious that this can be true for ALL babies, provided you admit the existence of infinite matter and space, which are necessary for existence of an infinite race.

Thus, I have shown the incorrectness of the assumption that complex beings cannot exist without biological evolution, which, by extension, disproves the argument that Stefan has built upon this incorrect assumption. 

Stefan: Secondly, we also know that consciousness is an _effect_ of matter  specifically biological matter, in the form of a brain. Believing that consciousness can exist in the absence of matter is like believing that gravity can be present in the absence of mass, or that light can exist in the absence of a light source, or that electricity can exist in the absence of energy. Consciousness is an effect of matter, and thus to postulate the existence of consciousness without matter is to create an insurmountable paradox, which only proves the nonexistence of what is being proposed.

This argument is based on incorrect assumption that God, somehow, is immaterial, or is not a being of matter. Granted, that some religious systems erroneously assert that, making themselves self-contradictory. It does not mean, however, that ALL religious systems accept such a fallacy. God is a glorified, immortal being that has a body of flesh and bone as tangible as mans. Even spirit itself is matter, but in a different state of it. 

Stefan: Thirdly, omniscience cannot coexist with omnipotence, since if a god knows what will happen tomorrow, said god will be unable to change it without invalidating its knowledge. If this god retains the power to change what will happen tomorrow, then it cannot know with exact certainty what will happen tomorrow. 

This argument is based on an incorrect understanding of what omnipotent means. If someone is omnipotent, it does not mean he has to contradict himself. In fact, it is precisely BECAUSE God does not contradict himself, that he is omnipotent. God knows what will happen tomorrow, because tomorrow is written by his desires and his decrees, because he is almighty. Since he understands himself completely, he has no contradicting desires and no incompatible priorities. Thus, for him to change his mind would be contradicting himself, which he does not do. To be omnipotent is to be able to do everything you desire and everything you say you would do. God is exactly that, and he does not contradict himself. 

Stefan: The fourth objection to the existence of deities is that an object can only rationally be defined as existing when it can be detected in some manner, either directly, in the form of matter and/or energy, or indirectly, based upon its effects on the objects around it, such as a black hole.
That which can be detected is that which exists,  

So far so good

Stefan: A god  or at least any god that has been historically proposed or accepted  is that which cannot be detected by any material means, either directly or indirectly.  Since god means that which is undetectable, either directly or indirectly, then the statement gods exist rationally breaks down 

God does not mean that which cannot be detected. If some religious system erroneously asserts such a fallacy, it does not mean that all systems assert the same nonsense. There is plenty of eyewitness testimony in the Bible and other scriptures of Gods reality. God has been seen. The effects of his actions and validity of his decrees and predictions have been empirically verified. Your objection that because you cannot see him at will, therefore he does not exist, is no more valid than you saying President does not exist because you cannot see him at will.


Ok. Lets start with these few points for now.

----------


## osan

> This is my response to Stefan Molyneux Book “Against the Gods?”
> 
> First of all, I want to say that I respect Stefan as a man who understands correct principles of Liberty, and is eloquent, passionate and effective in explaining and defending them. In fact, his brilliant treatment of the Non-Aggression Principle, is one of my favorites of all time!


Molyneux, while bright and articulate, goes catastrophically off the rails on crucial points.  It is clear to me that he is a prime example of one of those people who are become dangerous due to his possession of just the right amount of partial knowledge.  He is, in fact, one of the most dangerous precisely because he comes so close to truth without quite getting there in far too many cases for comfort.  His attempts at metaphysical criticism, as you quote from his book, are not just flawed, but are _catastrophically_ so.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty



----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Lift                              Up Your Hearts*
                            We're winning, and the establishment is terrified,                              says Eric Peters.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Criminal State vs. Liberty

"Through taxation, the state aggresses against the property of the individual, and through the variety of compulsory monopolies it enjoys, the state aggresses against the free exchange of goods and services in the area of which it claims control. Murray Rothbard writes that ‘the State, which subsists on taxation, is a vast criminal organization, far more formidable and successful than any “private” Mafia in history.’ He makes the obvious point that ‘it should be considered criminal…according to the common apprehension of mankind, which always considers theft to be a crime’. [4] "
...
" Libertarians differ from both contemporary liberals and conservatives in that they reject the use of force in all cases except where it’s necessary to resist or punish aggression. For libertarians, liberty operates as a fundamental principle across the whole range of human endeavour ..."
...
"When it comes to considering whether to recognize actions or behaviours as criminal, we must ask if they involve aggression against the person or properties of others. If not, whatever view one may entertain of their morality or desirability, they should not be the subject of legal prohibition. "
...
" If I can show that justice, law and order can be provided without a state, then the state begins to look like the Wizard of Oz, a small man with a megaphone pulling levers behind a curtain. Chapter three outlines an idea of liberty that is consistent with the moral character of human action..."
...

Read more: http://lewrockwell.com/orig10/casey-g4.1.1.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Larken Rose: "My Sympathies"




That's why I ONLY vote for those who oppose *ALL* public taxation of private property.


Larken Rose: "The God of Taxation" on The Peter Mac Show




Taxation is extortion by definition. See: Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Taxation. It is one of the deadly mistakes in the original Constitution that needs to be corrected if Liberty is to survive and prosper, (much like slavery was and had to be corrected).

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Anarcho-Capitalist Solution
Hans-Hermann Hoppe on the megalomaniacs called the State.


Obsessed by Megalomania

*Interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe*

_Recently by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Entrepreneurship With Fiat Property and Fiat Money_





_The following interview with Hans-Hermann Hoppe first appeared in the German weekly Junge Freiheiton November 2, 2012, and was conducted by Moritz Schwarz. It has been translated here into English by Robert Groezinger.
_
*Are taxes nothing but protection money? The state a kind of mafia? Democracy a fraud? Philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe is not only considered one of the most prominent pioneering intellectuals of the libertarian movement, but also perhaps the sharpest critic of the Western political system.
*
_Professor Hoppe: In your essay collection ‘Der Wettbewerb der Gauner’ (‘__The Competition of Crooks__’) you write that ‘99 percent of citizens, asked if the state was necessary, would answer yes.’ Me too! Why am I wrong?
_
*Hoppe*: All of us, from childhood, have been moulded by state or state licensed institutions – preschools, schools, universities. So the result you quoted is not surprising. However, if I asked you whether you said yes to an institution having the last word in each conflict, even in those it is itself involved in, you would certainly say no – unless you hoped to be in charge of this institution yourself.

_Er ... correct_.

*Hoppe*: Of course, because you know that such an institution cannot only mediate in conflicts but also cause them, you can recognize that it can then resolve them to its own advantage. In the face of this I, for one, would live in fear of my life and property. However, it is precisely this, the ultimate power of judicial decision-making, that is the _specific characteristic_ of the institution known as the state.

_Correct, but on the other hand the state is based on a social contract, which provides the individual with protection and space for personal fulfilment, which without the state he would not have – in a struggle of all against all.
_
*Hoppe*: No, the state is anything but the result of a contract! No one with even just an ounce of common sense would agree to such a contract. I have a lot of contracts in my files, but nowhere is there one like this. The state is the result of aggressive force and subjugation. It has evolved without contractual foundation, just like a gang of protection racketeers. And concerning the struggle of all against all: that is a myth. Of course the racketeer protects his victims on "his" territory from other racketeers, but only so he can conduct his own racket more successfully. Moreover: It is states that are responsible for the deaths of hundreds of millions of people and immeasurable destruction in the 20th century alone. Compared to that, the victims of private crimes are almost negligible. And do you seriously believe that conflicts between the inhabitants of the tri-border region [of France, Germany and Switzerland] near Basle, who are living together in a condition of anarchy, are more numerous than conflicts between the inhabitants of Dortmund and Düsseldorf, who are citizens of one and the same state [Germany]? Not that I know of.

_Why in your view is democracy just a "competition of crooks"?
_
*Hoppe*: All highly-developed forms of religion forbid the coveting of someone else’s property. This prohibition is the foundation of peaceful cooperation. In a democracy, on the other hand, anyone can covet anybody else’s property and act according to his desire – the only precondition being that he can gain access to the corridors of power. Thus, under democratic conditions, everybody becomes a potential threat. And during mass elections what tends to happen is that the members of society who attempt to access the corridors of power and rise to the highest positions are those who have no moral inhibitions about misappropriating other people’s property: habitual amoralists who are particularly talented in forging majorities out of a multitude of unbridled and mutually exclusive demands.

_‘Politicians: lazy and spongers!’ Aren’t you afraid you might be reproached for complaining on the level of the ‘__Bild__’ tabloid newspaper?
_
*Hoppe:* So what? Up until the 20th century there was hardly an important political thinker who didn’t speak disparagingly about democracy. The keyword was: mob rule. The populist criticism of democracy, as can be found in _Bild_ or at the water cooler, is all very well. But it is not fundamental enough, nor does it go far enough – to date _Bild_ hasn’t asked me for an interview either. Of course politicians are spongers: they live off money extorted from other people with the threat of violence – which is called ‘taxation’. But unfortunately, politicians are _not_ lazy. It would be nice if all they did was squander their booty. Instead they are obsessive megalomaniacal do-gooders, who in addition make life difficult for their victims with thousands of laws and regulations.

_Democracy is only one possible variety of statehood. Would a different form of state be more acceptable to you?
_
*Hoppe:* In a monarchist state everyone knows who the ruler is and who the ruled are, and accordingly there is resistance against any attempt to increase state power. In a democratic state this distinction becomes blurred, and it becomes all the easier to expand state power.

_Just a moment: that’s what courts, laws and the constitution are for, to limit and control the state – government as well as parliament.
_
*Hoppe*: The mafia also has "executive", "legislative" and "judicial" branches. Just go and watch the movie "The Godfather" again!

_Another objection: What about the new internet-based detractors of the state, such as ‘Occupy’ or the ‘Pirates,’ who demand transparency and participation, without immediately condemning the state and democracy in their entirety?_

*Hoppe*: The ‘Occupy’ movement consists of economic ignoramuses who fail to understand that the banks’ dirty tricks, which they rightly deplore, are possible only because there is a state-licensed central bank that acts as a "lender of last resort," and that the current financial crisis therefore is not a crisis of capitalism but a crisis of statism. The ‘Pirates’, with their demand for an unconditional basic income, are well on the way to becoming another ‘free beer for all’ party. They have a single issue: criticism of ‘intellectual property rights’ (IP rights), which could make them very popular – and earn them the enmity in particular of the music, film and pharmaceutical industries. But even there they are clueless wimps. They just need to google Stephan Kinsella. Then they’d see that IP has nothing to do with property, but rather with state privileges. IP allows the inventor (I) or ‘first maker’ of a product – a text, picture, song or whatever – to forbid all other people to replicate this product, or to charge them license fees, even if the replicator (R) thereby uses his own property only (and does not take away any of I’s property). This way, I is elevated to the status of co-owner of R’s property. This shows: IP rights are not property but, on the contrary, are an attack on property and therefore completely illegitimate.

_In ‘The Competition of Crooks’ you outline as an alternative the model of a ‘private law society’. How does it work?
_
*Hoppe:* The basic concept is simple. The idea of a monopolistic property protector and law keeper is self-contradictory. This monopolist, whether king or president, will always be an expropriating property protector and a law breaking law keeper – who will characterize his actions as being in ‘the public interest’. In order to guarantee the protection of property and safeguard the law there has to be free competition in the area of law as well. Other institutions apart from the state must be allowed to provide property and law protection services. The state then becomes a normal subject of private law, on an equal footing with all other people. It can’t raise taxes any more or unilaterally enact laws. Its employees will have to finance themselves just the same as everybody else does: by producing and offering something that freely engaging customers consider value for money.

_Wouldn’t that quickly lead to a war between these ‘providers’?
_
*Hoppe:* War and aggression are costly. States go to war because they can, via taxes, pass on the cost to third parties who are not directly involved. By contrast, for voluntarily financed companies war is economic suicide. As a private law subject the state too will, like all other security providers, have to offer its customers contracts that can only be changed by mutual agreement, and which in particular regulate what is to be done in the case of a conflict between itself and its customers, or between itself and the customers of other, competing security providers. And for that there is only one solution acceptable to everyone: that in these sorts of conflicts not the state, but an independent third party decides – arbitrators and judges who in turn compete with each other, whose most important asset is their reputation as keepers of the law, and whose actions and judgments can be challenged and, if need be, revised, just as anyone else’s can be.

_Who should be such a ‘third party’? And with what instruments of power should it assert the interests of an individual citizen against his contractual partner – the private state, which of course is much more powerful?
_
*Hoppe:* In local conflicts, in a village or a small town, these will very often be universally respected ‘natural aristocrats’. Or else arbitrating organisations and courts of appeal, which insurers and insured have contractually agreed on from the start. Whoever then does not abide by the judgments will not only be defaulting, he will become a pariah in the world of business. Nobody will want to have anything to do with him, and he will immediately lose all his customers. This is no utopian idea. This is already the usual practice in international – anarchical – business transactions today. And another question for you: How should the individual citizen assert his interests in the face of a monopolistic tax-state? It is much more powerful – and always has the last word!

_Do you understand the continuing scepticism with regard to your proposition?
_
*Hoppe*: Of course, as most people have never heard of this idea, let alone thought about it seriously. I am only unsympathetic towards those who yell out at the top of their voices when they hear this idea and demand the condemnation of its representatives, without having the least knowledge of economics and political philosophy.

_

It is hardly likely that a majority of citizens will ever support such an unfamiliar model. But what parts of it at least could be adopted, in order to achieve at least partial improvements of our current system, without a complete abandonment of state and democracy?
_
*Hoppe*: There is an interim solution. It’s called secession and political decentralization. Small states must be libertarian, otherwise the productive people will desert them. Desirable therefore is a world made up of thousands of Liechtensteins, Singapores and Hong Kongs. In contrast, a European central government – and even more so a world government – with a ‘harmonized’ tax and regulation policy, is the gravest threat to freedom.

_For that too you will probably not find a majority. Therefore how will state and democracy develop in future? Where will we finally end up?
_
*Hoppe*: The Western ‘welfare state model’, ‘socialism light,’ will collapse just like ‘classical’ socialism – of course, I can’t say whether in five, ten or 15 years. The key words are: state bankruptcy, hyperinflation, currency reform and violent distribution battles. Then it will either come to a call for a ‘strong man’ or – hopefully – a massive secession movement.
_December 29, 2012_

_Hans-Hermann Hoppe [send him mail] is distinguished fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute and founder and president of the Property and Freedom Society. His books include_ Democracy: The God That Failed_ and_ The Myth of National Defense_. Visit his website._


Copyright © 2012 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.


*The Best of Hans-Hermann Hoppe*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Wow! Greatest pro-gun explanations EVER!

Part 1



Part 2

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty



----------


## helmuth_hubener

Thanks for posting the Hoppe interview above.  It was enjoyable.  I had missed it on LRC.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Thanks for posting the Hoppe interview above.  It was enjoyable.  I had missed it on LRC.


You are welcome. Helmuth Hubner was lds, are you?

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> You are welcome. Helmuth Hubner was lds, are you?


 Yep, I am!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Yep, I am!


I thought I recognized his face. He was a brave young man!
Happy New Year to all!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

This is cute:

Podcast from LRC

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lewrockwe...by-politician/

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

School Is Bad for Children

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

War on Drugs: The Solution is Decriminalization

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Secession Part 1 of 3: 
CONSENT of the Governed. 




Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiaQvkY6eRY

Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvlx3kfxFtc   << Awesome!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Illusion of Choice By George Carlin, Ron Paul, and Judge Napolitano




http://www.successcouncil.com/

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Correct Principles of Liberty*
*and*
*The Errors of the US Constitution.*
 

The Constitution of the United States is a largely inspired document, which unfortunately had certain key errors in it, which important errors, if are not corrected, will inevitably lead to the destruction of the Constitution, Liberty, and ultimately of the society itself.

The main error of the US Constitution is violation of both Justice and Liberty by violation of Private Property via twin abominations of public taxation and public regulation of Private Property. This stems from misunderstanding of what government is, and what its proper role ought to be, which, in turn, stems from the lack of understanding of what Property is.

Understanding of Property is the KEY, which answers what proper role of government is, as well as defines both Justice and Liberty, without which no society can hope to either survive or prosper. 

So let’s first look at what property is.

The most fundamental type of Property is Private Property.

What is Private Property?

Private Property is defined as something that you own, that belongs to you and none else, so that: 
a) you do not need to ask anyone’s permission to use it, but 
b) others must obtain your voluntary consent to use, because it is yours, and 
c) you can do with it whatever you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another. 
That is what Private Property is.

How does one become an owner of a property? A just owner of a property is either:
i) the first user of it, or 
ii) the recipient of it via voluntary gift bequest or sale. 
Now, according to these definitions, private property is more than just land or real state, etc. Your Private Property, among other things, includes: you, your body, your mind, your ability to make choices, your ability to move, to speak, to act, the fruits of your labor, your natural, unalienable rights, etc.

It is actually the case, that *all* rights and virtues derive from the concept of Private Property. In fact, they all, are entirely meaningless without it.

Let’s look at Liberty and Justice, for example. What are they?

They are nothing more or less than attributes of Private Property.

What is justice but Non-Aggression of Private Property, with the implied right to use equal force necessary to offset an aggression against, and repair damages to, private property caused by another? And what is Liberty if not the right to do with your own property whatever you please as long as you do not violate the property of another? Both Justice and Liberty, therefore, are attributes of Private Property and have exactly ZERO meaning without it. This is why I say that Justice and Liberty are two sides of the same coin, which coin is Private Property; in other words, Justice and Liberty are one and the same as Private Property. You cannot violate or diminish one without violating or diminishing the other. They are the same thing.

Interestingly, God subscribes to exactly the same principles. The right of Private Property is summarized in these two great commandments:
* Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not steal.*
 
Thus God reaffirms Life, and defines Liberty and Justice.

Incidentally, this is the very reason why the first plank of Luciferian/Illuminati/Communist manifesto is to abolish Private Property, because thus they abolish Justice, Liberty, and consequently Life itself.

The opposition here is clear as night and day!

All types of property are ultimately based on Private Property. The most prominent of these is public property. Public property is property to which all people have equal claim of ownership. Example would be a public road that was used for centuries by millions of people. All have equal claim of ownership upon it. Everyone has the right to travel on it as long as he is not violating the same right of others.

Now let’s return to the question of What is Government?

The principle of Government, as all other principles, unsurprisingly, is also derived from the principle of property.

What is government? It is nothing more than ownership, and ownership is nothing more than just control of property. You have the right to govern your property. Your neighbor has the right to govern his property. The proper extent of one’s government is no further than the extent of his property.

Now, let’s return to Public Representative Government. What is it? And what is the proper extent of its authority?

The answer is simple. Proper Public Representative Government is a group of people chosen by the majority of the population to represent them, to whom they delegated a part of their own authority. And that delegated authority is the only proper and just authority that such a government can ever have. Now, since no one can delegate an authority he does not have, and no individual, obviously, has the right to govern his neighbor’s property, therefore he cannot delegate such authority to the government; hence, the only proper authority of a Public Representative Government is to manage Public property according to justice, so as to represent and protect each person’s equal claim of ownership in the public property. 

So, we will ask again, what is Public Representative Government? *It is the government of public property*. Nothing more, nothing less.

It has exactly ZERO moral or logical right to govern or violate the Private Property of ANY individual, because the government does not own Private Property of individuals, and NO ONE could have delegated such authority to it, because no one has the authority to govern the property of his neighbor, and you cannot delegate an authority you do not have. And proper representative government cannot justly have ANY authority, except that which has been DELEGATED to it by the individuals comprising it. This is a fundamental principle of Liberty, and a principle of Justice also.

This clearly shows, among other things, that public representative government has no logical, moral, or just right to claim an exclusive monopoly on justice enforcement or on operation of courts, because no one can delegate the authority to establish such a monopoly to it, because no one, individually, has such authority, and you cannot delegate an authority you do not have. Therefore such a monopoly supported by aggressive violence of taxation of private property, would be unjust, and would violate private property, and thus would be nothing more than a mafia style protection racket: “We will rob you now, so no one may rob you later” deal, which is obviously a fraud. Actually, they cannot even rightly promise that. The track record of governments justice enforcement is dismal at best. It is inefficient, expensive (think of all the taxes you are forced to pay to support it), and above all, it is UNJUST.

As always, free market enterprise can deliver the service of justice enforcement much more efficiently in both price and quality, and infinitely more justly than an unjust by definition, government forced monopoly. 

(As a side note, we will point out that anti-nuisance laws can still exist in a just society, because no one has the right to violate or pollute the property of another, be that property private or public. So, one cannot rightly build, say, a pig farm next to your house, and thus, without your consent, pollute your air with the smell or noise of pigs; neither has anyone the right to project offensive sounds or images upon your property, nor can they project that upon public property if the majority of the users of the public property find it offensive. So property rights, or in other words, non-aggression/non-violation principle, takes good care of anti-nuisance enforcement.)

All of the expenses of operating of Public Representative Government can only be justly derived from public property user fees and from voluntary contributions, and nothing else, provided that everyone is treated equally, and the property of no one is violated in the process.

Thus, we can see that public taxation of Private Property is wholly immoral, and UNJUST. It is nothing more than legalized plunder, i.e. the use of state sponsored aggressive violence, to confiscate/violate the Private Property of individuals against their will, which is the very definition of plunder and theft. The fact that a group is doing it does not make it any more moral or right than if a mugger on the street was doing it. Where does the government get this authority? Who delegated it to it? No one! Because no one has such authority! And you cannot delegate an authority you do not have. 

The idea that violent aggression, whether by individual or a group, can be used to violate Private Property is the root of all evil. In fact, it is the very definition of evil. Literally.

Thus, you can only justly tax the things you own and nothing else. The government or the public DO NOT OWN YOU, therefore they have absolutely no right to tax you or to violate your property. 

The only thing the government can rightly tax, if the majority of the population chooses, is the PUBLIC PROPERTY, in the form of public property user fees, and nothing else, provided that such fees are:
1) approved by the majority of the people,
2) are administered equally among all the users, since all have equal claim of ownership in public property, and
3) the rights and the property of no individual is violated in the process. 
Thus we see that Private Property is the Supreme Law of the land, and is not subject to the vote of the majority, if Liberty and Justice are to exist, and consequently, the society is to survive and prosper.

In light of this understanding, let’s look at US Constitution.

Though largely inspired, this document has the seeds of its own destruction firmly implanted in it.

The greatest error of the US Constitution is that it allows, and actually sanctions public taxation of private property. It is theft. It is legalized and institutionalized aggressive violence and plunder. It is immoral. It is evil by definition. (Evil is defined simply, as aggressive violence, or as violation of Private Property. These two definitions are equivalent.). It is UNJUST. It is an affront to the eternal principles of Liberty and to JUSTICE itself. It is an abomination, which together with slavery, copyright and patent laws, and other things, guaranteed that Liberty would eventually be destroyed in this land, and tyranny, like cancer, would inevitably spread, until the whole society is utterly destroyed, if this gross error is not vanquished.

---
 
Now, some would say, if the taxes were low, we wouldn't care so much, so instead of abolishing taxation lets work only on reducing it. The problem with this is the following: By allowing 1% tax of private property you concede 100% of the principle of liberty. 

You concede that the government OWNS YOU 100%, but allows you to keep most of your stuff, for now. You concede that you are a slave. You concede plunder, robbery and theft. You concede evil. You forsake 100% of the principle of JUSTICE. 

And once JUSTICE is forsaken, there is nothing preventing the gradual and inevitable growth of tyranny until a completely totalitarian state destroys the society itself. It is like being a little bit pregnant: once began, the tyranny will grow to its logical conclusion of complete destruction of liberty and of the society, unless INJUSTICE is rejected completely, and JUSTICE is embraced as the only true law. 

Justice is an ALL or NOTHING proposition: life or death, liberty or slavery. If you pick up one end of a stick, you pick up the other also. You reap what you sow. Cause and effect.

It is also like this joke: "A man says to a woman, Will you sleep with me for 1 million dollars? She says, Yes. He says, Will you sleep with me for 20 dollars? She says, Who do you think I am?! He says, We already established WHO you are, now we are only arguing about the price." 

The point is that once the principle is gone, there is nothing of substance preventing the gradual slide to a total tyranny. Once the principle of liberty is forsaken for the sake of convenience or laziness, tyranny will metastasize and inevitably grow, until total and complete destruction of all liberty, unless the correct principle is reestablished. 

If you allow a little bit of rape, or a little bit of plunder, or a little bit of INJUSTICE, you allowed rape and plunder and INJUSTICE, and unless these are COMPLETELY rejected, any society that accepts these will unavoidably self-destruct. It is a simple statement of inevitable cause and effect.

Plunder, rape, aggressive violence and INJUSTICE, must be COMPLETELY and TOTALLY rejected if Liberty and the society is to survive and prosper. 

Again it is, an ALL or NOTHING proposition. *Either we will have JUSTICE, or not.* There is no middle ground. But if you reject justice, you have chosen eventual and INEVITABLE self-destruction of the society. It is a mathematical certainty. It is as inescapable as truth. It is cause and effect. It is the way things REALLY are. 

---

I have written five Constitutional amendments designed to fix the most egregious errors in the US Constitution. You can find them here:  *The Fundamental Principles of Liberty.*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

"As for power. We have the power, but we are ignorant of it. We, the sleeping giant, are more powerful than all the scamming, crooked, Lucifer worshiping banksters combined.  And they know it! 

The ONLY way they can subjugate 300,000,000 people is by BRAINWASHING them to believe a lie. And that's what they have done. Unless the 300,000,000 THINK that slavery is for their good, unless they THINK that slavery is  liberty, unless they THINK that this is as good as it gets and cannot be any better, there is absolutely no way to control them by force. The MAIN, by FAR, instrument of control is DECEPTION, so the people would not know their own power.


We are disabusing them from the deception. That is all. "The TRUTH shall make you free," says God.


And so it is. With God is ALL POWER."

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Elaborated the First Principle in the first post of the thread.

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## osan

> The Constitution of the United States is a largely inspired document, which unfortunately had certain key errors in it, which important errors, if are not corrected, will inevitably lead to the destruction of the Constitution, Liberty, and ultimately of the society itself.


Not bad.




> The main error of the Constitution is the misunderstanding of what government is, and what its proper role ought to be. This misunderstanding, in turn, stems from the lack of understanding of what Property is.


Not exactly.  There are several generally characterized errors.  The one you cite is more aptly expressed as the _absence_ of an explicit description of the proper role not of the institution of government, but rather of the function of _governance_.  Government is, in and of itself, nothing.  It is a conceptually structured _set of conventions_ that do nothing more than describe the operational structure and characteristics of governance that include the metes and bounds of those operational qualities, and who shall discharge the duties described.  More ideally, it should include, as you note, the purpose that it serves in order to provide a clear clue to people as to whether those contriving it have so much as a minimally correct idea of what it is they conceive.  If the principles of governance are laid out correctly and with sufficient completeness, the abstract structure we call "government" that arises therefrom (or does not) may be capably examined and evaluated by those of nominal intelligence and learning for compliance to those principles.  If they do, then one may be able to say that government is rightly conceived and otherwise that it is not.




> Understanding of Property is the KEY, that answers the question of the proper role of government, as well as defines what Liberty and Justice are, which is absolutely crucial if both Liberty and Justice are to exist, and consequently the society, as a whole, to survive and prosper.


Property is _a_ key, but not the primary one.  Life occupies that position and it may be argued that it is not property in the sense that so many take it as such.  The concept of life as property presupposes the "you" are separate from your "life" and in being so separate you therefore own your life.  This is a very emotionally compelling argument but suffers from two flaws.  Firstly, it is not proven in any tract of which I am familiar, philosophical or metaphysical, that we are separate from our lives.  We may well be separate from our bodies, but I doubt that our animated bodies constitute the sum total of our lives.  Either we are separate from our bodies or we are not.  If we are not, then we are our bodies and there is no separation between our lives and ourselves.  If there is no separation, then there is no distinction between owner and that which is owned, which is to say that the ownership relationship is absent.  I further assert that the absence of ownership in this case does _not_ imply an absence of _mastery_.  I assert further still that while one is not the owner of one's own life, he is its _master_, if by no other virtue than that nobody else may own you and you are in fact the sole "occupant" of your own body/life.  Life, in this view, is not owned by anyone, but is shared by everyone.

If it is the case that "soul" or "spirit" or whatever term you wish to use is separate from the body, the same result arises because the soul is itself a living thing and is in fact the true fabric of your life, the body affording that life a means of navigation and expression in the material world, that world providing the environment within which the soul may function in accord with whatever purpose it may be charged with fulfilling, mysterious or mundane.  Your soul is your life and you are still your own master.  The Cardinal Postulate, if accepted, leads immediately and directly to this, stating "All men hold equal Just Claims to Life."  Once accepted, the CP leads immediately, naturally, intuitively obviously, and most forcefully to the conclusion that each man is his own master.

The second flaw, and this is a very serious one whose roots in philosophy and metaphysics tie into daily living with strong tentacles, lies in the very acceptance of a life as something to be owned in any fashion by any person.  Any time the concept of ownership is accepted as being applicable to a given circumstance, that ownership may be argued.  There are no exceptions to this.  Who owns the Moon?  I contend nobody does, but if Exxon lays claim and we accept it, someone else can then in principle lay counterclaim.  But if we reject out of hand that anyone can lay claim to owning the Moon, nobody may lay claim to it.  The Moon becomes sacrosanct.  In the 1970s, Shell Oil made a stab at laying claim to the _sun_.  I $#@! you not about this, and perhaps some of you even recall that short-lived episode where a court in the USA slapped them face-down into the dirt without equivocation on that point.  Just imagine had Shell been granted the claim!  The world would today be a very different place and we would likely be praying by the hour to have a world only as loused up as what we have today. 

By denying that ownership even applies to our lives, those lives are set beyond the grasp of those who would argue ownership.  One might then respond by asking what is the material difference between declaring self-ownership and self-mastery.  I assert the difference to be subtle but nonetheless fundamental because of the psychological/conceptual tie of "master" with "slave".  When one is not one's own master, he is reduced to the status of slave regardless of how seemingly free he may be and how large and prettily gilt his cage.  To master another is to assume_ownership rights_ over them.  If ownership rights to lives do no exist, then it is impossible for one man to rightfully argue his right to master another without the other's consent.  But to master one's own life implies not ownership rights but simply the status of captain of the life that you *are*.  You do not own what you are.  Nobody owns that.  You are your life and are the master of it.  You are, in this regard, sacrosanct and beyond the morally legitimate touch of others so long as you observe the same courtesies and obligations toward them as they do toward you.






> What is Private Property?
> Private Property is defined as something that you own, that belongs to you and none else, so that:
> a) you do not need to ask anyone’s permission to use it, but 
> b) others must obtain your voluntary consent to use, because it is yours, and 
> c) you can do with it whatever you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another. 
> That is what Private Property is.


Incomplete.  There is also commonly owned private property.  When a group of people buys land or an automobile, they may own that property in common.  In such cases, the parameters of ownership may be very different from those of individual holdings.




> How does one become an owner of a property? A just owner of a property is either:
> a) the first user of it, or 
> b) the recipient of it via voluntary gift bequest or sale.


Also incomplete and inaccurate.  By your definition we are every last one of us thieves here in the USA because every square inch of the territory had been used prior by _somebody_  Over several tens of thousands of years it is not likely that too many square feet of area have lain completely unused by anyone ever.  If a man uses a tract of land and dies, what of his ownership rights?  According to your definition, they still exist, which is pretty intuitively incorrect.  I have to get to errands so I am not in a position to redefine the term at the moment, so perhaps you might want to go back and give it another try.  You will find that coming up with a complete and perfectly consistent definition very challenging.  Perhaps impossibly so.  Been there, done that.





> It is actually the case, that *all* rights and virtues derive from the concept of Private Property. In fact, they all, are entirely meaningless without it.


This is eminently arguable and for the reasons I cite above, it is a relatively weak paradigm upon which to base principles of governance precisely because the door to argumentation is left ajar.  Given enough time for stupidity to creep through the crack, one ends up where we currently find ourselves.



> *
> Thou shall not kill.*


* 
*
Thou shalt not commit murder.  BIG ass difference.





> All types of property are ultimately based on Private Property. The most prominent of these is public property. Public property is property to which all people have equal claim of ownership.


Or no ownership at all.

Anyhow, gotta run.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Incomplete. There is also commonly owned private  property. When a group of people buys land or an automobile, they may  own that property in common. In such cases, the parameters of ownership  may be very different from those of individual holdings.


I would  call it group property, and it is, as all other property, based on  Private, i.e. individual property. It was not my intent to describe all  cases, but the most important and the most prominent ones.




> “How does one become an owner of a property? A just owner of a property is either:
> 
> a) the first user of it, or
> b) the recipient of it via voluntary gift bequest or sale. "
> 
> Also incomplete and inaccurate. By your definition we are every last one of us thieves here in the USA because every square inch of the territory had been used prior by _somebody_ Over several tens of thousands of years it is not likely that too many square feet of area have lain completely unused by anyone ever. If a man uses a tract of land and dies, what of his ownership rights? According to your definition, they still exist, which is pretty intuitively incorrect.”


I say, if someone owned it long time ago, and has gone leaving no claim, then that can be considered a bequest, unless he presents a valid claim to the contrary.




> “All types of property are ultimately based on Private Property. The most prominent of these is public property. Public property is property to which all people have equal claim of ownership."
> 
> Or no ownership at all.


I consider ownership as a range of just control. By this definition, public property IS owned, because people can JUSTLY exercise a range of CONTROL over it.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Public Schools are Evil.
Home School Your Children.

"If the government controlled schools are so good, why can't the kids just be allowed walk out? Compulsory attendance laws are abusive and tyrannical. Why call it free education when it really is indoctrination and brainwashing?"

Read more: http://lewrockwell.com/huff/huff33.1.html

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Here Hans Hoppe says that limited government is impossible. He is right, *because* of the way he defines state and its government, i.e. _"a compulsory territorial monopolist of law and order (an ultimate decision maker)."_ That, of course, is evil and unjust because it is based on aggressive violence (the definition of evil) and thus violates Private Property and therefore Justice and Liberty; so Hans Hoppe is right on this. 

He also correctly points out that the state has no moral right to tax private property. That is key. He is exactly right! Neither has the state the right to "legislate" according to Hoppe. He is exactly right as far as private property is concerned. 

The state has ZERO right to legislate regarding private property, (except that private property should not be violated), because the state does NOT own private property, therefore it has exactly ZERO say about it; the state can only rightly legislate regarding public property, because it is its proper function, and nothing more.

Now the *proper* definition of a legitimate state is this: State is nothing more or less than the government of public property by the people, i.e. property to which all people have equal claim of ownership, therefore it (public property) can be managed by the voice of the majority provided that: 
a) all are treated equally (since all have equal claim of ownership upon it), and 
b) that Private Property of no individual is violated, in any way, by such legislation.

That is a proper definition of a legitimate/just state, i.e. the government of PUBLIC property, and public property ONLY.

(By the way, the justice of existence of public property can be denied no more than the justice of existence of joint ownership of property.)

But since Hans defines state differently, his assertions are correct within his definition.

He also correctly points out that production of justice enforcement is much better handled by Free Market, and the state has no moral right to establish a monopoly over it.

Here is Hans' brilliant article:


On the Impossibility of Limited Government and the Prospects for a Second American Revolution*by Hans-Hermann Hoppe*_Recently by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: Obsessed by Megalomania__
_
_This essay was originally published in_Reassessing the Presidency: The Rise of the Executive State and the Decline of Freedom_, edited by John V. Denson, pp. 667–696. An MP3 audio file of this article, read by Dr. Floy Lilley, isavailable for download._


In a recent survey, people of different nationalities were asked how proud they were to be American, German, French, etc., and whether or not they believed that the world would be a better place if other countries were just like their own. The countries ranking highest in terms of national pride were the United States and Austria. As interesting as it would be to consider the case of Austria, we shall concentrate here on the United States and the question of whether and to what extent the American claim can be justified.

In the following, we will identify three main sources of American national pride, the first two of which are justified sources of pride, while the third actually represents a fateful error. Finally, we will look at how this error might be repaired.

I - A Country of Pioneers
The first source of national pride is the memory of America's not-so-distant colonial past as a country of pioneers.

In fact, the English settlers coming to North America were the last example of the glorious achievements of what Adam Smith referred to as "a system of natural liberty": the ability of men to create a free and prosperous commonwealth from scratch. Contrary to the Hobbesian account of human nature – _**** homini lupus est_ – the English settlers demonstrated not just the viability but also the vibrancy and attractiveness of a stateless, anarchocapitalist social order. They demonstrated how, in accordance with the views of John Locke, private property originated naturally through a person's original appropriation – his purposeful use and transformation – of previously unused land (wilderness). Furthermore, they demonstrated that, based on the recognition of private property, division of labor, and contractual exchange, men were capable of protecting themselves effectively against antisocial aggressors – first and foremost by means of self-defense (less crime existed then than exists now), and as society grew increasingly prosperous and complex, by means of specialization, i.e., by institutions and agencies such as property registries, notaries, lawyers, judges, courts, juries, sheriffs, mutual defense associations, and popular militias.[1]

Moreover, the American colonists demonstrated the fundamental sociological importance of the institution of covenants: of associations of linguistically, ethnically, religiously, and culturally homogeneous settlers led by and subject to the internal jurisdiction of a popular leader-founder to ensure peaceful human cooperation and maintain law and order.[2]

II - The American Revolution
The second source of national pride is the American Revolution.

In Europe there had been no open frontiers for centuries, and the intra-European colonization experience lay in the distant past. With the growth of the population, societies had assumed an increasingly hierarchical structure: of free men (freeholders) and servants, lords and vassals, overlords, and kings. While distinctly more stratified and aristocratic than colonial America, the so-called feudal societies of medieval Europe were also typically stateless social orders.

A state, in accordance with generally accepted terminology, is defined as a compulsory territorial monopolist of law and order (an ultimate decision maker). Feudal lords and kings did not typically fulfill the requirements of a state; they could only "tax" with the consent of the taxed, and on his own land every free man was as much a sovereign (ultimate decision maker) as the feudal king was on his.[3] However, in the course of many centuries, these originally stateless societies had gradually transformed into absolute – statist – monarchies. While they had initially been acknowledged voluntarily as protectors and judges, European kings had at long last succeeded in establishing themselves as hereditary heads of state. Resisted by the aristocracy but helped along by the "common people," they had become absolute monarchs with the power to tax without consent and to make ultimate decisions regarding the property of free men.

These European developments had a twofold effect on America. On the one hand, England was also ruled by an absolute king, at least until 1688, and when the English settlers arrived on the new continent, the king's rule was extended to America. Unlike the settlers' founding of private property and their private – voluntary and cooperative – production of security and administration of justice, however, the establishment of the royal colonies and administrations was not the result of original appropriation (homesteading) and contract – in fact, no English king had ever set foot on the American continent – but of usurpation (declaration) and imposition.

On the other hand, the settlers brought something else with them from Europe. There, the development from feudalism to royal absolutism had not only been resisted by the aristocracy but it was also opposed theoretically with recourse to the theory of natural rights as it originated within Scholastic philosophy. According to this doctrine, government was supposed to be contractual, and every government agent, including the king, was subject to the same universal rights and laws as everyone else. While this may have been the case in earlier times, it was certainly no longer true for modern absolute kings. Absolute kings were usurpers of human rights and thus illegitimate. Hence, insurrection was not only permitted but became a duty sanctioned by natural law.[4]

The American colonists were familiar with the doctrine of natural rights. In fact, in light of their own personal experience with the achievements and effects of natural liberty and as religious dissenters who had left their mother country in disagreement with the king and the Church of England, they were particularly receptive to this doctrine.[5]

Steeped in the doctrine of natural rights, encouraged by the distance of the English king, and stimulated further by the puritanical censure of royal idleness, luxury, and pomp, the American colonists rose up to free themselves of British rule.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, government was instituted to protect life, property, and the pursuit of happiness. It drew its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. In contrast, the royal British government claimed that it could tax the colonists without their consent. If a government failed to do what it was designed to do, Jefferson declared, "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

III - The American Constitution
But what was the next step once independence from Britain had been won? This question leads to the third source of national pride – the American Constitution – and the explanation as to why this Constitution, rather than being a legitimate source of pride, represents a fateful error.

Thanks to the great advances in economic and political theory since the late 1700s, in particular at the hands of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard, we are now able to give a precise answer to this question. According to Mises and Rothbard, once there is no longer free entry into the business of the production of protection and adjudication, the price of protection and justice will rise and their quality will fall. Rather than being a protector and judge, a compulsory monopolist will become a protection racketeer – the destroyer and invader of the people and property that he is supposed to protect, a warmonger, and an imperialist.[6]

Indeed, the inflated price of protection and the perversion of the ancient law by the English king, both of which had led the American colonists to revolt, were the inevitable result of compulsory monopoly. Having successfully seceded and thrown out the British occupiers, it would only have been necessary for the American colonists to let the existing homegrown institutions of self-defense and private (voluntary and cooperative) protection and adjudication by specialized agents and agencies take care of law and order.

This did not happen, however. The Americans not only did not let the inherited royal institutions of colonies and colonial governments wither away into oblivion; they reconstituted them within the old political borders in the form of independent states, each equipped with its own coercive (unilateral) taxing and legislative powers.[7] While this would have been bad enough, the new Americans made matters worse by adopting the American Constitution and replacing a loose confederation of independent states with the central (federal) government of the United States.

This Constitution provided for the substitution of a popularly elected parliament and president for an unelected king, but it changed nothing regarding their power to tax and legislate. To the contrary, while the English king's power to tax without consent had only been assumed rather than explicitly granted and was thus in dispute,[8] the Constitution explicitly granted this very power to Congress. Furthermore, while kings – in theory, even absolute kings – had not been considered the makers but only the interpreters and executors of preexisting and immutable law, i.e., as judges rather than legislators,[9] the Constitution explicitly vested Congress with the power of legislating, and the president and the Supreme Court with the powers of executing and interpreting such legislated law.[10]

In effect, what the American Constitution did was only this: Instead of a king who regarded colonial America as his private property and the colonists as his tenants, the Constitution put temporary and interchangeable caretakers in charge of the country's monopoly of justice and protection.

These caretakers did not own the country, but as long as they were in office, they could make use of it and its residents to their own and their protégés' advantage. However, as elementary economic theory predicts, this institutional setup will not eliminate the self-interest-driven tendency of a monopolist of law and order toward increased exploitation. To the contrary, it only tends to make his exploitation less calculating, more shortsighted, and wasteful. As Rothbard explained,

while a private owner, secure in his property and owning its capital value, plans the use of his resource over a long period of time, the government official must milk the property as quickly as he can, since he has no security of ownership. … [G]overnment officials own the use of resources but not their capital value (except in the case of the "private property" of a hereditary monarch). When only the current use can be owned, but not the resource itself, there will quickly ensue uneconomic exhaustion of the resources, since it will be to no one's benefit to conserve it over a period of time and to every owner's advantage to use it up as quickly as possible. … The private individual, secure in his property and in his capital resource, can take the long view, for he wants to maintain the capital value of his resource. It is the government official who must take and run, who must plunder the property while he is still in command.[11]
Moreover, because the Constitution provided explicitly for "open entry" into state government – anyone could become a member of Congress, president, or a Supreme Court judge – resistance against state property invasions declined; and as the result of "open political competition" the entire character structure of society became distorted, and more and more bad characters rose to the top.[12]

Free entry and competition is not always good. Competition in the production of goods is good, but competition in the production of bads is not. Free competition in killing, stealing, counterfeiting, or swindling, for instance, is not good; it is worse than bad. Yet this is precisely what is instituted by open political competition, i.e., democracy.

In every society, people who covet another man's property exist, but in most cases people learn not to act on this desire or even feel ashamed for entertaining it.[13] In an anarchocapitalist society in particular, anyone acting on such a desire is considered a criminal and is suppressed by physical violence. Under monarchical rule, by contrast, only one person – the king – can act on his desire for another man's property, and it is this that makes him a potential threat. However, because only he can expropriate while everyone else is forbidden to do likewise, a king's every action will be regarded with utmost suspicion.[14] Moreover, the selection of a king is by accident of his noble birth. His only characteristic qualification is his upbringing as a future king and preserver of the dynasty and its possessions. This does not assure that he will not be evil, of course; at the same time, however, it does not preclude that a king might actually be a harmless dilettante or even a decent person.

In distinct contrast, by freeing up entry into government, the Constitution permitted anyone to openly express his desire for other men's property; indeed, owing to the constitutional guarantee of "freedom of speech," everyone is protected in so doing. Moreover, everyone is permitted to act on this desire, provided that he gains entry into government; hence, under the Constitution, everyone becomes a potential threat.

To be sure, there are people who are unafflicted by the desire to enrich themselves at the expense of others and to lord it over them; that is, there are people who wish only to work, produce, and enjoy the fruits of their labor. However, if politics – the acquisition of goods by political means (taxation and legislation) – is permitted, even these harmless people will be profoundly affected.

In order to defend themselves against attacks on their liberty and property by those who have fewer moral scruples, even these honest, hardworking people must become "political animals" and spend more and more time and energy developing their political skills. Given that the characteristics and talents required for political success – good looks, sociability, oratorical power, charisma, etc. – are distributed unequally among men, then those with these particular characteristics and skills will have a sound advantage in the competition for scarce resources (economic success) as compared with those without them.

Worse still, given that, in every society, more "have-nots" of everything worth having exist than "haves," the politically talented who have little or no inhibition against taking property and lording it over others will have a clear advantage over those with such scruples. That is, open political competition favors aggressive, hence dangerous, rather than defensive, hence harmless, political talents and will thus lead to the cultivation and perfection of the peculiar skills of demagoguery, deception, lying, opportunism, corruption, and bribery. Therefore, entrance into and success within government will become increasingly impossible for anyone hampered by moral scruples against lying and stealing.

Unlike kings then, congressmen, presidents, and Supreme Court judges do not and cannot acquire their positions accidentally. Rather, they reach their position because of their proficiency as morally uninhibited demagogues. Moreover, even outside the orbit of government, within civil society, individuals will increasingly rise to the top of economic and financial success, not on account of their productive or entrepreneurial talents or even their superior defensive political talents, but rather because of their superior skills as unscrupulous political entrepreneurs and lobbyists. Thus, the Constitution virtually assures that exclusively dangerous men will rise to the pinnacle of government power and that moral behavior and ethical standards will tend to decline and deteriorate over all.

Moreover, the constitutionally provided "separation of powers" makes no difference in this regard. Two or even three wrongs do not make a right. To the contrary, they lead to the proliferation, accumulation, reinforcement, and aggravation of error. Legislators cannot impose their will on their hapless subjects without the cooperation of the president as the head of the executive branch of government, and the president in turn will use his position and the resources at his disposal to influence legislators and legislation. And although the Supreme Court may disagree with particular acts of Congress or the president, Supreme Court judges are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate and remain dependent on them for funding. As an integral part of the institution of government, they have no interest in limiting but every interest in expanding the government's, and hence their own, power.[15]

IV - Two Hundred Years Later …
After more than two centuries of "constitutionally limited government," the results are clear and incontrovertible. At the outset of the American "experiment," the tax burden imposed on Americans was light, indeed almost negligible. Money consisted of fixed quantities of gold and silver. The definition of private property was clear and seemingly immutable, and the right to self-defense was regarded as sacrosanct. No standing army existed, and, as expressed in George Washington's_ Farewell Address_, a firm commitment to free trade and a noninterventionist foreign policy appeared to be in place. Two hundred years later, matters have changed dramatically.[16]

Now, year in and year out, the American government expropriates more than 40 percent of the incomes of private producers, making even the economic burden imposed on slaves and serfs seem moderate in comparison. Gold and silver have been replaced by government-manufactured paper money, and Americans are being robbed continually through money inflation. The meaning of private property, once seemingly clear and fixed, has become obscure, flexible, and fluid. In fact, every detail of private life, property, trade, and contract is regulated and re-regulated by ever-higher mountains of paper laws (legislation). With increasing legislation, ever more legal uncertainty and moral hazards have been created, and lawlessness has replaced law and order.

Last but not least, the commitment to free trade and noninterventionism has given way to a policy of protectionism, militarism, and imperialism. In fact, almost since its beginnings the US government has engaged in relentless aggressive expansionism and, starting with the Spanish-American War and continuing past World War I and World War II to the present, the United States has become entangled in hundreds of foreign conflicts and risen to the rank of the world's foremost warmonger and imperialist power. In addition, while American citizens have become increasingly more defenseless, insecure, and impoverished, and foreigners all over the globe have become ever more threatened and bullied by US military power, American presidents, members of Congress, and Supreme Court judges have become ever more arrogant, morally corrupt, and dangerous.[17]

What can possibly be done about this state of affairs? First, the American Constitution must be recognized for what it is – an error.

As the Declaration of Independence noted, government is supposed to protect life, property, and the pursuit of happiness. Yet in granting government the power to tax and legislate without consent, the Constitution cannot possibly assure this goal but is instead the very instrument for invading and destroying the right to life, property, and liberty. It is absurd to believe that an agency that may tax without consent can be a property protector. Likewise, it is absurd to believe that an agency with legislative powers can preserve law and order. Rather, it must be recognized that the Constitution is itself unconstitutional, i.e., incompatible with the very doctrine of natural human rights that inspired the American Revolution.[18]

Indeed, no one in his right mind would agree to a contract that allowed one's alleged protector to determine unilaterally, without one's consent, and irrevocably, without the possibility of exit, how much to charge for protection; and no one in his right mind would agree to an irrevocable contract which granted one's alleged protector the right to ultimate decision making regarding one's own person and property, i.e., of unilateral_ lawmaking_.[19]

Second, it is necessary to offer a positive and inspiring alternative to the present system.

While it is important that the memory of America's past as a land of pioneers and an effective_ anarchocapitalist_ system based on self-defense and popular militias be kept alive, we cannot return to the feudal past or the time of the American Revolution. Yet the situation is not hopeless. Despite the relentless growth of statism over the course of the past two centuries, economic development has continued, and our living standards have reached spectacular new heights. Under these circumstances, a completely new option has become viable: the provision of law and order by freely competing private (profit-and-loss) insurance agencies.[20]

Even though hampered by the state, insurance agencies protect private property owners upon payment of a premium against a multitude of natural and social disasters, from floods and hurricanes to theft and fraud. Thus, it would seem that the production of security and protection is the very purpose of insurance. Moreover, people would not turn to just anyone for a service as essential as that of protection. Rather, as de Molinari noted,
Before striking a bargain with [a] producer of security … they will check if he is really strong enough to protect them … [and] whether his character is such that they will not have to worry about his instigating the very aggressions he is supposed to suppress.[21]
In this regard insurance agencies also seem to fit the bill. They are big and in command of the resources – physical and human – necessary to accomplish the task of dealing with the dangers, actual or imagined, of the real world. Indeed, insurers operate on a national or even international scale. They own substantial property holdings dispersed over wide territories and beyond the borders of single states and thus have a manifest self-interest in effective protection. Furthermore, all insurance companies are connected through a complex network of contractual agreements on mutual assistance and arbitration as well as a system of international reinsurance agencies representing a combined economic power that dwarfs most if not all contemporary governments. They have acquired this position because of their reputation as effective, reliable, and honest businesses.

While this may suffice to establish insurance agencies as a possible alternative to the role currently performed by states as providers of law and order, a more detailed examination is needed to demonstrate the principal superiority of such an alternative to the status quo. In order to do this, it is only necessary to recognize that insurance agencies can neither tax nor legislate; that is, the relationship between the insurer and the insured is consensual. Both are free to cooperate or not to cooperate, and this fact has momentous implications. In this regard, insurance agencies are categorically different from states.

The advantages of having insurance agencies provide security and protection are as follows. First, competition among insurers for paying clients will bring about a tendency toward a continuous fall in the price of protection per insured value, thus rendering protection more affordable. In contrast, a monopolistic protector who may tax the protected will charge ever-higher prices for his services.[22]

Second, insurers will have to indemnify their clients in the case of actual damage; hence, they must operate efficiently. Regarding social disasters – crime – in particular, this means that the insurer must be concerned above all with effective prevention, for unless he can prevent a crime, he will have to pay up. Further, if a criminal act cannot be prevented, an insurer will still want to recover the loot, apprehend the offender, and bring him to justice, because in so doing the insurer can reduce his costs and force the criminal – rather than the victim and his insurer – to pay for the damages and cost of indemnification. In distinct contrast, because compulsory monopolist states do not indemnify victims and because they can resort to taxation as a source of funding, they have little or no incentive to prevent crime or to recover loot and capture criminals. If they do manage to apprehend a criminal, they typically force the victim to pay for the criminal's incarceration, thus adding insult to injury.[23]

Third and most important, because the relationship between insurers and their clients is voluntary, insurers must accept private property as an ultimate given and private property rights as immutable law. That is, in order to attract or retain paying clients, insurers will have to offer contracts with specified property and property damage descriptions, rules of procedure, evidence, compensation, restitution, and punishment, as well as intra- and interagency conflict resolution and arbitration procedures.

Moreover, out of the steady cooperation between different insurers in mutual interagency arbitration proceedings, a tendency toward the unification of law – of a truly universal or international law – will emerge. Everyone, by virtue of being insured, would thus become tied into a global competitive effort to minimize conflict and aggression. Every single conflict and damage claim, regardless of where and by or against whom, would fall into the jurisdiction of exactly one or more specific and enumerable insurance agencies and their contractually agreed-to arbitration procedures, thereby creating "perfect" legal certainty.

In striking contrast, as tax-funded monopoly protectors, states do not offer the consumers of protection anything even faintly resembling a service contract. Instead, they operate in a contractual void that allows them to make up and change the rules of the game as they go along. Most remarkably, whereas insurers must submit themselves to independent third-party arbitrators and arbitration proceedings in order to attract voluntary paying clients, states, insofar as they allow for arbitration at all, assign this task to another state-funded and state-dependent judge.[24]

Further implications of this fundamental contrast between insurers as contractual versus states as noncontractual providers of security deserve special attention.

Because they are not subject to and bound by contracts, states typically outlaw the ownership of weapons by their "clients," thus increasing their own security at the expense of rendering their alleged clients defenseless. In contrast, no voluntary buyer of protection insurance would agree to a contract that required him to surrender his right to self-defense and be unarmed or otherwise defenseless. To the contrary, insurance agencies would encourage the ownership of guns and other protective devices among their clients by means of selective price cuts, because the better the private protection of their clients, the lower the insurers' protection and indemnification costs would be.

Moreover, because they operate in a contractual void and are independent of voluntary payment, states arbitrarily define and redefine what is and what is not a punishable "aggression" and what does and does not require compensation. By imposing a proportional or progressive income tax and redistributing income from the rich to the poor, for instance, states in effect define the rich as aggressors and the poor as their victims. (Otherwise, if the rich were not aggressors and the poor not their victims, how could taking something from the former and giving it to the latter be justified?) Or by passing affirmative action laws, states effectively define whites and males as aggressors and blacks and women as their victims. For insurance agencies, any such business conduct would be impossible for two fundamental reasons.[25]

First, all insurance involves the pooling of particular risks into risk classes. It implies that to some of the insured, more will be paid out than what they paid in, and to others, less. However – and this is decisive – no one knows in advance who the "winners" and who the "losers" will be. Winners and losers – and any income redistribution among them – will be randomly distributed. Otherwise, if winners and losers could be systematically predicted, losers would not want to pool their risk with winners but only with other losers because this would lower their insurance premium.

Second, it is not possible to insure oneself against any conceivable risk. Rather, it is only possible to insure oneself against accidents, i.e., risks over whose outcome the insured has no control whatsoever and to which he contributes nothing. Thus, it is possible to insure oneself against the risk of death or fire, for instance, but it is not possible to insure oneself against the risk of committing suicide or setting one's own house on fire.

Similarly, it is impossible to insure oneself against the risk of business failure, of unemployment, of not becoming rich, of not feeling like getting up and out of bed in the morning, or of disliking one's neighbors, fellows or superiors, because in each of these cases one has either full or partial control over the event in question. That is, an individual can affect the likelihood of the risk. By their very nature, the avoidance of risks such as these falls into the realm of individual responsibility, and any agency that undertook their insurance would be slated for immediate bankruptcy.

Most significantly for the subject under discussion, the uninsurability of individual actions and sentiments (in contradistinction to accidents) implies that it is also impossible to insure oneself against the risk of damages that are the result of one's prior aggression or provocation. Rather, every insurer must restrict the actions of its clients so as to exclude all aggression and provocation on their part. That is, any insurance against social disasters such as crime must be contingent on the insured submitting themselves to specified norms of nonaggressive, civilized, conduct.

Accordingly, while states as monopolistic protectors can engage in redistributive policies benefiting one group of people at the expense of another, and while as tax-supported agencies they can even "insure" uninsurable risks and protect provocateurs and aggressors, voluntarily funded insurers would be systematically prevented from doing any such thing. Competition among insurers would preclude any form of income and wealth redistribution among various groups of insured, for a company engaging in such practices would lose clients to others refraining from them. Rather, every client would pay exclusively for his own risk, respectively that of people with the same (homogeneous) risk exposure that he faces.[26]Nor would voluntarily funded insurers be able to "protect" any person from the consequences of his own erroneous, foolish, risky, or aggressive conduct or sentiment. Competition between insurers would instead systematically encourage individual responsibility, and any known provocateur and aggressor would be excluded as a bad insurance risk from any insurance coverage whatsoever and be rendered an economically isolated, weak, and vulnerable outcast.

Finally, with regard to foreign relations, because states can externalize the costs of their own actions onto hapless taxpayers, they are permanently prone to becoming aggressors and warmongers. Accordingly, they tend to fund and develop weapons of aggression and mass destruction. In distinct contrast, insurers will be prevented from engaging in any form of external aggression because any aggression is costly and requires higher insurance premiums, implying the loss of clients to other, nonaggressive competitors. Insurers will engage exclusively in defensive violence, and instead of acquiring weapons of aggression and mass destruction, they will tend to invest in the development of weapons of defense and of targeted retaliation.[27]

V - Revolution by Means of Secession
Even though all of this is clear, how can we ever succeed in implementing such a fundamental constitutional reform? Insurance agencies are presently restricted by countless regulations that prevent them from doing what they could and naturally would do. How can they be freed from these regulations?

Essentially, the answer to this question is the same as that given by the American revolutionaries more than two hundred years ago: through the creation of free territories and by means of secession.

In fact, under today's democratic conditions, this answer is even truer than it was in the days of kings. For then, under monarchical conditions, the advocates of an antistatist liberal-libertarian social revolution still had an option that has since been lost. Liberal-libertarians in the old days could – and frequently did – believe in the possibility of simply converting the king to their view, thereby initiating a "revolution from the top." No mass support was necessary for this – just the insight of an enlightened prince.[28]

However realistic this might have been then, this top-down strategy of social revolution would be impossible today. Political leaders are selected nowadays according to their demagogic talents and proven records as habitual immoralists, as has been explained above; consequently, the chance of converting them to liberal-libertarian views must be considered even lower than that of converting a king who simply inherited his position.

Moreover, the state's protection monopoly is now considered public rather than private property, and government rule is no longer tied to a particular individual but to specified functions exercised by anonymous functionaries. Hence, the one-or-few-men-conversion strategy can no longer work. It does not matter if one converts a few top government officials – the president and some leading senators or judges, for instance – because within the rules of democratic government no single individual has the power to abdicate the government's monopoly of protection. Kings had this power, but presidents do not. The president can resign from his position, of course, only to have it taken over by someone else. He cannot dissolve the governmental protection monopoly because according to the rules of democracy, "the people," not their elected representatives, are considered the "owners" of government.

Thus, rather than by means of a top-down reform, under the current conditions, one's strategy must be one of a bottom-up revolution. At first, the realization of this insight would seem to make the task of a liberal-libertarian social revolution impossible, for does this not imply that one would have to persuade a majority of the public to vote for the abolition of democracy and an end to all taxes and legislation? And is this not sheer fantasy, given that the masses are always dull and indolent, and even more so given that democracy, as explained above, promotes moral and intellectual degeneration? How in the world can anyone expect that a majority of an increasingly degenerate people accustomed to the "right" to vote should ever voluntarily renounce the opportunity of looting other people's property? Put this way, one must admit that the prospect of a social revolution must indeed be regarded as virtually nil. Rather, it is only on second thought, upon regarding secession as an integral part of any bottom-up strategy, that the task of a liberal-libertarian revolution appears less than impossible, even if it still remains a daunting one.

How does secession fit into a bottom-up strategy of social revolution? More important, how can a secessionist movement escape the Southern Confederacy's fate of being crushed by a tyrannical and dangerously armed central government?

In response to these questions, it is first necessary to remember that neither the original American Revolution nor the American Constitution was the result of the will of the majority of the population. A third of the American colonists were actually Tories, and another third were occupied with daily routines and did not care either way. No more than a third of the colonists were actually committed to and supportive of the revolution, yet they carried the day. And as far as the Constitution is concerned, the overwhelming majority of the American public was opposed to its adoption, and its ratification represented more of a _coup d'état_ by a tiny minority than the general will. All revolutions, whether good or bad, are started by minorities; and the secessionist route toward social revolution, which necessarily involves the breaking-away of a smaller number of people from a larger one, takes explicit cognizance of this important fact.

Read the second half of the article here (including the brilliant foot notes): http://lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe32.1.html

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Is Nullification Unconstitutional?
(Who cares, right?)
by Tom Woods.


Now on some level, we shouldn’t care: resisting violent people who claim the right to expropriate you and force you around is a natural right, and doesn’t rely on any parchment guarantee.

But I for one prefer to address my opponents from every angle I can, including their own.

These days we’re seeing a lot of newspaper columns condemning the idea of state nullification of unconstitutional federal laws. A common claim is that nullification is “unconstitutional.” I’ve addressed this claim in bits and pieces elsewhere, but I figured I’d write up one post I can use to counter this argument once and for all.

The most common claim, which one hears quite a bit from law professors (this is not meant as a compliment), is that the Supremacy Clause precludes nullification. “Federal law trumps state law” is the (rather inane) way we hear the principle expressed these days.

What the Supremacy Clause actually says is: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme law of the land.”

In other words, the standard law-school response deletes the most significant words of the whole clause.  It’s safe to assume that Thomas Jefferson was not unaware of, and did not deny, the Supremacy Clause.  His point was that only the Constitution and _laws which shall be made in pursuance thereof_ shall be the supreme law of the land.  Citing the Supremacy Clause merely begs the question.  A nullifying state maintains that a given law is not “in pursuance thereof” and therefore that the Supremacy Clause does not apply in the first place.

Such critics are expecting us to believe that the states would have ratified a Constitution with a Supremacy Clause that said, in effect, “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, plus any old laws we may choose to pass, whether constitutional or not, shall be the supreme law of the land.”

Hamilton himself explained at New York’s ratifying convention that while on the one hand “acts of the United States … will be absolutely obligatory as to all the proper objects and powers of the general government,” at the same time “the laws of Congress are restricted to a certain sphere, and when they depart from this sphere, they are no longer supreme or binding.” In Federalist 33, Hamilton noted that the clause “expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution.”

At North Carolina’s ratifying convention, James Iredell told the delegates that when “Congress passes a law consistent with the Constitution, it is to be binding on the people. If Congress, under pretense of executing one power, should, in fact, usurp another, they will violate the Constitution.” In December 1787 Roger Sherman observed that an “excellency of the constitution” was that “when the government of the united States acts within its proper bounds it will be the interest of the legislatures of the particular States to Support it, but when it leaps over those bounds and interferes with the rights of the State governments they will be powerful enough to check it.”

Another argument against the constitutionality of nullification is that the Constitution nowhere mentions it.

This is an odd complaint, coming as it usually does from those who in any other circumstance do not seem especially concerned to find express constitutional sanction for particular government policies.

The mere fact that a state’s reserved right to obstruct the enforcement of an unconstitutional law is not expressly stated in the Constitution does not mean the right does not exist.  The Constitution is supposed to establish a federal government of enumerated powers, with the remainder reserved to the states or the people.  Essentially nothing the states do is authorized in the federal Constitution, since enumerating the states’ powers is not the purpose of and is alien to the structure of that document.

James Madison urged that the true meaning of the Constitution was to be found in the state ratifying conventions, for it was there that the people, assembled in convention, were instructed with regard to what the new document meant.  Jefferson spoke likewise: should you wish to know the meaning of the Constitution, consult the words of its friends.

Federalist supporters of the Constitution at the Virginia ratifying convention of 1788 assured Virginians that they would be “exonerated” should the federal government attempt to impose “any supplementary condition” upon them – in other words, if it tried to exercise a power over and above the ones the states had delegated to it. Virginians were given this interpretation of the Constitution by members of the five-man commission that was to draft Virginia’s ratification instrument.  Patrick Henry, John Taylor, and later Jefferson himself elaborated on these safeguards that Virginians had been assured of at their ratifying convention.

Nullification derives from the (surely correct) “compact theory” of the Union, to which no full-fledged alternative appears to have been offered until as late as the 1830s. That compact theory, in turn, derives from and implies the following:

1) The states preceded the Union.  The Declaration of Independence speaks of “free and independent states” (and by “states” it means places like Spain and France) that “have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do.” The British acknowledged the independence not of a single blob, but of a group of states, which they proceeded to list one by one.

The states performed activities that we associate with sovereignty. Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina outfitted ships to cruise against the British. It was the troops of Connecticut that took Ticonderoga. In New Hampshire, the executive was authorized to issue letters of marque and reprisal. In 1776 it was declared that the crime of treason would be thought of as being perpetrated not against the states united into an indivisible blob, but against the states individually.

Article II of the Articles of Confederation says the states “retain their sovereignty, freedom, and independence”; they must have enjoyed that sovereignty in the past in order for them to “retain” it in 1781 when the Articles were officially adopted.  The ratification of the Constitution was accomplished not by a single, national vote, but by the individual ratifications of the various states, each assembled in convention.

2) In the American system no government is sovereign, not the federal government and not the states.  The peoples of the states are the sovereigns.  It is they who apportion powers between themselves, their state governments, and the federal government.  In doing so they are not impairing their sovereignty in any way. To the contrary, they are exercising it.

3) Since the peoples of the states are the sovereigns, then when the federal government exercises a power of dubious constitutionality on a matter of great importance, it is they themselves who are the proper disputants, as they review whether their agent was intended to hold such a power.  No other arrangement makes sense.  No one asks his agent whether the agent has or should have such-and-such power.  In other words, the very nature of sovereignty, and of the American system itself, is such that the sovereigns must retain the power to restrain the agent they themselves created.  James Madison explains this clearly in the famous Virginia Report of 1800:
The resolution [of 1798] of the General Assembly [of Virginia] relates to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all the forms of the Constitution may prove ineffectual against infractions dangerous to the essential right of the parties to it. The resolution supposes that dangerous powers not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the Judicial Department also may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and consequently that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority, as well as by another, by the judiciary, as well as by the executive, or the legislature.

In other words, the courts have their role, but in “great and extraordinary cases” it would be absurd for the states, the fundamental building blocks of the United States, not to be able to defend themselves against the exercise of usurped power. The logic of sovereignty and the American Union demand it.

And as for “but Madison later claimed he never supported nullification!” see myNullificationFAQ.com, and/or pages 288-290 of my book _Nullification_.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Two Views of Libertarianism*by* *Laurence M. Vance*
_Recently by Laurence M. Vance: Murder Is Still Murder_

 
There exists much confusion in the political sphere about libertarianism. Conservatives often mischaracterize it as discounting human nature and disdaining morality at the same time that liberals depict it as grossly naïve and overly utopian.

One can read what some opponents of libertarianism say about it and then what some proponents of libertarianism say about it and conclude that there is no way that both groups could possibly be talking about the same thing.

Exhibit A is Tony Greco, writing for the Daily Kos the essay "Four Reasons to Reject Libertarianism."

Greco argues that there are "four broad reasons why progressives should firmly reject" libertarianism:

1. Libertarian values are repellent – Libertarianism celebrates greed and selfishness.

2. Libertarianism is intellectually myopic – Libertarians cherish freedom above all, but their concept of freedom is constricted and myopic.

3. Libertarianism is utopian – An active state is a universal feature of advanced societies.

4. Libertarianism is politically hopeless – You might well agree with me on the three preceding points but still feel that libertarianism has to be reckoned with politically.

Exhibit B is Jacob Hornberger, writing for the Future of Freedom Foundation the essay "The Glory of Libertarianism."

Hornberger argues that libertarianism is glorious for these four reasons:

For one, it is founded on the principle of genuine freedom — a society in which people are free to live their lives the way they want, so long as their conduct is peaceful. What could be more glorious than that?

Second, libertarianism is founded on solid moral and religious principles, the protection of free will being the best example. Another one is its recognition of the wrongfulness of stealing, even when it’s done by people acting collectively through the government and even when the thief uses the money to help others in need.

Third, in the economic realm, libertarianism is the only system that raises people’s standard of living, especially those at the bottom of the economic ladder. That’s because many people who are accumulating wealth inevitably save some of that wealth, which is then available as capital, which enables business owners to purchase better tools and equipment, which in turn make their workers more productive, which then leads to higher real wage rates.

Fourth, a society in which people have the widest possible ambit for free will and freedom of choice will be one that nurtures, develops, and encourages such important traits as compassion, caring, and responsibility.

According to Greco, libertarians don’t care much about the poor. They "are simply not much bothered by social and economic inequality." Their "hearts bleed for the rich and successful, not for the underprivileged." Libertarians "understand freedom almost exclusively in terms of freedom from government." They don’t recognize that "unfettered capitalism" and the "free market economy" can be "as great a threat to freedom as government action." They refuse to recognize that "government action is necessary to mitigate the oppression inflicted by markets." The minimal government society that libertarians envision "doesn’t exist anywhere in the industrial or post-industrial world, and never has." Libertarianism "is as distant from real world possibilities as traditional socialism, and should be taken no more seriously." Libertarians can never achieve mass appeal because they are "hobbled by their principled consistency." Politically, they have "an elitist economic program plus some sensible proposals"

According to Hornberger, libertarians "strive to convert our country into one that Franklin preferred, one where liberty dwells." Liberal and conservative statists think they live in a free country because "they define freedom in a totally different way than we libertarians do." They define freedom as "the extent to which the federal government takes care of people with welfare" or "the extent to which the U.S. military and the CIA police the world." Libertarians think just the opposite. Freedom "is defined by the absence of government paternalism and the absence of a vast military empire and national-security state apparatus." Freedom for libertarians entails the right to "engage in any peaceful behavior whatsoever, no matter how irresponsible, dangerous, or self-destructive," to "make choices, for better or for worse, so long as they don’t involve the initiation of force against someone else," to "engage in any occupation without seeking permission of the government," to "engage in economic transactions with anyone anywhere in the world without government interference, regulation, or control," and to "accumulate unlimited amounts of wealth and the right to decide what to do with it." Yes, libertarianism necessarily entails free markets, but rather than oppression-inflicting, free markets "are nothing more than sellers and consumers peacefully interacting with each other for mutual gain."

So, whose view of libertarianism is correct?

I think someone has a tremendous misconception of just what libertarianism is, and it is not Jacob Hornberger.

As libertarianism’s greatest theorist, Murray Rothbard, explains:

Libertarianism is not and does not pretend to be a complete moral, or aesthetic theory; it is only a _political_ theory, that is, the important subset of moral theory that deals with the proper role of violence in social life. Political theory deals with what is proper or improper for government to do, and government is distinguished from every other group in society as being the institution of organized violence. Libertarianism holds that the _only_ proper role of violence is to defend person and property _against_violence, that any use of violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive, unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free to do as he sees fit except invade the person or property of another. What a person _does_ with his or her life is vital and important, but is simply irrelevant to libertarianism.

Do libertarians celebrate greed and selfishness? Some no doubt do. Do libertarians not care for the poor? Some no doubt do not. Are libertarians not bothered by social and economic inequality? Some no doubt are not. Are libertarians not concerned about the underprivileged? Some no doubt are not. But this has nothing to do with libertarianism. One can be a liberal, a progressive, a moderate, or a conservative and celebrate greed and selfishness, not care for the poor, not be bothered by social and economic inequality, and not be concerned about the underprivileged. And not caring for the poor, not being bothered by social and economic inequality, and not being concerned about the underprivileged does not involve committing violence against anyone. Greco’s solutions to righting what he perceives as the wrongs in society all involve aggression against person and property.

Libertarianism celebrates liberty, property, peace, laissez faire, anything that’s peaceful, individual responsibility, free markets, free thought, a free society, and the absence of government attempts to do violence to these things in the name of social justice, correcting inequality, or promoting fairness.

Libertarianism is glorious indeed.

_February 26, 2013_
_Laurence M. Vance [__send him mail__] writes from central Florida. He is the author of_Christianity and War and Other Essays Against the Warfare State, The Revolution that Wasn't_,_Rethinking the Good War_, and_ The Quatercentenary of the King James Bible_. His latest book is_The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom_. Visit_ _his website__._
Copyright © 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.
*The Best of Laurence M. Vance*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Progressives Love Guns 
(and Other Things They Dont Teach in Government School)**
by James Ostrowski*_Recently by James Ostrowski: My Remarks at the Amherst NY Presidential Straw Poll_
_Note_: _This is the text of my remarks to the Buffalo Second Amendment Rally on February 23, 2013._

I want to talk today about some things they dont teach in government school and that the lying progressive politicians wont tell you.

The right to bear arms is a natural right of the individual. It wasnt and isnt granted by the government or the Constitution or some slimy politician any more than your right to breathe comes from the government. If you have the right to life, then you must have the means to defend that life against those who would stop you from breathing or who would turn you into a slave or a laboratory rat, which, judging from current trends, appears to be about where we are headed in this country.

We live under the most powerful government that ever existed and its getting bigger and stronger every week as new laws are passed taking over more and more aspects of life that used to be free. There is no literally no aspect of life, no matter how trivial or formerly private that progressive politicians do not have designs on: Little League football, the size of soft drinks, or what you say on Twitter about your government school jailers. These days, there is no aspect of your life, liberty or property or family life that is absolutely secure against this crazed progressive onslaught.

That is why we must resist this current gun grab by all means the Founding Fathers sanctioned in the Declaration of Independence including the right to alter or abolish a government destructive to our liberties. Thats right, Governor, abolishing this government is on the table.

Now, these days, those words in the Declaration are ignored or edited out when politicians quote the document. Rather, the phrase "all men are created equal" is offered up as some sort of Marxist balderdash about the state making us all equal. The meaning of that phrase is clear, however. We are all equal in natural rights such as liberty which precludes any form of progressivism, socialism or Marxism. Sorry Barack!

Consider this. Isnt the right to bear arms implied in the right of revolution that is proclaimed in the founding document of our nation? _Of course it is._ Good luck fighting a revolution against a state that can send a drone to your house and make you disappear when all you have to fight back is a squirt gun.

Not only is the right to bear arms implied in our founding document, but the actual start of the revolution was an act of resistance against British gun control at Lexington and Concord. America was born when the Minute Men picked up their privately-owned muskets and formed a line of defense against _government troops_ coming up the road _to take their guns away_.

They dont teach this stuff in government school.

It is critical to realize that progressives never address the actual reason for the right to bear arms. Rather, they seek to confuse the issue by answering arguments for the right to bear arms that were never made. The Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting, sport or target shooting, or collecting antiques and its main purpose is _not_ to allow you to protect yourself from criminals although that is a secondary and important purpose. It is an undeniable historical fact that the central purpose of the right to bear arms is to allow the people to protect themselves _against the government_.

Now, why do progressives ignore or pretend not to know the true purpose behind the Second Amendment even though our side has been explaining it for many, many years? Two reasons. First, they cannot rebut the argument! History and logic show that governments are dangerous to people when they get too much power, get too crazed in their ideologies and when the people are weak, disorganized and unarmed or disarmed. In the 20th century, 170 million people were murdered by their own governments according to historian RJ Rummel. The Soviets, _a US ally_, killed 62 million; the Communist Chinese killed 35 million. The Nazis killed 21 million. _US ally_ Nationalist China killed 10 million. Japan killed 6 million, Cambodia killed 2 million and Turkey killed 1.8 million.

How can they deny obvious facts? Can they argue that Germans are so different from Americans? After all, they were an advanced Western, Christian nation and German-Americans are the largest ethnic group in America. To say it cant happen here is a bad argument. They could argue that the US state has never engaged in mass murder against its own citizens but thats a bad argument because our citizens have always been well-armed, _so that proves our point_. Thats another bad argument they dont make.

So, instead of making bad arguments against the true purpose of the Second Amendment, they make good arguments against an imaginary Second Amendment that never existed. Its extremely effective in a population short on critical thinking skills they never learned in government school. If government schools taught critical thinking skills, the first thing the students would ask is why the hell in a free country does the government have the right to kidnap children for 12 years, send them to daytime juvenile detention centers run by progressive Democratic union members and send their parents the bill, threatening to foreclose on their houses if they dont pay up?

The second reason why progressives never confront the true reason behind the Second Amendment is even more interesting and more important. The notion that a government with a monopoly of armed force could be an evil thing is abhorrent to them. It goes against the core of their ideology  that government guns pointed at peaceful citizens can create a utopia on earth. That cant happen if the citizens are pointing guns back.

But progressives dont want to admit that their ideology contains no room for privately-owned guns since there presently is too much support for the right to bear arms. So, again, they simply ignore the issue and try to confuse people by talking about hunting, target shooting and shotguns for home defense. By narrowing the scope of the purposes of gun ownership, they hope to be able to continually chip away at gun rights until all private guns are banned which is of course their actual goal. The more honest among them will admit, in response to our question  what do I do when a burglar tries to break the door down  "Call the police." Right, so the crime historians can draw a chalk line around your familys bodies and call the medical examiner.

_But thats what they think._ They really believe we would be better off if only the government had guns. Thats why they love to cite phony statistics that Professor Kleck has refuted that allegedly prove that guns in the home are likely to be used, not for defense, but against one of the members of the family. _They really think wed be better off without any guns even though they wont admit it._ Thats why Cuomos treasonous gun law is not the end, any more than that weasel George Patakis gun law was the end in the 1990s. Since progressives are utopians who wish to use the power of the state to make life perfect on earth, there is _never_ an end to their efforts to grab power from us.

Heres another thing you wont learn in government school or out of the mouths of lying progressive politicians. Most crime in America is caused by failed progressive policies such as welfare, the war on drugs and government schools. By their very nature, progressives are unable to acknowledge the failure of their own ideology. So they use guns as a scapegoat to distract attention away from their failures and avoid having to change their policies. The data is clear. The rise of the welfare state led to the destruction of the family unit in minority communities. Fathers left the home and teenage boys joined criminal gangs as a perverted form of father substitute.

Government schools failed to provide what was missing at home and merely served as a recruiting ground for gangs and a distribution point for drugs. Local high schools in this area compete for the nickname, "heroin high." The progressives war on drugs is an abysmal failure which merely sucks poor kids into a criminal and violent lifestyle once they realize that government school gave them no job skills and that progressive policies sucked all the economic vitality out of once bustling inner city neighborhoods.

Now, we dont really know much about the cause of the latest school shooting  they are suppressing the lab report and other information. But we do know that several school shooters were bullied in government school and went back for revenge. Also, the politicians brag that they have made government schools gun-free zones, assuring mass killers of an easy target.

The state kidnaps kids, bullies them, turns them into bullies of the weaker, gives them dangerous psychotropic drugs, then leaves the students defenseless, and its the fault of the shotgun locked in your safe at home? Thats madness. School shootings are a failure of progressive policies. They invented the daytime juvenile detention center in the first place. Beyond school shootings, government schools are bad places for your kids for reasons I explained in a book and you should take them out anyway and soon.

Im not going to argue statistics today but consider the fact that the folks in suburban and rural areas surrounding Buffalo are armed to the teeth but do not suffer from the decades-old crime wave and reign of terror criminals have imposed on the city of Buffalo. Case closed. Why should guns be confiscated from law-abiding people because progressives have unleashed a crime wave in America?

By the way, if you want people to accept your right to possess private property, guns, you had better consider accepting the right of other people to possess private property, drugs, if they so choose. Liberty is seamless and does not allow for exceptions. Liberty is doing what you wish with what you own. _Doing what you wish with what you own._ In fact, the war on drugs has proved to be the major driving force behind the war on guns. Same war, different name.

A couple more things they dont teach in government school. Progressives dont hate guns; _they love guns_. They love them so much they want to be the only ones who have any. They want a gun monopoly. Again, a progressive is a person who has this fantastic dream of creating a utopia on earth by threatening people with government guns if they dont comply with their utopian schemes. The difference between progressives and us is this. They want to use guns _aggressively_, to make peaceful people do things they dont want to do. We wish to use them only _defensively_, to stop a government that gets out of control and engages in mass murder, or systemically tramples the Bill of Rights.

The progressive state uses guns against us on a daily basis to impose their will on us. Yet, to my knowledge, not a single Patriot has fired a gun back. We have exercised remarkable restraint. So, again, the government schools, the politicians and the mainstream media _lie_. The truly violent gun fanatics and gun lovers are the progressive gun grabbers, not us.

One last point before I close. I have seen very few African-Americans at these rallies. I dont understand that. No group has suffered more under government tyranny than blacks. The federal government kept them in slavery for 75 years. Slavery is a form of slow motion, mass murder. After slavery, governments took their guns away and failed to provide police protection.

One of the purposes of the 14th Amendment was to allow blacks to own guns for protection. Blacks are more likely to be the victims of violent crime. Finally, if you study the history of the various mass murders perpetrated by governments, they very often are aimed at ethnic, racial or religious minorities as they were in Germany and Turkey. If I was a member of a racial minority in a hostile world, I would be a ferocious defender of the right to bear arms.

So those are a few points about the right to bear arms they dont teach in government school and that you wont hear from lying politicians or the state-controlled media.



_February 26, 2013__James Ostrowski is an attorney in Buffalo, New York and author of_ Government Schools Are Bad for Your Kids: What You Need to Know_ and_ Political Class Dismissed: Essays Against Politics_, Including "What's Wrong With Buffalo." His latest book is_ Direct Citizen Action: How We Can Win the Second American Revolution Without Firing a Shot_. See his website._Copyright © 2013 James Ostrowski*The Best of James Ostrowski*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Secession: Safe? Immoral? Wrong?* 
ep# 16 (3 of 3)

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## BAllen

> *Progressives Love Guns 
> (and Other Things They Dont Teach in Government School)**
> by James Ostrowski*_Recently by James Ostrowski: My Remarks at the Amherst NY Presidential Straw Poll_
> _Note_: _This is the text of my remarks to the Buffalo Second Amendment Rally on February 23, 2013._
> 
> I want to talk today about some things they dont teach in government school and that the lying progressive politicians wont tell you.
> 
> The right to bear arms is a natural right of the individual. It wasnt and isnt granted by the government or the Constitution or some slimy politician any more than your right to breathe comes from the government. If you have the right to life, then you must have the means to defend that life against those who would stop you from breathing or who would turn you into a slave or a laboratory rat, which, judging from current trends, appears to be about where we are headed in this country.
> 
> ...


 Great article! 
Government creates problems, then claims they have a solution (which isn't really a solution at all), which is expanding a failed government and taking away more of our freedoms. Oh, and yes, one would think the blacks would support liberty more, but they don't because they take the bribe money from the government.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

"You are not Evil, you are Dumb."
Truth about Capitalism vs. Socialism.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Ethics of Repudiation *
Mises Daily:*     Tuesday, February 26, 2013     
by John P.  Cochran 

Article 

                 Comments                                                                                                                                                                                                 Also by John P.  Cochran 

 
      Do you ever get the feeling that no one in the Washington power  elite is willing to seriously deal with the major economic threat to  future prosperity     facing the United States today: mounting government debt and the  associated deficits? The problem, as pointed out     by Murray Rothbard over 20 years ago: 
Deficits and a mounting debt, therefore, are a growing and  intolerable burden on the society and economy, both because they raise  the tax burden and     increasingly drain resources from the productive to the parasitic,  counterproductive, public sector. Moreover, whenever deficits are  financed by     expanding bank creditin other words, by creating new moneymatters  become still worse, since credit inflation creates permanent and rising  price inflation     as well as waves of boom-bust business cycles. 
 
In 1992, when Rothbard wrote the above, the US debt was approaching  $4 trillion (now nearing $17 trillion) and Federal Reserve policy was  relatively benign     compared to the current quantitative easing, which is effectively  monetizing a significant portion of newly created government debt. The  peace dividend     from the end of the Cold War and the false prosperity from two  Fed-created economic booms made the problem appear less urgent and  allowed politicians to kick the can down the road. A solution is now urgent, but not likely. David Hendersons Must Default Be Avoided at All Costs?  is a great place to start in order to     reinvigorate a serious discussion on a moral approach to shrinking  the size of the federal government down to a less destructive level. 

      Henderson wrote, 
Bruce Bartlett, in _The Benefit and the Burden_, his book about taxes, writes that default would constitute a grossly immoral theft of trillions of dollars from those who loaned money to the federal government in good faith. In my review of his book, I commented, Really?    _Its worse to default on creditors who took a risk than to forcibly take money from taxpayers who have no choice?_[emphasis added] 

Henderson sees default as likely to occur eventually and, given  current trends and other alternatives, the more moral alternative. Jason  J. Fichtner and     Veronique de Rugy make a case that Default must be avoided at all  costs and should not be an option on the table ("The Debt Ceiling: Assets Available to Prevent Default,"      January 25, 2013). But Henderson disagrees: 
Im unconvinced. The U.S. government has dug itself a deep hole.  Commitments that it has made to various people must be broken. There is  no plausible way,     for example, that the U.S. government will be able, 20 years from  now, to pay for all the Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits  that it has     committed to pay. _One such commitment to consider breaking is the commitment to pay the debt._ [emphasis added] 

For a sustained case in favor of default, Henderson recommends Jeffrey R. Hummels               Some Possible Consequences of a U.S. Government Default.       As in many areas, Rothbard was a leader. Writing in the June 1992 issue of_Chronicles_ (pp. 4952), Rothbard made the case for Repudiating the National Debt.In  this extended discussion, which I frequently used as a reading     assignment for Principles of Macroeconomics during the 1990s,  Rothbard clearly lays out the difference between public debt and private  debt, as well as the     moral case for public-debt repudiation or default. 

      First, there is no moral problem with private debt, and private debt  repudiation is morally reprehensible. As Rothbard explains, 
To think sensibly about the public debt, we first have to go back to  first principles and consider debt in general. Put simply, a credit  transaction occurs     when C, the creditor, transfers a sum of money (say $1,000) to D,  the debtor, in exchange for a promise that D will repay C in a years  time the principal     plus interest. If the agreed interest rate on the transaction is 10  percent, then the debtor obligates himself to pay in a years time  $1,100 to the     creditor. This repayment completes the transaction, which in  contrast to a regular sale, takes place over time. 
So far, it is clear that there is nothing wrong with private debt. 

      In essence: you borrowed it, you spent it, and you should be responsible for repayment. 

      Per Rothbard, 
In a profound sense, the debtor who fails to repay the $1,100 owed  to the creditor has stolen property that belongs to the creditor; we  have here not     simply a civil debt, but a tort, an aggression against anothers  property. 
 
What about public debt? Rothbard provides the answer: 
If sanctity of contracts should rule in the world of private debt,  shouldnt they be equally as sacrosanct in public debt? Shouldnt public  debt be     governed by the same principles as private? The answer is _no_, even though such an answer may shock the sensibilities of     most people. [emphasis added] 
 
The reason is that the two forms of debt-transaction are totally different. 

      Rothbard continues, 
[W]hen government borrows money, it does not pledge its own money;  its own resources are not liable. Government commits not its own life,  fortune, and     sacred honor to repay the debt, but ours. This is a horse, and a  transaction, of a very different color. 
 
How is it a different horse? 
The public debt transaction, then, is very different from private  debt. Instead of a low-time-preference creditor exchanging money for an  IOU from a     high-time-preference debtor, the government now receives money from  creditors, both parties realizing that the money will be paid back not  out of the     pockets or the hides of the politicians and bureaucrats, but out of  the looted wallets and purses of the hapless taxpayers, the subjects of  the state. 

      Both parties [the politicians doing the borrowing and the members of  the public loaning funds to the government] are immorally contracting  to participate     in the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future.  Both parties, therefore, are making agreements about other peoples  property, and both     deserve the back of our hand. The public credit transaction is not a  genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, any more than  robbers parceling     out their shares of loot in advance should be treated as some sort  of sanctified contract. 
 
In summary, as a taxpayer, you did not borrow the funds, you did not  spend the funds, and you have no moral obligation to repay the funds. 

      Rothbards recommendation: I propose, then, a seemingly drastic but  actually far less destructive way of paying off the public debt at a  single blow:     outright debt repudiation. Repudiation is not only a sound economic  solution to our fiscal crisis, but it is also the morally correct  solution. Rothbards     more detailed proposal, which was a combination of repudiation and  privatization, should be considered a blueprint for an effective  debt-reduction plan.     As Rothbard argued, such a plan would go a long way to reducing the  tax burden, establishing fiscal soundness, and desocializing the United  States. As an     added bonus, default would be as effective, if not more effective,  than a balanced budget amendment, in reducing the likelihood of a future  reoccurrence of     the problem. 

      But [i]n order to go this route, however, we first have to rid  ourselves of the fallacious mindset that conflates public and private,  and that treats     government debt as if it were a productive contract between two  legitimate property owners. The commentary by Hummel and Henderson are  evidence that some     are seriously addressing this issue, alas, after over a 20 year lag. 

    Comment on this article.

   John P. Cochran is emeritus dean of the Business School and  emeritus professor of economics at  Metropolitan State University of  Denver and coauthor with Fred R. Glahe of _The Hayek-Keynes Debate: Lessons for Current Business Cycle Research_.  He is also a senior scholar for the Mises Institute and serves on the editorial board of the _Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics_. Send him mail.  See John P.  Cochran's article archives.

   You can subscribe to future articles by John P.  Cochran via this RSS feed.


                      You can receive the Mises Dailies in your inbox. Subscribe                                                                  or unsubscribe.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Society                Without a State*

*by                Murray                N. Rothbard*

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## torchbearer

you can have a first principle- I own my self.
and then all other princples are derived from it.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> you can have a first principle- I own my self.
> and then all other princples are derived from it.


Agreed!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Hans-Hermann Hoppe is being *
DEVASTATINGLY BRILLIANT!*
 _ 

The Economics of World Government

A transcript                of the Lew Rockwell Show episode 130 of Hans-Hermann Hoppe at the                2009 Mises University talking about the economics of political centralization by                Hans-Hermann Hoppe Recently                by Hans-Hermann Hoppe: On                the Impossibility of Limited Government and the Prospects for a                Second American Revolution   
__
Listen                  to the podcast

_*
Here is the transcript:

ANNOUNCER:                 * This is the Lew Rockwell Show. 

*ROCKWELL*:                  Recently, at the 2009 Mises University, Professor Hans-Hermann                  Hoppe talked about the economics of political centralization.                  What is it that brings about unification, unfortunate unification                  and centralization within a country like the United States where                  the states gradually become irrelevant under an all-powerful D.C.,                  and, for that matter, drives countries to join together into an                  even worse situation, of course, a world government?

Here's Dr.                  Hoppe.

*HOPPE*:                  OK, I will begin my lecture. 

At the beginning,                  I want to repeat a few points that I have made in my previous                  lecture on law and economics, and then I want to get to an entirely                  different subject than the one that I dealt with in that previous                  lecture.

Because there                  is a scarcity in the world, we can have conflicts regarding these                  scarce resources. And because conflicts can exist whenever and                  wherever there exists scarcity, we do need norms to regulate human                  life. Norms – the purpose of norms is to avoid conflicts. And                  in order to avoid conflicts regarding scarce resources, we need                  rules of exclusive ownership of such scarce resources or, to say                  exactly the same, we need property rights to determine who is                  entitled to control what and who is not entitled to control what.

These rules,                  I have defended in my previous lecture, the rules that Austrians                  regard as rules capable of doing this, avoiding conflict and,                  at the same time, being just rules are the following. One is every                  person owns himself, his own physical body. He has exclusive control                  over his own physical body. The second rule refers to, how do                  we acquire property, the right of exclusive control of scarce                  resources outside of our body in the external world. Previously                  – initially, the outside world is un-owned and we acquire property                  in objects outside of our body by being the first one to put certain                  resources to use and, thereby, we become the owner. This is also                  sometimes referred to as original appropriation or as homesteading.                  Rule number three and four are implied in the previous two. He                  who uses his physical body and those things that he originally                  appropriates in order to produce something, to transform things                  into a more valuable state of affairs, thereby, becomes the owner                  of what he has produced. Producer owns the product. And finally,                  we can also acquire property by a voluntary transfer from a previous                  owner to a later owner. 

We again                  only emphasize in this lecture that there are intuitively sensible                  rules, who should own us unless – who should own us, except ourselves.                  Somebody else should own us sounds absurd. Should the second one                  be the owner who has done nothing to a resource, instead of the                  first one? Again, that sounds absurd. The producer does not own                  the product, but somebody who has not produced it should own the                  product? Again, that sounds absurd. And obviously, rule number                  four, if it would be possible to just to take something away from                  other people against their consent, civilization would be destroyed                  in a moment's time.

In addition,                  you also realize that if you would follow these rules, by and                  large, wealth will be maximized. And if we follow these rules,                  then all conflicts can conceivably be avoided.

Now the question                  is, there are, of course, people who just say, so what. Even if                  we can justify them and show that they are economically beneficial                  to follow and that all conflicts can be avoided if people were                  to follow these rules, there will be law breakers. There will                  be criminals, evil people as long as mankind exists. What do we                  do with these people? How do we enforce these rules? Merely stating                  them does not mean that people will actually act according to                  them under all circumstances. There will always be bad people.

The classical                  liberals gave the following answer to the question, how do we                  enforce these rules. They said this is the sole task of government,                  the sole task of a state. A state doesn't do anything else except                  to make sure that everyone who breaks these laws will be hit on                  the head and brought to their senses.

Now what                  do we have to make to this answer of the classical liberals? It                  includes in this case, also, Ludwig von Mises. And Ludwig von                  Mises' position was precisely these rules are the rules of a just                  society and it is the task of the state to see to it that people                  adhere to these rules and punish – and threaten to punish potential                  lawbreakers.

Now, whether                  this answer is right or wrong, that is, whether this is the task                  of the state and the state will do it efficiently, that depends,                  of course, on what is the definition of a state. And I'm not giving                  you a fanciful definition of the state but that definition that                  is more or less accepted by everyone who has ever written about                  the state. It is the standard definition of the state. And that                  is, the state is a territorial monopolist of ultimate decision                  making or of ultimate arbitration in some territory. That is,                  whenever there is a conflict arising, the state is the ultimate                  arbiter to decide who is right and who is wrong. There is no appeal                  beyond the state. His is the final word; you are right, you are                  wrong. And this implies also that the state is the final arbiter,                  the final judge, the final decision maker even in cases of conflict                  involving the state or state agents themselves. We will see in                  a moment that this is a very important implication of what a state                  is, and from that, lots of consequences follow.

A corollary                  of this is the state is then also the only agency that is permitted                  to tax people, to unilaterally determine the price that we must                  pay for doing this service to us, that is, enforcing these rules.

Now, given                  this definition of the state, I want to show that it is an illusion                  to believe that the state will be successful in doing what, according                  to the classical liberals, is his sole and only task, mainly to                  enforce these rules.

The first                  argument against this position of a minimal state is to say, look,                  in economics, we always say monopoly is bad from the point of                  view of consumers, and competition is good from the point of view                  of consumers. Emphasis, "from the point of consumers." From the                  point of view of a producer, a monopoly is always great and competition                  is always terrible. But from the point of view of consumers, competition                  is good and monopoly, bad, for a simple reason that whenever we                  have a monopoly, the price of the product will be higher than                  it otherwise would be and the quality of the product will be lower                  than it otherwise would be because he is shielded from competition                  by other people entering the market by offering lower prices or                  offering a higher-quality product. If we have free competition,                  then there is a constant attempt of producers to produce at the                  lowest possible production costs, pass this on in the form of                  lower prices to consumers, and to produce the highest quality                  product. Otherwise he will simply lose out in competition against                  others. Otherwise, he will invite, so to speak, competition against                  himself. 

So the first                  argument would be simply, why should this also not be also true                  for providing the service of protecting our private property?                  Why should a monopoly be, in this area, good, whereas, in all                  other areas, we say monopoly is bad? Not only this, when it comes                  to, say, a monopoly of milk production, then all we can say is,                  yes, a monopolist of milk production will offer a comparatively                  lousy product at comparatively high prices. So we get a lousy                  product in a way.

But when                  it comes to a monopoly of law and order, of ultimate decision                  making, the situation is actually far worse. Not only can they                  produce, so to speak, a lousy good, what a monopolist of ultimate                  decision making can produce is they can produce bads in the following                  way.

(Laughter)

Look, if                  I am the ultimate decision maker in any state of every conflict                  that might arise, what can I do? What I can do is I can cause                  conflict myself and then be the arbitrator in my own case. I can                  then determine who is right and wrong. And if I have caused the                  conflict myself, then it is, of course, easy to predict what a                  monopolist will, by and large, decide. He will decide, I was entirely                  justified in doing what I did to this complaining party, and I'm                  right.

A policeman                  hits you on the head, you complain about this fact. Who then decides                  who was right and wrong? Maybe not the policeman directly, but                  another person who is employed by exactly the same agency that                  employs the policeman also. So what you can predict in this situation                  is you will, instead of having a situation where peaceful cooperation                  between various individuals exists, you can predict that there                  will be constantly conflicts generated on the part of those people                  supposedly protecting our lives and property. And then a decision                  will be made that favors them over those people that have been                  aggressed upon by the state agents themselves. 

And to make                  matters worse, then they can also decide what you have to pay                  them for this type of justice that is committed onto you. That                  is, first, they hit you on the head, then they decide that it                  was entirely justified; you looked the wrong way or whatever it                  was. And then they tell you, and for this service, please pay                  me $100, and you cannot say no.

(Laughter)

Otherwise,                  we will jail you. Again, this follows, so to speak, automatically                  from what the definition of a state is, a conflict arbitrator                  even in cases where you have yourself generated the conflict.

And on top                  of it, the standard anti-monopoly arguments apply, of course,                  as well. There will be a constant tendency for the quality of                  justice to deteriorate and, parallel to this, a constant tendency                  for the price of this ever-lower quality of justice to go up.                  You must pay more and more and more for getting less and less                  and less in terms of justice.

So an entirely                  failed argument as far as I can see in defense of a minimal state.                  The idea of a minimal state is some sort of absurdity.

Next point,                  on top of this, the classical liberals made another fateful error,                  the defenders of minimal states. When the classical liberals developed                  their program, and they saw in front of them states that were,                  by and large, monarchial states, kings and queens and so forth,                  and classical liberals now made a fateful error. They said monarchial                  states are bad institutions for the reason that monarchs, kings                  or queens, have privileges. Kings and queens are, so to speak,                  a violation of the principle of equality before the law. The king                  can do certain things that other people simply cannot do and we                  must institute a society where equality before the law is in effect.                  

And what                  solution did they propose? They proposed as a solution, democracy.                  Again, not all classical liberals, but most of them did this.                  And they said democracy is somehow compatible with the idea of                  equality before the law, because everybody can now become king                  or queen or senator or prime minister, instead of just a hereditary                  class of individuals.

Now, I want                  to show, first, that this is, again, a fateful error to believe                  that democracy implies equality before the law. All that, in fact,                  happens by substituting democracy for monarchy is that we replace                  personal privileges with functional privileges. In democracy,                  our democratic rulers also have privileges as compared with what                  normal citizens have. 

I'll give                  you just an example. And this privilege is reflected, so to speak,                  in the fact that we have a separation or a distinction between,                  on the one hand, what is called public law that covers the relationship                  between the rulers, the democratic rulers and the citizenry and,                  on the other hand, private law that covers the relationships between                  private citizens.

Under public                  law, that is, if you are a public official, you can do things                  that, under private law, you can never do. If I steal your money                  from your wallet, I will be punished as a private citizen. If                  I, however, do this as an IRS agent, this is not considered to                  be a crime, even though from the point of view of the person who                  is being robbed there is absolutely no difference whatsoever.                  Public law allows stealing.

Under private                  law, if I take you and force you to work in my garden for 16 hours,                  this is called kidnapping, enslaving and so forth and, again,                  is a punishable offense. On the other hand, if I do this as a                  public official and draft you into the army and send you off to                  get killed, to fight for democracy someplace – 

(Laughter)

 – then this                  sort of thing is just called – you are compelled to engage in                  public service.

(Laughter)

If I take                  your money and give it to somebody else as a private citizen,                  this is called stealing and fencing of stolen goods. If I do that                  as a public official, it's called social policy.

(Laughter)

Taking from                  some, and then pretending to be a generous benefactor onto others.                  If you just look at your politicians, they go around, spend millions                  on this country and that country and give it to these people and                  then they even get a medal for this sort of – 

(Laughter)

– medal for                  this sort of thing. It is not their own money that they give away.                  So it is fencing of stolen of goods. 

As a matter                  of fact, we might even say what states do is even worse than what                  private criminals do, in so far as private criminals, at least                  when they are done with their bad stuff, at least they disappear.                  Next time, you can prepare yourself for such an attack and maybe                  smash them when they come again. Whereas, states do that on an                  institutional basis. They rob you and then, the next week, all                  over.

(Laughter)

You can expect                  another visit from – 

(Laughter)

 – from those                  people.

(Laughter)

*Read the brilliant conclusion here:* *http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe33.1.html*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

* Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government*
 Thomas J. DiLorenzos latest book
*
by                Ilana Mercer*
 _Recently                by Ilana Mercer: The                Goods on Grain and the Big Agra-Government Alliance_   
"No statist                lies are safe from his scrutiny," writes Lew Rockwell about                economist Thomas J. DiLorenzos latest book. What follows is my                conversation with professor DiLorenzo about _Organized                Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government_,  and the                timeless economic truths to which it speaks.

1. *ILANA                MERCER*: A microscopic decrease in the increase in government                spending has sent our overlords in DC into apoplexy. A cut in oink-sector                spending, theyre claiming, will destroy the chances of an economic                recovery. It is the exact opposite. You point this out in the chapter                on "The Myth of Government Job Creation": "Government                spending increases unemployment because it crowds out so much private                sector job creation" (p. 202). Explain with reference to the                zero-sum nature of government spending  the cost of a government                job, and Bastiats "What-Is-Seen-and-What-Is-Not-Seen"                principle.

*THOMAS DILORENZO*:                Every dollar that the government spends is a dollar that is not                spent (or saved) by individuals, families, businesses, and entrepreneurs.                Therefore, whenever government grows, private enterprise  the sole                source of real job creation  shrinks and unemployment there rises.                Each government job destroys several genuine, private sector jobs                because of all the bureaucracy and red tape. For example, government                may spend $200,000 to give one person a $30,000/year job. And government                "jobs" are usually involved in doing something that no                one but a few politicians ever voiced a preference for. Private                sector jobs, by contrast, cannot survive unless they are part of                an enterprise that succeeds in satisfying genuine consumer wants.                By contrast, Keynesians like Paul Krugman would have us believe                that prosperity is created whenever government takes money out of                our bank accounts (with the threat of forcing us to live in a cage                for years if we do not pay) and letting government bureaucrats squander                the money instead. Part of the Keynesian mantra is that such spending                could and should be on "anything"  it doesnt matter,                as long as it is government that is doing the spending. The biggest                year of private sector economic growth in American economic history                was 1946 when the nation was in the middle of a two-thirds reduction                in federal government spending as the military was demobilized from                World War II. This proves that the Keyensians were always dead wrong,                but of course they and their political patrons ignore this reality.

2. *MERCER*:                You quip: "In Washingtonese, if one proposes a $100 billion spending                increase, and actual spending increases by 'only' $90 billion, they                call it a $10 billion budget cut." We're in the grip of exactly                this kind of a paradox. How is the "Washington Monument Syndrome"                playing out in its "sequesteria" version?

*DILORENZO*:                The "Washington Monument Syndrome" is an old bureaucratic                trick that is so named because the head of the National Park Service                closed down the Washington Monument  the most popular tourist attraction                in Washington, D.C.  in the 1960s after Congress refused to fully                fund his pie-in-the-sky spending wish list. Tourists from every                state, on their annual vacations, called their congressmen to complain,                forcing them to give the Park Service bureaucrat all the money he                wanted. State and local governments routinely use this sleazy gimmick                by immediately threatening to shut down police protection, garbage                collection, ambulance service, school buses, and whatever else would                impose the maximum pain on the public whenever there is talk of                fiscal responsibility. The Obama administration has taken this to                buffoonish extremes by threatening to close down airports, etc.,                were government spending to increase by about one percentage point                less than they wish over the next ten years. No one in Washington                has proposed cutting a single cent out of the federal budget despite                the fact that the surest route to economic recovery would be to                chop federal spending in half, and then in half again next year.

3. *MERCER*:                Like tax havens, tax loopholes are ethical and efficient. Your point                about efficiencies is especially good: "The time spent by citizens                trying to legally avoid taxes is in fact a good investment of their                time." Decode the Orwellian Doublespeak of phrases like, "simplifying                the tax laws " and "revenue neutrality." 

*DILORENZO*:                Politicians and statist economists intentionally confuse the public                when they refer to proposed tax increases as "tax reform"                and to tax cuts as "wasteful" or "unnecessarily complicated."                I have long agreed with Milton Friedmans dictum that the cause                of freedom and prosperity is always served by any tax cut, of any                kind, at any time. One has to realize that the purpose of government                is for those who run it to plunder those who do not. Depriving political                parasites of revenue is always and everywhere a good idea. The rhetoric                of "revenue neutrality" really means that under no circumstances                should government  unlike everyone else in society  ever, ever                spend a penny less next year than this year. Any tax reform should                therefore never, ever, end up putting more money in the pockets                of the public at the expense of the political parasite class. 

4. *MERCER*:                Expect the "compassion of the IRS and the efficiency of the                post office" from Obamas health care plan, you forewarn. But                as Obamas army of harpies at CNN would argue, his politburo of                proctologists has involved itself in the insurance industry merely                to enhance markets. Or, to "bring down costs." Dispense                with this idiotic notion. 

*DILORENZO*:                Government intervention always causes costs to rise and quality                to decline. This has always been true; it has especially been true                in the field of health care in places like Canada and Great Britain                where healthcare was nationalized long ago. There is no reason to                believe that the socialists in the Obama administration are better                at socialism than were the Soviets, the Eastern Europeans, the Chinese,                the Cuban government, or anyone else. The absence of a market feedback                mechanism based on profits and losses guarantees government failure.                Public choice economists refer to a "bureaucratic rule of two"                with regard to governmental provision of any type of service, based                on hundreds of empirical articles that show that, on average, a                government takeover of any function will double the per-unit cost                of providing the product or service. 

5. *MERCER*:                You write: "At the heart of the U.S. governments continued                takeover of the health care sector of the economy was a law passed                during the Obama administration that would eventually drive the                private health insurance industry out of business and transform                it into a _de facto_ nationalized industry." Elaborate.                Since, as you repeatedly warn, the natural laws of economics cannot                be repealed, what will these health care exchanges achieve? How                will they invariably be funded? What will be the cost to business?                To the millions whore losing coverage? Who will ultimately fork                out for the per-head fee imposed on medical plans? 

*DILORENZO*:                The Obama version of health-care socialism forces insurance companies                to cover people with expensive diseases without charging them higher                rates to compensate for the additional risk. This effectively will                force the insurance companies to pay out billions in health care                costs, and then the Obammunists will impose price controls on the                industry because thats what socialists always do once they intervene                in a market by forcing businesses to offer something for nothing,                thereby driving demand through the roof. The price controls will                cause massive bankruptcy, at which point the argument will be made                that what is needed is "single-payer healthcare," a euphemism                for health-care socialism or government-run monopoly. In the meantime,                they seem to be imposing hundreds of relatively small, hidden taxes                to come up with the revenue to keep the scheme going.

6. *MERCER*:                _The                Obamacare Survival Guide_ is a best-seller on Amazon. The                market is producing survivalist literature to help Americans navigate                the treacherous shoals of this law. What does it tell you? Like                me, you must know plenty of Obama-heads (doctors too) who shrugged                off the idea that further centralizing health care  a modest                healthcare expansion totaling $2 trillion, I believe  would                cost them anything at all. As _The Lancet_ recently confirmed,                in the UKs National Health Service funding is inversely related                to patient outcomes. You speak of "inputs" and "outputs."

*DILORENZO*:                I cited a study by the late Milton Friedman entitled "Inputs                and Outputs in Medical Care," published by the Hoover Institution                some twenty years ago. In it the Nobel laureate economist showed                that, historically, as government became more and more involved                in health care by taking over hospitals and funding Medicare and                Medicaid, inputs  in terms of money spent  skyrocketed while "output"                in terms of patients served declined. He spoke of something called                "Gammons Law," named after a British physician named                Max Gammon, who noticed that with healthcare socialism in England,                increased "inputs" in the form of massive amounts of money                spent always seemed to disappear "as though through a black                hole" with little or nothing to show for it in terms of health                care. 

7. *MERCER:*                You touch briefly on the "private component of GDP." Free-market                thinkers get that the private economy alone produces wealth. But                no. GDP is a political construct, defined, tracked and manipulated                by the D.C. political machine. Unpack the GDP gambit for us, down                to its deceptive components.

_

_*DILORENZO*:                Including government spending in the definition of GDP was a creation                of John Maynard Keynes, who defined it as C (Private Consumption)                + I (Private Investment) + G (Government Purchases) + X-M (Net Exports).                In so doing, Keynesians concluded that the most prosperous year                in American economic history  1946  was actually a year of revival                of the Great Depression with a precipitous drop in economic activity                because of the huge decline in federal government spending after                World War II. Of course, this was NOT a year of depression but an                explosion of private investment, consumption, and job creation.

8. *MERCER*:                About that elusive economic recovery: My colleague Vox Day (who                sadly called it a day on WND) argued that, "The Great Depression                2.0 will be worse than its predecessor." Day chalked that up to                todays unprecedented levels of debt, consumption and credit, private                and public. Its a hunch. But I think youll disagree. 

*DILORENZO*:                No one can predict something like this, especially since todays                economy is vastly different from the 1930s. Capital markets are                much more sophisticated, for one thing, although government regulators                by the thousands do their best to destroy them  and with them whats                left of American capitalism. Predictions like this always ignore                the resilience of entrepreneurs. As the Austrian Business Cycle                theory of Mises and Hayek contends, it is the boom period where                all the damage is done in the form of "malinvestment"                 in the latest bust this was mostly in real estate. During the                recession or depression is when entrepreneurs are forced to become                more efficient, more inventive, more creative  or else. This is                how the Japanese recovered from something much worse than a depression                 long years of war and the dropping of atomic bombs on their country                 in a little over a decade.

 _March                  11, 2013_ 
 _                  Ilana Mercer [send her                  mail] lives at www.ilanamercer.com.                  She blogs at_ BarelyABlog.com_.                 _ _Her latest book is_ Into                  the Cannibal's Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South                  Africa. 
Copyright                © 2013                Ilana Mercer  *The                Best of Ilana Mercer*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Mark R. Crovelli pops! You will enjoy this:*

Drunk Driving vs. Sober Driving: What's the Difference?

The Fact That Drunk Drivers 'Choose' to Drive Drunk Is Completely Irrelevant

Don’t Disarm the Mentally Ill

If Two Men Go Into the Woods Without a Police Officer, How Many Will Come Out Alive?

*
Good stuff!*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Gold & Silver Ep1: Mike Maloney - Hidden Secrets of Money

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Science of Liberty
A Short Essay.
 

Justice and Liberty are inseparably connected to the concept of Private Property, and neither Justice nor Liberty exist, or have any meaning without Private Property.

Indeed, Justice and Liberty are two sides of the same coin, which coin is Private Property.
*
So what is Private Property?*

Private Property is something you exclusively own, that belongs to you and no one else, so that you do not need to ask anyone's permission to use it, and everyone must obtain your permission to use. And you can do with it whatever you desire, as long as you do not violate the property of another.

The rightful owner of a property is either the first user of it, or the recipient of it via  voluntary gift, bequest or sale.

Defined this way, your Private Property includes you, your body, your mind, your ability to think, to speak, to act, to move, the fruits of your labor, etc.

This is why, I said that Private Property is Liberty, because Liberty is nothing more than the ability to do with your own Property what you will, as long as you do not violate the Property of another.

And Justice is nothing more than non-violation of Private Property, which implies the right to use equal force to offset and neutralize the aggression of another against your Property.

Thus both Justice and Liberty do not exist, and are completely meaningless without Private Property.

Therefore, whosoever violates Private Property is violating both Justice and Liberty. And any society which makes such violations into law, in the form of public taxation, or public regulation, of Private Property, will unavoidably self-destruct. Because no society can long endure without Justice and Liberty.

So public taxation of Private Property is theft, legalized plunder, and institutionalized injustice. It is aggressive violence, which is the very definition of evil.

*Now what about Public Property?*

Public Property is property to which all have equal claim of ownership, like a public road, and since all own it equally, it can be governed by the voice of the majority, provided that:a) everyone is treated equally, and

b) the property of no one is violated in the process. 
It is that simple!


These are the fundamental principles of liberty.

*So how would we finance government then?*

Government is ownership. You can rightly govern only the things you own, and nothing else. You can govern your property; your neighbor can govern his property, and so on. Public Representative Government can only rightly govern Public Property, and nothing else, because it does not own you, nor your property.

Therefore, the only just sources of revenue for Public Representative government are public property user fees and voluntary contributions, because you can only rightly tax the things you own, and nothing else.

*But what about defense and Law enforcement?*

No one has the right to grant justice enforcement and defense monopoly to the government, because no one, INDIVIDUALLY, has the authority to enforce such a monopoly, therefore no one can delegate such authority, to enforce the monopoly, to the government, because no one can delegate an authority he does not have.

Free Market can take care of justice enforcement and defense much better and more efficiently than any immoral and unjust government forced monopoly ever can. Otherwise, such a government monopoly supported by compulsory taxation becomes simply a “protection” racket: “I will rob you now, so no one can rob you later” deal. Which, of course, is a fraud!

Monopolies granted by the force of aggressive violence are unjust by definition, and are ALWAYS less efficient in providing services to consumers than Free Market.

* And what about “the greater good for the greater number?”*

O Yes. The ancient lie.

You see, a group is nothing more than a collection of individuals. And if it is wrong for one man to rob his neighbor, it is also wrong for many men to rob him. And if no one, INDIVIDUALLY has a just claim upon his neighbor’s property, neither does the whole group, whatever the size, because the group derives its authority from individuals, and no one can delegate an authority he does not have.

Thus, by violating private property, you destroy liberty and justice in the society, which if unchecked, will result in the destruction of the entire society itself. 

And since a society is made of individuals, the only greater good for the greater number is what is good for individuals, which is their Liberty and Justice, that is their Private Property; everything else is a lie.

So, by violating Private Property, you are destroying the society, only one person at a time.

So how would we summarize this?

* The three Fundamental Principles of Liberty and Justice are these:*

First and foremost, from which all other principles are derived:

*1) Private property is Liberty and ought not to be violated.* (The owner of a property can do whatever he wants with his property, as long as he is not violating the property of another.)

Second:

*2) Private property is not to be violated by a group.*

(If it is wrong for one person to rob an individual, it is also wrong for many persons to rob him. And if no one individually has the right to use force upon his neighbor, neither does the whole group, whatever the size, because the group derives its authority from individuals, and no one can delegate an authority he does not have).

And the third:

*3) If there exists public property, that is property to which all have equal claim of ownership, it can be managed by the voice of the majority, provided that (a) everyone is treated equally and (b) the property of no one is violated in the process.*

That’s it.

 Any society that violates these principles is by definition UNJUST, and must unavoidably self-destruct if such violations are not abolished.

Liberty is Science. The laws of Liberty and Justice are universal.

For the list of five amendments I proposed to bring the US Constitution into harmony with these principles please see: 
* The Fundamental Principles of Liberty*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

What Anarchy Isn't
by Larken Rose

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Libertarian Anarchy
Tom Woods Talks to Gerard Casey

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Adam Kokesh gives Correct Philosophical Principles of Liberty

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*                Taxation Is Robbery*

*by                Frank Chodorov*

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## osan

A good article in general, but there are a few holes in his argumentation.  For example:




> "Complete objectivity is precluded when an ethical postulate is the major premise of an argument and a discussion of the nature of taxation cannot exclude values."


"Complete objectivity" is undefined and predicates upon its definition as used in the article.  The implication that ethical postulates cannot of objectively complete, however, seems to me to be significantly mistaken.  Again, objectivity predicates upon the premises one accepts as underpinning the argumentation.




> "If we assume that the individual has an indisputable right to life, we must concede that he has a similar right to the enjoyment of the products of his labor."


While I agree, he skips a step or two in the chain from right to life to property rights.  Not a fatal sin, but the complete chain of reason could be very helpful to those new to the concepts the author is addressing.

I just love this part:




> "Robbery is robbery, and no amount of words can make it anything else."


Similar to "One is either free or is something else.  There is nothing in between." 

My nit picking notwithstanding, the excerpt is very good.  That it was written in 1962 makes it all the more impressive.  Methinks I will have to locate a copy of the book.  His tone suggests the right attitude.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thanks, osan.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Abolish                              the Corporate Income Tax*
But ignore Pat Buchanan's advice on tariffs.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

David Icke Speaks the 
TRUTH 
at Bilderberg

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Balance between Liberty and Security is a Lie



 
Woolsey is lying here. There is no need to establish "balance" between  liberty and security, because they are not contradictory ideals at all.  In fact, the only valid reason for existence of security is to defend Liberty, and you cannot defend Liberty by destroying it.

He is also lying about the fact that the contents  of MOST (almost all) electronic communications are recorded and stored  by the government by default, not just metadata. The government is using  fraud and aggressive violence, which is a violation of private property  and JUSTICE, to force companies to give them access to users' data. For  example, they charge $25,000 a day from any company that refuses to  provide wiretapping capability, as well as splice into their fiber-optic  cables, etc.

He is also lying about the fact that the  communications are continually scrutinized by computers in search of  specific patterns and keywords. Everyone's data is scrutinized by government's computers.

He  is also lying about the propriety of storing people's stolen personal  data on government computers indefinitely, saying that "policy" prevents  them from looking at it. It is a lie, because he well knows that  government routinely spies on its citizens and goes on "fishing"  expeditions, to find a pretense of a cause to persecute them un-justly,  as was proven by the recent IRS scandal.    

He is also lying about the source of most of terrorism, which is the  government itself. This includes 9-11, Oklahoma, London, Madrid, and  many other irrefutable inside jobs. Even now the government is openly  supporting Al Qaeda (Al-CIA-da, because it was openly admitted that it  was created by CIA) in Syria and elsewhere.

So sadly, Woolsey is a liar and a spokesmen of liars here. But Edward Snowden is a hero,  who at a great cost to himself exposed the lie and the crimes of the  government, which he did to promote the cause of Liberty and Justice. 
Thus government is the criminal here, and Edward Snowden is a hero.

---
*Summary*: 

A "balance" between Liberty and security is a lie because Liberty *supersedes* security,  because Liberty created security in the first place. Therefore the only  security that has ANY just right to exist is that which preserves  liberty, and you cannot preserve liberty by destroying it, and  destroying Liberty is unjust. Now "security" that destroys Liberty and  therefore Justice, is no security at all, but is a lie, tyranny,  usurpation, evil, injustice and plunder, masquerading as "security." It  is a mafia style protection racket: "We will destroy your liberty now,  so no one may destroy it later." Which, of course, is a fraud!

See more here.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty



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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The True meaning of the 4th of July

*4TH OF JULY* = *THE RIGHT OF SECESSION*
*Independence Day* = *SECESSION*

Get it?

_Declaration of Independence was the ultimate states’ rights document._
 
"The founders of our government were constant secessionists. They not only claimed the right for themselves, but conceded it to others. They were not only secessionists in theory, but in practice.. The old confederation between the states [the _Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union_] was especially declared perpetual by the instrument itself. Yet Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and the hosts of heroes and statesman of that day seceded from it." And, "_The Constitution provides no means of coercing a state in the Union; nor any punishment for secession."_

_How strange it is that the true and obvious meaning of the 4th of July is LOST on majority of Americans! We should thank Rockefeller hijacked education system for that. Yet truth is an unconquerable opponent. One cannot prevail against truth any more than he can prevail against God._

Read more about true meaning of the 4th of July here: http://lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo260.html

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Egalitarianism is Evil,* 
because it promotes Aggressive Violence
(which is the very definition of evil)

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Thomas Pain is a true Founder of the Country and 
the Principal author of the Declaration of Independence!*



Listen to the MP3's here: http://galambos.com/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Americas Deep Political Crisis and Private Property


                                                                                                          By Michael S. Rozeff                                                        on July 9, 2013
 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/07/m...itical-crisis/
...

The crisis is unusual in being slow and pervasive, rather than being  quick and limited in scope. This is occurring because the heart and soul  of the crisis has been institutionalized and legalized.

 That heart is the income tax, passed in 1913 by constitutional  amendment (although the legal ratification has been disputed). Human  wealth embodied in the human being is what generates income, in  conjunction with non-human capital. One has property not only in objects  but in ones own person and body. The taxation of this by society,  government or state is a taking of ones property. It is a form of  slavery, a degree of slavery, in which the state co-owns the person and  body of those subject to the income tax. Regulations that determine how  one may generate or use wealth amount to roundabout forms of taxes.

 These taxes and regulations could only be enacted as laws under the  notion that older ideas of individual property ownership, even in ones  person, were inadequate or unjust, and that they needed to be modified  or replaced by the newer ideas of property being a social matter. It is  extraordinarily ironic that after a bloody war that ended slavery, a  short 48 years later, the country would end up with an income tax that  enslaved everyone subject to it.

 America seriously modified its property rights regime in 1913 without  abandoning it. It now had two contradictory ways of thinking about  property. In the 1930s, the social function or social necessity or  social welfare way of thinking about property rose in importance.  Government intervention into property, by way of both taxation and  regulation, became an accepted feature of American politics.

 But the contradiction remains. Is property private or not? The  extension of government power and violence into a long list of states  like the welfare state, warfare state, penal state, big pharma state,  etc. is a manifestation of interventionism. Even though these  interventions serve only private interest groups, they all are  rationalized by the idea that the intervention policy is overcoming  problems with private property by assuring that propertys social side  is tended to. This basic idea, however, crowds out and destroys private  property. Every state intervention that transfers wealth to  military-industrial businesses, or to banks or to surveillance firms or  to large farmers or to prison builders and prison operators, takes that  wealth from those who own private property.

 Both Left and Right adhere to the idea that property is social. Both  support interventions, but each with its own favored recipients of the  resulting confiscated wealth.

*The long-running crisis in America cannot be ended without resolving  the question of property rights.* The crisis will continue and deepen as  long as government interventionism continues. The latter depends on the  theory that the government can legitimately and justly tax and regulate  for the sake of society because all property, including all persons and  their wealth, lie at the governments disposal. *This theory of property  being social and the institutionalization of this theory are the causes  of Americas silent and unrecognized crisis.*

If  a person does not own what he or she produces, then who does? If other  people do, which is the social or collective answer, then we get  constant crisis as an outcome. If everyone owns everything and  everyones wealth collectively, then there will be continual conflicts  about who gets what. The incentive to produce and preserve wealth will  deteriorate. Income production and job opportunities will decline.  Economic crisis results from a political determination that property is  social, not individual.

 The alternative is that each and every person has a right to life,  liberty and the pursuit of happiness, understanding that this comprises  each persons property rights in the wealth and income that he or she  generates, recognizing that each person justly owns what he or she  produces, not other people, not society, not the government and not the  state.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Improved the wording in *The Correct Principles of Liberty and The Errors of the US Constitution.*

----------


## Fredom101

> This is my response to Stefan Molyneux Book Against the Gods?
> 
> First of all, I want to say that I respect Stefan as a man who understands correct principles of Liberty, and is eloquent, passionate and effective in explaining and defending them. In fact, his brilliant treatment of the Non-Aggression Principle, is one of my favorites of all time!
> 
> My principal disagreement with Stefan is contained in his book Against the Gods? I will show that the main claim of Stefan in this book, namely that he has conclusively proven that God cannot exist, is false. I will show the logical error in his arguments by exposing false assumptions on which he bases them.
> 
> I do this for two reasons. First, I sincerely believe that true freedom is impossible without correct understanding of who we are. And we cannot understand who we are without understanding who God is. And secondly, the cause of Liberty is mightily strengthened when it is understood that God is a Libertarian, if by being Libertarian we take that He adheres to the Non-Aggression Principle, the central and defining tenet of Libertarianism.  In fact, God is the greatest champion of Liberty in the entire Universe, and is actually the source of it. Therefore, the cause of Liberty is Gods cause, and it will succeed because God cannot fail. 
> 
> Now that I have stated my reasons for engaging in this debate, I will pass directly to the logical arguments that Stefan made, and I will show errors in them:
> ...


It will be very difficult to achieve a free society if the majority of people believe in mythology, like invisible beings who live in the sky. Because there is no such thing as a god, or gods, believing in this concept is harmful to societies in that feel as if there is a referee who will ultimately control the outcome of situations and "do good" for everyone. Since no one can agree on what "god" is (since it doesn't exist, no one will ever agree), or even what "good" is (i.e. george bush thought he was doing "good" and carrying out the will of god by attacking Iraq), these subjective concepts will keep us in a state of perpetual conflict and leave those who believe to rely on a source that will not an can not act to change situations in the world, including our struggle for freedom.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> It will be very difficult to achieve a free society if the majority of people believe in mythology, like invisible beings who live in the sky.


First of all, since your name is Freedom101, you should understand that non-aggression is the heart of liberty and justice. Given that, as long as people accept that, it does not matter what they believe, as far as earthly justice is concerned.

Secondly, I personally believe in visible beings.




> Because there is no such thing as a god, or gods,


Prove it. You have no evidence whatsoever except your word only. That’s a bit religious on your part, don’t you think? Did you ever stop to think that atheism is a religion of sorts, because it requires a belief without any proof. Yet, I have a proof. But the nature of the proof is such that it can only be achieved individually, and cannot, as yet, be forced upon others. But I do know for myself, because I did what one must do to obtain such a proof. It is a knowledge no less certain to me than the knowledge that I exist.




> believing in this concept is harmful to societies in that feel as if there is a referee who will ultimately control the outcome of situations and "do good" for everyone.


How is a belief in a being who said “Thou shall not kill; Thou shall not steal” be harmful to the cause of Liberty? Don’t you see that these two commandments are the non-aggression principle itself, i.e. the definition of Liberty and Justice? Moreover, you have absolutely no proof that he does not interfere in the lives of his children. I, on the other hand, do have proof that he most certainly does. The key is in the proof. Evidence is king.




> Since no one can agree on what "god" is


Some people do agree, but besides, your logic is fundamentally flawed. With the same non-logic you may say: Since some people disagree about what matter or energy is, it does not exist. Or, since some people disagree whether the earth is flat of a sphere, the earth does not exist. Etc.. The fact that some people disagree about certain realities, does not mean they don’t exist. Your logic is flawed.




> (since it doesn't exist, no one will ever agree),


Prove it. You have absolutely no proof. Again, that is a religion of sorts. Not a very good one, though, because it is logically inconsistent and self-contradictory. The only way for you to claim you are right is to assert the knowledge of all things, or a revelation, yet you deny both, because if you knew everything you would be a God, whose existence you deny. So your position is profoundly self-contradictory. That is not a good belief system.




> or even what "good" is


Because some people misinterpret what “good” is does not mean that good does not exist. I have a non-contradictory definition of what good is: Good is Private Property (i.e. the things one justly owns), with Liberty and Justice derived from this concept, which mean non-aggression.




> (i.e. george bush thought he was doing "good" and carrying out the will of god by attacking Iraq),


If someone was wrong, does not mean that good and God don’t exist. Bad logic again. With the same non-logic one could say, since someone thinks you do not exist, you do not exist. Bad logic.




> these subjective concepts will keep us in a state of perpetual conflict


You can have any subjective concepts you like, as long as you agree on non-aggression. This is the essence of Liberty. Don’t you see that? As doctor Paul said, “Liberty brings people together.”





> and leave those who believe to rely on a source that will not an can not act


You have absolutely no proof of that. I, and millions of other people have the proof to the contrary.

In fact, I know, that the cause of Liberty can never ultimately prevail, without reliance on the hand of God, the Parent of human family, the rightful owner of the Earth, the author, source, and absolute champion of Liberty.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Libertarian Paradox
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

                                                                                    July 24, 2013





                                                       As libertarians attempt to persuade others of their position,  they encounter an interesting paradox. On the one hand, the libertarian  message is simple. It involves moral premises and intuitions that in  principle are shared by virtually everyone, including children. Do not  hurt anyone. Do not steal from anyone. Mind your own business.

 A child will say, “I had it first.” There is an intuitive sense  according to which the first user of a previously unowned good holds  moral priority over latecomers. This, too, is a central aspect of  libertarian theory.

 Following Locke, Murray Rothbard, and other libertarian philosophers  sought to establish a morally and philosophically defensible account of  how property comes to be owned. Locke held the goods of the earth to  have been owned in common at the beginning, while Rothbard more  plausibly held all goods to have been initially unowned, but this  difference does not affect their analysis. Locke is looking to justify  how someone may remove a good from common ownership for his individual  use, and Rothbard is interested in how someone may take an unowned good  and claim it for his individual use.

 Locke’s answer will be familiar. He noted, first of all, that “every  man has a property in his own person.” By extension, everyone justly  holds as his own property those goods with which he has mixed his labor.  Cultivating land, picking an apple – whatever the case may be, we say  that the first person to homestead property that had previously sat in  the state of nature without an individual owner could call himself its  owner.

 Once a good that was previously in the state of nature has been  homesteaded, its owner need not continue to work on or transform it in  order to maintain his ownership title. Once the initial homesteading  process has taken place, future owners can acquire the property not by  mixing their labor with it – which at this point would be trespassing –  but by purchasing it or receiving it as a gift from the legitimate  owner.

 As I’ve said, we sense intuitively the justice at the heart of this  rule. If the individual does not own himself, then what other human  being does? If the individual who transforms some good that previously  lacked specific ownership title does not have a right to that good, then  what other person should?

 In addition to being just, this rule also minimizes conflict. It is a  rule everyone can understand, based on a principle that applies to all  people equally. It does not say that only members of a particular race  or level of intelligence may own property. And it is a rule that  definitively stakes out ownership claims in ways that anyone can grasp,  and which will keep disputes to a minimum.

 Alternatives to this first user, first homesteader principle are few  and unhelpful. If not the first user, then who? The fourth user? The  twelfth user? But if only the fourth or twelfth user is the rightful  owner, then only the fourth or twelfth user has the right to do anything  with the good. That is what ownership is: the ability to dispose of a  good however one wishes, provided that in doing so the owner does not  harm anyone else. Assigning property title through a method like verbal  declaration, say, would do nothing to minimize conflict; people would  shout vainly at each other, each claiming ownership of the good in  question, and peaceful resolution of the resulting conflict seems  impossible.

 These principles are easy to grasp, and as I’ve said, they involve moral insights which practically everyone claims to share.

 And here is the libertarian paradox. Libertarians begin with these  basic, commonly shared principles, and seek only to apply them  consistently and equally to all people. But even though people claim to  support these principles,  and even though most people claim to believe in equality – which is  what the libertarian is upholding by applying moral principles to  everyone without exception – the libertarian message suddenly becomes  extreme, unreasonable, and unacceptable.

 Why is it so difficult to persuade people of what they implicitly believe already?

 The reason is not difficult to find. Most people inherit an  intellectual schizophrenia from the state that educates them, the media  that amuses them, and the intellectuals who propagandize them.

 This is what Murray Rothbard was driving at when he described the  relationship between the state and the intellectuals. “The ruling  elite,” he wrote,

 whether it be the monarchs of yore or the Communist parties of today, are in desperate need of intellectual elites to weave _apologias_ for  state power. The state rules by divine edict; the state insures the  common good or the general welfare; the state protects us from the bad  guys over the mountain; the state guarantees full employment; the state  activates the multiplier effect; the state insures social justice, and  on and on. The _apologias_ differ over the centuries; the effect is always the same.

 Why, in turn, do the intellectuals provide the state this service?  Why are they so eager to defend, legitimate, and make excuses for the  corridors of power?

 Rothbard had an answer:

 We can see what the state rulers get out  of their alliance with the intellectuals; but what do the intellectuals  get out of it? Intellectuals are the sort of people who believe that, in  the free market, they are getting paid far less than their wisdom  requires. Now the state is willing to pay them salaries, both for  apologizing for state power, and in the modern state, for staffing the  myriad jobs in the welfare, regulatory state apparatus.

 In addition to this, the intellectual class we are dealing with wants  to impose its vision, its pattern, on society. Frederic Bastiat spends  much of his classic little book _The Law_ on this very impulse: the  conception of the intellectual and the politician as the sculptors, and  the human race as so much clay.

 What we are taught, therefore, from all official channels, is  something like the following. For the sake of mankind’s well-being and  improvement, some individuals need to exercise power over others. On our  own, we would have little if any philanthropic instinct. We would  commit the vilest of crimes. Commerce would grind to a halt, innovation  would cease, and the arts and sciences would be neglected. The human  race would descend to a condition too degraded and appalling to  contemplate.

 Therefore, a single institution needs a monopoly on the initiation of  physical force and on the ability to expropriate individuals. That  institution will ensure that society is molded according to the proper  pattern, that “social justice” is achieved, and that mankind’s deepest  aspirations have some chance of fulfillment.

 So entrenched in our minds are these ideas that it would hardly occur  to most people even to think of them as propaganda. This is simply the  truth about the world, people assume. It is the way things are. They  cannot be otherwise.

 But what if they can? What if there really is another way to live?  What if the sphere of freedom need not be so confined after all, but may  expand without limit? What if the general presumption against monopoly  applies to government just as much as it does to anything else? What if  the free market, the most extraordinary creator of wealth and innovation  ever known, and the most reliable and efficient allocation mechanism of  scarce resources, is also better at producing the goods for which we  have been told we must rely on government? And what if the state, the  greatest mass-murderer in history, the great drag on economic progress,  and the institution that pits us against each other in a zero-sum game  of mutual plunder, is retarding rather than advancing human welfare?

 Just how liberating these political philosophy becomes clear when we realize some of its implications.

 It means that taxation is a moral outrage, since it involves the violent expropriation of peaceful individuals.

 It means that military conscription is a fancy term for official kidnapping.

 It means that the state’s wars are cases of mass murder, and that the  suspension of normal moral rules that the state’s officials insist on  during wartime is a transparent attempt to divert the normal kinds of  moral inquiries that might occur to someone unschooled in government  propaganda.

 And it means the state is not the glorious guarantor of the public  good, but is instead, a parasite on the individuals it rules. The  left-anarchists were grotesquely wrong to condemn the state as the  protector of private property. The state could not survive absent its  aggression against private property. It produces nothing of its own, and  can survive only because of the productive work of those it  expropriates.

 The state is the very opposite of the free market in its ethics and  in its behavior, and yet so few supporters of the market bother to  examine their premises. They continue to believe the following:

 (1) The best social system is one in  which private property is respected, people are free to exchange with  each other, and coercion is not used.

 (2) That is, until the production of  certain goods is in question. Then we need monopoly, coercion,  expropriation, bureaucratic decisionmaking – in other words, the most  egregious contradiction of the principles we              claim to  uphold.

 To be sure, it may not be so easy at first to imagine the free-market  provision of certain goods. And anyway, don’t we need someone “in  charge”?

 But by the same token, it should be just as difficult to imagine the  success of the free market itself: without someone in charge of  production decisions, how can we expect private actors to produce what  people want, especially when faced with a virtually infinite number of  possible combinations of resources, each of which is demanded in varying  degrees of intensity by an unimaginable number of possible production  processes? Yet that is exactly what happens on the market, without  fanfare, every day.

 I’ve been surprised not only by the spread of anarcho-capitalism –  quite a surprising development, since it runs counter to everything  people are taught to take for granted – but also by the attacks on it.  You’d think, since we’re still a tiny minority, no important periodical  would bother going after us. And yet they have. The reason? Because they  realize, as you and I do, what these ideas mean.

 Libertarians have put forth the most radical critique of the state  ever posed. The Marxists claimed to favor the withering away of the  state, it is true, but this can hardly be taken seriously. The coercive  power of the state plays a central role in the Marxist transition from  capitalism to socialism. As Rothbard put it, “It is absurd to try to  reach statelessness via the absolute maximization of state power in a  totalitarian dictatorship of the proletariat (or more realistically a  select vanguard of the said proletariat). The result can only be maximum  statism and hence maximum slavery….”

 And without private property, how would production decisions be made?  By a state, of course. The Marxists just wouldn’t call it a state.  Again Rothbard:

 With private property mysteriously  abolished, then, the elimination of the state under communism…would  necessarily be a mere camouflage for a new state that would emerge to  control and make decisions for communally owned resources. Except that  the state would not be called such, but rather renamed something like a  “people’s statistical bureau”….  It will be small consolation to future  victims, incarcerated or shot for committing  “capitalist acts between consenting adults” (to cite a phrase made  popular by Robert Nozick), that their oppressors will no longer be the  state but only a people’s statistical bureau. The state under any other  name will smell as acrid.

 “Limited-government” conservatives, in turn – who in practice favor  an enormous government footprint, but for the sake of argument we’ll  give them the benefit of the doubt – want to reform the system. If we  try this or that, they say, we can transform a monopoly on violence and  expropriation into the fountainhead of order and civilization.

 We libertarians are a million miles removed from either of these  views. We do not view government officials as “public servants.” How sad  to hear naïve conservatives speak of returning to a time when  government is responsive to the people, whose elected officials in turn  pursue the public good. The situation we face now, contrary to what  these conservatives try to believe, is not an unfortunate aberration. It  is the dismal norm.

 There are two, and only two, versions of the story of liberty and  power. One looks to power, as manifested in the state, as the source of  progress, prosperity, and order. The other credits liberty with these  goods things, along with commerce, invention, prosperity, the arts and  sciences, the conquering of disease and destitution, and much else. For  us liberty truly is the mother, not the daughter, of order.

 Some will protest that a third option is available: a judicious  combination of the state and liberty, it may be said, is necessary to  human flourishing. But this is merely an apologia for the state, since  it takes for granted precisely what we libertarians dispute: that the  state is the indispensable source of order, within which liberty  flourishes. To the contrary, liberty flourishes despite the state, and  the fruits of liberty that we observe around us would be all the more  abundant were it not for the state’s dead hand.

 We can find precursors of anarcho-capitalism here and there in  Western intellectual history – Gustave de Molinari, for example, and in  the United States Lysander Spooner, Benjamin Tucker, and a handful of  others. But no one developed it fully, followed it consistently, or  assembled it in a coherent system before Rothbard. It was Rothbard who  made a sweeping and systematic case for private-property anarchism,  based on economics, philosophy, and history.

 Very few people have either the courage or the originality to break  radically with existing systems of thought, much less to develop their  own. Courage and originality were Rothbard’s trademarks. Had Murray been  content to repeat the state’s propaganda, a man of his genius could  have taught wherever he wanted, and enjoyed the prestige and privilege  of the top tier of academia. He refused to do it. Instead, he labored,  often thanklessly, to bequeath to us an elegant – and massive – system  of scholarship from which we can learn and to which we can add as we  press forward toward Murray’s lifelong goal of a truly free society.

 We can be thankful that we live in an age in which the work of  Rothbard – despised, resisted, and suppressed by the purveyors of  official opinion – is readily available.



And  here is another side to the libertarian paradox: although our  philosophy derives from a single proposition, the nonaggression  principle, the development of and elaborations on that principle provide  an inexhaustible source of intellectual pleasure, as we explore how the  interlocking features of human society can work together harmoniously  in the absence of coercion.

 The intellectual class has its task and we have ours. Theirs is to  confuse and obscure; ours is to clarify and explain. Theirs is to darken  the mind; ours is to enlighten it. Theirs is to subject man to the  domination of those who violate the moral principles all civilized  people claim to cherish. Ours is to emancipate him from that subjection.

 I will leave you with the final libertarian paradox, which is this:  while on the one hand we are teachers of the philosophy of freedom, as  long as we love and cherish these great ideas, we shall always be  students as well. Continue to explore and discover, to read and to  write, to discuss and to persuade. Violence is the tool of the state.  Knowledge and the mind are the tools of free people.







                                                                                  Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail], former editorial assistant to Ludwig von Mises and congressional chief of staff to Ron Paul, is founder and chairman of the Mises Institute, executor for the estate of Murray N. Rothbard, and editor of LewRockwell.com. See his books.

                             Copyright © 2013 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

                             Previous article by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.: Against Neocon Dictatorship


*Note*: Rockwell and Rothbard  define State as a coercive monopoly on the use of force over certain  geography that includes multiple private properties. Under that definition it is true that State is inherently immoral and unjust.

I  define State as public property and its government. A minor problem I  find with Rothbard, who I believe is at least 97% correct on true  principles of Liberty, is that he either ignores the existence of public  property, or believes that it has no right to exist. That is wrong. It  both exists and has a right to exist. (Public property is property to  which all have equal claim of ownership). And if it exists, then it can  and should be governed according to justice. And that is what a proper  State is: public property and its government. Other than that (and one  other small error I found on intellectual property), I found Rothbard to  be totally correct. The man is BRILLIANT!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Liberty and Safety*

                                                                                                           By Andrew P. Napolitano

                                                                                    July 24, 2013




                                                       When Edward Snowden revealed that the federal government, in  direct defiance of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution, was  unlawfully and unconstitutionally spying on all Americans who use  telephones, text messaging or emails to communicate with other persons,  he opened a Pandora’s box of allegations and recriminations. The  allegations he unleashed are that Americans have a government that  assaults our personal freedoms, operates in secrecy and violates the  Constitution and the values upon which it is based. The recriminations  are that safety is a greater good than liberty, and Snowden interfered  with the ability of the government to keep us safe by exposing its  secrets, and so he should be silenced and punished.

 In the course of this debate, you have heard the argument that we all  need to sacrifice some liberty in order to assure our safety, that  liberty and safety are in equipoise, and when they clash, it is the  government that should balance one against the other and decide which  shall prevail. This is, of course, an argument the government loves, as  it presupposes that the government has the moral, legal and  constitutional power to make this satanic bargain.

 It doesn’t.

 Roman emperors and tribal chieftains, King George III and French  revolutionaries, 20th-century dictators and 21st-century American  presidents all have asserted that their first job is to keep us safe,  and in doing so, they are somehow entitled to take away our liberties,  whether it be the speech they hate or fear, the privacy they  capriciously love to invade or the private property and wealth they  salaciously covet.

 This argument is antithetical to the principal value upon which  America was founded. That value is simply that individuals — created in  the image and likeness of God and thus possessed of the freedoms that He  enjoys and has shared with us — are the creators of the government. A  sovereign is the source of his own powers. The government is not  sovereign. All the freedom that individuals possess, we have received as  a gift from God, who is the only true sovereign. All of the powers the  government possesses it has received from us, from our personal  repositories of freedom.

 Thomas Jefferson recognized this when he wrote in the Declaration of  Independence that our rights are inalienable — they cannot be separated  from us — because we have been endowed with them by our Creator. James  Madison, who wrote the Constitution, observed that in the history of the  world, when freedom has been won, it happened because those in power  begrudgingly permitted freedom as a condition of staying in power or  even staying alive.

 But not in America.

 In America, the opposite occurred when free people voluntarily  permitted the government to exercise the limited power needed to protect  freedom. That is known as “the consent of the governed.” To Jefferson  and Madison, a government lacking that consent is illegitimate.

 So, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence and the  principal author of the Constitution were of one mind on this: All  persons are by nature free, and to preserve those freedoms, they have  consented to a government. That was the government they gave us — not  power permitting liberty, but liberty permitting power — and the  instrument of that permission was the Constitution.

 The Constitution was created by free men to define and limit the  government so it can defend but not threaten our freedoms. Since only  free persons can consent to a government, the government cannot lawfully  exist without those consents. Here is where the modern-day tyrants and  big-government apologists have succeeded in confusing well-meaning  people. They have elevated safety — which is a goal of government — to  the level of freedom  — which created the government. This common and pedestrian argument  makes the creature — safety — equal its creator — freedom. That is a  metaphysical impossibility because it presumes that the good to be  purchased is somehow equal to the free choices of the purchaser.

 What does this mean?

 It means that when politicians say that liberty and safety need to be  balanced against each other, they are philosophically, historically and  constitutionally wrong. Liberty is the default position. Liberty is the  essence of our natural state. Liberty cannot possibly be equal to a  good we have instructed the government to obtain.

 What is the only moral relationship between liberty and safety?

_It cannot be balance, because liberty and safety are not equals,  as one created the other. It can only be bias a continual predisposition  toward and preference for freedom._

 Every conceivable clash between the free choices of persons and their  instructions to their government to safeguard freedom must favor the  free choices because freedom is inalienable. Just as I cannot authorize  the  government to take away your freedom any more than you can authorize it  to take away mine, a majority of all but one cannot authorize the  government in a free society to take freedom from that one individual.  So if somehow freedom and safety do clash, it is the free choice of each  person to resolve that clash for himself, and not one the government  can morally make.

 The government will always make choices that favor its power because,  as Ludwig von Mises reminded us, government is essentially the negation  of freedom. If anyone truly believes that by silencing him or  monitoring him or taxing him the government keeps him safe, and that  those are the least restrictive means by which to do so, let that person  surrender his own speech and privacy and wealth. The rest of us will  retain ours and provide for our own safety.

 The reasons we have consented to limited government are to preserve  the freedom to pursue happiness, the freedom to be different and the  freedom to be left alone. None of these freedoms can exist if we are  subservient to the government in the name of safety or anything else.





                                                                                                               Andrew P. Napolitano [send                him mail],  a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior  judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven  books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Theodore                and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional                Freedom. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit creators.com. 



 Copyright © 2013 Andrew P. Napolitano

                             Previous article by Andrew P. Napolitano: The Disgraceful 'Civil Rights' Attack on George Zimmerman. 


*My summary*: 

A "balance" between Liberty and security is a lie because Liberty *supersedes* security,  because Liberty created security in the first place. Therefore the only  security that has ANY just right to exist is that which preserves  liberty, and you cannot preserve liberty by destroying it, and  destroying Liberty is unjust. Now "security" that destroys Liberty and  therefore Justice, is no security at all, but is a lie, tyranny,  usurpation, evil, injustice and plunder, masquerading as "security." It  is a mafia style protection racket: "We will destroy your liberty now,  so no one may destroy it later." Which, of course, is a fraud!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Leading From Behind By Patrick J. Buchanan*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*WOW!*


*How to Fix Detroit in 6 Easy Steps*


FREEMANSPERSPECTIVE · Jul 23rd, 2013 


Abandoned automobile factory in Detroit.


 The news is full of stories of Detroit, and understandably so. Its an unmitigated disaster. But I know how to fix it.

 Seriously, I do!

 I have a plan that would cost the state of Michigan nothing  not a  cent. It wouldnt cost DC anything either, and it would turn Detroit  into the most thriving city in North America. As a bonus, it would give  the remaining property owners in Detroit a financial windfall.

 Heres the plan:

The federal government (in writing) forbears taxes,  regulations, laws, and impositions for a hundred years to the area of  the current municipality of Detroit and to all persons and commercial  entities resident there.The government of the state of Michigan forbears taxes, regulations,  laws, and impositions for a hundred years to the area of the current  municipality of Detroit and to all persons and commercial entities resident there.All municipal government agencies within Detroit are disbanded.All state and federal offices within the city of Detroit are disbanded.The federal government  guarantees that entry and exit to/from Detroit will remain unchanged  from the current conditions, and that no obligations will be placed upon  residents of Detroit in any other place.Federal and state governments immediately cease all payments to  residents of Detroit. (They may resume payment to those persons if and  when they are no longer resident in Detroit.) 

 The final legal document would be more complex than this, but those are all  the main points necessary.

 What this plan does is to return Detroit to its natural state  to  the way it was managed when the first settlers arrived. (In other words,  not managed at all.)

 And think of the money that will be saved by Michigan and the feds. Billions per year.

*And Then*

 And then we have a free for all and a good one. Think of Hong Kong, but easy to get to.

 Businesses would begin to relocate the next morning. Hundreds of  them, thousands of them. The people who still owned and lived in their  homes would be offered lots of money for their properties.

Libertarians and conservatives, disgusted by the gang in DC, would load up and drive to Detroit. Productive former residents  would return. Thousands of opportunity-seekers, anarcho-capitalists,  and pot-smoking hippies would be gathering their money and buying  property.

 Detroit would, within only a few years, become the coolest city on the planet  by FAR.

*But, But*

 But there wont be any police!

 There wont be any courts!

 It will be non-stop murder, death, and mayhem!

_You wanna bet? Do ya?_ (And you dont think Detroit has non-stop mayhem already?)

 The people who come to Detroit would be coming to escape from their  chains and to be productive. These are precisely the kinds of people who  clean up a town. And with no taxes to pay for a hundred years, theyd  have plenty of extra money to spend on whatever services (security or  otherwise) that they wanted.

*The Truth*

 The truth, of course, is that the state and fed guvs will never agree to a plan like this one, for a single reason:

_Because they fear it would succeed_.

 Theyll let every last person in Detroit rot before theyll let a group of producers live free of their chains.

 Detroit returned to its natural state would expose the great lie of the government game  that we cant survive without them.

 Paul Rosenberg

FreemansPerspective.com

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Heres the plan: The federal government (in writing) forbears taxes,   regulations, laws, and impositions for a hundred years to the area of   the current municipality of Detroit and to all persons and commercial   entities resident there.The government of the state of  Michigan forbears taxes, regulations,  laws, and impositions for a  hundred years to the area of the current  municipality of Detroit and to  all persons and commercial entities resident there.All municipal government agencies within Detroit are disbanded.All state and federal offices within the city of Detroit are disbanded.The federal government   guarantees that entry and exit to/from Detroit will remain unchanged   from the current conditions, and that no obligations will be placed upon   residents of Detroit in any other place.Federal and state  governments immediately cease all payments to  residents of Detroit.  (They may resume payment to those persons if and  when they are no  longer resident in Detroit.) 
> 
>  The final legal document would be more complex than this, but those are all  the main points necessary.





> You  could do this on a dry bit of the roughest country on earth, even  inhospitable and costly to survive in mountain tops or desert areas with  no surface or ground water, and it would become the richest place on  earth.


Amen! Would to GOD that the people would comprehend this simple and profound truth!

The  reason for this to work is the Eternal Law of Justice that is being violated by public taxation and public regulation of PRIVATE property.  Remove this injustice and you have prosperity springing out of the  ground! 

JUSTICE is an eternal law. No society can survive or  prosper while violating it; and no society can help but prosper if they  obey it!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

State Magnifies Crime, Murder, Plunder, Social disorder and Destruction far beyond any Anarchy

Listen to the Podcast here

or watch starting at 2:46



State  here is defined as a forced monopoly on violence over a geographical  area, which monopoly is supported by aggressive violence of legalized  plunder/extortion a.k.a. taxation. Defined this way state, by  definition, is evil and unjust because: 
a) all aggressive violence, by definition, is evil and unjust, and 
b) no such monopoly can be achieved without aggressive violence, (which is, by definition, evil and unjust). 
There  is another definition of a just state, which is public property and its  proper government. (See Top post of Fundamental Principles of Liberty  for details).

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Why Speak of DEFENSIVE Violence?*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Replacing the state. 
How Court Systems would work.
 Judge.me ep#24*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Huffington Post:
The Economic Philosopher's Outcast: 
Mises*



*Steve Mariotti*

Founder, Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship
Posted: 08/21/2013  4:23 pm                                                                                  
Follow  Financial Crisis, Economy, Ludwig Von Mises, Socialism,                                                                                                                   Business News 


                                           SS Gestapo Chief Henrich Himmler's agents sped through the  streets of Vienna on an early morning, March 11, 1938, to capture and  eliminate Nazi Germany's enemies. One of his prime targets lived in a  middle-class Jewish neighborhood at 28 Weihoffen St. Apartment 7. Ludwig  Von Mises, a 58-year-old political philosopher, was Jewish and  defenseless. Hitler deemed this man an enemy of the state and one of the  top targets to be seized during the Nazi takeover of Austria. Fleeing  from the city the day before, Professor Mises narrowly escaped to Switzerland.

  Despite attempts on his life, Mises born in 1881, spent the 92 years  of his life fighting totalitarianism that fed the actions of the Nazis,  Marxist Socialists and other fringe groups. He believed that any kind of  authoritarian government infringed on people's rights to worship, free  speech, the right to travel and own businesses, all of which were banned  by the National Socialist and Bolsheviks.

  With cities like Detroit ($18.5 billion in debt), Philadelphia ($8 billion in debt), and Sacramento ($1.9 billion in debt)  why are Mises disciple's voices silenced at major economic councils in  Washington and throughout the country? Robert Reich, former Clinton  Administration Secretary of Labor, singles out the huge economic and  political discrepancies between the Tea Party and the Occupier movements  sparked by the Wall St. government bailouts. In a recent series of  articles in the Huffington Post, Reich cites  the high correlation "between inequality and political divisiveness."   He correctly points out that America was never so divided regarding  income, wealth and power since the 1920s. What Reich fails to address  are the conditions that fed the growth of extremist movements, such as  the Nazis and Communists, which later imploded as a result of the  economic policies of debt and printing money.

  Mises, the modern day creator of the Classical Liberal movement  (today also called libertarianism) destroyed the intellectual arguments  of socialism by proving that it was impossible to allocate scarce  resources effectively without private property and free-market prices.  He showed that the more the state limited economic incentives to  individuals, the greater the harm to low-income people and the general  population. Centralized planning, something that was characteristic of  all three types of socialism: the Nazis, the Fascists and the  Communists, led to the ruin of an economy, and resulted in more and more  tyranny and the rise of the totalitarian state. What economists failed  to understand was that massive government spending and a authoritative  centralized government would bring economic ruin to Germany, Russia, and  many other countries.

   Sooner or later government debt has to be repaid out of tax  receipts. Our current revenue base is not strong enough to sustain a  viable repayment program to service the debt. Today we create money --  billions a month -- to meet the debt repayments. As new money floods the  market its value declines. The country experiences inflation destroying  the savings, and pensions of its citizens. Similar conditions led to  the downfall of the Weimar Republic. The rampant inflation of the 1920s  in Germany was a contributing factor to the rise of Hitler, Himmler and  the centralized planning of the ultimate socialist organization the  National Socialist Workers Party (Nazis).

  The recent bankruptcy of the City of Detroit is a harbinger of  serious problems for the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market. Mises  witnessed firsthand rampant government spending, overwhelming debt, and  inflation in both Germany and Austria. The results of similar economic  policies are threatening major urban centers around our country.

  Author of dozens of seminal books and hundreds of articles, Mises  works were studied by the Nazis in the 1930s as part of their assault on  pro-democracy individuals, particularly those who were Jewish. Mises'  unparalleled contributions to economic theory, which upheld a free  market over one controlled by a coercive government, later fostered a  world-wide movement. His books were significant for their discussions of  money, credit, Socialism, central planning, and human action. 

  Mises' most remarkable argument for the free market came in his 1922  piece, "Socialism: an Economic and Sociological Analysis." In a  Socialist state, there were no prices, essential to allocating  resources.  Prices signaled information simultaneously to both  entrepreneurs and consumers.  The centralized decision making over both  production and consumption is impossible because of the complexity of an  economy composed of hundreds millions of people and trillions of  decisions every second. This insight gave Mises a greater appreciation  of the value of a market economy, one that allows for the change of  prices based on changes in supply and demand. The anticipation of future  consumer demand impacts the output of entrepreneurs intent on meeting  that demand in the future and thereby make a profit. This defense of  limited government and the rights of all citizens made Professor Mises a  threat to the ultimate central planners and explains why the Gestapo  had sped to his home to arrest him.

   Mises, leader of the Austrian School of Economics, mentored the  great Nobel Prize winner Friederich Hayek, who I studied with in 1979 at  the Institute for Humane Studies.  They influenced noted economists such as Israel Kirzner, Robert Higgs,  Lawrence White, Peter G. Klein, Roger Garrison, Edward Stringham, Peter  Boettke, and the novelist Ayn Rand who later made popular classical  liberal economic policies.

   Mises disciples today see the threat of government intervention in  our nation's economy as seriously undermining economic productivity and  self-starting growth. According to Peter Klein, a disciple of Mises:People are increasingly disenchanted with mainstream  Keynesian views of the economy. Keynesians were blindsided by the  housing bubble and the financial crisis. Their response was to pump the  economy with cheap credit and huge government spending which has only  prolonged the agony. The Austrians led by Mises offer a compelling  alternative explanation in which booms and busts are caused by  central-bank manipulation of interest rates in vain attempts to  stimulate or stabilize the economy.
Klein further points out that monetary central planning, combined  with misguided housing regulation led the economy to produce the wrong  kinds of goods and services. For Klein recovery means getting the  government out of the way and letting entrepreneurs fix the mistakes.

  According to Paul Wisenthal, the country's leading journalist  authority on entrepreneurship education for young people, America was  built on new small business development, led by its forefathers who were  primarly entrepreneurs. He believes the U.S. may continue to diminish  small business incentives as government expands on taxpayer dollars that  don't exist.

  Anyone wishing to learn more about this fascinating political  philosopher should visit Hillsdale College, which houses the personal  library and works of Ludwig Von Mises in Hillsdale, Michigan or the Mises Institute  located in Auburn, Alabama. The world's top professional philosophers,  economists, students and political scientists attend annual conferences  to debate and discuss these ideas; true outcasts in a society haunted by  the idea of large  coercive regulation and antiquated tax codes on the  world's population.




The author in the archives of the Mises Institute.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I could simplify it even further, making calculations and legislation simpler.

All concepts, all virtues, all rights, justice, Liberty, good and evil itself are derived from the concept of *Private Property*, and they do not exist, and are completely meaningless without it. Therefore:


*Good* = Private Property.*Evil* = violation of private property.*Justice* = non-violation of private property (with the implied right to use equal force to offset/neutralize the aggression of another against one's property)*Liberty* = the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.
How's  that for starters? Property makes all this simple. And without Private  Property, all these things are COMPLETELY meaningless. The Law of God  himself is MEANINGLESS without Private Property. That is the Foundation  of all Liberty and of all Justice.

----------


## torchbearer

> I could simplify it even further, making calculations and legislation simpler.
> 
> All concepts, all virtues, all rights, justice, Liberty, good and evil itself are derived from the concept of *Private Property*, and they do not exist, and are completely meaningless without it. Therefore:
> 
> 
> *Good* = Private Property.*Evil* = violation of private property.*Justice* = non-violation of private property (with the implied right to use equal force to offset/neutralize the aggression of another against one's property)*Liberty* = the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another. 
> How's  that for starters? Property makes all this simple. And without Private  Property, all these things are COMPLETELY meaningless. The Law of God  himself is MEANINGLESS without Private Property. That is the Foundation  of all Liberty and of all Justice.


+1

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Man Pays Tax Bill With Thousands of Single Dollar Bills in Protest 

*Infowars.com*

September 6, 2013

 Robert Fernandes, an IT manager and father of three, moved to Forks  Township, Penn. last year seeking lower property taxes so he could  afford a larger home which could also house his elderly parents.




  His wife home-schools their children, ages 7, 4, and 1.  

 He is not interested in being forced to pay $7,143 in taxes to fund public schools his children do not even attend.

 We dont even use the public system, yet I am being forced to pay all this money into a public school system, he told Leigh Valley Live. I dont think thats really either fair or just or even ethical.

 It would be the equivalent if McDonalds were to force vegetarians to pay for their cheeseburgers.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I can elaborate a little bit further. 

Rights, as all true concepts, are derived from the fundamental principle  of Private Property. 

*A right is nothing more than ownership of  property. 
*
You have a right to free speech because you own your body. As  long as  you do not violate the property of another, you have the right  to do  with your own property whatever you please, because you own it,  etc.. 

So, *all rights are statements of ownership of property*. 

You have a  right to travel on a public road because you have an equal  claim of  ownership in it, etc.; but you have no right to travel upon  the property  of your neighbor without his permission, because it is not  yours.  

Thus, all rights are derived from property, and are completely meaningless without it. 

To summarize: *

Rights are derived from OWNERSHIP of property. 
You have rights only over the things you OWN, and nothing else.*

Hope this helps.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

In deference to the preceding, I added a passage to the First Principle section in the top post:




> *A right is nothing more or less than ownership of property.* 
> And natural, unalienable rights are the rights/ownership everyone are  born with. These rights/ownership come to you by the fact of your  existence, or in other words, they come from God.
> 
> *Example:* If you have a _right_ to live, it is because you own your body. The same is true for your _right_  to speak, to move, to think. Now, do you have the right to move across  the property of your neighbor? No. So your rights are intrinsically  connected to the concept of ownership of property. 
> 
> *All rights are statements of ownership of property.* 
> 
> You have a right to travel on a public road because you have an equal  claim of ownership in it, etc. Without ownership there are no rights,  because rights are nothing more or less than ownership of property. 
> 
> *Therefore, you have rights only over the things you OWN, and nothing else.*

----------


## Natural Citizen

> *Example:* If you have a _right_ to live, it is because you own your body.


So then if I don't own my body then I don't have a right to live? Who's who?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> So then if I don't own my body then I don't have a right to live? Who's who?


Exactly my point. It is because you do own your body that you have a right to live, to speak, to move, to think, to act, etc. as long as you do not violate the property of others.

----------


## osan

> I could simplify it even further, making calculations and legislation simpler.
> 
> _All concepts, all virtues_, all rights, justice, Liberty, good and evil itself are derived from the concept of *Private Property*, and they do not exist, and are completely meaningless without it.


Went too far with the bolded.  Certainly all concepts are not derived from the idea of private property.  The principles of quantum physics have nothing to do with private property, nor those of kinematics, thermodynamics, and a nearly endless list of others.  Private property's functional domain over which it applies is nothing more or less than that of proper human relations.  

Furthermore, your private property argument fails miserably if perchance the assumption that you own your life is proven false or is otherwise rejected.  The entire issue of rights turns on the question of equality in ownership and ownership can run one of but a few ways


I own my life exclusivelyI do not own my life exclusivelyI do not own my life at allSomeone else owns my life exclusivelySomeone else partly owns my lifeNobody owns my life.Nobody owns anybody's life.

Points 2, 4, and 5 are readily dismissed and I trust a proof is not needed for the purposes of this conversation.  If the reason for this is unclear, just start asking the questions that arise naturally if one presumes either of them as true.  For example, to believe that you own your life exclusively but that your brother Harry does not own his equally so opens the door wide to a virtually endless list of questions relating to why one does and another does not.  These questions by their very fabric have no credible answers because any answer given is constrained to arbitrariness.

In the wake of dismissing 2, 4, and 5, we are left only with what remains and their truth value is meaningless to the question of liberty.  Points 1,3, 6, and 7 however, may not be so straightforward to accept or reject for truth in terms of choosing between them, but I submit that their truth value is irrelevant to the question of human freedom.    What _is_ relevant, however, is the equal application of the presumption of whichever premise one chooses.  Therefore, if I accept as true point 1, I am obliged to accept it as true for all persons because if I fail to do so, I do not in fact accept the point as being true, but rather in some oblique manner subscribe to 2, 4, 5, of some combination of those, all of which are equally absurd.  This is readily demonstrated through the use of symbolic logic and truth tables, which I will mercifully spare you from subjection.

Points 3, 6, and 7 are similarly constricted in terms of _how_ they must be accepted, which is to say that they either apply to all or they apply to none for precisely the same reasons as with point 1. If I do not own my life, nobody owns theirs either.  

We basically are faced with two credible possibilities if equality of application is assumed: either everyone is the sole owner of his own life or nobody is the owner of anyone's life and please forgive me if I decline to include the formal intermediary steps.  In either case, the argument for liberty is made through either a positive presumption of a right or a negative one.  The praxeological implications are precisely the same.

*Positive property case:* If I exclusively own my life and the equality of claim applies, then all others own theirs similarly.  It follows that I hold no claim on the lives of any other persons nor they upon mine.  Therefore, all are free to act as they please so long as they refrain from doing so such that the practical result is indistinguishable from that issuing from one laying some manner and degree of claim upon the life of another.  Liberty as a right is established.

*Negative property case:* If I hold no claim of positive ownership upon my life and the equality of claim applies, then the same applies to all and it may then be inferred via the rejection of points 2, 4, and 5 that no ownership claims exist upon the lives of anyone.  Therefore, all are free to act as they please so long as they refrain from doing so such that the practical result is indistinguishable from that issuing from one laying some manner and degree of claim upon the life of another.  Liberty as a right is established.

The point in all this is that property may or may not be at issue in the derivation of fundamental liberty.  It is equally valid to claim that a life cannot be owned and that any ownership claim, even when one claims self-ownership, is not provable.  Therefore, the ownership question must be rendered irrelevant, which I have done here.  All that is required to establish liberty as a rightful claim is the equality of just claims to life.  Your private property argument is nice, but it rests upon shaky ground in the senses demonstrated here.  My fundamental postulate does not depend upon how ownership of life predicates, whereas yours does.  Mine depends solely upon the notion of equal application of either sole ownership or universal non-ownership.  By this virtue is it far and away more difficult to assault, once again due to the endless raft of questions that arise whose answers are by necessity arbitrary.

Therefore, equality in the sense here employed is the _exclusivity operator_ in the algebra of proper human relations and the result of its application is the tautological implication of liberty.  Equality as a constraint of _universal application_ to the question of whether one owns his life leads irrevocably to the same result regardless of the truth value of premises 1, 3, 6, or 7.




> Therefore:
> 
> 
> *Good* = Private Property.*Evil* = violation of private property.*Justice* = non-violation of private property (with the implied right to use equal force to offset/neutralize the aggression of another against one's property)*Liberty* = the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.
> How's  that for starters? Property makes all this simple. And without Private  Property, all these things are COMPLETELY meaningless. The Law of God  himself is MEANINGLESS without Private Property. That is the Foundation  of all Liberty and of all Justice.


And the moment one rejects your notion of private property, your argument falls apart because of the equally valid presumption of life as nobody's property, but rather as something that simply _is_.  Life is a fact - it exists, but cannot be owned - an argument that can be as strongly put forth as yours that each man is the sole owner of his life.  Ownership is thereby rendered a shaky predicate of rights whereas equality is as solid as anything may be reasonably expected.

Just for the sake of completeness, one could also reject the Cardinal Postulate of equality of claim, but as mentioned above, it opens them wide to broad and unpleasant cross-examinations that even a fifth grader could mount and to which no satisfactory answer would be forthcoming.

QED.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> "*All concepts, all virtues*, all rights, justice, Liberty, good and evil itself are derived from the concept of Private Property, and they do not exist, and are completely meaningless without it."
> 
> Went too far with the bolded. Certainly all concepts are not derived from the idea of private property. The principles of quantum physics have nothing to do with private property, nor those of kinematics, thermodynamics, and a nearly endless list of others. Private property's functional domain over which it applies is nothing more or less than that of proper human relations.


Exactly. For simplicity sake I said what I said, but, of course it should be understood in it's proper scope: "All concepts, all virtues, IN THE SCOPE OF HUMAN RELATIONS, are derived from the concept of Private Property, and they do not exist, and are completely meaningless without it."

The scope is not always specified, when it is obvious. Otherwise, communication becomes too cumbersome.

Example: "I am going to get some milk."
"O! Are you going to fly to Tibet and milk a goat?"
"No, I'm just going to the store at the corner."
The scope is implied because it is obvious from the context.




> Furthermore, your private property argument fails miserably if perchance the assumption that you own your life is proven false or is otherwise rejected.


My definition of Private Property ("i.e. all the things you own"), includes you, your body, your mind, the fruits of your labor, your ability to act, to speak, etc. So your life is clearly included in your private property. And since my definition is such as it is, your statement is equivalent to saying: 

"Your private property argument fails miserably if perchance the assumption that Private Property exists is rejected."

Well, If the existence of Private Property is rejected, then the one rejecting it is denying himself, and contradicting himself, because his very stating of his opinion implies his self-ownership, and that he HAS an opinion. Otherwise he has no opinion. In fact, he quite literally has nothing, as per his own assertion. You see the problem here? It is an irreconcilable self-contradiction, i.e. falsehood. Hence, if you have an opinion you must accept existence of Private Property as defined here, otherwise you are contradicting yourself! See that?





> The entire issue of rights turns on the question of equality in ownership and ownership can run one of but a few ways
> 
>     I own my life exclusively
>     I do not own my life exclusively
>     I do not own my life at all
>     Someone else owns my life exclusively
>     Someone else partly owns my life
>     Nobody owns my life.
>     Nobody owns anybody's life.
> ...


Brilliant! I agree.




> The point in all this is that property may or may not be at issue in the derivation of fundamental liberty. It is equally valid to claim that a life cannot be owned and that any ownership claim, even when one claims self-ownership, is not provable. Therefore, the ownership question must be rendered irrelevant, which I have done here. All that is required to establish liberty as a rightful claim is the equality of *just claims to* life.


But my friend! "Just claims to" is just another way of saying "OWNERSHIP!" These terms are exactly equivalent! It is EXACTLY the same. In fact, *ownership* is defined as a "just claim to," or as a "range of just control over" something. It is exactly the same! I simply use one word instead of three or five words! Do you see it?

Besides, my definition of Liberty is much simpler and clearer: 

*Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.*

How simple does it get?

This is why I like it!

 Thanks for your thoughtful post!

----------


## Natural Citizen

> Exactly my point. It is because you do own your body that you have a right to live, to speak, to move, to think, to act, etc. as long as you do not violate the property of others.


OK. So...how do I not violate these property rights of others if they own my body? Do I pay them a royalty or something to be able to continue living and to have all of the natural rights thereof?

Explain to me your logic regarding this growth versus survival skit. I'm not following you on the notion of citizenship itself being premised upon property rights.

----------


## muzzled dogg

your constitutional republic, even with the amendments you propose, violates your fundamental principles of liberty

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> OK. So...how do I not violate these property rights of others if they own my body?


Who said they do? Are you a slave? That makes no sense!




> Do I pay them a royalty or something to be able to continue living and to have all of the natural rights thereof?


You own you. That is the birthright you are born with. It comes from God. Get it? 
No one has the right to take that away from you. That's why it is called an inalienable right. 




> Explain to me your logic regarding this growth versus survival skit.


I don't know what you are talking about. Elaborate please.




> I'm not following you on the notion of citizenship itself being premised upon property rights.


If I understand you correctly, then you are a citizen of say US if you own property in US or were admitted in US.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> your constitutional republic, even with the amendments you propose, violates your fundamental principles of liberty


Please show how. 
I designed the 5 amendments to fix the most glaring holes in the Constitution. Did I miss something? Thanks.

----------


## muzzled dogg

are you $#@!ing serious? i dont want to participate in your experimental social contract.  do you propose to use force against me?

do not try to enslave me into your constitutional militia that is so precious that it is NECESSARY to the security of your experiment

do not quarter any soldiers in my house no matter what some bureaucrats tell me what time it is, wartime or w/e

don't tell me that some politician has declared that it's reasonable to search me etc etc etc etc

i never signed your constitution.  why would anyone?  it violates the fundamental principles of liberty, as i see them and as you have defined

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> are you $#@!ing serious? i dont want to participate in your experimental social contract.  do you propose to use force against me?


You speak many words, but you didn't seem to notice what I have said. All the amendments I proposed REMOVE aggressive violence of the state, and declare it illegal. 




> do not try to enslave me into your constitutional militia that is so precious that it is NECESSARY to the security of your experiment
> 
> do not quarter any soldiers in my house no matter what some bureaucrats tell me what time it is, wartime or w/e
> 
> don't tell me that some politician has declared that it's reasonable to search me etc etc etc etc
> 
> i never signed your constitution.  why would anyone?  it violates the fundamental principles of liberty, as i see them and as you have defined


You are right. What you missed, however, is that the amendments that I proposed render ALL these parts of the constitution MOOT. My 5 amendments, including The Fundamental Law Constitutional Amendment, cancel any and ALL impositions upon the Private Property of Anyone, and render them ILLEGAL.

These 5 amendments remove the poison from the US Constitution, subjecting it to the Universal Laws of Justice. So my challenge to you is to point out any injustice in the US Constitution that is not canceled by one of the 5 amendments I proposed. Remember a latter amendment takes precedence over previous, original text of the faulty Constitution.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Minarchism: Great Start, Horrible Finish
Watch the VIDEO here.
by Larken Rose
 
Larken speaks the truth.

His position is in harmony with the Fundamental Principles of Liberty.

He  defines his terms slightly differently than I do, but if the  definitions are understood as intended, then you can see that he is  right.

So let's look at his definitions vs. mine.

*Larken: Government is a monopoly of law enforcement that claims the right to tax (violate) Private Property of others.*

Defined  THIS way, government, BY DEFINITION, is EVIL and has no logical or  moral right to exist as it blatantly violates the very heart of Liberty  and Justice, which is the Non-Aggression principle. Larken is perfectly correct. 

*Me: Government  is ownership of property. Therefore, the only proper role of Public  representative government is to manage Public property, according to  justice, so as to protect each man's equal claim of ownership in Public  Property.*

Defined THIS way, government has a  perfectly just right to exist, as long as it stays within its proper  role and does not violate the property of anyone.

*Larken: State is the same as his definition of government over a geographical area.* 

Larken is right. Defined THIS way, state is EVIL by definition, and has no right to exist. I agree.

*Me: State is Public property and its proper government (as I defined government earlier).*

Defined THIS way, state has a perfectly just right to exist, as long as:
a) majority of people agree on its operations, and 
b) the property of no individual is violated in the process. 
*Larken: Anarchy is a voluntary society guided by the non-Aggression principle.*

This is one of the valid definitions in the dictionary, and is the very definition of Justice and Liberty.

Unfortunately there are other definitions of the word "Anarchy" which are diametrically OPPOSITE to the first one.

*World's prevalent definition: Anarchy is chaos, and aggressive violence.*

As  I said it is the EXACT opposite of the first, also valid definition.  Hence, the usual trick of mixing meaning and painting Libertarians as  the opposite of what they actually are.

But this is not new in  English. Take the word "cleave" it has at least two meanings which are  the logical OPPOSITES of each-other. 


My principle point of  difference with Larken is that he seems to avoid the fact of existence  of Public property, i.e. property, to which all people have equal claim  of ownership. You can deny a just existence of public property no more  than you can deny the just existence of joint ownership of some  property. And if Public property does exist (as it undeniably does in  many cases), then it can and should be managed by the voice of the  majority of its users, provided that:
a) every one is treated equally, since all have equal claim of ownership upon it, and 
b) the property of no one is violated in the process. 
Such  public representative government is just, because it does not violate  the Non-Aggression principle, which is the principle of JUSTICE and  Liberty. And that is the proper role of government.

Other than that, I agree with Larken completely (as far as I am aware).

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Another great video from Larken!

*The Great Escalators*

Forced monopoly on "law-enforcement" is blatantly immoral and unjust.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Larken Rose- The Government Con Game*



 
The Government Con Game is the lie that AGGRESSIVE VIOLENCE is justified (as long as it is done by "government"). That is the big lie. Aggressive Violence is ALWAYS evil, because it is the very DEFINITION of EVIL, and the definition of INJUSTICE. 

*Larken Rose- The Government Con Game - part 2*



*Larken Rose- The Government Con Game - part 3*

*Larken Rose- The Government Con Game - part 4*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Larken Asks some Direct Questions
that will make you shiver (it did me).




Anyone who votes for Public taxation of Private property is committing a crime (knowingly or unknowingly). 

Outside The Cage - Larken Rose - Episode 3 (2/3) 

Outside The Cage - Larken Rose - Episode 3 (3/3)

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Lew Rockwell: We’re Winning*

2013, Lew tells Alex Jones, is the year that the world woke up.
They are talking False Flags, vs. Liberty.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*A Few Modest Proposals To Rid our Inner Cities of Gang-Related Violence: The Libertarian Solution*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What E’er Thou Art, Act Well Thy Part*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What Must Be Done*



 
*Book Description*

Publication Date:         *July 10, 2013* 


In this concise and ever-timely essay on how anarcho-capitalists should  engage the modern state, Hans-Hermann Hoppe dissects the nature of the  modern democratic state and then suggests strategies for enacting a  bottom-up libertarian revolution in ideology and civil government.

Hoppe begins by examining the nature of the state as a monopolist of defense and the 
provision  and enforcement of law and order. Recent centuries have experienced  almost non-stop and untrammeled growth in the size and scope of the  state, and the trend only accelerated with the expansion of democratic  states. 

How can the libertarian fight back against this trend? 

Hoppe  offers a program for the libertarian revolution that consists of a few  key tenets such as a tireless defense of private property and support  for decentralization of all states. 

Hoppe also outlines a highly  pragmatic strategy of localism, self-sufficiency, passive resistance,  and non-cooperation with central governments that can pave the way for a  new libertarian society. Hoppe tells us that anarcho-capitalists should  largely ignore the great debates at the center of major states, and  instead concentrate on creating small-scale self-sufficient communities  that can be in a position to assert a sort of informal independence from  central government. Overt secession movements are impractical, so Hoppe  suggests instead policies in which localized communities devoted to the  true protection or private property can refuse to cooperate and assist  central governments. Over time, and as the movement grows, the effective  power of central states will decline to the point of becoming  irrelevant. 

First delivered as a speech in 1997, What Must be  Done contains many of the themes and assertion later covered in more  detail in Hoppes 2001 book Democracy: The God that Failed, while  providing a number of insights into how libertarians can reach beyond  the intellectual sphere to bring about a libertarian society.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*How America Can Be Saved 
Hans-Hermann Hoppe    * 

(1996, old but good lecture)

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Tax                Day*

*by                Murray                N. Rothbard
*

*Mises.org* 

_This                unsigned editorial, written by Murray N. Rothbard, appeared in the                April 15, 1969, issue of_ The                Libertarian_ (soon to become_ The Libertarian Forum_).
_ 
April                15, that dread Income Tax day, is around again, and gives us a chance                to ruminate on the nature of taxes and of the government itself.
 The                first great lesson to learn about taxation is that taxation is simply                robbery. No more and no less. For what is "robbery"? Robbery                is the taking of a mans property by the use of violence or the                threat thereof, and therefore without the victims consent. And                yet what else is taxation?
 
Those                who claim that taxation is, in some mystical sense, really "voluntary"                should then have no qualms about getting rid of that vital feature                of the law which says that failure to pay ones taxes is criminal                and subject to appropriate penalty. But does anyone seriously believe                that if the payment of taxation were really made voluntary, say                in the sense of contributing to the American Cancer Society, that                any appreciable revenue would find itself into the coffers of government?                Then why dont we try it as an experiment for a few years, or a                few decades, and find out?


But                if taxation is robbery, then it follows as the night the day that                those people who engage in, and live off, robbery are a gang of                thieves. Hence the government is a group of thieves, and deserves,                morally, aesthetically, and philosophically, to be treated exactly                as a group of less socially respectable ruffians would be treated.

 This                issue of _The Libertarian_  is dedicated to that growing legion                of Americans who are engaging in various forms of that one weapon,                that one act of the public which our rulers fear the most: tax rebellion,                the cutting off the funds by which the host public is sapped to                maintain the parasitic ruling classes. Here is a burning issue which                could appeal to everyone, young and old, poor and wealthy, "working                class" and middle class, regardless of race, color, or creed.                Here is an issue which everyone understands, only too well. Taxation.                


 _Murray                  N. Rothbard__                  (19261995) was dean of the Austrian School, founder of modern                  libertarianism, and chief academic officer of the Mises                  Institute. He was also editor  with Lew Rockwell                   of_ The                  Rothbard-Rockwell Report_,                  and appointed Lew as his executor. See                  Murray's books._

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## helmuth_hubener

Foundation, I have quite enjoyed your train of thought in this thread, the progression of ideas in the posts.  Lots of good articles.  Hoppe is stupendous, isn't he?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Foundation, I have quite enjoyed your train of thought in this thread, the progression of ideas in the posts.  Lots of good articles.  Hoppe is stupendous, isn't he?


Yes, his name is almost "Hope!" Very fitting, because his ideas are the ONLY hope humanity has, because they are (mostly) correct! 

Nice avatar, by the way! I see you are team Edward (Snowden) now!

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## osan

> Wow ok I actually have degrees in physics and philosophy, so I know something about science, AND how it is applied in a philosophical sense, and I know how moral and political theories are formed. But I don't feel the need to strut my qualifications, perhaps because I don't feel like I need to in order to bolster my argument (as it seems your argument requires). 
> 
> _I'm sorry but science does not deal with the concept of value, if you think it does then I doubt you are a well-trained scientist. So I'm guessing you are just being stubborn in this point. In science, everything is value-neutral._ The reason a moral theory can't be scientific, is because it necessitates a premise or "axiom" that something is of intrinsic value. The utilitarians, for instance, believed it was 'happiness.' But to say good=happiness, is not scientific, it is just an observation of internal equivalency. And that's what it always comes down to - any moral theory is aimed at _creating_ a certain conclusion in line with our moral intuition. If we didn't have any moral intuition, there would be no reason to study it, or to think about it. Correct? The reason we create these theories is to satisfy our pre-conceived notions. And if you know anything about science (and I take your word for it that you do), then you would know that this is the exact opposite of the scientific method. In science, we are doing experiments mainly for the purpose of finding observational fault with a theory. That is not how our moral thinking works. Instead, we are always trying to see why we are right. And the problem is that if we didn't already have our conclusion in mind, there would be nothing to investigate. 
> 
> _Political theories are a bit more ambiguous._ But to me it seems like they have to be based on a moral premise. In most Western nations unfortunately they are based on the utilitarian ethic. Although once you have your moral principle in mind, some scientific analysis can be done to establish the best way of implementing it, or which political system will best uphold it, etc etc.


I think you misread my tone - easily done given the nature of this text medium and that I could have done a better job of constructing my sentences for timbre.  Sorry about that.  You make a good point about the different sorts of theories.  I was mindful of the point but either got lazy or simply forgot to address it; mea culpa.

Regarding the bold text, that bit may not be quite correct, but I am not sure of your precise meaning.  Science can certainly "deal" with issues of value - it can be applied to any concern.  Addressing questions of value, even subjective value, is eminently within the envelope of utility for the scientific method.  That proper science addresses questions of such value in a value-neutral fashion, which is another way of saying "unbiased", is a different point and I suspect the one you may have been making.

A moral theory most certainly can be scientific, which speaks to structure and the way in which the theory is proven.  Methinks you are attempting to draw a distinction between objective and subjective worlds and if I read you correctly, would have to assess this as mistaken.  As with a hammer or screw driver, science is but a tool.  There are right ways to use it and wrong, the arbiter of these being the quality of the result any given use provides.  If one properly formulates his moral theory and then makes correct use of the tool to prove it, such a theory can indeed then be referred to as having been proved or disproved scientifically.  The "science" in "scientific theory" does not refer to an inherent quality of the theory itself, but whether it has been validated through the scientific method.

Regarding the red text, usually yes, but they are not of necessity so.   Political theories can be every bit as scientifically rigorous in their formulation and proof as any other.  The fact that they are almost never so indicates to me any of the following possibilities:


difficulties inherent in political theorya specific case where tools of science are not suited to the task at handfundamental incapacity of the theorizerlassitude or other poor habits of the theorizerpoor ethics of the theorizersome other failure of the theorizer

Being a tool, science cannot address all questions with equal effect.  Driving screws with a hammer rarely works out that well.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Great points, osan.




> In science, we are doing experiments mainly for the purpose of finding observational fault with a theory. That is not how our moral thinking works. Instead, we are always trying to see why we are right. And the problem is that if we didn't already have our conclusion in mind, there would be nothing to investigate.


You can apply scientific method even in matters of faith and religion. Jesus said: "by their fruits shall ye know them." That is the essence of scientific method. Also it is impossible to do wrong and to feel right. Happiness is the great fruit of true science and of true religion, (which are one and the same).

In fact, God is the ultimate scientist, and true religion is always in perfect harmony with true (correct) science. This is the reason, one of the names of deity is The God of Truth.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Repudiating the National Debt*
 

*Mises Daily:* Monday, July 09, 2012 by Murray N. Rothbard 
Also by Murray N. Rothbard 

     [Day 16 of Robert Wenzel's 30-day reading list that will lead you to become a knowledgeable libertarian, this article ran in the June 1992 issue of _Chronicles_ (pp. 4952).]



 
 In the spring of 1981, conservative Republicans in the House of  Representatives cried. They cried because, in the first flush of the  Reagan Revolution that was supposed to bring drastic cuts in taxes and  government spending, as well as a balanced budget, they were being asked  by the White House and their own leadership to vote for an increase in  the statutory limit on the federal public debt, which was then scraping  the legal ceiling of $1 trillion. They cried because all of their lives  they had voted against an increase in public debt, and now they were  being asked, by their own party and their own movement, to violate their  lifelong principles. The White House and its leadership assured them  that this breach in principle would be their last: that it was necessary  for one last increase in the debt limit to give President Reagan a  chance to bring about a balanced budget and to begin to reduce the debt.  Many of these Republicans tearfully announced that they were taking  this fateful step because they deeply trusted their president, who would  not let them down.

 Famous last words. In a sense, the Reagan handlers were right: there  were no more tears, no more complaints, because the principles  themselves were quickly forgotten, swept into the dustbin of history.  Deficits and the public debt have piled up mountainously since then, and  few people care, least of all conservative Republicans. Every few  years, the legal limit is raised automatically. By the end of the Reagan  reign the federal debt was $2.6 trillion; now it is $3.5 trillion and  rising rapidly. And this is the rosy side of the picture, because if you  add in "off-budget" loan guarantees and contingencies, the grand total  federal debt is $20 trillion.

 Before the Reagan era, conservatives were clear about how they felt  about deficits and the public debt: a balanced budget was good, and  deficits and the public debt were bad, piled up by free-spending  Keynesians and socialists, who absurdly proclaimed that there was  nothing wrong or onerous about the public debt. In the famous words of  the left-Keynesian apostle of "functional finance," Professor Abba  Lernr, there is nothing wrong with the public debt because "we owe it to  ourselves." In those days, at least, conservatives were astute enough  to realize that it made an enormous amount of difference whether   slicing through the obfuscatory collective nouns  one is a member of  the "we" (the burdened taxpayer) or of the "ourselves" (those living off  the proceeds of taxation).

 Since Reagan, however, intellectual-political life has gone  topsy-turvy. Conservatives and allegedly "free-market" economists have  turned handsprings trying to find new reasons why "deficits don't  matter," why we should all relax and enjoy the process. Perhaps the most  absurd argument of Reaganomists was that we should not worry about  growing public debt because it is being matched on the federal balance  sheet by an expansion of public "assets." Here was a new twist on  free-market macroeconomics: things are going well because the value of  government assets is rising! In that case, why not have the government  nationalize all assets outright? Reaganomists, indeed, came up with  every conceivable argument for the public debt except the phrase of Abba  Lerner, and I am convinced that they did not recycle that phrase  because it would be difficult to sustain with a straight face at a time  when foreign ownership of the national debt is skyrocketing. Even apart  from foreign ownership, it is far more difficult to sustain the Lerner  thesis than before; in the late 1930s, when Lerner enunciated his  thesis, total federal interest payments on the public debt were $1  billion; now they have zoomed to $200 billion, the third-largest item in  the federal budget, after the military and Social Security: the "we"  are looking ever shabbier compared to the "ourselves."

 To think sensibly about the public debt, we first have to go back to  first principles and consider debt in general. Put simply, a credit  transaction occurs when C, the creditor, transfers a sum of money (say  $1,000) to D, the debtor, in exchange for a promise that D will repay C  in a year's time the principal plus interest. If the agreed interest  rate on the transaction is 10 percent, then the debtor obligates himself  to pay in a year's time $1,100 to the creditor. This repayment  completes the transaction, which in contrast to a regular sale, takes  place over time.

 So far, it is clear that there is nothing "wrong" with private debt.  As with any private trade or exchange on the market, both parties to the  exchange benefit, and no one loses. But suppose that the debtor is  foolish, gets himself in over his head, and then finds that he can't  repay the sum he had agreed on? This, of course is a risk incurred by  debt, and the debtor had better keep his debts down to what he can  surely repay. But this is not a problem of debt alone. Any consumer may  spend foolishly; a man may blow his entire paycheck on an expensive  trinket and then find that he can't feed his family. So consumer  foolishness is hardly a problem confined to debt alone. But there is one  crucial difference: if a man gets in over his head and he can't pay,  the creditor suffers too, because the debtor has failed to return the  creditor's property. In a profound sense, the debtor who fails to repay  the $1,100 owed to the creditor has stolen property that belongs to the  creditor; we have here not simply a civil debt, but a tort, an  aggression against another's property.

 In earlier centuries, the insolvent debtor's offense was considered  grave, and unless the creditor was willing to "forgive" the debt out of  charity, the debtor continued to owe the money plus accumulating  interest, plus penalty for continuing nonpayment. Often, debtors were  clapped into jail until they could pay  a bit draconian perhaps, but at  least in the proper spirit of enforcing property rights and defending  the sanctity of contracts. The major practical problem was the  difficulty for debtors in prison to earn the money to repay the loan;  perhaps it would have been better to allow the debtor to be free,  provided that his continuing income went to paying the creditor his just  due.

 As early as the 17th century, however, governments began sobbing  about the plight of the unfortunate debtors, ignoring the fact that the  insolvent debtors had gotten themselves into their own fix, and they  began to subvert their own proclaimed function of enforcing contracts.  Bankruptcy laws were passed which, increasingly, let the debtors off the  hook and prevented the creditors from obtaining their own property.  Theft was increasingly condoned, improvidence was subsidized, and thrift  was hobbled. In fact, with the modern device of Chapter 11, instituted  by the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 1978, inefficient and improvident  managers and stockholders are not only let off the hook, but they often  remain in positions of power, debt-free and still running their firms,  and plaguing consumers and creditors with their inefficiencies. Modern  utilitarian neoclassical economists see nothing wrong with any of this;  the market, after all, "adjusts" to these changes in the law. It is true  that the market can adjust to almost anything, but so what? Hobbling  creditors means that interest rates rise permanently, to the sober and  honest as well as the improvident; but why should the former be taxed to  subsidize the latter? But there are deeper problems with this  utilitarian attitude. It is the same amoral claim, from the same  economists, that there is nothing wrong with rising crime against  residents or storekeepers of the inner cities. The market, they assert,  will adjust and discount for such high crime rates, and therefore rents  and housing values will be lower in the inner-city areas. So everything  will be taken care of. But what sort of consolation is that? And what  sort of justification for aggression and crime?

 In a just society, then, only voluntary forgiveness by creditors  would let debtors off the hook; otherwise, bankruptcy laws are an unjust  invasion of the property rights of creditors.

 One myth about "debtors'" relief is that debtors are habitually poor  and creditors rich, so that intervening to save debtors is merely a  requirement of egalitarian "fairness." But this assumption was never  true: in business, the wealthier the businessman the more likely he is  to be a large debtor. It is the Donald Trumps and Robert Maxwells of  this world whose debts spectacularly exceed their assets. Intervention  on behalf of debtors has generally been lobbied for by large businesses  with large debts. In modern corporations, the effect of ever-tightening  bankruptcy laws has been to hobble the creditor-bondholders for the  benefit of the stockholders and the existing managers, who are usually  installed by, and allied with, a few dominant large stockholders. The  very fact that a corporation is insolvent demonstrates that its managers  have been inefficient, and they should be removed promptly from the  scene. Bankruptcy laws that keep prolonging the rule of existing  managers, then, not only invade the property rights of the creditors;  they also injure the consumers and the entire economic system by  preventing the market from purging the inefficient and improvident  managers and stockholders and from shifting the ownership of industrial  assets to the more efficient creditors. Not only that; in a recent law  review article, Bradley and Rosenzweig have shown that the stockholders,  too, as well as the creditors, have lost a significant amount of assets  due to the installation of Chapter 11 in 1978. As they write, "if  bondholders and stockholders are both losers under Chapter 11, then who  are the winners?" The winners, remarkably but unsurprisingly, turn out  to be the existing, inefficient corporate managers, as well as the  assorted lawyers, accountants, and financial advisers who earn huge fees  from bankruptcy reorganizations.

 In a free-market economy that respects property rights, the volume of  private debt is self-policed by the necessity to repay the creditor,  since no Papa Government is letting you off the hook. In addition, the  interest rate a debtor must pay depends not only on the general rate of  time preference but on the degree of risk he as a debtor poses to the  creditor. A good credit risk will be a "prime borrower," who will pay  relatively low interest; on the other hand, an improvident person or a  transient who has been bankrupt before, will have to pay a much higher  interest rate, commensurate with the degree of risk on the loan.

 Most people, unfortunately, apply the same analysis to public debt as  they do to private. If sanctity of contracts should rule in the world  of private debt, shouldn't they be equally as sacrosanct in public debt?  Shouldn't public debt be governed by the same principles as private?  The answer is no, even though such an answer may shock the sensibilities  of most people. The reason is that the two forms of debt-transaction  are totally different. If I borrow money from a mortgage bank, I have  made a contract to transfer my money to a creditor at a future date; in a  deep sense, he is the true owner of the money at that point, and if I  don't pay I am robbing him of his just property. But when government  borrows money, it does not pledge its own money; its own resources are  not liable. Government commits not its own life, fortune, and sacred  honor to repay the debt, but ours. This is a horse, and a transaction,  of a very different color.

 For unlike the rest of us, government sells no productive good or  service and therefore earns nothing. It can only get money by looting  our resources through taxes, or through the hidden tax of legalized  counterfeiting known as "inflation." There are some exceptions, of  course, such as when the government sells stamps to collectors or  carries our mail with gross inefficiency, but the overwhelming bulk of  government revenues is acquired through taxation or its monetary  equivalent. Actually, in the days of monarchy, and especially in the  medieval period before the rise of the modern state, kings got the bulk  of their income from their private estates  such as forests and  agricultural lands. Their debt, in other words, was more private than  public, and as a result, their debt amounted to next to nothing compared  to the public debt that began with a flourish in the late 17th century.

 The public debt transaction, then, is very different from private  debt. Instead of a low-time-preference creditor exchanging money for an  IOU from a high-time-preference debtor, the government now receives  money from creditors, both parties realizing that the money will be paid  back not out of the pockets or the hides of the politicians and  bureaucrats, but out of the looted wallets and purses of the hapless  taxpayers, the subjects of the state. The government gets the money by  tax-coercion; and the public creditors, far from being innocents, know  full well that their proceeds will come out of that selfsame coercion.  In short, public creditors are willing to hand over money to the  government now in order to receive a share of tax loot in the future.  This is the opposite of a free market, or a genuinely voluntary  transaction. Both parties are immorally contracting to participate in  the violation of the property rights of citizens in the future. Both  parties, therefore, are making agreements about other people's property,  and both deserve the back of our hand. The public credit transaction is  not a genuine contract that need be considered sacrosanct, any more  than robbers parceling out their shares of loot in advance should be  treated as some sort of sanctified contract.

 Any melding of public debt into a private transaction must rest on  the common but absurd notion that taxation is really "voluntary," and  that whenever the government does anything, "we" are willingly doing it.  This convenient myth was wittily and trenchantly disposed of by the  great economist Joseph Schumpeter: "The theory which construes taxes on  the analogy of club dues or of the purchases of, say, a doctor only  proves how far removed this part of the social sciences is from  scientific habits of mind." Morality and economic utility generally go  hand in hand. Contrary to Alexander Hamilton, who spoke for a small but  powerful clique of New York and Philadelphia public creditors, the  national debt is not a "national blessing." The annual government  deficit, plus the annual interest payment that keeps rising as the total  debt accumulates, increasingly channels scarce and precious private  savings into wasteful government boondoggles, which "crowd out"  productive investments. Establishment economists, including  Reaganomists, cleverly fudge the issue by arbitrarily labeling virtually  all government spending as "investments," making it sound as if  everything is fine and dandy because savings are being productively  "invested." In reality, however, government spending only qualifies as  "investment" in an Orwellian sense; government actually spends on behalf  of the "consumer goods" and desires of bureaucrats, politicians, and  their dependent client groups. Government spending, therefore, rather  than being "investment," is consumer spending of a peculiarly wasteful  and unproductive sort, since it is indulged not by producers but by a  parasitic class that is living off, and increasingly weakening, the  productive private sector. Thus, we see that statistics are not in the  least "scientific" or "value-free"; how data are classified  whether,  for example, government spending is "consumption" or "investment"   depends upon the political philosophy and insights of the classifier.

 Deficits and a mounting debt, therefore, are a growing and  intolerable burden on the society and economy, both because they raise  the tax burden and increasingly drain resources from the productive to  the parasitic, counterproductive, "public" sector. Moreover, whenever  deficits are financed by expanding bank credit  in other words, by  creating new money  matters become still worse, since credit inflation  creates permanent and rising price inflation as well as waves of  boom-bust "business cycles."

 It is for all these reasons that the Jeffersonians and Jacksonians  (who, contrary to the myths of historians, were extraordinarily  knowledgeable in economic and monetary theory) hated and reviled the  public debt. Indeed, the national debt was paid off twice in American  history, the first time by Thomas Jefferson and the second, and  undoubtedly the last time, by Andrew Jackson.

 Unfortunately, paying off a national debt that will soon reach $4  trillion would quickly bankrupt the entire country. Think about the  consequences of imposing new taxes of $4 trillion in the United States  next year! Another way, and almost as devastating, a way to pay off the  public debt would be to print $4 trillion of new money  either in paper  dollars or by creating new bank credit. This method would be  extraordinarily inflationary, and prices would quickly skyrocket,  ruining all groups whose earnings did not increase to the same extent,  and destroying the value of the dollar. But in essence this is what  happens in countries that hyper-inflate, as Germany did in 1923, and in  countless countries since, particularly the Third World. If a country  inflates the currency to pay off its debt, prices will rise so that the  dollars or marks or pesos the creditor receives are worth a lot less  than the dollars or pesos they originally lent out. When an American  purchased a 10,000 mark German bond in 1914, it was worth several  thousand dollars; those 10,000 marks by late 1923 would not have been  worth more than a stick of bubble gum. Inflation, then, is an  underhanded and terribly destructive way of indirectly repudiating the  "public debt"; destructive because it ruins the currency unit, which  individuals and businesses depend upon for calculating all their  economic decisions.

 I propose, then, a seemingly drastic but actually far less  destructive way of paying off the public debt at a single blow: outright  debt repudiation. Consider this question: why should the poor, battered  citizens of Russia or Poland or the other ex-Communist countries be  bound by the debts contracted by their former Communist masters? In the  Communist situation, the injustice is clear: that citizens struggling  for freedom and for a free-market economy should be taxed to pay for  debts contracted by the monstrous former ruling class. But this  injustice only differs by degree from "normal" public debt. For,  conversely, why should the Communist government of the Soviet Union have  been bound by debts contracted by the Czarist government they hated and  overthrew? And why should we, struggling American citizens of today, be  bound by debts created by a past ruling elite who contracted these  debts at our expense? One of the cogent arguments against paying blacks  "reparations" for past slavery is that we, the living, were not  slaveholders. Similarly, we the living did not contract for either the  past or the present debts incurred by the politicians and bureaucrats in  Washington.

 Although largely forgotten by historians and by the public,  repudiation of public debt is a solid part of the American tradition.  The first wave of repudiation of state debt came during the 1840s, after  the panics of 1837 and 1839. Those panics were the consequence of a  massive inflationary boom fueled by the Whig-run Second Bank of the  United States. Riding the wave of inflationary credit, numerous state  governments, largely those run by the Whigs, floated an enormous amount  of debt, most of which went into wasteful public works (euphemistically  called "internal improvements"), and into the creation of inflationary  banks. Outstanding public debt by state governments rose from $26  million to $170 million during the decade of the 1830s. Most of these  securities were financed by British and Dutch investors.

 During the deflationary 1840s succeeding the panics, state  governments faced repayment of their debt in dollars that were now more  valuable than the ones they had borrowed. Many states, now largely in  Democratic hands, met the crisis by repudiating these debts, either  totally or partially by scaling down the amount in "readjustments."  Specifically, of the 28 American states in the 1840s, 9 were in the  glorious position of having no public debt, and 1 (Missouri's) was  negligible; of the 18 remaining, 9 paid the interest on their public  debt without interruption, while another 9 (Maryland, Pennsylvania,  Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and  Florida) repudiated part or all of their liabilities. Of these states,  four defaulted for several years in their interest payments, whereas the  other five (Michigan, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Florida)  totally and permanently repudiated their entire outstanding public debt.  As in every debt repudiation, the result was to lift a great burden  from the backs of the taxpayers in the defaulting and repudiating  states.

 Apart from the moral, or sanctity-of-contract argument against  repudiation that we have already discussed, the standard economic  argument is that such repudiation is disastrous, because who, in his  right mind, would lend again to a repudiating government? But the  effective counterargument has rarely been considered: why should more  private capital be poured down government rat holes? It is precisely the  drying up of future public credit that constitutes one of the main  arguments for repudiation, for it means beneficially drying up a major  channel for the wasteful destruction of the savings of the public. What  we want is abundant savings and investment in private enterprises, and a  lean, austere, low-budget, minimal government. The people and the  economy can only wax fat and prosperous when their government is starved  and puny.

 The next great wave of state debt repudiation came in the South after  the blight of Northern occupation and Reconstruction had been lifted  from them. Eight Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana,  North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia) proceeded,  during the late 1870s and early 1880s under Democratic regimes, to  repudiate the debt foisted upon their taxpayers by the corrupt and  wasteful carpetbag Radical Republican governments under Reconstruction.

 So what can be done now? The current federal debt is $3.5 trillion.  Approximately $1.4 trillion, or 40 percent, is owned by one or another  agency of the federal government. It is ridiculous for a citizen to be  taxed by one arm of the federal government (the IRS) to pay interest and  principal on debt owned by another agency of the federal government. It  would save the taxpayer a great deal of money, and spare savings from  further waste, to simply cancel that debt outright. The alleged debt is  simply an accounting fiction that provides a mask over reality and  furnishes a convenient means for mulcting the taxpayer. Thus, most  people think that the Social Security Administration takes their  premiums and accumulates it, perhaps by sound investment, and then "pays  back" the "insured" citizen when he turns 65. Nothing could be further  from the truth. There is no insurance and there is no "fund," as there  indeed must be in any system of private insurance. The federal  government simply takes the Social Security "premiums" (taxes) of the  young person, spends them in the general expenditures of the Treasury,  and then, when the person turns 65, taxes someone else to pay the  "insurance benefit." Social Security, perhaps the most revered  institution in the American polity, is also the greatest single racket.  It's simply a giant Ponzi scheme controlled by the federal government.  But this reality is masked by the Social Security Administration's  purchase of government bonds, the Treasury then spending these funds on  whatever it wishes. But the fact that the SSA has government bonds in  its portfolio, and collects interest and payment from the American  taxpayer, allows it to masquerade as a legitimate insurance business.

 Canceling federal agency-held bonds, then, reduces the federal debt  by 40 percent. I would advocate going on to repudiate the entire debt  outright, and let the chips fall where they may. The glorious result  would be an immediate drop of $200 billion in federal expenditures, with  at least the fighting chance of an equivalent cut in taxes.

 

$23.00


 But if this scheme is considered too draconian, why not treat the  federal government as any private bankrupt is treated (forgetting about  Chapter 11)? The government is an organization, so why not liquidate the  assets of that organization and pay the creditors (the government  bondholders) a pro-rata share of those assets? This solution would cost  the taxpayer nothing, and, once again, relieve him of $200 billion in  annual interest payments. The United States government should be forced  to disgorge its assets, sell them at auction, and then pay off the  creditors accordingly. What government assets? There are a great deal of  assets, from TVA to the national lands to various structures such as  the Post Office. The massive CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia,  should raise a pretty penny for enough condominium housing for the  entire work force inside the Beltway. Perhaps we could eject the United  Nations from the United States, reclaim the land and buildings, and sell  them for luxury housing for the East Side gliterati. Another  serendipity out of this process would be a massive privatization of the  socialized land of the western United States and of the rest of America  as well. This combination of repudiation and privatization would go a  long way to reducing the tax burden, establishing fiscal soundness, and  desocializing the United States.

 In order to go this route, however, we first have to rid ourselves of  the fallacious mindset that conflates public and private, and that  treats government debt as if it were a productive contract between two  legitimate property owners.

  Comment on this article.

 Murray N. Rothbard (19261995) was dean of the Austrian School. He  was an economist, economic historian, and libertarian political  philosopher. See Murray N. Rothbard's article archives.

 Day 16 of Robert Wenzel's 30-day reading list that will lead you to become a knowledgeable libertarian, this article ran in the June 1992 issue of _Chronicles_ (pp. 4952).

 You can subscribe to future articles by Murray N. Rothbard via this RSS feed.

 Copyright © 2012 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Permission to  reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided full credit is  given.





  You can receive the Mises Dailies in your inbox. Subscribe or unsubscribe.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*If Not For Government*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Veterans Day*

*From Another Angle* by a Marine

"How many Laos did we butcher for nothing, how many Vietnamese, how many  Cambodians? Millions, literally. For nothing. Nothing.  How many Iraqis?  Afghans? Pakistanis? If any of it preserved my freedom, I am unaware of  it."

Read more.

The principle here is that military financed by aggressive violence of taxation is an evil force because it is built and sustained on the foundation of evil and injustice, in the service of the very politicians who commit the plunder. Such military, in principle, does not protect our liberty. It destroys it. This is why the cult of venerating the military is always promoted by an evil state, because it "justifies" its plunder and tyranny, which is the opposite of Liberty and the opposite of Justice.

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## Ronin Truth

Good thread. I like it!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thanks!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Improved the wording in the top post as follows: 

"*Private Property is Liberty and Justice, and ought not to be violated.* "

----------


## Ronin Truth

Have you read this one?
*The Fundamentals of Liberty by Robert LeFevre, R.S. Radford and Lawrence Samuels (May 1, 1988)*


I think you might like it. LeFevre was my original libertarian mentor back in the early 70's.

The Nature of Man and His Government (pdf)

He also authored this from my signature list.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Have you read this one?
> *The Fundamentals of Liberty by Robert LeFevre, R.S. Radford and Lawrence Samuels (May 1, 1988)*
> 
> 
> I think you might like it. LeFevre was my original libertarian mentor back in the early 70's.
> 
> The Nature of Man and His Government (pdf)
> 
> He also authored this from my signature list.


Nice! This makes you about 60+? Right?

Thanks for the pdf. Sounds like Robert was a good man!

True definition of government, (as all other virtues and true concepts of interactions between intelligent beings), is derived from the concept of Private Property, and is meaningless without it. 

Government is nothing more or less than ownership of property. 

You have the right to govern your property; your neighbor has the right to govern his property, and so on. If you own it, you have the right to govern/control it.

Thus public representative government, is nothing more or less than government of Public property according to justice, and has exactly ZERO right to govern Private property, because it does not own it.

You can rightly govern ONLY the things you own. Public representative government does not own you, nor your property. Therefore, they have exactly ZERO right to govern you, or your property.

Thanks for posting!

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## Ronin Truth

> Nice! This makes you about 60+? Right?
> 
> Thanks for the pdf. Sounds like Robert was a good man!
> 
> True definition of government, (as all other virtues and true concepts of interactions between intelligent beings), is derived from the concept of Private Property, and is meaningless without it. 
> 
> Government is nothing more or less than ownership of property. 
> 
> You have the right to govern your property; your neighbor has the right to govern his property, and so on. If you own it, you have the right to govern/control it.
> ...


More like 60++! 

More LeFevre:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_LeFevre




> *The Philosophy of Ownership*
> 
> *Robert LeFevre*
> 
> http://library.mises.org/books/Rober...0Ownership.pdf
> 
> The significance of property ownership has rarely been fully appreciated, writes Robert LeFevre.
> He proceeds to present the entire libertarian case for private ownership, with his characteristic clarity of exposition. He makes what is a radically hard-core case for the absolute integrity of self ownership and property ownership but in a way that comes across as common-sense. He shows that how a society thinks about the issue of ownership is not just a matter of details; our very survival depends on it.
> Here is an excellent overview of a topic that Mises said was the foundational idea of liberalism itself. But it's more than an overview: it is a strong case for iron-clad, impenetrable, and no-exceptions social rules on ownership.


Enjoy!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Nice! As I said, truth is truth. These are natural, universal, and absolute laws that simply needed to be discovered and lived by, like the laws of mathematics of mechanics. 

Apparently Robert was another one who already discovered them!

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## Ronin Truth

I'm also a huge fan of Lysander Spooner.

Would you care to give this a shot?

http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_1/3_1_7.pdf

Later!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I'm also a huge fan of Lysander Spooner.
> 
> Would you care to give this a shot?
> 
> http://mises.org/journals/lar/pdfs/3_1/3_1_7.pdf
> 
> Later!


Thanks for this. Lysander is definitely brilliant! 

I disagree with him only about his misunderstanding of intellectual property. Other than that, as far as I was able to learn, I perfectly agree with him.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Added a note to the First Principle in the top post:

*Note:* Now, Jesus defined Good as “doing unto others as you would have them do to you.” “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” (Matt. 7:12) 

How is that compatible with our definition of good as Non-violation of Private Property?
Perfectly. In fact, one principle is directly derived from the other:
Would you like that someone violated your property? No? Then don’t do it to others! Because whatsoever you are doing to others you are doing it to yourself. Thus, the Law of Justice itself is a simple statement of cause and effect, because we are all fundamentally one, and whatsoever you are doing to others, you are, in reality, doing it to yourself!

Non-violation, or non-aggression principle, i.e. the principle of private property, is the logical consequence of “doing unto others as you would have them do to you.” The two principles are in PERFECT harmony with each other. In fact, as I said, one is directly derived from the other, because they are ONE principle.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Free Your Mind with Truth

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Eyewitness to Hitler Warns Americans: Keep your guns. Keep your guns and buy more guns    By Kimberly Paxton 
The Daily Sheeple 
December 19, 2013   

When Katie Worthman was a little girl in Austria, she witnessed  firsthand Adolph Hitlers rise to power and the Soviet communist  occupation that followed.  She also witnessed, for decades, the  distortions of the media when it came to the reporting of the events.   From her eyewitness perspective, Worthman said that the whole thing  didnt happen overnight, in a brutal attack, like the media portrays it,  but rather, it evolved into a dictatorship gradually, over a period of a  few years.  Hitler didnt come across as someone evil, to be feared,  initially.  In the beginning, Hitler didnt look like, or talk like a  monster at all. He talked like an American politician.   Here are some things that occurred in Austria, according to Worthman, that just might look familiar to Americans:  
Hitler was elected with 98% of the vote.Hitler destroyed the existing medical system when he brought a national healthcare plan into being.First, people were forced to register their guns to cut down on crime.Then they were forced to turn them in or risk capital punishment for keeping them. 
Worthmans eyewitness account is eerily reminiscent of what we can see going on in the United States today.
In 1938, the media reported that Hitler rode into  Austria with tanks and guns and took us over. Not true at all, she  says. 
The Austrian people elected Hitler by 98% of the vote by means of  the ballot box. Now you might ask how could a Christian nation elect a  monster like Hitler. The truth is at the beginning Hitler didnt look  like or talk like a monster at all. He talked like an American  politician.   We also had gun registration. All the Austrian people had guns. But  the government said, the guns are very dangerous. Children are playing  with guns. Hunting accidents happen and we really have to have total  controlled safety. And we had criminals again. And the only way that we  can trace the criminal was by the serial number of the gun.   So we dutifully went to the police station and we registered our  guns. Not long after they said, No, it didnt help. The only way that  we wont have accidents and crimes [is] you bring the guns to the police  station and then we dont have any crimes anymore and any accidents.  And if you dont do that: capital punishment.   So thats what we did. So dictatorship didnt happen overnight. It  took five years. Gradually, little by little to escalate up to a  dictatorship.   When the people fear the government, thats tyranny. But when the  government fears the people thats liberty. Keep your guns. Keep your  guns and buy more guns.    
Now 84, Katie Worthman is warning America, her adopted country, in  the hopes that history does not repeat itself. Watch her powerful  presentation below.  If you dont want to go buy more ammo after that,  then you arent paying attention.

----------


## Sanguine

> Eyewitness to Hitler Warns Americans: “Keep your guns. Keep your guns and buy more guns”    By Kimberly Paxton 
> The Daily Sheeple 
> December 19, 2013   
> 
> When Katie Worthman was a little girl in Austria, she witnessed  firsthand Adolph Hitler’s rise to power and the Soviet communist  occupation that followed.  She also witnessed, for decades, the  distortions of the media when it came to the reporting of the events.   From her eyewitness perspective, Worthman said that the whole thing  didn’t happen overnight, in a brutal attack, like the media portrays it,  but rather, it evolved into a dictatorship gradually, over a period of a  few years.  Hitler didn’t come across as someone evil, to be feared,  initially.  ”In the beginning, Hitler didn’t look like, or talk like a  monster at all. He talked like an American politician.”   Here are some things that occurred in Austria, according to Worthman, that just might look familiar to Americans:  
> Hitler was elected with 98% of the vote.Hitler destroyed the existing medical system when he brought a national healthcare plan into being.First, people were forced to register their guns to cut down on crime.Then they were forced to turn them in or risk capital punishment for keeping them.
> Worthman’s eyewitness account is eerily reminiscent of what we can see going on in the United States today.
> “In 1938, the media reported that Hitler rode into  Austria with tanks and guns and took us over. Not true at all,” she  says. 
> “The Austrian people elected Hitler by 98% of the vote by means of  the ballot box. Now you might ask how could a Christian nation… elect a  monster like Hitler. The truth is at the beginning Hitler didn’t look  like or talk like a monster at all. He talked like an American  politician.   “We also had gun registration. All the Austrian people… had guns. But  the government said, ‘the guns are very dangerous. Children are playing  with guns. Hunting accidents happen and we really have to have total  controlled safety. And we had criminals again. And the only way that we  can trace the criminal was by the serial number of the gun.’   “So we dutifully went to the police station and we registered our  guns. Not long after they said, ‘No, it didn’t help. The only way that  we won’t have accidents and crimes [is] you bring the guns to the police  station and then we don’t have any crimes anymore and any accidents.  And if you don’t do that: capital punishment.’   “So that’s what we did. So dictatorship didn’t happen overnight. It  took five years. Gradually, little by little to escalate up to a  dictatorship.   “When the people fear the government, that’s tyranny. But when the  government fears the people… that’s liberty. Keep your guns. Keep your  guns and buy more guns.”    
> Now 84, Katie Worthman is warning America, her adopted country, in  the hopes that history does not repeat itself. Watch her powerful  presentation below.  If you don’t want to go buy more ammo after that,  then you aren’t paying attention.


Hitler actually deregulated arms possession with the 1938 Weapons Act for anyone that wasn't Jewish.  The registry was there, but the Nazis didn't use it for taking guns en masse.  Hitler's didn't nationalize health care, Otto Von Bismarck did six years before Hitler was even born. 

Besides, a government with an extensive air force, access to nuclear arms, the capability to monitor movement, and a large drone program won't be afraid of your guns.  The first principle of liberty is that a liberated person is a knowledgable person. Liberty may be achieved by dismantling the system, which can only be done through the use of the political system itself.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Hitler actually deregulated arms possession with the 1938 Weapons Act for anyone that wasn't Jewish.  The registry was there, but the Nazis didn't use it for taking guns en masse.  Hitler's didn't nationalize health care, Otto Von Bismarck did six years before Hitler was even born. 
> 
> Besides, a government with an extensive air force, access to nuclear arms, the capability to monitor movement, and a large drone program won't be afraid of your guns.  The first principle of liberty is that a liberated person is a knowledgable person. Liberty may be achieved by dismantling the system, which can only be done through the use of the political system itself.


So you know Austria better than the woman who was born and grew up there, and whose father was a doctor who had to flee after medicine was socialized by Hitler? Nice. Also, she says their firearms were first registered, then confiscated by Hitler. Were you there then? No? She was. She SAW it with her own eyes. Talking about first-hand knowledge here, which you seem to value so much. She WAS there then. Were you? 

If couple hundred million firearms and assault rifles in the hands of the people were not important, the government would not have been so eager to confiscate them. This is what standing in the way of their total tyranny. Make no mistake, when firearms go, so does the liberty. Read your history. It is the last line in the sand. People are either armed or enslaved; these are the only two options that are possible. It is a fact. History teaches that.

More importantly, it is the principles that are supreme. The Private Property rights, which are the definition of Justice and Liberty, preclude the use of aggressive violence to spy on and to disarm people. 

These are the fundamental Principles of Liberty. Both Obama and Hitler have violated them, of course one more than the other, but BOTH, in principle, have done it. Let's talk about Principles, if you can. Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What We Each Can Do for Freedom*

                                                                               Alex Jones interviews Lew Rockwell on the role we all can play.

Listen to the podcast.

----------


## Sanguine

> So you know Austria better than the woman who was born and grew up there, and whose father was a doctor who had to flee after medicine was socialized by Hitler? Nice. Also, she says their firearms were first registered, then confiscated by Hitler. Were you there then? No? She was. She SAW it with her own eyes. Talking about first-hand knowledge here, which you seem to value so much. She WAS there then. Were you? 
> 
> If couple hundred million firearms and assault rifles in the hands of the people were not important, the government would not have been so eager to confiscate them. This is what standing in the way of their total tyranny. Make no mistake, when firearms go, so does the liberty. Read your history. It is the last line in the sand. People are either armed or enslaved; these are the only two options that are possible. It is a fact. History teaches that.
> 
> More importantly, it is the principles that are supreme. The Private Property rights, which are the definition of Justice and Liberty, preclude the use of aggressive violence to spy on and to disarm people. 
> 
> These are the fundamental Principles of Liberty. Both Obama and Hitler have violated them, of course one more than the other, but BOTH, in principle, have done it. Let's talk about Principles, if you can. Thanks.



Basically virtually every account of history that isn't from a random person from the Daily Sheeple (which ironically is the most unenlightening rag I've read in a while).  I don't know about you, but the many records and eyewitness accounts that contradict that account.  Hitler wasn't even elected, he was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg thanks to the massive pressure Hitler was imposing upon the Reichstag.  Hitler's Nazi troops then threatened the Reichstag into signing the Enabling Act to transfer a lot of power to the Chancellor.  The only people with the guts to stand up to the Nazis were the few social Democrats that managed to get into the building.  I value reputable experience, I don't gobble up every word of the sensationalistic media.

Nonetheless, Hitler again only took away firearms from Jews.  Why?  Because it would obviously make it much easier to commit such atrocities against them as the Nazis had done.  However, the arsenal of the Nazi state didn't provide such a clear advantage over firearms as the United States government's today does.  Did the Nazis have atomic weapons or drones?  Did it have missile systems such as those owned by the United States military? They didn't.

What you are posting aren't "Principles of Liberty", they're the Principles of your own ideology.  Private property is not the basis of liberty, it's the basis of the dominance of the rich over the poor.  Know who thought that? Adam Smith. 

"This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."

"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."  

Smith was an advocate of creating ranks within society, of having classes with more power.  Power which indeed stems from private property.  To have liberty is to be free of a master, and so I as an anarchist am especially disgusted when someone considers liberty to be a mere switching of those masters.

----------


## Sanguine

> *What We Each Can Do for Freedom*
> 
>                                                                                Alex Jones interviews Lew Rockwell on the role we all can play.
> 
> Listen to the podcast.


Interesting how Jones makes note of the Mafia demanding "respect", in other words being to _fear_ them.  Without that fear, the mafia may be targeted by larger powers (the state especially), or may face a rise in competition. Both damage their profits.  Interesting how coercion is found along the unrestrained path to profit.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Basically virtually every account of history that isn't from a random person from the Daily Sheeple (which ironically is the most unenlightening rag I've read in a while).


This story was carried by many outlets, including this one.




> I don't know about you, but the many records and eyewitness accounts that contradict that account.  Hitler wasn't even elected,


"April 10, 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the infamous Anschluss  election. Ninety-nine percent of those voting throughout the German  Empire put their stamp of approved on the Nazi takeover of Austria. The  percentage of yes votes was even higher in Austria where 99.75 percent  voted “Ja.” Adolf Hitler proclaimed, “This hour is the proudest my  life.”"

http://www.thenewamerican.com/cultur...hluss-election

"German  paper ballot, 1p. oblong 8vo., [n.p., Apr. 10, 1938]: "Do you agree  with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted  on 13 March 1938, and do you vote for the party of our leader Adolf  Hitler?". The larger circle, a "Yes", has been marked by a voter. Fine.  On the morning of 12 March, the 8th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed  the border to Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering  German-Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags and flowers.  Parliamentary elections were held in Germany on April 10, 1938. They  took the form of a single-question referendum asking whether voters  approved of a single Nazi-party list as well as the recent annexation of  Austria. 98.9% of the voters voted "yes". "

http://www.icollector.com/HITLER-ELE...LLOT_i14049851
And you are saying?




> I value reputable experience, I don't gobble up every word of the sensationalistic media.


You got exactly zero evidence that her experience is not reputable. I show you the evidence that she was right. 




> Nonetheless, Hitler again only took away firearms from Jews.  Why?  Because it would obviously make it much easier to commit such atrocities against them as the Nazis had done.


Nazis disarmed the population of every country they took over, including Austria.
""The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the supply of arms to the underdogs is a sine qua non for the overthrow of any sovereignty. So let's not have any native militia or native police. German troops alone will bear the sole responsibility for the maintenance of law and order throughout the occupied Russian territories, and a system of military strong-points must be evolved to cover the entire occupied country." 

--Adolf Hitler, dinner talk on April 11, 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk 1941-44: His Private Conversations, Second Edition (1973), Pg. 425-426. Translated by Norman Cameron and R. H. Stevens. Introduced and with a new preface by H. R. Trevor-Roper. The original German papers were known as Bormann-Vermerke. "

http://www.stephenhalbrook.com/regis...istration.html





"Austrian citizen Kitty Werthmann, an eyewitness to Anschluss, Hitler’s annexation of Austria, confounds recent efforts by gun control advocates to re-write history, by re-affirming that the Nazis did indeed confiscate guns belonging to ordinary citizens.

“The only way we can prevent accidents and crimes is for you to turn-in your guns at the police station, and then we won’t have any crimes or any accidents. If you didn’t turn in your guns – capital punishment. So we turned in our guns.”

http://www.infowars.com/eyewitness-y...cate-our-guns/"



> However, the arsenal of the Nazi state didn't provide such a clear advantage over firearms as the United States government's today does.  Did the Nazis have atomic weapons or drones?  Did it have missile systems such as those owned by the United States military? They didn't.


It does not matter. To maintain a semblance of pretended legitimacy the government cannot openly nuke its own people, or use tanks against them. For a tyrannical government, the only way to effectively control 300 million people is to lie to them and to convince them that the tyranny and legalized plunder and extortion is "in their best interest." If 200,000,000 firearms and assault rifles were not important, the government would not so eagerly seek to outlaw and confiscate them. It is the only thing that is preventing an all-out plunder of Americans by the tyrants.




> What you are posting aren't "Principles of Liberty", they're the Principles of your own ideology.


Prove it. They are both. My ideology is the Principles of Liberty and the principles of Justice. You cannot prove them wrong. I have reason and logic on my side. You have nothing but name calling. Let people judge for themselves who has better and clearer reasons on their side, you or me.




> Private property is not the basis of liberty,


Liberty is defined as the right to do with your own property as you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another. This is what LIBERTY means. Thus Liberty is completely meaningless without the concept of Private property. So is Justice meaningless without Private Property, because Justice is nothing more than Non-violation of Private Property, with the implied right to use equal force to offset/neutralize the aggression of another against your property. 

Therefore, you saying "Private property is not the basis of liberty" is the same as you saying "water is not the basis of an ocean," when ocean, by definition, consists of water and does not exist without it. So does Liberty not exist without private property, because Private Property is part of the definition of the word Liberty.




> it's the basis of the dominance of the rich over the poor.  Know who thought that? Adam Smith.


As long as this dominance does not include aggressive violence or fraud, it is a justified dominance. And I don't really care who thought of it. Truth is truth no matter who says or denies it.




> "This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments."


Aggressive violence and fraud are the causes of corruption, not wealth. 




> "Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."


Defense of property is perfectly justified, as long as it was not obtained through aggressive violence or fraud. People deserve and have a right to protect themselves and their property, no matter weather they are rich or poor. Justice is justice regardless the wealth. 




> Smith was an advocate of creating ranks within society, of having classes with more power.  Power which indeed stems from private property.


Power that is devoid of aggressive violence and fraud is a Just power, no matter the magnitude of that power. And you are right, it does stem from Private Property, and there is nothing wrong with it as long as Justice is honored.




> To have liberty is to be free of a master, and so I as an anarchist am especially disgusted when someone considers liberty to be a mere switching of those masters.


I said nothing of the sort. I said Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you please as long as you do not violate the property of another. That's what Liberty means. Do not ascribe to me what I have not said.

Do you have a more correct definition of Liberty? Define "master." If by the word "master" you mean aggressive violence and fraud, then I agree with you.   However, if being a "master" does not involve aggressive violence (which is the definition of evil) or fraud, it is justified and is in harmony with principles of Liberty. So, define your terms please, then we can continue this conversation based on reason and logic, and not mere name calling. Truth is truth. 

Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Interesting how Jones makes note of the Mafia demanding "respect", in other words being to _fear_ them.  Without that fear, the mafia may be targeted by larger powers (the state especially), or may face a rise in competition. Both damage their profits.  Interesting how coercion is found along the unrestrained path to profit.


The only proper "restraint" to profit is justice, i.e. non-violation of private property. Absent such violation, profit ought to be unrestrained.

----------


## Sanguine

> This story was carried by many outlets, including this one.
> "April 10, 2013 marks the 75th anniversary of the infamous Anschluss  election. Ninety-nine percent of those voting throughout the German  Empire put their stamp of approved on the Nazi takeover of Austria. The  percentage of yes votes was even higher in Austria where 99.75 percent  voted “Ja.” Adolf Hitler proclaimed, “This hour is the proudest my  life.”"
> 
> http://www.thenewamerican.com/cultur...hluss-election*
> Sourcing BeforeItsNews doesn't make you reputable.  Plus, your New American source contradicts your point. * 
> 
> "German  paper ballot, 1p. oblong 8vo., [n.p., Apr. 10, 1938]: "Do you agree  with the reunification of Austria with the German Reich that was enacted  on 13 March 1938, and do you vote for the party of our leader Adolf  Hitler?". The larger circle, a "Yes", has been marked by a voter. Fine.  On the morning of 12 March, the 8th Army of the German Wehrmacht crossed  the border to Austria. The troops were greeted by cheering  German-Austrians with Nazi salutes, Nazi flags and flowers.  Parliamentary elections were held in Germany on April 10, 1938. They  took the form of a single-question referendum asking whether voters  approved of a single Nazi-party list as well as the recent annexation of  Austria. 98.9% of the voters voted "yes". "
> 
> http://www.icollector.com/HITLER-ELE...LLOT_i14049851
> ...


Comments are in *BOLD.*

----------


## Sanguine

> The only proper "restraint" to profit is justice, i.e. non-violation of private property. Absent such violation, profit ought to be unrestrained.


Who enforces that restraint?  If the restraint isn't enforced, then it isn't there.  What will stop the mafia from terrorizing civilians and eliminating competition when they can pay off private mercenaries sent to stop them?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*How Do You Kill 11 Million People?*
Why the Truth Matters More Than You Think

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> *Sourcing BeforeItsNews doesn't make you reputable. Plus, your New American source contradicts your point.*


So what, FoxNews is reputable, or CNN? Are you joking? These filthy propaganda outfits that spew 85% lies, that is reputable?

You have no evidence that Kitty Werthmann is lying. More importantly, it is the Principle that is important. It is a violation of Justice and Liberty, i.e. Private Property to confiscate firearms from people, and therefore is IMMORAL. It inevitably leads to tyranny and genocide. Read your history. EVERY incident of genocide in the last 200 years was preceded by gun registration and then gun confiscation by the government. It is a clockwork.





 You yourself admit that the Jews were disarmed by the government before they were exterminated by the government. Case closed.



> *If you think InfoWars is a reputable source, you're going to be laughed at.*


InfoWars is much more reputable then CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, New York Times, and every other government/CIA controlled propaganda outlet put together.



> *You're contradicting yourself. If the only way to control people is to lie, then they wouldn't have to confiscate weapons in the first place.*


You are wrong. The reason they have to confiscate the weapons is because all lies are eventually found out. It is impossible to lie forever and get away with it. That’s why they have to disarm the people BEFORE the people wake up. Therefore, FIRST they LIE to confiscate the guns, THEN they exterminate. Exactly as it was done to the Jews. 

Lying and genocide are intrinsically connected. One, if persisted in, inevitably leads to the other. Cause and effect. Lies destroy, and it is easier to destroy and “get away” with the lies if you disarm people first. But, in the end, no one gets away with anything, because all that you do to others, you are doing it to yourself. God is just.

*How Do You Kill 11 Million People?* 
*You LIE to them.*


 
And don’t tell me “Glen Beck is the devil.” It does not matter. Concentrate on the message and the facts. The Facts are true, no matter the source. Truth is true no matter who accepts or denies it. Do you get that? Principles matter, not names.



> *Except your ideology is centred around the accumulation of profit in the absence of a body that monopolizes coercion and is still (supposedly) held accountable by the people. Instead, you support the privatization of law enforcement, calling up mercenaries of a private nature to fight on your behalf, and to use courts that rule for the highest bidder. In private business, the name of the game is profit. The higher payer earns the better mercenaries, and provides the most profit for the court*


In a Free Market, the product that a court delivers is justice. If a court perverts justice, people will not agree to abide by its decisions. Once reputation of such a court is lost, it will have to go out of business, because no one in their right mind will trust it. So Justice, i.e. Free Market still work in this situation, infinitely better then immoral by definition government forced monopolies on “justice enforcement” which are nothing more than mafia style “protection” racket.



> * (assuming courts are even used, which I doubt they would be).*


Doubt not. Just judgment/justice-enforcement is a valuable service, and people will freely pay for such valuable service, as for any valuable service in a free market, for that matter. Free Market is the ONLY JUST way to deliver justice enforcement. 



> *Really, what would stop a rich corporation from hiring mercenaries to clear the region of competition, and set up a monopoly? We already see that with gangs and cartels. Private enforcement is just statism by another name.*


Free Market is only as perfect as people in it. But the Principle of Free Market, i.e. absence of aggressive violence of coercion, is the principle of Justice, and it is a perfect principle. It is infinitely more just than the unjust, by definition, government forced monopoly. Is it possible that the rich will abuse their power and hire mercenaries to harass people? Yes. But that is a lesser evil than GOVERNMENT doing the same thing. Why? Because it is easier for people to band together and to resist a rogue company, or even a rogue cartel, then a monolith of criminal government that feigns moral right to “legal” plunder. In other words, it is easier to resist smaller criminal gangs, then one huge one that got all the guns. And it is much more just. In other words, one is based on JUSTICE, and the other on INJUSTICE. That is the difference here. 



> *Defining liberty merely by property only results in a narrow definition. Liberty is to be free from the power of another.*


That is a dangerously imprecise, and very pervertable, duplicitous definition, because you did not say the “power” to do WHAT? Let me give you an example. 

Your neighbor makes better mouse traps and sells them in a free market. His mouse traps are much better than yours. You could say that he uses his power of production to undercut your profit potential. Are you then justified in killing him so as to “free” yourself from his "power" of production and thus corner the market for yourself? Do you see the problem here? By defining Liberty through Private Property, you avoid all these problems. *

Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you will, as long as you do not violate the property of another. 

*That is the proper and precise definition. It is the ONLY thing that is not self-contradictory, and that makes any sense. 

Your definition, though, could be rescued thus: “*Liberty is to be free from the power of another TO VIOLATE YOUR PROPERTY as long as you do not violate his.”* That solves the problems of your original definition, and is actually equivalent to mine. 

So you can see that it is IMPOSSIBLE to properly define Liberty without using Private Property, because one is the definition subset of the other, and thus one does not exist without the other. They are actually one and the same.




> “As long as this dominance does not include aggressive violence or fraud, it is a justified dominance. And I don't really care who thought of it. Truth is truth no matter who says or denies it.”
> *If that is what you think, then you do not believe in liberty. You believe in the freedom of tyrants to restrain others.*


The problem is that you did not define “dominance.” I will give you an example. Your neighbor “dominates” you in a free market by baking and selling better bread. Are you justified to use violence against him because he causes less of your bread to be sold, by selling better bread that people prefer to yours? He “dominates” you in a free market. His bread is superior. According to your vague definition, he should not be allowed to “dominate” you. Do you see the problem here? You have to define “dominate” for this to be a correct definition. If you define “dominate” in this context as the use of aggressive violence or fraud, then your definition becomes: “*Liberty is to be free from being dominated by aggressive violence*,” and I agree with that definition, but then it is equivalent to my definition, because *aggressive violence* is defined as the initiation of force against another’s *property*, or preemptive violation of another’s *property*. So you see Private Property is still indispensable part of any non-self-contradictory definition of Liberty. 



> *Aggressive violence and fraud stem from the desire or need for more- the very heart and soul of capitalism.*


The “desire or need for more” is the very force behind all the progress that was ever made. You have an iPod because someone “desired or needed more.” You have food to eat, clothes on your back, and a house to live in precisely because someone desired for “more” food, clothing, and housing. If they did not “desire for more” you would be dead from cold, hunger, and the lack of the things that sustain your existence every day. *So, desire for “more” is the very life force that gives existence, life and meaning to the Universe*. The fact that some people seek to obtain “more” by violence and fraud of aggression, does not mean that all desire for “more” is evil. Aggressive violence is evil. Desire for more is good, as long as it is free of aggressive violence and fraud. And capitalism is nothing more than Free Market, which is ABSENCE of aggressive violence and the freedom to do with your own as you please, which is the definition of Liberty and Justice.



> *It is not justice when children starve after making the products that a business owner profits handsomely off of.*


They would starve even faster if the business owner was not there. How is that preferable? The children and their parents are there of their own free will BECAUSE they are benefited more by working for that business than not, because if they didn’t their situation would have been much worse. So this business is literally saving their lives. 

Now, we all have responsibility to be charitable to less fortunate around us. But charity, by definition, is VOLUNTARY. Charity is no more when coercion enters in. All that remains is plunder. And if you believe in charity, you should also believe that plunder is evil, because the same God who said to be charitable (i.e. VOLUNTARILY help the poor) said, Thou shall not steal. 




> *Maintaining up a system ruled and perpetuated by the rich that prevents the sick from being treated due to their poverty is not justified. .*


Define “prevents.” Are they using aggressive violence to prevent it? If so then you are right, it is not justified. But if no aggressive violence or fraud is used, it is PERFECTLY justified, by definition of the word Justice. 

And again, you are free to be as charitable as you wish, but with your own money, not your neighbor's money. You say you are libertarian, but you sound like a closet socialist, because you believe in aggressive violence of the state to redistribute the wealth via legalized plunder. That is EVIL. Every country that tried it, found death and starvation of the poor on galacticaly greater scale than in a country where Justice is allowed to prevail, by people being allowed to keep what they have earned, and to do charity to the poor.

Justice is Non-violation of private property. Nothing else, nothing more. It is JUSTICE that you are rebelling against. Any society that have done so have self-destructed, or on the way to self-destruction, because denial of Justice is a self-contradiction, and those who embrace self-contradictions destroy themselves, by definition. And when the productive base of a society is destroyed via injustice, then ALL become poor, and ALL starve. 

So, if you truly care for the poor, you will ravenously guard Justice as the very life of the society itself, for so it, truly, is. 




> *A master is someone that dominates another. Someone that controls another. If you think that one may have liberty and a master, then I'm sorry, but you're delusional.*


Not really. I already unpacked the word “dominate” for you. Not all control is evil. Some control is perfectly just. What makes it just or unjust? Absence of aggressive violence and fraud makes any control just, and it means therefore it is a control to which someone VOLUNTARY agrees. So yes, you can have liberty and a master, if you CHOSE VOLUNTARILY to be subject to that master. So you are wrong again.

To summarize: Remove aggressive violence and fraud, and you have Liberty and Justice. It is that simple, and it means nothing less and nothing more than Private Property, which is both Liberty and Justice, by definition of the terms.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> "The only proper "restraint" to profit is justice, i.e. non-violation of  private property. Absent such violation, profit ought to be  unrestrained."
> 
> Who enforces that restraint?  If the restraint isn't enforced, then it isn't there.  What will stop the mafia from terrorizing civilians and eliminating competition when they can pay off private mercenaries sent to stop them?


Other private mercenaries and the armed people themselves. Free market at work, my friend. It is much better than a monolithic gang of thugs called "government" that have all the guns. Get it? 

Free Market, i.e. Justice, minimizes the foibles of human nature, but unjust government forced monopoly maximizes those evils. So, one system is significantly superior and preferable to the other, because one system is based on a JUST principle, and the other one on an UNJUST. 

That is the difference.

----------


## Sanguine

> So what, FoxNews is reputable, or CNN? Are you joking? These filthy propaganda outfits that spew 85% lies, that is reputable?
> 
> *Stop strawmanning.  I get my news open-source, but not from $#@!ing nutcases and entertainers that are taken too seriously.*
> 
> You have no evidence that Kitty Werthmann is lying. More importantly, it is the Principle that is important. It is a violation of Justice and Liberty, i.e. Private Property to confiscate firearms from people, and therefore is IMMORAL. It inevitably leads to tyranny and genocide. Read your history. EVERY incident of genocide in the last 200 years was preceded by gun registration and then gun confiscation by the government. It is a clockwork.
> 
> *
> Except most genocides (ie the Holodomor) were by starvation or attacking poor people that couldn't afford guns in the first place. * 
> 
> ...





> Other private mercenaries and the armed people themselves. Free market at work, my friend. It is much better than a monolithic gang of thugs called "government" that have all the guns. Get it? 
> 
> Free Market, i.e. Justice, minimizes the foibles of human nature, but unjust government forced monopoly maximizes those evils. So, one system is significantly superior and preferable to the other, because one system is based on a JUST principle, and the other one on an UNJUST. 
> 
> That is the difference.


Oh right, how stupid of me.  Those cartels and drug gangs clearly don't exist, because people are armed.  and mercenaries, with all that profit incentive would never be bribed by the gangs and cartels, right?  It's not like the more powerful cartels could just hire other mercenaries.  Welcome to War Economy 2.0!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> * Indeed I did, that's why I made a point in arguing proportionality of firepower... which you ignored and went off with "GENOCIDE AND HITLER TOOK AWAY ALL GUNS"*


I did address proportionality by pointing out the ideological infeasibility for the government to nuke or to tank its own people if they wish to retain a semblance or pretext of legitimacy (which they desperately need if they wish to brainwash and control 300 million people).  Therefore, they cannot do that. This is why they are desperately eager to register and then confiscate all small firearms, assault rifles and ammunition from the people, for then the people will be truly defenseless in their view, for then they can squash them more discretely.

Secondly, I showed you Hitler’s own words, in which he called for COMPLETE gun confiscation in ALL conquered territories: Russia, Poland, France, and everywhere else. Did you miss that?



> * If you think that the people who claim HAARP controls the weather can be considered reputable, you're delusional.*


HAARP itself admits that they can influence weather by influencing the temperature of the stratosphere via microwave radiation. So you are the one who is delusional. 



> * When you capitalize "facts", it means that they are rather a subject of your philosophy, not anything in an objective sense. What you want me accept is not reality, but rather your pseudohistoric beliefs.*


Prove it. I proved mine.



> * Except in markets, agents act for profit.*


And government paid courts serve the one that pays their salaries, the government. So in a dispute between government and a citizen, whose side do you think the government court will take? Don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out. If the government court system has no free market competition it will exhibit all the traits of government forced monopoly, i.e. high price, low quality, and plain old INJUSTICE (in favor of the government, of course). 



> *The people might not trust them and insist on competition, but that doesn't happen when the industry itself sells out. Who gets to say that it isn't fair, because quite clearly the court delivered wholesome free market "justice", did it not?*


In a free market you do not have to go to a court to obtain justice, but if you retaliate unjustly you are liable to be subject to justice yourself. Furthermore, in a free market if a court does not deliver its product, i.e. justice, it will be rejected in favor of the one that does. Free market, and Justice 101.



> * Or you know, a community tribunal without a profit incentive.*


Justice is absolute, it is a science, like math or mechanics. Whoever delivers it is right in that point. Even government courts once in a while deliver just decisions (which is not often unfortunately). But it is UNJUST for a community to claim a monopoly on justice enforcement, because no one individually has a right to establish such a monopoly, and therefore no one can delegate such authority to a group. Therefore, Free Market, i.e. voluntary interactions between people, is the only Just way to deliver justice enforcement, and a "community tribunal" has a right to exist too, as long as it does not claim monopoly, for that would be unjust. 



> * If a free market is perfect insofar as the people are, then it's no better than communism.*


Wrong. ANY system is as perfect as the people in it, be it a mafia gang, or a community of saints. This is true for ANY organization. Therefore what you are saying is equivalent to saying: "a community built on principles of justice and liberty is no better than mafia, because both consist of people." That is wrong because one community is built on CORRECT and JUST principles, and the other on INCORRECT and UNJUST ones. It is the Principles that the system is built upon that determine whether it is right or wrong. You are missing that point. 



> * Oh, and saying "but government is worse" doesn't make your point any more valid.*


Yes it does. One, that is Free Market, is based on and is defined by the principles of JUSTICE, and the other, that is government that codifies aggressive violence into law, is based on the principles of INJUSTICE. Therefore, not surprisingly, though both are as perfect as the people in them, Free Market minimizes the foibles and evils of human nature, but the present government maximizes them. Why? Because one is built on JUST principles, and the other on UNJUST principles.



> * I will not choose the lesser of two evils when I can pick the best of what is good.*


The principles of Free Market are the principles of Liberty and Justice by definition, therefore they are not “the lesser of two evils,” they are actually good. 
On the other hand, the principles of current government are the principles of aggressive violence (the definition of evil) enshrined as law on which it is based, therefore it is EVIL by definition. Get the difference? It is night and day. Darkness and light. Justice and Injustice. Truth and falsehood.



> * I don't need to say what that power can do, as power offers the freedom to tyrannize others and provide good. But, if it can do both, then power cannot be allowed.*


ALL power can be used for good or evil. Therefore, what you are saying, there must not be any power. If that is true, then the world should cease to exist, including you. Look, Your heart is beating. It gives you power to do both good and evil. According to your logic, you should be destroyed. Hence, you shouldn’t be speaking in the first place, since you shouldn’t exist. Thus you contradict yourself. And you are wrong. There is nothing wrong with power. Nothing exists without it. But it is how power is used that determines whether it is good or evil. 



> * Begging the question again. "Liberty is private property" is assumed, but you lack any sort of way to back yourself up.*


I can prove it. See the top post. But I will repeat it here:
Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you please as long as you do not violate the property of another.
Part of the DEFINITION of Private Property, is the right to do with it what you please as long as you do not violate the property of another. 
Thus, both are the definition subset of the other. It is IMPOSSIBLE to define either Liberty or Private Property without the other. Therefore I say, they are INSEPARABLY connected. Indeed, one defines the other. Therefore it is correct to say that Private Property is Liberty, and Liberty IS Private Property. It does not exist without the other.
Proof complete.



> * >Implying that they can't just produce their food as a community, or work with others for mutual benefit as a community*


Yes they can, but they chose not to, even though no one forces them against it. What does it mean? It means they chose to work for the business because they consider it to be more beneficial for them than the other alternative. 



> * I believe plunder is only a necessary evil in a system where people crave for capital.*


There is no such thing as “necessary evil.” ALL evil is, by definition, unnecessary (or it would not be evil). Evil is self-contradictory and self-destructive by definition. Therefore, it is a falsehood, and it destroys itself, and is always annihilated by the light of truth and justice.



> * Otherwise, a system without capital should not need to use charity or plunder.*


Capital is wealth. “A system without capital” is a system without any wealth, and therefore it, by definition, does not exist. And since it does not exist, it does “not need to use charity or plunder.” Thus, you are right, but it is not very useful to anyone. It is equivalent to saying “square circles do not need bicycles.” Since, “square circles,” by definition, don’t exist, you are right. 



> * please tell me how such plunder causes poverty, when nations such as my homeland of Canada use taxes for extensive welfare and health care*


The socialized health care of Canada is the laughing- (or crying) stock of civilized world. 



Also, because of Canadian socialism your country is the backwater of the industrial world. If your country, or any other country for that matter, persists in this socialism it will eventually and inevitably self-destruct.



> * Please, do go on about how an addition of force in the right direction in a society built upon coercion causes death and destruction, when Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover screwed the economy into the Great Depression.*


You should not quite lump Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover into one here.  Hoover indeed used aggressive violence of the state to institute wage and price controls and to kick-start “New Deal” plunder which caused The Great Depression. 
See more here: The Hoover-Roosevelt Depression



Also read: The Great Depression: 1929-1933, Part III,  and the role of Hoover in the depression. 




> “Justice is Non-violation of private property.”
> *You're making the assumption with your own redefinition of justice. You're not the moral authority*


Whether or not I am “an authority” makes no difference here. Truth speaks for itself. Justice is non-violation of private property, and is completely meaningless without Private Property. You cannot combat this truth, any more than you can unseat God, or overturn the laws of mechanics, or of mathematics, or prove that 2+2=5.



> “So, if you truly care for the poor, you will ravenously guard Justice as the very life of the society itself, for so it, truly, is. “
> *Oh, so if I truly care for the poor, I'll let people allow them to remain poor, as you claim was "justified"? You're disgusting me now with your dishonesty. If you defend private property to such an extent, you do not care for the poor, and I would consider your ideology unethical, but at least still a valid ideology. You lose validity when you start making absurdly false claims.*


There is nothing “absurd” or “false” about my statements. They are true. 

If you remove Justice form a society you will destroy it, both rich and poor combined. The socialist experiments of Soviet Russia, Communist China, and many others are a testament to that. Besides, I did not say I do not care for the poor. I said the opposite. Precisely because I care for the poor, I must insist on Justice, i.e. private property, because otherwise there will be MORE poor, and their plight will be much, MUCH worse. Look at tens of millions that starved in socialist countries for example, even though the right to food was guaranteed in their constitutions.  You cannot legislate a loaf of bread. Someone has to actually produce it. And it is systems built on Justice, i.e. Free Enterprise that produce the most. Which actually makes perfect sense. And when society is rich, because of Justice, it can better take care of the poor through charity, as God commands. Charity, by definition, must be VOLUNTARY. Aggressive force destroys charity and justice, and the productive base of the society, and the society itself for that matter. And when society is destroyed, so are the poor. Therefore, if you love the poor, as you claim, you will insist on Justice, that is sanctity of Private Property, as the very life of the poor, and the very life of the society itself. 



> * Oh right, how stupid of me. Those cartels and drug gangs clearly don't exist, because people are armed. and mercenaries, with all that profit incentive would never be bribed by the gangs and cartels, right? It's not like the more powerful cartels could just hire other mercenaries.*


I said it is better to have smaller gangs of thugs than bigger gangs of thugs. Government that practices aggressive violence (the definition of evil) is a big, monolithic criminal gang that seeks to have all the guns. It is much worse than smaller gangs that have no power to establish such monopoly, and do not claim moral superiority for their plunder. Get it? 

Justice is the issue here. Free Market is justice and Liberty at work by definition.

----------


## Sanguine

> I did address proportionality by pointing out the ideological infeasibility for the government to nuke or to tank its own people if they wish to retain a semblance or pretext of legitimacy (which they desperately need if they wish to brainwash and control 300 million people). Therefore, they cannot do that. This is why they are desperately eager to register and then confiscate all small firearms, assault rifles and ammunition from the people, for then the people will be truly defenseless in their view, for then they can squash them more discretely.
> *
> Except they don't need perceived legitimacy if they're going to attack their people.  If they're brainwashing, then they don't and to take away guns. In fact, it would be better for them if they didn't, but then again Obama's just freed up weapons rather than confiscate them.*
> 
> Secondly, I showed you Hitler’s own words, in which he called for COMPLETE gun confiscation in ALL conquered territories: Russia, Poland, France, and everywhere else. Did you miss that?
> *
> Mhm, except once again, that's because Hitler was using the same guns to conquer them.* 
> HAARP itself admits that they can influence weather by influencing the temperature of the stratosphere via microwave radiation. So you are the one who is delusional. 
> *
> ...


*


Your dogmatic thinking disturbs me.*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Except they don't need perceived legitimacy if they're going to attack their people.


They want to attack them discretely. Only those who wake up to the truth. Hence they want to take away the guns from the people, so that they won't have to use nuclear bombs and tanks, which would wake up many more people to what they are.




> If they're brainwashing, then they don't need to take away guns. In fact, it would be better for them if they didn't,


Not true. All lies eventually fail. It is inescapable. So for then, when people wake up, they want the people to be unarmed.




> Mhm, except once again, that's because Hitler was using the same guns to conquer them.


Exactly. Hitler, like the government today, wanted all the guns for himself, and not for the people under his rule, so he could dominate, plunder and exterminate them. Get it? 



> HAARP


I don’t have the time to go into HAARP. I will just say that you are very wrong. Do your own research. I did.



> Uh, and the winner of the court pays the court in a free market. Thanks for confirming my belief that Privatized justice is as ineffective as state justice!


In a free market the guilty pays most of the court expenses. Now, however, you are forced through taxation to pay for the incarceration of the criminals that attack you. That injustice does not exist in a Free Market. Thanks for building a straw man. 



> Yeah, just hire mercs to kill their ass instead! Justice!.


As I said, if you retaliate unjustly you are subject to justice enforcement by the wronged parties. 



> "So long as people can pay off a court, we can have justice" is basically what you're saying. Sorry mate, but privilege and justice are not synonymous.


Who would you rather pay for your protection? Would you force others at the point of a gun to pay for your security? How is that Just?
Besides, in a free society justice enforcement could be served as a charity to the poor as well. But it would be done voluntarily, and not via plunder.



> Except that system allows for corruption and violence, with justice only administered to the highest bidder.


You are wrong about that. Justice is absolute. It is not subject to being rich or poor. If private court of arbitration perverts justice, especially for the poor, it will be plainly visible to the consumers. The reputation of such corrupt court would be destroyed, and with it no one will agree to its decisions. Reputation is the thing by which such business lives or dies. If people see that court X perverts justice in favor of the rich, it will lose its reputation, and thus market share. People on mass will refuse to abide by its decisions, and therefore, there will be no point for the rich companies to hire such a court, because its decisions have no weight with most people. Do you see this? This is free market in operation. The product here is JUSTICE. The court that delivers the best product will capture the greatest market share.



> If you look in my posts in that thread with the Griffin video, you will see my thoughts on natural freedom existing in place of natural rights. What you're suggesting is natural freedom: which allows for all to commit coercive acts through the power they accumulate and dominate others with.


Not really. If people value peace, which most do, they will seek justice, and Free Market will deliver it infinitely more efficiently and justly than the unjust, by definition, government forced monopoly, i.e. “protection” racket (“we will rob you now, so no one may rob you later” deal).



> Stop begging the question, your circular logic is becoming so annoying.


All logic is ultimately circular because there are finite number of words in the language. I prove my points very carefully from multiple perspectives with interlocking, though mutually related principles. You don’t. My system is self-harmonizing and non-self-contradictory, therefore it is correct. Your system is self-contradictory and self-destructive at every turn. Therefore, it is wrong.

Let the people, therefore, judge who has made his case better.




> "Justice is private property, therefore private property is just" has been repeated so many times. If you can't argue, then concede defeat until you can find someone that can actually debate me.


As I correctly pointed out, and proved, the notions of Justice and Liberty are meaningless and non-existent without the concept of Private Property. I gave a careful, detailed proof of that earlier, which you failed to refute. Refute the proof that I gave, if you can, otherwise concede defeat. 



> I didn't say power as in "energy" or mere ability, I referred to power as the social construct that is gained from dominance of another. Don't red herring me, it's pathetic.


There is no red herring here, unless you provided it. I “unpacked” the word “dominance” for you already, and pointed out that power and influence in a society is perfectly just, by definition, if it is free of violation of private property. Did you miss that? Can you prove otherwise? No. Because it is true. 

And I say it again, ALL power, including social, can be used for good or evil, thus you are arguing for absence of any social power, which is only possible if society, i.e. interacting group of people did not exist which is a self-destructive desire, for it would lead to mass starvation and death of all people, and the end of human race itself. And if human race shouldn’t exist, neither should you. And if you shouldn’t exist, then why are you talking? Thus your claims are self-contradictory, and therefore, wrong.




> As I said, you're redefining liberty for your own purposes and using it to beg the question. Liberty has much more to it than property. "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.,"the power or scope to act as one pleases." Guess who takes the first one (it's me).


Private Property, the way I use the word, includes all the things that you justly own. It includes you, your body, your mind, your ability to speak, to move, to act, etc. Therefore, because of this broad definition, Liberty is precisely equal to Private Property. You cannot prove it wrong, because it is perfectly correct, and you cannot point out any liberty that is outside of the definition that I gave. Therefore my definition is correct.

Now, as for your definition of Liberty, please define “oppressive restrictions.” If it means violation of private property, (the way I use the word), then we perfectly agree. 

Once again, therefore, it proves that definition of Liberty is meaningless without the concept of Private Property as I defined it.




> "Work for the business, where you only get a paltry amount in comparison of the value of your labour or starve". That isn't freedom, that's coercion by needs, a theft of labour. That's why even Lysander Spooner was against the wage system.


“Coercion by needs” is a red herring, misdirection, a sly attempt at plunder, and a lie. The same non-logic can be used to say that ANY employer is “coercing you by needs” to be in subjugation to him. This is a lie. Coercion means the use of force, by definition. No force is used when a job is offered in a free market. You use communist propaganda and lies to justify plunder. And I don’t care what Lysander Spooner’s opinion is, unless it is a correct one. So quit name dropping. Names do not mean anything in this conversation. Only principles of truth do. 



> A necessary, opposing evil is necessary in a system that itself is built upon evil. That's why I only advocate it in capitalism.


You just have admitted that you actually advocate evil. Finally. That's what I was saying about your position all along. 

I rest my case. 

By the way, capitalism, when free of violation of private property, by definition, is not evil. 

Capitalism that is free of violation of private property is simply Free Market, that is Justice and Liberty. Thus you are advocating evil against Justice and Liberty. Not good. It is actually evil. Just as you said it was. You have defeated yourself. 




> Anarcho-socialism can never exist? Primitivism never existed? Communalism never existed? You're certainly delusional and pretty committed to dogma if you think capitalism has always existed.


Straw man. I never asserted any of these. You are ascribing to me words I never said, neither can you show that I implied any of this. Therefore you are being disingenuous. 



> Is that why most of the civilized world adopted socialized health care?


Most of the world adopted socialized health care, and socialism for that matter, because it is being covertly ruled by devil-worshiping banksters to that end, because they infiltrated and subverted most of the governments on earth to promote this injustice so that the devil may destroy the world and everyone in it. I admit, most of them are ignorant of the true objectives, but the ones at the very top know it, and it is supported by useful idiots like yourself who are in reality bleeding heart liberals, who are seduced by the use of aggressive violence to commit legalized plunder and injustice, and to force others to conform to their delusions of error. 



> As I seem to recall, it was actually America that's laughed at,


Then why the people in the video I posted were forced to seek healthcare in America, which they, being on the brink of death could not obtain in Canada? Watch it again.



> Canada isn't really socialist, just because it has one socialized aspect, it doesn't make it socialist in the least.


Socialism is defined as the use of the aggressive violence of the state to redistribute the wealth, at the point of a gun, from those who earned it, against their will, to those who did not. 

Socialism is nothing more or less than legalized and institutionalized plunder and theft. It is evil and injustice of potentially lethal aggressive violence pretending to be charity. 

Most of the governments on earth are infected with it. The more it is present, the worse are the economic problems of that country; and the less socialism present, the greater the prosperity and industry of the country. Canada is nigh close to dead because of socialism.  America sadly is moving in the same direction. If this slide is not reversed, any country afflicted with it, will unavoidably self-destruct, because no society can endure long while embracing evil and denying justice. 



> Also, if you think our economy is centered around health care, then it goes to show that you're incredibly ignorant


I never said it was centered around health care. But I am sure your country's health care, is one of the main reasons your country is slowly dying from socialism. 



> You've got to be kidding me. Hoover continued a lot of Coolidge's policies but introduced price controls.


 So you admit that. Price controls are the use of aggressive violence of the state to dictate prices on goods and services and thus commit legalized plunder, redistribute the wealth, and kill the operations of Free Market, which violations of Free Market, i.e. violations of Justice, ALWAYS cause depressions and economic ruin of every shade. 

Price controls are socialism.



> I only included him because of that continuation, but he certainly wasn't the cause of the Depression, because he was only in office five months prior to the crash,


It does not matter if he was in the office one minute, if in that minute he signed a Free Market killing law known as price controls. It is like saying, “he could not have pulled the trigger and shot the victim, because he had the gun only for one minute.“ 



> How amused Orwell would be to see the libertarians of today redefining words to be twisted meanings,


Show me one instance where I have “twisted meaning” of even one word. You cannot prove that. You are the one who is “twisting meanings” because you pretend to be for liberty, yet advocate aggressive violence and legalized plunder.



> and rewriting history for their benefit.


You got the history wrong. But more importantly, you got the principles wrong. 




> Speaking of Orwell, I'm pretty disgusted that you would refer to him when he was vehemently opposed to capitalism.


I haven’t mentioned Orwell even once. You are confusing me with someone else.  It is you who speak of Orwell over and over again. Should you not then be “disgusted” with yourself. According to you, you should be.



> I've combated your "truth" multiple times and you have thus ignored it or used circular logic through begging the question. Your "truth" is based on fallacy.


Prove it. Show me where is the fallacy in my reasoning, and then PROVE that it is a fallacy. You have done nothing of the sort. At best you resort to name calling. That is not a proof. Show me where my logic is wrong.



> Fallacy is logic, knowledge is ignorance? Methinks you live in Oceania.


Here is another Orwell reference from you. Aren’t you “disgusted” with yourself? According to you, you should be. I quote you: “Speaking of Orwell, I'm pretty disgusted that you would refer to him when he was vehemently opposed to capitalism.” So are you disgusted with yourself?




> If you insist on private property, then you cannot care for the poor, as can even be extracted from the words of Smith. Charity does not give enough for the poor, yet you insist upon it. 
> I insist on one being able to reap the fruits of their labours, and for those that cannot to still be supported by the community.


That is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. You insist on mutually exclusive things. A) You insist on people "being able to reap the fruits of their labors,” and B) you insist on extracting wealth from the people that earned it, against their will, at the point of a gun, and giving it to the people who have not earned it. Don’t you see that A and B are in direct contradiction to each other? That A and B CANNOT possibly both be true at the same time? Thus, you insist on a contradiction, or in other words, you CONTRADICT YOURSELF. Therefore, you are wrong, by the definition of the word "wrong."

And I already proved to you that the poor are hurt even more, and there are more of them, if productive base of the society is destroyed via destruction of justice. Charity takes care of the poor much better and infinitely more justly than legalized and institutionalized injustice of plunder that destroys the society and the poor with it.




> I do not see how relieving poverty -a condition that is a product of the system- is hating the poor.


Because by “relieving” you mean the use of aggressive and potentially lethal violence (i.e. the point of a gun) to commit legal plunder, theft, and injustice. This destroys society’s productive base, and eventually the society itself, with its poor. Thus, ultimately you KILL the poor, despite of your professed good intentions. You may not “hate the poor,” but you are certainly making their condition worse. Indeed, if this error is persisted in, ALL of the society will end up first poor, then dead. It is the INEVITABLE consequence of INJUSTICE. 




> “I said it is better to have smaller gangs of thugs than bigger gangs of thugs. “
> What happened to evil (even the lesser) being unnecessary? Surely you can't support a system that allows such coercive collectives to stand, right? Or perhaps your principles are conflicting.


No conflicting principles here at all. I am only supporting the system that is AGAINST aggressive violence, be it by government or by any other gang of thugs. Evil is still unnecessary by definition and always will be, because it is a self-contradiction, by definition.

It is true that the smaller the gang of thugs the better, zero being the best. This diminution of the number of thugs is a natural consequence of supporting a Free Market system, that is a system based on perfect principles of Justice and Liberty.

If gangs happen to arise within such Free Market system, it will be in contradiction to the principles upon which it is based, as opposed to the present system, in which legal plunder and injustice are codified into the law upon which it is based. Thus, the present system naturally magnifies injustice and evil, but the Free Market system naturally minimizes them. 

It is stupid in the extreme to compromise the correct and just principles of Liberty for any political gain. It is a self-contradiction of highest order, and thus wrong by definition.

Thus, I am supporting a system based on perfect principles, which leads to diminution of the number of thugs in government or otherwise. 

There is no contradiction here at all. 




> “Justice is the issue here. Free Market is justice and Liberty at work by definition.”
> Stop redefining the words. The fact that the majority of your post is doing just that goes to show that you're dogmatic.


My definitions are correct, and I have proven that they are non-self-contradictory and self-harmonizing which means they are correct. PROVE them wrong if you can. You are incapable of doing so, because you cannot disprove the truth, nor prove that 2+2 is 5. 

Truth speaks for itself.



> Your dogmatic thinking disturbs me.


Your advocacy of aggressive violence and legalized plunder masquerading as liberty disturbs me.


Happy Holidays, by the way.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Economic Lessons of Bethlehem*
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
December 25, 2013





Merry Christmas Everyone!

----------


## Sanguine

> They want to attack them discretely. Only those who wake up to the truth. Hence they want to take away the guns from the people, so that they won't have to use nuclear bombs and tanks, which would wake up many more people to what they are.
> *
> The amount of weapons the average individual has will not save them from an authoritarian government armed to the teeth. All it takes is a little cyanide, a shooter on a roof or whatever else.  Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but America's already $#@!ed itself over.* 
> 
>  Not true. All lies eventually fail. It is inescapable. So for then, when people wake up, they want the people to be unarmed.
> 
> *Their arms mean nothing to the government. * 
> 
> Exactly. Hitler, like the government today, wanted all the guns for himself, and not for the people under his rule, so he could dominate, plunder and exterminate them. Get it? 
> ...



I can't hear you over your points breaking.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> *The amount of weapons the average individual has will not save them from an authoritarian government armed to the teeth.*


The point is, if they need to silence 10 million people (3% of the population), it is easier for them to do, if this 10 million are not armed, because if the 10 million are armed and organized, they are impossible to overcome except perhaps with nuclear weapons or tanks or massive aerial bombardment, etc., which they prefer not to do, as it will wake up the remainder of the people to the reality of what this government actually is, i.e. a gang of thieving and murdering thugs.




> *Hitler only wanted the guns of the people he oppressed, because his government didn't have advanced weapons and technology.*


So, you finally admit the link between gun confiscation and oppression? Besides, he had pretty advanced weapons too, bombers, tanks, artillery, navy, etc. 




> *I presume your "research" involved going on InfoWars and BeforeItsNews, searching up HAARP, and believing everything you read?*


You presume wrong, as usual.




> *A guilty party may just take it up to another court and try to bribe it to avoid major losses.*


That’s why there will be also inter court arbitration as well, i.e. arbitration between competing courts (which would be similar to an appeal under current system).




> “As I said, if you retaliate unjustly you are subject to justice enforcement by the wronged parties. “
> *Except not really, you're just subject to the party for retaliation itself. Say you steal a bit of copper wire from a manufacturing plant, and the wronged party decides instead to shoot your ass down. Any retaliation from the family is met with more by business-paid mercs. Good luck finding actual justice.*


If a manufacturing plant retaliates unjustly, it will have to pay justice to the wronged parties, who can get together, as in a class action suit, pool their resources, and bring even a big player to justice. Free Market, i.e. voluntary association between people based on justice and liberty, will always find a way to restore justice, and much better so than a criminal, monolithic, and unjust by definition crime syndicate of thieves and thugs, called “government.”




> *I'd rather not pay for my protection and work with my community to protect itself.*


As long as this arrangement is voluntary, it would be just. That is NOT what takes place now, however. Now, you  have nothing more or less than “protection” racket that forces you to pay for its services at the point of a gun (taxation). In other words, the government commits aggressive violence (the definition of evil) and robbery under the pretext of protecting you from aggressive violence and robbery. It is an oxymoron, an injustice, and a lie. The ONLY way to deliver protection justly is via Free Market, where people VOLUNTARILY pay for the service. Everything else are different shades of legalized plunder, injustice and evil.




> *implying that courts would care about measly payers over larger spenders.*


Yes, and I carefully described to you why. If a court loses its reputation among majority of the people, its services become worthless even to a large corporation, because the decisions of such court have zero weight with most of the people. Reputation for justice is the only marketable commodity that a court has in a Free Market.




> *Buying the court will only lead to arbitration by another court, and it itself may be paid to continue such gross injustice.*


Abuse may happen in any system that is run by imperfect humans. However, some systems minimize such abuse, because they are built on principles of justice, and other systems maximize such abuse because they are built on the principles of INJUSTICE. The current system is built on principles of evil and injustice codified into the very laws on which it is based, therefore, not surprisingly, the abuses you describe will be much larger and more devastating in it than in a Free Market system defined by principles of Justice.




> *Besides, your point on market share only really applies if there was infinite competition within the region.*


Do you need “infinite” competition on milk or shoes to get a good product? All you need is free entry into the market place to deliver the service. Free Market does the rest of the magic. Free entry into the market of justice enforcement is now prevented by aggressive violence of government forced monopoly, which is immoral by definition.




> *Not everyone (in fact, few) will have the resources to start up a business with the enforcers required for it to succeed.*


If the demand for the service is high, it will be more profitable for people to enter into such business, thus Free Market naturally regulates itself. Justice is just another service. It is very valuable, but it is just another service, and *Free Market is the ONLY entity that can deliver Justice by definition*, because anything else would be unjust, by definition. By what definition? The definition of Free Market, of course, which is defined as voluntary associations between people, devoid of aggressive violence, which is a definition of Justice itself. Thus Justice and Free Market are one and the same.




> *Government forced monopolies are just an acceleration towards the inevitable, just another power structure operating in the market.*


Power is not evil in and of itself, only power used to violate Justice, i.e. Private Property, becomes evil by definition. Without power NOTHING exists. Without power in a market, market does not exist. What power should exist in the market? The power of producers who deliver the products that consumers desire, and who do so without violating private property of anyone. That is a good power, without which neither Free Market, nor life itself exist. 




> *Reason dictates that for you to declare my system as wrong, you have to identify my system and refute its points.*


Your system, from what I have gathered from your comments is self-contradictory to the core. 
A) You believe that there must be no power in the market place nor in society, which I have proven to you means that neither market nor society would exist, because market and society without power are literally nothing. To have a society is to have power. To have a market is to have power. Good or bad, depends on how it is used.
B) You believe that people should keep the fruits of their own labor, yet those fruits must be taken from them by violence and given to those who have not earned them, which is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction.
C) You also believe that Private Property deprives people of the fruits of their labor, which is an oxymoron because Private Property is defined, in part, as the fruits of one’s labor.

So, if your “system” was followed it would end up in literal extinction of the entire human race, including you. This is why I say it is self-contradictory and self-destructive at every turn, and is therefore wrong, by definition.




> “Let the people, therefore, judge who has made his case better.” 
> *Let a forum of ideologically focused people choose between the ideology that they dogmatically follow, or the one they oppose? Definitely no bias there.*


The only bias here is towards the truth verses self-contradictory falsehood. It is a good bias, a bias without which life would not exist.




> *Your "detailed proof" was "Private Property is Justice, and Justice is Liberty." I take liberty for its own definition.*


I gave the definition sets of three things: 1) Private Property, 2) Liberty, and 3) Justice, and then I pointed out that the three definition sets intersected, and thus were inseparably and eternally connected and interlocked, because each, necessarily defines the others, and neither has any meaning without the other two. I pointed out a truth; you failed to disprove it, because it is impossible to disprove. 

I challenge you to give non-self-contradictory definitions of items 1), 2), and 3), and then prove that they do not intersect and do not contain each other. If you do so successfully you will have disproved my point, but you have not done so, because it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to do. You would have to, in essence, prove 2+2=5, which cannot be done, because it is a self-contradiction. You cannot prove a lie, and you cannot disprove the truth.




> *You did not unpack dominance, you took the use of "power" out of context and applied it to the ability to choose as opposed to the system of authority.*


I showed you that Private Property is a natural extension of self-ownership (which you yourself admit exists), and thus produces the natural system of authority over the things you own. It is perfectly just, because it is the definition of Justice itself (i.e. non-violation of private property). 

Thus, I have proven to you that not all “systems of authority” are evil. What makes them evil? Violation of Private Property, and nothing else. What makes them Just? Non-violation of Private Property, and nothing else. Why? Because Good is Private Property, by definition, and good does not exist and is meaningless without it. Of course, you have to use the broad definition of Private Property which I gave for this to be true, which definition, in part is: _Private Property are all the things that you justly own, it includes, among other things, you, your body, your mind, your ability to think, to speak, to move, to act, the fruits of your labor, etc…_ . For a complete definition please see the top post.

I have shown that the definitions I gave are non-self-contradictory, and self-harmonizing; therefore they are true. 
So, power and dominance that do not violate Private Property are Just and good by definition. Without such power and dominance the world or life itself would not exist. It is the very power of life and progress, and it is literally impossible without Private Property, which is the definition of Justice and Liberty itself.




> *I did not oppose choice, I opposed dominance.*


Define “dominance.” If by it you mean violation of Private Property, then I agree with you that it is evil.




> *If you argue for the necessity of social power, then you're confirming my self-held belief of Neoliberals worshipping authority as much as the Leninist derivatives.*


I have shown that society, i.e. associations between people, do not exist without social power (power being defined as the ability to control property). What determines whether this power is good or evil is whether it is used to violate private property or not. Thus, if power is not used to violate private property, then it is Just and good by definition, and without such power life itself would not exist.




> *I argue against private property insofar as it is the method of depriving someone of the fruits of their labour.*


That is an oxymoron. The fruits of your labor are a part of your private property. 

Of course, if you mean that private property can be used to violate the private property of another, then I agree that it would be unjust. But the very definition of Private Property forbids such violations of the property of another. Therefore, inasmuch as you violate the property of  another, you forfeit your own property, because Justice demands non-violation, and therefore neutralization of aggression, even if it must be by the use of equal and opposite force to offset or neutralize the aggression of another. So, the true concept of Private Property has the notion of Justice built right into it. It is a part of its correct definition.




> *Perhaps I should have made clear what I distinct personal property from the rest of what is private. Your body, your clothes, and your possessions are yours and yours alone*


Very interesting. You contradict yourself again. First you say you do not believe in private property, then you say that you can own your body and your clothes. By what moral principle does such ownership stop at your clothes? What about a second set of clothes? What about a house, that you use to clothe yourself with in the winter so you may live and not die? What about the rest of it. Your position is self-contradictory. Either private property and self-ownership exist, or they do not. If self-ownership exists, then ownership of property must necessarily exist too. It’s either one way or the other. You cannot have it both ways, because they are mutually exclusive.

I say self-ownership does exist, because the opposite is self-contradictory. And since self-ownership exists, then ownership of Private Property must necessarily exist too, or it would be self-contradictory. 




> *True liberty is the freedom to govern the life of oneself, and not have that freedom infringed.*


Agreed. But it is meaningless without the concept of Private Property, the way that I defined it.




> *For this, it must mean that individuals must not be pushed down into poverty and lack access to the necessities of life*


Define “pushed down.” If it means violation of private property, then I agree with your statement. Otherwise, your statement is self-contradictory, because if no property is violated, no freedom is infringed by definition. To assert otherwise is a self-contradiction.




> *nor does it mean that the access to those necessities should only be granted in return for labour to the profit of those that do not earn it or need it (as that is being under a master).*


If you justly own it, you earned it. It is the same thing by definition. Did you earn your body? I say yes, because you own it. So, to justly own something is to have earned it. It is one and the same. Thus, your statement is equivalent to saying: “nor does it mean that the access to those necessities should only be granted in return for labor to the profit of those that do not [own] it.” And that is obviously true, but useless. 

However, if people DO justly own those necessities of life, then your statement becomes false. You cannot justly expect access to their property without their permission or payment of their choosing, if they choose to sell. Otherwise, you can claim and force “access to the necessities of life” that belong to other people all day long and never productively work again a day in your life. It is called plunder and aggressive violence which can be justly met with equal force to offset your aggression. Anything to the contrary is self-contradictory.




> “Once again, therefore, it proves that definition of Liberty is meaningless without the concept of Private Property as I defined it.”
> *Only when it's private in the personal sense.*


Private is personal, so your distinction is completely meaningless. 




> *"Work under me or starve" is no different in outcome than "work for me or be shot".*


False. One includes the use of aggressive violence and injustice, the other one does not. 

Key difference. 

You ALWAYS have to work or starve, even if that work is to lift your food to your mouth. So, “work or starve” is perfectly just, as long as no Private Property is violated. Even the Bible says: “this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.” (2 Thes. 3:10) This is perfectly just.




> *The entire system is built around "work for someone or die"*


Yes. Work or die. This is how it works. And it is perfectly just, as long as no private property is violated. Even the Bible says the same.




> *I advocate a necessary evil to oppose an evil that is just as great. That doesn't mean I prefer either. Indeed, I prefer neither.*


I already proved to you that there is no such thing as “necessary evil.” If it is evil it is unnecessary, by definition, otherwise it would not be evil. 




> “By the way, capitalism, when free of violation of private property, by definition, is not evil. “
> *"Work for me or starve" isn't evil when there's another option? Hah.*


If aggressive violence is used to deny “another option” and thus to compel labor, then that is evil, and it is contrary to what I have described, which was: “capitalism, when free of violation of private property, by definition, is not evil.“
So, you are actually equating what I have said to the exact opposite of what I have said. No wonder you are arriving at the opposite conclusion! You are confusing light and darkness, up and down, true and false. They are the OPPOSITES of each other. They are NOT the same.




> *Advocating using an evil as a tool against another evil isn't as bad as someone who just advocates a system based around exploitation.*


Advocating evil is evil by definition.

Please define “exploitation.” You beginning to sound like comrades Marx and Lenin. Are you sure you are not a closet commy?

If no private property is violated, and no fraud is committed, there is no exploitation, by definition.




> *You said a society without capital cannot exist. If that were true, communalism and primitivism never existed, as neither use capital.*


Capital is wealth. Society without wealth does not exist, just as a river without water does not exist. It is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. 

So, please define “capital,” to make sure we are speaking about the same thing. Thanks.




> *Oh wait, I support the state now? Huh, I would have thought that EVERY SINGLE ONE of my posts would have explained that I wasn't.*


Define “state.” One thing for sure, you support the use of aggressive violence to commit plunder, in other words, you support injustice, and thus evil. This much you have established by your own words when you were raving against Private Property. Injustice is violation of Private Property, by definition. (Again, broad definition of Private Property is used as before. See above.)




> “Then why the people in the video I posted were forced to seek healthcare in America, which they, being on the brink of death could not obtain in Canada? Watch it again.”
> *They were denied because others were being cured.*


They were denied because care was rationed, because there is not enough of it to go around. This ALWAYS happens when socialism, or in other words, price controls and legalized plunder are used as they are in Canada.




> *The market alternative is to give people less access unless they can pay.*


No, the market alternative is to give people access if they can pay. This is why these people had to go to US to get care.




> *Oh, but death is only alright when the rich allow it, right?*


According to you, death is alright when the state of Canada demands it.




> “Socialism is defined as the use of the aggressive violence of the state to redistribute the wealth, at the point of a gun, from those who earned it, against their will, to those who did not. “
> *Except it isn't. Leninism and branches derived from it represent socialism no more than how Keynesianism and its derived schools represent capitalism.*


Or really? All socialist systems use aggressive violence of the state (ultimately backed up by the threat of lethal violence), to commit legal plunder, by forcefully taking the fruits of the labor of those who earned it, and transferring those fruits, against the will of the rightful owners, to those who have not earned it. It is the same in US, Canada, EU, or any other place that is poisoned by the cancer of socialism. Thus:

Public taxation of private property is socialism. 
Price and wage controls are socialism. 
Public regulation of private property is socialism. 

Socialism is evil, because it is aggressive violence, and aggressive violence is the definition of EVIL and injustice itself. 

How do you define Socialism? And prove to me that no aggressive violence is found in your definition. 




> “Socialism is nothing more or less than legalized and institutionalized plunder and theft. It is evil and injustice of potentially lethal aggressive violence pretending to be charity. “
> *If that's socialism, can I claim capitalism is a plutocracy?*


Perhaps. Plutocracy is evil only if it involves the use of aggressive violence. Sadly, now it is the case. However, true capitalism is a Free Market, which is defined as the absence of aggressive violence. What we have now is NOT a Free Market; it is a perversion of capitalism that involves aggressive violence of the state. It is also known as fascism. 

Removing of aggressive violence of the state transforms fascism into a Free Market system again.




> *Ironically, Canada has freer markets than the United States. And it didn't get nearly as … up by the recession as everyone else was.*


Canada is socialistic, perhaps more than the US, therefore Canada is experiencing slow, torturous and steady descent into utter economic ruin. It may have smaller jolts along the way, but it is going down just as sure as the US, or any country that persist with the injustice and legalized plunder of socialism, or just as sure as the frog that is slowly boiled alive. Because there are no certain jolts, the frog doesn’t even notice it is being boiled, until it is too late. 




> *If your economy immediately and completely collapses after the introduction of a few price controls, then your economy sucks to start with.*


Price structure is the nervous system of Free Market. Remove or paralyze it via government forced price controls, and Free Market dies, because: 

a) legalized plunder is being committed via aggressive violence, 
b) resources are misallocated because price information no longer guides allocation of resources, and 
c) the incentive to produce is removed or significantly lessened.

Thus to say that if the economy collapses after introduction of price controls, therefore economy was bad, is the same as to say, since you shot someone in the head and they collapsed, they must have been in poor health. You are severely delusional.

Secondly, it was not just “a few price controls” these were severe price and wage controls, which were preceded by a massive counterfeiting theft spree by the Federal Reserve (a fraudulent and immoral counterfeiting monopoly granted by the aggressive violence of the state) which caused, beyond obvious theft, massive misallocation of the resources in the economy prior to the Depression, and then, as I said, followed by massive government intervention of more aggressive violence, in the form of price and wage controls, and outright gold confiscation under Roosevelt, followed by massive wasteful public works financed by the Fed’s counterfeiting thus robbing and destroying the middle class even more; all this assured that the depression would last for over a decade. 

Thus, the reason for the Great Depression was legalized plunder via aggressive violence of the states worldwide, nothing more, nothing less.




> “Price controls are socialism.”
> *Learn what socialism is.*


Ditto. 




> *If price controls kill economies that quickly, the United States would be in recession almost all the time.*


I already enumerated all the main factors that cause depressions. The more severe the price controls the greater the damage to the economy and to justice. 

By the way, Fed price fixing interest rates by decree is a price control, one of the most important ones, since money is one half of every transaction. This counterfeiting and price fixing by the Fed causes the "business cycle," the never ending stream of booms and busts that the Fed uses to fleece the public, which more correctly should be called the "plunder cycle." But of course, to the Fed, plunder is the business, therefore they call it the "business cycle." 




> *I've told you countless times that you've bastardized "liberty" as a term.*


Really? For you legalized plunder via aggressive violence is liberty. So, I think it is you who bastardized the term.
Let people judge who is right and who is wrong. 




> *Your principles aren't absolute. You sound like a North Korean dictator.*


In this case, multiplication table that says that 2x2=4 sounds like a North Korean dictator.




> *Uh, Orwell was a Democratic Socialist. I doubt he would be disgusted with me.*


You said you are “disgusted” that I would refer to him, when I didn’t refer to him. Then you proceeded to refer to him yourself over and over again. So, I ask again, should you not then be “disgusted” with yourself? According to your logic, you should be. Why the double standard? I didn’t refer to him at all.




> *I never said anything about coercing others. You're attacking a completely different position than the one I have.*


Really? Wasn’t it you who was a) raving against private property and saying that b) the wealth must be redistributed by violence “to help the poor?” Did you not call for the use of aggressive violence to redistribute the wealth from those who earned it, against their will, to those who did not earn it? What is exactly your position? PROVE  to me that it does not involve aggressive violence to take the fruits of the labor of those who earned it, and transfer it against their will to those who did not earn it. 

Is that not what you said? Prove it.




> *Ah, so less is more in a society built around more? That's utter bollocks.*


What does that mean? Sounds like another straw man to me.

But if I could interpret it, I would say: 
Less injustice is more Freedom, general Prosperity and therefore help to the poor, in a society built around more Justice, more Progress, and more Prosperity. So in that sense, less is certainly more! 




> “Because by “relieving” you mean the use of aggressive and potentially lethal violence (i.e. the point of a gun) to commit legal plunder, theft, and injustice. This destroys society’s productive base, and eventually the society itself, with its poor. Thus, ultimately you KILL the poor, despite of your professed good intentions. You may not “hate the poor,” but you are certainly making their condition worse. Indeed, if this error is persisted in, ALL of the society will end up first poor, then dead. It is the INEVITABLE consequence of INJUSTICE. “
> *Can you actually connect welfare with the death of the poor?*


I just did. I not only connected it to the death of the poor, but to the death of the entire society itself, with its poor, who’s number will be greatly multiplied, and their plight greatly increased before then. It is the inevitable consequence. 

If what remains of Free Market was able to bear this shenanigans for a while, it doesn’t mean it can continue indefinitely. As Free Market dies under the weight of aggressive violence of the state, so does the society itself eventually die, with its poor, if this aggressive violence is not abolished.  




> *You just said "it kills the poor THEREFORE it kills the poor".*


No. I said aggressive violence kills the productive base of the society, and when the society is thus gradually destroyed, that makes more poor, and their plight worse, until eventually it kills the poor and the society itself. 

Get it? 

INJUSTICE of aggressive violence kills the society and the poor with it. 




> *Thing is, money doesn't just vanish when it goes to the poor, it goes back to businesses through the purchasing of goods and services. The profits to the top, and a much smaller portion goes back to the individual on the bottom. It's not like the poor just hold on to the majority of their money and not purchase anything with it*


With the same logic you might say: “The money doesn’t just vanish when someone is robbed, it goes back to business through the purchases made by the robbers. It's not like the robbers just hold on to the majority of their money. Therefore, let’s have more robberies so we may stimulate the economy.”  

Do you see any problem with your non-logic? 




> *You don't make the amount of thugs any smaller.*


I disagree. A Free Market system tends to diminish the number of thugs, but government based on plunder tends to increase their number.




> *Besides, what happened to all evil being unnecessary? Your system harbors evil, so it must be unnecessary and just as evil. At least, according to your logic it is.*


Aggressive violence is contrary to the foundation principles of Free Market, which is defined as the absence of aggressive violence, that is as Justice and Liberty. Therefore, Free Market does not “harbor” evil, it is in the state of contradiction to it, and therefore ever tends to naturally minimize the number of thugs. The aggressive violence of the state, on the other hand, codifies plunder and thuggery into law, therefore it naturally maximizes the number of thugs until the society is destroyed, if this aggression is not abolished. 

Thus, your non-logic, is equivalent to saying: “If a person gets sick, he is harboring disease, and therefore he is unnecessary and evil.” That is a bad logic, because you can heal the patient, by getting rid of self-contradicting principles in him. I say it again, the principles of Free Market are perfect principles of Justice and Liberty, therefore crime is a CONTRADICTION to the principles of Free Market.




> *The state in democracy is supposed to represent the people. It just indicates that the goodness of the state and market aren't absolute.*


Neither the goodness of mafia nor the goodness of a community of saints is absolute, because both are made up of more or less imperfect people. The difference though, is that one society is based on INCORRECT principles of aggressive violence, and the other on CORRECT principles of JUSTICE. Which of the two societies, do you think, will enjoy greater peace and progress, the one base on a LIE in its foundation, or the one based on TRUTH and JUSTICE in its foundation? Any ideas?




> *Your system is already contradictory. Your point is void.*


You haven’t proven a single contradiction in my system. 




> “I am supporting a system based on perfect principles, which leads to diminution of the number of thugs in government or otherwise.”
> *It's not perfect, you're just saying it is as an ego boost.*


Prove any imperfection in the principles I am advancing. You have not done so. You cannot prove it. WHERE  is your proof? It does not exist.




> “There is no contradiction here at all. “
> *Except the whole "liberty is working under a master"*


It is possible but only if you VOLUNTARILY chose that master. Get that? 




> *and "capitalism is hating the poor, BUT BECAUSE WE LOVE THE POOR"*


Never said that. Straw man.




> *And calling evil "unnecessary" when you admit that gangs and violent businesses will form in anarcho-capitalism.*


I said gangs and aggressive violence are AGAINST the principles on which Free Market is built, by definition. 




> *Except you've ignored my proof or further contradicted yourself, begged the question, or gave me a strawman argument.*


Which proof of yours have I ignored? I am willing to take a second look. Would you be so kind to repeat your proof, please.

Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> *If price controls kill economies that quickly, the United States would be in recession almost all the time.*


I already enumerated all the main factors that cause depressions. The  more severe the price controls the greater the damage to the economy and  to justice. 

By the way, Fed price fixing interest rates by decree is a price  control, one of the most important ones, since money is one half of  every transaction. This counterfeiting and price fixing by the Fed  causes the "business cycle," the never ending stream of booms and busts  that the Fed uses to fleece the public, which more correctly should be  called the "plunder cycle." But of course, to the Fed, plunder is the  business, therefore they call it the "business cycle."

----------


## Sanguine

> The point is, if they need to silence 10 million people (3% of the population), it is easier for them to do, if this 10 million are not armed, because if the 10 million are armed and organized, they are impossible to overcome except perhaps with nuclear weapons or tanks or massive aerial bombardment, etc., which they prefer not to do, as it will wake up the remainder of the people to the reality of what this government actually is, i.e. a gang of thieving and murdering thugs.
> *
> Uh, no.  They don't need to silence 10 million anyways as the state has enough resources to propagandize and paint them in a poor light. * 
> 
> So, you finally admit the link between gun confiscation and oppression? Besides, he had pretty advanced weapons too, bombers, tanks, artillery, navy, etc. 
> *
> Hitler bombing the German people for speaking out against him would have resulted in him starting a civil war.  If he starts it, he will lack support to win it (not to mention that he lacked the resources to begin with).  Instead, he beat down people such as the socialists through propagandization and the conflation of all forms of socialism under one banner.* 
> 
> You presume wrong, as usual.
> ...



I grow tired of wasting my time with you.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I'll respond shortly.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

You Can’t Have a War without Soldiers

By Laurence M. Vance
January 15, 2014

“It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are  punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of  trumpets.” 
~ Voltaire

 Critics of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and of U.S. military  escapades in general are often inconsistent. Although they may denounce  warmongering politicians, senseless foreign wars, the warfare state, the  military-industrial complex, U.S. foreign policy, foreign military  bases, and the destruction of civil liberties during wartime, they  usually forget one very important thing.

 You can’t have a war without soldiers.

 Even though it is U.S. soldiers who make all of these things  possible, they are apparently immune from criticism. Seemingly oblivious  to the very things they condemn, many critics of war and the warfare  state still spout the same nonsense about the troops as the most diehard  red-state conservative warmonger: “Support the troops,” “The troops  defend our freedoms,” “God bless the troops,” “Pray for the troops in  harm’s way,” “Thank the troops for their service,” “The American soldier  and Jesus Christ, one gives his life for your freedom, the other for  your soul.”

 A case in point is an otherwise excellent article by a conservative, “War: What is it Good For?”

 The author rightly points out that Iraq “had not and was not planning  to attack us,” we squandered hundreds of billions in Afghanistan  “building a nation for people who don’t see themselves as a nation,” the  war in Afghanistan  was not constitutionally declared, “there hasn’t been a declared war  since World War II and yet our sons and daughters have fought and died  in countless battles around the world,” Iran doesn’t have a nuclear  weapons program, but has the right to “develop nuclear power for  peaceful means,” “our worldwide military presence is not keeping us safe  and in many ways it is provocative,” and that “the cost of war is often  seen in the growth of government power and the loss of freedom at  home.”

 He criticizes intervening militarily in Syria and Iran, sanctions  against Iran, arming the Syrian rebels, the idea that it is “acceptable  for North Korea to have nuclear weapons but not Iran,” and the shadow  war between Iran and Israel (with American support).

 He calls for the end of foreign military bases, an interventionist  foreign policy, and “entangling agreements that bind us to fight for  others who should instead fight for themselves.”

 But as a preface to his article, the author prints this statement from the second paragraph of the article:
I am a supporter of our troops.  I believe they are  patriots and America’s best. It is not the bravery or skill of our  troops that I question; it is the imperial foreign policy which sends  them as sacrifices on the altar of political ambition that I question.
 
But what is there to support about U.S. troops? Should we support  them for voluntarily joining an evil institution? Should we support them  for fighting unjust wars? Should we support them for blindly following  orders? Should we support them for fighting foreign wars? Should we  support them for perpetuating the myth that they defend our freedoms?  Should we support them for fighting undeclared wars? Should we support  them for helping to create more terrorists? Should we support them for  helping to carry out an evil U.S. foreign policy? Should we support them  for fighting unnecessary wars? Should we support them for invading and  occupying foreign countries? Should we support them for fighting immoral  wars? Should we support them for maiming and killing hundreds of  thousands of people that were no threat to the United States?

 Are U.S. soldiers patriots or just young men and women who were seeking benefits, couldn’t find a job, or simply wanted to join the military, travel the world, meet interesting people, and then kill them?

 Are U.S. soldiers America’s best? The typical American worker in a  factory or on a construction site will probably disagree. Soldiers  certainly aren’t all America’s best. Some soldiers are downright dumb. There is no doubt that U.S. soldiers are America’s best when it comes to suicide, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, and sexual assault  (13,900 men and 12,100 women in the military experienced “unwanted  sexual contact” in 2012). And, of course, there are the infamous  military values and standards of conduct.

 I have prefaced this article, not with something I say in the  article, but with a well-known statement from Voltaire about how  soldiers are universally given a license to kill. This is the worst  thing about soldiers. This idea that mass killing in war is acceptable  but only the killing of one’s neighbor violates the Sixth Commandment is unfortunately a very prevalent idea among Christians as well.

 But it is not just Voltaire who recognized this ghastly attitude.

 Here is the famed Seneca, writing in the first century:
We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We  check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much  vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples? There are no limits to our  greed, none to our cruelty. And as long as such crimes are committed by  stealth and by individuals, they are less harmful and less portentous;  but cruelties are practised in accordance with acts of senate and  popular assembly, and the public is bidden to do that which is forbidden  to the individual. Deeds that would be punished by loss of life when  committed in secret, are praised by us because uniformed generals have  carried them out.

The early Christian author Lactantius said of the Romans:
They despise indeed the excellence of the athlete,  because there is no harm in it; but royal excellence, because it is wont  to do harm extensively, they so admire that they think that brave and  warlike generals are placed in the assembly of the gods, and that there  is no other way to immortality than by leading armies, devastating  foreign (countries), destroying cities, overthrowing towns, (and) either  slaughtering or enslaving free peoples. Truly, the more men they have  afflicted, despoiled, (and) slain, the more noble and renowned do they  think themselves; and, captured by the appearance of empty glory, they  give the name of excellence to their crimes. Now I would rather that  they should make gods for themselves from the slaughter of wild beasts  than that they should approve of an immortality so bloody. If any one  has slain a  single man, he is regarded as contaminated and wicked, nor do they  think it right that he should be admitted to this earthly dwelling of  the gods. But he who has slaughtered endless thousands of men, deluged  the fields with blood, (and) infected rivers (with it), is admitted not  only to a temple, but even to heaven.

Writing before Lactantius, Cyprian early in the third century speaks  of the idea that “homicide is a crime when individuals commit it, (but)  it is called a virtue, when it is carried on publicly.”

 And then there is the reply given to Alexander the Great by a  captured pirate that was recounted by Augustine sixteen hundred years  ago in his famous work, _The City of God_:
Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to  Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king  had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the  sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the  whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a  robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.”

The celebrated Dutch humanist Erasmus addressed this idea as well in his work _A Complaint of Peace_:
Do you shudder at the idea of murder? You cannot require  to be told, that to commit it with dispatch, and by wholesale,  constitutes the celebrated art of war. If murder were not learned by  this art, how could a man, who would shudder to kill one individual,  even when provoked, go, in cold blood, and cut the throats of many for a  little paltry pay, and under no better authority than a commission from  a mortal as weak, wicked and wretched as himself.

And he wrote elsewhere: “If it is criminal for a man to attack  another with the sword, how much more destructive it is, how much more  criminal for the same deed to be done by so many thousands of men?”

 The British Quaker Jonathan Dymond observed:
They who are shocked at a single murder on the highway,  hear with indifference of the slaughter of a thousand on the field. They  whom the idea of a single corpse would thrill with terror, contemplate  that of heaps of human carcasses mangled by human hands, with frigid  indifference.

And as the nineteenth-century Baptist Charles Spurgeon well said:
If there be anything which this book denounces and counts  the hugest of all crimes, it is the crime of war. Put up thy sword into  thy sheath, for hath not he said, “Thou shalt not kill,” and he meant  not that it was a sin to kill one but a glory to kill a million, but he  meant that bloodshed on the smallest or largest scale was sinful.

In his _Thoughts of a Biologist_  (1939), Jean Rostand penned this trilogy: “Kill one man, and you are a  murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all,  and you are a god.”

 I don’t know who Vassilis Epaminondou and Ramman Kenoun are, or even  if they actually exist, but the statements they are reported to have  made are true nonetheless:
If you kill one person you are a murderer. If you kill  ten people you are a monster. If you kill ten thousand you are a  national hero. ~ Vassilis Epaminondou

 A man who kills on his own is a murderer. A man who kills at his government’s request is a national hero. ~ Ramman Kenoun

Just as you can’t have a war on drugs without DEA agents, just as you  can’t have invasive airline security procedures without TSA agents, and  just as you can’t have a police state without police, so you can’t have  a war without soldiers.

 This mindset that exalts and excuses soldiers for doing things that  ordinary Americans would be put in prison for must be destroyed.


The Best of Laurence M. Vance
   

Laurence M. Vance [_send him mail_] writes from central Florida. He is the author of King                James, His Bible, and Its Translators, The Revolution that Wasn't, The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom, and Social Insecurity. His latest books are War,                Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism and War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy. Visit _his website_.

 Copyright © 2014 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

 Previous article by Laurence M. Vance:  What Have the Reich-Wingers Been Up to?


*LRC Blog*

What You Were Never Told About ObamacareIf Cops Are THIS Afraid of Each Other, Why Should the Public Support Them?U.S. Senators Are Nearly All Stooges for IsraelThe Ridiculousness of Appealing to the RulersEnvyTake My War Criminal–PleaseBenedict’s BirthdayAn Ex-Con Helps Save a Stranger; an Ex-Cop (Allegedly) Murders OneHanging Out With Tom Woods…Kelly Thomas Verdict: Support Your Local Police Uber Alles 

*Podcasts*

Lew Rockwell: The Truth Shall Make Us FreeRalph Weber: Against Fascist HealthcareJohn Denson: My Two Famous Cousins in WWIIGerald Celente: Bond Market Explosion and Intellectual Revolution for LibertyJohn Denson: How I Became a Non-Interventionist

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Uh, no. They don't need to silence 10 million anyways as the state has enough resources to propagandize and paint them in a poor light.


Not anymore, because of the Internet.




> Hitler bombing the German people for speaking out against him would have resulted in him starting a civil war. If he starts it, he will lack support to win it (not to mention that he lacked the resources to begin with).


You just made my point for me. These are the reasons why the state cannot wage an open, all out war against its own people and hope to retain their support, which it needs for its own survival. 

A state cannot survive without general voluntary support of the people in it, and for a tyrannical, plundering state that requires some major lying and brainwashing of its citizens about "the greater good for the greater number," "your fair share," and other lies like that, to support their tyranny. The only "greater good for a greater number," of course, is what is good for individual, because a collective is nothing but a collection of individuals, and what is good for an individual is his Property, which is Justice and Liberty, everything else is a lie. If you unjustly destroy individuals "for the greater good of the collective," you are destroying the collective, only one person at a time.




> Instead, he beat down people such as the socialists through propagandization and the conflation of all forms of socialism under one banner.


Right. Propaganda and lies are the main weapon, the weapon of choice of a dictator. Disabuse enough people of the lie and the tyrant's house of cards comes crumbling down.




> Arbitration between courts just means that there's more subjects to be paid. Besides, arbitration courts could be demanded arbitration and thus continue cases in perhaps the most inefficient manner possible.


Free market system is not this stupid. There has to be genuine evidence of injustice for an appeal to be warranted. 

Again, reputation for justice is the only marketable commodity a court has in a free market. When a court destroys its reputation it will loses market share, because people will insist, through patronage, on more reputable courts to handle their cases, and even a large corrupt company will have no use for disreputable court because its decisions have no weight with majority of the people.




> Rather, the pay incentive must be eliminated through the elimination of capital itself.


Elimination of the pay incentive might be a very good idea, even if only a marketing ploy, because a court that does it, and charges strictly for its time, no matter who the customer is, will be viewed as more impartial by the market, and thus capture the larger share of the market.

As for "elimination of capital," you yourself defined it as wealth (see below). A society without capital is a society that literally has nothing, and therefore does not exist, by definition. 




> “If a manufacturing plant retaliates unjustly, it will have to pay justice to the wronged parties, who can get together, as in a class action suit, pool their resources, and bring even a big player to justice. Free Market, i.e. voluntary association between people based on justice and liberty, will always find a way to restore justice, and much better so than a criminal, monolithic, and unjust by definition crime syndicate of thieves and thugs, called “government.””
> 
> Under whose authority?


The authority of private property, of course.




> Besides, you're looking at the serfs pooling together against their lords.


Well-armed "serfs" with justice on their side. I like the odds.




> Liberty is without a master.


Unless you VOLUNTARILY choose one. If you are free, you must be free to do that as well.




> Thus, as anarcho-capitalism provides a monopoly of power to the businesses (whereas the state was a monopoly of violence), the businesses will maintain a monopoly of the features which were of course previously held by the state. Hence why I call capitalism pseudo-statism.


Ok, that is wrong.

First of all, monopoly, by definition, means one entity has cornered the market on some good or service. So it is, in principle, impossible that "businesses will maintain a monopoly," because "businesses" means many, and that is the opposite of a monopoly, which means one, and because there are many there can be no monopoly as long as free competition exists, and free entry into the market is not barred by aggressive violence of anyone.

Secondly, not all monopolies are evil. If a monopoly is achieved without the use of aggressive violence (especially that of the state) then it is a just monopoly, which is also called natural monopoly, and it is achieved by providing the product people desire at the best price around. It is actually a good thing, and is perfectly just. Thus, since no aggressive violence is used, it is good and just, as opposed to a monopoly established by aggressive violence of the state, which is evil and unjust by definition. Such evil violent monopolies, in contrast to natural monopolies, usually deliver inferior products that are drastically overpriced. Just look for example at the current court monopoly system, or the US national "defence" spending racket. And why is it overpriced? Because free entry into the market is barred by the aggressive violence of the state, either in the form of licensing or of an outright ban, or giving contracts to only politically connected companies. And where no free competition is allowed, such immoral violent monopolies can gouge the prices without the fear of competition.

So, in one case (that is the case of violent state monopoly) you have evil and injustice with rising prices and diminishing quality, and in another (i.e. the case of natural monopoly) you have, justice and good, with falling prices and increasing quality. 

What is the difference between the two monopolies? Aggressive violence is the difference, the very difference between good and evil.





> "Paying" whether it be voluntary or not implies that there is some form of exchange.


Right.




> In capitalist society, there is a disparity within these exchanges


This is another famous and key lie by Marx and Lenin. They called it the “disparity of exchange” or “exploitation.” Let’s disprove it:

In a free market devoid of aggressive violence, there is absolutely no disparity in these exchanges whatsoever. Both the buyer and the seller voluntarily trade because they both view the transaction as beneficial to them. Thus, it is a win-win situation for both: the buyer pays LESS than what he thinks the product is worth to him (otherwise he would not buy), and the seller receives MORE than what he thinks the product is worth to him (or he wouldn't sell). Thus, in a Free Market both the buyer and the seller win, and are both made more wealthy because of the transaction. This is the beauty of peaceful, VOLUNTARY cooperation between people, — all are mutually benefitted and made better off because of it.

However, when aggressive violence enters the picture, then one side, the violently coerced side, is plundered by the other side; if it was not perceived as plunder by the victim, there would have been no need for the coercion. 




> In capitalist society also, the system is maintained and forces exchange of disparity, otherwise such exchange does not occur.


In a Free Market, the exchange is VOLUNTARY and thus viewed by both parties as mutually beneficial, or the exchange does not occur.




> In anarchist society, exchange occurs based upon needs without that disparity, though such may still occur if that is at the wish of those exchanging.


You just described Free Market.
Besides, who will ascertain these needs? How is such a tribunal just? The only just way to do exchanges of property is VOLUNTARY one. Everything else is unjust, by definition. 

Free Market is nothing more than a system of voluntary production and voluntary exchange of goods and services. 

Such VOLUNTARY interactions are the definition of Justice and Liberty, i.e. Private Property. 

This is what you are raving against! You are raving against Justice and Liberty, against the very definition of good, and say that it ought not to exist! Thus, you contradict yourself, and therefore are wrong, by definition.




> “Abuse may happen in any system that is run by imperfect humans. However, some systems minimize such abuse, because they are built on principles of justice, and other systems maximize such abuse because they are built on the principles of INJUSTICE. The current system is built on principles of evil and injustice codified into the very laws on which it is based, therefore, not surprisingly, the abuses you describe will be much larger and more devastating in it than in a Free Market system defined by principles of Justice.”
> 
> Yours does nothing to curb abuse.


Free competition in a Free Market does curb abuse, because people vote with their wallets, and the companies that fail to deliver the products and services people want at a competitive price go out of business. They go bankrupt and die by the hand of Free Market so that their resources could be put to a better use.




> Screaming "JUSTICE" at me doesn't actually mean that your proposed system is just.


Define justice please. 

I defined justice as non-violation of Private Property (see my definition of Private Property), and then I have shown that a strictly voluntary system of interactions between people is, by definition, just, because it involves no aggressive violence, and thus no violation of private property. So my proof is sound. My system is just because it does not violate the property of anyone, which is Justice by definition. Now, what's you proof? You got none.




> Your scrapbook manifesto is riddled with fallacies.


If you use the terms as I defined them, there are no contradictions or fallacies in them.




> Justice isn't a tangible, quantifiable product. Rather, it's a service based upon approval. Only through infinite competition could the courts have it in their interests to be just.


Define "infinite competition." If by it you mean free entry into the market, then we agree; however, it does not mean that there need to be an infinite number of courts any more than there has to be an infinite number of milk producers or shoemakers to deliver a quality product. All you really need, is the ability for anyone willing, to freely enter the market unimpeded by aggressive violence of anyone. Free Market competition does the rest.




> Not justice, but judgment. Judgment is a service, but like in all industry, it is oriented towards the accumulation of wealth and so will favour the rich class.


Judgment without justice will be rejected in a free market as any other inferior product. Such business lives and dies by its reputation. I already answered that in detail earlier, which you have completely failed to refute. 




> Then anarcho-capitalism is not anarchism, if it is a system based around power. Indeed, without power the market in a traditional sense does not exist. No power itself should exist, as any power over others enables violence and exploitation as we have seen with the state.


What is power if not the ability to control property? (Property is broadly defined as before).

Does the man who sell ice cream have power over others in a free market? Yes, just as much as people like his ice cream and its price over those of other producers.

Does a security guard have power over others in a free market? Yes, just as much as people violate the property he is hired to protect. And he can rightly use that power to neutralize/offset the aggression.

Can these powers be abused to commit aggressive violence or fraud? Yes, just as any other worldly power. Does it mean therefore, that ice cream makers and security guards have no right to exist because they might possibly abuse their power over others? No! Of course not! They have a right to exist and to exercise their just powers over others, as long as they do not violate the property of others (for then the power automatically becomes unjust by definition).  

It is lunacy to imagine that a society or a market can exist without power. Indeed, nothing exists without power. Show me a society without power, and I will show you a unicorn without a unicorn. Indeed society, ANY society, IS power. 

Society without power is NOT a society. It is actually nothing. It is a self-contradiction, an oxymoron.




> It's not self contradictory because you like to continue begging the question. Society does not need a hierarchy, and society without hierarchy may still flourish.


You are conflating power and hierarchy. They are not the same.




> I never said that their fruits should be taken from them by means of violence. The society isn't forced, it just means that if you don't pool your resources with everyone else, don't expect them to share with you.


That is good. People should be free to associate in any manner they choose as long as no aggressive violence is used.




> I specifically differentiated between private and personal property. Private property is the property used to accumulate wealth over others. For example, a machine for production, land that is rented out or otherwise used for accumulated wealth over others, or a tool for sale. Personal property is what is used for your person or family without the purpose of accumulating wealth over others, such as a house, a tool for personal use, or clothes.


That is a self-contradiction. It is also another famous lie by Marx and Lenin and is at the heart of their violent socialist ideology that was used to justify the slaughter of over 100 million people in the last century alone. So let's address this great lie in detail and thoroughly dismantle it, and then summarize a concise proof in the end. Here we go:

You say tools for personal use are allowed, yet not for the purpose of accumulating wealth over others. Let's take a hammer. According to you, it is ok to use it to make a chair for yourself or your family, but it is a crime to use it to make a chair for your neighbour. Why would that be evil? The neighbour needs the chair and is willing to pay for your time and trouble to make one for him. Is that unjust? No. Is it unjust to receive compensation for your time, which you might have used for something else instead, yet you chose to make something your neighbour needs? 

Separation of labour, made possible through a medium of exchange is what makes a civilization and economy great. Indeed, no large scale production is possible without it. Some people are better at building chairs but they know nothing of building computers. Separation of labour makes it possible for the chair maker to have a computer, and for computer maker to have chairs or milk or clothing, etc. So, if it is fine to make things for others, why is it not fine to own the tools of such production? Where is the moral principle that says it is ok to use your hammer to make a chair for yourself and your family, but it is evil to use the same hammer to make a chair for your neighbour? Aren't you free to do with your own property as you please as long as you do not violate the property of another? Why is it evil to use your property to make goods for others? And if you do not believe in aggressive violence, as you just so honourably claimed, what business is it of yours what I choose to do with my own property? 

If it is just to use a hammer to make a chair for yourself and your family, it must be as just to use the hammer to make a chair for your neighbour as well, and exchange that chair for other goods and services that you and your family need. In fact, it is blatantly unjust for you to forbid such activity, for thus you would violate personal property.

There is exactly zero logical or moral distinction between what you call personal or private property. It is all private property. And you cannot make it disappear just because you arbitrarily renamed it. It was mine before; it is mine still, because I did not VOLUNTARILY convey it away out of my possession, neither have I violated anyone's property with it. Thus, it is still justly mine. And you denying it is self-contradictory.

Also, there is no evil in accumulating wealth if you choose to use it for just and righteous purposes. Indeed, if through your effort and industry you obtain more than your neighbour, that means you were more productive than your neighbour, which means you delivered more good to others than your neighbour did. Even Jesus in the parable of the talents said the same thing. How is then it is evil to obtain more wealth if you've done it honestly and have not violated the property of any one in the process? Indeed, it is good to do so, for it is the very engine of progress, life and prosperity. 

It is a self-contradiction to say it is just to use your property to make goods for yourself, but not for another, because it is YOUR property, and it is just for you to do with it as you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another, by definition.

Why is it a crime for one man to be more productive than another? Why is it a crime to compensate him for his contribution according to the value of it to others? Is it not a grave and blatant injustice to forbid such production and industry? Indeed it is. Why? Because for you to impose such restriction by violence is to violate that which is not yours, that is to violate the property of another, which is the definition of evil.

It was Marx and Lenin who taught this false doctrine of envy and injustice, which called it evil the productive activity of one WITH HIS OWN PROPERTY for the benefit of another, or in other words forbidding private ownership of the means of production. It is a self-contradictory and unjust doctrine to the core, because it calls evil that which is good, and violates the property of the individual, which is the very definition of injustice and evil. Thus, being itself evil and unjust, this doctrine calls that which is good and just, evil. 

Why is it evil to violate personal property, which you yourself agree ought not to be violated? Because personal property is the logical and moral extension of your self-ownership. If you don't own yourself, then who does? How is it just? Why would not the same logic be used to enslave you? And if you implicitly claim self-ownership by the mere fact of having this conversation where you express YOUR thoughts, why would you deny the same to others? It is inconsistent and morally wrong. And if you admit the self-ownership of everyone, you must accept the logical consequence of personal property, and if you accept the sanctity of personal property as an extension of self-ownership that it is, then you cannot logically forbid the use of personal property to meet the needs of others, nor to pay someone with your personal property for goods or services they offer. It is there personal property and they have the right to do with it as they please. To say that personal property somehow becomes evil if it is used in exchange or production for others is inconsistent and illogical, and violates personal property (if you don't like the word "private"). It is fundamentally the same; it is all the property of the individual, and to violate it is a crime equivalent to partially enslaving him, because it violates the principle of self-ownership. 

So, your and Marx's doctrine of forbidding personal ownership of the means of production is a violation of personal property and therefore is evil and unjust. You cannot rightly do away with personal property simply by renaming it. If it was personal when I was using it to build things for myself, it is still my personal property when I use it to build things for my neighbour. Why? Because it is mine, and I have the right to do with it as I please, as long as I do not violate the personal property of another. You have exactly ZERO right to prescribe to me what to do with my personal property as long as I do not violate the property of another. To suppose otherwise is self-contradictory, because that would imply that I no longer own myself, which is an oxymoron, for if I do not own myself, neither do you, nor anybody else. And if you do not own yourself, then why do you speak? Because by expressing YOUR thoughts you implicitly assert your self-ownership. And you do speak. Thus, your position is profoundly self-contradictory. 

Here is the short version of this proof:

*The proof that forbidding private means of production is self-contradictory* 
 
If I justly own my personal property, as you yourself agree, and it is a logical extension of my self-ownership, then I am, by definition, free to do with my personal property as I please, as long as I do not violate the property of another. Building things for others in VOLUNTARY exchange is NOT violating their property, by definition, because voluntary is the logical opposite of involuntary or in other words, the logical opposite of violation. Thus, since I am violating no one's property, I must be free to engage in such production and voluntary exchange, and it is just by definition. To deny this freedom is to deny my self-ownership by extension. To deny my self-ownership is to deny yours, and everyone else's self-ownership, which is a self-contradiction, because you do speak YOUR thoughts, and thus implicitly affirm your self-ownership, and thus mine, and everybody else's. Thus you contradict yourself, and are wrong by definition.

That should do it. Try proving it wrong. You might as well prove 2+2=5, or that up is down, or that true is false. You cannot do it, because what I am saying is true.




> “So, if your “system” was followed it would end up in literal extinction of the entire human race, including you. This is why I say it is self-contradictory and self-destructive at every turn, and is therefore wrong, by definition.”
> 
> Uh not really. Similar forms were used by others for centuries, particularly Aboriginal Americans prior to European imperialism.


If you wish to live as an Aborigine go right ahead, but you have Zero right to force anyone else to live like that. 

No large scale economy or production, or progress for that matter, is possible without sacred respect for private property. 

Whatever success Aborigines had, was BECAUSE of whatever respect for private property they had remaining. 

This is so because respect for Private Property is the respect for Liberty and Justice, for neither Liberty nor Justice EXIST without Private Property; nor is it possible to non-self-contradictory define them without Private Property. 

You have failed to successfully define Justice and Liberty without Private Property, and this is for a good reason too, because Liberty and Justice are completely and utterly MEANINGLESS without Private Property. 

The principles of Justice, as I defined them, are universal and absolute. They are, like the laws of nature or of mathematics, true everywhere and at all times, be it among Aborigines, or in a modern world, on the Moon, Mars or anywhere else; just like 2+2=4 is true on the Moon and Mars, whether you are Aborigine or not. 

And you cannot define 2+2 as 5 because that would be self-contradictory.




> “The only bias here is towards the truth verses self-contradictory falsehood. It is a good bias, a bias without which life would not exist.”
> 
> No, it's a bias towards your opinion. Most people think that biases towards them are good biases.


It is both my bias and my opinion which happen to be the truth. You can overturn the truth no more than you can unseat God. You might try, but you will fail, because by denying the truth you contradict yourself.




> “I gave the definition sets of three things: 1) Private Property, 2) Liberty, and 3) Justice, and then I pointed out that the three definition sets intersected, and thus were inseparably and eternally connected and interlocked, because each, necessarily defines the others, and neither has any meaning without the other two. I pointed out a truth; you failed to disprove it, because it is impossible to disprove.” 
> 
> I differed between private property and personal property as your definition of private property was inclusive of such and avoided what I was talking about.


I just in details proved that the same rules of justice apply to both personal and private property, and that the restrictions that you, Marx, and Lenin place on private property are a) evil, b) unjust, and c) self-contradictory, and thus d) false.




> “I challenge you to give non-self-contradictory definitions of [these] items 1)[Personal Property], 2)[Liberty], and 3)[Justice], and then prove that they do not intersect and do not contain each other. If you do so successfully you will have disproved my point, but you have not done so, because it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to do. You would have to, in essence, prove 2+2=5, which cannot be done, because it is a self-contradiction. You cannot prove a lie, and you cannot disprove the truth.”
> 
> If you cannot prove a lie, is that why you've employed fallacies to justify yourself?


Prove it.




> “I showed you that Private Property is a natural extension of self-ownership (which you yourself admit exists), and thus produces the natural system of authority over the things you own. It is perfectly just, because it is the definition of Justice itself (i.e. non-violation of private property).“
> 
> No, you showed me that PERSONAL property is an extension of self-ownership (which I already knew).


And I just showed you, earlier in this post, that what you call Private Property is also a natural extension of self-ownership and is derived from what you call Personal Property, and has exactly the same rules of justice apply to it. And that, therefore, to violate Private Property is to violate Personal Property, and thus, to violate Justice and Liberty, because it is all the property of the individual and thus the extension of his self-ownership. 




> You didn't define private property as what I have argued against private property. If what you call personal is private, then what shall you call what I call private?


I would call it what Marx called it: private means of production. 

But contrary to Marx's lies I would say that private means of production are as sacred and as inviolate as Personal Property or as the self-ownership of individual himself, and that to violate them is to commit evil and to violate both Justice and Liberty, and to engage in a self-contradiction, which if unchecked will result in the entire destruction of human race. 

Marx and Lenin did call for violation of Private means of production via aggressive violence of the state. Thus, knowingly or unknowingly, they have called for the extinction of the entire human race. 

Now, if people wish to VOLUNTARILY share their resources they are certainly free and welcome to do so, but to force such "sharing" is the essence of evil, robbery, and injustice, because it is self-contradictory, and therefore self-destructive.




> I'm going to understand that what you declare as private property is in reality personal property.


Yes, you are right more than you know.  

As I just proved earlier in this post, Private property, in your definition as the private means of production, is in fact, a type and a subset of personal property, because, in reality, it is ALL Personal Property. Thus, to violate Private Property is to violate Personal Property, because it is all Property of the individual, and is the natural extension of his self-ownership.




> Power and dominance are the enablers of coercion and violence, and thus must be eliminated in a free society.


False. Already answered that. All worldly power can be misused, but by eliminating all power in a free society, you eliminate free society, because without power there is no society. 

Power is good or evil, depending on how it is used. What is the difference here? 

Aggressive violence is the difference, or on the other hand, Non-Aggression is the difference. 

As long as power is free of aggression, it is good by definition. 

God is power; his kingdom is power. What makes Him, his power, and his kingdom good? Non-aggression, of course, which is the very definition of Justice and Liberty! 

It is interesting to note here that an absolute, almighty power, by definition, cannot be an aggressive power, or it would destroy itself, because ALL aggression, by definition, is self-contradictory, because we are all one (even if you do not yet understand it), -- hence, the existence of the Law of Justice, which is a simple statement of cause and effect. And hence is the fact that almighty power must be love, or it would not be almighty, because love (which includes non-aggression by definition) is the only non-self-contradictory thing in existence. Hence, in the end, all evil and injustice must unavoidably self-destruct because they are self-contradictory, and what remains in the end is love. (As someone well said: infinite love is the only reality, everything else is illusion.) 




> “Define “dominance.” If by it you mean violation of Private Property, then I agree with you that it is evil.”
> 
> The control of a person through exploitation of their needs, through the hierarchy inherent to the system and maintained by those higher, or through coercion.


Only aggressive coercion is unjust. Everything else is just, by definition. 




> “I have shown that society, i.e. associations between people, do not exist without social power (power being defined as the ability to control property). What determines whether this power is good or evil is whether it is used to violate private property or not. Thus, if power is not used to violate private property, then it is Just and good by definition, and without such power life itself would not exist.”
> 
> Then monopoly in a region through seizure of resources from the land is just? Hah.


Define "seizure." If it involves violation of property then it is evil.




> “That is an oxymoron. The fruits of your labour are a part of your private property. “
> 
> *personal property


Right. Both private and personal property are the property of individual, and thus are a logical extension of his self-ownership. Private Property in your definition, is simply Personal Property used in a certain way. And since it does not involve violation of anyone's property it is perfectly just, and cannot be justly forbidden by force, because that would constitute a violation of property, and violation of property of anyone is evil and unjust by definition. 




> Forcing forfeiture of property is coercive and easy to abuse in a corrupt system.


I was simply pointing out that according to the definition of Private/Personal Property, inasmuch as you violate the property of another, insomuch you automatically forfeit your own, because equal force can justly be used against you to offset/neutralize your violent aggression against the property of another.




> I defined and differentiated between private and personal property. It is not contradictory, and ignoring my differentiation would just show how dogmatic you are.


Already covered that. Division of property on Private and Personal is meaningless since they are both the property of individual, violation of which is immoral, evil and unjust, by definition.




> “I say self-ownership does exist, because the opposite is self-contradictory. And since self-ownership exists, then ownership of Private Property must necessarily exist too, or it would be self-contradictory. “
> 
> The opposite of self-ownership isn't self-contradictory, but rather it's called slavery which is wrong on an ethical level.


It is wrong on an ethical level precisely BECAUSE it is self-contradictory. How? If you deny self-ownership to one, you have logically denied self-ownership to all, including yourself. Yet at the same time you are speaking your thoughts here, which necessarily implies your self-ownership. Thus you contradict yourself by both denying and asserting your self-ownership. 




> “Agreed. But it is meaningless without the concept of Private Property, the way that I defined it.”
> 
> Not insofar as you conflate the private and personal


Both private and personal property are clearly, as even their very names irrevocably state, ARE the property of the individual. To violate the property of ANYONE is evil and unjust by definition. Thus, you have no more moral right to violate Private Property than you have the moral right to violate Personal Property, because they are both the Property of the individual, and to violate ANYONE’S property is the definition of EVIL and injustice. 

And again, I defined "Private Property" is a union of both "private" and "personal" property in your and Lenin's definition. Such union is logically unassailably justified, because both "private" and "personal" property are the property of the individual, violation of which is unjust by definition.




> “Define “pushed down.” If it means violation of private property, then I agree with your statement. Otherwise, your statement is self-contradictory, because if no property is violated, no freedom is infringed by definition. To assert otherwise is a self-contradiction.”
> 
> You work under someone, you don't get what you work for (or what is of equal value) in return.


First of all, you always get what you worked for unless terms of the employment contract are broken by either side, or aggressive violence is used. If no contract is broken, however, and no property is violated, you do get what you worked and agreed for, by definition.

Secondly, the value of the work is determined by the worker when he voluntarily sells it for a price agreed to with the employer. As with any transaction in a free market, the value of labour being sold by the worker is LESS to him than the amount he gets paid for it; if it weren't so he would not have sold it; at the same time, the value of the work is GREATER to the employer than the price he pays for it; if it weren't so he would not have hired the worker. Thus, in a Free Market, both the seller and the buyer of labour, benefit because of the transaction; if it weren't so the transaction would not have taken place.




> You didn't earn your body. Rather, your body is central to your person.


It's both. But even if you consider your body a gift, you are still the rightful owner of the gift, because you were the rightful and intended recipient of the gift, which makes you the rightful owner.




> “Private is personal, so your distinction is completely meaningless. “
> 
> Nope. In proper argument, you work with the differences posed when they are subject to argument, not the conflation of the two.


I honoured your definitions, and then have shown that both private and personal property constitute the property of the individual by definition, and thus the same laws of justice apply to both, and therefore violation of either is evil by definition.




> I said work UNDER someone. You are made to work under someone who takes part of the value of your labour (a disparity in the exchange between labour and resource). Either you don't get the full payment of what you worked for, or you starve.


I already proved to you that in a Free Market the value of the labour to the worker is always LESS than the payment he receives for it; otherwise he would not have hired out, by definition, therefore there is no “disparity in the exchange;’ it is perfectly just. This is so because in a Free Market no one is “made” or aggressively forced to work for another. Everyone is free to choose who they will work for without any aggressive violence involved. This arrangement is perfectly just, by definition, because justice is  defined as the absence of aggressive violence. 




> Quoting a Bible passage doesn't exactly work when the central figures of the book's premise are telling you to feed the poor.


They are also telling you not to steal. Did you miss that? Thus the feeding must be voluntary, by definition, to satisfy both commandments.




> The abuse of the judgment industry is an evil that must be necessary according to you. Otherwise your principles really fall apart.


The abuse is “necessary” only in the case of an unjust by definition, government forced monopoly on courts. In a Free Market, on the other hand, such abuse is completely unnecessary, and indeed, forbidden. So my principles remain intact.




> “Advocating evil is evil by definition.”
> 
> If you were forced to pick between killing an innocent mother of a baby or killing the baby, which stance would you advocate people take over the other?


Neither, is the correct answer here.




> I see it no differently. If the evils of capitalism exist, it needs the evils of a state to combat it.


Wrong. Evil is annihilated by application of justice and good, not by another evil. So, the evils that occur in capitalism are cured by application of Free Market principles, which are the principles of Liberty and Justice. 




> If the evils of an authoritarian state exist, it requires the evils of capitalism to hold it back.


False. It requires the principles of Liberty and Justice, which are the principles of Free Market.




> Marx was a wannabe anarchist. Lenin was an authoritarian.


Both Marx and Lenin advocated wholesale use of the aggressive violence of the state to commit legalized plunder and murder. The difference was in the speed of application of the evil and injustice, not in principle. They both taught evil by definition.




> I've got nothing against communism,


I figured that much...




> but only if it is not governed authoritatively.


That is an oxymoron, because communism, as defined by both Lenin and Marx, required wholesale aggressive violence of the state to be achieved.




> Lenin governed authoritatively and thus recreated the "bourgeoisie" class he claimed to want to dissolve. Perhaps not in riches, but in power and dominance.


Right. Good point.




> “If no private property is violated, and no fraud is committed, there is no exploitation, by definition.”
> Capitalism is a system based on disparity of exchange,


Not Free Market capitalism. Free Market, by definition, is 100% voluntary market, therefore no “disparity of exchange” is possible, in principle, otherwise exchange would not occur.

Let’s define “disparity of exchange.” 

If by it you mean an exchange for more than the other party is willing to pay, then you must, by definition, be talking about exchange forced by aggressive violence. Aggressive violence is forbidden in a Free Market. Indeed absence of aggressive violence is a definition of Free Market.

And again, if by the “disparity of exchange” you mean unfair price, then no “disparity of exchange,” in principle, can take place in a Free Market, because in a Free Market amounts of ALL exchanges are fair, by definition, because they have been VOLUNTARILY agreed to by both parties, without fraud or aggressive violence. If either side, in a Free Market, believes that the exchange is unfair, the exchanged does not take place. 

Thus, if an exchange took place in a Free Market, it was, by definition, a fair exchange, because no force or fraud was involved.  




> and is maintained and enforced by those with power in that system. People need to work under a master who takes a substancial cut of the value of labour, or else they starve.


The value of labour is determined in a 100 % VOLUNTARY and thus fair, by definition exchange. Thus the value of the labour is exchanged for a fair price, voluntarily agreed to by both parties. And as I said, in a Free Market, the value of the labour to the worker is always LESS than the pay he receives for it, or he would not agree to work. And yes, you have to work or starve. Get over it. It is a correct principle of Justice, which even the Bible teaches. And in a free market, weather you are your own boss, or work UNDER someone, you  still work for yourself, as long as no aggressive violence or fraud is used by the employer. It is a fair trade, by definition, or it would not have taken place in a Free Market. So you, Lenin, and Marx are dead wrong, actually over 100 million dead wrong in the last century alone. Marx has lied, and Lenin has lied, and so are you either confused or lying. If no aggressive violence or fraud is used, ALL exchanges are 100% just, by definition. Anything else is self-contradictory and therefore false.




> “Capital is wealth. Society without wealth does not exist, just as a river without water does not exist. It is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction.” 
> 
> I can't hear you over your fallacies.


Perhaps, you cannot hear me over YOUR fallacies.




> “So, please define “capital,” to make sure we are speaking about the same thing. Thanks.”
> 
> The assets, such as a medium of exchange or material objects of a person or organization, that are accumulated by means of exchange, and available for further interaction in the capitalist system.


That is correct. And that is exactly what I said: Capital is wealth. Society without wealth, has exactly nothing in it, and thus literally does not exist.




> I don't advocate "injustice" as you claim, I only would choose it over a worse injustice.


That is a false choice, because justice and correct principles are available, but you argue AGAINST them. You are not justified in doing so. You are raving against perfectly just principles of Free Market and call them evil. That is wrong by definition. 




> “They were denied because care was rationed, because there is not enough of it to go around. This ALWAYS happens when socialism, or in other words, price controls and legalized plunder are used as they are in Canada.”
> 
> If they couldn't afford it in private hands, they wouldn't have health care anyways. It wasn't rationed, just unavailable due to depletion of the stock of available doctors.


Such depletion ALWAYS happens when socialism and price controls are introduced because it lessens profit incentive and thus participation in the market. Thus, Free Market self-regulates, by supplying more doctors because prices, and thus profit incentive, go up. This self-regulation is destroyed when price structure of Free Market is destroyed by aggressive violence of price controls.




> “No, the market alternative is to give people access if they can pay. This is why these people had to go to US to get care.”
> 
> You're claiming that saving more people is worse simply because you don't like that there wasn't a profit motive.


There is absolutely no evidence that Canadian system saves more people. ZERO. In fact, if I had to guess, I would say, a more free market system, all other things being equal, saves more people. But what we know for sure, is that Canadian socialized system has more shortages, to the point that the people who need urgent care have to literally leave Canada and seek it in the US, where no shortage exists, because of the profit incentive which causes more doctors to go into business.




> “According to you, death is alright when the state of Canada demands it.”
> 
> Not the state, but when scarcity demands. If you lack a supply, there's nothing you can do.


You need to ask WHY is supply lacking, seeing that there is plenty of demand. Free Market, because of its price structure, through profit incentive self-regulates by increasing supply to meet the demand. This self-regulation does not happen in Canada, because price structure of Free Market is destroyed by the aggressive violence of the government in the form of socialized healthcare, which more properly should be called aggressive violence health care.




> The existence of a state isn't required in socialism.


Define socialism. All the definitions that have been practiced so far involved aggressive violence of the state to commit legalized plunder. Therefore, clearly, your definition, whatever it might be, drastically differs from that understood and practiced all over the world today.




> The fruits of labour are already taken off the backs of the poor in the disparity of exchange between labour and wage.


In a Free Market no such disparity can possibly exist in principle and by definition, because ALL transactions are VOLUNTARY, and no aggressive violence or fraud is permitted to compel the labourer by violating his property; therefore the value of his labour is always LESS to the worker, than the payment he receives for it, for were it not so, worker would NOT sell his labour. Thus, no disparity in exchange is possible in a Free Market, on principle and by definition.




> You lose the right to cry about that when you advocate disparity.


I oppose all transactions forced by aggressive violence as immoral and unjust, and thus advocate no disparity. But it is you who advocates disparity when you seek to forbid private property. Such prohibition is unjust.




> Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production. Leninism and its derivatives aren't really socialism but are frequently conflated with it. that's why I make a point in calling it STATE socialism.


So, how then do you propose to achieve this public ownership of the means of production? By aggressive violence of robbery? If not, then more power to you, if you can convince people to VOLUNTARILY donate their property to the collective. In my experience, the only collective worthy of such trust is the one actuated by the laws and commandments of God. All other ones I would not trust.




> Nonetheless, socialism in this definition does not include the regulation of markets, prices or anything of the sort. That's called "interventionism".


Didn’t you advocate society without capital and without money and without power? In such a case there would be no markets and no prices to regulate at all. In fact, there would be no society itself, and it would actually result in the extinction of the entire human race. How is that for “no interventionism” by socialists like yourself? You contradict yourself again!




> “Socialism is evil, because it is aggressive violence, and aggressive violence is the definition of EVIL and injustice itself.”
> 
> Oh look at you, continuing to employ fallacies.


No fallacy here. This is precisely how socialism has functioned in the most of the world so far. It is the de facto definition of it as practiced by the overwhelming majority of self-confessed socialists. Therefore, this is the prevailing definition in the point of fact.

Besides, when public regulation and taxation of the private means of production takes place, as is in most of so called "capitalist" countries today, it is partial public ownership (control) of the means of production, and inasmuch as it is implemented, insomuch it is socialism, even by your own definition. Thus, public taxation and public regulation of private property is socialism in action, according to your own definition.

Aggressive violence of the state to cease private means of production and to make them public property is also socialism by your own definition, because it results in “public ownership of the means of production.” Thus, your definition ALLOWS aggressive violence, though does not necessarily mandates it. To be sure, it does not forbids it. Thus, your definition of socialism is a wide open door for evil and injustice. It is a wide open door for the aggressive violence of the state to seize private means of production, and thus violate the property of the individual, which is the definition of plunder, evil, and injustice. In fact, your definition was used as the justification for the aggressive violence of socialist states the world over, which resulted in over 100 million state sponsored murders in the last century alone. Therefore your definition is lacking, since it ALLOWS such plunder and  slaughter.


(Continued in the next post.)

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> How do you define Socialism? And prove to me that no aggressive violence is found in your definition. 
> 
> Socialism is the public ownership of the means of production.


The question is HOW is this "public ownership" achieved. So far, in most cases, aggressive violence was employed to achieve this public "ownership" via theft and plunder, which are evil and injustice by definition.




> If a community decides together to build wind turbines and its members mine the ore, grow the food to feed the labourers, smelt the ore, shape the metal into parts, and build the turbines and share the energy generated from them as a community, THAT'S socialism.


If all that is done voluntary by all the involved I am all for it! That is just.




> If a government tells a business to not put BPA in baby bottles, that's not socialism but interventionism.


I beg to disagree. According to you, socialism is public ownership of the means of production. Ownership is control. Inasmuch as public regulation prescribes private businesses in their production, insomuch it is public ownership (control) of the means of production, therefore  insomuch it is SOCIALISM, by your own definition.

Now, if someone knowingly harms his customers without their informed consent, he is knowingly violating their property, and insomuch forfeits his own property, because force can justly be used against him to neutralize/offset his aggression. 

Thus, it is just to sue manufacturers who knowingly persist in harming their customers without their informed consent. It is a variant of violence by fraud. However, if the customers are made aware of the danger before they buy the product, no force can justly be used against the manufacturer anymore, because informed consent has been obtained.




> Plutocracy is a state by another name.


Not necessarily. A just state is merely public property and its government. Government of public property is the only proper role of public representative government, anyway, because one can justly govern ONLY the things he or she owns. Public representative government does not own the people nor their private property, therefore it can only govern public property according to the authority delegated to it and according to justice. Since no one has the right to control the property of his neighbour without permission, he cannot delegate such authority to his government to do it in his behalf, because no one can delegate an authority he does not have. Thus public representative government has exactly ZERO right to control private property of the people, by definition. 




> Removing of aggressive violence of the state transforms fascism into a Free Market system again.
> 
> You're misusing the term fascism, which is a radical authoritarian mixed economy with a hypernationalistic attitude.


"Mixed economy" means economy infected with aggressive violence of the state. In the words of Mussolini, the fascist dictator of Italy, fascism is the marriage of corporations and aggressive violence of the state, which is also called corporatism. Hypernationalism is optional, (as in the case of Italy), but it helps the wicked state to cement its grasp on society. Thus, I am using the term precisely, and it is you who do not understand the meaning of the word.




> Canada is socialistic, perhaps more than the US, therefore Canada is experiencing slow, torturous and steady descent into utter economic ruin. It may have smaller jolts along the way, but it is going down just as sure as the US, or any country that persist with the injustice and legalized plunder of socialism, or just as sure as the frog that is slowly boiled alive. Because there are no certain jolts, the frog doesnt even notice it is being boiled, until it is too late. 
> 
> Replace socialism with capitalism and you're spot on.


Up is down for you, my friend. Light is darkness. Bitter is sweet, and good is evil. You are messed up, by definition.

By the way, if you use your definition where public ownership of the means of production achieved VOLUNTARY, and without aggressive violence which is the definition of evil, then there is no conflict between Free Market, and socialism thus defined.

Unfortunately, your "non-violent" definition of socialism is NOT shared by most socialists the world over. Besides, even your definition is actually silent on whether aggressive violence is allowed, thus it can be, and most often actually is, misconstrued to JUSTIFY and encourage the use of aggressive violence to achieve this "public ownership." The use of aggressive violence is the key point that separates justice from injustice and good from evil. And that is the point that is dangerously and, actually, treacherously missing from your definition. Thus opening the door, or even inviting aggressive violence, if not openly calling for it, like Lenin did.

The definition of Free Market, on the other hand, is not so lacking. It puts the strictest prohibition against aggressive violence in all its forms front and center. 




> Canada's got freer markets and is less authoritative than the United States. it's just got better social programs.


That is an oxymoron. Its like saying: The mob is more peaceful. It just got better aggressive violence. It is a self-contradiction, because Canada is openly using aggressive violence of the state in the form of taxation and price controls, which are the opposite of Free Market, to finance its "social" programs, which more correctly, should be called "legalized plunder" programs. It is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction, and you are drinking these like water! No wonder you are so confused!




> Except economic policies aren't instantaneous. Like a shot in the head.


It took some time since Hoover pulled the trigger on price controls, and then criminal Roosevelt added some more shots; but most importantly it was the Fed which was massively counterfeiting and inflating the currency the decade before during the "roaring twenties," thus creating massive distortions  and misallocation of resources in the market, and then imploding economy by design by pulling the plug on lending thus creating classic "boom bust" cycle, or more correctly public "fleecing" or simply the "plunder" cycle. Mind you, the counterfeiting monopoly was granted to the Fed by the aggressive violence of the state. Thus, it was the aggressive violence of the state that caused and prolonged the Great Depression.




> The middle class was already destroyed in the 20s.


It was being set up for destruction by the massive counterfeiting of currency done by the Fed, thus transferring purchasing power via counterfeiting from the middle class to politically connected classes.




> Are you high, or conveniently forgetting certain points of history? Roosevelt [screwed] up because he didn't actually listen to Keynes.


Keynes was a deranged economics voodoo practitioner who forsook reason and logic for "animal spirits." No wonder every plundering state the world over is using his lunacy to justify their organized thefts.




> Thus, the reason for the Great Depression was legalized plunder via aggressive violence of the states worldwide, nothing more, nothing less.
> 
> except not


Ditto. 




> Hoover's controls weren't that extensive. You're rejecting the obvious fact that Coolidge really screwed up the economy for the sake of your own ideology.


The Fed really screwed up the economy for the sake of your own ideology.




> Interest rates are immoral, as they aggregate debt far further than the debt originally incurred. Really, it's just an exploitation of the inability to pay.


There is nothing wrong with exploitation of the inability to pay, just as there is nothing wrong in food producer exploiting the fact that people get hungry. Thus, interest rates have a right to exist, as long as they are not forced upon the whole country at the point of a gun as the Fed does through the monopoly to counterfeit granted to them by the aggressive violence of the state.




> You're redefining terms to fit your ideology and portray it in the best light, and declaring all opposition to your principles as some great evil.


I uncovered a set of true, non-self-contradictory (self-harmonizing) principles that were always there, they just needed to be uncovered and presented together as a coherent system.

And yes, opposing the Truth, Justice and Liberty IS a great EVIL, by definition. Get over it. The earth may pass away, but the truth of these principles will remain to all eternity. You might as well unseat God as to overturn them. You cannot succeed against these principles any more than you can prove 2+2=5.




> I recall you referring to Orwell in one of your previous "principles".


Not once. You are confusing me with someone else.




> Really? Wasnt it you who was a) raving against private property and saying that b) the wealth must be redistributed by violence to help the poor? Did you not call for the use of aggressive violence to redistribute the wealth from those who earned it, against their will, to those who did not earn it? What is exactly your position? PROVE to me that it does not involve aggressive violence to take the fruits of the labour of those who earned it, and transfer it against their will to those who did not earn it.
> 
> I was raving against what is real private property.


And I have proven to you that what is real private property is the extension of personal property, and is the property of an individual, and you are seeking to violate it, which is the definition of evil and injustice.




> I don't support violence, I support taxation and redistribution ONLY in a capitalist system, so as to rectify some of the disparity of exchange capitalism forces. You're outraged that I think it's fine to steal from robbers.


Not at all. Robbers, by definition, do not own the loot. And you are contradicting yourself again. You say I dont support violence, yet you support taxation which is aggressive violence by definition, and it is aimed, primarily, at those who did not rob anyone. Those who rob the most, i.e. the Fed, exempt themselves from the taxation. Thus, you contradict yourself by promoting aggressive violence against the innocent, while claiming to be against violence. 




> Tell me, how does the rich "earn" their money?


Unfortunately, most of the riches today are obtained via aggressive violence of the state. Certainly, this is how Rothschilds and Rockefellers got their wealth, by having aggressive violence of the state grant them money counterfeiting monopoly. Thus, they can plunder the world in the comfort of their offices by typing a few zeroes on a computer. It is a desperate fraud and evil.

All that, is unjust, and a proper case can be made to dispossess them of the stolen loot.

However, if Free Market can be restored, and this aggressive violence stopped, people will quickly regain their wealth from the scamming and conniving banksters. 

End the aggressive violence of the state, and this galactic theft and plunder will stop, and not until then.




> Your ideology serves to work for the aristocracy. When you tell me that a McDonald's worker bringing in hundreds of dollars an hour for a business earns only $7.25 an hour somehow doesn't "deserve welfare", then you're either brainwashed or a goddamn liar.


It's not his business. Somebody else created it, and thus justly receives the benefit of it. And to the worker, his labours value, to himself, is LESS than $7.25 an hour. If it were not so, he would NOT have worked there.




> You said that giving people the resources to survive when they don't have access to those resources hurts them, and that less helps them.


I said nothing of the sort. I said committing plunder and injustice to "help" the poor, will DESTROY the poor. Why? Because plunder and injustice DESTROYS the productive base of the society, and the society with it. And when productivity is destroyed, ALL become poor, and the plight of the poor gets much worse, and then ALL die of starvation including the poor.

The proper way to take care of the poor is the way God commanded, the just way, and that is through charity, which is VOLUNTARY by definition, and NOT through aggressive violence of plunder, which God expressly forbade. For He who commanded to feed the poor, also commanded not to steal.




> Cut the freedom and justice bull$#@!. You're really not fooling anyone. As soon as you said that liberty was to have masters, you lost credibility.


You are lying. I said Liberty is to be able to do with your own property what you please as long as you do not violate the property of another. 

I also said that you could voluntarily choose a master, and still be free, as long as that obedience is voluntary, which is love.

I have shown you that even your definition of Liberty was actually equivalent to mine, because you said: Liberty is to be free of the power of others. Power of others to do what? Power of others to violate your property, of course. Your definition is completely meaningless without property. You cannot get around it. There is no Liberty without property. And there is no individual liberty without the property of individual. Thus your definition is equivalent to mine or it is meaningless.

Can you point to any Liberty without Property? If you can, then you are right and I am wrong. But if you cannot, then you must agree that my definition of Liberty as Property is correct.




> When you said you wish for prosperity, it's only for the elite.


For all.




> Taxation takes less money from the poor than the disparity caused by profit.


First, taxation takes money from the poor; in other words, poor are being robbed. How is that just?

Secondly, disparity caused by profit is perfectly just, if no aggressive violence is used. If someone delivers greater benefit to others, how is it not just that he should be compensated more? It is only just. Who deserves more compensation, he who feeds 100 people or he who feeds 1? Where is justice in that? Any ideas?




> If you are truly concerned with the poor, you wouldn't advocate anarcho-capitalism.


If you are truly concerned with the poor, you would advocate Justice and Liberty, which is Free Market.




> If welfare is the death of the poor, then you do claim that less is more (which is oxymoronic). I didn't strawman you, you said it.


Aggressive violence of the state is the death of society and therefore of its poor. Less is more would be oxymoronic only IF it applied to the same thing. However it does not. LESS aggressive violence is MORE freedom and prosperity. This is a perfectly sound doctrine, just like LESS water on the camp fire is MORE flames.

Less aggressive violence is more freedom and prosperity, including that for the poor.




> I said aggressive violence kills the productive base of the society, and when the society is thus gradually destroyed, that makes more poor, and their plight worse, until eventually it kills the poor and the society itself. 
> 
> "Aggressive violence" being welfare.


Yes, welfare supported by the aggressive violence of the state.




> If poverty is the productive base of society,


Productive base of society is its industry, including those who work in it. They all are taxed/robbed by the aggressive violence of the state. They are all being plundered and gradually destroyed by this violence. When profit motive is destroyed by plunder, the industry is being diminished and gradually destroyed. Thus, prosperity is being diminished for all except perhaps for the robbers who commit the plunder and theft, but even that is temporary, for what you do to others, you are doing it to yourself.




> then you're saying that capitalism is effectively based on exploitation of the poor as capitalism is focused on disparity of exchange.


Free Market capitalism is based on VOLUNTARY and thus, by definition, mutually beneficial transactions. If "exploitation" does not involve aggressive violence or fraud, it is perfectly just.




> I get it, that's why I can refute you with ease.


You refute yourself with ease because you contradict yourself.




> INJUSTICE of aggressive violence kills the society and the poor with it. 
> Again, the declaration of "less is more".


Exactly. Less injustice more liberty and prosperity in the society as a whole.




> Besides, taxation is really just a reclaimation of the state's property, as the state prints currency as a means of exchange for its constituents,


False on multiple levels: 
a) If exchange has occurred, no "reclamation" can be made afterwards for that was not a part of a contract that anyone agreed to, thus that would be plunder and fraud; secondly,
b) the government collects taxes even if you transact in weight of gold or silver, which they do not own. 

Thus, all forms of taxation of private property are theft and plunder, by definition of the term.




> Do you see any problem with your non-logic? 
> Nope, because you failed to poke any holes in it.


Your logic failed to inflate,  for the multitude of gaping holes in it, therefore no poking was really necessary.




> That's because the free market legitimizes thuggery.


Wrong by definition. Free Market is DEFINED as absence of aggressive violence. If such violence is present it is NOT Free Market, by definition. 




> No, it's contradictory to YOUR ethical principles. The free market is an enabler of violence and is based around exploitation, and thus should not exist.


How can that which is defined as the absence of aggressive violence be its enabler? Unless you mean its power can be misused, but then ANY worldly power can be misused. Your heart is the enabler of you doing both good and evil. It doesn't mean you shouldn't exist. Your power is good as long as you use it justly. And so ANY social structure based on principles of non-aggression, i.e. the principles of justice, is good, and has a right to exist. 

Even your "non-violent socialism" has a right to exist, as long as aggressive violence is STRICTLY forbidden in it, because aggressive violence is the definition of evil.




> You're making absurd, unfounded claims that thuggery is reduced by ancap society, in spite of me providing reasoning as to why that's false.


What are the reasons please? Does it prove that current government based on thuggery that is written into law, that steals over 50% of all you own through diverse means of taxation, that increases the price of all you buy (because the manufacturers are also taxed at every step and element of production, so when you add it all up, plus the income tax and all other taxes, it is probably over 2/3 of every dollar you spend that is being stolen from you through taxation),-- does it prove that it steals less? Not by a long shot! This is organized and streamlined, WHOLESALE, mass plunder writ large, which no random gang of thugs that could possibly pop up contrary to the principles of Free Market can ever HOPE to achieve! Thus, as I said, Free Market reduces plunder, because it is based on principles of Justice, that is the principle of Non-aggression. 




> Thus, your non-logic, is equivalent to saying: If a person gets sick, he is harboring disease, and therefore he is unnecessary and evil. That is a bad logic, because you can heal the patient, by getting rid of self-contradicting principles in him. I say it again, the principles of Free Market are perfect principles of Justice and Liberty, therefore crime is a CONTRADICTION to the principles of Free Market.
> 
> I'm arguing using your reasoning. It's not my fault that you inconsistently apply your principles to favour your ideology.


What exactly is inconsistent. Please point it out. I have not seen it.




> Do yourself a favor and read about doublethink.


You need that.




> Oh, so the potential for evil is ok, so long as it fits your ideology?


Potential for evil is in the human nature itself, and it needs to be dealt with by ANY system of human interactions. Accordingly, a system built on just principles MINIMIZES the effects of that evil, but a system built on unjust principles maximizes it. Free Market, defined as absence of aggressive violence minimizes the evil. The current state, on the other hand, with aggressive violence written into its very laws, maximizes the evil to the point of the destruction of the society itself, if this aggression is not abolished.




> That's megalomaniacal. You're not even arguing now, I've reduced you to relying on redefining terms to make your ideology appealing,


Prove my definitions inconsistent or self-contradicting. You cannot do so because they are true.




> to rely on begging the question,


You are begging the question. Where are self-contradictions in my definitions? They do not exist. 

Moreover, I have shown that even your own definitions of justice and liberty were actually equivalent to mine, if you spell out what "domination" and "power" are in terms of property, and that without property these terms are completely meaningless.

I have challenged you to come up with any Liberty or Justice that does not involve property, and that if you could do so you would have proven my point wrong, but you failed to do so, because it CANNOT be done any more than you can prove 2+2=5.

Property of individual is Justice and Liberty. You cannot prove it otherwise. Therefore, let the people who read this judge who has proven his point better, you or me.




> You havent proven a single contradiction in my system. 
> 
> You can clearly read that I have, numerous times in this post alone.


I must have missed it. Could you please be more specific.




> You advocate a system focused on disparity of exchange, where people rely on working under a master that takes the value of their labour from them.


Not takes but EXCHANGES it for money voluntarily agreed upon by both parties. So, here you are wrong. It is a just TRADE if no aggressive violence or fraud is involved.




> If they don't, they starve.


Exactly. Work or starve. This is perfectly just. Even the Bible says the same. Or would you prefer that you be fed by stealing the fruits of labour of others? How is that just?




> You try telling me that it isn't coercive that the system is maintained and held up by the rich that profit from said system, and force people to give them a substantial share of the value of their labour or they will die by starvation.


Yes, if no aggressive violence or fraud is involved, then such system is perfectly just. The poor must be helped in the way that God prescribed, the just way, and that is through charity, which, by definition, is voluntary.




> You want to tell me that in such a system, taking money from those that coerce others to work is "evil",


There is no coercion if no aggressive violence is involved. "Coercion by needs" is a communist lie and an oxymoron, because no aggressive violence is involved in it, and thus there is no coercion by definition. Work or starve is a just principle.

If "coercion by needs" lie were used every time, you could falsely claim and force access to the necessities of life all the day long, and never again work productively, a day in your life, living by plunder. 

Thus, I say again, if no aggressive violence is involved, there is no coercion by definition. 




> You tell me that "evil" coercion kills the poor by providing the means to survive, and that not providing them the means to survive doesn't.


All societies that practiced aggressive coercion to substantially collectivize wealth  to feed the poor saw poor starve by tens of millions. Why? Because you cannot legislate a loaf of bread. Someone has to actually bake it. The systems that produce the most, are those that preserve to the labourer the fruits of his labour, which is known as the profit motive, which simply means you keep what you earn, which is justice. Aggressive violence destroys profit motive of the producer by violating justice. Thus, production is reduced more and more until the poor starve, even though food was guaranteed to them by government decree. Government decrees cannot abolish the laws of economics, nor the laws of nature, nor the laws of morality, nor the laws of justice. Any government or society that persists in such wicked legislation must unavoidably self-destruct with its poor and with its rich, because no society can long deny justice and survive.




> You try telling me that it's evil to provide more people with health care


There is exactly zero evidence that more people are provided with healthcare in Canada, in fact, there is evidence that people in need of urgent care have to leave the country to get it. 

Besides, the care that is provided, is provided at the expense of the slow and insidious destruction of the productive base of the society because of the violation of the principle of justice, which if unchecked will inevitably metastasize into complete destruction of the society itself, if this cancer of aggressive violence is not removed from the law that governs the country. It is similar to selling body and soul for the mess of pottage. (Genesis 25:31-34) 




> and only deny on the basis of availability,


Availability naturally goes down under aggressively violent socialism because self-regulating forces of Free Market no longer exist, because profit motive has been removed or lessened by destroying justice and dynamic and free fluctuating price structure via price controls. In a Free Market when demand rises, so does justly the price, causing MORE producers to step into the market driven by profit motive, thus meeting the demand, and driving the price down. 
This natural and just self-regulation does not exist when aggressive violence of the state imposes price controls. Thus Free Market operation is destroyed, causing shortages of producers who are no longer interested to step into the market, to have their labour, or a large part of it stolen by violent state.




> but claim that providing for less and only on the basis of wealth is not.


Aggressively violent socialism provides LESS, and only to politically connected. I am against that. And so should you be.




> You tell me that "justice" can be left up to those motivated by profit,


Yes, just like the production of milk can be left up to those motivated by profit. Or production of shoes, or anything else. We leave the production of vitally important things to those motivated by profit every day, and as long as Free Competition is allowed, or in other words, as long as aggressive violence is AGAINST the law and is forbidden, such competition will naturally deliver the best milk, the best shoes, the best food, and the best justice. It's been so for thousands of years. How strange it would be if someone began to argue that "the production of such vitally important thing like food could not be left to those motivated by profit." You would think that the person who said so was bunkers, because food was provided for hundreds of years, just fine by those motivated by profit, and it self-regulated itself to perfection; only when you get aggressive violence of the state involved, do you begin getting serious problems in food production. So is justice, a vitally important service, by definition, can ONLY be justly delivered by a Free Market, via voluntary interactions between people, anything else would be grotesquely unjust.




> but won't cast judgment where it is profitable, as opposed to where it is just.


It is not profitable in a Free Market to lose your reputation as a business. Now, given that reputation for justice is the ONLY commodity that a court in a Free Market has, it would mean the end of that court as a business. No one thereafter would consider its decisions as reputable, thus such a court would literally become worthless to everyone, including to the big companies, and would have to go out of business.




> You tell me that systems that harbour evil are evil, but claim that even though yours may, it's not evil because it's "just".


If I understand your meaning correctly "harbour" means support, so by definition Free Market does not and cannot "harbour" or support evil, i.e. aggressive violence, because it is in direct contradiction to it. Evil, if it occurs in a free market can be compared to a disease or infection in a body. The body does not "harbour" disease, it is in direct conflict with it, because the disease is in direct contradiction to its principles. 

Current government, however, can be compared to a virus or a disease in the body of the society, because INJUSTICE and aggressive violence are written into the very laws on which the government is based. Thus, you can correctly say, that the current government harbours, supports, and promulgates evil.




> You claim that force will be met with equal force, and fail to acknowledge that the person that can afford better mercenaries will win.


Not necessarily. It is all about reputation. If the insurance agency protecting the little guy wants to keep its reputation, it will publish abroad the evidence that a big company is perverting justice by attacking their client. The reputation of that big security agency will be tarnished, which will increase the cost of doing business for them, because private courts will be suspicious of them. And if a big company annoys enough competing security agencies by harming their clients and thus their bottom line, they can band together to bring it to justice. Ultimately, the people themselves can take up arms, pool their resources and take down the bully, like they did to king George the third and his mercenaries.   

The point is that right now, if you have a dispute with the state, you are facing ONE monolithic gang of thugs, called government, who claim a monopoly on justice enforcement and operation of courts. ALL the courts work FOR THEM; the courts are literally on their payroll, and this one monolithic and gigantic gang of thugs wants to have all the guns. What kind of justice do you think you will get from this ONE gang in a case against itself?  It is a much worse situation than multiple, much smaller security/insurance agencies competing for customers in a Free Market, and one or few of them misbehaving, while being subject to the corrective forces of the competing market.




> You tell me that "liberty" means to have a master dictate you,


Nothing of the sort. I said, Liberty is the ability to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another. 

I also said that, if you are truly free, you should be able to VOLUNTARILY choose a master IF you desire. Such VOLUNTARY obedience is love.

So, you totally misrepresented what I have said. I wonder why would you do that?




> and you tell me that free association is now "coercive" because it's done so in a socialist manner,


As I already mentioned, your definition of socialism is treacherously silent on whether aggressive violence is allowed to collectivize the means of production. Indeed, your definition of socialism as public ownership of the means of production was most often use as an excuse to commit such aggressive violence.  Thus it practically invites such violence and evil, though not necessarily requires it. Sounds like a sly treachery to me.

You should include explicit prohibition against all forms of aggressive violence into your definition, if you wish to describe a just system. And then, though I don't think such system is effective, because it is missing a vital Free Market price structure, that communicates vitally important information to the market as to how resources ought to be allocated in it, it still has a right to exist, as long as prohibition on aggressive violence remains in force.




> but being forced by the system to choose between masters or stave is not.


In a Free Market no one is forcing anyone. It is all VOLUNTARY. There is only one law there Â the law of private property, i.e. the law of Justice.




> Your entire pseudo-philosophy is riddled with contradictions and Orwellian doublethink.


Still waiting for you to prove even one.




> You support what is essentially feudalism


Yes, as long as property is obtained justly.




> as businesses create regional monopolies


As I already explained, a natural monopoly, where one company provides a vastly superior product at a vastly superior price is a perfectly just, good and productive thing. It is only a monopoly established by aggressive violence that is bad.




> and enforce them through mercenaries,


The only just way to enforce a monopoly is through a superior product at a superior price. Enforcing monopolies via aggressive violence is the exact opposite of Free Market. And I never supported that.  




> just as the cartels do. You see, the drug cartels of Mexico still go to war with themselves and with the forces of the state, and they hire mercenary armies to escape justice. They own the small towns, who are too poor to afford kicking them out. Yet, you claim that "justice" will prevail as somehow the poor will pay for a series of courts and a small army of mercenaries against the immensely rich.


First of all, what you are missing is the fact that the drug cartels have so much power for ONE and ONLY reason, and that is the aggressive violence of the state in the form of drug prohibition. This is what brings hundreds of billions of dollars into the drug war. 

If all drugs were decriminalized tomorrow, drug cartels and their power would evaporate. 

So in essence, in a very real sense, the drug cartels are created, financed and empowered by the aggressive violence and might of the government. No wonder that the poor in Mexico cannot yet successfully fight the combined power of the world's governments who empower and create drug cartels via aggressive violence of drug prohibition. 

Think of it, the cost of production of drugs is about the cost of production of herbal tea, yet because of the aggressive violence of the state it is valued more than its weight in gold. So, in essence, the poor in Mexico are fighting the monolithic government of the US, and all that while being disarmed by the aggressive violence of the state in the form of some of the most draconian "gun control" laws that disarm law abiding citizens, so that in Mexico, almost exclusively, only the criminals are armed. 

And despite all this, now vigilante groups of citizens are formed, that bring justice where lawlessness prevailed before. So the Free Market, or what is allowed to exist of it, is saving the day in Mexico again, and that under most unfavourable conditions. Mark my word, all systems of aggressive violence will eventually collapse under the weight of their own corruption, and only the Free Market will remain, because it is the only system that is self-sustaining, because it is based on eternal and unconquerable principles of Justice and Liberty.




> Your ideology is false,


Prove it. I have proven your objections false and self-contradictory one by one.




> your justifications are lies, your applications inconsistent, and your principles are fallacies.


Prove it. You are making completely unsubstantiated statements that I have methodically proven to be utterly lacking of merit and logic. Your self-admitted socialistic lunacy has been dismantled exceedingly thoroughly, so that all can see that your emperor of delusion has no clothes. Your proof is severely lacking, Sir.




> No one can voluntarily choose to not have a master.


Wrong again. Already explained that.




> You advocate killing the poor by letting them starve, but claim to love the poor.


Already answered that. I advocate saving the poor through strict respect for Justice and Liberty, which are attributes of Private Property, thus increasing prosperity and productive base of the society, and through charity, which will thus have a chance to become much more plentiful. This is the way how God commanded to take care of the poor, and not via aggressive violence, that will destroy the society and with it the poor.




> ÂI said gangs and aggressive violence are AGAINST the principles on which Free Market is built, by definition.Â 
> 
> That doesn't mean they won't exist.


Right, but Free Market is the ONE and ONLY system that can deal with that evil of human nature in the most efficient, and above all JUST way.




> You aren't god.


Making assumptions again? 




> My posts are the proofs that you ignored.


I don't think I ignored hardly a single word of yours. 




> I grow tired of wasting my time with you.


I actually appreciate this opportunity to debate you, so I could systematically dismantle the lies and errors of comrades Marx and Lenin, which you seem to have so deeply partaken of, which explains the profound moral vertigo you are experiencing, where good is evil, up is down, and light is darkness. 

Good luck, my friend.

Thanks again. Feel free to ask more questions. Thanks for the debate.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Hacking Education
This Is What Happens When A Kid Leaves Traditional Education*







Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/01/j...rnment-school/

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## helmuth_hubener

> Making assumptions again?

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Welcome back! Your avatar gets better and better!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Simplified the wording of the first principle in the top post:

*Private Property is not to be violated, because it is Justice and Liberty. 

*I could say the same thing thus:*

Private Property is* *Liberty* *and* *Justice, and ought not to be violated.
*

The second one is more forceful. Which one do you like better? I think I'll stick with the first for now.

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## osan

> *
> 
> Private Property is* *Liberty* *and* *Justice, and ought not to be violated.
> *
> 
> The second one is more forceful. Which one do you like better? I think I'll stick with the first for now.


you call that forceful?  It is naught more than a suggestion.  Replace "ought" with "may" and you will on a much better track.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

According to a dictionary: 




> *ought*
> 
>        Use *Ought* in a sentence 
> *ought*
> 
> 1   [awt]  Show IPA  
>    auxiliary verb  1. (used to express duty or moral obligation): Every citizen ought to help.  
> 
> 2. (used to express justice, moral rightness, or the like): He ought to be punished. You ought to be ashamed.  
> ...


which seems to jibe with what I am trying to say.

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## osan

> According to a dictionary: 
> 
> 
> which seems to jibe with what I am trying to say.


The implication is still weaker than "may not", which implies a stronger prohibition than "ought not".  You forgot to include the other possibility: *may* _auxilliary verb_

*2.*(used to express opportunity or permission): _You may enter.
_The negation of which indicating the prohibition against.

The other word that would serve the better purpose is "must":

*must* _auxilliary verb

_
*1.*to be obliged or bound to by an imperative requirement: _I must keep my word.

_Technically, "must" is even stronger, but may be too strong.  For example, you are lost in the woods in the bitter winter and discover a cabin.  You break a window, enter, and preserve your life from extinction.  Technically, you violated the cabin owner's property rights.  Worded with "may", the prohibition lends broader latitude for the offender to make restitution without being branded a criminal, whereas in a world choking on incompetent and dishonest men, some of whom seek to make their bones in life upon those of their fellows by any "technical" means they can pull off, "must" could be more easily taken as an inflexible blanket prohibition that is to be punished no matter what the reason for having committed the offense.

Words matter and must thereby be chosen with the utmost care.  That there are those in this world who would bring YOU to harm for no other reason than that they are able to without consequence (such as prosecutors making those bones), you are well behooved to take more careful stock in the subtleties of the words you are choosing.  This is most true in philosophical affairs.  Many of the scholarly philosophical works are painful in their tedious use of language and thereby difficult to read without succumbing to the desire to take up a pistol and shoot your brains out.  That is precisely because the authors understand not only the central importance of language, but its difficulties per sÃ©.  It is one thing to order a ham and cheese sandwich at the logal bodega and quite another to present a philosophical argument concerning universal moral principles.  You, and I mean YOU personally, need to be more careful in your use of language - at least be aware of what it is you are doing.  Do what you wish, but if you ignore this recommendation you risk producing a result that is no better than anything else out there.  If that is your goal or if that is tolerable, then please proceed.  Otherwise, I would recommend you remain open minded about the suggestions offered.

That all said, I will further observe that your use of "private property is liberty and justice" sounds a bit prosaic to me - just not my style.  The actual insufficiency, however, lies in the absence of support for the assertion.  You assert a fact but provide no basis.  Need I point out the weakness there?  Men of good character might not threaten the positive truth of your work, but those who are rotten will be able to credibly twist it into something you would not recognize.  To wit, the Constitution of the United States.  Elegant and compact... yes... and a semantic mess so vaguely constructed in places, so imprecise, that rotten men in key places have brought this nation to its currently teetering pass.

If you are going to go for the gusto, the woggle room for interpretation must be reduced to the minimal epsilon.  Even then we are not immune, but at least one forces the rotters to work harder for their booty.

Your call - it is, after all, your work.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Thanks, osan. What about "is not to be violated?" That's seems simple and precise. 




> That all said, I will further observe that your use of "private property is liberty and justice" sounds a bit prosaic to me - just not my style.  The actual insufficiency, however, lies in the absence of support for the assertion.  You assert a fact but provide no basis.


Is not this the support:




> Your Private Property, thus defined, includes, among other things: you,  your body, your mind, your ability to make choices, your ability to  move, to speak, to act, the fruits of your labor, your natural,  unalienable rights, etc.
> 
> This is why Private Property and Liberty are one and the same.  Therefore, you cannot violate or diminish one without violating or  diminishing the other.
> 
> It is actually the case, that all rights and virtues derive from the  concept of Private Property, and are, in fact, entirely meaningless  without it.
> 
> To prove this, let’s look again at Liberty and Justice, for example. What are they?
> 
> They are nothing more or less than Private Property.
> ...


But, you are right. Therefore, I am adding to it an extra passage:




> In fact, the definitions of both Justice and Liberty are directly found  IN the  definition of Private Property itself. In the section (c) of the   definition of Private Property we find:*
> Liberty* = the right to do with your own property what you will as long as you do not violate the property of another; and
> *Justice* = non-violation of property of another. 
> Thus, both Justice and Liberty are the key subset of the definition of  Private Property itself, and do not exist without it. They are  inseparably connected, and in fact, are one and the same. Therefore, you  can rightly say: 
> 
> *Private Property IS Liberty and Justice*.
> 
> Which is a VERY profound and  important thing to realize!


Thanks.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

In light of this I also improved the wording of the *Fundamental Law Constitutional Amendment*.

See if you like it better now. More suggestions? Thanks.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Rules*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Public Schools =* *A Prison By Any Other Name*

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## osan

> *Private Property IS Liberty and Justice.*


Respect for private property is respect for liberty and justice.

The two, of course, are not quite the same.  Once again, because this is essentially a philosophical work, leaving cracks for interpretation or attack is a bad idea.

Again, playing devil's advocate, were I an evil man (and some may claim I am) and wanted to discredit your idea, I could readily dismantle the assertion that private property is liberty and justice by doing nothing more than presenting dictionary definitions and noting the absence of any linkages between the three.  But if you assert that respect for private property equates with justice and liberty or with respect for same, the work of the attacker becomes notably more difficult.

The fundamental problem is that the statement does not rest upon an irreducible truth.  Because of this, it is open to dissection along multiple lines.  If we return to my original response to your OP, i offered up the Cardinal Postulate as a well structured example:

 Each man holds equal just claims to life
Notice how this runs into bedrock.  There is nowhere else to go with this assertion, save two places: accept it as true or reject it as false.  There is a third, which is to remain skeptical in the absence of strong enough evidence to cause one to accept or reject, but it is not a conclusion but only an intermediary state.  If it is to lead anywhere, it is to an evaluation of "true" or "false".

If I accept it as true, we are done.  The Postulate is accepted as axiomatic and apodictic.  This path results in a compact elegance that requires no further consideration.

If I reject it as false, we have not even begun the downward excavation of a literally bottomless abyss.  It is bottomless in the literal sense of it being infinite in size and scope.  The reason for this may be revealed within the first several iterations of queries that naturally arise when one chooses to reject the Cardinal Postulate, for if it is so rejected, a direct implication arises out of mutual exclusivity.  If all men do not hold equal just claims to life, then they are by necessity unequal.  Being unequal perforce means that there is at least ONE man whose claim to life is either greater- or less-than those of the others.  This cannot be escaped, save perhaps those who live on planet Bizarro, and while I may agree that we here on earth are rapidly coming to emulate that other world, we are not as yet there.

Thus far, as you can plainly see, there is nowhere else to go when you reject the CP as a fundamental truth.  You accept that someone, somewhere, holds either a superior claim to life than yours or one that is inferior.  Forgetting for practicality's sake what is meant by "inferior" and "superior" as they apply to the particulars, in general the questions arise as to whose claims are larger/smaller, by what virtue, who determines, by what authority do they determine, and so forth and so on.  No matter how you answer, if the response holds the least shred of rational validity, one will find that it never reaches bedrock, but only raises more of the same sorts of questions.   I will not do so here, but you can easily demonstrate for yourself that the questions generate nothing but more questions in an infinite regression.  I have not done the formal proof, but my intuition tells me that it would not be terribly difficult to prove that the regression is indeed infinite and due to the fundamental nature of the questions, no invariant may be reached, thereby demonstrating the infinite, or at least circular, nature of the path.

It is for this brand of solidity for which you should be striving, resulting in a structure that is as close to unassailable as possible.  I do not question the validity of your propositions, but observe that I have not identified the irreducible root from which they spring.  If it is there (your equivalent of the CP), you should state it.  Or use the CP itself.  It _is_ the good basis.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Respect for private property is respect for liberty and justice.


Yes, but why? Have you thought about it?



> Again, playing devil's advocate, were I an evil man (and some may claim I am) and wanted to discredit your idea, I could readily dismantle the assertion that private property is liberty and justice by doing nothing more than presenting dictionary definitions and noting the absence of any linkages between the three.


Lets do that:*
private property* 
 *n* land or belongings owned by a person or group and kept for their exclusive use  
Check. Except I broadened it to include not just belongings, but everything you justly own: i.e. you, your body, your mind, etc.*
liberty*
1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control. 
2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence. 
3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice. 
4. freedom from captivity, confinement, or physical restraint: The prisoner soon regained his liberty. 
5. permission granted to a sailor, especially in the navy, to go ashore.  
Check again. Freedom from control. Control of what? Of Private Property, of course! (Using the broad definition of Private Property as before).*
justice*
noun 
1. the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness: to uphold the justice of a cause. 
2. rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim or title; justness of ground or reason: to complain with justice. 
3. the moral principle determining just conduct. 
4. conformity to this principle, as manifested in conduct; just conduct, dealing, or treatment. 
5. the administering of deserved punishment or reward.  
Check again. Rightfulness or lawfulness, as of a claim. Claim to what? To property, of course.

Here is the intersection and linkage between the three: It is Private Property.

In fact, justice and liberty, as defined by the dictionary, would be completely meaningless without the concept of Private Property. This is the key link that I pointed out.  

If you can point out any Liberty or Justice outside of the definition of Private Property that I gave, you will have disproven my point; but it cannot be done, because there is neither Justice nor Liberty at all outside of property as I defined it.



> But if you assert that respect for private property equates with justice and liberty or with respect for same, the work of the attacker becomes notably more difficult.


Yes, but why is it that respect for private property equates with justice and liberty? Because definitions of Justice and Liberty are found IN the definition of Private Property, and Private Property is found IN the definition of Justice and Liberty. They are INSEPARABLY and eternally connected. You cannot separate them without rendering all three meaningless and self-contradictory.




> The fundamental problem is that the statement does not rest upon an irreducible truth.


Actually it does. Private Property, as I defined it, is the irreducible truth. And I will show you that it is equivalent to your claim to life assertion.



> Because of this, it is open to dissection along multiple lines. If we return to my original response to your OP, i offered up the Cardinal Postulate as a well structured example:
> 
> Each man holds equal just claims to life
> 
> Notice how this runs into bedrock. There is nowhere else to go with this assertion, save two places: accept it as true or reject it as false.  I do not question the validity of your propositions, but observe that I have not identified the irreducible root from which they spring. If it is there (your equivalent of the CP), you should state it. Or use the CP itself. It _is_ the good basis.


Lets do just that. Lets prove that my first principle of Liberty is equivalent to your Cardinal Postulate: Each man holds equal just claim to life.

First of all, I point out that claim to life is equivalent to ownership of property, where property is your life, your body, your mind, your immortal spirit, your soul. My definition of Private Property, as all the things you justly own, includes all these. There is no claim to life without claim to Private Property as I defined it. They are one and the same.

Proof complete.

Thanks for posting. I enjoy your thoughtful contributions.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

osan, thanks to you I added highlighted text to the top post:




> Your Private Property, thus defined, includes, among other things: you,  your body, your mind, your ability to make choices, your ability to  move, to speak, to act, the fruits of your labor, your natural,  unalienable rights, etc.. *Thus, obviously, the ownership of Private  Property is based on your self-ownership, and is the natural extension  of it.*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Wish to save endangered species?
*Make them Private Property!*
*Dah!*

Violation of private Property causes greater extinction of endangered species.

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/b...gered-species/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Lincoln did severe damage to the fabric of Liberty in this country. This is why he is deified by the thieving and marauding state which uses Lincoln's crimes as an excuse for theirs.
* 
The Regime Celebrates its Birthday*
By Thomas DiLorenzo
                                                                                    February 12, 2014

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty



----------


## ProIndividual

As someone who writes in my spare time about my own ethical theory and philosophy in general, I want to commend your effort, even if I could critique it. I won't critique it, as I know from experience that these kinds of writings are hard to master, and you tend to hone the craft through trial and error. Keep up the efforts...the arguments can only get better via experience.

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## PierzStyx

You'd be dismayed at how many people don't understand the basic concept of liberty and property being intertwined. We talk alot about Locke in school, but we never study him. This is why. You study to much you learn you're being turned into a slave by the state.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> As someone who writes in my spare time about my own ethical theory and philosophy in general, I want to commend your effort, even if I could critique it. I won't critique it, as I know from experience that these kinds of writings are hard to master, and you tend to hone the craft through trial and error. Keep up the efforts...the arguments can only get better via experience.


I'd very much like to hear constructive critique so I could improve. So please do.

Thanks.

----------


## ProIndividual

> I'd very much like to hear constructive critique so I could improve. So please do.
> 
> Thanks.


To critique you would be a three-fold problem:

1. Others have already said some helpful things, and I don't think repeating those things would be necessary.

2. Trial and error will show you the best way for YOU to organize YOUR ideas...no one is the authority and there is no cookie cutter method of coherently expressing philosophical ideas (although we tend to somewhat copy certain aspects of order and structure from our favorite philosophers). There is no best way to organize thoughts...but there are varying degrees of bad ways (if that makes sense to you).

3. To critique the real essence of your arguments, I'd have to go into detail with my own ideas, ethics, etc...and not only would that be longwinded (like most of my posts), but it would hijack your thread and make it look like I was trying to troll or derail the threads original topic. I guess the best way for us to critique each other would be for us both to continue posting our own ideas and ethical theories, and then for each of us to go into those threads to read them. Then we could start a thread to just debate our differences. I debate people on here sometimes, but I try to keep my long posts away from specifically laying out my ethical theory or ideas, as that would really derail the threads for no reason (and make me appear more of a rambling madman than I already must look to be...lol).

So, maybe sometime soon I'll start a thread on my ethical theory (I did this once before, but it wasn't fully developed at the time). Then you and others can debate it/me. Then I'll do the same for you in your threads, and we won't have to go about derailing each other's threads to define our conflicts from scratch. We can just link to the relevant posts in other threads to save space and time. I think I have a pretty rough idea where you are coming from now, so hopefully soon (when I start a thread on it) you'll see where I'm coming from, and we can go from there.

As far as writing style, don't worry too much...I'm no pro at it either. Concentrate on concisely getting your ideas across (even if it means being longwinded or sort of talking down to an audience who you know doesn't require you to talk down to them), and keeping the logic consistent. All else (like ethics) will flow from there.

If you want to take a brief look at my ethical theory as it stands today (fully developed), and thereby get a sense of what some of my critiques might be, go *here* and read the post (#28) I'm linking you to.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> If you want to take a brief look at my ethical theory as it stands today (fully developed), and thereby get a sense of what some of my critiques might be, go *here* and read the post (#28) I'm linking you to.


This is my view on your theory so far:



> the SLOET is simply that no one single ethical code should be imposed, via law or social norm, on anyone that is not voluntarily agreeing to it.


This is equivalent to the First Principle of Liberty (see top post). Why? Because the word “imposed” is meaningless unless it is defined via private property (using the broad definition, see above). And the “voluntary agreement” means nothing more or less than non-violation. Thus your statement is equivalent to mine, because it requires exactly the same things, and has exactly the same effect.




> Circumstances dictate ethics in my opinion, not acts themselves. No act should be viewed as "right" or "wrong"...the circumstance determines this value judgment.


I believe this to be a mistake, because the definitions of certain acts are specific enough to successfully identify them as good or evil REGARDLESS the circumstance. All these acts fall under one, well defined category: ALL forms of aggressive violence are evil by definition, circumstances irregardless. This is an absolute. An axiom. A self-evident truth, denial of which leads to endless and irreconcilable self-contradictions.

----------


## ProIndividual

> This is my view on your theory so far:
> 
> This is equivalent to the First Principle of Liberty (see top post). Why? Because the word “imposed” is meaningless unless it is defined via private property (using the broad definition, see above). And the “voluntary agreement” means nothing more or less than non-violation. Thus your statement is equivalent to mine, because it requires exactly the same things, and has exactly the same effect.


We both agree on private property...but some do not. Should we impose our ethical theories on them? The SLOET says no, as long as they only enjoy their disdain for private property with other like-minded people who voluntarily subject themselves to that kind of communal existence. If two people contract (and yes, I know we would say that implies property rights, but they will semantically sidestep that by using the word "possession", or outright reject a human can own a human, even to the extent that no person can own themselves, as to them "ownership" is a dirty word) with each other, and that agreement says that neither owns anything, even themselves, and they are subject purely to the will of some collective, even if that harms them, assuming they are both of adult age (or mentally ability) and do not have serious mental illness or handicap, then their ability to consent allows them to subject themselves to anti-propertarian, collective, masochistic ethics, laws, etc. They just can't impose it on those who do not consent (or cannot consent).

My point is, our ideas of property do not come from the SLOET, they come from our individual ethical theories. Yours and my ethical theories both agree on property rights, but we have no more a logical right to impose our ethical theories on communists than they have the logical right to impose theirs upon us. The SLOET prevents both. The SLOET isn't itself an ethical theory, it's just an observation of a logical truth based on metaphysical and epistemological precepts that are testable and thereby objective (the nature of reality, and the nature of knowledge). 

Now, we would agree, completely, on property. I don't want that to be lost in my response above. So yes, my PLC (the Path of Least Coercion; my ethical theory) is identical to your theory (as far as I can tell) in our understanding of the ethics of self ownership (individual sovereignty/self autonomy) and the property rights external to the self that logically follow from that. I just wanted to point out that the SLOET is separate from the PLC, as the SLOET doesn't endorse or deny any ethical theory (or lack thereof), provided no one is imposing their ethical theory (or lack thereof) on others who haven't voluntarily agreed to it (assuming they are capable of consent).





> I believe this to be a mistake, because the definitions of certain acts are specific enough to successfully identify them as good or evil REGARDLESS the circumstance. All these acts fall under one, well defined category: ALL forms of aggressive violence are evil by definition, circumstances irregardless. This is an absolute. An axiom. A self-evident truth, denial of which leads to endless and irreconcilable self-contradictions.


I totally disagree, and as I pointed out in the examples I gave in the link I left, even murder and cannibalism can be ethical given the right circumstance (if it is the least coercive choice among a set of choices that contain no non-coercive choices). That should not be confused for being legal...legal theory develops from ethical theory, but should NEVER be identical, as legal theory is set up to nonviolently solve disputes, which requires remuneration of victims (even if they are made victims via an ethical act).

Aggressive violence, as I pointed out in that link, is not unethical if it is the least coercive thing one can possibly do at the time. This is why I abandoned the NAP...it claims initiating aggression is always unethical, which doesn't work when initiating aggression decreases coercion (and this only occurs when no non-coercive choice or choices exist in your set of choices). 

So, no, I do not agree at all...and how could you possibly say such a thing objectively, given the SLOET (which you already agreed to)? Logically, if the SLOET is true, as you have agreed it is (albeit under another name), then you can not make objective statements about ethical theories (you can't logically prove your theory, or my PLC theory, is objectively true). I deny any ethical theory is objectively true, including my own...the only thing that is logically objectively true (because we can test it via logic and falsifiability) is the SLOET.

If aggression saves more lives, while non-aggression kills more people, then non-aggression is MORE coercive than aggression. The enemy of liberty is coercion, not aggression. Aggression merely USUALLY is the root of coercion...but it is not ALWAYS the root of it. When there are no non-coercive choices, aggression will often decrease coercion, and non-aggression will often increase coercion. This is why most NAP adherents aren't pacifists, despite the fact the NAP taken to its logical conclusions IS pacifism (the entire idea of violent self defense is based upon the fact that coercing another person, when no non-coercive choice is available, will decrease total coercion in the extreme circumstance). Hence, the NAP is 99.9% of the time correct to say initiation of aggression decreases coercion, but in rare and extreme circumstances, it fails to preserve as much liberty as possible. In those circumstances (the extreme circumstances where no non-coercive choices are available) that which preserves maximum liberty by minimizing total coercion IS initiation of aggression. I gave both hypothetical and real life examples of this in the link I left you.

So, there is no absolute ethical truth except the SLOET...neither of our theories are anywhere near absolute, and to say so is to deny the nature of knowledge and the nature of reality, as per the link I gave you. Unless you can show me scientific and/or logical proof that debunks the nature of reality (as an assumed objective thing, and viewed subjectively) or the nature of knowledge (only that which can be proven via logic and/or the scientific method, and holds up to falsification, as to show if our subjective views of reality are accurately describing the objective reality we assume exists), then it is logically impossible to say "ALL forms of aggressive violence are evil by definition, circumstances irregardless (sic)", and "This is an absolute". Neither can be objectively true, given the nature of reality and knowledge, logically speaking.

There is no self evident truth there. The "irreconcilable contradiction" is agreeing to the SLOET and then saying any ethical claim is an "absolute truth" or "self-evident". And to not agree with the SLOET, unless you have some logical proof and/or falsification of its metaphysical and epistemological failing, is illogical.

I'd ask you to go back and read that post one more time, being careful to go over the specific examples I gave, especially the one where 4 men would have died if they didn't initiate violent aggression against one dying man in order to save the other three via murder and cannibalism. It was ethical to do so according to the PLC (again, I'm not claiming this is objectively true...no ethical theory has objective truth; they are all logically subjective, as pointed out via the SLOET), precisely because it decreased total coercion (nature would have coerced 4 men to death, and only the act of aggressive violence saved 3 of them). Now, that doesn't mean the PLC would call this legal (and I said as much in the post I linked you to)...it merely shows that the circumstance, not the act of murder and cannibalism itself, determines the ethics and therefore level of illegality of the acts. To murder and eat someone for sexual satisfaction in normal circumstances would carry a severe penalty for sure (assuming the victim wasn't consenting), but the to do so as they did in a very extreme circumstance (where no non-coercive choice was available, and the least coercive act was the one they chose - which saved the most lives) would carry a much lower penalty (they should have to remunerate the victim's family - or surety, if a stateless situation - to the level possible, but not face the same stigma the former murderer and cannibal who did the same acts in normal circumstances with a non-consenting victim would face).

So, please attack the SLOET via logic and falsification (which I do not believe to be possible - but you are welcome to try), or cease saying any ethical theory's preferences are objectively true. The PLC is no more objectively true than the NAP, nihilism, egoism, utilitarianism, etc. It's impossible via logic to call any ethical theory objectively true. The objective truth is the SLOET (or your same claim under another name - names aren't important). The SLOET isn't itself an ethical theory, as it is not based on subjective values...it's purely based on logic and reason which derive metaphysical and epistemological precepts (which I don't think anyone can deny via logic and falsification). The Singular Logical Objective Ethical Truth therefore denies any ethical theory is absolute, correct, or objectively true...it actually affirms that this is impossible, and therefore only consenting individuals (of age and mental ability to consent) can follow the same ethical theories (or lack thereof), and any imposition of any ethical theory via social norm or law on non-consenting individuals is a violation of the SLOET (and THAT would be logically objectively unethical).

For this reason, all law must be contractual, and no social norm or law can be monopolized and imposed on anyone who refuses to consent and is capable of consent. To impose the idea that all initiations of aggression are absolutely and objectively wrong and, thereby illegal, would itself violate the SLOET and therefore be logically objectively unethical. You can only use that standard with those that agree and contract to those laws. People like me will contract separately, and when we are in the situation(s) I gave where we are initiating aggression to decrease coercion (the rare and extreme circumstance), that will not be considered unethical among us, and will carry likely lesser penalties than your contract would for you and your fellow contract mates (because you think they are absolutely unethical, so the penalty will logically follow from that belief). 

When one of my contract mates and one of yours end up in a rare and extreme circumstance where one of my contract mates act and take the least coercive path, albeit one that initiates aggression against your contract mate, then we will have a dispute that requires negotiation to solve, and likely will require arbitration from a as-non-bias-as-possible-individual (an arbiter with a market reputation for non-bias dispute resolution services). If we assume both of our contracts are fairly popular on the market for law, we will have a pre-agreed to arbiter ready for just such a situation. Then the market will sort out the problem, and the SLOET will be upheld, while neither of our ethical theories will be deemed objectively true or false.

As you can see, I can poke logical holes in the NAP...but not as a subjective ethical theory, but only as an objective ethical theory. If it is claimed to be subjective, then it is logical and unfalsifiable, because it doesn't get imposed on anyone as if it were objective. If the NAP is claimed to be objective, then it violates the SLOET by its imposition via law and/or social norm...which leaves it open to criticism via logic and falsifiability. It's just too easy to prove via logic that all ethical theories are subjective, not objective, and thereby cannot be universally claimed to be objective or imposed on non-consenting individuals.

The main point is: we have to be careful that we don't mistake our personal opinions on the best ethical theory as a logical objective truth (which is what you did). To do so has logical implications for legal theories (and therefore includes imposition via social norm and/or law on the non-consenting individuals). If we cannot show via logic and/or falsifiability that the SLOET is incorrect, then no ethical theory is logically objectively true. Only the SLOET (whatever name we give it) can be shown, via logic and the inability to falsify it, to be logically objectively true.

Told you I'd end up long-windedly derailing your thread...sorry about that...but you did open up the critique

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> we have no more a logical right to impose our ethical theories on communists


We have moral and logical right to protect our property from aggressive violence. This right is absolute. Even if communists do not agree with this "ethical theory" we still have the right to use force to protect ourselves, and thus "impose" our "ethical theory" of non-aggression on them by protecting our property. They might as well disagree with the laws of gravity or of mechanics.

Again, our "ethical theory" is simply non-aggression. And yes we can use force to protect ourselves from aggression. If you call it "imposing an ethical theory" so be it, as long as I "impose" it upon my property only.




> This is why I abandoned the NAP...it claims initiating aggression is always unethical, which doesn't work when initiating aggression decreases coercion


That is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction under my set of definitions of terms. Initiating aggression CANNOT decrease coercion by definition of the word coercion. At least by the definition I use. So, I perceive, the problem here, at least in part, is that we use different definitions for the word "coercion."

*I define the word coercion as the use of control over property against another's will.* 

Coercion can be defensive or aggressive. Defensive coercion is justified as it offsets/annihilates the aggression of another against property that is not his. Aggressive coercion, however, is ALWAYS morally and ethically wrong. Thus, under my definition of coercion, initiating aggression CANNOT "decrease coercion" in principle. Thus, under these definitions, the proper goal is to minimize aggression, not coercion, because defensive coercion must always be equal to aggressive coercion if justice is to exist. Defensive coercion is always just by definition. For example, you could "minimize coercion" by abolishing self-defense completely, but that would be immoral and unjust. Thus, it is aggression that needs to be minimized, not coercion, per say.




> I deny any ethical theory is objectively true, including my own...the only thing that is logically objectively true (because we can test it via logic and falsifiability) is the SLOET.


Then SLOET is YOUR ethical theory! The abandoning NAP leads to logical self-contradictions. More on this later.




> If aggression saves more lives, while non-aggression kills more people, then non-aggression is MORE coercive than aggression.


I already pointed out that, in terms of Justice, the goal is not to minimize coercion but aggression. Thus, where justice is concerned, you have no right to take innocent life to save your own.




> The enemy of liberty is coercion, not aggression.


Now you have to define aggression also, because under my definitions, the exact opposite is true.

*I define aggression as unjust coercion, or in other words, as control of property against the will of its rightful owner.*




> Aggression merely USUALLY is the root of coercion...but it is not ALWAYS the root of it. When there are no non-coercive choices, aggression will often decrease coercion, and non-aggression will often increase coercion. This is why most NAP adherents aren't pacifists, despite the fact the NAP taken to its logical conclusions IS pacifism (the entire idea of violent self defense is based upon the fact that coercing another person, when no non-coercive choice is available, will decrease total coercion in the extreme circumstance). Hence, the NAP is 99.9% of the time correct to say initiation of aggression decreases coercion, but in rare and extreme circumstances, it fails to preserve as much liberty as possible. In those circumstances (the extreme circumstances where no non-coercive choices are available) that which preserves maximum liberty by minimizing total coercion IS initiation of aggression. I gave both hypothetical and real life examples of this in the link I left you.


This again sounds like a self-contradiction. Please give an example HERE of 0.1% where you think what you are saying is true. And I will show you that it is never true.

Let’s start here and take it a step at a time. Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Discrimination (by Private Sector) Means Freedom

"There is no right to service. In a free society, every individual  and business owner has the right to refuse service. It is part and  parcel of the inviolability of private property, the freedom of  assembly, the freedom of association, the freedom of contract, free  enterprise, and the free market. In a free society, business owners,  like homeowners, have the right to run their businesses as they choose,  including the right to refuse service, and including the right to  discriminate on any basis against anyone. I am speaking of a free  societya society that hasnt existed in the United States for quite  some time. ..."

"Discrimination means freedom. A free society includes the freedom to  discriminate based on anything, not just religion, but a free society  also includes the freedom to discriminate based on nothing. A free  society includes the freedom to discriminate against all gays, not just  gay couples, but a free society also includes the freedom to  discriminate against anyone, not just gays. And a free society likewise  includes the freedom to discriminate whether doing so is logical or  illogical, reasonable or unreasonable, rational or irrational."

Read more here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/02/l...iscrimination/

----------


## ProIndividual

> We have moral and logical right to protect our property from aggressive violence. This right is absolute. Even if communists do not agree with this "ethical theory" we still have the right to use force to protect ourselves, and thus "impose" our "ethical theory" of non-aggression on them by protecting our property. They might as well disagree with the laws of gravity or of mechanics.


You are stating this subjective moral stance as an objective. It's not objective. Until someone tries to impose their ethical theory on you via law or social norm, you have nothing to defend against, even as they non-coercively seize property (which they do not believe in) from each other, via their contractual arrangements.

You seem to think the conflict is in ethical theory...its' not. It's in you or them imposing their different ethical theories via law or social norm on those who can consent and refuse to consent.

If everyone in the world but you and I were communist anarchists, and they didn't coerce us into their contractual arrangement where private property was banned, and we were therefore free to own private property and trade with each other, while choosing to ostracize (nor not) the communists (or each other), and while we did not coerce them into our propertarian contractual arrangements, then there is no conflict.

The only conflict arises when you or I are coerced out of property, or we coerce others into recognizing property rights when interacting with others who do not believe in it any more than they do.

Now imagine the world is all free market anarchist, and only two anarcho commies exist...the same holds true. We have no more a right to impose our ethical theories on them via law or social norm, than they had the right to impose theirs on us. Who is in the majority or minority, or to what degree, is irrelevant. It is a blatantly illogical claim to say either theory is objectively true. Both ethical theories are subjective...and so they cannot be ethically imposed on the other (or it violated the one objective truth in ethics we can derive via logic; the SLOET).

*The only objective ethical truth is* that no one can view an assumed objective reality beyond their subjective viewpoint (which makes our understanding of the nature of the objective reality inherently flawed and uncertain), and that our methods for testing whether our subjective views of reality are describing accurately the assumed objective reality are limited and incomplete at best, and therefore *without the ability to view reality objectively, and without a way to test many of our subjective views (like ethics), logically it is objectively true that ethics must be subjective and their imposition (as if objective) on any non-consenting individual (capable of consent) is objectively unethical.*

There is no exemption here for ethical belief in property (which you and I happen to share). Property rights are a subjective thing...they are dependent an ethical theory that is developed based on subjective values (and not all people capable of consent share these values, for whatever reasons).

Again, I ask you to use logic and/or falsification to disprove or invalidate _the nature of reality_  and _the nature of knowledge_  in #1 and #2 of the SLOET's development process (from the link I left a few posts back)...because if you can't logically disprove or invalidate either, then my conclusion is pretty air tight (although I'm willing to hear direct arguments against it).




> Again, our "ethical theory" is simply non-aggression. And yes we can use force to protect ourselves from aggression. If you call it "imposing an ethical theory" so be it, as long as I "impose" it upon my property only.


YOUR ethical theory is the NAP...I don't buy into the NAP any longer, as I can show places it actually increases coercion. I'm for the path of least coercion, which usually mirrors the NAP, but in rare extreme circumstances will actually decrease coercion in places the NAP would increase it. I gave specific historical and hypothetical examples of this in the link I left.

And there is no reason to put _ethical theory_ in quotes ("ethical theory"). Are you suggesting there is no such thing as a definable ethical theory, and that there aren't more than one? Clearly there are many; egoism, amoralism, nihilism, the NAP, the PLC (my theory), utilitarianism, situationalism, etc., etc., etc.

My point with self defense is that it is not taking the NAP seriously, because the NAP taken to its logical conclusion is pacifism. Self defense is NOT imposing an ethical theory...it's an act of aggression to thwart coercion, hopefully to limit the total coercion in the circumstance...which follows my theory the PLC exactly. But the PLC doesn't limit acts of aggression to simply self defense against coercion of man...it also takes into account the more coercive thing in all our lives...nature. To ignore nature and its coercions is to increase coercion in rare and extreme circumstances (those that have no non-coercive choice in the set of choices available). You have a right to self preservation, whether it is a rapist trying to rape you (self defense circumstance), or a famine trying to starve you to death (also a self defense circumstance, in the form of self preservation). The NAP doesn't agree with the either case, when taken to its logical conclusions. But many take the NAP only so far, and ignore the conflict in logic when advocating self defense in response to aggression. The PLC simply points out that A) people aren't taking the NAP completely to its logical ends if they believe in defensive aggression, B) that coercions of man and nature are distinguishable, but essentially act identically upon the individual victim, and C) any theory that has an arbitrary exception is inconsistent with its stated rules/purposes, and is an incomplete and thereby invalid theory. 

Einstein pointed out his Theory of Relativity had an exception (Special Case)...which means he knew it was invalid. It was simply the best theory so far, which meant it was flawed but less flawed than the previous theory it replaced. Scientists are still in search of proof for a "theory of everything" (which will replace the ToR when found). 

In the same way, the NAP has an exception (self defense), at least for non-pacifists...and this suggests it is invalid (for non-pacifists). Instead of trying to reconcile the theory, they simply dismiss the exception, and refuse to try and search for a theory that works in rare and extreme circumstances where no non-coercive choices exist. I've developed a theory that needs no exception for non-pacifists...it just means they have to stop viewing aggression (whether initiated or not) as the enemy, and instead see that coercion is the enemy. Where aggression increases coercion (99.9% of life), aggression is unethical. Where aggression decreases coercion (a tiny minority of circumstances in life for most of us), aggression is ethical. Whether or not the aggression is initiated or not is immaterial to the ethical judgment...all that is considered is if it was the _path of least coercion_, all things considered.  Therefore, no act is ethical or unethical inherently....it is all circumstance dependent. The same act that is unethical in one situation may be ethical given an entirely different circumstance.

*The only way to IMPOSE your ethics on others is NOT through a self defense act (self defense isn't an imposition; by definition it is rejection of imposition).* If you try to FORCE anarcho communists to accept property rights among each other, you'd have to coerce them to do it. That's imposing your ethics on them, and that would mean you somehow, without any logical way to do it, think your ethical theory is objective. Since it cannot be objective, you are the tyrant, not them. They only become the tyrant if they coerce you, either by trying to take your property, attack you, or otherwise coerce you via law or social norm, and that includes trying to make you deny property rights exist among yourself and willing participants in property rights (like me), and the trade that emits from them.

The NAP is not objectively true. The PLC (my theory) is not objectively true. I would not coerce you to follow my theory, nor would I want you to coerce me into your theory. We must, if we are to be consistent, share that respect with those who have theories completely dissimilar from our own (like anarcho commies).




> That is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction under my set of definitions of terms. Initiating aggression CANNOT decrease coercion by definition of the word coercion.


*No, it isn't a self contradiction, and I gave specific hypothetical and historical examples where non-aggression increased coercion, and initiation of aggression decreased coercion.* Address those examples, or we can stop now...because I'm not into pretending I didn't already prove this is no oxymoron, no paradox, and no enigma. Initiating aggression not only CAN decrease coercion, it HAS done it. I can give hundreds of examples in both history and hypothetical form. By definition, coercion is not equivalent to initiating aggression (let alone aggression generally, which would include self defense). *The most coercive force in history is nature, not man.* To only view man as a coercive force is a flaw in logic.

Please address my examples, or stop making this claim (or make it again and get no further responses...it's up to you).




> I define the word coercion as the use of control over property against another's will.


Well, we can't all make up our own meanings to words...let's use some sourced ways to define these terms:




> Coercion /koʊˈɜrʃən/ is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of intimidation or threats or some other form of pressure or force, and describes a set of various different similar types of forceful *actions that violate the free will of an individual to induce a desired response*.


I am intimidated by nature (gravity, specifically) into not trying to fly off my roof, because gravity will coerce my face into the pavement below my window. I am forced into the very shape my body takes on, and my body takes this shape in an act of defiance (and survival is that act of defiance) to the very nature that is trying to kill it at all times. If I refuse to breath or eat, I die. If I try to fly, I die. If I refuse to $#@! or piss, I die. If you move me to another planet will all the same stuff we have here, but with slightly more or less gravity, my body will adapt to the difference in coercion and start to make changes accordingly. In a few generations the body will have evolved in different ways than those on Earth.

*The act of living is an act of rebellion to the coercion, the tyranny, of the Universe (nature). Hence, the famous quote (made most famous by Aleister Crowley and the comic/movie  V for Vendetta:
*




> "Vi veri veniversum vivus vici."


V.V.V.V.V. (5 V's, or the Roman Numeral for five - V - V's)...it means *"By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe".
*

Why did we invent medical science? To thwart the coercions of nature upon our individual autonomy for as long as possible...ie., avoid death and pain for as long as possible. Why did we invent clothing? To avoid death and pain for as long as possible. Why did we invent shelter? Fire? The wheel? agrarian economics? Industrialization? Technological/automation economics?

To avoid the coercions of nature (pain and death) for as long as possible.

And where survival is MORE coercive than our death or pain, we seek death (euthanasia, suicide, Do Not Resuscitate orders, self sacrifice to save a friend, family member, or even a stranger).

*The coercivity of something is a scientific term:*




> In materials science, *the coercivity, also called the coercive field or coercive force*, is a measure of a ferromagnetic or ferroelectric material to withstand an external magnetic or electric field.


*Coercion, in short, is ANY force put upon a non-consenting individual or thing...regardless of whether the coercion is derived from a magnetic field (or any other aspect of nature), or a person (and people, BTW, are just another part of nature).* It is a vain and ego-driven attempt to separate human beings from the rest of nature that leads people to view ONLY initiations human aggression as coercion, and to think of building a home any more unnatural than beavers building a dam (both can destroy ecosystems). *Humans, and therefore human coercions, are inseparable from nature...our technology is natural, as we are natural. Our coercions on each other are hardly the only form of coercion nature produces.* 

A famine is quite coercive for the starving, and it is nature that is the coercer, not your neighbor (and had it been the neighbor, that could also be argued to be a coercion of nature).




> Then SLOET is YOUR ethical theory!


Actually, as I said already, it is NOT an ethical theory, nor is it MY ethical theory. 

1. *My ethical theory is the PLC (the Path of Least Coercion), not the SLOET.*

2. *The SLOET cannot be logically denied or falsified (as of yet, no attempt to do so has succeeded).* You would have to deny _the nature of reality_ and/or _the nature of knowledge_ to deny the SLOET. If you cannot logically invalidate _the nature of reality_ or the _nature of knowledge_, then the SLOET is NOT an ethical theory...its precisely the denial that any subjective ethical theory can be proven to be objective. Because no ethical theory can be proven to be anything but subjective, to impose those theories as if they were objective is OBJECTIVELY UNETHICAL. Do you see why? The SLOET is simply the only logical objective truth you can derive about ethics given _the nature of reality_ and _the nature of knowledge_. *Until you use logic to invalidate the nature of reality and/or the nature of knowledge, then the SLOET is both logical and objective, and therefore the only objective thing that can be known about ethics.*

3. *If it is the only thing that can be objectively known about ethics, given logic and lack of ability for someone to falsify it* (not to say it is unfalsifiable...because it COULD be falsified if the two premises on which its based could be logically falsified or invalidated), *then not only are ALL ethical theories subjective (including mine), but pretending they are objective is itself unethical, and itself illogical.
*




> The abandoning NAP leads to logical self-contradictions


The only contradictions are in A) believing any ethical theory, whether the NAP, my theory, or any other theory is objectively true, and B) saying you believe in the NAP completely, but then not being a pacifist (the NAP taken to its logical conclusion is pacifism). 

You cannot be a total NAP adherent without being a pacifist. If you believe in self defense you have already admitted there needs to be an exception to the NAP, and thereby have invalidated the theory (which does not mean it should be abandoned until you find a better theory, like with all invalidated theories).

Anyone can hold any ethical theory they like, no matter how illogical it is...it's not unethical to do so, provided no non-consenting individual (and no individual not capable of consent) is coerced. *As long as NAP adherents only contract with NAP adherents, and don't impose their theory via law or social norm, there is no problem (and if they did do that, it would violate the NAP anyways).* But they MUST (in order to stay consistent with non-aggression against innocents) not use law or social norm to impose their theory...others must be free to contract according to other ethical theoretical preferences. After all, all ethical theories are logically subjective.




> I already pointed out that, in terms of Justice, the goal is not to minimize coercion but aggression.


No, it really isn't...not historically, and not in the eyes of many libertarians who are either utilitarians, egoists, or like me have a self developed theory. That's your subjective view, and sounds like a coercive monopoly on law to me (a state). I gave examples, both historical and hypothetical that show this. If you wanted to minimize aggression with no regard to coercion you'd kill a lot of people unnecessarily in circumstances where there are no non-coercive choices available when all is considered (coercions of nature and man, both), only a set of choices that are equally coercive (coercion neutral choices), or sets of choices that are of varying degrees of coercion (some may be equal in coercive value, and others will be more or less coercive than that, but all choices are coercive due to nature and/or man).

*In a free market society, the point of Justice is to nonviolently solve disputes...nothing more.* *Law isn't made, it emerges via those dispute resolutions on the market.* Whether a certain thing (like say, murder) would be legal or illegal would depend on who was killed and their contractual legal agreements. If you and I agreed to contracts that said murder was illegal, then we could not be murdered lawfully. If two other madmen with an entirely different ethical theory decided to make murder legal in their contract, that's fine, as long as they only murder each other and others who voluntarily sign that contract (and are able to consent when signing it). Those two whackos can feel free to murder each other as long as no one outside their contract is directly and measurably affected (we don't witness it, don't have to pay for it, etc., etc.). This extreme example is VERY extreme, but it essentially shows *my point...only creating victims (non-consenting people being coerced) in normal circumstances (where non-coercive choices are available, ie. 99.9% of life) is unethical objectively (it violates the SLOET)...all the rest is subjective and none of anyone's business.*

My PLC contract would be different than your NAP contract only in one way; when a circumstance is rare and extreme (like famine), and therefore no non-coercive choice would be available, my contract would view initiating aggression to limit coercion to its lowest possible level as ethical. Your contract will view it as unethical. Therefore, in my contract the punishment when I do it to a fellow contract mate who agreed to this standard of ethics will be less than if you do it (by "it" I mean steal food for your child to keep them from dying of starvation when no other choice is available after trying all other methods) to one of your fellow contract mates. *Also, for you to steal to save your child in this famine, in light of the fact there is no other available choice, you'd have to violate the NAP*...whereas my PLC already accounts for this, and is not violated and remains completely consistent (as do my actions that follow it). 

Only if I had to steal from someone outside my contract in this extreme circumstance (famine) would I face some different standard of ethics. Let's say I stole from you, or you stole from me in this circumstance. Then we simply hire a non-bias arbiter who has a good reputation for impartiality on the market. We agree to the form of trial or lack thereof, etc., and we commence nonviolent dispute resolution. A victim was created when one of us stole from the other. No one disputes that. What is disputed is if the act was ethical or not; I say it is, you say it isn't. The penalty you or I will face will depend...if you stole from me, your contract would likely have a harsher punishment here because of the lack of logical exceptions for times when aggression decreases coercion, and therefore I would not dispute the penalties (unless I thought I could move the arbiter to leniency). If I stole from you, my contract penalties are likely less than yours (given the subjective ethical difference), so we'd have to meet somewhere in the middle via arbitration...somewhere between your stiffer penalties and my lighter ones.

That's what Justice and law look like in a free market, free society. *Obviously you couldn't have a state if you took the NAP to its logical conclusions (even with the self defense exception, the state cannot exist via the NAP, as it only exists via initiations of aggression).* And if you have no state, there is no coercive monopoly in legal markets, and therefore nonviolent dispute resolution services.

*If you believe in the legitimacy of the state, you are not following the NAP (even with the self defense exception). If that is your position, I'd also mention that the rest of this debate is likely useless (if you can't see the state's existence violates the NAP, then you'll never see the self defense also does, and therefore you'll never admit any need to take a harder look at the theory for holes in it - what you refer to as contradictions).*




> Now you have to define aggression also, because under my definitions, the exact opposite is true.


It has a simple meaning:




> Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation.



And again, aggression decreases coercion when self defense is used. Hence, people always say "initiation of aggression" when discussing the NAP...but the NAP is the NON-aggression principle (its not really axiomatic, hence not the "NAA"), NOT the non-INITIATION of aggression principle. Hence, pacifists practice the NAP completely, in a logically consistent manner. Anyone who adds a self defense exception into the NAP are essentially not following the NAP at all, but follow up to the point they see aggression CAN and DOES decrease coercion in extreme circumstances. They try to say self defense is only justified when first coerced by the initiated aggression of another person...but in reality, aggression (whether initiated or not) decreases coercion anytime no non-coercive choice is available. These extreme circumstances where no non-coercive choice exists are necessarily self preservation circumstances (and as with self defense, you can extend self preservation to the preservation of anyone else who is a circumstance where you could ethically act in preservation of the self if in their place)...and aggression (whether initiation of aggression, or responsive aggression) in these extreme circumstances will almost always decrease coercion (by choosing NOT pacifism, but instead by choosing the Path of Least Coercion). This aggression is only meant to decrease coercion to its lowest possible levels.

Why?

Because to save as much liberty as possible, all considered, you must ALWAYS decrease coercion to its lowest possible levels. This usually means not aggressing...but that correlation is not a causal relationship. The cause of limiting coercion is neither aggression or non-aggression...it is circumstance. The same exact act in a normal circumstance (where a non-coercive choice exists) would be considered unethical, but when it occurs in a totally different and extreme circumstance (where no non-coercive choice exists) it can be considered ethical. This works for both self defense and initiations of aggression, if you use the PLC, not the NAP. 

*The enemy of liberty is ALWAYS coercion, not aggression...because aggression is only the enemy insofar as it coerces.* If aggression does not coerce, or is the least possible coercion available, then it is my contention via the PLC that it IS ethical (precisely because our goal as libertarians is supposed to be to maximize liberty for all, and to do that we MUST thwart coercion first, and aggression only where is increases coercion). The NAP, taken to its logical conclusions to maintain its logical and ethical integrity as a theory, says ALL aggression is unethical. You either have to make special case exemptions to believe in self defense, (which invalidates the theory, logically), or you have to abandon the theory for one that is more consistent in its ideal.

*I can easily point out hypotheticals and historical cases where coercion was decreased by initiating aggression, let alone self defense, and where not acting aggressively would have increased total coercion. You can't point out where my PLC theory increases coercion, even by way of initiating aggression (as it always aims to take the least coercive path).*




> This again sounds like a self-contradiction. Please give an example HERE of 0.1% where you think what you are saying is true. And I will show you that it is never true.


*I gave quite a few examples in the link I left originally*...which you clearly didn't read very thoughtfully. I'm not going to do anything but say "go back and hit the link and read the post slowly, and digest it before your reject it". *You'll see I logically show where aggression CAN and in fact HAS decreased coercion. In fact, the entire thread was about that debate...not just my post. It was fairly clear to me and a few others (see the poll on the thread) that the NAP had certain "holes" in it (as a theory claiming to be objectively true, not as a subjective theory). Although my theory (the PLC) has no such logical holes in it, it is also subjective (as I can't call it objective without first logically disproving the SLOET, or by falsifying it somehow - and I can do neither of those things, nor do I think anyone else can).*

*Where we need to start is:

1. You read the post again and explain to me how I didn't show aggression can, and does, reduce coercion when you are in circumstances where no non-coercive choice is available (this counts for self defensive aggression and initiated aggression). The examples were famine, the original hypothetical in the OP of that thread (stealing medication for a sick child I believe), consensual crime, and last but not least a real life case of murder and cannibalism for survival on a lifeboat at sea. 

2. Show me how the SLOET (which you originally agreed with) is logically invalid or falsifiable. Do so by quoting the nature of reality  and/or the nature of knowledge  and explain how they are wrong. If you can do neither, then please quote  the nature of ethics  section and explain how the conclusions there are anything more than strictly logically derived from the previous two sections, and thereby is either illogical or falsifiable.* 

If you can't do either of those things, then I can't see A) denying the logical validity of the SLOET, and that therefore all ethical theories are logically subjective, while the SLOET is logically objective (hence its name; the "Singular Logical Objective Ethical Truth"...which is NOT an ethical theory unto itself AT ALL), and B) claiming that coercion cannot be reduced, when no non-coercive choice is available, by acts of aggression (when it clearly can).

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

This was not the first point in your post, but I put it at the top as it seems to be most important. I will address your other points after it.



> * Also, for you to steal to save your child in this famine, in light of the fact there is no other available choice, you'd have to violate the NAP*...whereas my PLC already accounts for this, and is not violated and remains completely consistent (as do my actions that follow it).


This is a good and important question. And I have a brilliant solution for you.

Let’s compare and contrast PLC (Path of the Least Coercion) and NAP (the Non-Aggression Principle) in the context of Justice and Private Property.
First we will define coercion as doing things against someone’s will. Coercion therefore may or may NOT involve violation of private property, and therefore may or may not be just. Examples:
a) robbing someone is a coercion involving a violation of private property, and therefore is unjust, by definition; 
but, on the other hand,
b) you wearing your hat of the color that your neighbor does not like, or even you using equal force to defend your property from aggression of your neighbor, are examples of justified coercion that does NOT violate anyone’s private property. 
So, in both instances a) and b) we have coercion, but one is justified, and the other is not.

Now, PLC says all coercion is bad, and the less coercion you have the better, no coercion being the best, and it makes no distinction between defensive and aggressive coercion.  That clearly violates Justice as it may be used to forbid defensive coercion, as the means of having less coercion in the system. That is unjust. Defensive, or non-aggressive coercion is perfectly justified, and neither justice nor life could exist without it. PLC violates private property, self-ownership, and thus is self-contradicting.

Now you agree with it in 99% of the cases except in “extreme” circumstances when some aggressive coercion seems to decrees total coercion in the system. I have a simple solution for you: Proper application of the NAP.

The NAP says that Aggression is always wrong, and the goal is to limit and eliminate aggression, so that the less aggression you have the better, no aggression being the best. (Aggression being defined as aggressive coercion, i.e. a coercion that violates private property.)

Let’s consider your “extreme” example and show that the NAP still operates correctly in it.

You say you are justified in stealing food from your neighbor to save your children from starvation when no other choice is available because of famine and “aggression” of nature or someone else against you.

Well, NAP solves this rather nicely. Remember, under the NPA the diminution, or lessening of aggression as much as possible is the goal. If you are being attacked by nature or by marauders and need to use coercion upon your neighbor’s property to save yourself and/or your children from the aggression against you, inasmuch as this act decreases total AGGRESSION in the system it is justified. You can pay reparations to your neighbor later. The goal is to diminish total aggression in the system, and that is perfectly in harmony with NAP.

The key difference here is what we are minimizing. We are minimizing aggression, which is ALWAYS the right way to take. Minimizing coercion, on the other hand, is not always the right path to take. Thus, minimizing aggression is ALWAYS just. Minimizing coercion, is not always just. (Remember, minimizing or forbidding defensive coercion is unjust, because defensive coercion is an integral part of justice itself).

Thus NAP solves your “extreme” cases perfectly. It holds up to the laws of justice under ALL circumstances, whereas PLC does not. Therefore the NAP is correct, and PLC is not.

Furthermore, Charity does not violate the NAP. We all have a responsibility to treat our neighbor as ourselves. This is justice. If you do not wish your children to starve, when you have done all that you can, you should not allow your neighbor’s children to starve either, if they have done all that they can. NAP remains intact if you treat others as yourself. *It would be unjust of you to treat your neighbor differently than how you wish to be treated by him in the same situation.* Thus, there is no need to violate the NAP even in the 0.1% of cases you are describing. It is taken care of by charity.




> Both ethical theories are subjective...and so they cannot be ethically imposed on the other (or it violated the one objective truth in ethics we can derive via logic; the SLOET).
> *The only objective ethical truth is* that no one can view an assumed objective reality beyond their subjective viewpoint


You have a prejudice against subjective viewpoints. Some of them are perfectly and demonstrably true. You can make repeatable verifiable experiments that bricks fall downward and not upward when dropped. If you don’t believe in objective reality, I suggest you go for a walk, blindfolded on a busy highway, or put your hand on a hot stove, you will be quickly convinced that objective reality exists.



> There is no exemption here for ethical belief in property (which you and I happen to share). Property rights are a subjective thing...they are dependent an ethical theory that is developed based on subjective values (and not all people capable of consent share these values, for whatever reasons).


The problem is that such believes are self-contradictory. If you don’t believe in self-ownership that is self-contradictory (if you do not own yourself, then why do you speak YOUR thoughts, etc. The very fact we are having this conversation proves your implied assertion of self-ownership.). Thus, by extension, if you do not believe in ownership of property, that is self-contradictory. Etc.



> Again, I ask you to use logic and/or falsification to disprove or invalidate _the nature of reality_ and _the nature of knowledge_ in #1 and #2 of the SLOET's development process (from the link I left a few posts back)...because if you can't logically disprove or invalidate either, then my conclusion is pretty air tight (although I'm willing to hear direct arguments against it).


Restate 1 and 2 here, and we will discuss them.



> And there is no reason to put _ethical theory_ in quotes ("ethical theory"). Are you suggesting there is no such thing as a definable ethical theory, and that there aren't more than one? Clearly there are many; egoism, amoralism, nihilism, the NAP, the PLC (my theory), utilitarianism, situationalism, etc., etc., etc.


I put “ethical theory” in quotes, because some “ethical theories” like NAP, are actually ethical facts. Like I have a “theory” that 2+2=4. Calling it a “theory” does not change the reality that it is more than a theory. It is a fact.



> Self defense is NOT imposing an ethical theory...it's an act of aggression to thwart coercion,


Again, that is an oxymoron under my set of definitions. Self-defense, by DEFINITION, is NOT aggression. They are the diametrically opposite concepts. Self-defense is the *opposite* of aggression. We are speaking different languages, attaching different meanings to the same words. Hence is the disagreement. We must FIRST agree on definitions of terms. Insure they are not self-contradictory. Then, and only then can we proceed. So please define the following terms:Aggression.
Coercion.
Self-defense.
I can prove to you that all these terms are utterly MEANINGLESS without the concept of private property (see top post).



> But the PLC doesn't limit acts of aggression to simply self defense against coercion of man...it also takes into account the more coercive thing in all our lives...nature. To ignore nature and its coercions is to increase coercion in rare and extreme circumstances


Ah! I knew that’s where it was going. It is an important question, but in total harmony with the NAP.

If you assume that the acts of nature are the acts of God, which is my position, then He, as the proper owner of the earth and all that is on it, can do with it as He pleases. NAP is perfectly intact, because it is His property. By the way, this does not mean that you should not protect yourself from natural disasters, because God gave you the ability, knowledge and responsibility to do so, so that you may develop the strengths and abilities he wants you to a achieve.

Even if you assume that nature is an inanimate object, or just a third party actor, you cannot presume that “aggression” by this actor justifies your aggression against an innocent party. 

Example: If person A attacks your property, it does not justify your “retaliation” against B who has NOT attacked you. Even if killing B may save your life, it does not make it just for you to kill B.

Thus, if you assume that nature is just another actor, you cannot assume that your aggression against innocent parties is justified because nature “compelled” you. It is not just.



> The PLC simply points out that A) people aren't taking the NAP completely to its logical ends if they believe in defensive aggression,


The point of the NAP is Non-Aggression. Thus, it is AGGRESSION that must be limited, not coercion. BIG difference. NAP is perfectly consistent with DEFENSIVE coercion. In fact, it is a logical, and integral part of it, because DEFENSIVE coercion can and should be used to annihilate aggression. 

Aggression is the sin, not coercion. BIG difference. Aggression is the difference between JUSTICE and INJUSTICE. Defensive coercion to eliminate aggression, is an indispensable part of JUSTICE.



> C) any theory that has an arbitrary exception is inconsistent with its stated rules/purposes, and is an incomplete and thereby invalid theory.


The NAP  is perfectly consistent within itself, including in dealing with natural events.



> In the same way, the NAP has an exception (self defense), at least for non-pacifists


Self-defense is NOT an exception to the NAP, but is the integral and indispensable part of it as the means of diminishing and annihilating aggression. The NAP is nothing more or less than justice itself.



> Whether or not the aggression is initiated or not is immaterial to the ethical judgment...


Wrong. Aggression or the absence of it is the very essence of what differentiates Justice from injustice. Right from wrong. Good from evil.



> all that is considered is if it was the _path of least coercion_, all things considered.


Again, with this non-logic, (in a pretense to promote “self-defense from coercion”), you could outlaw all true self-defense, because it would decrees coercion. Your position is profoundly self-contradictory. Aggression is the enemy, not coercion.



> Therefore, no act is ethical or unethical inherently....it is all circumstance dependent.


You start from a false premise and therefore arrive at a self-contradictory and false conclusion. Moral relativism is profoundly self-contradictory, because it makes it an absolute to deny absolutes. It is self-defeating and false at its very core.



> * The only way to IMPOSE your ethics on others is NOT through a self defense act (self defense isn't an imposition; by definition it is rejection of imposition).* If you try to FORCE anarcho communists to accept property rights among each other, you'd have to coerce them to do it. That's imposing your ethics on them, and that would mean you somehow, without any logical way to do it, think your ethical theory is objective. Since it cannot be objective, you are the tyrant, not them. They only become the tyrant if they coerce you, either by trying to take your property, attack you, or otherwise coerce you via law or social norm, and that includes trying to make you deny property rights exist among yourself and willing participants in property rights (like me), and the trade that emits from them.


Exactly right, I agree with you. But I was simply pointing out the self-contradictory nature of a position that denies property rights. If someone denies the existence of property and ownership, he can wrongly view people’s self-defense as “imposition” of ethical theory. That was my point.



> * The most coercive force in history is nature, not man.*


Not in the last 200 years. Aggressive violence of the state was responsible to close to 300,000,000 deaths in the last 100 years alone. All natural disasters combined in that time period did not come close to this number.

But it is immaterial who is more coercive. NAP stands supreme, being the very law of Justice itself.



> Please address my examples, or stop making this claim (or make it again and get no further responses...it's up to you).


Since we are having this discussion in this thread, would you be so kind to give your example here, and I will address it. Thanks.



> “I define the word coercion as the use of control over property against another's will. “
> Well, we can't all make up our own meanings to words...let's use some sourced ways to define these terms: 
> "Coercion /koʊˈɜrʃən/ is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of intimidation or threats or some other form of pressure or force, and describes a set of various different similar types of forceful *actions that violate the free will of an individual to induce a desired response*. "


I think you can clearly see that both definitions are equivalent. Thus, we agree on this definition.



> * The act of living is an act of rebellion to the coercion, the tyranny, of the Universe (nature).*


Not necessarily. It is nature that also gives you life and existence. Are you going to rebel against your heartbeat too?



> * Hence, the famous quote (made most famous by Aleister Crowley*


If what I heard is true, he was a very wicked man. A wicked self-destructive degenerate who extolled aggressive violence. Hence, he was a self-confessed Satanist. I would not take advice from him. He was wrong.



> * not only are ALL ethical theories subjective (including mine), but pretending they are objective is itself unethical, and itself illogical.*


Are you denying the existence of objective reality? If not, then you cannot rightly assert that objective reality cannot be known. Your position is self-contradictory. It is folly and self-contradiction to assert that a) objective reality is unknowable and therefore b) does not exist. It exists. It is knowable. It is experimentally and logically verifiable. By us having this conversation, you actually implicitly assent to these facts. Hence, your position is self-contradictory.

I am not trying to antagonize you, I am simply pointing out self-contradictions in your position. Please, accept this as such: well intentioned effort to help you.



> My PLC contract would be different than your NAP contract only in one way; when a circumstance is rare and extreme (like famine), and therefore no non-coercive choice would be available, my contract would view initiating aggression to limit coercion to its lowest possible level as ethical.


PLC (path of least coercion), or in other words, the less coercion the better, is self-contradictory and therefore false. PLC violates justice. Defensive coercion is important part of Justice. One way to satisfy PLC is to abolish justice, self-defense, private property and self-ownership, which is a self-contradiction. Think about this. If self-defense was abolished, would it not reduce the amount of coercion (albeit justified, defensive coercion)? So, you see satisfying PLC you violate Justice and self-ownership, which is a self-contradiction.

Now, justice is absolute. It is not subjective. Just like the laws of the Universe are not subjective, even though they might be subjectively perceived at times. Example: If you unaware that China exists, does not make it disappear. If a blind man on a highway is unaware of a truck coming towards him, it does not make the truck disappear. This is the point you are missing. Reality is OBJECTIVE and knowable, otherwise you contradict yourself by having this very conversation.



> * Obviously you couldn't have a state if you took the NAP to its logical conclusions (even with the self defense exception, the state cannot exist via the NAP, as it only exists via initiations of aggression).*


You need to define “state” here. If you define “state” as a taxing body that claims the right to violate private property, then I agree, that such state cannot exist without violation of NAP, and thus such state is evil, by definition, and has no right to exist. 

However there is a definition of a just state, a state that does NOT violate the NAP.  Such state is defined as public property and it’s just management. This state has a right to exist, as long as the property of no individual is violated.



> And if you have no state, there is no coercive monopoly in legal markets, and therefore nonviolent dispute resolution services.


That is false. Nonviolent dispute resolution is possible only in the absence of such state, because to exist, such state requires aggressive violence of taxation of private property. (Think legalized plunder and “protection” racket). There is nothing non-violent about that. Only Free Market, can deliver truly non-violent conflict resolution, in principle. Such, non-violent resolution is IMPOSSIBLE in any other way.



> Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation.


That is a self-contradictory definition, because aggression, in principle, is impossible in retaliation. Retaliation, by definition, is not aggression. The definition of aggression is using force against someone’s property WITHOUT provocation. 

*Aggression is a violation of Private Property. It is coercion/force imposed upon property against the will of its rightful owner.*

Thus we disagree about the basic definition of this important term. No wonder we arrive at different conclusions. We need to hash out and agree on definition of the term “aggression” before we can continue.



> * Show me how the SLOET (which you originally agreed with) is logically invalid or falsifiable.*


In my agreement I used your definition of SLOET, in your own words, as follows:

“the SLOET is simply that no one single ethical code should be imposed, via law or social norm, on anyone that is not voluntarily agreeing to it.”

This is what I agreed with, and pointed out that it was equivalent to the First Principle of Liberty (in the top post), because the word “imposed” is meaningless unless it talks about private property as defined in the top post, and the phrase “voluntarily agreeing” is synonymous with non-violation.

If you have a different definition of SLOET, please give it here. Thanks.

----------


## ProIndividual

> Let’s compare and contrast PLC (Path of the Least Coercion) and NAP (the Non-Aggression Principle) in the context of Justice and Private Property.
>  First we will define coercion as doing things against someone’s will. *Coercion therefore may or may NOT involve violation of private property, and therefore may or may not be just*.


Not true, exactly. If the least coercive choice you have is to steal (as opposed to watching your child starve to death in a famine, for instance), then logically it does not increase coercion...coercion is reduced via violation of private property (the alienable right to property is coerced, but the inalienable right to life is preserved, which is objectively less coercive).




> Now, PLC says all coercion is bad...


Actually the PLC doesn't say that, the SLOET does, as does libertarianism as a philosophy, especially the anarchism wing of it. And "bad" is a relative term wit the PLC...if the circumstance allows a non-coercive choice, then ALL coercion (as you stated) is bad. But if the circumstance has no non-coercive choice available, the PLC says the LEAST COERCIVE CHOICE is not bad, but the only good. In the absence of utopian circumstances where NEVER is there a set of choices with no non-coercive choice available, coercion will be an unavoidable fact of life (albeit increasingly rarer and rarer). Because of this, allowing more than minimal coercion when a coercion is guaranteed is in my humble opinion unethical. Pacifism can kill people unnecessarily (or increase pain), and the NAP can kill people unnecessarily (or increase pain) even with the self defense exception (which logically invalidates the theory anyways). The PLC isn't EVER going to advocate for anything except the least coercive path, and therefore will always maximize liberty preserved, and will always take the choice least coercive for all involved when coercions of man and nature (some might call that redundant) are all considered (which usually means a choice lacking aggression, in accordance to the NAP).




> ...and the less coercion you have the better, no coercion being the best, and it makes no distinction between defensive and aggressive coercion.


First, this is semantically flawed...."no distinction between defensive and aggressive coercion"...defense is an act of aggression. See the definition of aggression. There is no such thing as non-aggressive self defense. Both self defense and initiation of force are types of aggression. You referred to them as if they were types of coercion, not aggression, and by doing so seemed to imply self defense is not a form of aggression, which is totally not true. Maybe this is why you think self defense doesn't violate the NAP...but it clearly does.

Secondly, the PLC makes a distinction between self defensive aggression and initiated aggression...it just isn't logically relevant. I can recognize the difference between self defense and initiations of aggression, but they aren't logically relevant to whether or not you decrease total coercion for all involved. It's just like the PLC draws a distinction between coercions of nature and coercions of man...but they aren't logically any different when put upon the individual in circumstance. In other words, coercion is coercion, and aggression is aggression...self defense is only ethically superior when non-coercive choices are available. When no non-coercive choices are available, and the least coercive choice is aggression, it doesn't have any logical bearing whether this aggression is self defensive or initiated. I know that seems counter intuitive...but ponder it with hypotheticals. You'll find it won't matter in the least in circumstances where no non-coercive choices are available. Only in usual circumstances where non-coercive choices are present will self defense be the only ethical way to act aggressively (and again, this violated the NAP anyways).

You are arguing for a theory you don't even wholly buy into...as was I, for years, until I decided to clear up the theoretical contradictions for myself.




> Well, NAP solves this rather nicely. Remember, under the NPA the diminution, or lessening of aggression as much as possible is the goal. If you are being attacked by nature or by marauders and need to use coercion upon your neighbor’s property to save yourself and/or your children from the aggression against you, inasmuch as this act decreases total AGGRESSION in the system it is justified. You can pay reparations to your neighbor later. The goal is to diminish total aggression in the system, and that is perfectly in harmony with NAP.


You just violated the NAP to aggress at all...hence the "NON-aggression principle",  NOT the "NON-INITIATION-of-aggression principle".

You just described the PLC. To do so, you used the word aggression incorrectly. Aggression is:




> Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is *forceful, hostile or attacking. It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation*


You didn't reduce aggression, because nature isn't aggressing against you anymore than usual...it's COERCING you more than usual. It's always aggressing...Mother Nature is a psychopathic serial killer. The level to which that aggression is COERCING you is circumstance dependent. Your need to eat (nature's aggression, so to speak) is constant...what changed in the famine is your ability to feed yourself and your child (shortage). THAT (the circumstance) is what makes that usual, constant aggression of nature turn NOT more aggressive, BUT instead more coercive than usual. 

You always require food or you die...it is a rare circumstance where that constant aggression becomes seriously coercive. That coercive circumstance is still not a deviation between PLC and NAP until it is so bad that no non-coercive choice exists. Then, and only then, will the PLC deviate from the NAP (and its otherwise logically consistent pacifism), and prescribe initiated aggression (or self defense) in an act of self preservation (or the logical extension of this to others, if you were justified if in their place). 

The NAP does NOT seek the least possible aggression...it is the NON-aggression principle...it, if taken seriously, and to its logical conclusions, calls for NO AGGRESSION, or pacifism. To have a self defense exception, or to twist it into the Path of Least Aggression is to bastardize it and essentially admit its flaws that I'm already criticizing. 

The PLC recognizes that aggression USUALLY increases coercion, but in extreme circumstances where it decreases coercion (the true enemy of liberty, NOT aggression), the PLC deviates from the NAP's pacifism and allows not only self defense for self preservation (and its logical extension to others in peril), but allows initiations of aggression if they minimize coercion to its lowest possible levels, again for self preservation (or its logical extension to others in peril).

Also, the NAP has little to say on animal rights (I've heard both arguments for and against animal rights by adherents to the NAP), environmentalism (beyond property rights, which won't help communists who want to be environmentally conscious), etc. It DOES, to its great credit, mostly apply itself logically to parenting of children and child rights. The PLC need only be applied consistently to come to understandings of animal rights , environmentalism, and child rights. To coerce when one does not need to in order to limit coercion to its lowest levels, is unethical...whether it is against another adult, a child, and animal, or the environment. If it is necessary to coerce, even via initiation of aggression, in extreme circumstances where no non-coercive choice exists, then it is ethical...whether it is to steal food from an adult victim, stop a child from running into the busy road, to kill an animal to eat it if hungry, or to cut down a tree to build a cabin to avoid winter cold (all of which require forms of aggression, in logical violation of the NAP).

You seem not to disagree with what I would do in the same situation at all, or the fact a victim was created and needs remunerated...the difference appears to be you clinging to the term "NAP" out of some nostalgia for it, despite the fact you are already logically abandoning it by acting aggressively in self preservation. This therefore boils down to semantics, not logical, ethical differences. You just described exactly what I described in the link I left you that started all this. You call that consistent with the NAP (which makes no logical sense at all), and I call it the PLC (because it isn't the NAP once you aggress, whether defensively or not, but especially when non-defensively).

To sum up, you just increased the aggression of the circumstance by stealing...you didn't decrease it (the need to feed is a constant in the equation, famine or not). You didn't aggress to decrease aggression...you aggressed to decrease total coercion. You are no longer being coerced to death once you steal and eat, but the aggression of nature is still constant (you will need to eat again very shortly). You increased total aggression in the circumstance to decrease the total coercion...and I defined these terms via Wiki earlier, so we need to stop using our own meanings, and go with meanings cited. You seem to want to define them other than how they are defined, and this leads us to semantical disagreement, not an ethical disagreement. We both would steal. We both would consider this ethical at the time (you said it was the NAP's goal - which it isn't, but whatever - to decrease aggression to its lowest levels; therefore it is ethical to steal according to your version of the "NAP" - which isn't recognizable as the NAP at that point, but whatever). We both would also call this illegal, and in need of remunerating the victim. 

Our ethical prescriptions were identical...it's you calling the NAP something that it isn't in order to keep supporting it that makes us different. I realized long ago the NAP will not allow what you just said it would, and thereby a new theory needed to be developed. I've debated this on many forums, and you are the first NAP adherent to EVER say it would allow stealing in famine...all the rest have cursed me out for advocating non-defensive aggression to save total lives and reduce coercion, or have themselves violated the NAP by threatening me. 

You sir, are a nice change of pace from that. You have the right ideas, but you are using a label for those ideas that don't fit the ideas themselves.

I believe, in effect (but not explanation and labels), we are ethically pretty damn identical. Kudos to you for that, for sure. I'd just suggest you study ethics more before saying stealing in a famine for self preservation is congruent with the NAP (it isn't). And if you think it's ethical to do that, then you might want to consider another ethical theory, as to be more precise for yourself, more precise and logical when trying to convince others, and less apt to support a theory which doesn't support you and your very rational and logical ideas in ethics.

You can feel free to $#@! all over the PLC...just develop the same theory by another name. It seems you already have...but calling it the NAP will only serve to confuse. It's clearly not the NAP at all. Don't keep making exceptions to the theory without admitting the theory is flawed. To do so is intellectually dishonest, and it creates cognitive dissonance and dogmatism. You seem capable of evaluating these contradictions and coming to good solutions...just give it a name of your own (if PLC does not suit you) that is worthy of the theory you present in effect. The NAP adherents neither want our exceptions, no do they deserve our ideas being labeled and credited to their very theory we are making exceptions to.

I believe I developed a theory with no need for exceptions like you and I have made with the NAP...it is consistent, and it transcends the categories of deontological ethics and consequentialist ethics. It ventures into a new area, called circumstantialist ethics.  It makes self defense totally consistent with the overall theory, and makes stealing in a famine for self preservation also consistent with the overall theory. It does this by changing the focus of the theory from aggression as the enemy of liberty, to instead the real enemy of liberty; coercion.

I don't see any point in debating further...you have claimed the NAP to be things it is not, and yet have agreed with my theory in effect (your actions in the ethical dilemma were identical to mine, as were your legal ideas). This is therefore a debate over semantics, not actual theoretical differences. You can confuse aggression with coercion all you like, if you answer hypotheticals identical to myself, you already agree with me in ethical theory....even as you protest this fact adamantly.

I don't care what you call it, as long as you do the "right" thing in the extreme circumstance and the normal circumstance. You clearly have a great head on your shoulders when it comes to these circumstances, so debating further would be futile. We agree...and that means you're cool in my book. I'm voting up your last post, even though I think semantics lead to all the protestation of my points. Actions matter more than words, after all.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ok, it is clear to me that your use of the word aggression is equivalent to my use of the word "coercion." So that we do not waist anymore time, please define precisely the following terms:

1) Aggression (you already did, but what the heck, put them side by side, so we can examine your definition set for self-contradictions).
2) Coercion.
3) Self defense.
4) Aggressive violence.
5) Defensive violence.
6) Justice.
7) Liberty.

Let's start here. Until we define the terms, we are wasting out time. 

Thanks.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

"George Ought to Help"

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## ProIndividual

> Ok, it is clear to me that your use of the word aggression is equivalent to my use of the word "coercion." So that we do not waist anymore time, please define precisely the following terms:
> 
> 1) Aggression (you already did, but what the heck, put them side by side, so we can examine your definition set for self-contradictions).
> 2) Coercion.
> 3) Self defense.
> 4) Aggressive violence.
> 5) Defensive violence.
> 6) Justice.
> 7) Liberty.
> ...


Hello FoL,

Yeah, I think we agree in effect, so we're just stuck on a semantics debate. I said I thought that, and didn't see the point of debating further because of it. However, I do not want to leave you hanging, so I'll define these things quickly for you so we can clear up the semantic problems. I hope you read my last long post, as I think I basically cleared up a lot, but I'll rehash the 7 real quick:

1. *Aggression* - 


> Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation.


2. *Coercion* - (the important part is highlighted to point out that coercion is both of nature and humans - and humans can be seen as a part of nature; aggression is often, but not universally, the cause of coercion, whereas coercion is not the cause of aggression directly...although coercion may be a motive for aggression) 


> Coercion /koʊˈɜrʃən/ is the practice of forcing another party to act in an involuntary manner by use of intimidation or threats or some other form of pressure or force, and describes *a set of various different similar types of* *forceful actions that violate the free will of an individual to induce a desired response.*


3. *Self defense* - (and this applies by extending it to others who can be defended by you if you could have used self defense ethically if you had been in their place) 


> Self-defense or self-defence (see spelling differences) is a countermeasure that involves defending oneself, one's property, or the well-being of another from harm.[1]


4. Aggressive violence - I would change this term, for clarity, to *Initiation of Aggression* - aggression not in response to external aggression; aggression that is not defensive

5. Defensive violence - I would change this term, for clarity, to *Defensive Aggression* - aggression that is in response to external aggression; aggression that is not initiated.

6. *Justice* - this can be defined either in the context of the state, which would be outsourced vengeance 

or it can be defined as I would define it, as it was defined for about 8,000 years before the state was incepted...the "balancing of scales"; the remuneration for offenses to victims

I could get detailed, but it take up space and I've already explained it in other posts, so you already know it, I'm sure.

7. *Liberty* - 


> Liberty is the quality individuals have to control their own actions. Different concepts of liberty articulate the relationship of individuals to society in different ways. Some concepts relate to life under a social contract, existence in an imagined state of nature, and therefore define the active exercise of freedom and rights essential to liberty in corresponding ways. Understanding liberty involves how we imagine, and structure, individual's roles and responsibilities in society in terms of free will and determinism, which involves the larger domain of metaphysics.
> 
> Classical liberal concepts of liberty typically consist of freedoms of individuals from outside compulsion or coercion, also known as negative liberty. This conception of liberty, which coincides with the libertarian point-of-view, suggests that people should, must, and ought to behave according to their own free will, and take responsibility for their actions. In contrast, social liberal conceptions of liberty (positive liberty) place an emphasis upon social structure and agency and is therefore directed toward ensuring egalitarianism. In feudal societies, a "liberty" was an area of allodial land where the rights of the ruler or monarch were waived.


Pure liberty, in terms of practical application, is a society with no state, but which replaces the services and goods the state provides via coercion with the same or similar (often improved) services and goods via voluntary consent and voluntary association. This can be done via any organizational method (democracy or consensus  vs anti-democracy methods ranging from full individual autonomy to single leadership of a group) or any economic method (free markets vs communism, etc.), provided all methods are completely voluntary and consensual (which assumes all parties involved are capable of explicit, not implicit, consent). The laws followed are purely contractual and not bound by territory (although if a bunch of like minded people are in the same area, it can superficially appear that a particular law is assigned to particular area - but it is not, as visitors with different legal contracts cannot be held to that standard of the group as long as they are not creating victims via coercion). The punishments or remuneration assigned for laws may or may not be in the best interests of a coercion-less or least coercive society...this is because individuals may choose to follow laws that others find objectionable. This is why law is contractual and cannot be territorially based...so that only contract mates are held to those laws, and no one is coerced into the contracts. Any inter-contract disputes will result in negotiation between contract providers, via an arbitrator or directly, to resolve inconsistencies between contractual legal agreements of the parties in the dispute. Inter-contract laws emerge from these disputes when resolved, leading to future disputes between these contract providers having templates for solving them faster, or even instantly. (I gave examples of this I believe, but I can give more).

I would add these terms:

8. *Self preservation* - (and this applies by extending it to others who can have their lives preserved by you if you could have used self preservation ethically if you had been in their place) 


> Self-preservation is behavior that ensures the survival of an organism.[1]


 I would add to the definition...any act that ensures survival as a response to coercion, whether coercions of nature or humans. Self preservation can be seen as an extreme form of self defense.

9. *Unethical coercion* - (this is my PLC theory's opinion, and is not an objective thing, but I felt it was necessary given what else we're defining) coercion that is not the least coercive choice available; in circumstances where a non-coercive choice (or choices) are available, all coercion is unethical, and in circumstances where no non-coercive choice is available, coercion that does not minimize coercion (if there are more than one equally coercive choices available, and they are the least coercive, then this is a coercion neutral choice, and any of these equally least coercive choices are ethical - but if they are not the least coercive choices, then all of them are unethical).

I was going to try to come up with a tenth to make it nice round number, but I don't think we'll be debating further due to our clearing up our semantic differences. But I'll check back over the next few days to see if you respond with debates/questions/comments.

Thanks for your valuable time. Have a good day.

----------


## osan

> 5. Defensive violence - I would change this term, for clarity, to *Defensive Aggression* - aggression that is in response to external aggression; aggression that is not initiated.


Defensive aggression?  Oxymoron, given the definitions of its component terms.  "Defensive violence" is abundantly clear, IMO.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Defensive aggression?  Oxymoron, given the definitions of its component terms.  "Defensive violence" is abundantly clear, IMO.


I agree with osan.

PI, your definition set appears to be self-contradictory.

Defensive violence is the logical opposite of Aggressive violence. Thus, Defense is the logical opposite of Aggression. 

To clarify your position further, however, please tell me *what is the difference between Aggression and Coercion*, under your definitions?

Further, I would point out that your problem with Non-Aggression Principle is simply that you miss-defined the word Aggression. 

The word "Aggression" in Non-Aggression Principle, means what you have defined as "Initiation of Aggression." Thus, under your terminology, what the rest of the world calls Non-Aggression Principle, you would call "Non-initiation of Aggression Principle," or what I would call "Non-violation of property principle" which is equivalent to "Non-aggression Principle," because under my definition set "Aggression" and "violation" are one and the same, and both are the opposite of defense, and the opposite of Justice.

So, please clarify, *what, under your definitions, is the difference between Aggression and Coercion?* Because I think this is where the problem and self-contradiction in your definition set lies.

Under my definition set, the words Force, violence, and Coercion are synonymous. Coercion or force (or violence), can be Defensive or Aggressive. Defensive is the *opposite* of Aggressive. Defensive coercion (force, violence) is justified; Aggressive coercion (force, violence) is ALWAYS unjust. In fact, Aggressive Violence is THE definition of injustice, and Non-violation of Private Property is the definition of Justice and Liberty.

But we will talk about that later. Please tell me, *what is the logical difference between Aggression and Coercion* in your definition set? This is the key of our disagreement. 

Thanks again.

----------


## ProIndividual

You guys think defense is not aggression?

The explain why aggression is defined as:




> Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. *It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation.*


This is the definition I've repeated from Wiki (and it is found in MANY other places) at least 3 times. It is the generally accepted definition. You guys are speaking colloquially, not in terms of how it is actually defined in the denotation sense.

This definition is why pacifists insist self defense violates the NAP (it's the NON-aggression principle, not the non-INITIATED-aggression principle), and if you take the NAP to its logical conclusions, they are absolutely correct. Hence, I keep pointing out those who believe in self defense that it shows a chink in the armor of the NAP...provided they don't want to be pacifists. Bulletproof theories cannot have exceptions...and the NAP would require an exception to allow self defense and self preservation. That's why I slowly gave it up and developed a theory without need for such exceptions.

Another good example of the fact that self defense is a type of aggression comes from the Wiki article on anarcho capitalism:




> . It is in terms of the non-aggression principle that Rothbard defined anarchism; he defined "anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression ['against person and property']" and said that "what anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the State, i.e. to abolish the regularized institution of *aggressive coercion*."[34]


"Aggressive coercion" logically implies there is also non-aggressive coercion...otherwise it's a redundant phrase. I gave historical examples and hypothetical examples where following the NAP can actually increase coercion...the lifeboat murder and cannibalism case was a great one. Rothbard focused on human coercions in his writings, and I never saw him go into much detail about non-human caused coercion. Once you start in on the non-human caused coercions, you can find easily places where non-aggressive coercion exists. I think he was aware of this given his use of the phrase "aggressive coercion".

Also:




> One difficult application of *defensive aggression* is the act of revolutionary violence (including anarcho-capitalist revolution) against tyrannical regimes. Many anarcho-capitalists admire the American Revolution as the legitimate act of individuals working together to fight against tyrannical restrictions of their liberties. In fact, according to Murray Rothbard, the American Revolutionary War was the only war involving the United States that could be justified.[55] Some anarcho-capitalists, such as Samuel Edward Konkin III, feel that violent revolution is counter-productive and prefer voluntary forms of economic secession to the extent possible.


So, again, we see the use of a term that logically implies aggression can be defensive in nature. 

The fact is, defense is a form of aggression. It is only colloquially that the word "aggression" means offense-only. The denotation of the word is USUALLY or ESPECIALLY initiated/offensive aggression, but it also includes defensive aggression.

Hope that helps.




> what, under your definitions, is the difference between Aggression and Coercion?


Reread the quoted definitions. They are clearly different. They may not be as different as defining a boat to a car, but they are easily distinguishable as defined.

I pointed out the difference too. I pointed out that you can use aggression to increase or decrease coercion, given the circumstance. I've repeatedly explained how. The only problem here is semantics...the minute you guys accept that aggression is both initiated AND defensive, this entire debate becomes an agreement.

If you view self defense (a form of aggression) as a way to limit coercion, you just found the difference in the terms.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> You guys think defense is not aggression?
> 
> The explain why aggression is defined as:
> "Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. *It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation.*"


What dictionary are you using?

*aggression*
*ag·gres·sion*

  [uh-gresh-uhn]  Show IPA  
   noun  1. the action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like: The army is prepared to stop any foreign aggression.  

2. any offensive action, attack, or procedure; an inroad or encroachment: an aggression upon one's rights.  

3. the practice of making assaults or attacks; offensive action in general. 

4. Psychiatry.  overt or suppressed hostility, either innate or resulting from continued frustration and directed outward or against oneself.

(Source: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/+Aggression?s=t)

----------


## ProIndividual

> What dictionary are you using?
> 
> *aggression*
> *ag·gres·sion*
> 
>   [uh-gresh-uhn]  Show IPA  
>    noun  1. the action of a state in violating by force the rights of another state, particularly its territorial rights; an unprovoked offensive, attack, invasion, or the like: The army is prepared to stop any foreign aggression.  
> 
> 2. any offensive action, attack, or procedure; an inroad or encroachment: an aggression upon one's rights.  
> ...


I told you what source I'm using...I'm starting to think you're not reading my posts all the way through. I also quoted more than one page, quoted Rothbard himself, and I've taken philosophy in college, as well as psychology (and studied both outside of college for years for my job, and for my own well being), and both define aggression as unprovoked AND defensive. It's the standard denotative meaning of the word.

The source was Wiki, as I said before. 

If you want to use colloquial meanings in dictionaries then "anarchy" means "chaos"...but we all know looking to dictionaries isn't the best place to learn about something, especially concerning philosophy or psychology. Encyclopedias step away from colloquialism into denotation. Denotation is the direct and explicit meaning of words (or other things) not confused by relative connotation.

Hence, I quoted an encyclopedia instead of a dictionary...because dictionaries don't give you denotation on many things.

Here's more encyclopedia meanings:




> http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/aggression.aspx
> 
> The Oxford Companion to the Body |  2001 | COLIN BLAKEMORE and SHELIA JENNETT
> 
> Distinctions have been made between different types of aggression, largely on the basis of the context in which it occurs or the stimuli that provoke it: (i) inter-male, or inter-female (territorial, social conflict, etc.); (ii) maternal; *(iii) self defence*; and (iv) infanticide. *Aggression towards members of the same species has been divided more simply into ‘offence’ and ‘defence’.*
> 
> International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences |  2008
> 
>  Aggression is defined as behavior that is intended to harm others and that is perceived as harmful by the victim. Because aggression is such a broad phenomenon, subtypes of aggression have been proposed to reconcile discrepant research findings—for example, that not all aggression is angry. *Subtypes of aggression abound, but two classifications are most important: reactive versus proactive aggression, and physical versus social aggression.*
> ...


As long as we refuse to use the denotative meanings of words, and keep referring to colloquial or connotative meanings, we are going to continue this semantics problem. We are discussing ethical theory here, which is an aspect of philosophy, and even psychology. Therefore we should use the word in that context, not the colloquial connotation of "the man on the street" you get from dictionaries. Dictionaries are reference guides, not definitive texts.

This is the exact same problem I run into concerning the word "anarchy" when I tell people I'm an anarchist. I'm speaking about the philosophy of anarchism; they are talking about the colloquialism which means "chaos". If they refuse to adapt in the conversation to use actual denotative meanings, then no matter how many times I tell them I'm for a stateless legal order, and free market spontaneous order, they just look at me and say "but you're for chaos; that's what 'anarchy' means". That's always going to end the same way...with me facepalming my forehead.

I would like to avoid that here...so please understand this philosophical discussion MUST use the denotative meaning for "aggression" when we are discussing that word. This is a philosophy discussion, and that is how it is defined in philosophy (among other subjects, and sciences). No credible philosopher defines it as you are currently defining it...as offense/initiation only. That's simply connotation; colloquialism.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The way you defined Aggression and Coercion makes them synonymous.

I agree with your definition of Coercion. I do NOT agree with your definition of Aggression. Why? Because it muddies the water, and is indistinguishable from Coercion.

You do NOT have a problem with Non-Aggression Principle. You have a problem with defining the word aggression.

Aggression, when used in the context of Non-Aggression Principle ALWAYS means offense, attack, initiation of aggressive violence against the property of another, violation of Private Property.

This is the proper meaning of the word Aggression in the context of Non-Aggression principle. Defined any other way, Non-aggression principle is utterly meaningless and inconsistent with justice and liberty. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Aggression (as in initiation of aggressive violence) is the definition of evil and injustice. Aggression, the way I, Rothbard and the Non-Aggression Principle use the word ALWAYS means OFFENSIVE violence, unjustified violence, initiation of violence. THIS is what I mean. THIS is what I ALWAYS meant. This is what Rothbard ALWAYS meant, as far as I was able to observe.

THIS is the only way I use the word, because it is easily understood by MOST people. Aggression is the OPPOSITE of Defense.

In this context, Aggressive Defense is an OXYMORON. I refuse to accept your confusing and contradictory definition of a perfectly good word Aggression.

At least now, you should perfectly understand what I am saying when I say the word "Aggression," and yes, most probably we agree if you take this into account. Except I still feel that your definition set is SELF-CONTRADICTORY and confusing. Mine is not so.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Judge Napolitano: 
Lincoln Set About On The Most Murderous War 
In American History*




He also forgot to say that Lincoln was deeply racist, and fought hard to amend the Constitution to make slavery permanent and was literally forced to "free" the slaves against his wishes.
_"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."_

Lincoln's speech during a debate with Douglas in Charleston, Illinois on September 18, 1858 (Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, vol. 3, pp. 145-146):

Read more: Lincoln the Racist


In fact, Lincoln DESTROYED the Union which has the legitimate, logical,  just (and Constitutional) right to secession, and established an empire  that destroyed justice and Liberty. (The difference between love and  rape.) 

Lincoln did severe damage to the fabric of Justice and Liberty in  this land.

----------


## osan

> You guys think defense is not aggression?
> 
> The explain why aggression is defined as:


I don't know from what dictionary your definition comes, but it is bull$#@!.  To aggress, from the Latin to "step toward", is to INITIATE a harm.  That is all.  The aggressor is the one who started the fight.  The defender is, hopefully in most cases, the one put the aggressor on his ass or in his grave.






> This is the definition I've repeated from Wiki (and it is found in MANY other places) at least 3 times. It is the generally accepted definition. You guys are speaking colloquially, not in terms of how it is actually defined in the denotation sense.


No, my definitions come not from colloquially drifted bastardized forms but from a 200 year old dictionary and a couple of newer ones, though not much newer.




> This definition is why pacifists insist self defense violates the NAP (it's the NON-aggression principle, not the non-INITIATED-aggression principle), and if you take the NAP to its logical conclusions, they are absolutely correct.


Well, then they are imbeciles who do not know how to semantically parse a sentence properly.  Your "definition" stated:




> Aggression, in its broadest sense, is behavior, or a disposition, that is forceful, hostile or attacking. *It may occur either in retaliation or without provocation.*


This is an unclear definition in the bolded text because "retaliation" is not sufficiently narrowed.  If you strike at me and I respond, it may be viewed as retaliation, but this is completely acceptable retaliation.  Were it not, the direct and inescapable implication would be that each of us is _obliged_ to surrender life or limb upon the demand of another.  This, of course, is prima facie bull$#@! and requires no further refutation.  If you harm me and six months later I attack you at some good opportunity, that _might_ be reasonably viewed as aggression.  Note "might".  The NAP as commonly stated is good so far as it goes.  It is, however, simplistic.  If a man shoots me tomorrow and is not brought to justice, I am well within my moral right to hunt that man at ANY future time whether it be the next day or in 40 years, and dispense justice of MY choosing upon him.  No, the NAP is inadequate.  It's spirit is correct, but is fails the tests of completeness and clarity, but it has correctness on its side.




> Hence, I keep pointing out those who believe in self defense that it shows a _chink in the armor of the NAP_


Correct conclusion based on very flawed reasoning.




> Bulletproof theories cannot have exceptions


Unsupported assertion - FAIL.  I could pull many examples contradicting your claim.  A more properly formulated NAP is but one of these.




> ...and the NAP would require an exception to allow self defense and self preservation. That's why I slowly gave it up and developed a theory without need for such exceptions.
> 
> Another good example of the fact that self defense is a type of aggression comes from the Wiki article on anarcho capitalism:


You're getting your definitions from a wiki?  Your credibility just went down the crapper.





> "Aggressive coercion" logically implies there is also non-aggressive coercion...otherwise it's a _redundant phrase_.


Bingo, you solved your own perplexity for the case in question.  Rothbard was a bright guy but that does not mean he may not have used unfortunate literary instruments on occasion.  We all do it now and then... some more than others.  To coerce is to compel by force.  That is by definition aggression because it constitutes a harm.  This is different from cajoling or coaxing, either of which may be carried to an extent where one becomes annoyed, but in the end there are still choices whereby the person being coaxed of cajoled may preserve himself from violation.  Coercion offers no such opportunity because one is forced to choose between evils.  In either case harm has been brought to him.




> So, again, we see the use of a term that logically implies aggression can be defensive in nature.


You apparently have much to learn about semantics.




> The fact is, defense is a form of aggression.


No, it is not.  Defense is RESPONSIVE, not initiatory.  These are fundamentally different concepts.




> It is only colloquially that the word "aggression" means offense-only. The denotation of the word is USUALLY or ESPECIALLY initiated/offensive aggression, but it also includes defensive aggression.


You have NO idea what you're talking about here.  This is so wrong I cannot state it plainly enough.  Dead-wrong.  Completely and utterly wrong.  Out there wrong.  Wrong as wrong gets.  Purely wrong. Keenly wrong. Painfully wrong.  Atrociously wrong.  Hair-raisingly wrong.  Mind bendingly wrong.  Gut wrenchingly wrong.  Tearfully wrong... and so on down a very long descriptive list.

Here are some proper definitions.  From the Oxford Etymological Dictionary:


aggression (n.) 1610s, "_unprovoked attack_," from French aggression (16c.), from Latin aggressionem (nominative aggressio) "a going to, an attack," noun of action from past participle stem of aggredi "to approach; attack," from ad- "to" (see ad-) + gradi (past participle gressus) "to step," from gradus "a step" (see grade (n.)). Psychological sense of "hostile or destructive behavior" first recorded 1912 in A.A. Brill's translation of Freud.


Samuel Johnson's dictionary of 1785:

To Aggress v. n. To commit the _first_ act of violence

Aggression n. s. The _first_ act of injury

Aggressor n. s. The person that _first_ commences hostility


Worcester's primary dictionary of the English language:

Aggress v. n. to _begin_ hostility

Aggression n. the *first* act of injury; attack; assault

Aggressive a. making the _first_ attack; offensive

Aggressor n. one who _commences_ hostility


A Modern Dictionary of the English Language (1914)

Aggress v. to _begin_ a quarrel

Aggression n. a _first_attack on another

Aggressor n. one who aggresses

Websters Uabridged Dictionary of 1898 - perhaps the finest dictionary of the English language ever compiled

Ag-gress, v. i. To commit the _first_ act of hostility or offense; to begin a quarrel or controversy; to make an attack

Ag-gress', v. t. To set upon ; to attack. 

Ag-gress, n. Aggression

Ag-gres'slon n. The _first_ attack, or act of hostility; the _first_ act of injury, or _first_ act leading to a war or a controversy ; _unprovoked_ _attack_ ; assault ; — as, awar of aggression. " Aggressions of power." Hallam.

Ag-gres'sive  a. Tending or disposed to aggress; characterized by aggression; making assaults; _unjustly attacking_; as, an aggressive policy, war, person, nation.


As is plain to see, my ancient dictionaries disagree with your wiki.  You should know better.  If you do, one can only wonder what it is you are trying to peddle.

Defense and aggression are antithetical concepts.  I hope this is now clear in your thoughts.

The principle that the NAP wishes it were is the Cardinal Prohibition:

        -1 No One may trespass upon the Equal Rights of Others

This simple sentence covers it all because from it, along with the other three elements of the Canon of Individual Sovereignty, may be derived all the particulars of proper human relations.  Once one violates the rights of another, until full restitution is made the violator is under debt to those he violated.  There is no statute of limitations on moral principles, contrary to what state-enforced statutes may say to the contrary.  Statutes of limitations serve but as a get-out-of-jail-free card for those who can avoid detection for the prescribed period, which is inherently arbitrary and nonsensical in the deal.  If you swindled my dear mother for all her savings through fraud, I promise you that no statute of limitation would protect your from my finding you and taking the pounds of flesh from your bones that you owe.

So long as the debt remains undischarged, the victim is within his moral right to hunt the violator and exact justice, whether that means money, limb, or even life.  No right to tresspass either means what it says or it means nothing at all.  We cannot have it both ways and half-measures are no-measures.  It is long past time that people cut out all the bull$#@! issuing from their corrupt designs and desires.  If I damage you, you are entitled by all moral rectitude to hunt me like an animal until you either apprehend me and exact you justice, or you decide to give up.  The choice is YOURS to make and nobody else's.

----------


## Cabal

Aggression is shorthand for initiation of violence/force/coercion. Aggression denotes initiation. To say 'initiation of aggression' is thus redundant for this reason.

----------


## osan

> I told you what source I'm using


Yeah, and it is wrong.




> The source was Wiki, as I said before.


You appear to be proud of this, which raises some disturbing questions.




> If you want to use colloquial meanings in dictionaries then "anarchy" means "chaos"...but we all know looking to dictionaries isn't the best place to learn about something, especially concerning philosophy or psychology. Encyclopedias step away from colloquialism into denotation. Denotation is the direct and explicit meaning of words (or other things) not confused by relative connotation.
> 
> Hence, I quoted an encyclopedia instead of a dictionary...because dictionaries don't give you denotation on many things.
> 
> Here's more encyclopedia meanings:
> 
> http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/aggression.aspx
> 
> The Oxford Companion to the Body | 2001 | COLIN BLAKEMORE and SHELIA JENNETT
> ...


You are quoting TECHNICAL JARGON.  If you do not understand the problem here, your problems are worse than my ability to repair.




> As long as we refuse to use the denotative meanings of words, and keep referring to colloquial or connotative meanings,


This is _precisely_ what you are doing.  You are using bull$#@! definitions from a bull$#@! source (wiki) and technical jargon used to describe some scientific observations or speculation of human/animal behavior.  This is done in mathematics constantly and while valid within the narrow context of its intended application, those often conflicting redefinitions of terms are NOT intended to be taken as valid outside of that context.

You have got a lot to learn about semantics and the use of language.




> we are going to continue this semantics problem. We are discussing ethical theory here, which is an aspect of philosophy, and even psychology. Therefore we should use the word in that context, not the colloquial connotation of "the man on the street" you get from dictionaries. Dictionaries are reference guides, not definitive texts.


This is PURE bull$#@!.  This exactly what must be avoided at all costs because it is so very tempting to redefine terms to fit one's objectives, their use leading to confusion and gross misunderstanding.  What you propose here is nothing short of obscene and merits no further consideration.  I have destroyed your argument in toto and you have nothing upon which to stand save the rubble that is the result of my work.  All you can do is accept that you are wrong and admit it, or keep repeating the same ludicrous nonsense.  I am putting this to you in VERY direct fashion because this is important stuff that strikes at the very heart of a man's ability to make good and proper sense of the world around him.  What you are proposing seeks to destroy that ability, whether you realize it, and needs to be smacked into the dirt where it belongs.  No nominally intelligent adult with his brain in gear will accept this ridiculous nonsense and if you are not a shill, a troll, or an idiot, you are well behooved to dispense with this baloney and get some sense into your mind about these things.

Words matter and if they are to remain as such they need to have constantly reliable meanings or we as a species are absolutely lost.

EDIT: might as well add this bit while correcting my shameful typing errors.

If I teleported you to Bizarro, a planet where everything looks just like here on earth but I meanly failed to tell you that every word's meaning is 90* to your understanding, chances are pretty good you would not live through your first day.  I say 90* instead of 180* because the latter case is relatively easy to detect and you might be able to adjust to it relatively quickly.  But "90*" implies a level of departure that is non-deterministic in nature, which would leave you in deep poo such that when you said "good morning" in greeting to some stranger, his proper Bizarro parse of the sentence would be "I am going kill you and your children with a knife", resulting in his producing a large-bore pistol and shooting you stone dead.

THAT is how important communication is and without language there is comparatively weak communication.  Weak usage of language wanders toward weak communication.  Go too weak and real trouble can result.  We see this all the time - cops soiling their panties because they communicate poorly and operate of a basis of personal terror with daily regularity tends to result in lots of dead people.  Inability to get a point across to a drug-addled robber with a gun may get you injured or kind of dead.  Misunderstanding a street sign results in a head-on collision or a trip off a severed bridge.  Tv and movies use failed communications as a vehicle for both comedy and drama to great effect - just look at some of the episodes of The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy, to name but two where people talk right past each other, thinking they understand when in fact it's apples and oranges.  It can be _very_ funny.  It can also lead to tragedy.

I cannot overemphasize how important this all is for everyone.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Brilliant, osan!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Aggression is shorthand for initiation of violence/force/coercion. Aggression denotes initiation. To say 'initiation of aggression' is thus redundant for this reason.


Perfect! Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The War Crime Called Hiroshima*

Hollywood whitewashed it, says Greg Mitchell.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Crony Capitalism, From Sea to Shining Sea*

Ryan McMaken on the transcontinental railroad scam.

By Ryan McMaken
Mises.org
March 11, 2014


  
 


                                                         When Barack Obama used the transcontinental railroads  as an example of the wonderful things that can be accomplished with  grandiose government programs, he was attacked for mistakenly referring to the railroads as _inter_continental.  Notably, he was attacked by approximately no one for talking up a  government program that in reality should be best remembered as a  pioneering feat in government corruption, corporate welfare, and immense  waste.

 Although not related in quite the heroic terms it once was, the  trans*continental railroads retain their place as one of the great  alleged suc*cess stories of nineteenth-century America. According to the  popular myths, the same myths now exploited by the president, and  challenged by no one, the railroads, these supposedly great monuments to  the ingenuity of American industrialists, united East and West by  bringing together the economies of the West coast and the East coast.  This government program then set the stage for the massive economic  growth and national greatness that would occur in the United States  during the early twentieth century.

 And yet, few claims about the necessity or success of the  transcontinental railroads are true. While none would argue that  transcontinentals would not become economically feasible in the private  market _at some point_, during the 1860s, as the first  transcontinentals took shape, there was no economic justification. This  is why the first transcontinentals were all creatures, not of capitalism  or the private markets, but of government. There simply were not enough  people, capital, manufactured goods, or crops between Missouri and the  West coast to support a private-sector railroad.

 As creatures of government and of taxpayer-funded schemes to  subsidize the railroads and their wealthy owners through cheap loans and  outright subsidies, the railroads quickly became scandal-ridden,  wasteful, and contemptuous of the public they were supposed to serve.

 This tale is told in grim detail in historian Richard Whites 2011 tome on the transcontinental railroads, _Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America_,  which exposes the near-utter disconnect between the railroads and the  true geography of the markets in the mid-nineteenth century.

 While it has been long-assumed that the West coast benefited  immensely from the transcontinentals that connected the West coast to  eastern markets, in fact the overland railroads made little difference.  The West coast already had its own economy founded on exports to Europe  and Asia, and Californians and Oregonians obtained all the goods they  needed by sea. Indeed, for years after their completion, the railroads  of the West coast were unable to effectively compete with the steamship  operators (many of them also subsidized by Congress) that provided  cheaper transportation of goods. Naturally then, this situation  degenerated into a political competition between railroads and steamship  companies seeking more favorable treatment from the federal government.

 In general, however, the economy of the West coast turned to the more  efficient and more competitive sea carriers. By the 1860s, the sea  carriers were already taking advantage of well-developed trade with the  Panama Railroad across Central America, completed in 1855, that was  providing true transcontinental shipping at a much lower price over a  much shorter overland route.

 In spite of massive subsidies and free lands equal in size to New  England, the lack of overland trade made it difficult for the railroads  to turn a profit, and after a series of bankruptcies, bailouts, and  other schemes, railroad owners like Leland Stanford, Thomas Durant, and  Jay Gould managed to make a lot of money manipulating federal largesse,  but many others, including families and ranchers who followed the flood  of money and capital west during the boom, but who found themselves as  paupers on the western plains after the bust, were ruined by the  railroads bubble economy.

 With the signing of the first bill to create the transcontinentals in  1862, it was already known that there was no economic justification for  the railroads, which is why they were, according to White, justified  on the grounds of military necessity. Lacking any privately  funded-entrepreneurs willing to build a road through more than a  thousand miles of territory uninhabited by whites, the 1862 Railroad Act  created the Union Pacific, making it the first federally-created  corporation since the Bank of the United States. Legal and economic  shenanigans ensued, and it would not be until the 1890s that anyone  built a privately-funded railroad, the Great Northern Railway.

 Indeed, by the 1890s, global progress in technology and technique had  greatly reduced the cost of constructing railroads. The benefits of  waiting for the private sector to construct railroads when costs and  consumer demand made them feasible could have been enormous. The costs  of _not_waiting were indeed huge. The transcontinentals set the  stage for the corruption and corporate capitalism that now defines the  Gilded Age in the minds of many. While much of the American economy of  that era was characterized by very free markets, the railroad markets  west of Missouri were anything but. In the end, the railroads  constituted a huge transfer of wealth from taxpayers, Indians, Mexicans,  and more efficient enterprises who found themselves competing with  these subsidized behemoths.

 It was the same old story of using the state to socialize costs while  privatizing profits. As one opposition Congressman declared in response  to the Railroad Bill, the enterprise was substantially a proposition  to build this road  on Government credit without making [the railroads]  the property of the Government when built. If there be profit, the  corporations may take it; if there be loss, the Government must bear  it.

 Even if presented with this information today, many Americans, both  left and right, are likely to just shrug and make the consequentialist  argument that the railroads were worth it because without them,  America (whatever that means to the one making the argument) wouldnt  be as great (another perfectly malleable term) without the  transcontinentals being built by the U.S. government. This enormously  presumptuous statement, however, completely ignores the opportunity cost  of constructing and financing the railroads in that fashion. What else  could have been funded with the resources that went to the railroads  during the decades following the American Civil War? Well never know.

 Yet even during the 1870s and 80s, when it became apparent to many  that the railroads were a gargantuan waste of money, and most of the  railroad companies were in bankruptcy, the railroads supporters claimed  that it had all been a great idea because, although the railroads were  bankrupt, the railroads themselves were still there, and were now  presumed to be an immutable part of the landscape forever available for  future Americans. Even that argument held no water, of course, because  it turns out that railroads require an enormous amount of upkeep and  maintenance. This was especially true of the first transcontinentals  which were poorly and cheaply constructed, and which required rebuilding  in many places. The railroads were in fact huge white elephants that in  many cases could only be maintained with cheap government financing and  other forms of corporate welfare.

 Interestingly, White, in his conclusions in _Railroaded,_ appears  somewhat dismayed at the chaos that reigned among the railroad  companies and within the so-called markets that connected the railroads  to the farmers, ranchers, and miners who used the railroads for  shipping. Lacking the insights of the Austrian School, White fails to  see the booms, busts, and waste of the transcontinentals as the natural  outcome of a government-dominated market divorced from a functioning  consumer market or price system. Whites understanding of economics  remains mired in neo-classical assumptions using buzzwords like  competition and efficiency as the most important aspects of markets.  In this, White is very much like his nineteenth-century subjects who,  we learn from White, were themselves stuck in non-Austrian economic  thinking that so often concludes that when markets appear to be broken,  they can be fixed by government-mandated competition and  government-determined prices that are said to be more efficient. The  central role of the consumer, so well understood by Austrians, was often  ignored by even the most consistent free-marketeer of that time and  place.

 Im forced to forgive White for his ignorance of economics, however,  for he has done a great service in providing us with such detailed and  unvarnished documentation of the crony capitalist world of the  transcontinental railroads. Although hes likely a complete stranger to  the works of Bastiat, White concludes that the unseen cost of the  transcontinentals is one of the great ignored realities of the  railroads. Those who dogmatically defend the governments  transcontinentals, White asserts, need to escape thinking that assumes  the inevitability of the present. Yes, its a fact that the  government-financed railroads were built, and yes, its a fact that  American standards of living increased greatly in the decades that  followed. The assumed connection between those two events, however, is  on far shakier ground, and the assumption that it was right to tax and  defraud millions of American taxpayers to make the enormous boondoggle a  reality, is on the shakiest ground of all.

The Best of Ryan McMaken

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## ProIndividual

You guys still can't accept sourced denotative meanings of words in philosophical discussion...3 of you totally ignored evidence you were wrong about the meaning of the word "aggression" in philosophical and other scientific discussions. I can't continue a conversation with people in denial, so this debate is over, clearly. I'm sorry we couldn't agree on an objective meaning sourced from multiple credible and oft-used encyclopedias. I'm sorry you guys look to reference guides like dictionaries as pillars of definitive truth on the meanings of terms. I guess by that logic, "anarchy" must mean chaos to all 3 of you (and for at least 1 of you, I know that isn't true). You can't have it both ways. Either "anarchy" is "chaos", not a society organized according to the principles and ethics of anarchism (a philosophy which aims to create the least coercive world possible, or abolish coercion completely) AND "aggression" doesn't mean both retaliatory and initiated actions, OR "anarchy" is a society via the philosophy of anarchism, and "aggression" means what encyclopedias generally say it means - both self defense and initiations of aggression. It's one or the other.

I'll take encyclopedia meanings over dictionary meanings anytime when in philosophical and scientific discussions (which is what this was supposed to be).

And no, aggression is not synonymous with coercion...and I flatly proved this.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Friend, you say you have a problem with "Non-aggression principle" which turns out to be your problem not with the principle but with your definition of the word "aggression." It's like you saying: "I have a problem with 2+2=4" but then turns out it's because you defined "+" to mean "division." Do you see a problem here?

I say it again, you do NOT have a problem with non-aggression principle, you have a problem with your misunderstanding of non-aggression principle which came about because of your erroneous, self-contradictory, and non-standard definition of the word "aggression."

To properly disagree with a principle you must first understand the principle as it was intended, not try to redefine its key terms.

With the same non-logic you can say "cat is not an animal, because I define 'animal' to mean 'chair'."

Definitions are important. Without them communication is impossible.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Are Firemen Heroes? *



No more than cops, says Eric Peters.





Cops (enforcers of the law) are far from heroic . . .  but what about _firemen_?



 Are _they_ heroes?

 People are taught  _pressured_  to regard them as such. It  has become an almost religious fetish  very much like cop worship. But  the image and the reality are two very different things  in _both_ cases.

 Like cops, firemen rely on force. And when someone can _legally_ use force to get their way, they tend to become arrogant, entitled and increasingly contemptuous of those whom they serve.

 Does this sound, er . . . familiar?

 You are probably forced to pay for fire services in your community.  Just as you are forced to help pay for law enforcement, even if you  yourself feel no need for either service and would rather opt-out, if  that choice were available to you. But of course, you have no such  choice. And because you (and others) are forced to pay, there is no  check on what is _spent_. The formerly small-scale local all-volunteer FD becomes _professional_  with _salaried_ full-time firefighters who have _contracts_  guaranteeing them large salaries and, of course, benefits. Multiple  ladder trucks and other such vehicles appear  the costs shuffled onto  the backs of the taxpayers in the area  who no longer have much, if  any, say as regards the need for all this elaborate (and often,  over-the-top) equipment. Since appearances must be maintained, all this  elaborate, over-the-top equipment is often sent out _en masse_ to  cat-in-a-tree calls, with much show of emergency lights, special  costumes, cones being set up and traffic stopped in its tracks.

 The FD becomes another services-at-gunpoint bureaucracy  and the  primary mission of any bureaucracy is to preserve and perpetuate itself,  expanding itself if possible. The fighting of fires becomes of  secondary or even tertiary importance.

 Firemen do more than merely fight fires, too.

 They also write and enforce fire _codes_  bureaucratic edicts  dictating to a private business owner how many customers he may serve  in his (in quotes to emphasis the irony)  establishment. If the owner  balks, the fire hero will summon other heroes  heroes with _guns_   to enforce compliance. Whether a building is a fire hazard  as  defined by a fire hero  is not the issue. The issue is whether the  building is private property  and whether the fire hero  or any other  hero  has any right to impose his standards on the putative owner of  the private property. If it is in fact his property, isnt it up to _him_  to gauge risk  and assume responsibility for same? Whence  how?  did  it become the prerogative of Fire Fuhrers to overlord private property?

  Firemen have also been known to prevent actual heroics. For instance,  there was a case recently where a man was forcibly restrained by  firemen and prevented from attempting to save his child, who was trapped  inside a burning house. Ryan Miller was Tazered for disobeying the  orders of fire officials who decided on his behalf that the life of his  three-year-old stepson was not worth attempting to save. When Ryan  ignored them,  the fire chief then made the call to have Ryan  handcuffed and taken to the police station . .  (see news story here).

 Whether the mans actions put him at risk of being hurt or even  killed is beside the point. No, it is precisely the point. The mans  life was _his_ to risk for the sake of his child, if _he_  wished to accept that risk. The firemen at the scene  whose own  children were safe in their beds  understandably did not wish to risk  being burned alive to save_ someone elses_ child (which would  have been heroic). But how dare they prevent  forcibly prevent  a free  man (sic) from attempting to save his own child?

 Or his _cat_, for that matter.

 The same arrogance that characterizes cop also suffuses the mindset of Hose Heroes. _They_ know best  and it is our duty to step out of the way, defer to them, and do as ordered.

 Or  and this is key  _else_.

 If these fire fuhrers restricted themselves to _offering_ help there would be no problem. But they do not confine themselves to merely offering.

 They now _insist_.

 Who does that remind you of?

 And what does it tell you about the nature of their services?

 When you are no longer free to say, no thanks to any service, then  it is not a service but a racket. Whether it does some good is beside  the point. The essential cretinhood of mobsters like Lucky Luciano  and  more recently, Pablo Escobar -  is not transformed into something  benevolent because they occasionally helped out a deserving neighborhood  kid. Just as occasionally catching an actual criminal (someone who has  harmed another human being) in no way washes away the sin of abusing  people over manufacturered crimes such as possessing an arbitrarily  illegalized substance or verboten tool (such as a high capacity rifle  magazine). Just as occasionally putting out a fire doesnt make amends  for shuttering a business on the basis of a code violation and  violently assaulting a man for attempting to rescue his child from a  blaze.

 It all comes down to _youve gotta have it  and do as we tell you  . . . or else._

 There is no legitimate reason for community fire services to exist on  other than a voluntary/free-exchange basis. Just like dairy farms or  restaurants or any another other provider of an ostensibly valuable  service.
*
 If a service is objectively valuable to people, they shouldnt have to be forced  to support it. Theyll do so freely  because its worth it to them.*  Starbucks does not need guns or threats to get people to buy Tall Bold  coffees  even at $2 a pop.

*When people are forced to buy in, its a clue that the service is not really valuable  much less essential* (as fire and cop shops are often characterized).

 And when people are threatened with violence without having done violence to anyone else first, then what were dealing with is _tyrannical_.

*Read more here:* http://ericpetersautos.com/2014/03/17/hose-heroes/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Libertarianism is nothing more or less than the law of justice and Liberty.


*What Libertarianism Is, and Isn't*
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
March 31, 2014



...

Libertarianism is concerned with the use of violence in society. That  is all. It is not anything else. It is not feminism. It is not  egalitarianism (except in a functional sense: everyone equally lacks the  authority to aggress against anyone else). It has nothing to say about  aesthetics. It has nothing to say about religion or race or nationality  or sexual orientation. It has nothing to do with left-wing campaigns  against “white privilege,” unless that privilege is state-supplied.

 Let me repeat: the only “privilege” that matters to a libertarian _qua_ libertarian  is the kind that comes from the barrel of the state’s gun. Disagree  with this statement if you like, but in that case you will have to  substitute some word other than libertarian to describe your philosophy.

 Libertarians are of course free to concern themselves with issues  like feminism and egalitarianism. But their interest in those issues has  nothing to do with, and is not required by or a necessary feature of,  their libertarianism. Accordingly, they may not impose these preferences  on other libertarians, or portray themselves as fuller, more  consistent, or more complete libertarians. We have seen enough of our  words twisted and appropriated by others. We do not mean to let them have _libertarian_.

 As Rothbard put it:
There are libertarians who are indeed hedonists and  devotees of alternative lifestyles, and that there are also libertarians  who are firm adherents of “bourgeois” conventional or religious  morality. There are libertarian libertines and there are libertarians  who cleave firmly to the disciplines of natural or religious law. There  are other libertarians who have no moral theory at all apart from the  imperative of non-violation of rights. That is because libertarianism  per se has no general or personal moral theory.

 Libertarianism does not offer a way of life; it offers liberty, so  that each person is free to adopt and act upon his own values and moral  principles. Libertarians agree with Lord Acton that “liberty is the  highest political end” – not necessarily the highest end on everyone’s  personal scale of values.
Libertarians are unsuited to the thought-control business. It’s  difficult enough trying to persuade people to adopt views dramatically  opposed to what they have been taught throughout their lives. If we can  persuade them of the  nonaggression principle, we should be delighted. There is no need to  complicate things by arbitrarily imposing a slate of regime-approved  opinions on top of the core teaching of our philosophy.

*Libertarianism is a beautiful and elegant edifice of thought and  practice. It begins with and logically builds upon the principle of  self-ownership. In the society it calls for, no one may initiate  physical force against anyone else.* What this says about the  libertarian’s view of moral enormities ranging from slavery to war  should be obvious, but the libertarian commitment to freedom extends  well beyond the clear and obvious scourges of mankind.

 Our position is not merely that the state [legalized aggressive violence] is a moral evil, but that  human liberty is a tremendous moral good. Human beings ought to interact  with each other on the basis of reason – their distinguishing  characteristic – rather than  with hangmen and guns. And when they do so, the results, by a welcome  happenstance, are rising living standards, an explosion in creativity  and technological advance, and peace. Even in the world’s partially  capitalist societies, hundreds of millions if not billions of people  have been liberated from the miserable, soul-crushing conditions of  hand-to-mouth existence in exchange for far more meaningful and  fulfilling lives.

 Libertarianism, in other words, in its pure and undiluted form, is  intellectually rigorous, morally consistent, and altogether exciting and  thrilling. It need not and should not be fused with any extraneous  ideology. This can lead only to confusion, and to watering down the  central moral claims, and the overall appeal, of the message of liberty.



*Read more:* http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/03/l...m-is-and-isnt/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

What Is a Country, Anyway?


Secession and the Crimea
By Larry LaBorde
Silver Trading Company

April 3, 2014

  

 It seems that the last thing the internet needs right now is another story on the Crimea but this is an older story.
 

 Doug Casey once said he thought there should be 7 billion independent  countries in the world  one for every human being on the planet.  Just  what is a country?  The first thing that comes to mind is a group of  people with a common culture that live in the same place that  voluntarily band together for their mutual benefit.  Sounds about  right.  However, how can 300+ million people in the US have a common  culture?  Can we even say that we all live in the same place?  We are  arguing about if we even speak the same language and can talk to each  other in English.   Cultural wars tear at the very fabric of our  society.  Some claimed that NAFTA was an effort to join the US, Canada  and Mexico into a super government.  Is this going in the right  direction?  Should countries be bigger to form super powers so that they  can project vast military power around the world for the sake of  controlling others?  That seems to be the trend in the last 100 years or so.

 Even in the United States, which was formerly known as the united  States (lower case u), national power has trumped State sovereignty over  the last 150 years.  After the War of Independence, England signed 13  separate peace treaties with the colonies.  The War Between the States  was literally a war between independent sovereign states.  Visit the  battlefields and you will see monuments that were erected to honor  individual State armies. The war was fought with separate State armies  under a unified command much like the UN today.  Each State had its own  officers and chain of command.  They fought as individual armies and  orders from the unified command were given and went down the chain of  command in each State army.  At the beginning of the war General Lee was  offered command of the united States unified command but turned it down  because he could not fight against  his native State of Virginia.  He considered himself a citizen of  Virginia first.  So very different from today where individual states  are mere political subdivisions of the United States Government.  Before  the 17th amendment to the constitution Senators were appointed by the  State governors to serve as the governors ambassadors to  Washington.  Senators served at the pleasure of the governor and could  be recalled.  The 17thamendment weakened the power of the individual  State governors.

 It seems that the Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from the  Ukraine.  The big question is, Can they do that?.  It is indeed a big  question.  It is the same question that is on the tip of millions of  tongues around the world.  In Europe there are dozens of major secession  movements and hundreds of smaller ones.  In the UK, Scotland is voting  to break free soon.  Will they be allowed to go peacefully?  In Spain  the Catalonia region with its different culture wants to be  self-governing.  In Turkey the Kurds want their right to  self-determination.  Venice wants to break away from Italy.  Across the  Atlantic in Canada the Quebec region has wanted independence for  years.  In the  United States there are several current movements for independence.  In  Texas, which was a sovereign country prior to joining the union, there  is a growing movement to secede. In New Hampshire the freestate project  has been slowly gaining momentum for a few years.  In Alaska, Sarah  Palins husband has been active in their independence organization.  In  Colorado there is currently a push for several counties to break away  and form their own state.  California is just a matter of time.  There  is also a movement to form a new country out of Washington State, Oregon  and BC.  The list goes on and on.

 What is the correct size for a country?  Why is Costa Rica or Switzerland a good size and Texas or California is not?

 Is it the business of Washington DC to hold onto a state such as  Texas that wants to leave?  Better yet, is it the business of Washington  DC to order the Crimea not to leave the Ukraine on the other side of  the world?  Perhaps it is time to remove the log from our own eye before  attempting to remove the speck from our brothers eye.  Oftentimes it  is so much easier to fix someone else than to take a hard look at our  own situation.

 What really holds us together as a country?  Some say the main glue  that has subverted the individual State sovereignty is federal revenue  sharing  money.  If so, what happens when the checks from Washington DC  stop coming?  Or if the checks continue to come but they no longer buy  anything?  How long would it take more prosperous states to unhitch  their wagons from a culture they no longer felt they were a part of  anymore?

 If you think countries are forever or that borders never change go to www.youtube.com/watch?v=EY9-rXxhyb0 for a few minutes and watch the old world change before your eyes.

 What is our US culture that holds us together?  Is it a belief in  God?  Is it a common language?  Is it a belief in rugged individualism  and self-determination?  A belief that we can create a better life for  our self and our family if we work  hard and do the right thing?  It seems that these beliefs are rapidly  polarizing the country.  Are we a Godly nation that believes in common  law based on the Ten Commandments anymore?  Or does whatever the  majority happen to vote upon become the new law regardless of our  rights?  Do we have a sense of shared values?  Do we have a national  moral compass?  Do we have morals at all?  Are we givers or takers?  Do  we look within and to God for solutions or do we look to the State?  Is  one world government the answer or is it something smaller and more  representative.  If so, how much smaller?

 Is the State the servant of the people (who have banded together for  mutual benefit) or just raw force required to keep the peace between  different cultures like Tito did in Yugoslavia for decades after  WWII?  What is a country?  It is a serious question that requires  serious thought.  Once the bribes from Washington DC stop how long will  ours survive?  Will we be allowed to peacefully organize according to  culture and beliefs in smaller groups or will the answer be raw power  and force?  Heaven help us all (all 7 billion of us).

_Reprinted with permission from Silver Trading Company._

The Best of Larry LaBorde



  

                                                                                  Larry LaBorde [send him mail] sells precious metals at the Silver Trading Company, LLC.. Worried about storage issues? Ask us and maybe we can help.

                             Copyright © 2014 Silver Trading Company LLC.

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## ProIndividual

> Friend, you say you have a problem with "Non-aggression principle" which turns out to be your problem not with the principle but with your definition of the word "aggression."


I have no problem with the definition, as I quoted sources (encyclopedias) to back up the definition I gave. The problem is you won't accept the sourced denotative meaning of the word. You insist on using only a popular colloquial meaning. That's fine, but don't act like I'm the one with problem when we were trying to have a debate about ethics, which requires we define words correctly (that's how philosophy debates work...we define words using sources that aren't just people that agree with us, but that are widely accepted academic materials).

It's like the debate I'm having in another thread with someone who refuses to accept minarchism is minimalist statism. They want to pretend the word "minarchy" isn't a form of statism. Well, I sourced half a dozen sources that said otherwise. But I have no real hope they will admit they are wrong there either. Some people are wed to their colloquialisms and the cover it provides them for their cognitive dissonance.

But whatever, carry on.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I agree with your definition of minarchism as statism. Good one.

As for your definition of aggression, it is self-contradictory, and you were unable to show the precise difference between your definition of aggression and coercion. They are almost indistinguishable, which seriously muddies the water.

Our definitions of aggression are NOT merely "colloquial," but are widely accepted and widely understood definitions found in the most reputable dictionaries of the last 200 years.

Therefore it is our, non-self-contradictory definition that will stand.

Good luck, and thanks for your input.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

My Dear European Friends Have Grave Concerns About Gun Liberty




*Los Angeles, CA*I have a deep and unending love for Europe especially, Germany, The Netherlands, Austria and of course Switzerland.  The culture, art and elegance of Europe are only matched by their terrific and productive people.    

The 18 months I spent in *Aschaffenburg, Germany* in my youth serving as an Army medical corpsman as part of my compulsory military service was nothing less than pure joy for me. 

Many of my European friends dont understand my position on gun freedom.  Some perhaps think somehow Im perhaps violent because I own, carry and shoot guns.  For me guns insure that there is less violence at least within my eyesight.   My gun is a tool that serves as deterrence rather than a danger. 

As a Chicago cop and as a private investigator my gun has saved many lives including my own.  Criminals for the most part are cowards and they nearly always have ended their assaults, robberies, home invasions and such the second they saw my gun.  Ive arrested hundreds of criminals for crimes like murder, rape and robbery without violence because I had a gun. 

Police are given guns because it has been proven that lives are saved as a result.  If that was not the case theyd all be disarmed.

My European friends must remember their own past to understand the future.  Between 1933-1945 Europe was on fire because of the political ambitions of Fascist and Nazi politicians.  Tens of millions of good people were needlessly killed.   Few families were spared from lost husbands, sons and brothers.  They helplessly watched the destruction of their homes and businesses.  That massive heartbreak and misery today is only a sad memory.

Since the beginning of time the leaders of nations have turned violent against their own populations killing millions.  Politicians are often deadlier that all the criminals in the world.  These are the same politicians that falsely lie to their people promising better public safety through bans on weapons.  Sooner or later every government goes bad.

I shudder as my own presidents Bush and Obama have allowed the tyrannical privacy invasion by our spying as revealed by brave heroes risking all such as *Assanage, Snowden* and *Manning*.  Why are we spying on our fellow Americans and European friends without warrants and court orders? We have become a criminal nation that routinely breaks the law!  Why cant we seem to stop this behavior? 

Ambitious politicians like *Hitler, Stalin* and *Mussolini* could not survive without first spying upon and disarming the honorable people of their nations.  The more dangerous politicians are, the larger the bodyguard army they must maintain.  Armed honorable people are always very dangerous to criminal politicians. 

The amount of murders by common criminals cant begin to compare to that of politicians.  Politicians always begin with lots of smiles and handshakes.  They make lots of promises of hope, prosperity and peace.  After a trusting population hands them the power too many of them quickly change into tyrants. 

This is simply about politicians empowering themselves to simply plunder the property of their own population.  What always follows are informants, secret police, torture and murder under color of law soon replaces Liberty and Freedom.

One European nation has avoided this kind of disaster.  *Switzerland* has managed to prevent ambitious politicians from gaining too mush power.  A Swiss president for example serves for only a single two-year term.  Political corruption is much more difficult to survive this way. 

The Swiss people have the real power.  Its in the form a fully automatic military rifle and stockpile of ammunition required by law in virtually every home.  Switzerland has a real *Minuteman* style defense system.  Because of this you have not, nor will ever see masses of Swiss refugees moving about like frightened and starving sheep.  

The Swiss stay out of efforts to colonize or otherwise invade other nations.  Theyve become trusted to protect much of the world wealth in their banks. 

In recent years the Swiss too have been poisoned with propaganda into ending gun freedom.  This through the lies of the worlds politicians that know guns will control their own rogue behavior. 

Every sane, sober and law-abiding man and woman on earth has a duty to train with and bear arms for the safety of their families, community and nation.  

Those clever politicians that demand gun bans for public safety are always up to no good.  *Gun bans are the needed tools of Nazis, Communists and other Fascists.*

I believe like the late and very wise, *Anne Frank* that most all people have good hearts.  We must believe in and trust each other.  If we do that we will never let another tyrant lead us into another government-sponsored bloodbath.

Please think about what I have written here and spread it around.  This is why I believe that plenty of guns in the hands of the well-behaved masses are the best way to insure public safety.




Read more: http://www.crimefilenews.com/2014/04...ave-grave.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Feminist Statistic Fraud

  By Thomas Sowell April 15, 2014

----------


## febo

> A just owner of a property is either:
> 
> i) the first user of it, or
> ii) the recipient of it from the previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale.


How does this apply to the land?
Specifically, who was the first user?

As I see it the first user of any given plot of land is all but impossible to determine.
And does the land speculator who does nothing with the land except own it - does he qualify in any sense as a "user"?
Do not these problems lead to the conclusion that the land must be regarded as belonging equally to all?

----------


## febo

> All men hold equal Just Claims to Life.


Do you agree that life depends on land, sea and air?
Does it not follow that libertarianism MUST also declare that "All men hold equal Just Claims to land sea and air"?.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> How does this apply to the land?
> Specifically, who was the first user?
> As I see it the first user of any given plot of land is all but impossible to determine.


You need proof of being the first user. The one who has such proof should be considered the first user, until an earlier claim could be conclusively proven.



> And does the land speculator who does nothing with the land except own it - does he qualify in any sense as a "user"?


The "user" requirement applies only to the first owner. Subsequent owners receive it via voluntary gift, bequest or sale.



> Do not these problems lead to the conclusion that the land must be regarded as belonging equally to all?


No it does not, no more than a watch found in the woods should be regarded as belonging equally to all. It belongs to the one who can prove ownership as described above. If the previous owner cannot be found, then the first one with a valid proof of the earliest use becomes the owner, until an earlier valid claim can be proven.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> "All men hold equal Just Claims to Life." Do you agree that life depends on land, sea and air?
> Does it not follow that libertarianism MUST also declare that "All men hold equal Just Claims to land sea and air"?.


Why then stop with land, sea and air? Life also depends on food, transportation, housing and infinity of other things. Why then not proclaim "equal claims" to EVERYTHING? 

All men have a right to THEIR property, not the property of others.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What Is Anarcho-Capitalism?*

 Ben Swann talks to Lew Rockwell.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*No Room for Statism in the Libertarian Tent*

                                                                                                           By Scott Lazarowitz
                                                                                    April 22, 2014
 

...
"libertarianism is really just the promotion of liberty, the  non-aggression principle and the self-ownership of the individual. As  Lew Rockwell wrote,  libertarianism begins with and logically builds upon the principle of  self-ownership. In the society it calls for, no one may initiate  physical force against anyone else. And in my view, the advocacy of liberty and non-aggression naturally  goes with the philosophy of individualism. Individualism goes  hand-in-hand with the concept of self-ownership. The individual owns  ones own life, including ones person, ones labor and ones  justly-acquired property."
...
"In a truly free, libertarian society, there would be no medical racket protected by a State, and there would be no medical licensure or regulations.  The licensure only protects bad doctors in the same way that teachers  tenure protects bad teachers. In a libertarian society the good doctors  would advance based on the word of consumers, not government  bureaucrats. Also in a libertarian society, any drug or supplement maker would  have the freedom to produce and sell a product on a totally free and  open market as long as no actual fraud is committed. And consumers would  be free to purchase whatever they want, and thats it. No compulsory  doctors prescription, no federal or state government agents worrying  about whether someone is using a drug not approved by a bureaucrat, and  so on.

 And no illegal drugs, only no aggression. And thats it. Freedom is not complicated.

And those are just a few examples."

Read more: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/04/s...ertarian-tent/

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What's So Bad About Nazis?*

*Answer:*
Aggressive violence,
in other words,
Violation of Private Property, 
which is violation of Justice and Liberty 
and the definition of Evil.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Five Stupid Complaints About Freedom*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Gun Registration: Evil, or Just Stupid?*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Limits = Freedom?*

----------


## Christopher A. Brown

> First and foremost, is the one from which all other principles derive:*
> Private Property is not to be violated, because it is Justice and Liberty*.


Yes, but to enforce the principle of private property a principal to enforce preceded the actual principal upheld.

And what about the principle of having your life unthreatened so private property can be enjoyed?

The meaningful practice of the principle has requisite principles.

Under the 1787 constitution there is the prime principal ability to alter or abolish government abusive to the principle of private property that is codified as Article V.  

The intent of the Declatation of Indepence is that the right to alter or abolish be present to enforce the requisite of life needed to enjoy the liberty and principle of private property.

As "the people are the rightful masters of the congress and the courts, the prime intended purpose of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is to assure information vital to survival is shared and understood.as well as all needed actions to alter or abolish abusive government and enforcement of the principle of private property.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Yes, but to enforce the principle of private property a principal to enforce preceded the actual principal upheld.


Not really. Private Property are the first words in that sentence. And secondly, It is not my task to define again every word in the language. You have to start somewhere. I start where the meaning is self-evident. Call it an axiom, if you will.




> And what about the principle of having your life unthreatened so private property can be enjoyed?


If you read the first principle carefully where it defines property, you will see that your life is a fundamental part of your Private Property, and a key part of your self-ownership, from whence all ownership derives.





> Under the 1787 constitution there is the prime principal ability to alter or abolish government abusive to the principle of private property that is codified as Article V.  
> 
> The intent of the Declatation of Indepence is that the right to alter or abolish be present to enforce the requisite of life needed to enjoy the liberty and principle of private property.
> 
> As "the people are the rightful masters of the congress and the courts, the prime intended purpose of the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights is to assure information vital to survival is shared and understood.as well as all needed actions to alter or abolish abusive government and enforcement of the principle of private property.


The Original Constitution was inspired but flawed. It allowed for, and failed to forbid, any and all aggressive violence (aggressive violence being the very definition of evil and injustice), especially in the form of public taxation of Private Property, which taxation is nothing more than violation of Private Property, legalized plunder, institutionalized evil and injustice.

Hence I proposed 5 amendments to fix these glaring errors in the Original Constitution to square it perfectly with the Non-Aggression Principle, which is the definition of Justice and Liberty.

----------


## osan

> Yes, but to enforce the principle of private property a principal to enforce preceded the actual principal upheld.
> 
> <schnip>
> 
> The meaningful practice of the principle has requisite principles.


True, but those are consequential principles that derive from the initial, in this case by direct implication.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Logical Beauty of Libertarianism*

By Hans-Hermann Hoppe
Mises.org
May 3, 2014


*If you could magically change one belief in the minds of all people in present societies, what would it be and why?
*
*Hoppe*: I agree in this with my principal teacher,  mentor, and master Murray Rothbard. I would only want people to  recognize matters for what they truly are. I would want them to  recognize taxes as robbery, politicians as thieves, and the entire state  apparatus and bureaucracy as a protection racket, a Mafia-like  enterprise, only far bigger and more dangerous. In short: I would want  them to hate the State. If everyone believed and did this, then, as É.  de la Boétie has shown, all power of the state would almost instantly  vanish.


*Read more here*: http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/h...ibertarianism/


Please note that Hoppe's opposition to state is justified because of the definition of the word "state" that he uses.
There, however, exists a definition of a just state, that does not violate the NAP. Hans does not write about that.
For more information, please see:
http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthr...=1#post4887540

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Thank the Troops...?*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Lew Rockwell: The Future of Freedom*
*Brian Wilson talks to Lew Rockwell about principles of Liberty.*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*True Libertarianism is Principled and Can't Be Compromised*
By Scott Lazarowitz
May 5, 2014

  
 

It seems that my recent article, No Room for Statism in the Libertarian Tent, and my recent blog post, The Libertarianism Debate Continues,  have touched a nerve with some people. One emailer felt that I was  arrogant and simplistic, and on a high horse in my perhaps harsh  evaluation of minarchists or minimal state, limited-government  libertarians and my promotion of uncompromisingly principled  libertarianism.

 In my blog post, I wrote,  if _you_ support a State to exist to rule over _my_ life, _my_ person, _my_ property, _my_ labor and _my_ contracts, and whose agents or employees are empowered to use threats and coercion against me if I dont obey _their_ rules regarding what _they_ think  I should do with my life, my person and property, and my labor and  contracts (rules which go beyond dont aggress, dont violate other  peoples persons or property, etc.), then I find it very difficult to  say that you are a libertarian. I dont see that as simplistic or  arrogant, but merely clarifying the difference between actual  libertarianism and statism.

 All libertarianism is is the promotion of the non-aggression  principle. Dont initiate aggression. It involves self-ownership. I own  my life, and you own your life.

 But, as soon as you institute a State, an organization whose agents  assume control over a particular territory and over the lives of the  people within the territory, no matter how limited that State  organization, what about those people within that territory who disagree  with that organizations control or monopoly of various services, or  its method of collecting payments for such services? Such a method for  such a scheme is contract-less and coerced. Right there you have  abandoned the non-aggression principle, no?

 So do you really want to empower that coercive government and its  agents to have that kind of control over everyone in the territory even  those who dont consent to those State agents authority and control?  And what, as long as 51% of the population voted for that system which  rules over everyone including the other 49%, thats okay? And the  majority-elected rulers have the power to enforce their will on the  minority with aggression, coercion and violence? Thats an acceptable  libertarian view of society?

 Obviously, with such a limited government that involves coercion  and the use of aggression to enforce the will of the rulers or the  majority, it is still a rejection of the non-aggression principle.

 So really, because of the absence of a voluntary contract between the  States agents and those over whom this State apparatus rules, and  because of the empowerment of a group of people to make demands on those  who do not consent to its rule and to use deadly force if dissenters  resist such a rule, what we have here, as Murray Rothbard pointed out, is nothing more than a criminal enterprise. A racket.

 Even a limited government is still an institution in which  dissenters who might prefer to use private services (such as for  security) may not do so because such alternative choices will not be  recognized by the official law of the society, which isnt really  law at all, but a racket. Therefore, this limited government thing  is really phony-baloney, and Im not going to pretend otherwise.

 So in the meantime, according to some who are minimal-State  libertarians or who are anarcho-capitalists but feel that gradualism  from current Big Government to liberty is the way to go, I ask you: _Right now,  when Im walking down the street and this empowered government police  officer wants to stop me and question me for no reason, and Im minding  my own business and he doesnt suspect me of anything, and I say, Would  you mind leaving me alone, Id like to go on my way, and he doesnt  like that and wants to grab me and prevent me from going on my way even  though he has no reason to suspect me of anything, what do you say then?  We should keep this scheme of government monopoly in place? But only  temporarily until we can convince more authoritarian sheeple to please  let us have our freedom, dignity and peace? So according to your  limited government system, if I try to defend myself against this  gangster who has no moral authority to stop me, then Im the criminal, and not the aforementioned neanderthal. No thanks._

_ And also, there are self-described libertarians who want to reform the local government police, reform the NSA, or reform Medicare  or Social Security. Yet those schemes are all immoral and unjust  monopolies, ponzi schemes and criminal rackets. You cant reform a  criminal racket, can you?

 Limited government still involves the institutionalization of  aggression as the official, legal means to enforce the will of the  rulers and their enforcers, to push the will of the majority onto the  minority, and it creates a two-tier system in which there is one set of  laws for the rulers and their enforcers and another set of laws for  everyone else. Thats hardly a libertarian way of life, in my view.

 So reforming a criminal enterprise isnt just merely rearranging the deck chairs. A criminal enterprise that enslaves and  imprisons innocents cant be a limited one. And an organization which  uses only minimal aggression initiated against people can never be  just.

 I know, a lot of people have been brainwashed to accept the State and  its monopolies and territorial control as a given. They are  indoctrinated through 12 years of government-controlled schooling to  idolize and be loyal and obedient to the State and not question its  legitimacy.

 The fact that so many amongst the population are so brainwashed to  not question the States legitimacy is why honest persuasion on the  justness and goodness and peace of liberty and libertarianism can better  help to break through that indoctrination. Certainly the political process and elections (Well elect that libertarian to office and hell shrink  the size and intrusiveness of government, thats for sure, etc. etc.  etc.) have not worked thus far. And that is because the inherent nature  of the State is to always grow, become more powerful and intrusive, and  never shrink. Instead of wasting time and money attempting to reform the criminal racket, it needs to be abolished, root and branch. More and more people are beginning to wake up to that and accept that fact.

 Libertarians, stick to your guns in the cause of liberty. One helpful hint is to read Rothbard, Rockwell, and Hoppe. The future of libertarianism and liberty really depends on being uncompromising and 100% principled.

The Best of Scott Lazarowitz

_


_   

                                                                                  Scott Lazarowitz [send him mail] is a writer and cartoonist,visit his blog .

                             Copyright © 2014 by LewRockwell.com. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

                             Previous article by Scott Lazarowitz:  In That Libertarian Tent

_

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*I Am a Libertarian*

By Laurence M. Vance
May 6, 2014
 
...
I am a libertarian. I subscribe to the non-aggression principle that  says, in the words of Murray Rothbard: “The only proper role of violence  is to defend person and property against violence, that any use of  violence that goes beyond such just defense is itself aggressive,  unjust, and criminal. Libertarianism, therefore, is a theory which  states that everyone should be free of violent invasion, should be free  to do as he sees fit except invade the person or property of another.” I  am concerned with actions; I am not concerned with thoughts: I am  concerned only with the negative consequences of thoughts. I believe  that the non-aggression principle extends to government. Libertarians  should therefore oppose or otherwise seek to limit the domestic and  foreign meddling and intervention of governments, which are the greatest  violators of the non-aggression principle.

 I am a libertarian. I believe in the golden rule. I believe in live  and let live. I believe that a person should be free to do anything he  wants, as long as his conduct is peaceful. I believe that vices are not  crimes.

 I am a libertarian. Our enemy is the state. Our enemy is not  religion, corporations, institutions, foundations, or organizations.  These only have power to do us harm because of their connection with the  state. And since war is the health of the state, the state’s military,  wars, and foreign interventions must be opposed root and branch.

 I am a libertarian. I believe in laissez faire. Anyone should be free  to engage in any economic activity without license, permission,  prohibition, or interference from the state. The government should not  intervene in the economy in any way. Free trade agreements, educational  vouchers, privatizing Social Security, etc., are not the least bit  libertarian ideas.

 I am a libertarian. The best government is no government. That  government that governs least is the next best government. Government,  as Voltaire said, at its best state is a necessary evil and at its worst  state is an intolerable one. The best thing any government could do  would be to simply leave us alone.

 I am a libertarian. Taxation is government theft. The government  doesn’t have a claim to a certain percentage of one’s income. The tax  code doesn’t need to be simplified, shortened, fairer, or less  intrusive. The tax rates don’t need to be made lower, flatter, fairer,  equal, or less progressive. The income tax doesn’t need more or larger  deductions, loopholes, shelters, credits, or exemptions. The whole  rotten system needs to be abolished. People have the right to keep what  they earn and decide for themselves what to do with their money: spend  it, waste it, squander it, donate it, bequeath it, hoard it, invest it,  burn it, gamble it.

 I am a libertarian. I am not a libertine. I am not a hedonist. I am  not a moral relativist. I am not a devotee of some alternative  lifestyle. I am not a revolutionary. I am not a nihilist. I neither wish  to associate nor aggress against those who are. I believe in the  absolute freedom of association and discrimination.

 I am a libertarian.


*Read more:* http://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/05/l...a-libertarian/

*Note:* The word "State" as it is  used here means an entity that claims a "right" to engage in aggressive  violence. Under that definition it is correct to say that State is the  enemy of all humanity and of all that is good, because aggressive  violence is the definition of EVIL and injustice. 

There is,  however a different definition of the word "state" as public property  and its just government. Such institution does not violate the  Non-Aggression Principle, and therefore has a right to exist. Such just  state corresponds to the Third fundamental principle of liberty as  described in the top post.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

I have a problem with the third principle:




> Third Fundamental principle of Liberty is (derived from the first two):*
> If there exists public property, that is property to which all have equal claim of ownership, it can be managed by the voice of the majority, provided that: 
> **
> a) everyone is treated equally, since all have equal claim of ownership in it, and
> 
> b) property of no individual is violated.*


Why would there ever be property "to which all have equal claim of ownership"?  How does a just claim of ownership come about, in your view?  And how could more than one person -- much less _all!_ -- come to have a just claim on the same object?  How does this situation come about?  What is the origin story behind it?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I have a problem with the third principle:
> Why would there ever be property "to which all have equal claim of ownership"?  How does a just claim of ownership come about, in your view?


 The examples of public property would be: a public road that has been used for centuries; a public water way; a forest in which people hunted for centuries, etc. Since original homesteading cannot be ascertained, to prove exclusive ownership, and all have been using the property for years, the ownerships is shared or intertwined, and cannot be justly separated, until a clear proof can be presented of such original first use, or clear and provable chain of ownership can be ascertained extending from the first user. But in all cases, the burden of proof must naturally rest on the person who challenges the current ownership status of a property. 




> And how could more than one person -- much less _all!_ -- come to have a just claim on the same object?


Joint ownership of property is quite common. A husband and wife can own the same house, etc. Shareholders of a company can all have a claim of ownership in it. Public property is an extension of the same principle. 

So, do you believe that joint ownership of property is possible? If such joint ownership exists, then what are the laws of justice governing its use? In a case of a company, shareholders vote with their shares. A majority share rule in such a property is a just proposition, provided that such control is proportionate to the shares owned in it, and the shares of no one are violated.

Public property can be thought of as a "public company" in which all have equal share of ownership. Thus, the Third Fundamental Principle of Liberty naturally applies, as the extension of the First Fundamental Principle of Liberty which applies to such shares, because the share held by each individual is his Private Property.

Does this answer your question?

Thanks.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> The examples of public property would be: a public road that has been used for centuries; a public water way; a forest in which people hunted for centuries, etc. Since original homesteading cannot be ascertained, to prove exclusive ownership, and all have been using the property for years, the ownerships is shared or intertwined, and cannot be justly separated, until a clear proof can be presented of such original first use, or clear and provable chain of ownership can be ascertained extending from the first user. But in all cases, the burden of proof must naturally rest on the person who challenges the current ownership status of a property.


 Great!  Thank you for a clear and cogent reply.   Because I think we are essentially in agreement on things, I am going to cut to the chase and get very practical very fast.

First, a very important correction: _all_ have not been using the property.  There exists no property anywhere that _all_ have been using in a way and to an extent that would give them legitimate claim over it.  _Some_ have been using it.  With that correction, let's get to the practical.

In this current age, in this particular nation, these kinds of resources -- forests, rivers, and roads -- have all been claimed and taken over by the state.  The state holds title to these places.  This is just as you say they have a legitimate right to do in Point the Third.  More importantly, it makes our job as libertarians easy, for here is the practical question: what is to be _done_?  What shall we _do_?  Since the state is the owner, that makes our job relatively simple.

1. Determine which branch or agency of the government has owned and been paying for the upkeep of this property all these decades.
2. Compile a list of the taxpayers to that government and the total amount of taxes they have paid.
3. Create a company and give all of these taxpayers (or their heirs, if dead) a share proportional to their tax contribution.
4. This company is now the owner and manager of the property in question.
5. Do this for all government properties.
6. Dissolve the state as redundant, unnecessary, and highly dangerous and thus unwise to keep around.

That is what I believe should happen, as a practical matter, in getting from "here" to "there."




> Joint ownership of property is quite common. A husband and wife can own the same house, etc. Shareholders of a company can all have a claim of ownership in it. Public property is an extension of the same principle.


 Joint ownership is one thing.  Collective ownership is another.  I can deal with joint ownership.  I can point to a person and ask "Do you or do you not own this basketball?" and he can tell me clearly and accurately "Yes" or "No."  He might have to add "my wife and I both do" or somesuch.  But collective ownership is all very, very fuzzy.  I am very suspicious of fuzzy thinking.  I think it leads to problems, and often to nonsense (think: Nicean Creed).  If "all" own it, that includes me.  Do I own these things only near my house, or do I also own roadways and hunting forests in Bokum, Kentucky?  Toole?  Bangalore?  How do I know what I own and what I don't?  Do I get a dividend if my property is managed well and makes a profit?  What if I grow tired of owning the property -- how do I go about selling it?  None of these problems seems solvable under your plan of: have it owned by collective ownership (everyone and no one) and managed by this special elite org called the state.




> So, do you believe that joint ownership of property is possible? If such joint ownership exists, then what are the laws of justice governing its use? In a case of a company, shareholders vote with their shares. A majority share rule in such a property is a just proposition, provided that such control is proportionate to the shares owned in it, and the shares of no one are violated.


 Very true, and it's all laid out in _contract_.  That's the key to just social arrangements: consent, from which springs the proper _authority_!  Sound familiar?  As the famous analogy goes, the ice cream man can't just go around pulling people over and giving out traffic tickets.  If he did, no one would pay them.  He has no _authority_.  If there's no contract, no title, no title transfer, and in short no nothing, the whole thing's a mess and is not a liberty and property framework at all.  Liberty in property is based on title and title transfer.  

Everything should be as clear and as cut-and-dried as we can possibly make it.  Good fences make good neighbors.  Clear boundaries, clear delineations: essential to property.  If I don't know what I own, and what you own, how can I know what I can and cannot do in relation to you?  I can't.  All this fuzziness causes conflict.  

*Expunge the fuzziness, I say!*  Get it all down, in writing, clear as crystal.  Then we can move forward and stop having endless insoluble conflicts which really result so many times from unclear and overlapping boundaries.




> Public property can be thought of as a "public company" in which all have equal share of ownership. Thus, the Third Fundamental Principle of Liberty naturally applies, as the extension of the First Fundamental Principle of Liberty which applies to such shares, because the share held by each individual is his Private Property.


 It "can be thought of as," yes.  You're idea is not hopelessly off-base.  I think you have the right basic idea.  But why keep it abstract?  If it "can be thought of," why not change that to "in reality, _is_"?  Rather than fuzzy and theoretical ownership that can be thought of as ownership with the right frame of mind and sufficient concentration of mental effort, why not just actual ownership as I am proposing?  I am guessing and somewhat hoping that your answer will be "Well, there is no reason why not."  I think my proposal would accomplish the same goal as your third point, and also solve some of these difficulties I've mentioned.  It's nothing but plus-factors.

But you may have some additional thoughts that I have not yet considered.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> The examples of public property would be: a public road that has been used for centuries; a public water way; a forest in which people hunted for centuries, etc. Since original homesteading cannot be ascertained, to prove exclusive ownership, and all have been using the property for years, the ownerships is shared or intertwined, and cannot be justly separated, until a clear proof can be presented of such original first use, or clear and provable chain of ownership can be ascertained extending from the first user. But in all cases, the burden of proof must naturally rest on the person who challenges the current ownership status of a property.


 Great!  Thank you for a clear and cogent reply.   Because I think we are essentially in agreement on things, I am going to cut to the chase and get very practical very fast.

First, a very important correction: _all_ have not been using the property.  There exists no property anywhere that _all_ have been using in a way and to an extent that would give them legitimate claim over it.  _Some_ have been using it.  With that correction, let's get to the practical.

In this current age, in this particular nation, these kinds of resources -- forests, rivers, and roads -- have all been claimed and taken over by the state.  The state holds title to these places.  This is just as you say they have a legitimate right to do in Point the Third.  More importantly, it makes our job as libertarians easy, for here is the practical question: what is to be _done_?  What shall we _do_?  Since the state is the owner, that makes our job relatively simple.

1. Determine which branch or agency of the government has owned and been paying for the upkeep of this property all these decades.
2. Compile a list of the taxpayers to that government and the total amount of taxes they have paid.
3. Create a company and give all of these taxpayers (or their heirs, if dead) a share proportional to their tax contribution.
4. This company is now the owner and manager of the property in question.
5. Do this for all government properties.
6. Dissolve the state as redundant, unnecessary, and highly dangerous and thus unwise to keep around.

That is what I believe should happen, as a practical matter, in getting from "here" to "there."




> Joint ownership of property is quite common. A husband and wife can own the same house, etc. Shareholders of a company can all have a claim of ownership in it. Public property is an extension of the same principle.


 Joint ownership is one thing.  Collective ownership is another.  I can deal with joint ownership.  I can point to a person and ask "Do you or do you not own this basketball?" and he can tell me clearly and accurately "Yes" or "No."  He might have to add "my wife and I both do" or somesuch.  But collective ownership is all very, very fuzzy.  I am very suspicious of fuzzy thinking.  I think it leads to problems, and often to nonsense (think: Nicean Creed).  If "all" own it, that includes me.  Do I own these things only near my house, or do I also own roadways and hunting forests in Bokum, Kentucky?  Toole?  Bangalore?  How do I know what I own and what I don't?  Do I get a dividend if my property is managed well and makes a profit?  What if I grow tired of owning the property -- how do I go about selling it?  None of these problems seems solvable under your plan of: have it owned by collective ownership (everyone and no one) and managed by this special elite org called the state.




> So, do you believe that joint ownership of property is possible? If such joint ownership exists, then what are the laws of justice governing its use? In a case of a company, shareholders vote with their shares. A majority share rule in such a property is a just proposition, provided that such control is proportionate to the shares owned in it, and the shares of no one are violated.


 Very true, and it's all laid out in _contract_.  That's the key to just social arrangements: consent, from which springs the proper _authority_!  Sound familiar?  As the famous analogy goes, the ice cream man can't just go around pulling people over and giving out traffic tickets.  If he did, no one would pay them.  He has no _authority_.  If there's no contract, no title, no title transfer, and in short no nothing, the whole thing's a mess and is not a liberty and property framework at all.  Liberty in property is based on title and title transfer.  

Everything should be as clear and as cut-and-dried as we can possibly make it.  Good fences make good neighbors.  Clear boundaries, clear delineations: essential to property.  If I don't know what I own, and what you own, how can I know what I can and cannot do in relation to you?  I can't.  All this fuzziness causes conflict.  

*Expunge the fuzziness, I say!*  Get it all down, in writing, clear as crystal.  Then we can move forward and stop having endless insoluble conflicts which really result so many times from unclear and overlapping boundaries.




> Public property can be thought of as a "public company" in which all have equal share of ownership. Thus, the Third Fundamental Principle of Liberty naturally applies, as the extension of the First Fundamental Principle of Liberty which applies to such shares, because the share held by each individual is his Private Property.


 It "can be thought of as," yes.  Your idea is not hopelessly off-base.  I think you have the right basic idea.  But why keep it abstract?  If it "can be thought of," why not change that to "in reality, _is_"?  Rather than fuzzy and theoretical ownership that can be thought of as ownership with the right frame of mind and sufficient concentration of mental effort, why not just actual ownership as I am proposing?  I am guessing and somewhat hoping that your answer will be "Well, there is no reason why not."  I think my proposal would accomplish the same goal as your third point, and also solve some of these difficulties I've mentioned.  It's nothing but plus-factors.

But you may have some additional thoughts that I have not yet considered.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Great!  Thank you for a clear and cogent reply.   Because I think we are essentially in agreement on things, I am going to cut to the chase and get very practical very fast.
> 
> First, a very important correction: _all_ have not been using the property.  There exists no property anywhere that _all_ have been using in a way and to an extent that would give them legitimate claim over it.  _Some_ have been using it.  With that correction, let's get to the practical.
> 
> In this current age, in this particular nation, these kinds of resources -- forests, rivers, and roads -- have all been claimed and taken over by the state.  The state holds title to these places.  This is just as you say they have a legitimate right to do in Point the Third.  More importantly, it makes our job as libertarians easy, for here is the practical question: what is to be _done_?  What shall we _do_?  Since the state is the owner, that makes our job relatively simple.
> 
> 1. Determine which branch or agency of the government has owned and been paying for the upkeep of this property all these decades.
> 2. Compile a list of the taxpayers to that government and the total amount of taxes they have paid.
> 3. Create a company and give all of these taxpayers (or their heirs, if dead) a share proportional to their tax contribution.
> ...


I agree. Well said. "All having equal claim of ownership" was a good approximation, because under de-facto terms of use of the property, all have equal right to use it. If such users wish to form a company you described, more power to them! 




> Joint ownership is one thing.  Collective ownership is another.  I can deal with joint ownership.  I can point to a person and ask "Do you or do you not own this basketball?" and he can tell me clearly and accurately "Yes" or "No."  He might have to add "my wife and I both do" or somesuch.  But collective ownership is all very, very fuzzy.  I am very suspicious of fuzzy thinking.  I think it leads to problems, and often to nonsense (think: Nicean Creed).  If "all" own it, that includes me.  Do I own these things only near my house, or do I also own roadways and hunting forests in Bokum, Kentucky?  Toole?  Bangalore?  How do I know what I own and what I don't?


Ownership is a range of just control over property. If your control is justly exclusive, your ownership is exclusive. In case of "public" property, de facto, ALL have a just right to use it in the same degree, because exclusive ownership cannot be justly established. Hence, I say you have an equal claim of ownership over it, just as much as your neighbor does. If all the identifiable and interested users get together, they have a right to manage the public property by the voice of the majority, provided that a) all are treated equally, because all have equal right to use it, and b) the property of no one is violated in the process. This is a direct derivation from the First Fundamental principle. 

If the identifiable and interested users wish to formalize their ownership and thus prevent further entry into such ownership by others who have not been the users of the property, they can do so. That's what you are proposing, and it does not contradict the Third principle. It is their just right to form such a company because they are the current, provable users, and no prior provable claim exists. However, if in the future, a provable prior claim of use/ownership can be found, it should factor into such an agreement and government of the company. 




> Do I get a dividend if my property is managed well and makes a profit?


The majority of the users may decide it, subject to the conditions (a) and (b).




> What if I grow tired of owning the property -- how do I go about selling it?


First you need to find a buyer. It is hard to find a buyer if all already own it just as much as you do. But if you are thinking in terms of shares, then the details of implementation of such transactions are to be decided by the voice of the majority of the users subject to conditions (a) and (b).




> None of these problems seems solvable under your plan of: have it owned by collective ownership (everyone and no one) and managed by this special elite org called the state.


It is in principle no different than a board of directors managing a publicly held company according to the voice of its shareholders and according to justice. Can you show me how this is principally different from that? The same logic applies, unless you can demonstrate otherwise.




> Very true, and it's all laid out in _contract_.  That's the key to just social arrangements: consent, from which springs the proper _authority_!  Sound familiar?  As the famous analogy goes, the ice cream man can't just go around pulling people over and giving out traffic tickets.  If he did, no one would pay them.  He has no _authority_.  If there's no contract, no title, no title transfer, and in short no nothing, the whole thing's a mess and is not a liberty and property framework at all.  Liberty in property is based on title and title transfer.


When you buy ice-cream on the street, is there a formal contract signing and "title transfer" involved? No. An implied contract is involved, however, according to well understood AND mutually agreed upon rules, and the ownership of the ice cream does change hands fairly smoothly. Is it "fuzzy?" Not if the conditions of the transactions are well understood by all the parties involved.  




> Everything should be as clear and as cut-and-dried as we can possibly make it.  Good fences make good neighbors.  Clear boundaries, clear delineations: essential to property.  If I don't know what I own, and what you own, how can I know what I can and cannot do in relation to you?  I can't.  All this fuzziness causes conflict.


I agree. In the case of public property clear and concise rules can be published or displayed at the entrances, as agreed upon by the majority of the users, subject to conditions (a) and (b). Just like in a national park now, it is clearly understood that you have no right, for instance, to burn the place down, or to pollute it, etc.



> *Expunge the fuzziness, I say!*  Get it all down, in writing, clear as crystal.  Then we can move forward and stop having endless insoluble conflicts which really result so many times from unclear and overlapping boundaries.


I am all for it. I never said differently. I agree with you. Joint ownership does not have to be "fuzzy" or confusing. It should follow clearly defined, and well understood rules. 




> "Public property can be thought of as a "public company" in which all have equal share of ownership."
> 
> It "can be thought of as," yes.  You're idea is not hopelessly off-base.  I think you have the right basic idea.  But why keep it abstract?  If it "can be thought of," why not change that to "in reality, _is_"?  Rather than fuzzy and theoretical ownership that can be thought of as ownership with the right frame of mind and sufficient concentration of mental effort, why not just actual ownership as I am proposing?  I am guessing and somewhat hoping that your answer will be "Well, there is no reason why not."  I think my proposal would accomplish the same goal as your third point, and also solve some of these difficulties I've mentioned.  It's nothing but plus-factors.
> 
> But you may have some additional thoughts that I have not yet considered.


I agree with you. We are saying the same thing, I believe. It is exactly the same.

Good post! Thanks!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Added two more amendments bringing total to 7, with the first one being the root of the 6, which are derived from, and amplify the first.
*Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)*  << new The Fundamental Law Constitutional Amendment Honest Money Constitutional Amendment Constitutional Amendment Abolishing Taxation No Judicial Monopoly Constitutional Amendment (NJM) << new Nullification - Constitutional Amendment  Constitutional Amendment: Abolishing Copyrights and Patents

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Mexican marijuana farmers have stopped planting the  crop because they cannot compete with legal marijuana grown in the US. * [The drug cartels and the US Drug Enforcement Agency  (DEA) are bemoaning the loss of business due to legalization.] _ Mother Jones_ 2014 May 7 (Cached)

From: http://www.realityzone.com/currentperiod.html

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Rothbards Red Pill*
*Waking up to the nature of the State*

                                                                                  By Dan Sanchez
Medium.com
May 21, 2014

  
 
                                                         I remember when the scales fell  from my eyes, and I saw the State for what it truly is, and has always  been. I was sitting in my car in San Francisco, listening to a Mises.org  audiobook of _For a New Liberty_ by Murray Rothbard. My perception of the world would never be the same again.

 The experience was similar to a great scene in the film _The Matrix._ The  character Neo knows that something is deeply wrong with the world, but  is unable to identify it. He asks the mysterious Morpheus about  something that has been haunting him. What is the Matrix?

 Morpheus answers, It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

 What truth? asks Neo.

 That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into  bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A  prison for your mind.

 Morpheus then offers Neo a choice between two pills: one red, and one blue.

 This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You  take the blue pill: the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe  whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill: you stay in  Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.

 Neo takes the red pill, which awakens him from the virtual reality  dream he had been living all his life: a dream that has been uploaded  directly into his brain while, in reality, his body has been a host to  parasitic machines. These machines cultivate and feed off of the bodies  of billions of dreaming humans in vast factory farms.

 Rothbard was my Morpheus, as he has been to countless libertarians,  and his writings were my Red Pill. Reading them woke me up to the fact  that I, like Neo, was born into bondage: bondage to the State, which is a  life-sucking, human-farming parasite that hides its true nature under a  veil of normalcy and legitimacy, and through lies that it has force-fed  my mind since I was a little child.

 Rothbards analysis of the State followed in the tradition of  Lysander Spooner, Franz Oppenheimer, Albert Jay Nock, and Frank  Chodorov. This tradition built up a theory of justice that made no  exceptions for the state, and a sociological analysis of the state that  revealed its true nature and function.

 Whatever expansive and benign functions state-worshipers have granted  it, and whatever limited function that even liberal social contract  philosophers like Locke have allowed it, those who actually wield the  apparatus of state power have their own purposes. It is their use and  development of the state that determines its true function. And that  function has _not_ been to, as Gouverneur Morris put it, take part of its citizenrys property for the security of the remainder.

 No, the state does not tax so it can protect. It (ineptly) protects  so it can tax. It is an uncommon criminal who says to common criminals,  Hands off, those are _my_ victims. It is a monopoly of crime,  in the words of Nock: a highwayman, in the words of Spooner, except  even worse than a highwayman, who, for all his faults, at least does  not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or  his slave. It is a conquering horde, as Oppenheimer explained, settling  in and making itself at home, and prudentially limiting its extractions  so as not to kill its host.

 Rothbard built on and systematized these analyses, especially in his _For a New Liberty (_1973), _Anatomy of the State (_1974), and _The Ethics of Liberty (_1982).  Rothbard showed how the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit  gang writ large One of his most important contributions to this  tradition was to integrate with it the insights of Étienne de La Boétie,  David Hume, and Ludwig von Mises to explain how such bandit gangs  hide their criminal nature with a veil of legitimacy weaved by Court  Intellectuals and draped, Matrix-like, over our eyes by public schools  and state-dominated media. These lackeys bamboozle and indoctrinate the  public in exchange for a share in the pelf.

 Thus, the State is a provident predator, prudentially progressing to parasitism, propped up by propaganda.

 Morpheus wisely warned Neo, Remember. All Im offering is the truth.  Nothing more. After all, the truth can be an awful thing to wake up  to. Neos virtual life of office work, internet lurking, and clubbing  was swept away as he awoke to a hellish reality of prison-pods and  killer robots.

 It may not be quite as visually dramatic as that, but Rothbards Red  Pill also packs one hell of a punch, and can send you reeling. It is  deeply unsettling to see the veils of legitimacy and euphemism lift off  of formerly cherished institutions.

 That precious public school you drive by each day stands revealed as  an indoctrination and sedation camp, with creepy droning pledges of  submission, and the inculcation of worshipful reverence for the States  most blood-soaked past leaders.

 The heroic cop in the car behind you stands revealed as a highway  robber, slave catcher, and fascist brutalizer, who will mug you the  first chance he gets, shackle and cage you for profit if you have the  wrong kind of herbage on your person, and may beat you into the pavement  or put a bullet in your head if you somehow piss him off.

 The freedom-defending wars you see covered on cable news, even the  good wars in your history textbook, stand revealed as a corrupt  atrocities of mass murder and terrorism.

 The good guys become bad guys, and many bad guys become victims, as your whole world inverts.

 In _The Matrix_, the character Cypher deeply regrets not  having taken the Blue Pill and actively seeks to rewipe his mind so he  will forget reality and return to the dream. Ignorance is bliss, he  says longingly. Similarly, the true nature of the State is far too harsh  a reality for some to accept, even for many libertarians. Such people  will often have a viscerally negative reaction to Rothbard, because he  always gives you the Red Pill straight, with no adulteration or  soft-pedaling.

 For others, like Neo, living a pleasant, but deeply suspect lie is  far more agonizing than looking reality, awful as it in some ways is,  square in the face, and doing the hard work necessary to change it. Such  individuals will even become invigorated by the moral clarity that  naturally comes with dropping double-standards. This may partially  explain Rothbards own ready joyous cackle (a far cry from Neos  perpetual hangdog demeanor) and love for life as well as liberty.

 Like Morpheuss, Rothbards Red Pill offers  the truth, and nothing more. But for many, the truth gives a natural  high unlike any other.

The Best of Dan Sanchez



  

                                                                                  Dan Sanchez [send him mail] directs the Mises Academy at the Mises Institute. He writes at Mises.org and Medium.com. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

                             Copyright © 2014 Dan Sanchez

                             Previous article by Dan Sanchez:  How Inflation Ruins Your Life

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Its Time for Freedom*

                                                                               Tom Woods and Lew Rockwell on Against the State: an Anarcho-Capitalist Manifesto.

Listen to the podcast

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Read Adam's new brilliant book:

*FREEDOM!*

Adam Kokesh 
 

*Introduction*

    Right now is an amazing time to be alive. The human experience is as rich and delightful as ever and every day carries the promise of a better world. Not everyone sees it that way, but on the whole, Team People is doing very well. We have come a long way and thats something worth taking a step back to appreciate. But the current path is not sustainable. Governments are transferring more wealth than ever from the poor to the rich. We are rapidly approaching a point where we must adapt or perish. The short view of history tempts pessimism. We might see the recent steps backward as the triumph of evil over good, or at least a turn toward mutual annihilation. They are merely the steps backward in a long progression of one step backward and two steps forward. 

    A truly free society does not exist just because we have been convinced we are free. A truly free society cannot exist when we have been so thoroughly propagandized as to define freedom in terms of government-granted privilege rather than as a universal moral principle. However, a free society is inevitable because the global paradigm is shifting as we learn how to better assert our right of self-ownership.
    We all know life is better with freedom  that our own individual experiences dont mean nearly as much without the ability to assert our will, rather than having our choices limited by force. Many of us today still experience lives dominated by the edicts of others. Many still live under the threat of death from war. While some are doing relatively well and enjoying a great deal of personal wealth and autonomy, many are not. Even those who are doing well are living in a less vibrant and robust environment due to violations of individual freedom around the world. 
    Any act of violence or threat of violence between individuals represents a violation of someones freedom. The great illusion of the current paradigm of statism is that governments achieve a worthwhile reduction of violence. Governments are the greatest cause of violence in the world today. They are coercive monopolies with only an illusion of public support. Everything they do is based on a presumed right to point guns at people who are acting peacefully.

    Many of us are dependent on government, and because it takes on a large role in society, one can claim that everyone benefits to some degree. This doesnt mean the benefits justify the cost, and the vast majority of us experience a net loss due to government. Even if we are convinced that most people have a net gain from government, we can always do better without using violence. 

    Freedom is the ability to exercise your will within your rights without the threat of force from anyone else. Its really that simple. You own yourself. No one can claim even partial ownership over you without violating your rights. By abolishing statism we will achieve a world free of miserable victims and miserable victimizers. We will create a world in which all relations are free of force and coercion. We will see each other as partners in the human experience, united in our desire to live free and realize our potential. We are destined to build a society based on respect and cooperation.

*1. The Philosophy

    I. Freedom*

    Freedom is what you have when no one is forcing their will on you. Everyone inherently recognizes this as a good thing because we all value our power to make decisions. We all value making decisions without being threatened. Unfortunately, most of us have not taken the time to consider the precise nature of freedom and its foundation in universal undeniable principles. Applying those principles to big issues may be complicated, but the concept of freedom is not. When applied consistently, it shows the way to a more harmonious society.
    If somebody is forcing their will on us, clearly, we are not free. So perhaps it is helpful to think of freedom not as a substance, but as an ideal state of social harmony in which no one is forcing their will on anyone else. A violation of freedom is an attack on a particular victim whose will is being forcibly hindered by taking their life, stealing their property, or threatening them with assault. Freedom is not just an ideal state of society, but a moral code for respecting the rights of others.

    Self-ownership is an integral part of being human. You own yourself. You own your body. You own your labor. For anyone to assert otherwise is to attempt to restrict your freedom or make you a slave. 

    Because you own yourself, it is wrong for someone to initiate force against you or your property. Acceptance of this simple fact is the foundation of a free and peaceful society. This universal non-aggression principle applies to everyone, and it is therefore wrong to kill, injure, assault, steal from, or threaten another person. Anyone who directly violates others, supports the violation of others, or violates others on behalf of someone else is holding us back from achieving our potential through the harmonious and mutually beneficial transactions that take place in freedom.


Read more: http://www.adamvstheman.com/freedom/

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Bribery Central*
Paul Rosenberg

 The treasures of a continent flow through Washington DC. Where else would we expect the thieves to be gathered?

 But DC is not rustic like Chicago; it’s a well-polished town. The  deals look pretty and they are sanctified by law. But if it weren’t for  the sale of government favors, DC would be a fraction of its glittering  self.

 Visit some time and hang out for a while on K Street. Most of the  lobbyists moved to the suburbs years ago, but there is still enough  activity to give you a feel for what goes on. Then spend a few days at  Tyson’s Corner Center around lunchtime. You’ll see lots of very fine  clothing and very fine deals being handled in pristine ways. It’s easy  to miss the fact that lobbying is little more than bribery in tailored  suits.

 I leave you with a quote from Frederick Bastiat :
_When plunder becomes a way of life  for a group of men living together in society, they create for  themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a  moral code that glorifies it._ 
 The old Frenchman nailed it.

 Paul Rosenberg

Read more: http://www.freemansperspective.com/bribery-in-america/


What is to be done? Learn and teach correct principles of Liberty:
*Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)*

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> I agree with you. We are saying the same thing, I believe. It is exactly the same.


 So, do you still think that there can and should be a state managing so-called public property?

If so, how are you defining "state"?  What exactly is the nature and characteristics of the "state" that you are calling for?  Thanks,

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> So, do you still think that there can and should be a state managing so-called public property?
> 
> If so, how are you defining "state"?  What exactly is the nature and characteristics of the "state" that you are calling for?  Thanks,


﻿That is an important question. Hoppe and Rothbard define state as an entity that claims the "right" to tax/plunder private property and to have a monopoly of aggressive violence. Under that definition, state is evil and unjust, (by definition), and has no right to exist, because aggressive violence is the very definition of evil.

There is, however, a definition of a just state. (See Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)). A definition of a just state (a state that does not violate private property) is as follows:

*"State is public property and its just government."* (See Third Fundamental principle of Liberty in the top post.)

Public property is property to which all citizens have equal claim of ownership.

Does public property exist? Yes. 

Should it exist? To forbid it by violence would be unjust.

So to summarize: It does exist, and it has a just right to exist. Therefore it should be justly managed/governed, as described in the Third Principle.

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## osan

> Added two more amendments bringing total to 7, with the first one being the root of the 6, which are derived from, and amplify the first.
> *Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)*  << newThe Fundamental Law Constitutional AmendmentHonest Money Constitutional AmendmentConstitutional Amendment Abolishing TaxationNo Judicial Monopoly Constitutional Amendment (NJM) << newNullification - Constitutional Amendment Constitutional Amendment: Abolishing Copyrights and Patents


Meh... ad hoc wheelspinning in the vain attempt to fix that which is fundamentally broken.

If we are to have governMENT as an instrument of governANCE, it should be the one of last resort.  That said, if such governMENT is to be established by constitutional specification, then let us start with a clean page and employ the lessons that the past 220+ years of foulups that began from basically the first days of the present Constitution and write one that has perhaps at least a marginally better chance as long-term success.  Trying to repair that which is fundamentally broken is a fool's errand.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Meh... ad hoc wheelspinning in the vain attempt to fix that which is fundamentally broken.
> 
> If we are to have governMENT as an instrument of governANCE, it should be the one of last resort.  That said, if such governMENT is to be established by constitutional specification, then let us start with a clean page and employ the lessons that the past 220+ years of foulups that began from basically the first days of the present Constitution and write one that has perhaps at least a marginally better chance as long-term success.  Trying to repair that which is fundamentally broken is a fool's errand.


Not if it increases the amount of justice and liberty.

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## helmuth_hubener

> ﻿That is an important question. Hoppe and Rothbard define state as an entity that claims the "right" to tax/plunder private property and to have a monopoly of aggressive violence. Under that definition, state is evil and unjust, (by definition), and has no right to exist, because aggressive violence is the very definition of evil.


 Yes, I would agree.  This is, in fact, the standard definition of the state.  Not just among libertarians, among all political scientists.




> There is, however, a definition of a just state. (See Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)). A definition of a just state (a state that does not violate private property) is as follows:
> 
> *"State is public property and its just government."* (See Third Fundamental principle of Liberty in the top post.)


  Public property and its just government.  OK.




> Public property is property to which all citizens have equal claim of ownership.


 I do not believe any such property exists.

Can you give an example of a piece of property which "all" citizens own?  And not only that, own exactly equally?

Sounds, frankly, like utter nonsense to me.




> Does public property exist? Yes.


 I very vigorously contest that.

I believe that statement to be completely and stupendously false.




> So to summarize: It does exist, and it has a just right to exist.


 It actually does _not_ exist.  It is logically and practically impossible -- absolutely impossible -- for "all" to own anything.  Nothing, from a pencil to a motorcycle to a corn field, is justly owned equally by "all."




> Therefore it should be justly managed/governed, as described in the Third Principle.


 No such property exists.  Therefore, all property can be private property.  And should be.

To manage any property on any principles other than those of private property is incoherent and unjust.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Can you give an example of a piece of property which "all" citizens own? And not only that, own exactly equally?


Yes. I think I already did that, but I'll repeat.

An example of a public property, i.e. property to which all citizens have equal claim of ownership, would be a public road on which millions of people have traveled for centuries. Every one has just as much right to travel on it as the next man, and no one can justly forbid anyone from traveling on it. That constitutes public property by definition, because everyone has equal claim upon it. Can you justly forbid anyone from using the road? No.

Why does this equal claim exist? Because it is impossible to establish a just exclusive claim, since millions have been using it. Best you can do, to lock it down, is to have majority of interested users create a jointly held company that would honor provable prior use claims, and thus fold all users into a company. But before this happens. It is public property by definition.

----------


## osan

> Not if it increases the amount of justice and liberty.


I must disagree.  We are either free or we are something else.  There is NOTHING in between.  Having "more" liberty directly implies that someone is doling it out, further implying that it is a privilege and not a right.  ULTRA FAIL. 

In this context, liberty and freedom are not the same thing.  Being "on liberty" as in "shore leave", for example, does not mean you are free.  It means someone has deigned to let you go whore-hopping in town this weekend.  They can as readily rescind that privilege.  Freedom is absolute in that it is your right.  That right is either respected in toto or it is denied identically.  Whether I deny your freedom in great measure or in the tiniest epsilon, the fact is that I presume mastery over you in all cases, the only differences being in degree alone.  In all such cases, your liberties are conditional upon my deign, making them by their nature and of necessity capricious and unreliable.  There is no freedom there, but only grants of privilege, making you a de-facto serf at best and an abject slave in the worse case.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I must disagree.  We are either free or we are something else.  There is NOTHING in between.  Having "more" liberty directly implies that someone is doling it out, further implying that it is a privilege and not a right.  ULTRA FAIL.   In this context, liberty and freedom are not the same thing.  Being "on liberty" as in "shore leave", for example, does not mean you are free.  It means someone has deigned to let you go whore-hopping in town this weekend.  They can as readily rescind that privilege.  Freedom is absolute in that it is your right.  That right is either respected in toto or it is denied identically.  Whether I deny your freedom in great measure or in the tiniest epsilon, the fact is that I presume mastery over you in all cases, the only differences being in degree alone.  In all such cases, your liberties are conditional upon my deign, making them by their nature and of necessity capricious and unreliable.  There is no freedom there, but only grants of privilege, making you a de-facto serf at best and an abject slave in the worse case.


Fine. The point I make is that freedom and justice can be won by degrees. The more of it the better, perfect justice being the best.   You cannot deny that there exist different degrees of wrongdoing, and therefore, different degrees of injustice.   So if justice is found more often and by more people, we are improving the world. That is my point. And of course the goal must always be Perfect and Total Freedom and Justice. There I agree with you.     Thanks.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> An example of a public property, i.e. property to which all citizens have equal claim of ownership, would be a public road on which millions of people have traveled for centuries. Every one has just as much right to travel on it as the next man, and no one can justly forbid anyone from traveling on it. That constitutes public property by definition, because everyone has equal claim upon it. Can you justly forbid anyone from using the road? No.


 Great example!  I disagree entirely.

Who maintains the road?  Who paves it?  Seems like they would have an awfully lot more ownership claim over it than me.  I've never even seen the road.

Who lives along the road?  What businesses and households?  Seems like they also would have an awfully lot more ownership claim over it than me.  Again, I've never even seen the road.

Also, because I am such a stickler for keeping these things grounded in reality (well, at least this time I'm going to be): could you please name the specific road you are thinking of?  Then we can be talking about something real: stretch of land X, so many feet wide and so many miles long.




> Why does this equal claim exist? Because it is impossible to establish a just exclusive claim, since millions have been using it.


 Just using something establishes exactly ZIP.  ZIP.

I cannot emphasize this enough.

ZIP.

I have used the corridors of the mall many times.  So, how much ownership claim do I have to it?

ZIP.

I have used this website many times.  So, how much ownership claim do I have to it?

ZIP.

I have often used my neighbor's ladder.  So, how much ownership claim do I have to it?

ZIP.

Using something establishes ZIP.




> Best you can do, to lock it down, is to have majority of interested users create a jointly held company that would honor provable prior use claims, and thus fold all users into a company.


 This would be a fine thing to do.  Would you advocate doing this?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Great example! I disagree entirely.
> 
> Who maintains the road? Who paves it? Seems like they would have an awfully lot more ownership claim over it than me. I've never even seen the road.
> 
> Who lives along the road? What businesses and households? Seems like they also would have an awfully lot more ownership claim over it than me. Again, I've never even seen the road.


The point is that no one who lives next to such road has a right to forbid someone to travel on it.
This is key:
a) EVERYONE has an equal right to travel on it.
b) NONE can be justly denied.

Can you deny points (a) and (b)? If you cannot prove them wrong, you cannot assert that the road is not public under the definition. That is key.




> Also, because I am such a stickler for keeping these things grounded in reality (well, at least this time I'm going to be): could you please name the specific road you are thinking of? Then we can be talking about something real: stretch of land X, so many feet wide and so many miles long.


I don't have an example in mind, but interstate highways, and oceans seem good examples.




> Just using something establishes exactly ZIP. ZIP.
> 
> I cannot emphasize this enough.
> 
> ZIP.
> 
> I have used the corridors of the mall many times. So, how much ownership claim do I have to it?
> 
> ZIP.
> ...


The point is not use, but FIRST use. Why? Because that establishes just ownership. So all your examples are irrelevant because FIRST user can be produced, and it is NOT you.




> [Creating companies to govern previously public property.] This would be a fine thing to do. Would you advocate doing this?


It is certainly just to do so. It would be unjust to forbid such companies.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> The point is that no one who lives next to such road has a right to forbid someone to travel on it.


  Perhaps they *do*.  Why don't they?  They are the ones who live there.  Would it be just to use force against them to prevent them from determining who can and cannot enter their own community, and on what terms?





> This is key:
> a) EVERYONE has an equal right to travel on it.
> b) NONE can be justly denied.


  That is indeed key to your argument.  And that is why your argument fails.  Because there is no such property.  It does not exist.




> I don't have an example in mind, but interstate highways, and oceans seem good examples.


  Please come up with a specific example.  For instance, do you think that I-15 from Salt Lake to Provo would be a good specific road to talk about?  If not, name another.




> The point is not use, but FIRST use. Why? Because that establishes just ownership. So all your examples are irrelevant because FIRST user can be produced, and it is NOT you.


  So is your claim that a roadway is different because "first use" can_not_ "be produced"?




> It is certainly just to do so. It would be unjust to forbid such companies.


 Would you advocate the creation of such companies?  Do you think that would be a desirable thing?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> That is indeed key to your argument.  And that is why your argument fails.  Because there is no such property.  It does not exist.


Are you saying there are, what we now call public roads, on which it is just for you to forbid people from traveling? How is that?




> Please come up with a specific example.  For instance, do you think that I-15 from Salt Lake to Provo would be a good specific road to talk about?  If not, name another.


Sure, let's take an interstate. Then address the Atlantic ocean, and if you have time the Mississippi river. Thanks.




> So is your claim that a roadway is different because "first use" can_not_ "be produced"?


Precisely. It is public because the exclusive owner cannot be determined outside of the procedure we discussed. Everyone has the equal right to use it.




> Would you advocate the creation of such companies?  Do you think that would be a desirable thing?


In certain instances, Yes!

----------


## osan

> Fine. The point I make is that freedom and justice can be won by degrees. The more of it the better, perfect justice being the best.   You cannot deny that there exist different degrees of wrongdoing, and therefore, _different degrees of injustice_.   So if justice is found more often and by more people, we are improving the world. That is my point. And of course the goal must always be Perfect and Total Freedom and Justice. There I agree with you.     Thanks.


Here we agree, just as there are degrees of oppression, vis-à-vis no degrees of freedom.

The world will likely never be quite just, but can it be free?  In the context of a long history of empire and of recent leaps in technological capabilities, the question is certainly of the $64 variety.  As I have written previously, barring an extraordinary event that disrupts the _willed_ path of mean human thought from its current state of general and immeasurably profound stupidity, I see little chance of humans becoming free in large numbers.  Perhaps some island populations who arm themselves mightily... but who can arm effectively against nukes or all bio-weapons?  The mindset of the tyrant is so well trained to the meaner's acceptance that the situation _seems_ hopeless at this point.  Tyrants will pass the baton to their heirs uninterrupted no matter what we do, short of a quantum change in our _fundamental_ views.  I do not believe at this time that this assertion can be disproved.  The set of common basic assumptions about who we are, our relationship to our fellows, and our place in this world and in life is so wildly distorted from that of free men that I see at best the possibility of a prettier state of slavery for us, and even that is very remote at this stage of human affairs.

The average man is at the distinct disadvantage here precisely because he chooses _not_ to be a wicked beast striving to take from others that which is not rightly his to apprehend.  He appears to want mainly to be left alone in the political sense and to live his life as best he can.  The tyrant, OTOH, is tireless in his pursuit of more.  The average man has become ever more tolerant of this predatory behavior, and there is no indication of this coming to an end any time soon.  Therefore, it appears by abstraction that the tyrant will always thrive precisely due to the differences in nature between the wolf and the sheep. 

In pre-empire days, sheep-types did not survive very long, leaving the wolves to watch over each other.  Once the city came to exist, some became lazy and the remaining wolves flourished when they quickly discovered the differences between people like themselves and the rest.  It was only matters of time and cleverness in the distortion of reason and truth before the wolves gained sufficient control over the rest to where they were able to steer their hamlets of "civilization" as they pleased.... more or less.

Now the sheep outnumber the wolves by perhaps as much as a million to one.  The true wolves have other, lesser-wolves well trained to be their servants - the men with guns who actually go and do the killing for them in enforcement of wolf fiat.  The rest now show almost universal sheep-quality, and that is why I assert that nothing short of a disruptive event stands even the merest chance of returning such people to their now deeply dormant wolf origins.  The only way sheep will return to their wolf roots is when the only other choice is immediate extinction from life, and even then droves will simply be extinguished for doing nothing. Barring this, they will be driven ever more tightly into a hem and as the worsening conditions slowly eat away their health and their lives, they will meekly lie down and die off because they will never ever connect the dots so clearly arrayed before them.  They will view this condition as unavoidable, inevitable, and therefore beyond their power to bring to alteration.  They will accept this for themselves and the children they so stalwartly profess to "love".  They will chalk it up to the usual idiotic nonsense such as "God's will", "the environment", or other circumstance beyond their control.  But they will never attribute the condition of their pending doom to the machinations of some of their fellows in a way that would indicate positive intent to destroy them or the knowing disregard that this destruction would be the result for many.  So long as that state of psychological affairs prevails sufficiently, the tyrants will be safe from any mass backlash.  And as the wolves perfect their technologies of extermination, the prospects of _any_ backlash, no matter how universal, diminishes and further ensures their very long-term perpetuation.

The average man either does not see what is really happening in this world of human affairs or they disregard it because they feel it costs them less to do so than to do otherwise.  So long as this is the case, we will see no fundamental change in the relations between wolves and sheep, the latter wanting the world to be rid of the former but always expecting someone else to do it.  Why?  Because they are too lazy or timid to do it themselves.  But who else can do it?  Other wolves.  But in the mind of the meaner, those would be _good_ wolves.  It's the old story of "The Seven Samurai" or "The Magnificent Seven" in the flesh of the real world played out for thousands of years.  Timid, bed-wetting types hiring one set of bad men to rid them of another.  What do you think it is we do every election cycle?  We're not hiring fellow sheep.  We are asking wolves to displace other wolves and save us from being eaten by... _wolves_.

If this circumstance does not define "insanity" with the clarity of ultimately deep punctuation, then nothing can.

This system, this American Constitution before which so many prostrate themselves in worshipful adoration, is precisely a system that guarantees the perpetuation of the sheep class, which indeed needs to be eliminated if freedom is to be realized.  You CANNOT be a free sheep.  There is NO SUCH THING precisely because there are predators out there and to rely upon other predators to protect you is raving, hollering insanity.  It matters not a whit how benevolent the protector wolves may be or how endlessly so.  You still live subject to THEIR view of things and the moment Theye deem this freedom or that one no longer appropriate, they tell you it is no longer allowed *for your own good*.  And there you are, once again, in the jaws of wolves and never free.

The ONLY solution is to return to your wolf roots.  There is literally no other way because there is no other path to parity with wolves other than to be one, oneself.

We can cite fundamental principles all day long.  They mean NOTHING without the means and the ready will to literally execute anyone who violates you.  That is the harsh truth behind "might makes right".  Without might, there is no existence in accord with any principle upon which one may rely.  It is the threat of immediate destruction that keeps wolves polite between one another, on the whole.

Look at chickens, which are direct analogs of human beings in terms of their social interactions.  I am now raising 15 tiny baby Buff Orphingtons for a friend.  Before yesterday there were 16.  One sickened and the others immediately went to work on her and she promptly died.  Now look at human children: they do precisely the same thing and adults _tend_ not to because it is beaten out of them.  But even well trained adult sheep can be whipped into a frenzy such that they will consume each other.  Our history is rife with such examples.  The wolf is alive inside most of us, but has been trained to a muzzle and will "come out" only with the permission of the Whipmaster.

All of this is plain to see for anyone and everyone, if only they had the impetus and the nerve to look and behold.  But they don't.  They want to believe the honey-dipped lies they were fed as children because they seem so much prettier than the harsh truth of what it REALLY means to be free.  No, people do not want freedom at all; they want the impossible - a sugary sweet world where their every whim is satisfied and nothing ugly happens in resulting costs to provide it.  Why do you think the idiocy or Star Trek has been so wildly successful?  "Early Grey, hot" <whiiiiiizzzzz>  "Aaaahhhh...."  No cost.  Everything shat into your lap at the bark of a command.  That is what people have come to believe is the world.  

"$#@! freedom.  We've got _stuff_."

As was the case with myself, you have pooched it by having placed the cart before the horse.  Forget your principles for now.  Squirrel them away, perhaps for some time when they may do some good.  For now, concentrate on returning men to their proper state as apex predators such that they stand shoulder to shoulder, if equality and freedom are the objects of your crusade.  Or at least focus on becoming a wolf yourself.

Otherwise, resign yourself to things as they are and as they shall be and forget all this idealism because not a whit of it will be realized until the sheep are eliminated, either through reversion or destruction.  Perhaps the latter is the better way?  Less to share.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Are you saying there are, what we now call public roads, on which it is just for you to forbid people from traveling? How is that?


 I do not know of any such road.  This is unsurprising, since I have nothing to do with roads.  I have read _Pavement Magazine_; does that count?  And I used to work for a surfacing and line-painting company.  But that's about as close as I've been to the road industry.  So no, there is is no road which I could have any sort of just claim on, and thus justly have any say about whatsoever.

But, the converse is not true.  The world is full of roads -- pretty much all of them -- on which it would be perfectly just for _other people_ to forbid _me_ from traveling.




> Sure, let's take an interstate.


 Which one, Foundation?  I want to talk about hard, fast, and real things, not imaginary things.  Please name a specific stretch of interstate.





> Precisely. It is public because the exclusive owner cannot be determined outside of the procedure we discussed.


 It seems like you just think that certain properties are going to be more problematic to privatize than others.  Is that about the gist of it?





> Everyone has the equal right to use it.


"Everyone" is an awful lot of people.

"Equally" is awfully equal.

Both of these things sound awfully unlikely to be true.  They're over-the-top.  They're hyperbole.  They're fuzzy, incorrect thinking.  The statement is simply untrue.  "Everyone" does not have "equal" right to use it.  They never did.




> In certain instances, Yes!


  In which specific instances would it not be desirable?  Could you present a specific instance, please?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> It was only matters of time and cleverness in the distortion of reason and truth before the wolves gained sufficient control over the rest to where they were able to steer their hamlets of "civilization" as they pleased.... more or less.


 So, you do admit that truth and reason are important, and it is only because of the distortion of reason and truth that the wolves gained control over the rest.  

 That is a very important realization, because it points the way to fixing this problem, i.e. restoration of truth and reason.  

 It also points to the fact that being a "wolf" is not a good thing, because it allows for destruction of reason and perversion of the truth. Two important points to remember.  




> The rest now show almost universal sheep-quality, and that is why I assert that nothing short of a disruptive event stands even the merest chance of returning such people to their now deeply dormant wolf origins.


 Two points. First you seem to think that being a "wolf" is a good thing, yet you admitted that it leads to trampling of reason and truth. Here you contradict yourself. I prefer a "lion," i.e. strength AND justice. Why is that important? Because "wolves" contradict themselves by perverting truth and reason, and thus unavoidably self-destruct. But if you respect truth and reason, you will gain power far beyond that of wolves, even the power of God.  

 Secondly, there will be a "disruptive event," because such is the nature of any highly polarized system that is building in contradiction as we now observe. 




> And as the wolves perfect their technologies of extermination, the prospects of any backlash, no matter how universal, diminishes and further ensures their very long-term perpetuation.


 You forget the fact that the greatest technology is possessed by Him in whom there is no contradiction, even God. All wicked systems, however armed, inevitably destroy themselves precisely because they trample upon truth and reason. The only thing that endures, and is capable of sustaining itself indefinitely is the system which holds Truth and reason sacred. Hence, the need to discover what those true principles are, and live in harmony with them. 




> Timid, bed-wetting types hiring one set of bad men to rid them of another. What do you think it is we do every election cycle? We're not hiring fellow sheep. We are asking wolves to displace other wolves and save us from being eaten by... wolves.


Again, I prefer sheep armed with the truth, or lions, whichever you want to call them.  




> This system, this American Constitution before which so many prostrate themselves in worshipful adoration, is precisely a system that guarantees the perpetuation of the sheep class, which indeed needs to be eliminated if freedom is to be realized.


I'd rather educate the sheep so they can dismiss the wolves. You seem to wish to fight the cancer by killing the patient, instead of killing the cancer.  



> You CANNOT be a free sheep. There is NO SUCH THING precisely because there are predators out there and to rely upon other predators to protect you is raving, hollering insanity.


 There is nothing wrong with sheep, rabbits, turtle doves, butterflies and etc. as long as they understand correct principles. As for the sheep, there is always a shepherd. As long as the sheep follow the Good Shepherd they will be safe because in him there is ALL power, and educated sheep, en masse are more terrible than a lion.  




> It matters not a whit how benevolent the protector wolves may be or how endlessly so. You still live subject to THEIR view of things and the moment. They deem this freedom or that one no longer appropriate, they tell you it is no longer allowed for your own good. And there you are, once again, in the jaws of wolves and never free.


 As I said, there is always the Good Shepherd, and if the sheep are wise they will follow him, then they will be stronger than a lion. No power of earth or hell can overcome a people led by God who follow his precepts of justice and truth.  

 You underestimate the almighty power of the truth.




> The ONLY solution is to return to your wolf roots. There is literally no other way because there is no other path to parity with wolves other than to be one, oneself.


 Wrong. As I pointed out, wolves however strong, contradict themselves, and thus cannot form a stable and prosperous society. As any parasite, they ALWAYS self-destruct, because their reign is base on deception, aggressive violence and lies, and their ultimate victory, as that of any parasite, results in their death, by definition.

  So, the ONLY solution is to educate yourself and your neighbors about the correct principles of truth and justice and live by them. That is the ONLY solution.




> We can cite fundamental principles all day long. They mean NOTHING without the means and the ready will to literally execute anyone who violates you. That is the harsh truth behind "might makes right". Without might, there is no existence in accord with any principle upon which one may rely. It is the threat of immediate destruction that keeps wolves polite between one another, on the whole.


You are right, might makes right. You only forget that ultimate might rests in a being free of self-contradictions, even God. A being free of self-contradictions is capable of exercising unlimited power. The sheep who follow the true shepherd and understand and live by the principles of truth and justice are unconquerable as God himself. Such is the almighty power of truth. It overcomes all.  




> As was the case with myself, you have pooched it by having placed the cart before the horse. Forget your principles for now. Squirrel them away, perhaps for some time when they may do some good.


 Ironically, it is you who places the cart before the horse. The horse, the engine of power, are the principles of truth and justice. If you are ever to have a hope of obtaining peace, justice, liberty and prosperity, these principles must lead the way.




> For now, concentrate on returning men to their proper state as apex predators such that they stand shoulder to shoulder, if equality and freedom are the objects of your crusade. Or at least focus on becoming a wolf yourself.


 You yourself asserted that the wolves pervert principles of truth and justice. Therefore, men must be returned to their proper state, but that sate is not of apex predator but of God, with freedom and justice for all. Only this state is free of self-contradiction, and therefore is capable to prevail, because a man with his eyes opened understands that we are all in separably connected, and therefore whatsoever you are doing to others, you are doing it to yourself.

I wish that you understand, that God arrived at this point of ultimate power by embracing true principles such as these, because ONLY in these principles there is no self-contradiction. And self-contradiction leads to self-destruction, by definition.  




> Otherwise, resign yourself to things as they are and as they shall be and forget all this idealism because not a whit of it will be realized until the sheep are eliminated, either through reversion or destruction. Perhaps the latter is the better way? Less to share.


Spoken like a wolf, and full of self-contradiction. Don't you understand that the solution is not to revert to a self-contradictory and self-destructive state of predator/parasite, but to self-harmonizing and self-sustaining state of God, because whatsoever you do to others, you are ultimately doing it to yourself? That is the truth that sets you free. That is what is meant by true enlightenment, because it is true. The greater the intelligence, the faster it arrives at this conclusion. But sooner or later, all will be constrained to acknowledge this ultimate truth.


 Good luck.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I do not know of any such road.  This is unsurprising, since I have nothing to do with roads.  I have read _Pavement Magazine_; does that count?  And I used to work for a surfacing and line-painting company.  But that's about as close as I've been to the road industry.  So no, there is no road which I could have any sort of just claim on, and thus justly have any say about whatsoever.
> 
> But, the converse is not true.  The world is full of roads -- pretty much all of them -- on which it would be perfectly just for _other people_ to forbid _me_ from traveling.


I am talking about any road that is now called "public." The simple fact of the matter is that ANYONE (who is a citizen or in the country legally) has as equal right to travel on it as anyone else, and NONE can be justly denied the right to travel on the road.

Do you dispute that such roads CURRENTLY exist?




> Which one, Foundation?  I want to talk about hard, fast, and real things, not imaginary things.  Please name a specific stretch of interstate.


It is irrelevant. Take any road that is currently called "public," and it will suffice for the example. But, if you insist, use the example you gave.




> It seems like you just think that certain properties are going to be more problematic to privatize than others.  Is that about the gist of it?


It is obviously true.




> "Everyone" is an awful lot of people.
> 
> "Equally" is awfully equal.
> 
> Both of these things sound awfully unlikely to be true.  They're over-the-top.  They're hyperbole.  They're fuzzy, incorrect thinking.  The statement is simply untrue.  "Everyone" does not have "equal" right to use it.  They never did.


This is the best estimate that can be rationally made at the time. They are what you call limits in mathematics. It is a fair aproximation, because no better aproximation is available now.




> In which specific instances would it not be desirable?  Could you present a specific instance, please?


Perhapse a public water or air way.

The point is free entry into equal ownership. As long as something is public, the entry into its ownership is free. If you lock it down with a company, then the ownership can only be passed formally. There are benefits to both, and both are to be decieded by the voice of the majority of owner-users.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

First, let me pause and point out the obvious: just as you have written before, we both believe very similar things.  I am just trying to understand exactly what the society you envision would look like.  Specifically, what the unique and anomalous element you have come up with -- the continued existence of a public property management agency -- entails in your unique variant of libertarianism.

Because other than that, you love Hoppe, you love Rothbard; we seem to like all the same people and have all the same political opinions.  But you depart from Rothbard and Hoppe and I on this anomalous element and so I'm trying to understand why.




> I am talking about any road that is now called "public." The simple fact of the matter is that ANYONE (who is a citizen or in the country legally) has as equal right to travel on it as anyone else, and NONE can be justly denied the right to travel on the road.


 I disagree.

Since you finally agreed to... well, not provide a specific example (Why so reticent?  No reason to make discussion difficult, Foundation!) but at least accept mine... we can now discuss something in the real world rather than high theory.  We are now discussing I-15 between Provo and Salt Lake.  If this road were next year to be made into a toll road, my rights would not be violated in the least.  Thus, obviously this toll-conversion could be justly done.  This would completely exclude me from being able to travel on the road unless I take the rather extreme step of taking out my hard-earned money and paying for it.  Thus, I obviously do not have any "right" to travel that road.  One does not have to pay for rights.

I do not have the right to travel on I-15.  I would say that probably a lot of other people likewise do not have this right.  In fact, I think it's safe to say that very few people do; perhaps no one.  Can you think of anyone?  Any specific person that has this right, and why?  How did they get such a right?




> It is irrelevant.


 Boy, I sure am writing a lot of irrelevant things in this thread.  Well, I guess it seemed relevant to _me_.  




> But, if you insist, use the example you gave.


 Thank you, thank you, thank you.




> This is the best estimate that can be rationally made at the time. They are what you call limits in mathematics. It is a fair aproximation, because no better aproximation is available now.


 We are not talking about infinities.  We are not talking about anything that could be considered remotely difficult or problematic from a mathematics point-of-view.  There are about 300 million people in the US.  There are about 2.855 million people in Utah.  There are about 1,140,000 people in the Salt Lake metro, and about 527,000 in the Provo-Orem metro.  Humans are available in conveniently discrete and countable units known as "individuals".  For each individual, we should be able to determine whether they have any ownership claim on the Salt-Lake-to-Provo-I-15-road; if they do, why they do -- what caused this result of ownership; and just how much ownership resulted.




> Perhaps a public water or air way.


 I think those would be wonderful candidates for privitization.  Everything works better when private.  All scarce resources should be privately owned.




> The point is free entry into equal ownership.


 I do not understand that at all, much less why it should be "the point".  I thought the point was to make us all free and sovereign?  I thought the point was that each *individual* have ownership of *his own* body and property, not to give *all* people some kind of *collective* ownership over all kinds of stuff.

Did I misunderstand the point?  Isn't absolute private property the point of our shared philosophy?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> First, let me pause and point out the obvious: just as you have written before, we both believe very similar things. I am just trying to understand exactly what the society you envision would look like. Specifically, what the unique and anomalous element you have come up with -- the continued existence of a public property management agency -- entails in your unique variant of libertarianism.
> 
>  Because other than that, you love Hoppe, you love Rothbard; we seem to like all the same people and have all the same political opinions. But you depart from Rothbard and Hoppe and I on this anomalous element and so I'm trying to understand why.


Thanks. Fair enough. Let's examine this difference and see if I am right on it.




> Since you finally agreed to... well, not provide a specific example (Why so reticent? No reason to make discussion difficult, Foundation!) but at least accept mine... we can now discuss something in the real world rather than high theory. We are now discussing I-15 between Provo and Salt Lake. If this road were next year to be made into a toll road, my rights would not be violated in the least. Thus, obviously this toll-conversion could be justly done. This would completely exclude me from being able to travel on the road unless I take the rather extreme step of taking out my hard-earned money and paying for it. Thus, I obviously do not have any "right" to travel that road. One does not have to pay for rights.


 Let's take a simpler example. Suppose Utah governor issued and order saying that all people with blue eyes and helmuth_hubener were no longer allowed to drive on I-15. Would that be just? Why not? What is the principle of justice that is operating here that determines right from wrong? Is the governor justified in carrying out any arbitrary order concerning I-15? Why not?




> I do not have the right to travel on I-15. I would say that probably a lot of other people likewise do not have this right. In fact, I think it's safe to say that very few people do; perhaps no one. Can you think of anyone? Any specific person that has this right, and why? How did they get such a right?


I think I-15 is public property, that is, it is collectively owned by the people of UT, therefore it can be governed by the voice of the majority of the people. Thus, YOU have a right to travel on I-15, and so is everybody else in UT.




> Boy, I sure am writing a lot of irrelevant things in this thread. Well, I guess it seemed relevant to me.


I didn't mean it like that. I meant that specific public property was irrelevant to the general principle discussed, meaning that ANY example of public property would do.




> Thank you, thank you, thank you.
> 
>  We are not talking about infinities. We are not talking about anything that could be considered remotely difficult or problematic from a mathematics point-of-view. There are about 300 million people in the US. There are about 2.855 million people in Utah. There are about 1,140,000 people in the Salt Lake metro, and about 527,000 in the Provo-Orem metro. Humans are available in conveniently discrete and countable units known as "individuals". For each individual, we should be able to determine whether they have any ownership claim on the Salt-Lake-to-Provo-I-15-road; if they do, why they do -- what caused this result of ownership; and just how much ownership resulted.


I agree. You seem to believe that you have zero claim of ownership upon I-15, yet by your vote you might influence how I-15 is managed. Why is that? Is it just? Do you think it a violation of justice that you can vote in such a way? Why not? Have you not been expropriated under threat of violence to pay for I-15, have not millions of other people? I think you and they do have a just claim of ownership upon I-15, and this is why you have a right to vote as to how it is should be maintained and used, etc, because you are a part owner of it.




> I think those would be wonderful candidates for privatization. Everything works better when private. All scarce resources should be privately owned.


Public property is simply a shorthand for a publicly held company owned by all the citizens of certain geographic location, whose rights of ownership over the property held by the company are so intertwined as to be impossible to separate by a convincing proof of exclusive ownership. Hence, it is managed like a publicly held company, with a caveat, that one becomes a shareholder of the company by taking residence in the geographic location, because this is the de facto way public property operates now. You would consider it unjust if the governor of your state said YOU are forbidden to travel on the highway. I would certainly consider it unjust. YOU have just as much right to travel on that highway as any other resident of your state.




> The point is free entry into equal ownership. 
> 
>  I do not understand that at all, much less why it should be "the point". I thought the point was to make us all free and sovereign?


Yes. I am talking in context here. When I said the point I meant the point of difference between Public Property, and a jointly owned company. That point of difference is that once such company (as you described) is formalized, one does not become a shareholder of it unless by a formal contract/purchase; whereas in the case of public property you are a shareholder by the mere fact of you being there, or being a resident/user of that geographic location. So even though both arrangements can be thought of a publicly held company, one, i.e. Public property has no bar to entry to ownership (you move in, you automatically become a voting co-owner); and the other is a formalized publicly held (traded) company, in which you have to formally buy a stock. So one has free entry of co-ownership, and the other does not.  




> I thought the point was that each individual have ownership of his own body and property,


True.  



> not to give all people some kind of collective ownership over all kinds of stuff.


You are not giving it. It already exists. Why? Because it is impossible to determine an exclusive owner or owners, except by the process we described earlier.  




> Did I misunderstand the point? Isn't absolute private property the point of our shared philosophy?


It is. I am simply trying to show that Private Property is the foundation of any other kind of property, such as Joint Ownership of property, as in husband and wife owning a house together, or as in one owning shares in a publicly traded company, or in Public property, where the share of each individual is his Private Property that ought not to be violated.   

 Public property is simply an extension of Joint Ownership of property, in which partial ownership comes by the mere fact of you being there, or being a resident of that location. Why? Because the majority of owners have not yet went through the trouble, or thought it unnecessary to prevent such free entry into their co-ownership.  

_Proof of ownership is key. _ 

 Where proof of exclusive ownership cannot be justly produced, public property exists.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Consent Lie*

                                                                                                           By Walter E. Block
Mises.org
                            June 16, 2014

  
 
                                                         Just as an important difference in everyday life is  that between a bathroom and a kitchen, so, too, does a crucial  distinction in political economic philosophy exist between government  and private contractual arrangements. But here is where the analogy  breaks down. There are other, even more important insights to be  garnered in ordinary living than that between these two rooms (e.g.,  dont eat poison, feed yourself, take care of babies); there is simply _no_ more  important delineation in libertarian theory than that which exists  between coercion (the government) and voluntary cooperation (the  market).

 Yet, such is the parlous nature of our discipline that there are even  people parading themselves around as libertarians who are unaware of  this distinction. Worse, there are those who write articles in  professional journals, and even books, which are dedicated in their  entirety to the obliteration of the difference between the state and  private market interaction.

 They  are not without an argument, paltry as it is. Exhibit A in their  arsenal is the condominium agreement. These libertarians wax eloquent  about the severity and comprehensiveness of such housing developments.  For example, they typically require that all exteriors be painted in the  same color; that fences be identical (e.g., everyone must have, say, a  picket fence); that there be no window air conditioning units. Some even  go so far as to stipulate the color of curtains that can be seen from  outside, and either compel, or prohibit, such things as floor rugs,  Venetian blinds, screen doors, types of foot mats and whether  automobiles must, or cannot be, parked in garages. Some prohibit  children entirely; others specify minimum ages for residents (e.g., 60  years old for retirement communities). And legion are the rules and  regulations concerning noise at which hours, parties, where tricycles  can be stored, etc. Compared even to some villages and small towns, the  mandates of these private communities can be intrusive, comprehensive,  and oft-times arbitrary.

 Then, too, there is the fact that both kinds of organizations are  typically run on fully democratic principles. And not only that: there  is a sense in which, in both cases, it can truly be said that people _agree_ to take part in the elections in the first place.

 In the case of cooperative housing, this is easy to see. All members  of the development sign a purchase contract, indicating willingness to  be bound by the condo constitution and by a formula (majority, super  majority, whatever) for altering its terms.

 For towns, no one, of course, signs the constitution. (If you dont believe this, go back and read Spooners _No Treason_.)  However, argue these libertarians, by moving into a village the  newcomer knows full well the rules of the political entity, or can  easily learn them: no spitting on the street, the zoning specifications,  speed limits, etc. And, in virtually all cases, town regulations are  far less all encompassing than those of condominiums. True, concludes  this argument, the city government garners taxes while the condo  collects membership fees, but this is a distinction without a  difference.

 The first chink in this seemingly airtight case can be seen when we  examine the position not of the new arrival in town, but rather that of a  landowner who was located there before the town was incorporated; or,  alternatively, when we look at the plight of the homeowner living just  outside the village limits, when it expands to take into its  jurisdiction people such as himself living in contiguous but previously  unincorporated areas. (We consider the second of these cases not the  first, since there are now far more individuals alive who have  experienced the latter, not the former.)

 So the mayor comes to this homeowner and says to him, Ive got good  news for you, Zeke. Youre now part of the town. Well collect your  garbage for you, well provide city water and sewage services, policing,  fire protection, membership in the library; heck, weve even got a  municipal swimming pool. Youll have to pay for welfare for the poor,  too, of course, but youve always helped your down at their luck  neighbors before, so that shouldnt be any burden on you.

 Replies Zeke: That really sounds wonderful. Were really getting  modern around her, arent we, Clem? But I tell you what. Im going to  take a pass on this wonderful opportunity. I see no reason for change.  Thanks, but no thanks.

 Whereupon responds Mayor Clem: I dont think Ive fully made my  position clear. This really isnt your choice. We took a vote on this,  and your side lost. Youre in, whether you like it or not.

 At this point states Zeke: Hitler came to power through an election.  So dont tell me about the ballot box. However, Ill give you one  thing, Clem. At least you dont add insult to injury. At least you dont  compound naked aggression with outright lying, Clem, like those  so-called libertarians who see no difference between being amalgamated  into a town against their will, and buying into a residential  community. Your demand for my tax money was refreshingly honest, albeit a  bit brutal, for a person I used to think of as a good neighbor.

 So much for the first chink in the armor, the case where the property  owner is forcibly incorporated into the town. There is indeed a  relevant difference between being compelled to be part of the village,  and voluntarily joining the condo.

 But what about the stronger case for the libertarian side of this  argument, the one where a new arrival moves into town, buys a house,  etc., knowing full well what rules and taxes he will be bound by? Is it  not true that at least in this case, the municipal government is  indistinguishable from the strata council that runs the condominium?

 Not at all. Consider the following case. I buy a home in a dangerous  neighborhood, say, the South Bronx. I know full well that the crime rate  there is high, and that I will be especially targeted, given the color  of my skin. Perhaps I make this economic decision because of the cheaper  real estate, or because I want to be closer to the people, the better  to study their situation and help eradicate poverty. In any case, as  soon as I move in, I am confronted by a street thug with a knife who says to me: Give me your wallet, you white mother f, or Ill cut you, man.

 Whereupon I pull out my gun and say to the criminal: My good man,  you are overmatched, firepower wise. Cease and desist from your evil  ways, and go about your legitimate business, if you have any.

 This street person, who, unbeknownst to me, is actually a bit of a  philosopher, expounds as follows: You dont seem to understand. Im one  of those libertarians who maintain that since you moved to the South  Bronx with the full knowledge you would very likely be subjected to  muggings of the sort Im now pulling (or at least trying to pull; Ive  never met a less cooperative victim than you; whats this world coming  to?), you in effect have agreed to be mugged by robbers like me. So, get  with the program, man.

 The point is, as we can readily see, the ability to foresee an event  is not at all equivalent to agreeing to it. Yes, I can full well predict  that if I move to the South Bronx, Ill likely be victimized by street  crime. But this is not at all the same thing as acquiescing in such  nefarious activities. Yet, according to the libertarian argument we  are considering, the two are indistinguishable.

 Similarly, the individual who locates in a city with taxes, zoning,  etc., can be expected to know he will be subjected to these  depredations, just like everyone else there. But this is more than a  country mile away from his having agreed to be coerced by these evil  doers. The new arrival in town no more gives permission for the tax  collector to mulct funds from him than does the newcomer to the South  Bronx give permission to the mugger to violate his rights.

 In very stark contrast indeed, the purchaser of a unit in a housing  development not only foresees he will be subjected to a monthly  membership payment, and to a welter of restrictions as to what he can do  with his property, but actually consents to pay the former and be bound  by the latter. The proof of this is that he signs a bill of sale,  stipulating all of the above. In the town-citizen case, there is no such  written contract.

 It is no exaggeration to say that the most important distinction in  all of libertarian theory is that between coercion and non-coercion.  Obliterate this divergence and there is nothing left to libertarianism  at all. This is so important, it bears repeating: libertarianism  consists of nothing more than the implications of this one single  solitary distinction. Without it, there is absolutely no theory.

The Best of Walter E. Block


                                                                                  Dr. Block [send him mail]  is a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a  senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending                the Undefendable, The                Case for Discrimination, Labor                Economics From A Free Market Perspective, Building                Blocks for Liberty, Differing                Worldviews in Higher Education, and The                Privatization of Roads and Highways. His latest book is Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty.


                             Previous article by Walter E. Block:  Walter Block Influenced by Left-Wing Jesuits

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*No, WWII Did Not End The Great Depression*
No, War is NOT Good for Echonomy.
The lies we are being taught:








Read more here:
*Frederic Bastiat: That Which Is Seen, and That Which Is Not Seen*
and
http://www.infowars.com/no-wwii-did-...at-depression/

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Thanks. Fair enough. Let's examine this difference and see if I am right on it.


OK.  You do agree that you are going off on your own on this then, right?  You do know that you are disagreeing with Rothbard, Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, and the vast majority of libertarians for whom you have admiration and who have provided your ideas.  The men whose writing adorns this thread.  I just want you to be clear on this: none of these men would agree with your position, as you have stated it so far.





> Let's take a simpler example. Suppose Utah governor issued and order saying that all people with blue eyes and helmuth_hubener were no longer allowed to drive on I-15. Would that be just?


 Of course it would.




> Why not?


 Actually, it would be.  So there is no reason.  The only thing that could make it unjust is if I somehow had an ownership claim on I-15.  But I do not.  So, my non-existent right to I-15 cannot be violated.

Now in this special case, everything that the state does is unjust simply by the nature of what the state is and how it operates.  It is unjust for the state to have a forcibly-maintained monopoly on the road industry.  When one agency arrogates to themselves such a monopoly, why, you could make the case that any limits or restrictions are unjust, even things like mandatory speed limits and traffic signals.  But in a normal, private property society, obviously it would not be unjust in the least for the road owner to determine whatever rules and limitations he chooses for his road.

The goal is for all roads to be privately owned.  This is not a particularly hard goal to accomplish.  Read Walter Block's book (you can read it for free!  You should!) on privatizing the roads.

Consider this: under your crazy proposed system of communist roads, how could any road ever be moved or removed?  Is this "public" road, bathed in the mystical and unexplainable aura of "publicness", ordained to remain that way to all eternity?  No, you will say, the people can vote it out in some democratic process.  Let me tell you, I have little to no respect for the democratic process.  This is a stupid system.  It is a horrible system.  It is nothing but mob rule.  And Winston Churchill was an idiotic, mass-murderous drunk.




> What is the principle of justice that is operating here that determines right from wrong? Is the governor justified in carrying out any arbitrary order concerning I-15?


 The owner, once there is an owner, is justified in doing arbitrary things with his property.  Yes.  Obviously.  The governor is not the owner, never claimed to be the owner, and no one believes that he is the owner, and yet his bureaucracy _does_ control what happens regarding the road -- and thus the root of many of our problems today.

We should have an actual owner.  Not a brain-dead, proven to fail, idiotic system like that myth we call "public property".  I am just shocked, shocked!, that anyone as thoughtful as you could believe in such a blatant absurdity.  It is an inherent contradiction.  Do you also believe in the Nicean Creed?  That God is everywhere and nowhere, three but only one, etc.?  Public property is no less nonsensical and impossible.




> I agree. You seem to believe that you have zero claim of ownership upon I-15, yet by your vote you might influence how I-15 is managed. Why is that?


 Because we currently live under a crazy system of mob-rule on this continent, and a communist road system happens to be a part of our particular brand of crazy.




> I think I-15 is public property, that is, it is collectively owned by the people of UT, therefore it can be governed by the voice of the majority of the people. Thus, YOU have a right to travel on I-15, and so is everybody else in UT.


 *OK.  No one in Nevada, then?  Just the legal residents of Utah, right?  And no one from Mexico, Canada, Panama, or anywhere else, right?  I want to get your story straight.*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> OK. You do agree that you are going off on your own on this then, right? You do know that you are disagreeing with Rothbard, Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, and the vast majority of libertarians for whom you have admiration and who have provided your ideas. The men whose writing adorns this thread. I just want you to be clear on this: none of these men would agree with your position, as you have stated it so far.


You, of all people, should know that names mean nothing. Authority means nothing, except it be from God. These men made great contribution to the cause of liberty, and I highly respect them for it, however, I believe I have a case, and I can prove it. Truth speaks for itself and is independent of anyone's opinion of it.




> “Let's take a simpler example. Suppose Utah governor issued and order saying that all people with blue eyes and helmuth_hubener were no longer allowed to drive on I-15. Would that be just?”
> Of course it would.


See here we disagree. Strongly. It would be highly unjust, and intuitively most people understand it. But I will show you WHY it is unjust.




> The only thing that could make it unjust is if I somehow had an ownership claim on I-15. But I do not. So, my non-existent right to I-15 cannot be violated.


You, and almost everyone in the country have been robbed, under threat of lethal violence to pay for I-15, whether you used it or not. Why? Because I-15 uses Federal funding, which is extracted through taxation. Since YOUR property has been violated to pay for I-15, according to justice, it makes you a part owner of it, as part of restitution of the violation.




> Now in this special case, everything that the state does is unjust simply by the nature of what the state is and how it operates.


Correct.




> It is unjust for the state to have a forcibly-maintained monopoly on the road industry. When one agency arrogates to themselves such a monopoly, why, you could make the case that any limits or restrictions are unjust, even things like mandatory speed limits and traffic signals.


Correct.




> But in a normal, private property society, obviously it would not be unjust in the least for the road owner to determine whatever rules and limitations he chooses for his road.


Correct. Except that the proof of exclusive ownership of I-15 does not currently exist, hence the best approximation currently available (until better proof is produced) is equal ownership, i.e. public property by definition.




> The goal is for all roads to be privately owned.


Maybe yes, maybe no. Why? Is it inconceivable that residents of a certain geographical location, whose ownership in a road is so profoundly intertwined might decide to treat it according to assumption of equal ownership by all the users? It is possible, and certainly just, until a better proof of ownership is produced AND a decision is made by the owners to restrict free entry into such ownership. For a just arrangement, two elements must be present: A) proof of ownership, and  
B) decision by the owners as to government of property.   



> This is not a particularly hard goal to accomplish. Read Walter Block's book (you can read it for free! You should!) on privatizing the roads.


Of course it can be accomplished. But UNTIL it is accomplished (meaning A and B) the best guesstimate is equal ownership, which is the definition of public property.  

So once again, a conversion to private property (and a bar to unrestricted entry into ownership) can be accomplished through the process we discussed earlier. But if this process is not followed, and/or if the users decide not to restrict free entry into co-ownership, public property exists by definition of the term.  




> Consider this: under your crazy proposed system of communist roads,


“Communist roads” imply the use of AGGRESSIVE violence. The arrangement of just public property (as described in the Third Fundamental Principle) has no aggressive violence in it, and is therefore just by definition.  




> how could any road ever be moved or removed? Is this "public" road, bathed in the mystical and unexplainable aura of "publicness", ordained to remain that way to all eternity? No, you will say, the people can vote it out in some democratic process. Let me tell you, I have little to no respect for the democratic process.


There is nothing wrong with democratic process as long as it is applied to the things that the group actually owns. Publicly traded companies are governed by the voice of the majority of the shares. That is just, as long as the property of no one is violated in the process. Will you say that Joint ownership of property is a) impossible and b) inherently unjust? I say no. Joint ownership of property can be perfectly just, as long as no aggressive violence is used, and as long as the share of each individual is not violated.




> This is a stupid system. It is a horrible system. It is nothing but mob rule.


Joint ownership of property is a fact, and there is nothing inherently unjust in it, therefore it has a perfect right to exist.




> And Winston Churchill was an idiotic, mass-murderous drunk.


Right. But what does it have to do with anything?




> “What is the principle of justice that is operating here that determines right from wrong? Is the governor justified in carrying out any arbitrary order concerning I-15?”
> The owner, once there is an owner, is justified in doing arbitrary things with his property. Yes. Obviously. The governor is not the owner, never claimed to be the owner, and no one believes that he is the owner, and yet his bureaucracy does control what happens regarding the road -- and thus the root of many of our problems today.


Right.  

What you are missing, however, is that you, and thousands upon thousands of people ARE the owners because they: a) have been using it for years (i.e. First Use is indistinguishable), and 
b) they have been forcibly robbed to pay for I-15,   therefore, according to justice they have become part owners of it.




> We should have an actual owner. Not a brain-dead, proven to fail, idiotic system like that myth we call "public property". I am just shocked, shocked!, that anyone as thoughtful as you could believe in such a blatant absurdity. It is an inherent contradiction.


Please show me the contradiction.




> Do you also believe in the Nicean Creed? That God is everywhere and nowhere, three but only one, etc.?


Partially.




> Public property is no less nonsensical and impossible.


Public property is the best approximation of ownership available, until a better proof can be given. Therefore it is just. *Proof is king.* The best available PROOF rules. This is key to this discussion.  




> “You seem to believe that you have zero claim of ownership upon I-15, yet by your vote you might influence how I-15 is managed. Why is that?”
> Because we currently live under a crazy system of mob-rule on this continent, and a communist road system happens to be a part of our particular brand of crazy.


Fine. That is the point. Via tradition of the people, and the criminal activity of the state, the ownership claims of thousands if not millions of people upon roads are indistinguishably intertwined (until a better proof can be produced). Therefore the best proof (i.e. the best approximation) must prevail (until a better proof is given). Short of the process you and I described earlier, the best working approximation available is EQUAL ownership by all the residents/users, which is the definition of Public property. If you don't like it, produce a better proof, and have the owners make decisions. UNTIL it is done, Public Property rules (as described in the 3rd Fundamental Principle) must justly prevail.




> “I think I-15 is public property, that is, it is collectively owned by the people of UT, therefore it can be governed by the voice of the majority of the people. Thus, YOU have a right to travel on I-15, and so is everybody else in UT.” 
> OK. No one in Nevada, then? Just the legal residents of Utah, right? And no one from Mexico, Canada, Panama, or anywhere else, right? I want to get your story straight.


All the residents of the geographic location who have been users of it, especially if they have been forcefully taxed (i.e. robbed) for it.


Friend, I apreciate your spirited debate. But your response seems to be overly emotional.  I prefer cold logic and reason. We are talking science after all. 

Logic is king. 
Reason is king.  

Let's start there.

Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Walter Block: Libertarianism from A to Z*
 
 By Walter E. Block
Mises.org
July 1, 2014

   




_Walter Block’s new book Toward a Libertarian Society_ _covers  a wide variety of topics from the death penalty to secession, and from  war to macroeconomics. Dr. Block recently spoke with the Mises Institute  about just a few of these._ *Mises Institute*: You say in your book that it is a  contradiction in terms to be both libertarian and to be for an  aggressive foreign policy. Why is this?

*Walter Block*: The essence of libertarianism is the  non-aggression principle (NAP). This means it is legitimate to use force  only in defense, or retaliation, but not to initiate it. However, an  aggressive foreign policy is an attempt to export democracy, or the  American way of life, or to make things easier for US business, at the  point of a gun or a bomb. Thus, this policy necessarily initiates  violence against foreigners, but not in defense of their attack on us,  nor in retaliation against such. Thus, there is a contradiction. It is  as if _A_ were to have the policy of punching _B_ in the nose, where _B_ did not first use violence against _A_. Clearly, _A_ would  be violating the NAP. This is true, however, whether it applies to an  individual or a large group, such as a nation. But what about 9-11? Did  they not attack us first? No. They were “over here” because we were  first “over there.” This was blowback. Had we not stuck our stick into  hornet’s nests in that part of the world, they would not have attacked  us. They were retaliating against the prior use of force on the part of  the US government.

*MI*: When it comes to the compatibility of libertarianism and labor unions, you say, “it depends.” What does it depend on?

*WB*: It depends upon whether organized labor violates  the NAP. They need not do so in order to pursue their goals, which is  an improvement in the wages and working conditions of their members. For  they do have one legitimate weapon in their arsenal: the mass quit. If  one person goes to the boss demanding improved pay, he is likely to be  shown the door. But if he says that all 500 employees will walk out of  the factory unless their demands are met, or at least negotiated, the  boss is more likely to make a counteroffer. If the union limits itself  to this sort of threat, it is entirely legitimate and is acting in  accordance with libertarian requirements. However, unions rarely, if  ever, limit themselves to a threatened mass quit. They also use violence  against those who try to pass through their picket lines, such as  replacement workers, or raw materials entering the firm’s property, or  finished goods leaving it. It is as if a husband divorces his wife, but  they surround her house with his friends who threaten to beat up any  potential suitor of hers. Leaving her, a quit, is justified; using  violence against competitors, is not.

*MI*: When it comes to building a better economy, you say that it is production that counts and not jobs. What does this mean?

*WB*: The goal is not jobs, but the goods and services  jobs bring about. If we could have the latter without the former, that  is, banish scarcity, all would be lovely. We could play (do whatever we  enjoyed) the live-long day. Unfortunately  we want more things than is available; that is why we have to work for  them. Suppose that the “jobs” consisted of digging holes in the ground,  and filling them up again, and that everyone did this and nothing else.  At the end of the day, we would have had mass employment, and we would  all starve to death because these “jobs” produced nothing to keep us  alive.

*MI*: One should not be surprised at all that you oppose the drug war, but what is the most important reason to oppose the drug war?

*WB*: There are many reasons to oppose the drug war.  It creates havoc in the lives of drug users. It promotes crime. As a  result of it, we have all too many people in jail. It is a victimless  crime, when limited to consenting adults. But the most important reason  to be against it is that the drug war violates the NAP. It uses violence  against peaceful users, and entrepreneurs who supply this good to them.

*MI*: How do you cure poverty? What is the best short answer to this question when a non-libertarian asks about it?

 WB: A very short answer is: promote private property rights, laissez  faire capitalism, and the NAP of libertarianism. A longer answer would  mention the fact that in the free enterprise system, the only way to  become wealthy (that is, cure poverty), is to engage in commercial  interaction. But this necessarily improves the well-being of all parties  to the exchange. Whenever Bill Gates sold a computer to someone for  $500, that person valued it at more  than this amount, otherwise he would not have purchased it; and it cost  Bill Gates less than that figure to produce the computer. Otherwise, he  would have gone broke. Each and every commercial transaction, buying,  selling, renting, bartering, borrowing, lending, employing, etc., is  mutually beneficial at least in the _ex ante_sense of  anticipations (we engage in the market since we expect to gain thereby).  Free enterprise is necessarily in this sense a wealth creating  institution. How else can poverty be cured, but by creating wealth?

*MI*: You’ve also written extensively on  environmentalism and free markets. Without government, wouldn’t we all  have to drink filthy water and breathe dirty air?

*WB*: Private property rights, along with the NAP, are  the two sides of the libertarian coin. Both are essential. But what is  pollution, whether air or water borne, other than a trespass of smoke  and dust particles onto the property, and into the lungs, of other  people? The government unfortunately, for many years, has not allowed  people to sue each other for such trespasses. If they had allowed this  to occur, the challenge of filthy water and dirty air would have long  ago been overcome.


The Best of Walter E. Block


Dr. Block [send him mail]  is a professor of economics at Loyola University New Orleans, and a  senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He is the author of Defending                the Undefendable, The                Case for Discrimination, Labor                Economics From A Free Market Perspective, Building                Blocks for Liberty, Differing                Worldviews in Higher Education, and The                Privatization of Roads and Highways. His latest book is Yes to Ron Paul and Liberty.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Celebrating the Overthrow of Tyranny*

                                                                                Ron Paul on the real meaning of July 4th.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> You, of all people, should know that names mean nothing. Authority means nothing, except it be from God. These men made great contribution to the cause of liberty, and I highly respect them for it, however, I believe I have a case, and I can prove it. Truth speaks for itself and is independent of anyone's opinion of it.


 I wasn't saying "you are wrong because you disagree with Rothbard."  I wasn't making an argument from authority, or an argument at all.  I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page and that you realized you were going off on your own on this deviation.  We are, and you do.  Perfect.




> See here we disagree. Strongly. It would be highly unjust, and intuitively most people understand it. But I will show you WHY it is unjust.


 You will show me why it would be unjust to deprive me of the use of property that isn't mine.  OK, let's see how that is:




> You, and almost everyone in the country have been robbed, under threat of lethal violence to pay for I-15, whether you used it or not. Why? Because I-15 uses Federal funding, which is extracted through taxation. Since YOUR property has been violated to pay for I-15, according to justice, it makes you a part owner of it, as part of restitution of the violation.


 Yes, we both understand this.  The principle is simple:

A thief took my stuff.
I should get it back.

You and I both agree to that principle, the principle of restitution.

But do I have the right to the eternal and perpetual use of the thief's living room?  That would be the principle:

A thief took my stuff.
I shouldn't get it back.
I, and my descendants, and their descendants, should get to party in the thief's living room perpetually and eternally.

That doesn't seem like quite as good a principle.

Nobody stole the road from me.  I never did own I-15.  I didn't homestead it, I didn't build it, nothing.  What they did steal was my money.  And what I'd like back is my money.  It's so simple!

What requirements and restrictions will be imposed on the usage of I-15 is an internal management decision, not a Great Moral Question.  The moral problems are the monopoly on road provision and the theft funding it all.




> Maybe yes, maybe no. Why? Is it inconceivable that residents of a certain geographical location, whose ownership in a road is so profoundly intertwined might decide to treat it according to assumption of equal ownership by all the users? It is possible, and certainly just, until a better proof of ownership is produced AND a decision is made by the owners to restrict free entry into such ownership. For a just arrangement, two elements must be present: A) proof of ownership, and  
>  B) decision by the owners as to government of property.


 This communist system of ownership is not desirable.  It does not work.

There are many, many, many types and modes and regions of property where the historical and legal provenance is anything but perfect and rigorous, like a mathematical proof.  What about areas that were used as communal farming grounds by peasants?  Do we need to restore all of that to its former communist glory?  Shared hunting grounds?  The problems that you see with privatizing roads and waterways exist also with essentially all land in general.  Do you want to abolish private property in land altogether, then?




> Communist roads imply the use of AGGRESSIVE violence. The arrangement of just public property (as described in the Third Fundamental Principle) has no aggressive violence in it, and is therefore just by definition.


 I believe it does.  How are these communist "just, public" roads paid for and maintained?  By "just, public" taxes!  The users use the "just, public" process of "just, public" democracy to "justly, publicly" decide how much _I_ should pay for their forsaken road, and to "justly, publicly" kick in my door and take it if I don't like it.  Am I right?  If not, explain how all the "just, public" property is going to be paid for and maintained.




> There is nothing wrong with democratic process as long as it is applied to the things that the group actually owns.


 The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one *can't define the group*.  Once the group is defined, it's no longer public property.

Fundamental: "I think I-15 is public property, that is, it is collectively owned by the people of UT, therefore it can be governed by the voice of the majority of the people. Thus, YOU have a right to travel on I-15, and so is everybody else in UT." 
Helmuth: "OK. No one in Nevada, then? Just the legal residents of Utah, right? And no one from Mexico, Canada, Panama, or anywhere else, right? I want to get your story straight."
Fundamental: "All the residents of the geographic location who have been users of it, especially if they have been forcefully taxed (i.e. robbed) for it."

Asking again: So no one in Nevada, then?  Those who are users, but _not_ residents of the geographic location, have no just right to travel on the road.  Those who live in Las Vegas have no just right to travel on I-15 from Provo to Salt Lake, not being residents there.  Right?




> Friend, I appreciate your spirited debate. But your response seems to be overly emotional.  I prefer cold logic and reason. We are talking science after all.


 If you read through my posts over the past many years, you will see I always use about the same style.  I do like to try to make my writing colorful, and as you say, "spirited," rather than dry and boring.  Please do not confuse that with being emotional -- I think you'll find me very calm and level-headed.  I worry from your comment you may have taken my somewhat confrontational style personally.  Please understand that I did not mean it personally in the least.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Yes, we both understand this. The principle is simple:
> A thief took my stuff.
> I should get it back.
> You and I both agree to that principle, the principle of restitution.
> But do I have the right to the eternal and perpetual use of the thief's living room? That would be the principle:
> A thief took my stuff.
> I shouldn't get it back.
> I, and my descendants, and their descendants, should get to party in the thief's living room perpetually and eternally.
> That doesn't seem like quite as good a principle.
> Nobody stole the road from me. I never did own I-15. I didn't homestead it, I didn't build it, nothing. What they did steal was my money. And what I'd like back is my money. It's so simple!


Just ownership theory states that the rightful owner of the property is either the first user of it, or recipient of it from a previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale. A) The first user is unknown. B) You have been robbed to pay for it, which means you are a part owner of it until a restitution can be made. From this, the best approximation must be made as to ownership of I-15. Unless a detailed analysis is made and a process that we described earlier applied, the best available approximation is equal ownership by all the users. This approximation must hold until a better and convincing proof is given. It takes work to produce such a proof and to identify rightful owners. Until that is done, equal ownership is the best guesstimate i.e.: you have just as much right to travel on that road as the next man.



> “Maybe yes, maybe no. Why? Is it inconceivable that residents of a certain geographical location, whose ownership in a road is so profoundly intertwined might decide to treat it according to assumption of equal ownership by all the users? It is possible, and certainly just, until a better proof of ownership is produced AND a decision is made by the owners to restrict free entry into such ownership. For a just arrangement, two elements must be present: 
> A) proof of ownership, and
> B) decision by the owners as to government of property. “
> 
> This communist system of ownership is not desirable. It does not work.


It very well might not be desirable in most cases, but it will have to do, until you have a convincing proof of ownership and have the owners arrive at a decision.




> There are many, many, many types and modes and regions of property where the historical and legal provenance is anything but perfect and rigorous, like a mathematical proof. What about areas that were used as communal farming grounds by peasants? Do we need to restore all of that to its former communist glory? Shared hunting grounds? The problems that you see with privatizing roads and waterways exist also with essentially all land in general. Do you want to abolish private property in land altogether, then?


Not at all. I simply point out the justice of the view that status quo of ownership must prevail until a convincing, just proof can be given to alter the status quo. No proof = no change of ownership. I think you will agree that it is reasonable and just.



> I believe it does. How are these communist "just, public" roads paid for and maintained? By "just, public" taxes! The users use the "just, public" process of "just, public" democracy to "justly, publicly" decide how much _I_ should pay for their forsaken road, and to "justly, publicly" kick in my door and take it if I don't like it. Am I right? If not, explain how all the "just, public" property is going to be paid for and maintained.


Public property user fees. That is the only just way to do it. You use it, you pay for it. You don’t, you don’t.



> The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one *can't define the group*. Once the group is defined, it's no longer public property.


I beg to disagree. Let me give you a for instance. Suppose there is a rich guy who says to himself I own a beautiful park. It is truly a masterpiece. I as the owner decide that I donate this park to all the citizens of the city I live in. It shall be managed by the voice of the majority of the residents of the city, from this time onward. So that any new resident of the city becomes voting part-owner of the park as long as he maintains a residence in the city.
Can this man do that? Yes. Is it just? Yes.
In essence, that’s what current public property, de facto, is. This current status quo of joint-ownership cannot be justly changed unless A) a better proof is given, and B) the owners make a decision to alter status quo.



> Asking again: So no one in Nevada, then? Those who are users, but _not_ residents of the geographic location, have no just right to travel on the road. Those who live in Las Vegas have no just right to travel on I-15 from Provo to Salt Lake, not being residents there. Right?


A federal interstate should be equally owned by the residents of the states through which it passes. This should prevail until (A) and (B) are satisfied.



> If you read through my posts over the past many years, you will see I always use about the same style. I do like to try to make my writing colorful, and as you say, "spirited," rather than dry and boring. Please do not confuse that with being emotional -- I think you'll find me very calm and level-headed. I worry from your comment you may have taken my somewhat confrontational style personally. Please understand that I did not mean it personally in the least.


Fair enough. Thank you. I enjoy your posts. Bring on reason, logic and truth.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

There are two broad categories of issues that your posts put forth, and which I'd like to address.

*1. Transitional difficulty in switching over from the current, statist system to a new, 100% private property system.

2. A belief model in which you think so-called "public property" can fit into a just libertarian system.*

The first category is minor.  The second goes to the fundamental nature and definition of what "public property" is.


*1
Transitional Difficulties*
The first should not be all that difficult to address.  Privatizing roads is not actually that difficult of a problem.  You should just read and absorb Walter Block's book on the matter.  Privatizing playgrounds, and duck ponds, and whatever other so-called "public" property about which you may be concerned are tasks even less difficult -- that is, it requires even less imagination to see how these could be done without causing any disruptions nor widespread difficulties.

What about privatizing the electrical grid, or the water supply network, or the wireless spectrum?  These are complex problems indeed; probably far more complex than simple primitive roadways like I-15 between Salt Lake and Provo.  Yet you have no disclaimer in your philosophy for them.  You make no jarring exception to your consistency for them.  Am I right?  You just believe -- as do I -- that the electricity industry should simply be completely private.  Am I right?

What about privatizing Social Security?  Very difficult transition!  So what do you say to that?  "Well, let's leave it in place as a so-called 'public' system until/unless the participants can get everything sorted out and agree on a solution via majority rule"?

What about privatizing the police, the prisons, and the court system?  Talk about a very difficult transition!  The mind boggles!  Yet you do not shy away from advocating just such a transition.  Do you?  You do not.  And rightly, and courageously, so.

All these transitions are difficult.  But the pay-off for going through them -- for replacing so-called "public" ownership and management with true private ownership and management -- is worth it in every case.  There are no exceptions.  And so difficulty is really no excuse at all.  The right action may not always be the easy action.  But difficulty is not the same as impossibility.  Though it may not be easy, yet the right thing should always be done.

Let me address a specific thing you have written:




> Just ownership theory states that the rightful owner of the property is either the first user of it, or recipient of it from a previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale. A) The first user is unknown.


 The first owner is unknown in many cases of existent property!  This doesn't really mess anything up.  As you say, "Status quo of ownership must prevail until a convincing, just proof can be given to alter the status quo."  This is a fine rule of thumb.  "Possession is 9/10th of the law" after all.

Right now, the status quo is not that "everyone" somehow "equally" owns I-15.  That is total bunk.  The status quo is that the USA federal government owns it.  They hold title to it.  They manage it.  They pay for it.  They decide who may and who may not travel on it.  They have complete and utter dictatorial control over it.  This institution is unquestionably the owner.  Period.  Everyone does _not_ currently have some sort of equal right to access and use I-15.  Obviously they do not.  A very limited group of persons may use it, in very limited and restricted ways.

The status quo would be for the federal government to remain the owner.  This is a more or less unacceptable status quo to us because we think the federal government is an immoral institution which should be stripped of all its ill-gotten properties.  There is ample proof of this.  And so, an alteration in the status quo is made: the federal government auctions off the interstate highway system piece by piece to the highest bidder, and, ideally, gives the proceeds to the taxpayers as (partial, meager) restitution for years and years of abuse.




> B) You have been robbed to pay for it, which means you are a part owner of it until a restitution can be made.


 Am I a part owner of the contents of the refrigerator of the welfare mother down the street?  Does all her food, her house, and her clothing, become the equal property of me and everyone else until some sort of ridiculous majority vote can decide otherwise?  Is that the "best approximation"?




> the best available approximation is equal ownership by all the users.


 I would say this is the _worst_ approximation.  This is an approximation which: 

1. bears no relationship to reality, and, even more importantly,
2. is completely unworkable and disastrous

Point two has been thoroughly and convincingly proven by sound social science and by the historical record.




> [How is public property paid for?] Public property user fees. That is the only just way to do it. You use it, you pay for it. You don’t, you don’t.


 What if the majority votes otherwise?  What if they would rather fund it through taxation?  What if the user fees don't cover maintenance costs and I-15 becomes impassable -- then no one can travel on the road?  What if they charge too much and I can no longer afford to commute on the road, which I count on for my livelihood?  What if they charge just me specifically too much?  What if they charge an extra $1,000 per trip for purple Volkswagon Bugs?  What if they vote to charge double to non-Mormons?  Would any of these actions be... _unjust_?


*2
So-called "Public Property" can be Just and Libertarian*
You defend public property as possibly just, and give what you think is an example of just and rightful public property:




> I beg to disagree. Let me give you a for instance. Suppose there is a rich guy who says to himself I own a beautiful park. It is truly a masterpiece. I as the owner decide that I donate this park to all the citizens of the city I live in. It shall be managed by the voice of the majority of the residence of the city, from this time onward. So that any new resident of the city becomes voting part-owner of the park as long as he maintains a residence in the city.
> Can this man do that? Yes. Is it just? Yes.


 Actually, no and no.  Now don't get me wrong, the principles you're basing this instance on are sound.  But you're a bit off in the details.

Rich Guy can give gifts, including parks, to whatever arbitrary group of people he choses.  True.  Mr. Guy can give $10 each to all red-headed women 6 feet and over.  Or he can give 1/5,042nd share of a park to everyone living within the boundaries of some circle he draws on the map, as you propose.  Great.

But you know who else has rights in these gift transactions?  Whose rights you have completely and utterly forgotten?  _The recipients!!_  They have rights, too!  Perhaps I'm a red-head and I don't _want_ to accept his $10; I think it looks improper, or tacky.  Guess what?  I can mail it back.  What if I live in the map circle and don't want a share of a park?  I can refuse to accept the share.  I can mail it back, or otherwise legally renounce it.  In short: I can opt out.

Because, you see, Rich doesn't own the circle he drew on the map, no more than he owns red-headedness, or height.  It's not _his_ city (if it is, that's another matter).  He almost surely does not actually know who all lives within its borders, and it's none of the owners' obligation to tell him.  He most assuredly will not know when people move in and out, and once he has given away all the shares in the property, he has no more say on what happens to it anyway.  My 5042nd share remains mine even if I move away.  I don't have to give it up.  And the park company is certainly under no obligation to give some newcomer a share just because he moved in.

So our friend Rich Guy can indeed do these things:

1. Form a corporation
2. Give the corporation ownership of any property he rightfully owns
3. Give all the shares of that corporation away to whatever individual or group he chooses
4. Watch helplessly as the new owners do whatever they want to do with their new-found property

He cannot:

5. Decide what group of people will own the park. ("He donates this park to all the citizens of the city he lives in.")  They can refuse to own it.  They can opt out.
6. Have any on-going say on how the property is managed after he is no longer the owner ("It shall be managed by the voice of the majority of the residence of the city, from this time onward").  Owners decide.  Non-owners don't.
7. Give any new shares to new move-ins. ("any new resident of the city becomes voting part-owner of the park").  Mr. Guy has no shares to give.  You can't give what you don't have.
8. Make people give up their shares when they move out. ("as long as he maintains a residence in the city").  Mr. Guy is out of the picture.  He can do squat.

Doing 1 through 4 is perfectly normal and fine.  It also has nothing to do with public property.  The group that owns the park is perfectly and clearly defined at every stage.  There are exactly 5042 people, each with a precise 1/5042nd share, and a certificate to prove it.  There's no conflict.  There's no confusion.  There's no majority ruling over a minority.  There's unanimous consent and nothing but perfectly voluntary interaction.

Doing 5-8 would be madness.  And that, my friend, would be public property.  Or at least bear some resemblance to it -- the ownership would still be better-defined than in public property as we know it.

With private property, one can opt in.  And one can opt out.  With so-called "public" property?  One can't.  That is a problem.  That is unjust.

*The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one can't define the group. If the group is defined, it's not public property.*



> A federal interstate should be equally owned by the residents of the states through which it passes. This should prevail until (A) and (B) are satisfied.


 So, by this rule, if I am understanding you correctly, the residents of Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, and California, all should be given equal title to the road(s) called I-15.  But _I-15 between Salt Lake and Provo_ only passes through Utah.  Why should it matter that some other road in Nevada happens to have the same name?  What if it had a different name -- changed its name at the border?  Would that matter?  If so, why?  If not, why not?




> Fair enough. Thank you. I enjoy your posts. Bring on reason, logic and truth.


 Thanks.  All the best!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> All these transitions are difficult. But the pay-off for going through them -- for replacing so-called "public" ownership and management with true private ownership and management -- is worth it in every case. There are no exceptions. And so difficulty is really no excuse at all. The right action may not always be the easy action. But difficulty is not the same as impossibility. Though it may not be easy, yet the right thing should always be done.


Difficulty was never the argument against privatization. Choice was. The only point I made was that residents of a certain location, being the best provable owners, may CHOOSE to leave certain things in public domain, to be governed according to justice by the voice of the majority of the residents of the location. It is conceivable that such a choice may be made by residents of certain locality. Heck, communist/socialist farms were voluntarily created in some places, then why not public property. All I am saying, IT IS A CHOICE. And as long as no aggressive violence is involved in the process it is perfectly just, and therefore has a right to exist. Do you get my point? Some things (probably most things) should be privatized, but some things can be left in a public domain if the owners choose so. 
Secondly, public property exists de facto, until and unless transition to private property is made. Transition is possible, often extremely desirable and worthwhile, but it must be made first. And until such effort is undertaken, public property exists as the best approximation of just ownership. Don’t like it? Provide a better proof of ownership, and get the owners make a decision. Until then, however, status quo, i.e. equal claim of ownership by the residents, must justly prevail. I emphasize again, justly changing status quo requires two things: A) proof of ownership, B) decision by the owners.



> Right now, the status quo is not that "everyone" somehow "equally" owns I-15. That is total bunk. The status quo is that the USA federal government owns it. They hold title to it. They manage it. They pay for it. They decide who may and who may not travel on it. They have complete and utter dictatorial control over it. This institution is unquestionably the owner. Period.


You are right. However you forget, that if a majority should vote it will decide the use of the road. That is the way the current system is defined.



> Everyone does _not_ currently have some sort of equal right to access and use I-15. Obviously they do not. A very limited group of persons may use it, in very limited and restricted ways.


Are you saying “a very limited group of persons may use” I-15? That is obviously incorrect. I bet hundreds of thousands are using it every day. Many millions have used it over the years.



> The status quo would be for the federal government to remain the owner. This is a more or less unacceptable status quo to us because we think the federal government is an immoral institution which should be stripped of all its ill-gotten properties.


The  way this ownership defined now IS public property. Predations of the current government notwithstanding, the definition is public property. They themselves violate it, but rational definition under which I-15 exists, IS public property. The arrangement is just as long as no aggressive violence is to be used, and it must prevail until a better proof is produced and a decision is made by the owners.



> And so, an alteration in the status quo is made: the federal government auctions off the interstate highway system piece by piece to the highest bidder, and, ideally, gives the proceeds to the taxpayers as (partial, meager) restitution for years and years of abuse.


I am not sure that would be just. Think about it. They PRINT money out of thin air, and you going to give them the highway system? No. For such an auction to be just the owners must first agree to the auction. Federal government is supposed to be, and pretends to be, a publically held company. Therefore the shareholders of the company, i.e. legal residents of US must decide what to do with public property, not a small group of banksters who hijacked the government and who will sell public property to themselves because they, literally, can legally counterfeit ALL the money they want. That is not just. The shareholders must decide whether or not they want such an auction. And in some instances, they very well may choose such an option, but it has to be their decision for this transaction to be just.



> Am I a part owner of the contents of the refrigerator of the welfare mother down the street?


Yes.



> Does all her food,


No. Just the food you paid for.



> her house, and her clothing, become the equal property of me and everyone else


If she bought it with money stolen from everyone, Yes.



> until some sort of ridiculous majority vote can decide otherwise?


Yes. And most of the food she ate, and the closings on her back should be probably forgiven her, because it is the most practical, and humane, and merciful thing to do.



> “the best available approximation is equal ownership by all the users. “
> I would say this is the _worst_ approximation. This is an approximation which:
> 
> 1. bears no relationship to reality, and, even more importantly,
> 2. is completely unworkable and disastrous


The reason for this approximation is the very fact that government, as it should be, and as it claims itself to be, is a publically held company governed by the voice of its shareholders, i.e. its citizens. That is the status quo. And were there no aggressive violence involved it would have been a just status quo. It is possible and just to have public property, as long as the owners agree, and no aggressive violence is being used. Whether it is “unworkable” is not yours to decide. The owners must decide. 



> Point two has been thoroughly and convincingly proven by sound social science and by the historical record.


It may be convincingly proven that it stupid and unhealthy to eat too much fried chicken. However, it is not your decision to make.
Moreover, it is conceivable, that citizens of a certain community may decide to hold some resources in common. There is nothing sinister or evil about such an arrangement as long as no aggressive violence is involved. In fact, it is the rule in heaven. But the key here, of course, is the absence of aggressive violence, and VOLUNTARY participation.



> “[How is public property paid for?] Public property user fees. That is the only just way to do it. You use it, you pay for it. You don’t, you don’t. “
> What if the majority votes otherwise? What if they would rather fund it through taxation?


The only thing they can vote about is that which they own. Thus they can vote about the property they jointly hold, but not about the property they do NOT own. Public taxation of private property is immoral precisely because the public does not own you neither your property. Therefore, according to justice, such taxation has no right to exist.



> What if the user fees don't cover maintenance costs and I-15 becomes impassable -- then no one can travel on the road?


That is on them. They own it, they have to pay for their stupidity.



> What if they charge too much and I can no longer afford to commute on the road, which I count on for my livelihood? What if they charge just me specifically too much? What if they charge an extra $1,000 per trip for purple Volkswagon Bugs? What if they vote to charge double to non-Mormons? Would any of these actions be... _unjust_?


The vote is proportionate to ownership. You vote with your share. Since everyone in the locality has equal claim of ownership, everyone’s vote is equal in power. Therefore, to be just such vote is subject to two conditions:
Everyone must be treated equally, since everyone has equal claim of ownership in it. AndThe property of no one must be violated in the process. 
That is just.
The unequal treatment violates point (a). 
In case of the poor, charity should be used as the solution.



> He most assuredly will not know when people move in and out, and once he has given away all the shares in the property, he has no more say on what happens to it anyway.


Not necessarily. He can have an executor of the estate, with rules applied to the estate: anyone who lives within the borders of the city, (as long as he lives there) has a voting share in managing the park, to decide how it is operated, as long as everyone is treated equally, since all residents of the city, according to the conditions of the bequest, have equal voting share in the management of the park.





> My 5042nd share remains mine even if I move away.


That may or may not be true. If the condition imposed on the park is that ANYONE who resides, or will reside, in the borders of the city has an equal voting share with anyone else who lives in the city, then your statement is false.



> And the park company is certainly under no obligation to give some newcomer a share just because he moved in.


That depends on the rules of the company, as decided by the owners.



> [He cannot] Give any new shares to new move-ins. ("any new resident of the city becomes voting part-owner of the park"). Mr. Guy has no shares to give. You can't give what you don't have.


Technically he can, if he has a contractually bound executor who grants equal voting privileges to all residents of the city. Even if he does not have an executor, the people of the city may decide to uphold such a rule. It is their choice.



> Make people give up their shares when they move out. ("as long as he maintains a residents in the city"). Mr. Guy is out of the picture. He can do squat.


See the answer above.



> There's no majority ruling over a minority.


In any jointly held company, majority does rule over minority. It is also just, as long as the share of no one is violated.



> With private property, one can opt in. And one can opt out. With so-called "public" property? One can't.


That is not true. No one forces you to use public property, and if you do not use it, no one can force you to pay the user fees.



> *The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one can't define the group. If the group is defined, it's not public property.*


Not true. The group is perfectly defined, i.e. residents of a locality.



> So, by this rule, if I am understanding you correctly, the residents of Montana, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and California, all should be given equal title to the road(s) called I-15. But _I-15 between Salt Lake and Provo_ only passes through Utah. Why should it matter that some other road in Nevada happens to have the same name? What if it had a different name -- changed its name at the border? Would that matter? If so, why? If not, why not?


A case can be made to segment the road as you described. But it must be decided by the owners. Again the two things of which I spoke must exist: A) a proof of ownership, and B) decision by the owners.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Some things (probably most things) should be privatized, but some things can be left in a public domain if the owners choose so.


 The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one can't define the group. If the group is defined, it's not public property.

To _intentionally_ leave any property in such a ill-conceived, undefined state is asking for trouble.  What we need instead for avoiding conflict is clarity, simplicity, and sharply-drawn boundary lines.  Leaving some things in the so-called "public" domain fails all of those standards.  A public domain is a domain begging for conflict.  It lends itself to conflict.  Since the whole point of the social order is to avoid conflict... it's a bad idea.

All property should be private.  Easy!  Blinding in its clarity.  Tear-jerking in its elegant simplicity.  Euclidian in its straight, black lines and borders.  Total private property is what we need.  Maintaining a "public" domain ghetto rather than converting everything to the superior system would be inexplicable.  It's inexplicable that you would advocate such a course.




> justly changing status quo requires two things: A) proof of ownership, B) decision by the owners.


 Status quo = state ownership.
My proposed change = turn it over to the free market.

I shouldn't need to prove anything to you to do that.  My way is obviously better.




> Are you saying a very limited group of persons may use I-15? That is obviously incorrect. I bet hundreds of thousands are using it every day. Many millions have used it over the years.


 Many, many more billions may _not_ use it.  There are all kinds of requirements and standards and rules that one must meet and keep and follow in order to be permitted to use I-15 between Provo and Salt Lake.  These are all what we call "limits".  If you wrote all these limits in the same font as the speed limit signs and put them on a sign on the on-ramp, labeled "Limits on Who May Use this Road", the sign would be the size of the entire state of Utah.

Obviously not everyone is freely and equally permitted to use the road right now.  Rather, the Federal Government owns the road, and allows people to use it only as it pleases them.




> I am not sure that would be just.


 You already agreed we can and should make the government create a company that owns I-15 and issue equal shares to everybody who got ripped off.  Having an auction and giving everyone who got ripped off the proceeds is just a superior and quicker way of accomplishing what amounts morally to the same thing.  Equally just.  Much more practical.




> No. Just the food you paid for.
> 
> If she bought it with money stolen from everyone, Yes.
> 
> Yes. And most of the food she ate, and the closings on her back should be probably forgiven her, because it is the most practical, and humane, and merciful thing to do.


 The point is, you're not going to get retribution for all the money stolen from you for welfare.  That money is gone.  Nor from Medicare, nor from 99% of all the idiotic government programs in existence.  Only very few programs have produced capital infrastructure that still has any value whatsoever.  Now the value of that capital should go back to the taxpayers somehow, that's true.  But in the big picture, it's a relatively very minor point.  The much, much, *much* bigger issue is that the free market take over everything and the state be eliminated.  _That_ is what has long-term consequences.




> ...a publically held company governed by the voice of its shareholders...


 _Publicly_ held companies have nothing to do with "_public_" property.  This is a confusion you have introduced.  No more than a restaurant advertising it's open to the _public_.  It happens to use the same word, but is totally different.  The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one can't define the group.  A publicly held company is just a company with a lot of owners.  Exactly who the owners are is clearly and perfectly defined.  This is not the case with "public" property.  The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one can't define the group that owns it.




> Moreover, it is conceivable, that citizens of a certain community may decide to hold some resources in common. There is nothing sinister or evil about such an arrangement as long as no aggressive violence is involved. In fact, it is the rule in heaven. But the key here, of course, is the absence of aggressive violence, and VOLUNTARY participation.


  The key is private property.  The key is always private property.  If the boundaries are not defined, how do you know if aggressive violence is taking place?  I will tell you: you cannot.  If I cannot opt out of participation in ownership, how do you know my participation is voluntary?  I will tell you: you may know of a surety that it is _not_.

What if it's against my religion to own a park?  Does Mr. Rich Guy have the right to force me to won it against my will?  But yet that is exactly what you say he has the right to do in your "for instance."




> With private property, one can opt in. And one can opt out. With so-called "public" property? One can't.
> 			
> 		
> 
> That is not true. No one forces you to use public property, and if you do not use it, no one can force you to pay the user fees.


 I cannot opt out from owning it at all.  Public property defines ownership in arbitrary and impossible ways, and *forcibly* assigns ownership to people who may not want ownership.  For instance, your statement: "He donates this park to *all the citizens of the city* he lives in."  To do such a thing, literally, would be unjust.  *All* the citizens may not want it.  Shoot, _none_ of the citizens may want it!




> Not necessarily. He can have an executor of the estate, with rules applied to the estate: anyone who lives within the borders of the city, (as long as he lives there) has a voting share in managing the park, to decide how it is operated, as long as everyone is treated equally, since all residence of the city, according to the conditions of the bequest, have equal voting share in the management of the park.


 Who owns the park after he gives it to the city-dwellers, Fundamental?  

If the estate executor still owns it, then yes, that estate executor can continue perpetually managing it however he wishes.  This includes the possibility of _acting_ as if the city-dwellers are the owners and abiding by their wishes.  This would create a sort of virtual or holographic situation of ownership for the city-dwellers.  But it would only be a simulation.  The city-dwellers would, in point of fact, not own the park at all.  The estate executor would own it.

If, instead, Rich actually _gave_ the park to the city-dwellers, as you specified, then they now own it and he does not and the estate executor does not.

In both possibilities, the park is _total private property_ and nothing to do with "public" property at all.  In the first, it is the private property of Mr. Guy, or his estate.  In the second, it is the private property of 5042 people who happen to have been given shares of the park.  The whole point and definition of so-called "public" property is that one can't define the group. If the group is defined, it's not public property.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

You forgot to address one more point:




> Not true. The group is perfectly defined, i.e. residents of a locality.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The problem with your position is that you think that public property is some kind of unimaginable evil and a highway to aggressive violence of totalitarianism.

It is not. Public property, as any other property type, is built upon the concept of private property, which is the most fundamental type. It is, or rather can be, built upon it without the use of any aggressive violence whatsoever. How? Simple.

Lets take the park from the previous example. Mr. Rich voluntarily gives the park to the city, all 5042 people in it, with a condition that they become part owners of the park as long as they live in the city, and with a covenant that they will make any new resident of the city an equal part owner with themselves if the new resident desires it, and that they will impose the same contract upon anyone else who receives a share from them. The 5042 accept the terms of the contract. You will agree that they are the rightful owners now, subject to the contract they have made, and that they have equal claim of ownership in the park. It is nothing more or less than a publicly held company with 5042 voting shares, which represents all the people who accepted this ownership, and the contract that came with it. No violence has been used. No aggression committed.

You may think it is stupid to make such contract (I dont see why, the new owners now have more property than they had before, and Mr. Rich fulfilled his desire to share his park with the residents of the city in perpetuity). You may think it is weird, unti-Rothbardian, and all together stinks of communism, and painfully reminds you of the present system. But you have to admit that no aggressive violence was used at any step of this process. No ones rights or property has been violated. No permission was given to rob or plunder anyone. And since exactly ZERO aggressive violence was used, this arrangement, however un-liked by you is still JUST, and therefore has a perfect right to exist. Heck, Mr. Rich could have burned the park down, for all you care (of course, only if he found a way to do it without polluting the environment of his neighbors), and it would have been just, because it is his, and if he is not a wise steward over it he will have to answer for it to God who owns the Earth and everything on it. But it is not your call to make, because it is not yours. It now belongs to the residents of the city subject to the contract. That is public property by definition. It is perfectly defined. It is just. It is un-ambiguous. It is built upon private property rights, and thus has a perfect right to exist, and you have no say in it, because it is not yours. You are free and welcome to refuse such a contract for esthetic reasons, but I wouldnt because it gives me more property than before, and gives me a chance to influence the use of property for good.

Do you see my point here? The key to the whole thing is the ABSENCE OF AGGRESSIVE VIOLENCE. If you can point out aggressive violence at any step of this process then you are right in calling it unjust. But if you cannot, you must let it be, because it has a perfect right to exist, because it is JUST.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> You forgot to address one more point:
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 			
> 				Not true. The group is perfectly defined, i.e. residents of a locality.


Oh.  Well... thank you for correcting me.

The words "residents of a locality," especially as you have explained and described them, do not perfectly define a group.  I do not think they perfectly define a group.  I cannot tell you for sure who is in that group and who is out of it.  That means it's not defined.

Let's go to the root of the disagreement.  You have drawn some parallels repeatedly enough now that I think I can say I understand your position and thus can address it.  You say:

*Jointly-owned property = public property*

But, in point of fact, it does not.  Jointly-owned property is _private_ property, through and through, which just happens to be owned by a bunch of individuals.  It has absolutely nothing to do with so-called "public" property.  It is simply private property.  The number of owners makes no difference.

You also say:

*Publicly-traded companies = Public property.*

But this is not the case.  A publicly-traded company is just like any other company, and it is private property no question about it -- private property which just happens to have a bunch of owners.  The number of owners does not affect its status as private property.  Just as the square acreage of a property may be subdivided indefinitely and still remain private property, so too can the ownership be subdivided.

In your "for-instance" about the park, if what Rich guy did was, as you assert, just, then one way or another the park is, will be, and was all along: *private property*.  That's it.  If the owners _are_ defined -- as in giving exactly 5042 people a precise, defined ownership stake in the park -- then it is private property.  It is the private property of those 5042 people.  Again, the number of owners does not affect its status as private property.

It is only when the owners are left undefined and ambiguous that the property can be called "public" property.  That is what so-called "public" property _is!_  That's what it _means_ to be so-called "public" property!  *If the owners are clearly defined, it's not public property, it's private property.*

*Private Property = I can point to the owners and to the property and say "those people own that thing."

Public Property = I can't.*

Are we all cleared up now and on the same page?  Did I address that point well enough?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

You have just proven my point that public property is a subset of private property, or in other words, public property is a construct based on private property. Or simply put, *public property is private property*. (Which, of course, does NOT mean that private property is public property; just like every cat is an animal, does not mean that every animal is a cat.)

Public property is a publicly held company where ownership/just control is conditional upon individual's place of residence. You live in the defined location, you have just control over the public property assigned to it, and if you don't, you don't.

I say it again, you are right:

*Public property is private property.*

(But not the reverse.)

And as a form of private property it has a right to exist. Think of the contract described above that was made by Mr. Rich with the 5042. Can you point out any injustice (i.e. aggressive violence) in that contract? If not, then it is a just contract by definition. What do you have against justice? What do you have against private property? Is not Mr. Rich free to use his own as he will, and give it to whomsoever he will on whatever condition he wants, as long as he does not violate the property of another?

And yes, the owners/just controllers ARE clearly defined. The definition of "residence" can be further honed by Mr. Rich, and be made as precise as you wish.

Precision is not the problem here at all. You can have all the precision you care for, indeed, absolute precision, and still have public property, according to its definition.

I guess the problem here is in definitions.

I defined public property thus: _"Public property is property to which all residents of a specific location have equal claim of ownership. (Ownership is defined as a just range of control)."_

Please give your definition of the term Public property, then we will see if we are talking about the same thing.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*How Minimum Wage Laws Promote Racial Discrimination*

              Gary North - July 18, 2014

...
He said that minimum-wage legislation discriminates against  teenage black males. This has been known by economists since at least  the mid-1950's. The statistical evidence on this was overwhelming. But  high school teachers had not heard this.
...
He made  the observation, which nobody challenged: the teenage black males are  considered undesirables by the general population. In other words, they  are discriminated against. They suffer from the stereotypes attached to  their particular group.

He asked the obvious question: "How does  someone who is part of a group that is discriminated against find a way  to prove to somebody doing the discriminating that his assessment is  incorrect?" ...

He said that the person who is  discriminated against needs to have a competitive edge that will enable  him to compete effectively with members of groups that are not  discriminated against. The free market offers such a tool, he said: wage  competition. Specifically in the case of competition among potential  workers who want to be employed, the most effective competitive edge  available is the offer to work for less money per hour. This offer is  taken seriously by employers.

Minimum-wage legislation makes it  illegal for employers to take advantage of such offers. This removes the  most effective single competitive strategy that is available to a  person who is considered undesirable because of his membership in a  particular group that is widely considered undesirable. This economic  analysis applies to all sorts of groups.

Statistically, economists  in 1974 knew that unemployment rates for black teenage males began to  exceed the unemployment rate for white teenage males when the system of  minimum-wage legislation was first enacted by the federal government.  The statistics on this go back as far as the legislation.

...

By making an offer to work for less than members of  desirable groups are willing to work for, members of undesirable groups  gain an edge in the marketplace. As soon as an employer is made aware of  such an offer, he now faces a cost for any future discrimination. If he  refuses to take the offer, he is going to have to pay a higher wage to a  member of a desirable group. This is going to increase his cost of  doing business. In other words, he suffers an economic loss. "Cost" is  defined as "that which you have to give up in order to gain what you  want." The employer wants low-cost workers. He wants to pocket the  difference between the price he pays for their output and the money he  receives from consumers of their output. It is "buy low, sell high."  If  an employer refuses to hire someone who has made an offer to work for  less, this increases his cost of doing business. From an economic  standpoint, this imposes the cost of discrimination on the employer.

Williams  understood that some employers, meaning employers at the margin, want  to gain a competitive edge against other employers. They will therefore  be willing to accept offers from certain individuals who are willing to  work at wages that are lower than average in the industry. By making the  offer, the member of an undesirable group imposes the cost of  discrimination on anybody who will not accept his offer.

There is  no question about the origin of minimum-wage legislation. It came from  trade unions. Trade unions did not want to face competition from workers  who were not members of a union. They wanted to make it illegal for  businessman to take advantage of offers to work for less than what the  trade union members were able to extract from employers, based on their  monopolistic position in the industry. The federal government, through  the Wagner Act of 1933, had made it illegal for businesses to offer  low-wage jobs, if half of the employees, plus one, voted to unionize the  business.

What was happening, union leaders understood, was that  blacks were in a position to break the stranglehold of the unions in  some industries, because they could go to employers and use their  competitive edge: a willingness to work for less money per hour.  The  way to stop this, the union leaders understood, was to make it illegal  for any employer to hire anyone at a wage below the mandated minimum  wage. This would stop competition against trade unions.

From a  political standpoint, it was incumbent on the trade unions to keep the  voters, and also keep Congressmen, from recognizing that minimum-wage  laws are discriminatory against groups that already suffer from  discrimination. It was seen as politically incorrect in the late 1960's  to discriminate against blacks, but this was what minimum-wage laws did  from the beginning. So, it was imperative that this line of reasoning be  kept away from students in colleges and universities. This was why  Williams' argument was devastating. Students and teachers could not  refute it. It made them feel guilty, because they were pushing for  legislation that imposed additional burdens on members of racial  minorities who were already suffering from discrimination. The laws took  away the victims' most effective tool for getting employed, and  therefore getting an opportunity to prove their worth to their employers  and also to coworkers.

The high unemployment rates for young  adults in Greece and Spain -- in the range of 50% -- are the result of  the same regulatory process. The trade unions can block offers to work  for less. Members of groups that are discriminated against -- non-union  workers -- cannot get employers to accept their offers to work for less.  It is illegal for employers to accept these offers.


Read more: http://www.garynorth.com/public/12683.cfm

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Public property is a publicly held company where ownership/just control is conditional upon individual's place of residence. You live in the defined location, you have just control over the public property assigned to it, and if you don't, you don't.


 I cannot conceive of a valid contract that would make what you want to have happen, happen.

It may be possible, but I cannot happen to think of how to construct one myself.

*If you think such a contract could be constructed, perhaps you can share what you have in mind.*




> I guess the problem here is in definitions.


 Yep.  I think so.  So often is.





> I defined public property thus: _"Public property is property to which all residents of a specific location have equal claim of ownership. (Ownership is defined as a just range of control)."_
> 
> Please give your definition of the term Public property, then we will see if we are talking about the same thing.


To most people, public property means government property, on the (dubious) theory that governments hold their property in trust for the public, and administer such property with an eye to the public interest. (source)

Indeed, it seems to mean that very thing to you, too, since you are calling for public property to be administered, and effectively owned, by "the government."

This is not a type of private property.  It is government property.  If I am one of the 5042, can I:

Sell my share to anyone I want?  Because that's what you can do with private property.Buy more shares from anyone selling?  Because that's what you can do with private property.Keep my share for as long as I want, even if I move away?  Because that's what you can do with private property.Gain a sufficient plurality of shares, stage a (so-called) hostile takeover, and turn the park into a office building?  Because that's what you can do with private property.

None of the above?  Then it's not private property.  *Unless you can explain to me how to contractually get to a spot where I can't do any of those things with my property, but yet I own it.*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I cannot conceive of a valid contract that would make what you want to have happen, happen.
> 
> It may be possible, but I cannot happen to think of how to construct one myself.
> 
> *If you think such a contract could be constructed, perhaps you can share what you have in mind.*
> 
>  Yep.  I think so.  So often is.
> 
> 
> ...


I have constructed it here.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Your proposed route to a so-called "public" (actually government) property virgin birth:




> Mr. Rich voluntarily gives the park to the city, all 5042 people in it, with a condition that they become part owners of the park as long as they live in the city, and with a covenant that they will make any new resident of the city an equal part owner with themselves if the new resident desires it, and that they will impose the same contract upon anyone else who receives a share from them. 
> 
> The 5042 accept the terms of the contract. 
> 
> *You will agree that they are the rightful owners now, subject to the contract they have made, and that they have equal claim of ownership in the park.*


I agree with no such thing.  You have raised more questions than you answered.

A covenant has two parties.  If there's only _one_ party, there's no obligation to the _other_.  _Because there ain't no other!_  Capisce?

As I explained to mencius here, once our friend Rich is gone and out of the picture, well, _he's out of the picture!_  Either he is out of the picture, no longer an owner, or he is not.  Either he still has an ownership claim on the property, or he does not.

If he or his estate is still somewhere in the background hanging about, binding the park to perpetually remain a park and all the 5042 to follow whatever ridiculous rules and conditions he wants to make, then guess what?  He or his estate is the ultimate owner!  Period.  Mr. Rich Guy owns the park, and is simply playing a slightly bizarre game with his property.  No problem!  I'm all for eccentric millionaires.  But let's be clear that Mr. Guy is the owner.  It's his property.  His _private_ property.  There is absolutely nothing special about it, certainly nothing requiring the existence of a state or government.

If the 5042 actually _are_ the real owners, true blue, through and through, then guess what?  They can do whatever they want with it!  They can keep it a park, sure.  No problem.  But they can also make it into a parking lot.  That's what *owners* can do.




> It is nothing more or less than a publicly held company with 5042 voting shares, which represents all the people who accepted this ownership, and the contract that came with it.


  Well, once again there are two options.  Either it _is_ nothing more or less than a publicly held company, or it _is not_ nothing more nor less than a publicly held company.

If it is, in fact, just a publicly held company with 5042 shares, then the owners of those shares can do whatever they wish with them.  No one can stop them.  It's _their_ company.  _Theirs_, and no one else's.

I hope I have now made this clear enough.  Do you understand the problem now, as I see it?  If so, could you kindly restate it in your own words?  I want us to be communicating effectively and on the same page.

If you do now understand, you will also understand the importance of these questions:

Sell my share to anyone I want?  Because that's what you can do with private property.Buy more shares from anyone selling?  Because that's what you can do with private property.Keep my share for as long as I want, even if I move away?  Because that's what you can do with private property.Gain a sufficient plurality of shares, stage a (so-called) hostile takeover, and turn the park into a office building?  Because that's what you can do with private property.

Could you answer them?  Thanks.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> A covenant has two parties. If there's only _one_ party, there's no obligation to the _other_. _Because there ain't no other!_ Capisce?


Yes. What’s the problem? Did I say one party? I didn’t.



> As I explained to mencius here, once our friend Rich is gone and out of the picture, well, _he's out of the picture!_ Either he is out of the picture, no longer an owner, or he is not. Either he still has an ownership claim on the property, or he does not.


Have you heard of conditional ownership, where ownership is conferred subject to certain conditions? Example: You buy a home in certain community. The sale is subject to you signing a contract that you will abide by the rules of the community (like not running through the streets naked, or not smoking in public, etc). Do you own that home or not? Yes. But your ownership is limited by the conditions of the contract you voluntarily signed before you purchased the home. This is a very common arrangement. There is nothing sinister about it. It is in strict adherence to the NAP, and therefore it is just.



> If he or his estate is still somewhere in the background hanging about, binding the park to perpetually remain a park and all the 5042 to follow whatever ridiculous rules and conditions he wants to make, then guess what? He or his estate is the ultimate owner! Period.


Yes. And what’s the problem?



> Mr. Rich Guy owns the park, and is simply playing a slightly bizarre game with his property. No problem! I'm all for eccentric millionaires. But let's be clear that Mr. Guy is the owner. It's his property. His _private_ property. There is absolutely nothing special about it,


Who said there was. Yes, It is his private property, but he also gave control/part-ownership to all the other 5042, subject to the contract they voluntarily made with him. NAP is still intact. Justice is not violated. All is well.



> certainly nothing requiring the existence of a state or government.


Don’t you understand, that according to the contract Mr. Rich made with the 5042, THEY  are the government, subject to the covenant they made? And if you define state as ownership (or joint ownership) of real estate by a group, what is the problem here? NAP is still intact. That is the definition of a just state. 

Definitions matter. Rothbard’s and Hoppe’s definition of the state is VERY different. They define it as an entity claiming the “right” to violate the NAP, which “right” is an oxymoron. And they are right that SUCH state is UNJUST by definition and has no right to exist. I do not advocate such “state” because it is an abomination, i.e. institutionalized EVIL by definition of the word evil.

However, the state that has a perfect right to exist is the one defined as group ownership of real estate. If NAP is honored, such state has a perfect right to exist.



> If the 5042 actually _are_ the real owners, true blue, through and through, then guess what? They can do whatever they want with it! They can keep it a park, sure. No problem. But they can also make it into a parking lot. That's what *owners* can do.


If the ownership grant was unconditional, then yes. 

It may or may not have been the case, depending on Mr. Rich’s wishes. 

But even if Mr. Rich transferred ownership to the 5042 unconditionally, the 5042 may CHOOSE to apply residence conditions to the property by a majority vote, with all the residents having equal voting rights regarding management of the park. Which is still public property by definition, i.e. *“equal claim of ownership of a property by residents of a certain locality.”* NAP is still not violated. Ownership is still clearly defined. And since NAP is intact, it is just, and has a right to exist.

And if grant of ownership was CONDITIONAL by Mr. Rich, then the 5042 are bound by the conditions of the contract they VOLUNTARILY signed when they accepted part ownership of the park. THEY are the owners of the park, provided they abide by the conditions of equality of ownership prescribed by Mr. Rich. And if Mr. Rich resigned from any other control of the park by covenant, then the property is Public by definition of the term, because the residents of the locality have EQUAL claim of ownership upon it, which is the DEFINITION of the term Public Property, that I use. This definition is precise, requires no aggressive violence, and therefore describes a just entity that has a perfect right to exist.

I have a feeling that you have a DIFFERENT definition of the term “Public Property,” hence your apprehensions. 

My definition does NOT violate the NAP. Therefore it is just.



> If it is, in fact, just a publicly held company with 5042 shares, then the owners of those shares can do whatever they wish with them. No one can stop them. It's _their_ company. _Theirs_, and no one else's.


Provided the ownership grant was unconditional.


> Sell my share to anyone I want? Because that's what you can do with private property.Buy more shares from anyone selling? Because that's what you can do with private property.Keep my share for as long as I want, even if I move away? Because that's what you can do with private property.Gain a sufficient plurality of shares, stage a (so-called) hostile takeover, and turn the park into a office building? Because that's what you can do with private property.


Yes to all of the above if:
the grant of ownership was unconditional, orif the conditions of purchase do not prohibit the points above. Conditional ownership means partial ownership. It is very common and does not violate the NAP if the conditions are entered into voluntarily, i.e. without the use of aggressive violence.

NAP is the key here. The beginning and the end.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

You did not restate my problem with your position in your own words, Foundation.  This is a very effective communication technique and I highly recommend it.  It is so difficult sometimes to know if the other guy is understanding at all anything you're saying.  You'll note that I have employed this tool almost every single post I have made to you on this topic.  I always want to make sure you know what I _think_ you are saying.

But, I press on.  Based on your overall post, I think you at least kind-of sort-of understand my point, and possibly may even thoroughly understand.




> Yes. What’s the problem? Did I say one party? I didn’t.


 You actually did, because you said that the 5042 were the owners.  Rich Guy was out of the picture, and yet, at the same time, somehow also still in the picture.  He had stepped away, was no longer an owner, and yet was still calling the shots over property he had nothing to do with.

That's an impossible contradiction.

So, you have further refined/clarified your proposed virgin birth as follows:




> It is his [Mr. Guy's] private property, but he also gave [*conditional*-]control/*part*-ownership to all the other 5042, subject to the contract they voluntarily made with him.


  In other words, this park property is something very normal -- nothing but the private property of one Rich Guy.  He has made an arrangement with some folks to manage it, just as a restaurant owner may hire a manager to manage his restaurant.  The owner remains in ultimate control, because he may fire the manager, or in this case, all 5042 managers.  Do we call the local Pizza Hut management team the "state" of Pizza Hut?  No?  Why not?

This is why my answer to this question:

"Don’t you understand, that according to the contract Mr. Rich made with the 5042, THEY are the government, subject to the covenant they made?"

is "no."  Or at least it _was_ "no."  _Of course_ I didn't understand that.  Why would I understand that?  I am not a mind-reader.  You gave me no indication that this was your position.

Here is your position, as I have now pieced it together:

Public Property = group ownership of real estate.  Specifically, "equal" ownership (why that is important is beyond me) by persons in a "certain locality" (again, seems arbitrary and unimportant to me)

The State = any management team managing real estate owned by a group.

However, here's more: The State also = a management team (the 5042 and their park corporation) managing real estate owned by an _individual_ (Rich Guy).

So, to reconcile all that and make it all coherent and fit together, here is your real definition of a State, as best as I can tell:

The State = any management team managing real estate.

and here is the definition of public property that goes along with that:

Public Property = group or individual ownership of real estate.

But that seems far too expansive, yes?  That would make _all_ real estate "public property" and _all_ real estate management an exercise in statism.  When I'm mowing my front lawn, I'm acting as a State?  That seems too much.  So we must narrow the scope back down somewhat.  Here is my proposal:

*The State = any management team managing real estate which is open to and used by the general public.

Public Property = group or individual ownership of real estate which is open to and used by the general public.*

Now I-15 and Rich Guy's park are "public property" and the individuals or corporations which manage (and probably also own) them are "states," but my front lawn is "private property" and I am not a State.  Phew!  Dodged the bullet.

This seems to more or less reconcile all the things you've written into an internally consistent position which I can understand.  Your type of public property is simply a sub-category of private property, just as you wrote in post #374 ("Public property is private property.").  Your type of state is just a publicly-held company or trust or other organization.  It is a voluntary organization, of course, per the NAP.  It has no special privileges nor features.  I-15, Inc., the state managing I-15, is just exactly like Apple, Inc., the corporation managing the various assets under its umbrella.  I-15, Inc. just happens to manage "real estate which is open to and used by the general public."  So that makes it a state, not a corporation, in your terminology.

Is this a pretty accurate summary of your view?  Did I nail it?

~~~

Above, that's the main post, the important thread of the conversation.  But I'll reply to the rest of your post, just so you know I understood it all:




> Have you heard of conditional ownership, where ownership is conferred subject to certain conditions? Example: You buy a home in certain community. The sale is subject to you signing a contract that you will abide by the rules of the community (like not running through the streets naked, or not smoking in public, etc). Do you own that home or not? Yes. But your ownership is limited by the conditions of the contract you voluntarily signed before you purchased the home. This is a very common arrangement. There is nothing sinister about it. It is in strict adherence to the NAP, and therefore it is just.


 Yes, I agree with all that.  Did you click on the link I made?  There has to be a counter-party.  You are abiding by or violating your contract _with_ someone: the home-owners' association.  *You can't make a contract with the air.*  There has to be a counter-party and an enforcement mechanism.




> Yes. And what’s the problem?


 No problem, if I have correctly formulated your position above.




> Who said there was? Yes, It is his private property, but he also gave control/part-ownership to all the other 5042, subject to the contract they voluntarily made with him. NAP is still intact. Justice is not violated. All is well.


 Well I thought that you had, but clearly I was mistaken, and so I of course agree that all is well in this scenario.  Just private property business as usual.




> Definitions matter. Rothbard’s and Hoppe’s definition of the state is VERY different. They define it as an entity claiming the “right” to violate the NAP, which “right” is an oxymoron. And they are right that SUCH state is UNJUST by definition and has no right to exist. I do not advocate such “state” because it is an abomination, i.e. institutionalized EVIL by definition of the word evil.


 Right, I agree.  Hopefully we have now nailed down what your definitions are with some good precision.




> If the ownership grant was unconditional, then yes.


 Agreed.




> the 5042 may CHOOSE to apply residence conditions to the property by a majority vote, with all the residents having equal voting rights regarding management of the park. Which is still public property by definition, i.e. *“equal claim of ownership of a property by residents of a certain locality.”* NAP is still not violated. Ownership is still clearly defined. And since NAP is intact, it is just, and has a right to exist.


 Yes, a corporation may operate however its owners wish.  However, I also may stage a hostile takeover.  Or, the owners can simply change their mind.




> And if grant of ownership was CONDITIONAL by Mr. Rich, then the 5042 are bound by the conditions of the contract they VOLUNTARILY signed when they accepted part ownership of the park. THEY are the owners of the park, provided they abide by the conditions of equality of ownership prescribed by Mr. Rich.


 I would say that Rich is still the owner.  But regardless, it doesn't really matter.  It could be a similar situation to that of a trust.




> I have a feeling that you have a DIFFERENT definition of the term “Public Property,” hence your apprehensions.


 Yes, I already told you I did.




> My definition does NOT violate the NAP. Therefore it is just.


 Agreed (if I got things right in the main post above.)




> Conditional ownership means partial ownership. It is very common and does not violate the NAP if the conditions are entered into voluntarily, i.e. without the use of aggressive violence.
> 
> NAP is the key here. The beginning and the end.


 I would agree with this.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> In other words, this park property is something very normal -- nothing but the private property of one Rich Guy.


Not necessarily. He diluted his ownership subject to the covenant he made with the 5024 residents of the city.



> He has made an arrangement with some folks to manage it, just as a restaurant owner may hire a manager to manage his restaurant. The owner remains in ultimate control, because he may fire the manager, or in this case, all 5042 managers.


Again, not necessarily. Mr. Rich transferred part of his ownership to the 5024, subject to the contract. The terms of the contract my preclude him from “firing” them, if they kept their end of the bargain.



> This is why my answer to this question:
> "Don’t you understand, that according to the contract Mr. Rich made with the 5042, THEY are the government, subject to the covenant they made?"
> is "no." Or at least it _was_ "no." _Of course_ I didn't understand that. Why would I understand that? I am not a mind-reader. You gave me no indication that this was your position.


I think I gave that indication when I said that Mr. Rich made the 5024 part-owners of the park, subject to the contract. *
Ownership = Government*. They are one and the same.



> here is your real definition of a State, as best as I can tell:
> The State = any management team managing real estate.


Correct.



> and here is the definition of public property that goes along with that:
> Public Property = group or individual ownership of real estate.


Not quite... (Though close.)
*Public Property is defined as property to which residents of a certain location have equal claim of ownership.*
And, yes real estate is  the best example of it. And no, it pertains to a group rather than one individual; hence the word “public.” 
And yes, public property is derived from, is based upon, and is a subset of private property.



> Here is my proposal:
> *The State = any management team managing real estate which is open to and used by the general public.*


I think there can be at least two definitions of a just state. One is more general, and the other is more specific.
The most general definition of a just state would be (as you partly stated):
*State = any management team managing  real estate.*
And a more specific definition derived from the previous one is:
*State = public property and its management.*



> *Public Property = group or individual ownership of real estate which is open to and used by the general public.*


Not quite.
Public ownership is a GROUP ownership, by definition. Individual ownership cannot be public, or it sounds oxymoronic.
And yes, public is a subset of group ownership, and group ownership is a subset of private ownership, private ownership being the foundational type of ownership.
Or to restate this differently:
ALL is *Private Property*, but some private property is jointly held, which is a *Group Property*, and some group property is EQUALLY owned by residents of a certain location, which makes it *Public Property* by definition. Thus, all of these property types are subsets, or different manifestations of, and are derived from, Private Property, the most fundamental type of property there is.



> Your type of public property is simply a sub-category of private property, just as you wrote in post #374 ("Public property is private property.").


Correct.



> Your type of state is just a publicly-held company or trust or other organization. It is a voluntary organization, of course, per the NAP.


Correct.



> It has no special privileges nor features. I-15, Inc., the state managing I-15, is just exactly like Apple, Inc., the corporation managing the various assets under its umbrella. I-15, Inc. just happens to manage "real estate which is open to and used by the general public." So that makes it a state, not a corporation, in your terminology.


Pretty much. Though under broad definition of a state (see above) you could consider a corporation that owns real estate a state as well.

I think we understand each other.

*The bottom line is that ANY arrangement that does not violate the NAP has a right to exist.*

Thanks.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Not necessarily. He diluted his ownership subject to the covenant he made with the 5024 residents of the city.
> 
> Again, not necessarily. Mr. Rich transferred part of his ownership to the 5024, subject to the contract. The terms of the contract my preclude him from firing them, if they kept their end of the bargain.


 Yes, yes, I understand all that.  You are right, of course.




> ALL is *Private Property*, but some private property is jointly held, which is a *Group Property*, and some group property is EQUALLY owned by residents of a certain location, which makes it *Public Property* by definition. Thus, all of these property types are subsets, or different manifestations of, and are derived from, Private Property, the most fundamental type of property there is.


 This is a good, clear statement, and it helps me a lot to understand what you're saying.

I myself am skeptical as to the usefulness of employing the term "public property" for what you are describing.  To almost everyone "public property" means government(or state) property and is a very fuzzy, ill-defined, unfortunate abomination or a concept.  It's the monopoly state managing some property and claiming to do so for the benefit of "the public," who really own it.  This claim is a lie, of course.  And the public are not really owners, because they cannot get out of their alleged ownership.  They can't sell their share.  And they can't escape their obligation of paying for all the supposed benefits they are getting from their ownership.  Furthermore, no one really knows who "the public" is.  No one can pinpoint it and define the precise owners and the bounds of their ownership.  That's why I kept saying: the key element and indeed the whole point of public property (under this standard understanding) is that one can't define the group. If the group is defined, it's not public property.  So those are the characteristics of the standard version of public property.

Your version of public property bears no resemblance to this standard, universally-held understanding of public property.  In your version:

*1. There is no monopoly state managing things.  A forcibly-maintained monopoly violates the NAP.
2. There is no obligation to pay for the alleged benefits.  You already explained this earlier:*


> Public property user fees. That is the only just way to do it. You use it, you pay for it. You dont, you dont.


*3. Each owner can sell his share and cease being an owner.  In fact, he never has to become an owner in the first place.  It's just as you said:*


> _if_ the new resident desires it


*4. The owners are precisely defined!  The "state," as you call it, is nothing more than a corporation, and so like any other corporation, it has shareholders, and each one knows exactly what the bounds, rights, and percentages of his ownership claim are.  It's just like Apple.*

With these four critical, extremely significant differences, your version of public property becomes _so different_ from what people normally think of as public property as to be well-nigh the _opposite_ of it!  No monopoly, no forced payments, free exit from ownership, and well-defined free association throughout: it just bears no resemblance to what we know as public property at all!

So I personally would not call it public property.  It took many posts of back and forth before I finally understood (Maybe!  I hope!) what you meant by it.  Your use of the term "public property" for something so diametrically unlike what I and most everyone else calls public property was the source of more confusion and frustration than enlightenment and understanding.

Just a thought.




> I think we understand each other.


 I think, at last, we do.





> *The bottom line is that ANY arrangement that does not violate the NAP has a right to exist.*


 True.  The only alternative, after all, would be to aggressively ban it!  And that, as you like to put it so well: "would not be just."

Thanks for the conversation.  I enjoyed it, and I hope you did as well.

I'm giving a talk on freedom at Church this Sunday.  Have any thoughts, tidbits, or stories you think I should share?

----------


## Christian Liberty

> OK.  You do agree that you are going off on your own on this then, right?  You do know that you are disagreeing with Rothbard, Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, and the vast majority of libertarians for whom you have admiration and who have provided your ideas.  The men whose writing adorns this thread.  I just want you to be clear on this: none of these men would agree with your position, as you have stated it so far.
> 
> 
>  Of course it would.
> 
>   Actually, it would be.  So there is no reason.  The only thing that could make it unjust is if I somehow had an ownership claim on I-15.  But I do not.  So, my non-existent right to I-15 cannot be violated.
> 
> Now in this special case, everything that the state does is unjust simply by the nature of what the state is and how it operates.  It is unjust for the state to have a forcibly-maintained monopoly on the road industry.  When one agency arrogates to themselves such a monopoly, why, you could make the case that any limits or restrictions are unjust, even things like mandatory speed limits and traffic signals.  But in a normal, private property society, obviously it would not be unjust in the least for the road owner to determine whatever rules and limitations he chooses for his road.
> 
> ...


I think there's something particularly abhorrent about government arbitrarily preventing people from using roads they forced them to pay for.

I think speed limits are illegitimate on government roads as well, since speeding is a "crime" without a victim (private property is different, obviously, if it was a private road the owner could say he was victimized) but its particularly abhorrent when government actually prevents you from using property they made you pay for.  And, I do think you have SOME claim to ownership since you are forced to pay taxes.

Similarly, while I believe you have every right to have a "no blacks allowed" sign on your own property, I think ending that practice on public property was justified, and that continuing it would not have been.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> I think there's something particularly abhorrent about government arbitrarily preventing people from using roads they forced them to pay for.
> 
> I think speed limits are illegitimate on government roads as well, since speeding is a "crime" without a victim (private property is different, obviously, if it was a private road the owner could say he was victimized) but its particularly abhorrent when government actually prevents you from using property they made you pay for.


 Yes, these are all problems.  Deviations from justice.




> And, I do think you have SOME claim to ownership since you are forced to pay taxes.


 Only indirectly. You have claim upon the taxes that were stolen from you.  Whether you get that back in the form of an actual check, part ownership of a road, some armaments from the local military base, some household appliances from the local welfare mother, or what, is morally irrelevant.  Most of -- virtually all of -- the taxes are long-gone, wasted with nothing to show for them, and so its just too bad.

As I wrote earlier to Foundation:

The point is, you're not going to get retribution for all the money stolen from you for welfare. That money is gone. Nor from Medicare, nor from 99% of all the idiotic government programs in existence. Only very few programs have produced capital infrastructure that still has any value whatsoever. Now the value of that capital should go back to the taxpayers somehow, that's true. But in the big picture, it's a relatively very minor point. The much, much, much bigger issue is that the free market take over everything and the state be eliminated. That is what has long-term consequences.




> Similarly, while I believe you have every right to have a "no blacks allowed" sign on your own property, I think ending that practice on public property was justified, and that continuing it would not have been.


 Yes, that sounds reasonable.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I myself am skeptical as to the usefulness of employing the term "public property" for what you are describing. To almost everyone "public property" means government(or state) property and is a very fuzzy, ill-defined, unfortunate abomination or a concept. It's the monopoly state managing some property and claiming to do so for the benefit of "the public," who really own it. This claim is a lie, of course. And the public are not really owners, because they cannot get out of their alleged ownership. They can't sell their share. And they can't escape their obligation of paying for all the supposed benefits they are getting from their ownership.


Right. However, the CLAIM, (though false one by the government), is that ALL residents of a certain location, “US,” own it equally and manage it by the voice of the majority according to justice. Hence, my use of the term Public Property, to denote the same idea, but this time, delivered INDEED, and without the use of aggressive violence.

Also, the term “publicly held” or “publicly traded” company closely describes this property. Hence, another reason for using the word “public,” with a perfect understanding that this “public” is just another manifestation of private property, the most fundamental property type, from which all other types are derived.



> I'm giving a talk on freedom at Church this Sunday. Have any thoughts, tidbits, or stories you think I should share?


You may mention the profound origins of freedom movement.

It originates with God in Heaven, the author and the ultimate champion of liberty.

The war in heaven was fought over it. What we call “agency” or “free will” is nothing more than self-ownership of individuals.
And if you understand that private property is derived from, and includes the self-ownership of individual, then you can rightly say that the war in heaven was fought over SELF-OWNERSHIP and PRIVATE PROPERTY.

Tell them that the heart and definition of Liberty is the Non-aggression principle, or the principle of Private Property, which originates from God who said: “Thou shall not kill. Thou shall not steal.” Or put in other words: “Thou shall not violate self-ownership and private property of individuals.”

Tell them that this Non-aggression principle, or the principle of Private Property, as taught by God, defines both Justice and Liberty, and that neither Justice nor Liberty have any meaning without it, because *Justice is nothing more than non-violation of private property* (with the implied right to use equal force to offset/neutralize the aggression of another against your property), and *Liberty is nothing more than the right to do with your own property what you will, as long as you do not violate the property of another*.

Tell them that all sin is nothing more or less than violation of God’s private property (and by extension an assault on his self-ownership). You live on his planet and are breathing his air, and you should therefore do on it as he directs. Etc.

Tell them that therefore, ALL violence that God uses is strictly DEFENSIVE violence. He is NEVER the aggressor, because aggressive violence is the very definition of evil and injustice, and that the devil is the father of aggressive violence.

Tell them that any “law” that violates private property of an individual, violates both justice and Liberty, and therefore is an abomination before God.

Tell them that the parable of the “Good Samaritan” would have been very different, if instead of using his own money and property the Samaritan pointed the sword at the next person who passed by and forced him to “donate” money and transportation to take care of the one that “fell among thieves,” thus becoming a thief himself, perpetuating the circle of aggressive violence and evil.

Tell them that the only just way to take care of the poor and the needy is the way God prescribed: and that is via voluntary charity, and not at the point of a gun.

In a very real way, God is the ultimate Libertarian. 

And that to defend Justice and Liberty is non-other than to defend self-ownership and private property of individual, just like we did in heaven, which allowed us, by the way, to come to this earth.

You can also tell them that the Non-aggression principle is derived from the “Golden rule” on which “hang ALL the law and the prophets” i.e. do unto others as you would have them do to you, as taught by Jesus and the Father.

Good luck.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Thanks so much for all the good ideas, Foundation.  I did put in the part about God being the ultimate libertarian, or liberty-lover.  I also recommended they all read Benson's _The Proper Role of Government_.  The talk went well.  Before you know it, our stake will be seceding from the Union and setting up a kritarchy, Ancient Israel-style .

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I think it is the union that seceded from Liberty, Justice and God, which will result in its self-destruction. But on the good side, God will set up a union of his own, that will outlast the earth. 

Cheers to that!

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*From Conservative to Anarchist*
                                                                                                           By Steve Patterson

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Call the Anti-Police: Ending the State's "Security" Monopoly*

By William Norman Grigg
Pro Libertate Blog

                            September 17, 2014

 
 

                                                         “How would things be different,” muses Dale Brown of the Detroit-based Threat Management Center,  “if police officers were given financial rewards and commendations for  resolving dangerous situations peacefully, rather than for using force  in situations where it’s neither justified nor effective?”

 Brown’s approach to public safety is “precisely the opposite of what  police are trained and expected to do,” says the 44-year-old  entrepreneur.  The TMC eschews the “prosecutorial philosophy of applied  violence” and the officer safety _uber alles_ mindset that  characterize government law enforcement agencies. This is because his  very successful private security company has an entirely different  mission – the protection of persons and property, rather than enforcing  the will of the political class.  Those contrasting approaches are  displayed to great advantage in proto-dystopian Detroit.

 “We’ve been hired by three of the most upscale neighborhoods in  Detroit to provide 24/7 security services,” Brown proudly informed me  during a telephone interview. “People who are well-off are very willing  to pay for Lamborghini-quality  security services, which means that our profit margin allows us to  provide free services to people who are poor, threatened, and desperate  for the kind of help the police won’t provide.”“Unlike the police, we  don’t respond after a crime has been committed to conduct an  investigation and – some of the time, at least – arrest a suspect,”  Brown elaborates. “Our approach is based on deterrence and prevention.  Where prevention fails, our personnel are trained in a variety of skills  – both psychological and physical – to dominate aggressors without  killing them.” Police typically define their role in terms of what they  are permitted to do _to_ people, rather than what they are required to do _for_ them. Brown’s organization does exactly the reverse, even when dealing with suspected criminals.

 To illustrate, Brown refers to an incident from a security patrol in  which he encountered a black teenager “who was walking in a neighborhood  at about 3:00 a.m. dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt, doing what is  sometimes called `the drift’ – it was pretty clear he was up to  something.”

 Rather than calling the police – who, given their typical four-hour response time,  wouldn’t have arrived soon enough to be of any help, as if helping were  part of their job description – Brown took action that was both  preventive and non-aggressive.

 “I told him, `There are criminals here who might rob you, so you’ll  get free bodyguard service anytime you’re in the neighborhood,’” Brown  related to me. “I also asked for his name and personal information for a  `Good person file’ that would clear him with the cops next time he  decided to go jogging in a black hoodie a three in the morning. He  didn’t have to give me that information, of course, but he told me what I  needed to know – and we’ve never seen him there again.”

 Brown and his associates take a similar approach to dealing with  minor problems that usually result in police citations that clog court  dockets and blight the lives of harmless people.

 “When we see someone who is drunk or otherwise intoxicated, we offer  to take their keys and call their families to get them home,” he  reports. “This way we keep them safe from harm – and, just as  importantly, protect them from prosecution. Again, everything we do is  the opposite of what the police do. If you have a joint in your pocket,  the cops will be all over you – but if you’re facing actual danger,  they’re nowhere to be found, and aren’t required to help you even if  they show up.”

 That contrast is most visible in confrontations with potentially  dangerous people. Brown’s company receives referrals to provide security  for people who face active threats, such as victims of domestic  violence. One representative case involved a young mother whose daughter had been abducted by a violent, abusive father with a lengthy criminal history. The child was rescued and reunited with her mother without guns being drawn or anybody being hurt.

 For reasons of accountability and what the private sector calls  “quality assurance,” Brown and his colleagues recorded that operation,  as they document nearly everything else they do. However, they weren’t  playing to the cameras. The same can’t be said of the Detroit PD SWAT  team that stormed the home of 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones at midnight in May 2010 while filming the assault for a cable television program.

 Officer Joseph Weekley,  who burst through the door carrying a ballistic shield and an MP5  submachine gun, shot and killed Aiyana, who had been sleeping on the  living room couch. By the time she was killed terrified little girl had  already been burned by a flash-bang grenade that had been hurled into  the living room.

 The home was surrounded with toys and other indicia that children  resided therein, and neighbors had pleaded with the police not to carry  out the blitzkrieg. The cops did arrest a suspect in a fatal shooting,  but he resided in a different section of the same building. In any case,  the suspect could have been taken into custody without a telegenic  paramilitary assault – if the safety of those on the receiving end of  police violence had been factored into the SWAT team’s calculations.

 Owing in no small measure to public outrage, Weekly has been charged  with involuntary manslaughter and careless discharge of a weapon  resulting in death. A jury deadlocked on the charges in July 2013. Weekley now faces a second trial that  will produce a conviction only if the prosecution can overcome the  presumption that the officer’s use of deadly force was reasonable.  This  is a function of the entirely spurious, and endlessly destructive,  doctrine of “qualified immunity,” which protects police officers from  personal liability when their actions result in unjustified harm to the  persons or property of innocent people.

The rationale behind qualified immunity is  the belief that absent such protection competent and talented people  wouldn’t enlist as peace officers. In practice, however, qualified  immunity merely emboldens incompetent and vicious police officers.

 “Police should be subject to exactly the same laws and liabilities  that the rest of us face,” contends Brown. “If we don’t have perfect  reciprocity, then police should be held to a higher standard of  accountability than the rest of the citizenry. If they commit criminal  acts that result in injury or death, police should do double the time  that a `civilian’ would face, because they’re supposed to be  professionals.”

 As private sector professionals, Brown observes, “we have double  accountability – first to our clients who pay us, and then to the  criminal justice system and civil courts if we do something wrong. And  because the police usually see us as competitors, they are very eager to  come after us if we screw up. But in all the years we’ve been working,  we’ve had no deaths or injuries – either to our clients or to our own  people – no criminal charges, and no lawsuits.”

 Not only do Brown and his associates operate without the benefit of  “qualified immunity,” they are required to expose themselves to physical  risk on behalf of their clients – something that police are trained to  avoid.

 “For police officers, going home at the end of the shift is the  highest priority,” Brown observes. “For us it can’t be. When we’re hired  to protect a client, his home, his business, his family, we’ve made a  choice to put the client’s safety above our own, and to make sure that  he or she gets home safely at the end of the day.”

 When people seek help from the police, Brown points out, they’re  inviting intervention by someone who has no enforceable duty to protect  them, but will be rewarded for injuring them or needlessly complicating  their lives.

 “Let’s examine this logically,” Brown begins. “What is this human  being – the police officer – going to get out of becoming involved in  your troubles? Will be he rewarded for helping you to solve them,  especially if this involves a personal risk? Would solving your problem  be worth getting injured or killed?”

 “We’re dealing with a basic question of human motivations,” Brown  continues. “Police are not required to intervene to protect you – there  is a very long list of judicial precedents proving this. They’re  actually rewarded for _not_ intervening. Here, once again, I  emphasize that Threat Management is not comparable to the police. We  follow exactly the opposite approach. People don’t have to work with  Threat Management, but if they choose to, that’s what we expect of  them.”

 Some critics of TMC and other private security firms insist that  their personnel cannot match the qualifications and experience of  government-employed police officers. That objection wildly overestimates  the professional standards that must be met in order for an individual  to become a government-licensed purveyor of privileged violence.

 “An individual can become a police officer in six months,” Brown  points out. “Can you become a doctor or an EMT in six months? Is there  any other profession in which employees can become `qualified’ to make  life-and-death decisions on behalf of other people after just a few  months of training?”

 By way of supplementing Brown’s point: In Arkansas, an applicant can  become a police officer in a day, and work in that capacity for a year,  without professional certification of any kind. However, to become a licensed practicing cosmetologist,  an applicant must pass a state board examination and complete 2,000  hours of specialized training. For an investment of 600 hours an  applicant can qualify to work as a manicurist or instructor.

 While Arkansas strictly regulates those who cut hair or paint nails  in private, voluntary transactions, it imposes no training or licensing  standards whatsoever on armed people who claim the authority to inflict  lethal violence on others. This is not to concede that there is any way  one human being can become legitimately “qualified” to commit aggressive  violence against another.

 “Law enforcement attracts a certain personality type that is prone to  narcissism and aggression,” Brown asserts, speaking from decades of  experience. “People like that get weeded out from our program very  early. We protect innocent people from predators, and we can’t carry out  that mission by hiring people who are predatory themselves. Our people  receive extensive training in firearms and unarmed combat techniques,  but they’re also taught to look at all humans as members of the same  family. The question we want them to ask themselves is – in what  circumstances would you shoot, or otherwise harm a member of your  family? They’re trained to apply that standard in all situations  involving a potential use of force. People who can’t think that way  aren’t going to fit in with our program.”

 Brown emphatically agrees that the phenomenon called “police  militarization” is a huge and growing menace, but insists that the core  problem is “not the military hardware, or the other trappings of  militarization, but the system itself. Police agencies attract the wrong  kind of people and then tell them, `You’re like God’ – they get to  impose their will on others and use lethal force at their discretion.  And when someone who is really golden shows up – that is, an ethical, conscientious person who wants to protect the public –  they get redirected into a role that will minimize their influence for  good by people who are worried about their own job security.”

 “Ideally, the best approach would be to abolish the current system  and start over,” Brown concludes. “But the very least we should demand  would be total equity and complete accountability – which would mean, as  a starting point, doing away with this idea of `qualified immunity.’  Police are citizens, and they should be governed by the same laws that  apply to all citizens. No exceptions, no special protections.”

 Several studies have shown that there  are between three and four times as many private peace officers – such  as security guards, armored truck drivers, and private investigators –  as sworn law enforcement officers in the United States. That fact demonstrates that the security market is _completely_ unserved by government law enforcement agencies. This shouldn’t be surprising, since – as I have observed before – police agencies serve the interests of those who plunder private property, and thus can’t be expected to protect it.





  Police personnel practice aggressive violence from the shelter of  “qualified immunity.” The absence of such protection doesn’t deter  talented, motivated people such as Dale Brown and his associates – and  others providing similar services in Houston, Oakland, and elsewhere — from seeking employment as private security officers who actually accept personal risk to protect property.

  Why not abolish qualified immunity for _all_ security personnel?  Critics of that proposal might protest that this would undermine the  state’s monopoly on the provision of “security” by requiring its  employees to compete on equal terms with the private sector. Which is  precisely the point.

The Best of William Norman Grigg



  

                                                                                  William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program

                             Copyright © 2014 William Norman Grigg

                             Previous article by William Norman Grigg:  Cadging Donuts and That’s About It

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Hans Hoppe is being devastatingly brilliant, as always! 

"All men are created equal" only in one way, that is they are ultimately equal before the demands of justice, and therefore are equally obligated not to commit aggression against anyone's property. That's all.



*A Realistic Libertarianism*



 By Hans-Hermann Hoppe
September 30, 2014
Libertarianism is logically consistent with almost any  attitude toward culture, society, religion, or moral principle. In  strict logic, libertarian political doctrine can be severed from all  other considerations; logically one can be  and indeed most  libertarians in fact are: hedonists, libertines, immoralists, militant  enemies of religion in general and Christianity in particular  and  still be consistent adherents of libertarian politics. In fact, in  strict logic, one can be a consistent devotee of property rights  politically and be a moocher, a scamster, and a petty crook and  racketeer in practice, as all too many libertarians turn out to be.  Strictly logically, one can do these things, _but psychologically, sociologically, and in practice, it simply doesnt work that way__._  [my emphasis, HHH]

Murray Rothbard, Big-Government Libertarians, in: L. Rockwell, ed., _The Irrepressible Rothbard_, Auburn, Al: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2000, p. 101

Let me begin with a few remarks on libertarianism as a pure deductive theory.

 If there were no scarcity in the world, human conflicts would be  impossible. Interpersonal conflicts are always and everywhere conflicts  concerning scarce things. I want to do X with a given thing and you want  to do Y with the same thing.

 Because of such conflicts  and because we are able to communicate  and argue with each other  we seek out norms of behavior with the  purpose of avoiding these conflicts. The purpose of norms is  conflict-avoidance. If we did not want to avoid conflicts, the search  for norms of conduct would be senseless. We would simply fight and  struggle.

 Absent a perfect harmony of all interests, conflicts regarding scarce  resources can only be avoided if all scarce resources are assigned as  private, exclusive property to some specified individual. Only then can I  act independently, with _my_ own things, from you, with _your_ own things, without you and me coming into conflict.

 But who owns what scarce resource as his private property and who  does not? First: Each person owns his physical body that only he and no  one else controls _directly_ (I can control your body only  in-directly, by first directly controlling my body, and vice versa) and  that only he directly controls also in particular when _discussing and arguing_  the question at hand. Otherwise, if body-ownership were assigned to  some indirect body-controller, conflict would become unavoidable as the  direct body-controller _cannot_ give up his direct control over his  body as long as he is alive; and in particular, otherwise it would be  impossible that any two persons, as the contenders in any property  dispute, could ever _argue and debate_ the question whose will is to prevail, since arguing and debating _presupposes_  that both, the proponent and the opponent, have exclusive control over  their respective bodies and so come to the correct judgment _on their own_, without a fight (in a conflict-free form of interaction).

 And second, as for scarce resources that can be controlled _only_  indirectly (that must be appropriated with our own nature-given, i.e.,  un-appropriated, body): Exclusive control (property) is acquired by and  assigned to that person, who appropriated the resource in question _first_ or who acquired it through voluntary (conflict-free) exchange from its _previous_ owner. For only the _first_  appropriator of a resource (and all later owners connected to him  through a chain of voluntary exchanges) can possibly acquire and gain  control over it without conflict, i.e., peacefully. Otherwise, if  exclusive control is assigned instead to _latecomers_, conflict is not avoided but contrary to the very purpose of norms made unavoidable and permanent.

 Let me emphasize that I consider this theory as essentially irrefutable, as _a priori_ true. In my estimation this theory represents one of the greatest  if not _the_  greatest  achievement of social thought. It formulates and codifies  the immutable ground rules for all people, everywhere, who wish to live  together in peace.

 And yet: This theory does not tell us very much about real life. To  be sure, it tells us that all actual societies, insofar as they are  characterized by peaceful relations, adhere, whether consciously or  subconsciously, to these rules  and are thus guided by rational insight. But it does not tell us to  what extent this is the case. Nor does it tell us, even if adherence to  these rules were complete, how people actually live together. It does  not tell us how close or distant from each other they live, if, when,  how frequent and long, and for what purposes they meet and interact,  etc.. To use an analogy here: Knowing libertarian theory  the rules of  peaceful interactions  is like knowing the rules of logic  the rules  of correct thinking and reasoning. However, just like the knowledge of  logic, as indispensible as it is for correct thinking, does not tell us  anything about actual human thought, about actual words, concepts,  arguments, inferences and conclusions used and made, so the logic of  peaceful interaction (libertarianism) does not tell us anything about  actual human life and action. Hence: just as every logician who wants to  make good use of his knowledge must turn his attention to real thought  and reasoning, so a libertarian theorist must turn his attention to the  actions of real people. Instead of being a mere theorist, he must also  become a sociologist and psychologist and take account of empirical  social reality, i.e., the world as it really is.

 This brings me to the topic of Left and Right.

 The difference between the Right and the Left, as Paul Gottfried has often noted, is a fundamental disagreement concerning an _empirical_ question. The Right recognizes, as a matter of _fact_,  the existence of individual human differences and diversities and  accepts them as natural, whereas the Left denies the existence of such  differences and diversities or tries to explain them away and in any  case regards them as something unnatural that must be rectified to  establish a natural state of human _equality_.

 The Right recognizes the existence of individual human differences  not just with regard to the physical location and make-up of the human  environment and of the individual human body (its height, strength,  weight, age, gender, skin- hair- or eye-color, facial features, etc.,  etc.). More importantly, the Right also recognizes the existence of  differences in the _mental_ make-up of people, i.e., in their  cognitive abilities, talents, psychological dispositions, and  motivations. It recognizes the existence of bright and dull, smart and  dumb, short- and far-sighted, busy and lazy, aggressive and peaceful,  docile and inventive, impulsive and patient, scrupulous and careless  people, etc., etc.. The Right recognizes that these mental differences,  resulting from the interaction of the physical environment and the  physical human body, are the results of _both_ environmental _and_  physiological and biological factors. The Right further recognizes that  people are tied together (or separated) both physically in geographical  space and emotionally by blood (biological commonalities and  relationships), by language and religion, as well as by customs and  traditions. Moreover, the Right not merely recognizes the existence of  these differences and diversities. It realizes also that the outcome of  input-differences will again be different and result in people with much  or little property, in rich and poor, and in people of high or low  social status, rank, influence or authority. And it accepts these  different outcomes of different inputs as normal and natural.

 The Left on the other hand is convinced of the fundamental _equality_  of man, that all men are created equal. It does not deny the patently  obvious, of course: that there are environmental and physiological  differences, i.e., that some people live in the mountains and others on  the seaside, or that some men are tall and others short, some white and  others black, some male and others female, etc.. But the Left does deny  the existence of _mental_ differences or, insofar as these are too  apparent to be entirely denied, it tries to explain them away as  accidental. That is, the Left either explains such differences as  solely environmentally determined, such that a change in environmental  circumstances (moving a person from the mountains to the seaside and  vice versa, for instance, or giving each person identical pre- and  post-natal attention) would produce an equal outcome, and it denies that  these differences are caused (also) by some  comparatively intractable   biological factors. Or else, in those cases where it cannot be denied  that biological factors play a causal role in determining success or  failure in life  (money and fame), such as when a 5 foot tall man cannot win an Olympic  gold medal in the 100 meter dash or a fat and ugly girl cannot become  Miss Universe, the Left considers these differences as pure luck and the  resulting outcome of individual success or failure as undeserved. In  any case, whether caused by advantageous or disadvantageous  environmental circumstances or biological attributes, all observable  individual human differences are to be equalized. And where this cannot  be done literally, as we cannot move mountains and seas or make a tall  man short or a black man white, the Left insists that the undeservedly  lucky must compensate the unlucky so that every person will be  accorded an equal station in life, in correspondence with the natural  equality of all men.

 With this short characterization of the Right and the Left I return  to the subject of libertarianism. Is libertarian theory compatible with  the world-view of the Right? And: Is libertarianism compatible with  leftist views?

 As for the Right, the answer is an emphatic yes. Every libertarian  only vaguely familiar with social reality will have no difficulty  acknowledging the fundamental truth of the Rightist world-view. He can,  and in light of the empirical evidence indeed must agree with the  Rights empirical claim regarding the fundamental not only physical but  also mental in-equality of man; and he can in particular also agree with  the Rights normative claim of laissez faire, i.e., that this natural  human inequality will inevitably result also in un-equal outcomes and  that nothing can or should be done about this.

 There is only one important caveat, however. While the Right may accept _all_  human inequalities, whether of starting-points or of outcomes, as  natural, the libertarian would insist that only those inequalities are  natural and should not be interfered with that have come into existence  by following the ground-rules of peaceful human interaction mentioned at  the beginning. Inequalities that are the result of _violations_ of these rules, however, _do_ require corrective action and _should_  be eliminated. And moreover, the libertarian would insist that, as a  matter of empirical fact, there exist quite a few among the innumerable  observable human inequalities that _are_ the result of such  rule-violations, such as rich men who owe their fortune not to hard  work, foresight, entrepreneurial talent or else a voluntary gift or  inheritance, but to robbery, fraud or state-granted monopolistic  privilege. The corrective action required in such cases, however, is not  motivated by egalitarianism but by a desire for _restitution_: he  (and only he), who can show that he has been robbed, defrauded or  legally disadvantaged should be made whole again by those (and only  those) who have committed these crimes against him and his property,  including also cases where restitution would result in an even greater  inequality (as when a poor man had defrauded and owed restitution to a  rich one).

 On the other hand: As for the Left, the answer is an equally emphatic  no. The empirical claim of the Left, that there exist no significant  mental differences between individuals and, by implication, between  various groups of people, and that what _appear_ to be such  differences are due solely to environmental factors and would disappear  if only the environment were equalized is contradicted by all  everyday-life experience and mountains of empirical social research. Men  are not and cannot be made equal, and whatever one tries in this  regard, inequalities will always re-emerge. However, it is in particular  the implied _normative_ claim and activist agenda of the Left that  makes it incompatible with libertarianism. The leftist goal of  equalizing everyone or equalizing everyones station in life is  incompatible with private property, whether in ones body or in external  things. Instead of peaceful cooperation, it brings about unending  conflict and leads to the decidedly _un_-egalitarian establishment  of a permanent ruling-class lording it over the rest of the people as  their material to be equalized. Since, as Murray Rothbard has  formulated it, no two people are uniform or equal in any sense in  nature, or in the outcomes of a voluntary society, to bring about and  maintain such equality necessarily requires the permanent imposition of a  power elite armed with devastating coercive power.[1]

 There exist countless individual human differences; and there exist  even more differences between different groups of individuals, since  each individual can be fit into countless different groups. It is the  power-elite that determines which of these differences, whether of  individuals or of groups, is to count as advantageous and lucky or  disadvantageous and unlucky (or else as irrelevant). It is the power  elite that determines how  out of countless possible ways  to actually  _do_ the equalizing of the lucky and the unlucky, i.e., what and  how much to take from the lucky and give to the unlucky to achieve  equality. In particular, it is the power elite, by defining itself as  unlucky, that determines what and how much to take from the lucky and _keep for itself_.  And whatever equalization is then achieved: Since countless new  differences and inequalities are constantly re-emerging, the  equalizing-job of the power elite can never ever come to a natural end  but must instead go on forever, endlessly.

 The egalitarian world-view of the Left is not only incompatible with _libertarianism_, however. It is so out of touch with reality that one must be wondering how _anyone_  can take it seriously. The man-on-the-street certainly does not believe  in the equality of all men. Plain common sense and sound prejudice  stand in the way of that. And I am even more confident that no one of  the actual proponents of the egalitarian doctrine really, deep down,  believes what he proclaims. Yet how, then, could the Leftist world-view  have become the dominant ideology of our age?

 At least for a libertarian, the answer should be obvious: the  egalitarian doctrine achieved this status not because it is true, but  because it provides the perfect intellectual cover for the drive toward  totalitarian social control by a ruling elite. The ruling elite  therefore enlisted the help of the intelligentsia (or the chattering  class). It was put on the payroll or otherwise subsidized and in return  it delivered the desired egalitarian message (which it knows to be  wrong yet which is enormously beneficial to its own employment  prospects). And so the most enthusiastic proponents of the egalitarian  nonsense can be found among the intellectual class.[2]

 Given, then, that libertarianism and the egalitarianism professed by  the Left are obviously incompatible, it must come as a surprise   and  it is testimony to the immense ideological powers of the ruling elites  and their court intellectuals  that many who call themselves  libertarian today are, and consider themselves to be, part of the Left.  How is such a thing possible?

 What ideologically unifies these left-libertarians is their active  promotion of various anti-discrimination policies and their advocacy  of a policy of free and non-discriminatory immigration. [3]

 These libertarians, noted Rothbard, are fervently committed to the  notion that, while each individual might not be equal to every other,  that every conceivable group, ethnic contingent, race, gender, or, in  some cases, species, are in fact and must be made equal, that each one  has rights that must not be subject to curtailment by any form of  discrimination.  [4]

 But how is it possible to reconcile this anti-discrimination stand  with private property, which all libertarians are supposed to regard as  the cornerstone of their philosophy, and which, after all, means _exclusive_ property and hence, _logically implies_ _discrimination_?

 Traditional leftists, of course, do not have this problem. They do  not think or care about private property. Since everyone is equal to  everyone else, the world and everything on and in it belongs to everyone  equally  all property is common property  and as an equal co-owner  of the world everyone has of course an equal right to access to  everywhere and everything. Absent a perfect harmony of all interests,  however, you _cannot_ have everyone have equal property and equal access to everything and everywhere _without leading to permanent conflict_.  Thus, to avoid this predicament, it is necessary to institute a State,  i.e., a territorial monopolist of ultimate decision-making. Common  property, that is, requires a State and is to become State property.  It is the State that ultimately determines not just who owns what; and  it is also the State, then, that ultimately determines the spatial  allocation of all people: who is to live where and allowed to meet and  have access to whom  and private property be damned. After all, it is _they_, the Lefties, who would control the State.



Read the rest of this brilliant article here.

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## helmuth_hubener

Brilliant, indeed!  It is essentially explaining how as libertarians we are, or should be, essentially aligned with the Right.

And now, here is another article, equally brilliant or more-so, arguing that we as libertarians are and should be essentially aligned with the Left!

*Left and Right: The Prospects for Liberty
*by Murray Rothbard

The Conservative has long been marked, whether he knows it or not, by long-run pessimism: by the belief that the long-run trend, and therefore Time itself, is against him, and hence the inevitable trend runs toward left-wing statism at home and Communism abroad. It is this long-run despair that accounts for the Conservative's rather bizarre short-run optimism; for since the long run is given up as hopeless, the Conservative feels that his only hope of success rests in the current moment. In foreign affairs, this point of view leads the Conservative to call for desperate showdowns with Communism, for he feels that the longer he waits the worse things will ineluctably become; at home, it leads him to total concentration on the very next election, where he is always hoping for victory and never achieving it. The quintessence of the Practical Man, and beset by long-run despair, the Conservative refuses to think or plan beyond the election of the day.

Pessimism, however, both short-run and long-run, is precisely what the prognosis of Conservatism deserves; for Conservatism is a dying remnant of the ancien régime of the preindustrial era, and, as such, it has no future. In its contemporary American form, the recent Conservative Revival embodied the death throes of an ineluctably moribund, Fundamentalist, rural, small-town, white Anglo-Saxon America. What, however, of the prospects for liberty? For too many libertarians mistakenly link the prognosis for liberty with that of the seemingly stronger and supposedly allied Conservative movement; this linkage makes the characteristic long-run pessimism of the modern libertarian easy to understand. But this paper contends that, while the short-run prospects for liberty at home and abroad may seem dim, the proper attitude for the libertarian to take is that of unquenchable long-run optimism. 

The case for this assertion rests on a certain view of history: which holds, first, that before the 18th century in Western Europe there existed (and still continues to exist outside the West) an identifiable Old Order. Whether the Old Order took the form of feudalism or Oriental despotism, it was marked by tyranny, exploitation, stagnation, fixed caste, and hopelessness and starvation for the bulk of the population. In sum, life was "nasty, brutish, and short"; here was Maine's "society of status" and Spencer's "military society." The ruling classes, or castes, governed by conquest and by getting the masses to believe in the alleged divine imprimatur to their rule. 

The Old Order was, and still remains, the great and mighty enemy of liberty; and it was particularly mighty in the past because there was then no inevitability about its overthrow. When we consider that basically the Old Order had existed since the dawn of history, in all civilizations, we can appreciate even more the glory and the magnitude of the triumph of the liberal revolution of and around the 18th century. 

Part of the dimensions of this struggle has been obscured by a great myth of the history of Western Europe implanted by antiliberal German historians of the late 19th century. The myth held that the growth of absolute monarchies and of mercantilism in the early modern era was necessary for the development of capitalism, since these served to liberate the merchants and the people from local feudal restrictions. In actuality, this was not at all the case; the King and his nation-State served rather as a superfeudal overlord re-imposing and reinforcing feudalism just as it was being dissolved by the peaceful growth of the market economy. The King superimposed his own restrictions and monopoly privileges onto those of the feudal regime. The absolute monarchs were the Old Order writ large and made even more despotic than before. Capitalism, indeed, flourished earliest and most actively precisely in those areas where the central State was weak or non-existent: the Italian cities, the Hanseatic League, the confederation of 17th century Holland. Finally, the old order was overthrown or severely shaken in its grip in two ways. One was by industry and the market expanding through the interstices of the feudal order (e.g., industry in England developing in the countryside beyond the grip of feudal, State, and guild restrictions.) More important was a series of cataclysmic revolutions that blasted loose the Old Order and the old ruling classes: the English Revolutions of the 17th century, the American Revolution, and the French Revolution, all of which were necessary to the ushering in of the Industrial Revolution and of at least partial victories for individual liberty, laissez-faire separation of church-and-state, and international peace. The society of status gave way, at least partially, to the "society of contract"; the military society gave way partially to the "industrial society." The mass of the population now achieved a mobility of labor and place, and accelerating expansion of their living standards, for which they had scarcely dared to hope. Liberalism had indeed brought to the Western world not only liberty, the prospect of peace, and the rising living standards of an industrial society, but above all perhaps, it brought hope, a hope in ever-greater progress that lifted the mass of mankind out of its age-old sink of stagnation and despair. 

Soon there developed in Western Europe two great political ideologies, centered around this new revolutionary phenomenon: the one was Liberalism, the party of hope, of radicalism, of liberty, of the Industrial Revolution, of progress, of humanity; the other was Conservatism, the party of reaction, the party that longed to restore the hierarchy, statism, theocracy, serfdom, and class exploitation of the old order. Since liberalism admittedly had reason on its side, the Conservatives darkened the ideological atmosphere with obscurantist calls for romanticism, tradition, theocracy, and irrationalism. Political ideologies were polarized, with Liberalism on the extreme "Left," and Conservatism on the extreme "Right," of the ideological spectrum. That genuine Liberalism was essentially radical and revolutionary was brilliantly perceived, in the twilight of its impact, by the great Lord Acton (one of the few figures in the history of thought who, charmingly, grew more radical as he grew older). Acton wrote that "Liberalism wishes for what ought to be, irrespective of what is." In working out this view, incidentally, it was Acton, not Trotsky, who first arrived at the concept of the "permanent revolution." As Gertrude Himmelfarb wrote, in her excellent study of Acton: 

his philosophy develop(ed) to the point where the future was seen as the avowed enemy of the past, and where the past was allowed no authority except as it happened to conform to morality. To take seriously this Liberal theory of history, to give precedence to "what ought to be" over "what is," was, he admitted, virtually to install a "revolution in permanence." 

The "revolution in permanence," as Acton hinted in the inaugural lecture and admitted frankly in his notes, was the culmination of his philosophy of history and theory of politics... This idea of conscience, that men carry about with them the knowledge of good and evil, is the very root of revolution, for it destroys the sanctity of the past... "Liberalism is essentially revolutionary," Acton observed. "Facts must yield to ideas. Peaceably and patiently if possible. Violently if not." [1]

The Liberal, wrote Acton, far surpassed the Whig: 

The Whig governed by compromise. The Liberal begins the reign of ideas... One is practical, gradual, ready for compromise. The other works out a principle philosophically. One is a policy aiming at a philosophy. The other is a philosophy seeking a policy. [2]

What happened to Liberalism? Why then did it decline during the nineteenth century? This question has been pondered many times, but perhaps the basic reason was an inner rot within the vitals of Liberalism itself. For, with the partial success of the Liberal Revolution in the West, the Liberals increasingly abandoned their radical fervor, and therefore their liberal goals, to rest content with a mere defense of the uninspiring and defective status quo. Two philosophical roots of this decay may be discerned: First, the abandonment of natural rights and "higher law" theory for utilitarianism. For only forms of natural or higher law theory can provide a radical base outside the existing system from which to challenge the status quo; and only such theory furnishes a sense of necessary immediacy to the libertarian struggle, by focussing on the necessity of bringing existing criminal rulers to the bar of justice. Utilitarians, on the other hand, in abandoning justice for expediency, also abandon immediacy for quiet stagnation and inevitably end up as objective apologists for the existing order. 

The second great philosophical influence on the decline of Liberalism was evolutionism, or Social Darwinism, which put the finishing touches to Liberalism as a radical force in society. For the Social Darwinist erroneously saw history and society through the peaceful, rose-colored glasses of infinitely slow, infinitely gradual social evolution. Ignoring the prime fact that no ruling caste in history has ever voluntarily surrendered its power, and that therefore Liberalism had to break through by means of a series of revolutions, the Social Darwinists looked forward peacefully and cheerfully to thousands of years of infinitely gradual evolution to the next supposedly inevitable stage of individualism. 

An interesting illustration of a thinker who embodies within himself the decline of Liberalism in the nineteenth century is Herbert Spencer. Spencer began as a magnificently radical liberal, indeed virtually a pure libertarian. But, as the virus of sociology and Social Darwinism took over in his soul, Spencer abandoned libertarianism as a dynamic historical movement, although at first without abandoning it in pure theory. In short, while looking forward to an eventual ideal of pure liberty, Spencer began to see its victory as inevitable, but only after millennia of gradual evolution, and thus, in actual fact, Spencer abandoned Liberalism as a fighting, radical creed; and confined his Liberalism in practice to a weary, rear-guard action against the growing collectivism of the late nineteenth-century. Interestingly enough, Spencer's tired shift "rightward" in strategy soon became a shift rightward in theory as well; so that Spencer abandoned pure liberty even in theory e.g., in repudiating his famous chapter in Social Statics, "The Right to Ignore the State." 

In England, the classical liberals began their shift from radicalism to quasi-conservatism in the early nineteenth century; a touchstone of this shift was the general British liberal attitude toward the national liberation struggle in Ireland. This struggle was twofold: against British political imperialism, and against feudal landlordism which had been imposed by that imperialism. By their Tory blindness toward the Irish drive for national independence, and especially for peasant property against feudal oppression, the British liberals (including Spencer) symbolized their effective abandonment of genuine Liberalism, which had been virtually born in a struggle against the feudal land system. Only in the United States, the great home of radical liberalism (where feudalism had never been able to take root outside the South), did natural rights and higher law theory, and consequent radical liberal movements, continue in prominence until the mid-nineteenth century. In their different ways, the Jacksonian and Abolitionist movements were the last powerful radical libertarian movements in American life. [3] 

Thus, with Liberalism abandoned from within, there was no longer a party of Hope in the Western world, no longer a "Left" movement to lead a struggle against the State and against the unbreached remainder of the Old Order. Into this gap, into this void created by the drying up of radical liberalism, there stepped a new movement: Socialism. Libertarians of the present day are accustomed to think of socialism as the polar opposite of the libertarian creed. But this is a grave mistake, responsible for a severe ideological disorientation of libertarians in the present world. As we have seen, Conservatism was the polar opposite of liberty; and socialism, while to the "left" of conservatism, was essentially a confused, middle-of-the road movement. It was, and still is, middle-of-the road because it tries to achieve Liberal ends by the use of Conservative means. 

In short, Russell Kirk, who claims that Socialism was the heir of classical liberalism, and Ronald Hamowy, who sees Socialism as the heir of Conservatism, are both right; for the question is on what aspect of this confused centrist movement we happen to be focussing. Socialism, like Liberalism and against Conservatism, accepted the industrial system and the liberal goals of freedom, reason, mobility, progress, higher living standards the masses, and an end to theocracy and war; but it tried to achieve these ends by the use of incompatible, Conservative means: statism, central planning, communitarianism, etc. Or rather, to be more precise, there were from the beginning two different strands within Socialism: one was the Right-wing, authoritarian strand, from Saint-Simon down, which glorified statism, hierarchy, and collectivism and which was thus a projection of Conservatism trying to accept and dominate the new industrial civilization. The other was the Left-wing, relatively libertarian strand, exemplified in their different ways by Marx and Bakunin, revolutionary and far more interested in achieving the libertarian goals of liberalism and socialism: but especially the smashing of the State apparatus to achieve the "withering away of the State" and the "end of the exploitation of man by man." Interestingly enough, the very Marxian phrase, the "replacement of the government of men by the administration of things," can be traced, by a circuitous route, from the great French radical laissez-faire liberals of the early nineteenth century, Charles Comte (no relation to Auguste Comte) and Charles Dunoyer. And so, too, may the concept of the "class struggle"; except that for Dunoyer and Comte the inherently antithetical classes were not businessmen vs. workers, but the producers in society (including free businessmen, workers, peasants, etc.) versus the exploiting classes constituting, and privileged by, the State apparatus. [4] Saint-Simon, at one time in his confused and chaotic life, was close to Comte and Dunoyer and picked up his class analysis from them, in the process characteristically getting the whole thing balled up and converting businessmen on the market, as well as feudal landlords and others of the State privileged, into "exploiters." Marx and Bakunin picked this up from the Saint-Simonians, and the result gravely misled the whole Left Socialist movement; for, then, in addition to smashing the repressive State, it became supposedly necessary to smash private capitalist ownership of the means of production. Rejecting private property, especially of capital, the Left Socialists were then trapped in a crucial inner contradiction: if the State is to disappear after the Revolution (immediately for Bakunin, gradually "withering" for Marx), then how is the "collective" to run its property without becoming an enormous State itself in fact even if not in name? This was a contradiction which neither the Marxists nor the Bakuninists were ever able to resolve. 

Having replaced radical liberalism as the party of the "Left," Socialism, by the turn of the twentieth century, fell prey to this inner contradiction. Most Socialists (Fabians, Lassalleans, even Marxists) turned sharply rightward, completely abandoned the old libertarian goals and ideals of revolution and the withering away of the State, and became cozy Conservatives permanently reconciled to the State, the status quo, and the whole apparatus of neo-mercantilism, State monopoly capitalism, imperialism and war that was rapidly being established and riveted on European society at the turn of the twentieth century. For Conservatism, too, had re-formed and regrouped to try to cope with a modern industrial system, and had become a refurbished mercantilism, a regime of statism marked by State monopoly privilege, in direct and indirect forms, to favored capitalists and to quasi-feudal landlords. The affinity between Right Socialism and the new Conservatism became very close, the former advocating similar policies but with a demagogic populist veneer: thus, the other side of the coin of imperialism was "social imperialism," which Joseph Schumpeter trenchantly defined as "an imperialism in which the entrepreneurs and other elements woo the workers by means of social welfare concessions which appear to depend on the success of export monopolism..." [5] 

Historians have long recognized the affinity, and the welding together, of Right-wing socialism with Conservatism in Italy and Germany, where the fusion was embodied first in Bismarckism and then in Fascism and National Socialism: the latter fulfilling the Conservative program of nationalism, imperialism, militarism, theocracy, and a right-wing collectivism that retained and even cemented the rule of the old privileged classes. But only recently have historians begun to realize that a similar pattern occurred in England and the United States. Thus, Bernard Semmel, in his brilliant history of the social-imperialist movement in England at the turn of the twentieth century, shows how the Fabian Society welcomed the rise of the Imperialists in England. [6] When, in the mid-1890's, the Liberal Party in England split into the Radicals on the left and the Liberal-Imperialists on the right, Beatrice Webb, co-leader of the Fabians, denounced the Radicals as "laisser faire and anti-imperialist" while hailing the latter as "collectivists and imperialists." An official Fabian manifesto, Fabianism and the Empire (1900), drawn up by George Bernard Shaw (who was later, with perfect consistency, to praise the domestic policies of Stalin and Mussolini and Sir Oswald Mosley), lauded Imperialism and attacked the Radicals, who "still cling to the fixed frontier ideals of individualist republicanism (and) non-interference." In contrast, "a Great Power ...must govern (a world empire) in the interests of civilization as a whole." After this, the Fabians collaborated closely with Tories and Liberal-Imperialists. Indeed, in late 1902, Sidney and Beatrice Webb established a small, secret group of brain-trusters called The Coefficients; as one of the leading members of this club, the Tory imperialist, Leopold S. Amery, revealingly wrote: "Sidney and Beatrice Webb were much more concerned with getting their ideas of the welfare state put into practice by any one who might be prepared to help, even on the most modest scale, than with the early triumph of an avowedly Socialist Party...There was, after all, nothing so very unnatural, as (Joseph) Chamberlain's own career had shown, in a combination of Imperialism in external affairs with municipal socialism or semi-socialism at home." [7] Other members of the Coefficients, who, as Amery wrote, were to function as a "Brains Trust or General Staff" for the movement, were: the Liberal-Imperialist Richard B. Haldane; the geo-politician Halford J. Mackinder; the Imperialist and Germanophobe Leopold Maxse, publisher of the National Review; the Tory socialist and imperialist Viscount Milner; the naval imperialist Carlyon Bellairs; the famous journalist J. L. Garvin; Bernard Shaw; Sir Clinton Dawkins, partner of the Morgan bank; and Sir Edward Grey, who, at a meeting of the club first adumbrated the policy of Entente with France and Russia that was to eventuate in the First World War. [8] 

The famous betrayal, during World War I, of the old ideals of revolutionary pacifism by the European Socialists, and even by the Marxists, should have come as no surprise; that each Socialist Party supported its "own" national government in the war (with the honorable exception of Eugene Victor Debs' Socialist Party in the United States) was the final embodiment of the collapse of the classic Socialist Left. From then on, socialists and quasi-socialists joined Conservatives in a basic amalgam, accepting the State and the Mixed Economy (=neo-Mercantilism=the Welfare State-Interventionism=State Monopoly Capitalism, merely synonyms for the same essential reality). It was in reaction to this collapse that Lenin broke out of the Second International, to re-establish classic revolutionary Marxism in a revival of Left Socialism. 

In fact, Lenin, almost without knowing it, accomplished more than this. It is common knowledge that "purifying" movements, eager to return to a classic purity shorn of recent corruptions, generally purify further than what had held true among the original classic sources. There were, indeed, marked "conservative" strains in the writings of Marx and Engels themselves which often justified the State, Western imperialism and aggressive nationalism, and it was these motifs, in the ambivalent views of the Masters on this subject, that provided the fodder for the later shift of the majority Marxists into the "social imperialist" camp. [9] Lenin's camp turned more "left" than had Marx and Engels themselves. Lenin had a decidedly more revolutionary stance toward the State, and consistently defended and supported movements of national liberation against imperialism. The Leninist shift was more "leftist" in other important senses as well. For while Marx had centered his attack on market capitalism per se, the major focus of Lenin's concerns was on what he conceives to be the highest stages of capitalism: imperialism and monopoly. Hence Lenin's focus, centering as it did in practice on State monopoly and imperialism rather than on laissez-faire capitalism, was in that way far more congenial to the libertarian than that of Karl Marx. In recent years, the splits in the Leninist world have brought to the fore a still more left-wing tendency: that of the Chinese. In their almost exclusive stress on revolution in the undeveloped countries, the Chinese have, in addition to scorning Right-wing Marxist compromises with the State, unerringly centered their hostility on feudal and quasi-feudal landholdings, on monopoly concessions which have enmeshed capital with quasi-feudal land, and on Western imperialism. In this virtual abandonment of the classical Marxist emphasis on the working class, the Maoists have concentrated Leninist efforts more closely on the overthrow of the major bulwarks of the Old Order in the modern world. [10] 

Fascism and Nazism were the logical culmination in domestic affairs of the modern drift toward right-wing collectivism. It has become customary among libertarians, as indeed among the Establishment of the West, to regard Fascism and Communism as fundamentally identical. But while both systems were indubitably collectivist, they differed greatly in their socio-economic content. For Communism was a genuine revolutionary movement that ruthlessly displaced and overthrew the old ruling élites; while Fascism, on the contrary, cemented into power the old ruling classes. Hence, Fascism was a counter-revolutionary movement that froze a set of monopoly privileges upon society; in short, Fascism was the apotheosis of modern State monopoly capitalism. [11] Here was the reason that Fascism proved so attractive (which Communism, of course, never did) to big business interests in the West--openly and unabashedly so in the 1920's and early 1930's. [12] 

We are now in a position to apply our analysis to the American scene. Here we encounter a contrasting myth about recent American history which has been propagated by current conservatives and adopted by most American libertarians. The myth goes approximately as follows: America was, more or less, a haven of laissez-faire until the New Deal; then Roosevelt, influenced by Felix Frankfurter, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, and other "Fabian" and Communist "conspirators," engineered a revolution which set America on the path to Socialism, and, further on, beyond the horizon, to Communism. The present-day libertarian who adopts this or a similar view of the American experience, tends to think of himself as an "extreme right-winger"; slightly to the left of him, then, lies the Conservative, to the left of that the middle-of-the road, and then leftward to Socialism and Communism. Hence, the enormous temptation for some libertarians to red-bait; for, since they see America as drifting inexorably leftward to Socialism and therefore to Communism, the great temptation is for them to overlook the intermediary stages and tar all of their opposition with the hated Red brush. 

One would think that the "right-wing libertarian" would quickly be able to see some drastic flaws in this conception. For one thing, the income tax amendment, which he deplores as the beginning of socialism in America, was put through Congress in 1909 by an overwhelming majority of both parties. To look at this event as a sharp leftward move toward socialism would require treating president William Howard Taft, who put through the 16th Amendment, as a Leftist, and surely few would have the temerity to do that. Indeed, the New Deal was not a revolution in any sense; its entire collectivist program was anticipated: proximately by Herbert Hoover during the depression, and, beyond that, by the war-collectivism and central planning that governed America during the First World War. Every element in the New Deal program: central planning, creation of a network of compulsory cartels for industry and agriculture, inflation and credit expansion, artificial raising of wage rates and promotion of unions within the overall monopoly structure, government regulation and ownership, all this had been anticipated and adumbrated during the previous two decades. [13] And this program, with its privileging of various big business interests at the top of the collectivist heap, was in no sense reminiscent of socialism or leftism; there was nothing smacking of the egalitarian or the proletarian here. No, the kinship of this burgeoning collectivism was not at all with Socialism-Communism but with Fascism, or Socialism-of-the-Right, a kinship which many big businessmen of the 'twenties expressed openly in their yearning for abandonment of a quasi-laissez-faire system for a collectivism which they could control. And, surely, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, and Herbert Clark Hoover make far more recognizable figures as proto-Fascists than they do as crypto-Communists. 

The essence of the New Deal was seen, far more clearly than in the conservative mythology, by the Leninist movement in the early 1930's--that is, until the mid-thirties, when the exigencies of Soviet foreign relations caused a sharp shift of the world Communist line to "Popular Front" approval of the New Deal. Thus, in 1934, the British Leninist theoretician R. Palme Dutt published a brief but scathing analysis of the New Deal as "social fascism"--as the reality of Fascism cloaked with a thin veneer of populist demagogy. No conservative opponent has ever delivered a more vigorous or trenchant denunciation of the New Deal. The Roosevelt policy, wrote Dutt, was to "move to a form of dictatorship of a war-type"; the essential policies were to impose a State monopoly capitalism through the NRA, to subsidize business, banking, and agriculture through inflation and the partial expropriation of the mass of the people through lower real wage rates, and to the regulation and exploitation of labor by means of government-fixed wages and compulsory arbitration. When the New Deal, wrote Dutt, is stripped of its "social-reformist 'progressive' camouflage," "the reality of the new Fascist type of system of concentrated state capitalism and industrial servitude remains, " including an implicit "advance to war." Dutt effectively concluded with a quote from an editor of the highly respected Current History Magazine: "The new America (the editor had written in mid-1933) will not be capitalist in the old sense, nor will it be Socialist. If at the moment the trend is towards Fascism, it will be an American Fascism, embodying the experience, the traditions and the hopes of a great middle-class nation." [14] 

Thus, the New Deal was not a qualitative break from the American past; on the contrary, it was merely a quantitative extension of the web of State privilege that had been proposed and acted upon before: in Hoover's Administration, in the war collectivism of World War I, and in the Progressive Era. The most thorough exposition of the origins of State monopoly capitalism, or what he calls "political capitalism," in the U.S. is found in the brilliant work of Dr. Gabriel Kolko. In his Triumph of Conservatism, Kolko traces the origins of political capitalism in the "reforms" of the Progressive Era. Orthodox historians have always treated the Progressive period (roughly 1900-1916) as a time when free-market capitalism was becoming increasingly "monopolistic"; in reaction to this reign of monopoly and big business, so the story runs, altruistic intellectuals and far-seeing politicians turned to intervention by the government to reform and regulate these evils. Kolko's great work demonstrates that the reality was almost precisely the opposite of this myth. Despite the wave of mergers and trusts formed around the turn of the century, Kolko reveals, the forces of competition on the free market rapidly vitiated and dissolved these attempts at stabilizing and perpetuating the economic power of big business interests. It was precisely in reaction to their impending defeat at the hands of the competitive storms of the market that business turned, increasingly after the 1900's, to the federal government for aid and protection. In short, the intervention by the federal government was designed, not to curb big business monopoly for the sake of the public weal, but to create monopolies that big business (as well as trade associations smaller business) had not been able to establish amidst the competitive gales of the free market. Both Left and Right have been persistently misled by the notion that intervention by the government is ipso facto leftish and anti-business. Hence the mythology of the New-Fair Deal-as-Red that is endemic on the Right. Both the big businessmen, led by the Morgan interests, and Professor Kolko almost uniquely in the academic world, have realized that monopoly privilege can only be created by the State and not as a result of free market operations. 

Thus, Kolko shows that, beginning with Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism and culminating in Wilson's New Freedom, in industry after industry, e.g., insurance, banking, meat, exports, and business generally, regulations that present-day Rightists think of as "socialistic" were not only uniformly hailed, but conceived and brought about by big businessmen. This was a conscious effort to fasten upon the economy a cement of subsidy, stabilization, and monopoly privilege. A typical view was that of Andrew Carnegie; deeply concerned about competition in the steel industry, which neither the formation of U. S. Steel nor the famous "Gary Dinners" sponsored by that Morgan company could dampen, Carnegie declared in 1908 that "it always comes back to me that Government control, and that alone, will properly solve the problem." There is nothing alarming about government regulation per se, announced Carnegie, "capital is perfectly safe in the gas company, although it is under court control. So will all capital be, although under Government control..." [15] 

The Progressive Party, Kolko shows, was basically a Morgan-created party to re-elect Roosevelt and punish President Taft, who had been over-zealous in prosecuting Morgan enterprises; the leftish social workers often unwittingly provided a demagogic veneer for a conservative-statist movement. Wilson's New Freedom, culminating in the creation of the Federal Trade Commission, far from being considered dangerously socialistic by big business, was welcomed enthusiastically as putting their long-cherished program of support, privilege, and regulation of competition into effect (and Wilson's war collectivism was welcomed even more exuberantly.) Edward N. Hurley, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission and formerly President of the Illinois Manufacturers Association, happily announced, in late 1915, that the Federal Trade Commission was designed "to do for general business" what the ICC had been eagerly doing for the railroads and shippers, what the Federal Reserve was doing for the nation's bankers, and what the Department of Agriculture was accomplishing for the farmers. [16] As would happen more dramatically in European Fascism, each economic interest group was being cartellized and monopolized and fitted into its privileged niche in a hierarchically-ordered socio-economic structure. Particularly influential were the views of Arthur Jerome Eddy, an eminent corporation lawyer who specialized in forming trade associations and who helped to father the Federal Trade Commission. In his magnum opus fiercely denouncing competition in business and calling for governmentally controlled and protected industrial "cooperation," Eddy trumpeted that "Competition is War, and 'War is Hell.'" [17] 

What of the intellectuals of the Progressive period, damned by the present-day Right as "socialistic"? Socialistic in a sense they were, but what kind of "socialism"? The conservative State Socialism of Bismarck's Germany, the prototype for so much of modern European--and American--political forms, and under which the bulk of American intellectuals of the late nineteenth century received their higher education. As Kolko puts it: 

The conservatism of the contemporary intellectuals,... the idealization of the state by Lester Ward, Richard T. Ely, or Simon N. Patten...was also the result of the peculiar training of many of the American academics of this period. At the end of the nineteenth century the primary influence in American academic social and economic theory was exerted by the universities. The Bismarckian idealization of the state, with its centralized welfare functions... was suitably revised by the thousands of key academics who studied in German universities in the 1880's and 1890's...[18]

The ideal of the leading ultra-conservative German professors, moreover, who were also called "socialists of the chair," was consciously to form themselves into the "intellectual bodyguard of the House of Hohenzollern"-- and that they surely were. 

As an exemplar of the Progressive intellectual, Kolko aptly cites Herbert Croly, editor of the Morgan-financed New Republic. Systematizing Theodore Roosevelt's New Nationalism, Croly hailed this new Hamiltonianism as a system for collectivist federal control and integration of society into a hierarchical structure. 

Looking forward from the Progressive Era, Gabriel Kolko concludes that:

a synthesis of business and politics on the federal level was created during the war, in various administrative and emergency agencies, that continued throughout the following decade. Indeed, the war period represents the triumph of business in the most emphatic manner possible... big business gained total support from the various regulatory agencies and the Executive. It was during the war that effective, working oligopoly and price and market agreements became operational in the dominant sectors of the American economy. The rapid diffusion of power in the economy and relatively easy entry virtually ceased. Despite the cessation of important new legislative enactments, the unity of business and the federal government continued throughout the 1920's and thereafter, using the foundations laid in the Progressive Era to stabilize and consolidate conditions within various industries ...The principle of utilizing the federal government to stabilize the economy, established in the context of modern industrialism during the Progressive Era, became the basis of political capitalism in its many later ramifications. 

In this sense progressivism did not die in the 1920's, but became a part of the basic fabric of American society. [19]

Thus the New Deal. After a bit of leftish wavering in the middle and late 'thirties, the Roosevelt Administration re-cemented its alliance with big business in the national defense and war contract economy that began in 1940. This was an economy and a polity that has been ruling America ever since, embodied in the permanent war economy, the full-fledged State monopoly capitalism and neo-mercantilism, the military-industrial complex of the present era. The essential features of American society have not changed since it was thoroughly militarized and politicized in World War II--except that the trends intensify, and even in everyday life men have been increasingly moulded into conforming Organization Men serving the State and its military-industrial complex. William H. Whyte, Jr., in his justly famous book, The Organization Man, made clear that this moulding took place amidst the adoption by business of the collectivist views of "enlightened" sociologists and other social engineers. It is also clear that this harmony of views is not simply the result of naiveté by big businessmen--not when such "naiveté" coincides with the requirements of compressing the worker and manager into the mould of willing servitor in the great bureaucracy of the military-industrial machine. And, under the guise of "democracy," education has become mere mass drilling in the techniques of adjustment to the task of becoming a cog in the vast bureaucratic machine. 

Meanwhile, the Republicans and Democrats remain as bipartisan in forming and supporting this Establishment as they were in the first two decades of the twentieth century. "Me-tooism"--bipartisan support of the status quo that underlies the superficial differences between the parties--did not begin in 1940. 
.....

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## helmuth_hubener

......


How did the corporal's guard of remaining libertarians react to these shifts of the ideological spectrum in America? An instructive answer may be found by looking at the career of one of the great libertarians of twentieth-century America: Albert Jay Nock. In the 1920's, when Nock had formulated his radical libertarian philosophy, he was universally regarded as a member of the extreme left, and he so regarded himself as well. It is always the tendency, in ideological and political life, to center one's attentions on the main enemy of the day, and the main enemy of that day was the conservative statism of the Coolidge-Hoover Administration; it was natural, therefore, for Nock, his friend and fellow libertarian Mencken, and other radicals to join quasi-socialists in battle against the common foe. When the New Deal succeeded Hoover, on the other hand, the milk-and-water socialists and vaguely leftish interventionists hopped on the New Deal bandwagon; on the Left, only the libertarians such as Nock and Mencken, and the Leninists (before the Popular Front period) realized that Roosevelt was only a continuation of Hoover in other rhetoric. It was perfectly natural for the radicals to form a united front against FDR with the older Hoover and Al Smith conservatives who either believed Roosevelt had gone too far or disliked his flamboyant populistic rhetoric. But the problem was that Nock and his fellow radicals, at first properly scornful of their new-found allies, soon began to accept them and even don cheerfully the formerly despised label of "conservative." With the rank-and-file radicals, this shift took place, as have so many transformations of ideology in history, unwittingly and in default of proper ideological leadership; for Nock, and to some extent for Mencken, on the other hand, the problem cut far deeper. 

For there had always been one grave flaw in the brilliant and finely-honed libertarian doctrine hammered out in their very different ways by Nock and Mencken; both had long adopted the great error of pessimism. Both saw no hope for the human race ever adopting the system of liberty; despairing of the radical doctrine of liberty ever being applied in practice, each in his own personal way retreated from the responsibility of ideological leadership, Mencken joyously and hedonically, Nock haughtily and secretively. Despite the massive contribution of both men to the cause of liberty, therefore, neither could ever become the conscious leader of a libertarian movement: for neither could ever envision the party of liberty as the party of hope, the party of revolution, or a fortiori, the party of secular messianism. The error of pessimism is first step down the slippery slope that leads to Conservatism; and hence it was all too easy for the pessimistic radical Nock, even though still basically a libertarian, to accept the conservative label and even come to croak the old platitude that there is an a priori presumption against any social change. 

It is fascinating that Albert Jay Nock thus followed the ideological path of his beloved spiritual ancestor Herbert Spencer; both began as pure radical libertarians, both quickly abandoned radical or revolutionary tactics as embodied in the will to put their theories into practice through mass action, and both eventually glided from Tory tactics to at least a partial Toryism of content. 

And so the libertarians, especially in their sense of where they stood in the ideological spectrum, fused with the older conservatives who were forced to adopt libertarian phraseology (but with no real libertarian content) in opposing a Roosevelt Administration that had become too collectivistic for them, either in content or in rhetoric. World War II reinforced and cemented this alliance; for, in contrast to all the previous American wars of the century, the pro-peace and "isolationist" forces were all identified, by their enemies and subsequently by themselves, as men of the "Right." By the end of World War II, it was second nature for libertarians to consider themselves at an "extreme right-wing" pole with the conservatives immediately to the left of them; and hence the great error of the spectrum that persists to this day. In particular, the modern libertarians forgot or never realized that opposition to war and militarism had always been a "left-wing" tradition which had included libertarians; and hence when the historical aberration of the New Deal period corrected itself and the "Right-wing" was once again the great partisan of total war, the libertarians were unprepared to understand what was happening and tailed along in the wake of their supposed conservative "allies." The liberals had completely lost their old ideological markings and guidelines. 

Given a proper reorientation of the ideological spectrum, what then would be the prospects for liberty? It is no wonder that the contemporary libertarian, seeing the world going socialist and Communist, and believing himself virtually isolated and cut off from any prospect of united mass action, tends to be steeped in long-run pessimism. But the scene immediately brightens when we realize that that indispensable requisite of modern civilization: the overthrow of the Old Order, was accomplished by mass libertarian action erupting in such great revolutions of the West as the French and American Revolutions, and bringing about the glories of the Industrial Revolution and the advances of liberty, mobility, and rising living standards that we still retain today. Despite the reactionary swings backward to statism, the modern world stands towering above the world of the past. When we consider also that, in one form or another, the Old Order of despotism, feudalism, theocracy and militarism dominated every human civilization until the West of the 18th century, optimism over what man has and can achieve must mount still higher. 

It might be retorted, however, that this bleak historical record of despotism and stagnation only reinforces one's pessimism, for it shows the persistence and durability of the Old Order and the seeming frailty and evanescence of the New--especially in view of the retrogression of the past century. But such superficial analysis neglects the great change that occurred with the Revolution of the New Order, a change that is clearly irreversible. For the Old Order was able to persist in its slave system for centuries precisely because it awoke no expectations and no hopes in the minds of the submerged masses; their lot was to live and eke out their brutish subsistence in slavery while obeying unquestioningly the commands of their divinely appointed rulers. But the liberal Revolution implanted indelibly in the minds of the masses--not only in the West but in the still feudally-dominated undeveloped world--the burning desire for liberty, for land to the peasantry, for peace between the nations, and, perhaps above all, for the mobility and rising standards of living that can only be brought to them by an industrial civilization. The masses will never again accept the mindless serfdom of the Old Order; and given these demands that have been awakened by liberalism and the Industrial Revolution, long-run victory for liberty is inevitable. 

For only liberty, only a free market, can organize and maintain an industrial system, and the more that population expands and explodes, the more necessary is the unfettered working of such an industrial economy. Laissez-faire and the free market become more and more evidently necessary as an industrial system develops; radical deviations cause breakdowns and economic crises. This crisis of statism becomes particularly dramatic and acute in a fully socialist society; and hence the inevitable breakdown of statism has first become strikingly apparent in the countries of the socialist (i.e., Communist) camp. For socialism confronts its inner contradiction most starkly. Desperately, it tries to fulfill its proclaimed goals of industrial growth, higher standards of living for the masses, and eventual withering away of the State, and is increasingly unable to do so with its collectivist means. Hence the inevitable breakdown of socialism. This progressive breakdown of socialist planning was at first partially obscured. For, in every instance the Leninists took power not in a developed capitalist country as Marx had wrongly predicted, but in a country suffering from the oppression of feudalism. Secondly, the Communists did not attempt to impose socialism upon the economy for many years after taking power: in Soviet Russia until Stalin's forced collectivization of the early 1930's reversed the wisdom of Lenin's New Economic Policy, which Lenin's favorite theoretician Bukharin would have extended onward towards a free market. Even the supposedly rabid Communist leaders of China did not impose a socialist economy on that country until the late 1950's. In every case, growing industrialization has imposed a series of economic breakdowns so severe that the Communist countries, against their ideological principles, have had to retreat step by step from central planning and return to various degrees and forms of a free market. The Liberman Plan for the Soviet Union has gained a great deal of publicity; but the inevitable process of de-socialization has proceeded much further in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Most advanced of all is Yugoslavia, which, freed from Stalinist rigidity earlier than its fellows, in only a dozen years has desocialized so fast and so far that its economy is now hardly more socialistic than that of France. The fact that people calling themselves "Communists" are still governing the country is irrelevant to the basic social and economic facts. Central planning in Yugoslavia has virtually disappeared; the private sector not only predominates in agriculture but is even strong in industry, and the public sector itself has been so radically decentralized and placed under free pricing, profit-and-loss tests, and a cooperative worker ownership of each plant that true socialism hardly exists any longer. Only the final step of converting workers' syndical control to individual shares of ownership remains on the path toward outright capitalism. Communist China and the able Marxist theoreticians of Monthly Review have clearly discerned the situation and have raised the alarm that Yugoslavia is no longer a socialist country. 

One would think that free-market economists would hail the confirmation and increasing relevance of the notable insight of Professor Ludwig von Mises a half-century ago: that socialist States, being necessarily devoid of a genuine price system could not calculate economically and therefore could not plan their economy with any success. Indeed, one follower of Mises in effect predicted this process of de-socialization in a novel some years ago. Yet neither this author nor other free-market economists have given the slightest indication of even recognizing, let alone saluting this process in the Communist countries--perhaps because their almost hysterical view of the alleged threat of Communism prevents them from acknowledging any dissolution in the supposed monolith of menace. [20] 

Communist countries, therefore, are increasingly and ineradicably forced to de-socialize, and will therefore eventually reach the free market. The state of the undeveloped countries is also cause for sustained libertarian optimism. For all over the world, the peoples of the undeveloped nations are engaged in revolution to throw off their feudal Old Order. It is true that the United States is doing its mightiest to suppress the very revolutionary process that once brought it and Western Europe out of the shackles of the Old Order; but it is increasingly clear that even overwhelming armed might cannot suppress the desire of the masses to break through into the modern world. 

We are left with the United States and the countries of Western Europe. Here, the case for optimism is less clear, for the quasi-collectivist system does not present as stark a crisis of self-contradiction as does socialism. And yet, here too economic crisis looms in the future and gnaws away at the complacency of the Keynesian economic managers: creeping inflation, reflected in the aggravating balance-of-payments breakdown of the once almighty dollar; creeping secular unemployment brought about by minimum wage scales; and the deeper and long-run accumulation of the uneconomic distortions of the permanent war economy. Moreover, potential crises in the United States are not merely economic; there is a burgeoning and inspiring moral ferment among the youth of America against the fetters of centralized bureaucracy, of mass education in uniformity, and of brutality and oppression exercised by the minions of the State. 

Furthermore, the maintenance of a substantial degree of free speech and democratic forms facilitates, at least in the short-run, the possible growth of a libertarian movement. The United States is also fortunate in possessing, even if half-forgotten beneath the statist and tyrannical overlay of the last half-century, a great tradition of libertarian thought and action. The very fact that much of this heritage is still reflected in popular rhetoric, even though stripped of its significance in practice, provides a substantial ideological groundwork for a future party of liberty. 

What the Marxists would call the "objective conditions" for the triumph of liberty exist, then, everywhere in the world, and more so than in any past age; for everywhere the masses have opted for higher living standards and the promise of freedom and everywhere the various regimes of statism and collectivism cannot fulfill these goals. What is needed, then, is simply the "subjective conditions" for victory, i.e., a growing body of informed libertarians who will spread the message to the peoples of the world that liberty and the purely free market provide the way out of their problems and crises. Liberty cannot be fully achieved unless libertarians exist in number to guide the peopled to the proper path. But perhaps the greatest stumbling-block to the creation of such a movement is the despair and pessimism typical of the libertarian in today's world. Much of that pessimism is due to his misreading of history and his thinking of himself and his handful of confreres as irredeemably isolated from the masses and therefore from the winds of history. Hence he becomes a lone critic of historical events rather than a person who considers himself as part of a potential movement which can and will make history. The modern libertarian has forgotten that the liberal of the 17th and 18th centuries faced odds much more overwhelming than faces the liberal of today; for in that era before the Industrial Revolution, the victory of liberalism was far from inevitable. And yet the liberalism of that day was not-content to remain a gloomy little sect; instead, it unified theory and action. Liberalism grew and developed as an ideology and, leading and guiding the masses, made the Revolution which changed the fate of the world; by its monumental breakthrough, this Revolution of the 18th century transformed history from a chronicle of stagnation and despotism to an ongoing movement advancing toward a veritable secular Utopia of liberty and rationality and abundance. The Old Order is dead or moribund; and the reactionary attempts to run a modern society and economy by various throwbacks to the Old Order are doomed to total failure. The liberals of the past have left to modern libertarians a glorious heritage, not only of ideology but of victories against far more devastating odds. The liberals of the past have also left a heritage of the proper strategy and tactics for libertarians to follow: not only by leading rather than remaining aloof from the masses; but also by not falling prey to short-run optimism. For short-run optimism, being unrealistic, leads straightway to disillusion and then to long-run pessimism; just as, on the other side of the coin, long-run pessimism leads to exclusive and self-defeating concentration on immediate and short-run issues. Short-run optimism stems, for one thing, from a naive and simplistic view of strategy: that liberty will win merely by educating more intellectuals, who in turn will educate opinion-moulders, who in turn will convince the masses, after which the State will somehow fold its tent and silently steal away. Matters are not that easy; for libertarians face not only a problem of education but also a problem of power; and it is a law of history that a ruling caste has never voluntarily given up its power. 

But the problem of power is, certainly in the United States, far in the future. For the libertarian, the main task of the present epoch is to cast off his needless and debilitating pessimism, to set his sights on long-run victory and to set about the road to its attainment. To do this, he must, perhaps first of all, drastically realign his mistaken view of the ideological spectrum; he must discover who his friends and natural allies are, and above all perhaps, who his enemies are. Armed with this knowledge, let him proceed in the spirit of radical long-run optimism that one of the great figures in the history of libertarian thought, Randolph Bourne, correctly identified as the spirit of youth. Let Bourne's stirring words serve also as the guidepost for the spirit of liberty: 

youth is the incarnation of reason pitted against the rigidity of tradition. Youth puts the remorseless questions to everything that is old and established-Why? What is this thing good for? And when it gets the mumbled, evasive answers of the defenders it applies its own fresh, clean spirit of reason to institutions, customs, and ideas, and finding them stupid, inane, or poisonous, turns instinctively to overthrow them and build in their place the things with which its visions teem. . . 

Youth is the leaven that keeps all these questioning, testing attitudes fermenting in the world. If it were not for this troublesome activity of youth, with its hatred of sophisms and glosses, its insistence on things as they are, society would die from sheer decay. It is the policy of the older generation as it gets adjusted to the world to hide away the unpleasant things where it can, or preserve a conspiracy of silence and an elaborate pretense that they do not exist. But meanwhile the sores go on festering, just the same. Youth is the drastic antiseptic... It drags skeletons from closets and insists that they be explained. No wonder the older generation fears and distrusts the younger. Youth is the avenging Nemesis on its trail... 

Our elders are always optimistic in their views of the present, pessimistic in their views of the future; youth is pessimistic toward the present and gloriously hopeful for the future. And it is this hope which is the lever of progress--one might say, the only lever of progress... 

The secret of life is then that this fine youthful spirit shall never be lost. Out of the turbulence of youth should come this fine precipitate--a sane, strong, aggressive spirit of daring and doing. It must be a flexible, growing spirit, with a hospitality to new ideas, and a keen insight into experience. To keep one's reactions warm and true is to have found the secret of perpetual youth, and perpetual youth is salvation. [21]

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The words "left" and "right" have changed their meanings as Rothbard points out. Therefore, both Hoppe and Rothbard are correct under the definitions they work.

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## helmuth_hubener

Yes, but they are correct in completely different ways!  That's what's so fascinating!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*THRIVE*





Excellent compilation of correct principles.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Reality check on the New World Order - Foster Gamble (part 1)

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## helmuth_hubener

"Thrive" is not grounded in any kind of sound economics.  Indeed in any understanding of reality at all, as far as I can tell.  Sorry!  It and that other one, what's it called?.... some sort of utopian thing... man, I'm having a hard time remembering.  The word reminds me of illuminati, also of poltergeist; it's a special word that the guy came up with for his movement. Argh, this is bugging me.

Phew, after a bit of searching I finally found it: Zeitgeist.

Anyway: don't do it, Foundation!  Don't go down this road.  It's not a fruitful line of inquiry nor productive path of life.  These kooky things have almost no touch points with reality.

http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/faq/

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> "Thrive" is not grounded in any kind of sound economics.  Indeed in any understanding of reality at all, as far as I can tell.  Sorry!  It and that other one, what's it called?.... some sort of utopian thing... man, I'm having a hard time remembering.  The word reminds me of illuminati, also of poltergeist; it's a special word that the guy came up with for his movement. Argh, this is bugging me.
> 
> Phew, after a bit of searching I finally found it: Zeitgeist.
> 
> Anyway: don't do it, Foundation!  Don't go down this road.  It's not a fruitful line of inquiry nor productive path of life.  These kooky things have almost no touch points with reality.
> 
> http://thrivedebunked.wordpress.com/faq/


He was for

1) Non-aggression principle as the core philosophy and law. (That alone spells perfect).
2) Free Competition in Currencies.
3) Exposing false flags.
4) Free energy disclosure.
5) Cancer cures and health science disclosure.

And many other important truths. What's not to like?

Can you point out a single wrong principle he promotes? He is at least 95% correct, and I applaud him for his courage and integrity! Thank God for people like these!

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

I love his emphasis on love, spirituality, and peaceful voluntary cooperation. These are divine principles...

Again, the machinery of this positive transformation is:
1) Truth. Love.
2) Non-aggression.
3) Voluntary creative cooperation. *
What would it take for us to thrive ? Solutions - Foster Gamble*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

"II. *Secession*

 To wit, and mainly, Cosh denies that libertarianism has anything to  say about the optimal size of countries in general, and, in particular,  nothing about whether or not Scotland should have seceded from Great  Britain. Not so, not so. For the anarcho-capitalist libertarian, the  ideal size of each nation is one; that is, if there are seven billion  people on the planet, there should be exactly that number of political  jurisdictions, one to a customer. We should each have our own country.  We should all of us be sovereign over ourselves."  -- Walter E. Block

Read more here.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

How to fix Africa

(no surprises here: Apply the fundamental Principles of Liberty.)

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Society Without the [plunder] State*





Recorded at the Mises Circle in Costa Mesa, California, 8 November 2014.

 Featuring Ron Paul, Judge  Andrew P. Napolitano, Lew Rockwell, Jeff Deist, and David Gordon. Enjoy  this lively discussion as they answer audience questions on topics of a  stateless society, such as private defense,homeschooling, privately  produced money, the role of markets, and how stateless legal systems  would work.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*All I Want for Christmas is a (Real) Government Shutdown*

                                                                                                           By Ron Paul
Ron Paul Institute
                            December 16, 2014

   
 

                                                         The political class breathed a sigh of relief Saturday  when the US Senate averted a government shutdown by passing the $1.1  trillion omnibus spending bill. This year’s omnibus resembles omnibuses  of Christmas past in that it was drafted in secret, was full of special  interest deals and disguised spending increases, and was voted on before  most members could read it.

 The debate over the omnibus may have made for entertaining political  theater, but the outcome was never in doubt. Most House and Senate  members are so terrified of another government shutdown that they would  rather vote for a 1,774-page bill they have not read than risk even a  one or two-day government shutdown.

 Those who voted for the omnibus to avoid a shutdown fail to grasp  that the consequences of blindly expanding government are far worse than  the consequences of a temporary government shutdown. A short or even  long-term government shutdown is a small price to pay to avoid an  economic calamity caused by Congress’ failure to reduce spending and  debt.

 The political class’ shutdown phobia is particularly puzzling because  a shutdown only closes 20 percent of the federal government. As the  American people learned during the government shutdown of 2013, the  country can survive with 20 percent less government.

 Instead of panicking over a limited shutdown, a true pro-liberty  Congress would be eagerly drawing up plans to permanently close most of  the federal government, staring with the Federal Reserve. The Federal  Reserve’s inflationary policies not only degrade the average American’s  standard of living, they also allow Congress to run up huge deficits.  Congress should take the first step toward restoring a sound monetary  policy by passing the Audit the Fed bill, so the American people can  finally learn the truth about the Fed’s operations.

 Second on the chopping block should be the Internal Revenue Service.  The federal government is perfectly capable of performing its  constitutional functions without imposing a tyrannical income tax system  on the American people.

 America’s militaristic foreign policy should certainly be high on the  shutdown list. The troops should be brought home, all foreign aid  should be ended, and America should pursue a policy of peace and free  trade with all nations. Ending the foreign policy of  hyper-interventionism that causes so many to resent and even hate  America will increase our national security.

 All programs that spy on or otherwise interfere with the private  lives of American citizens should be shutdown. This means no more TSA,  NSA, or CIA, as well as an end to all federal programs that promote  police militarization. The unconstitutional war on drugs should also  end, along with the war on raw milk.



 
All  forms of welfare should be shut down, starting with those welfare  programs that benefit the wealthy and the politically well connected.  Corporate welfare, including welfare for the military-industrial complex  that masquerades as “defense spending,” should be first on the chopping  block. Welfare for those with lower incomes could be more slowly phased  out to protect those who have become dependent on those programs.

 The Department of Education should be permanently padlocked. This  would free American schoolchildren from the dumbed-down education  imposed by Common Core and No Child Left Behind. Of course, Obamacare,  and similar programs, must be shut down so we can finally have  free-market health care.
 Congress could not have picked a worse Christmas gift for the  American people than the 1,774-page omnibus spending bill.  Unfortunately, we cannot return this gift. But hopefully someday  Congress will give us the gift of peace, prosperity, and liberty by  shutting down the welfare-warfare state.
The Best of Ron Paul


                                                                                                               Copyright © 2014 by RonPaul Institute.  Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided  full credit and a live link are given.
                             Previous article by Ron Paul:  DC Home for the Criminally Insane

Did the GOP Tell the Truth?The Oil Price Collapse

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Case for Ebenezer*

                                                                                                           By Butler Shaffer
                                                                                    December 24, 2014


*Correcting Scrooge’s Economics 
*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

When People Defy Corrupt Government 
They Rediscover their Humanity and become more Christlike.



Inspired by real events from 100 years ago. 

It commemorates the  extraordinary events of Christmas Day, 1914, when the guns fell silent  and two armies met in no-mans land, sharing gifts  and even playing  football together.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

State And Crime 
By Peter Bistoletti
January 12, 2015


   
 

There are three types of crimes, however two of those should not be considered as such. Let me explain.
1) Crimes against so called natural rights, conferred by  natural law. Natural rights are universal ethical rules, developed over  thousands of years and e. g. to be found in the commandments of all  large religions. These natural rights link the Non Aggression Principle  (NAP) to the respect for private property- you shall not kill, steal,  covet your neighbors house, use violence or offer violence against any  other person except in self-defense etc. Nobody should be coerced into a  contract and thus all contracts should be based on voluntariness. The  victims of crimes against these natural rights are always individuals.

 2)  Crimes directed at the state with the state as victim. Examples are  inter alia tax evasion, tax fraud, objection to military service (i.e.  slave labor) and damaging or stealing state property.

 3) Victimless crimes against state statutes and rules.
Lets now scrutinize these three kinds of criminal acts more closely.

 A criminal act harming natural rights is always directed at a private  person and/or private property. Natural rights are the basic conditions  of peaceful coexistence between human beings and the prerequisite for a  market economy with voluntary exchange of goods and services creating  prosperity for everyone, a.k.a. capitalism. State-issued statutes, based  on violence and force, and natural rights are incompatible. The state  often masquerades statutes as entitlements and rights when in reality  they are nothing but arbitrarily created and thinly veiled injustice,  serving primarily the states and its cronies interests. Already the  ancient Romans knew the  difference between statute (lex) and law (ius). They considered law to  be ethical rules guiding the coexistence and cooperation between human  beings. Statutes on the other hand were issued by the state in order to  implement rules and commands which had to be followed by the citizens.  The state, based on its monopoly on the use of force usurped a monopoly  on issuing statutes in order to exert power over the people, enforcing  these rules by violence or threat of violence. Statutes are almost  always in contradiction to the peoples sense about what is right and  just. They are drafted in an incomprehensible language with the purpose  of executing power. Thats why people have to hire attorneys to get help  in lawsuits.

 What is a criminal act directed against the state? For instance tax  evasion, refusal to pay taxes and rejection to be called up for  military service are deemed criminal acts, harming the state. But the  so called military duty must be considered as slave labor because it is  compelled and always paid for far below any minimum wages. Another crime  against the state allegedly is to steal or damage state property, a  behavior which was very common in the communist Soviet Union. There was  always a lack in toilet paper in Soviet hospitals, light bulbs  disappeared as did all things easily removable.

 But there is a moral dilemma, which is the crucial point and a priori  puts the state in the wrong: actions deemed crimes with regards to  individuals, for example to defraud, to blackmail or to resort to  violence and kill, are thought to be absolutely legitimate for the  state. From not only an ethical point of view but also in legal regards  the state therefore should be considered a slave holder, a blackmailer  and a murderer. The difference between the  state and the Mafia is marginal  the state is bigger, more powerful,  and less able to act and think economically. Both use extortion to  finance themselves, the only difference being that the state extorts  accompanied by deception. How so? Both promise protection but usually  the Mafia keeps that promise while the state only pretends to and is  neither really interested nor very efficient at giving cover. And the  state forces every entrepreneur to obey vast amounts of hampering and  annoying regulations, causing unnecessary expenses and losses. This  suggests the assumption that rule by the Mafia would be economically  more favorable for enterprises than state rule.

 To prosecute and punish victimless crimes is completely preposterous.  Hundreds of new regulations, all of them useless and issued only in the  interest of the state and its cronies, are enacted every year, making  normal and harmless behavior punishable offenses. But why at all should  the state prosecute and punish people when they are not harming anyone?  The fundamental question in this context is: who owns you and your body  and who should control and decide what you do with or put into your  body? Its none of the states business what an individual is doing to  his body. Every person is the exclusive proprietor of his own physical  body. The state has absolutely no say in ones decisions on consuming  alcohol or using drugs, on alpine climbing, horse-riding or motor biking   all self-endangering activities not jeopardizing or injuring anybody  else. It is ones own private matter. The so-called war on drugs is a  striking proof of completely futile statutes and regulations in view of  victimless crimes and should be finished immediately according to a  recent survey from the London School of Economics. This research study  proves that the war on drugs is useless, counterproductive, and costing  an enormous amount of money and resources. Instead of combating the  alleged crimes, this war has created a multi-billion  dollar black market for drugs and a whole new branch of crime, put  millions of young people in jail, making the US the No.1 prison country  in the world, and promoted exactly those criminal elements and violent  drug dealers it pretended to oppose. The only thing the global war on  drugs has achieved was inflating the bureaucracy  and perhaps this was  exactly what the states intended with their war on drugs. Unaffected  from the decades-long war the rates of addiction remain unchanged,  overdose fatalities are at an all-time high, drugs cost less than ever  before and the internet market for drugs is growing at an exponential  rate. If all states followed the examples set by Portugal, The  Netherlands, and some others and would finish the war on drugs, their  crime rate would decrease dramatically. Decriminalization would put an  end to prison overcrowding, reduce organized crime, and free resources  for fighting real crime against people and their private property,  unclog the court system and save a lot of (extorted) tax money.  Decriminalized drugs would be safer, the rate of contagious diseases  like HIV and hepatitis would drop, and the unfettered use of drugs would  encourage pharmaceutical companies to invest in the research of safer  and healthier drugs. The war on drugs, an unbelievably costly human  and economic disaster, is financed by (extorted) tax payer money. This  shows the entire futility of criminalizing victimless actions.

 The ensuring of security as well as the prevention and resolution of  conflicts can much better and cheaper be accomplished in a private law  society by insurance companies as Hans-Hermann Hoppe proposes with  convincing rationale. The overwhelming majority of people believe in the  necessity of a state. Without a state, they fear, there would be  permanent conflicts. Only the state is supposed to be an independent and  neutral arbiter in conflicts between individuals and only the state  should have the authority to judge and convict. But this timid  persuasion is twofold contradictory to fundamental economic and ethical  principles. First, the state is a judiciary monopolist.  According to generally accepted economic principles each monopoly  pushes the prices of products and services above free-market level while  simultaneously lowering their quality. Second, the state allegedly  provides law and order, but he does it with extorted tax payer money  while at the same time being the final decision maker in conflicts  regarding its own behavior. Thus the state is an expropriating property  protector and a law-violating law preserver  quite preposterous.

 Moreover, the state as the monopolist on violence usurped the  authority to legislate and implement its perverted statutes without the  genuine consent of the people affected. How does the production of law  and order by the state work in real life? The state as a self-appointed  monopolist proves to be notoriously ineffective in preventing crime and  providing security. Crime prevention, administration of justice, and  rehabilitation of delinquents in the states hands has nothing to do  with efficiency and results. On the contrary: the basic rule seems to be  that for the state a failure is a success!  The state has an inherent  interest in (1) leaving the rate of crime detection as low as possible  in order to not frighten the voters with the real extent of crime and  (2) keeping the crime rate high enough for getting more tax money for  its alleged fight against crime which in reality is a fight for tax  funds; a crime rate too low would be dangerous for the state as it would  call into question its necessity. This is one of the reasons why the  state continuously increases the number of victimless crimes, because it  supposedly proves the state to be a guarantor of peaceful coexistence.

 A quite disgusting part of the states judiciary is the contempt for  the victim. The state does hardly care for the victim of a crime. Victim  compensation is ridiculously low and its most abnormal that the  victims even have to pay for the criminals amenities in prison with their taxes.

 In most cases of petty crime like theft and robbery the crime  clearance rate is extremely low. Police and prosecutors obviously are  not interested in prioritizing combating these types of crimes. In the  present state-run judiciary system there is no contract with mutual  obligations between the state and its citizens. Instead what the state  offers is simply this:_I, the state, promise nothing. I provide services at  my leisure and you have to pay whatever I charge. I dont pay any  compensation if one should not be satisfied with my services. I, the  state, have the right to unilaterally price my services and am free to  alter my prices whenever and howsoever I want._
Any company offering such kind of a contract would disappear from the market immediately.

 The solution to the judiciary system run by the state would be a  society based on private law as proposed by Hans-Hermann Hoppe. This  would be a system respecting natural law and the resulting individual  rights. Private companies would provide insurances and security, based  on the rules of the free market. In Sweden nowadays there is more  private police than state police  and it works. In a private law  society everyone could conclude a contract with any private company for  providing crime prevention and prosecution. And private arbitration  courts would decide on lawsuits and penalization. Every person had the  right to carry a weapon for self-protection. More guns in the hands of  the individual mean less crime, so the right to carry a weapon and to  use it in self-defense would be inviolable. This construct of freedom  and self-responsibility is completely alien to the current  situation in the allegedly civilized world. The state solely in his  own interest of not having to fear any competition has disarmed almost  the entire population and usurped a monopoly on the use of violence.  Private security companies on the other hand in their interest of  keeping their operating costs down would encourage the possession of  weapons and reward the owners with lower insurance premiums, like today  they reward those with fewer car accidents or a house alarm system.

 In an unhampered market private security companies would also be much  more effective in preventing, prosecuting and punishing crimes than the  state because of the market pressure for cost effectiveness. For  instance they would be more successful in finding stolen goods and  thieves because only then they could claim damages, refund the stolen  goods, keep down their costs, keep up a good reputation, and stay  competitive. Private law societies have existed for thousands of years  before the emergence of the state and also in modern times and they were  much more successful in terms of economy, preservation of life and  decent social interaction than any state society. Even today, state-free  created international trade rules and arbitration (_International Chamber of Commerce  ICC, Incoterms 2010, Model Contracts and Clauses, UCP 600, URC 522 etc._) are good examples of how well a private judiciary system can work governing international trade and commerce.

*Summary:*

 From an ethical point of view, crimes against the state and  victimless crimes are no crimes at all, should not be prosecuted and  punished and their prevention and prosecution not be financed by tax  payers money. Huge resources would be released for useful appropriation  if private companies in open competition would prevent, prosecute and  punish crimes against individuals, companies, and their property. We  could all live in greater prosperity, with more individual freedom and  less surveillance. To abolish crimes against the state and victimless  crimes is no utopia but a realistic possibility to break or at least  diminish the state monopoly on violence.

Stockholm, 2015-01-03 

  

                                                                                  Peter Bistoletti, MD, PhD [send him mail],  an associate of the Karolinska Institutet, moved some years ago from  Austria to Sweden to live under socialism. The experience turned him  into an anarcho-capitalist.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Secession Begins at Home
Jeff Deist



 
"Imagine what a committed, coordinated libertarian base could achieve in America! 10 percent of the US population, or roughly thirty-two million people, would be an unstoppable force of nonviolent withdrawal from the federal leviathan."

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Brilliant Logic of State Rights

By Jack Kerwick

																					February 9, 2015

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Whats Anarcho-Capitalism?*

*We dont need a ruling class, Lew Rockwell tells Ben Swann.*

                                                     April 15, 2014                                                     
   
 Podcast length [ 34:48 ] Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download

 Lew Rockwell: Archives

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Libertarian Principle of Secession*

                                                                                                           By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Mises.org

                            March 12, 2015

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Discrimination (by Individuals) is Liberty.
*No discrimination = No Liberty.
*


*The Freedom To Discriminate*

                                                                               It’s essential to liberty, the economy, and civilization itself. Article by Barry Loberfeld.


<>

*What Romance Can Tell Us About Government Regulation*

                                                                                                           By Julian Adorney
Mises.org
                            April 10, 2015

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Don Fanucci of American Politics*
*(Or:  The Real Cause of the American 'Civil War')*

                                                                                  By Thomas DiLorenzo
                                                                                    April 11, 2015


Read full article here.

...
*The Criminal Cause of the “Civil War”, 
*
 In his first inaugural address Abraham Lincoln made essentially the  same exortion threat to the South.  But as the head of a powerful  government and not just a small criminal gang, his threat involved  “invasion” and massive “bloodshed” (his exact words) and a war that cost  the lives of as many as 850,000 Americans according to the latest  research.  This may seem far-fetched to some, but not if one understands  the essential nature of the state as a parasitic exploiter of the  public.  The state, said Murray Rothbard in his essay, “The State,” is  by nature “parasitic” in that “it lives coercively off the production of  the citizenry.”  The purpose of the state is for those who run it to  plunder those who do not.  As Rothbard further wrote, quoting Albert Jay  Nock:  “The State claims and exercises the monopoly of crime .  . . .   It forbids private murder, but itself organizes murder on a colossal  scale.  It punishes private theft, but itself lays unscrupulous hands on  anything it wants, whether the property of citizen or alien.”  Or as  George Washington once said, “Government is not reason; it is not  eloquent; it is force” and can become “a fearful master.”
 Extortion is indeed a primary occupation of the state and statists. 

...

In his first inaugural address Lincoln wasted no time establishing  himself as what I would call the Don Fanucci of American politics.  In  the first part of the speech he made an ironclad defense of Southern  slavery, arguably the most powerful defense of slavery ever made by an  American politician.  The purpose of this was to keep the South in the  union and, more importantly, to keep them paying federal taxes, which  had just been more than doubled two days earlier when President Buchanan  signed into law the Morrill Tariff.  (At the time tariffs on imports  accounted for about 90 percent of federal tax revenue.  The Morrill  Tariff increased the average tariff rate from 15% to 32.6%; vastly  increased the number of items covered by the tariff; and provided for a  future increase to 47%). On the issue of slavery, Lincoln promised the strongest possible  support.  “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with  the institution of slavery in the States where it exists,” he said.  “ I  believe I have no right do to do so, and I have no inclination to do  so.”

 He then reminded his Washington, D.C. audience that this same  ironclad defense of Southern slavery was a key part of the Republican  Party platform of 1860.  “Those who nominated and elected me did so with  full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and  had never recanted them. . . .  I now reiterate these statements . . .”

 Next, Lincoln offered the strongest possible support for the  enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled Northerners to  hunt down runaway slaves.  Finally, he voiced his support for the  proposed “Corwin Amendment” to the Constitution, which had already  passed the House and Senate with almost exclusively Northern votes, that  would have prohibited the U.S. government from ever interfering with  Southern slavery.  The text of the “first thirteenth amendment” read as  follows:  “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will  authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within  any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of  persons held to service.

 In mid-March of 1861 Lincoln sent copies of the proposed amendment to  all the state governors.  In in first inaugural address he mentioned  the amendment by saying, “I understand a proposed amendment to the  Constitution – which amendment, however, I have not seen – has passed  Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall *never* interfere  with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons  held to service   . . . .  holding such a provision to now be implied  constitutional law_, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable”_ (emphasis added).

...

On the issue of tariffs, on the other hand, Lincoln was a monstrous,  uncompromising tyrant.  “[T]here needs to be no bloodshed or violence,”  he announced in his first address.  What on earth, one may ask, could  cause an American president to think of the possibility of inflicting  “bloodshed or violence” on his own citizens?!  Lincoln explained in the  next sentence:  “The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy  and possess the property and places belonging to the Government _and to collect the duties and imposts_; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere” (emphasis added).
 This was Abe Lincoln’s Don Fanucci moment.  What he was saying was
 essentially this:


 “Here’s the deal.  Slavery is already legal and constitutional under  the U.S. system of government, and has been since 1776.  We in the North  have no qualms about making slavery “express and irrevocable” right in  the text of the U.S. Constitution.  So if you are worried about Northern  instigators of slave rebellions, you are mistaken.  Stay in the union  and your slave property will continue to be very well  protected.”

 “Slavery is a very profitable business, and we in the North intend to  share in those profits.  That is one of the main purposes of the  Morrill Tariff, which has just more than doubled the average tariff  rate.  Since you, the South, export at least three-fourths of all your  agricultural products and rely so heavily on foreign trade, we in the  North cannot – and will not – tolerate the free-trade policies that you  have written into your Confederate Constitution. [The Confederate  Constitution outlawed protectionist tariffs altogether].  Free trade in  the South, and a 50% tariff rate in the North, the cornerstone of the  Republican Party Platform of 1860, will destroy the Northern ports and  much of our commerce.  We will not allow this to happen.  We have the  willingness and the ability to inflict violence, bloodshed, force, and  invasion on the Southern people.  We will not back down this time to the  South Carolina tariff nullifiers as my predecessor, President Andrew  Jackson did some thirty years ago.”


 “We are not being any more greedy here than say, our European  counterparts.  We only want to wet our beaks, so to speak, by taxing a  portion of your slave profits.  There need not be any violence or  bloodshed –as long as you do what we say.”


 This is how the Southern politicians understood the motivations of  the Yankee political elite in early 1861.  Jefferson Davis himself  demonstrated this understanding in his own first inaugural address,  delivered in Montomery, Alabama, on February 18, 1861:


 “[O]ur true policy is peace, and the freest trade which our  necessities will permit . . . and that . . . there should be the fewest  practicable restrictions upon the interchange of commodities . . . .   If, however, passion or the lust of dominion should cloud the judgment  or inflame the ambition of [the Northern states], we must prepare to  meet the emergency and to maintain, by the final arbitrament of the  sword, the position we have assumed . . .”

 Whatever other reasons some of the Southern states might have given for _secession_ is irrelevant to the question of why there was a _war_.   Secession does not necessitate war. * Lincoln promised war over tax  collection in his first inaugural address*.  When the Southern states  refused to pay his beloved Morrill Tariff at the Southern ports, he kept  his promise of “invasion and bloodshed” and waged war on the Southern  states.  No gangster in the history of the world has ever enforced an  extortion racket on such a gargantuan scale of death, plunder, and  destruction.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*FBI Investigators Routinely Falsified Evidence Against "Criminals"*

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Ron Paul Predicts Inevitable and Complete Currency Collapse*

*Former U.S. Presidential candidate & 22-year Congressman explains a huge problem
few Americans know about – and how you should prepare...*




Watch it here.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Forgotten Depression*
                                                                                                           By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
                                                                                    May 19, 2015

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Ron Paul’s Warning: Big Changes Coming for the US Economy

----------


## helmuth_hubener

People have been saying that the bond bull market is about to end for the past 35 years.  They just keep being wrong.  Someday they'll be right.  But that day may not be today.  Sorry, Ron, but you're probably wrong in your prediction.  Mostly, people ought to realize that Ron actually does not know the future.  He doesn't know.  He just doesn't know.

Don't make decisions for your money based on predictions of gurus that, more likely than not, are not going to come true.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The destruction of the dollar will be a torturous decline over the course of about 10 years, culminating with complete collapse.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> The destruction of the dollar will be a torturous decline over the course of about 10 years, culminating with complete collapse.


Certainly possible.  At least that's a concrete time frame you've given me.  Ten years starting from when?  Today?

Can we revisit this in June 2025?  If the average annual inflation rate in the intervening 10 years has been less than 6%, will you admit that you were wrong about your prediction?

Will you admit already, right now, that you do not know the future and that your prediction is just a guess?

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Certainly possible.  At least that's a concrete time frame you've given me.  Ten years starting from when?  Today?
> 
> Can we revisit this in June 2025?  If the average annual inflation rate in the intervening 10 years has been less than 6%, will you admit that you were wrong about your prediction?


Gladly.




> Will you admit already, right now, that you do not know the future and that your prediction is just a guess?


No.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> Gladly.


 Excellent!  Hopefully RPF is still here.




> No.


 Will you, in 2025, then?  Along with admitting you were wrong, it would only follow that you should admit that you must not have known the future after all, and that your prediction must have just been a guess.  Otherwise, it would have been right instead of wrong.  Agreed?  Do we have a deal?

----------


## helmuth_hubener

A torturous decline over ten years, by the way, is _not_ what Ron Paul is predicting in the video above.  The clear impression he is trying to give is "any day now!" interest rates will rise and bonds collapse, and certainly not more than a year from now.  So if you are right, he is wrong, at least somewhat, at least in the specifics.  The specifics that may not be important from a theoretical economic perspective (I think he is basically right on the economics, by the way), but that are the _only_ things that are important from a "will I lose money or make money following this advice" perspective.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Excellent!  Hopefully RPF is still here.
> 
>  Will you, in 2025, then?  Along with admitting you were wrong, it would only follow that you should admit that you must not have known the future after all, and that your prediction must have just been a guess.  Otherwise, it would have been right instead of wrong.  Agreed?  Do we have a deal?


Yes.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> A torturous decline over ten years, by the way, is _not_ what Ron Paul is predicting in the video above.  The clear impression he is trying to give is "any day now!" interest rates will rise and bonds collapse, and certainly not more than a year from now.  So if you are right, he is wrong, at least somewhat, at least in the specifics.  The specifics that may not be important from a theoretical economic perspective (I think he is basically right on the economics, by the way), but that are the _only_ things that are important from a "will I lose money or make money following this advice" perspective.


I didn't say it will be even decline. There will be sudden intermediate drops before the final collupse, etc. So both I and Ron could be right.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

> I didn't say it will be even decline. There will be sudden intermediate drops before the final collupse, etc. So both I and Ron could be right.


True.

----------


## helmuth_hubener

Ayn Rand putting forth the principle of non-initiation of force to Phil Donahue:

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> Ayn Rand putting forth the principle of non-initiation of force to Phil Donahue:


Yep. The principle comes from God, except she did not know it then. 
Probably does now.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

The Truth About Politics
By Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

Read full article
 ...
Our schools and media portray *corporations*  as sinister, and government as benign. But who wouldnt rather take a  sales call from Norwegian Cruise Line than an audit demand from the  Internal Revenue Service?

Or imagine if a corporation fabricated a  web of untruths, used them as a pretext to launch a violent attack on a  people that had never caused Americans any harm, and brought about as  many as a million deaths and millions more internal and external  refugees. That corporation would be broken up and never heard from  again. It would be denounced ceaselessly until the end of time.

Now  all those things did happen, but they were carried out by the state.  And as we all know, there have been no repercussions for anyone. No one  has been punished. In fact, the perpetrators earn six-figure speaking  fees. The whole thing is shrugged off as at worst an honest mistake.  Some people are still outraged about it, but even they seem to take for  granted that theres really nothing that can be done about behavior like  this on the part of the American regime.

Imagine there were a  corporation that was somehow so entrenched that despite being  responsible for a staggering death toll, it evaded all responsibility  and simply carried on as before. The outrage would be deafening and  overwhelming.

But so relentless has been the propaganda, ever  since all of us were children, about the states benign nature that many  people simply cannot bring themselves to think as badly about the state  as they have been taught to think about corporations  even though the  crimes of the state put to shame all the misdeeds of all existing  corporations put together. Meanwhile, opponents of the state are  routinely portrayed as incorrigible misanthropes, when in fact, in light  of the states true nature, we are mankinds greatest advocates. 

...

Think  for a moment just about this last claim: that government employees are  our servants. These people staff an institution that decides how much of  our income and wealth to expropriate in order to fund itself. They will  imprison us if we do not pay. And we are to believe that these people  are our servants?

For those not gullible enough to fall for such a  transparent canard, the rationales become mildly more sophisticated.  All right, all right, the state may say, its not quite right to say  that the people govern themselves. But, they hasten to add, we can offer  the next best thing: the people will be represented by individuals  chosen from among them.

As Gerard Casey has argued, though, the  idea of political representation is not meaningful. When an agent  represents a business owner in a negotiation, he ensures that the  owerss interests are pursued. If the ownerss interests are defended  only weakly, ignored, or downright defied, the owner chooses different  representation.

None of this bears any resemblance to political  representation. Here, a so-called representative is chosen by some  people but actively opposed by others. Yet he is said to represent all  of them. But how can this be, when he cant possibly know them all, and  even if he did, hed discover they have mutually exclusive views and  priorities?

Even if we focus entirely on those people who did  vote for the representative, is their vote supposed to imply consent to  his every decision? Some of them may have voted for him not for his  positions or merits, but simply because he was less bad than the  alternative. Others may have chosen him for one or two of his stances,  but may be indifferent or hostile on everything else. How can even these  people  who actually voted for the representative  seriously be said  to be represented by him?

But the idea of political  representation, while meaningless, is not without its usefulness to the  modern state. It helps to conceal the brute fact that, despite all the  talk about popular rule and governing ourselves, even the free  societies of the West amount to some people ruling, and others being  ruled.

When the results are announced tonight amid cheers and  celebration, then, remember what it all represents: the triumph of  compulsion over cooperation, coercion over freedom, and propaganda over  truth. The civics textbooks may write with breathless awe about the  American political system, but this is by far the worst thing about the  US. Rather than celebrate the antisocial world of politics, let us raise  a glass to the anti-politics of the free market, which has yielded more  wealth and prosperity through peace and cooperation than the state and  its politicians could with all the coercion in the world.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*What Will Trump Do About the Central-Bank Cartel?*

*Trump could end global banking tyranny*

  Thorsten Pollet | Mises.org -   February 13, 2017 




> Of course, change for the better doesn’t come from politics. It comes from _better ideas_.  For it is ideas that determine human action. Whatever these ideas are  and wherever they come from: They make humans act. For this reason the  great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises (1881 – 1973) advocates the  idea of the “sound money principle” –
> 
> “The sound-money principle  has two aspects. It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a  commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the  government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.”
> 
> Mises also explains convincingly the importance of the sound money principle for each and every one of us –
> 
> “It  is impossible to grasp the meaning of the idea of sound money if one  does not realize that it was devised as an instrument for the protection  of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.  Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions  and bills of right.”
> 
> Mises’s sound money principle calls for  ending central banking once and for all and opening up a *free market in  money*. Having brought to a halt _political globalism_ for now,  the new US administration has now also a once in a lifetime chance to  make the world great again — simply by ending the state’s monopoly of  money production.
> ...


Full article here.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Law of Justice*

There is a law of Justice which if understood and applied allows to create a just society and thus preserve and develop liberty and prosperity of the people.

A just social order must be based on the Law of Justice.

What is justice? It is derived from a fundamental principle:

*Step 1: The fundamental principle:*

Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself.

From this follows:

*Step 2: The law of Justice:*

Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

From this follows:

*Step 3: The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP).*

How? Simple: as you would not like that someone committed an act of aggression against you and your property, so should you not commit such acts of aggression against others.

From this follows:

*Step 4: The Group*

Since no one individually has the right to commit acts of aggression against anyone and anyone’s property, neither has a group (no matter the size) the right to commit such acts of aggression, (because no one could rightly delegate a right they do not have).

So, as it is wrong for one person to rob his neighbor, so it is also wrong for many persons to rob him.

From this follows:

*Step 5: No Taxation of Other People’s Property*

Since no individual has the right to forcibly extract wealth from his  neighbor, he cannot delegate such non-existent right to the group.

Therefore  public taxation of private property is an act of aggression  of the  group against individual and his property, and thus is  immoral and unjust.

And that which is unjust is evil by definition. 

No society based on evil can ever persist, for it will unavoidably self-destruct. 

Therefore  no society based on public taxation of private property can ever  endure, but will unavoidably self-destruct by corruption and violence,  because it is BUILT upon aggressive violence of taxation, which is  nothing more than legalized plunder, which is nothing more or less than  legalized, monopolized, and institutionalized evil, written as law.

Such abomination of evil posing as law must not exist, if the society is ever to survive and prosper!

In  general, any violation of the NAP, and any violation of private  property is evil and unjust by definition, and any law sanctioning such  violation is a legislative crime and an abomination that must not be  allowed to exist, if the society is to survive and to prosper. 

From which follows:

*Step 6: No Regulation of Other People’s Property*

Regulation is control. No one has the right to control the property he does not own, neither can one delegate such non-existent right to a group or any third party.

Therefore all public regulation of private property, except one, (that private property be not violated), is immoral and unjust.

*What about anti-nuisance laws?*

No one has the right to destroy or pollute anyone else’s property: neither by offensive smells, air, water or ground pollution, nor by projecting offensive sounds or images upon his neighbor’s property. So property rights take good care of environment protection and anti-nuisance laws.

*What is Liberty?*

Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.
In other words, Liberty is anything you wish to do as long as it does not violate the NAP. (See Morality section at the end).

Thus a society built on the Non-Aggression Principle is the only just order possible. It is also the only way to have real Liberty.

*Just Government*

Then what about government? What is it, and what is its proper role?

To govern is to control. No one has the right to control the property he does not own. Thus any government has the right to govern or control ONLY the property it owns.

Since public representative government owns only public property, it has the right to govern public property only, and nothing else.

*What is public property?*

It is property to which all citizens of a certain location have equal claim of ownership. Therefore, since the claim of ownership is equal among the citizens, the just government of such public property must be done:

By the voice of the majority of the citizens, provided thatEvery citizen is treated equally (since all have equal claim on the public property), andThe property of no individual is violated in the process. 
*How do you justly finance such public government?*

Anything that is just must not violate the Non-Aggression Principle (the NAP).

Therefore the only just way to finance a public representative government is via public property user fees and voluntary contributions. User fee means you pay only if you use the property. If you don’t use it, you do not pay for it.

Again, since all citizens have equal claim of ownership upon public property, the public property user fees to be just must be:

Explicitly agreed to by the majority of the citizens.Administered equally among the citizens, andCollection of such fees must not violate the private property of anyone. 
*What about justice enforcement and courts?*

Anyone has an unalienable right to defend themselves and their property. No individual has the right to deprive his neighbor of such right of just self-defense.

Therefore no individual, nor group, has the right to claim exclusive monopoly on justice enforcement, for such claim would be unjust.

This means that justice can rightly be enforced by anyone, as long as such enforcement is just.

Of course, individuals could voluntarily contract with any third parties to provide such just enforcement.

*What is Private Property?*

Private Property is naturally derived from, and includes the self-ownership of individual. Ownership is just control.

You own you, your body, your mind, the fruits of your labor. No one has a just right to control by force that which belongs to you against your will.

A just owner of a property is either the first user of it, or a recipient of it from the previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale.

*What about Information or Intellectual Property?*

Property claims (i.e. exclusive just control) are meaningful and non-self-contradictory only with regards to TANGIBLE property. Such claims are entirely meaningless and self-contradictory for intangible objects.

Therefore information, or intellectual property ownership is only meaningful in terms of physical, TANGIBLE copies of information.

To own information is to own a tangible copy of it. Nothing less, nothing more.

Thus every tangible copy of information constitutes a separate intellectual property, even though it might represent exactly the same information.

Thus Intellectual Property is nothing more or less than ownership of a tangible copy of information.

Assigning and enforcing “ownership” to intangible information in general, leads to irreconcilable self-contradictions, and to violations of tangible property rights, and thus is unjust.

*Conclusion:*

Justice is NAP, that is non-violation of private property, with implied right to use equal force to neutralize/offset the aggression against one's property. To be just, any society must have the NAP (the Non-Aggression Principle) as its core principle.

Anything that does not violate the NAP is just and has the right to exist.

Anything that violates the NAP is immoral and unjust.

*What about God, morality and his laws?*

The same principle applies. God is the Creator and the Just owner of the world. Therefore all who live upon it are responsible to him to use his property only in the way he approves of. However no-one has the right to presume to speak for God or to enforce his laws without his permission.

Any such usurpation by anyone must be treated for what it is: an act of aggression, and it is just to end all aggression by force, which is the definition of just self-defense.


These are the laws of Justice. Let’s build a world upon these just and holy principles.

Amen.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Updated Step 5 above as follows: 




> *Step 5: No Taxation of Other People’s Property*
> 
> Since no individual has the right to forcibly extract wealth from his  neighbor, he cannot delegate such non-existent right to the group.
> 
> Therefore  public taxation of private property is an act of aggression  of the  group against individual and his property, and thus is  immoral and unjust. 
> 
> And that which is unjust is evil by definition. 
> 
> No society based on evil can ever persist, for it will unavoidably self-destruct. 
> ...

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Added this section to the article above:




> *What is Liberty?*
> Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.
> In other words, Liberty is anything you wish to do as long as it does not violate the NAP. (See Morality section at the end).
> 
> Thus a society built on the Non-Aggression Principle is the only just  order possible. It is also the only way to have real Liberty.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Edited 1st paragraph of the Conclusion as follows:




> *Conclusion:*
> 
> Justice is NAP, that is non-violation of private property, with implied right to use equal force to neutralize/offset the aggression against one's property. To be just, any society must have the NAP (the Non-Aggression Principle) as its core principle.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

This is cute. I like it:

https://phibetaiota.net/2017/02/evan...he-deep-state/

These measures are proper leaves and branches of the root measure, which root is unfortunately not found in the linked article. 

The root is points 5 and 6 in the *Law of Justice* essay. Namely: abolishing all public taxation of private property, and abolishing all public regulation of private property (except one, which is that private property be not violated), as the direct consequence of the Law of Justice and the NAP derived in steps 1-4.

The root gives the power to all branches and leaves. Without the root fix, subordinate problems are bound to return without the underlying doctrinal principle of the Law of Justice.

----------


## Ron Paul in 2008

> *The Law of Justice*
> 
> There is a law of Justice which if understood and applied allows to create a just society and thus preserve and develop liberty and prosperity of the people.
> 
> A just social order must be based on the Law of Justice.
> 
> What is justice? It is derived from a fundamental principle:
> 
> *Step 1: The fundamental principle:*
> ...


Trump would likely be immediately assassinated if he ever tried to abolish the fed.

----------


## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*Lew Rockwell: Break Up the USA*
*Prominent thinker makes case for abandoning leftists*

LewRockwell.com -   February 21, 2017

"Let my people go" (Exodus 8:1) 
Justice demands it. 
Remember it didn't go well for the Pharaoh when he refused.





*Some of our assumptions are so deeply embedded that we cannot perceive them ourselves.*

Case  in point: everyone takes for granted that it’s normal for a country of  320 million to be dictated to by a single central authority. The only  debate we’re permitted to have is who should be selected to carry out  this grotesque and inhumane function.

Here’s the debate we should  be having instead: what if we simply abandoned this quixotic mission,  and went our separate ways? It’s an idea that’s gaining traction — much  too late, to be sure, but better late than never.

For  a long time it seemed as if the idea of secession was unlikely to take  hold in modern America. Schoolchildren, after all, are told to associate  secession with slavery and treason. American journalists treat the idea  as if it were self-evidently ridiculous and contemptible (an attitude  they curiously do not adopt when faced with US war propaganda, I might  add).

And yet all it took was the election of Donald Trump for the  alleged toxicity of secession to vanish entirely. The left’s principled  opposition to secession and devotion to the holy Union went promptly  out the window on November 8, 2016. Today, about one in three  Californians polled favors the Golden State’s secession from the Union.

In other words, some people seem to be coming to the conclusion that the whole system is rotten and should be abandoned.

It’s  true that most leftists have not come around to this way of thinking.  Many have adopted the creepy slogan “not my president” – in other words,  I may not want _this particular person_ having the power to  intervene in all aspects of life and holding in his hands the ability to  destroy the entire earth, but I most certainly do want _someone else_ to have those powers.

Not  exactly a head-on challenge to the system, in other words. (That’s what  we libertarians are for.) The problem in their view is only that the  wrong people are in charge.

Indeed, leftists who once said “small  is beautiful” and “question authority” had little trouble embracing  large federal bureaucracies in charge of education, health, housing, and  pretty much every important thing. And _these authorities_, of course, you are not to question (unless they are headed by a Trump nominee, in which case they may be temporarily ignored).

Meanwhile,  the right wing has been calling for the abolition of the Department of  Education practically since its creation in 1979. That hasn’t happened,  as you may have noticed. Having the agency in Republican hands became  the more urgent task.

Each side pours tremendous resources into trying to take control of the federal apparatus and lord it over the whole country.

How about we call it quits?

No  more federal fiefdoms, no more forcing 320 million people into a single  mold, no more dictating to everyone from the central state.

Radical,  yes, and surely not a perspective we were exposed to as schoolchildren.  But is it so unreasonable? Is it not in fact the very height of reason  and good sense? And some people, we may reasonably hope, may be prepared  to consider these simple and humane questions for the very first time.

Now can we imagine the left actually growing so unhappy as to favor secession as a genuine solution?

Here’s  what I know. On the one hand, the left made its long march through the  institutions: universities, the media, popular culture. Their intention  was to remake American society. The task involved an enormous amount of  time and wealth. Secession would amount to abandoning this string of  successes, and it’s hard to imagine them giving up in this way after  sinking all those resources into the long march.

At the same time,  it’s possible that the cultural elite have come to despise the American  bourgeoisie so much that they’re willing to treat all of that as a sunk  cost, and simply get out.

Whatever the case may be, what we can  and should do is encourage all decentralization and secession talk, such  that these heretofore forbidden options become live once again.

I  can already hear the objections from Beltway libertarians, who are not  known for supporting political decentralization. To the contrary, they  long for the day when libertarian judges and lawmakers will impose  liberty on the entire country. And on a more basic level, they find talk  of states’ rights, nullification, and secession – about which they hold  the most exquisitely conventional and p.c. views – to be sources of  embarrassment.

How are they going to rub elbows with the Fed chairman if they’re associated with ideas like these?

Of  course we would like to see liberty flourish everywhere. But it’s  foolish not to accept more limited victories and finite goals when these  are the only realistic options.

The great libertarians – from  Felix Morley and Frank Chodorov to Murray Rothbard and Hans Hoppe — have  always favored political decentralization; F.A. Hayek once said that in  the future liberty was more likely to flourish in small states. This is  surely the way forward for us today, if we want to see tangible changes  in our lifetimes.

Thomas Sowell referred to two competing visions  that lay at the heart of so much political debate: the constrained and  the unconstrained. In the constrained vision, man’s nature is not really  malleable, his existence contains an element of tragedy, and there is  little that politics can do by way of grandiose schemes to perfect  society. In the unconstrained vision, the only limitation to how much  society can be remade in the image of its political rulers is how much  the rubes are willing to stomach at a given moment.

These  competing visions are reaching an endgame vis-a-vis one another. As  Angelo Codevilla observes, the left has overplayed its hand. The regular  folks have reached the limits of their toleration of leftist  intimidation and thought control, and are hitting back.

We can fight it out, or we can go our separate ways.

When  I say go our separate ways, I don’t mean “the left” goes one way and  “the right” goes another. I mean the left goes one way and everyone else  — rather a diverse group indeed — goes another. People who live for  moral posturing, to broadcast their superiority over everyone else, and  to steamroll differences in the name of “diversity,” should go one way,  and everyone who rolls his eyes at all this should go another.

*“No  people and no part of a people,” said Ludwig von Mises nearly one  hundred years ago, “shall be held against its will in a political  association that it does not want.”* So much wisdom in that simple  sentiment. And so much conflict and anguish could be avoided if only  we’d heed it.

http://www.infowars.com/lew-rockwell-break-up-the-usa/

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## osan

> 


Never has the color blue proven so obscene to the eyes of men of integrity.  Unfortunately, red fares only marginally better, most of the time.  They are both the colors of technologically enabled tyranny.






> *Some of our assumptions are so deeply embedded that we cannot perceive them ourselves.*


I see Lew has been reading my mad rantings.




> *“No  people and no part of a people,” said Ludwig von Mises nearly one  hundred years ago, “shall be held against its will in a political  association that it does not want.”*


I could not agree more, but would tune it to extend that respect to the right of each individual.




> So much wisdom in that simple  sentiment. *And so much conflict and anguish could be avoided if only  we’d heed it.*


If only that were true in the positive world.  This is a normative ideal that cannot be safely taken up in the current global political environment.

Let us assume the fifty states were to politely go their separate ways as sovereign states.  There are many, many issues that would have to be resolved, among them being:



Resolution of the national debt liabilities in apportionment among the fifty new nation statesResolution of the national asset credits in apportionment among the fifty new nation statesDisposition of conventional military assets in apportionment among the fifty new nation statesDisposition of nuclear, biological, and chemical weaponryDisposition and apportionment of "black" weapons systemsDisposition of other "national security" assets such as those of CIA, NSA, DIA, and so forth.Disposition of privately-held assets now become "transnational" (e.g. network infrastructure)

I am sure the list goes on for quite a bit more, but these issues alone represent an enormous effort of equitable settlements.  One does not simply secede and go on his merry way.  The tangle of moral questions, not to mention legalities, is staggering to say the least.  The secession of even a single state like California would not be as the idealists imagine it.

I would also point out that certain resultant arrangements on the part of any given state stand to give rise to severe concerns on the parts of the others.  For example, imagine CA has seceded and decided to become a vassal state of China, surrendering its sovereignty and military facilities to Beijing, upon which the Chinese rapidly established numerous military bases all across the land.  Does anyone here actually believe that the rest of the states would not rightly get themselves in a knot over it?  Imagine China were to undertake a huge military buildup on the west coast of the former state of California, (now called Qing Tao Beer) regardless of their actual intentions, sending thousands of tanks, artillery, and other assets and personnel right to the physical borders with Nevada, Arizona, and so on. Given the clear testament of human history, such an endeavor would pose abundant valid reason for the remnant of America to become very nervous.  The _potential_ for such situations would justify either the prohibition of secession or the imposition of such requirements that would limit the national sovereignty of the seceded state such that they could never come to such arrangements with other foreign powers.

This is not the normative ideal, but it becomes a matter of practical necessity in a world full of predatory neighbors seeking any opportunity of advantage over their rivals.

This is especially probable with a state such as California where the "government" is so abominably feckless in its fumbling ineptitude that they are virtually guaranteed to paint themselves into such a corner with a predator such as China that, once the trap set for them was sprung, they would be left with no choice but to toe the line of their new masters.  It is all but absolute in the assurance that this would become the case, leaving the North American continent with the establishment of an enormous "foreign" beach head.  Who, pray you tell, with the least shred of sense, would not find this very unsettling?  The race of men, since entering the aeon of Empire, have no history of particularly long periods of peaceful coexistence.  Now that we are so technologically enabled, the chances of any nation not exercising their advantage in some manner deleterious to others approaches nil.  It is the nature of things.

The world is a wicked mess and, denominators being what they are, necessity drives otherwise good men to less than shining behaviors for the sake of not being consumed by the devils that surround them.  This is one of the sad realities of a world devoid of virtue and basic sense.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

osan, you make a lot of good points.

However, the ideals and principles of pure truth should never be abandoned on the false alter of practicality. Truth is truth, no matter the circumstance. Justice demands the right of anyone to secede, provided such secession is not a tool of direct aggression. Liberty has no meaning without the right of secession. Self-ownership, the foundation of Liberty and Justice, is defined as the right to secede. If you are not free to secede, you are not truly free, in principle, and that is unjust.

No good can come from violating justice. None. In fact good is defined as justice. And evil is defined as injustice. 

Therefore denying secession, except for the reason of direct aggression, is evil, which is no good, by definition. And no good comes from no good.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

*The Law of Justice*
*Love, Justice, and Liberty – the one triumvirate of Truth.*
 
The Law of Justice is the foundation for any just, free, and prosperous society. Therefore it is absolutely imperative to understand what Justice is, and what are its direct, natural and inescapable consequences.

Let’s figure it out.

The principle and the law of Justice is derived from a fundamental principle.

*Step 1: The ONE Fundamental Principle*

All things are inseparably and most fundamentally connected. We are all a part of one great and indivisible whole. This one great whole is the ONE consciousness, the one self-awareness, the ONE Great I Am, and we all share it. One consciousness, but many minds; it moves the planets and shines the stars, and it gives life and existence to them all.

And because we all share one consciousness, we are all most profoundly and most fundamentally connected, and therefore whatsoever we do to anyone, we are actually and inescapably, and ultimately doing it to ourselves!

Therefore the one and only sane, and non-self-contradictory way of being, that follows, is:

*Step 2: Love*

*Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself.*

_Because it IS yourself!_ Anything else would be self-contradictory and self-destructive, because you are all, and all are you, since we are all one.

From which naturally follows:

*Step 3: The Law of Justice*

*Do unto others as you would have them do to you.* 

_Because, in reality, there are no “others,” it is all YOU, and you ARE, actually, doing it to yourself_, whether you yet see it or not (but you certainly will); and to do to self what you would not, is a self-contradiction.

A person who does evil to others, is like someone who is unwittingly pounding his own hand with a hammer, (which due to some disorder he does not yet realize, but he definitely will) because he is doing real damage to himself, which he cannot escape any more than he can escape self.

This reality, this truth, though may be temporarily hidden from view, always triumphs in the end to absolute uttermost. Some call it karma. I call it the Eternal Law of Justice. And it is a simple consequence of the fact that we are all one, whether we yet realize it or not.

You can escape this reality no more than you can escape self. It cannot, in principle, be done, because that would be a self-contradiction.

The more intelligent a being is, the sooner he or she realizes this fundamental truth. But, sooner or later, all will be constrained to acknowledge this fact, because again, it is the fundamental reality of all existence, that cannot, in principle, be avoided, at least no more than one can avoid self. And, news flash: self has no end, therefore justice has no end. Time will prove this fact to all.

So from this, directly follows the only sane conclusion:

*Step 4: The Non-Aggression Principle (NAP).*

Which is prohibition on initiation of aggressive violence against anyone and against their property, with the implied right to use equal and opposite force to offset or neutralize the aggression of another.

In scripture the NAP is defined simply as: “Thou shall not kill,” and “Thou shall not steal.” Short, precise and sweet.

So why does NAP follow from the previous step? Because if you would not have acts of aggression committed against you or your property, you yourself should not commit such acts of aggression.

Anything else would be self-contradictory, and therefore false.

From which follows:

*Step 5: The Group*

Since the group derives all of its legitimate authority by delegation from the individuals comprising the group, and since no individual has the right or authority to commit acts of aggression against anyone, neither has the group (no matter the size) the authority or right to commit such acts of aggression against anyone, because no one can delegate to it an authority they do not have.

In other words, if it is wrong for one person to rob his neighbor, it is also wrong for many persons to rob him. Increasing the number of thieves does not make theft any more legitimate or just.

Which means that the NAP applies to the group, just as much as it applies to an individual.

The famous and deceptive phrase that “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” legitimately applies to public property only (see the definition of public property below). It does not, and cannot, in principle, apply to private property. Why? Because if it were not so, any two people would be justified in robbing any one person, which would be a violation of the law of justice, and would be self-contradictory, and therefore wrong by definition.

From which follows:

*Step 6: No Taxation of Other People’s Property*

Since no individual has the right to forcibly extract wealth from his neighbor, he cannot delegate such authority to the group, because he cannot delegate an authority he does not have.

Therefore public taxation of private property is an act of aggression of the group against individual and his property, and thus is immoral and unjust.

And that which is unjust is evil by definition.

No society based on evil can ever persist, for evil is a self-contradiction, and that which is built upon self-contradiction will unavoidably self-destruct.

Therefore no society based on public taxation of private property can ever endure, but will unavoidably self-destruct by corruption and violence, unsurprisingly so, because it is built upon aggressive violence of taxation, which is nothing more than legalized plunder, which is nothing more or less than legalized, monopolized, and institutionalized evil, written as law.

Such abomination of self-contradiction and evil, posing as law must not exist, if the society is ever to survive and prosper!

In general, any violation of the NAP, and any violation of private property is evil and unjust by definition; and any law sanctioning such violation is a legislative crime and an abomination that must not be allowed to exist, if the society is to survive and to prosper.

From which follows:

*Step 7: No Regulation of Other People’s Property*

Regulation is control. No one has the right to control the property he does not own, neither can one delegate such non-existent right to a group or any third party.

Therefore all public regulation of private property, except one, (that private property be not violated), is immoral and unjust, because it violates the NAP and is an act of aggressive violence against individual and his property, and therefore is a self-contradiction.

*What about anti-nuisance laws?*

No one has the right to destroy or pollute anyone else’s property: neither by offensive smells, air, water or ground pollution, nor by projecting offensive sounds or images upon his neighbor’s property. So property rights take good care of environment protection and anti-nuisance laws.

From this non-regulation of other people’s property follows:

*Step 8: Liberty*

What is Liberty?

Liberty is the right to do with your own property what you please, as long as you do not violate the property of another.

In other words, Liberty is anything you wish to do as long as it does not violate the NAP. (See Morality section at the end).

In general, anything that does not violate justice has the right to exist, and it is unjust to forbid it, which defines Liberty.

Example: Since it does not violate justice that a peaceful person should possess an automatic weapon, it is unjust to forbid such possession.

Thus, denying Liberty is unjust.

From which follows:

*Step 9: The Triumvirate of Truth*

We have established that *Love* is to treat others as self, or as you wish to be treated, which is also the definition of *Justice*, and we have shown that Justice demands *Liberty*, for denying Liberty is unjust.

Thus we see that these three things: Love, Justice, and Liberty are inseparably and logically connected, and not one of them exists or has any meaning without the other two, because *Justice* and *Liberty* are none other than expressions and the definition of *Love*.

This establishes *Love*, *Justice* and *Liberty* as an indivisible triumvirate, where each part is defined by, and does not exist without the others, — constituting one Truth — a Truth without which no society can survive or prosper.

From which follows:

*Step 10: Just Government*

Then what about government? What is it, and what is its proper role?

To govern is to control. No one has the right to control the property he does not own. Thus any government has the right to govern or control ONLY the property it owns.

Since public representative government owns only public property, it has the right to govern public property only, and nothing else.

*What is public property?*

It is property to which all citizens of a certain location have equal claim of ownership. Therefore, since the claim of ownership is equal among the citizens, the just government of such public property must be done:

By the voice of the majority of the citizens, provided thatEvery citizen is treated equally (since all have equal claim on the public property), andThe property of no individual is violated in the process. 
*How do you justly finance such public government?*

Anything that is just must not violate the Non-Aggression Principle (the NAP).

Therefore the only just way to finance a public representative government is via public property user fees and voluntary contributions. User fee means you pay only if you use the property. If you don’t use it, you do not pay for it.

Again, since all citizens have equal claim of ownership upon public property, the public property user fees to be just must be:

Explicitly agreed to by the majority of the citizens.Administered equally among the citizens, andCollection of such fees must not violate the private property of anyone. 
*What is Private Property?*

Private Property is exclusive ownership and is naturally derived from, and includes the self-ownership of individual. Ownership is just control.

You own you, your body, your mind, the fruits of your labor. No one has a just right to control by force that which belongs to you against your will.

A just owner of a property is either the first user of it, or a recipient of it from the previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale.

Private property, because it includes the self-ownership of individual, is therefore the very foundation of every virtue and right, and of Liberty itself, because without self-ownership there can be no virtue, no rights, and no liberty at all, which would be unjust.

In fact, no virtue or right can even be defined without the concept of property. And private property is the most fundamental type of property from which all other types are derived.

Therefore anything that violates Private Property violates Justice and Liberty, and thus is evil by definition.

Not surprisingly, the FIRST plank of Satanist-Luciferian-Communist manifesto is the abolishing of Private Property by violence of the state, because by abolishing it they abolish every right and virtue, and Liberty and Justice itself, which is evil by definition, and if fully adopted, would result in entire destruction of the world and of all who live in it. This is not surprising considering the source of the manifesto, which is the devil “who seeketh to destroy the souls of men” and to make them miserable like unto himself.

Thus:
*Good is Private Property, and*

*Evil is violation of Private Property, and*

*Non-violation of Private Property is the definition of Justice and Liberty.* 
He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

So,

*Step 11: What about justice enforcement and courts?*

Anyone has an unalienable right to defend themselves and their property.

No individual has the right to deprive his neighbor of such right of just self-defense. Neither has any individual the right to claim exclusive monopoly on justice enforcement; therefore no one can delegate such right of exclusive monopoly to a group, because no one can delegate an authority they do not have.

Thus no individual, and consequently no group, has the right to claim exclusive monopoly on justice enforcement, for such claim would be unjust, for it would violate natural unalienable rights of individuals.

This means that justice can rightly be enforced by anyone, as long as such enforcement is just.

Of course, individuals could voluntarily contract with any third parties to provide such just enforcement.

*Step 12: What about Information or Intellectual Property?*

Property claims (i.e. exclusive just control) are meaningful and non-self-contradictory only with regards to TANGIBLE property. Such claims are entirely meaningless and self-contradictory for intangible objects.

Therefore information, or intellectual property ownership is only meaningful in terms of physical, TANGIBLE copies of information.

To own information is to own a tangible copy of it. Nothing less, nothing more.

Thus every tangible copy of information constitutes a separate intellectual property, even though it might represent exactly the same information.

And Intellectual Property is nothing more or less than ownership of a TANGIBLE copy of information.

Assigning and enforcing “ownership” to intangible information in general, leads to irreconcilable self-contradictions, and to violations of tangible property rights, and thus is unjust.

What would be an example of such irreconcilable self-contradiction caused by erroneous claims of ownership of intangible information in general?

Information is a pattern or an arrangement of matter. To claim “ownership” i.e. exclusive control over a pattern or an arrangement in general, is to claim the ownership and control of ALL matter in the Universe, because any matter can be used to encode such information, anywhere in the Universe, and in fact, every particle of matter contains information about all other particles of matter. Such claim of universal control over all matter, with an alleged “right” to prevent others by force from arranging their tangible property in that pattern, without actually owning all tangible property in the Universe, and without having one’s tangible property violated in any way, is a self-contradiction, because it creates contradictory ownership claims over all tangible property in the Universe, and if enforced, constitutes an act of aggression against the tangible property of others, and is therefore unjust.

*Conclusion:*

Justice is NAP, that is non-violation of private property, with implied right to use equal force to neutralize/offset the aggression against one’s property. To be just, any society must have the NAP (the Non-Aggression Principle) as its core principle.

Anything that does not violate the NAP is just and has the right to exist.

Anything that violates the NAP is immoral and unjust.

*What about God, morality and his laws?*

Exactly the same principle applies to God. Indeed, he is the source of this principle.

Love, Justice, and Liberty constitute the entire system of morality of God.

In his own words: “_Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets_.”

So NAP applies to God just as much as to anyone else. Indeed God is God because he lives by such laws (for he would cease to be God if he didn’t), and he is the one who gave these laws to man.

Now, God is the Creator and the Just owner of the Universe. Therefore all who live in it are responsible to him to use his property only in the way he approves of. However no-one has the right to presume to speak for God or to enforce his laws without his permission.

Any such usurpation by anyone must be treated for what it is: an act of aggression, and it is just to end all aggression by force, which is the definition of just self-defense.

These are the laws of Justice. Let’s build a world upon these just and holy principles.

Amen.


*Note*: you can find the abbreviated version of this proof *here*.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Based on the above proof I propose the following amendment to the Constitution, to square it with the Eternal principles of Justice.
Note: the amendment is written in this way because to be effective, the Constitution must not only proclaim the law, it must also educate the people as to WHY such law is true.

*Justice Constitutional Amendment*

*(JCA)*


*Justice*

Since Justice is the definition of Good and right, and
Since doing unto others as you would have them do to you is the definition of justice and morality,  and
Since non-violation of private property is the direct consequence of this principle,

*THEREFORE*, non-violation of private property, with the implied right to use equal and opposite force to offset and neutralize such violation, is the definition of Justice.

*THEREFORE, all violations of Private Property are evil and unjust, and are expressly forbidden.* 

*Individual and the Group*

Furthermore, since the only legitimate authority that public representative government can have is delegated to it by the individuals comprising it, and since no one can delegate an authority he does not have, and

*No Public Taxation of Private Property*

Since no individual has the right to forcibly confiscate his neighbor's property, he cannot delegate such authority to the government.

*THEREFORE, all public taxation of private property is evil and unjust, and therefore forbidden and abolished.* 

*Limits to Public Regulation of Private Property*
 
Furthermore, since no individual has the right to control his neighbor's property without his neighbor's permission, therefore he cannot delegate such authority to the government,

*THEREFORE, all public regulation of private property, — except one, that private property of no one be violated, — is evil and unjust, and is therefore forbidden and abolished.* 

*Courts and Justice Enforcement*

Furthermore, since no individual has the right to deny his neighbor the right of just self-defense nor has the right to claim the monopoly on justice enforcement, he cannot delegate such authority to the government,

*THEREFORE, public government forced monopoly on justice enforcement is evil and unjust, and is therefore forbidden and abolished.* 

All have the right to enforce justice personally, or to contract with any third party for such enforcement, as long as such enforcement is just.

*Proper Role of Government*

Furthermore, since government is control, and no one has the right to control that which they do not own, and since the only thing that public representative government justly owns is public property, 

*THEREFORE, public representative government has the right to govern public property only, and nothing else.*

*Public Property*

Public property is defined as property to which all citizens of a certain location have equal claim of ownership.

*THEREFORE*, to be just, public property

must be governed by the voice of the majority of the citizens, provided thatall citizens are treated equally with respect to the property, (since they all have equal claim of ownership upon it), and thatthe property of no individual be violated in the process. 

*Just Financing of Public Government*

Since no one has the right to tax what they do not own, such taxation being the definition and the essence of plunder, and
Since the only thing that public representative government can justly own is public property,

*THEREFORE, the only just way to finance public representative government is via public property user fees and voluntary contributions.*

To be just, such fees must be

explicitly agreed upon by the majority of the citizens,must be administered equally among the citizens, andthe collection of such fees must not violate the property of any individual. 

*Private Property*

Private Property is defined as exclusive ownership of property by an individual, and is derived from, and includes, the self-ownership of the individual.  Ownership is defined as just control.

*THEREFORE, no one has the right to control an individual's property against his or her will.* 

Since private property includes, and is derived from, self-ownership of the individual, it is the very foundation of Liberty, virtue and Justice, and is the source of all rights, because all of these things are meaningless without self-ownership of the individual, and therefore meaningless without private property.

The just owner of a property is either the first user of it, or the recipient of it from the previous owner via voluntary gift, bequest or sale.

*Liberty*

Liberty is defined as the right of the individual to do with his property as he pleases, as long as he does not violate the property of another. Violating Liberty is unjust and evil.

*THEREFORE, violating Liberty is expressly forbidden.*

That which does not violate justice has a right to exist, and it is unjust to forbid it.

*Violation*

Violation is defined as control of property against its owner's will.

[If it is easier, the following amendment can be passed separately.]
 *Intellectual Property*

Since exclusive ownership has meaning only with regards to tangible property, and results in irreconcilable self-contradictions when applied to intangible things, such as information and ideas,

*THEREFORE,* Intellectual Property is defined as a tangible copy of information, and is meaningless as property outside of such tangible embodiment,

*THEREFORE,* no rational, and non-self-contradictory property claim can be made on information or ideas in general outside of such tangible embodiments, for such claims always and inevitably create self-contradictory tangible property claims, which if enforced, produce violations of tangible private property, and therefore are evil and unjust.

*THEREFORE, all patent and copyright laws are unjust and therefore are forbidden and abolished.*

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Discrimination is Liberty




> Let’s clear up these and other misconceptions about discrimination from the libertarian perspectives of property rights, the non-aggression principle, and individual liberty.
> 
> Designing, making, selling, or not selling floral arrangements has nothing to do with free speech or speech. The U.S. Supreme Court has greatly erred by labeling certain actions as a form of speech in order to protect them instead of just recognizing property rights.
> 
> Refusing to sell a product has everything to do with property rights. Since no potential customer has a claim on the property of any business owner, he has no legal recourse if the owner of the property refuses to sell it to him.
> 
> Selling someone a product has nothing to do with endorsing the buyer’s opinions or use of the product.
> 
> Discrimination is a crime in search of a victim. Every real crime needs a tangible victim with measurable damages. Discrimination is not aggression, force, or threat. It should never be a crime.
> ...

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

Check out these articles:

The Law of Justice
Justice Constitutional Amendment (JCA)

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## Sola_Fide

> *The Law of Justice*
> 
> There is a law of Justice which if understood and applied allows to create a just society and thus preserve and develop liberty and prosperity of the people.
> 
> A just social order must be based on the Law of Justice.
> 
> What is justice? It is derived from a fundamental principle:
> 
> *Step 1: The fundamental principle:*
> ...


I agree with a lot of this post, with some minor exceptions.

I don't think natural law is a logically defensible position.  I think the right of property comes from the negative command of God (you shall not steal).   The command of God, not nature, gives the foundation for a logically defensible concept of property.   But I like that post otherwise.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> I agree with a lot of this post, with some minor exceptions.
> 
> I don't think natural law is a logically defensible position.  I think the right of property comes from the negative command of God (you shall not steal).   The command of God, not nature, gives the foundation for a logically defensible concept of property.   But I like that post otherwise.


Thank you! If you believe as I do that are rights come from God, you will probably like a more detailed article The Law of Justice as well.

Thanks for your post.

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## osan

Your "law" fails.  Why?  Because of the presumptive basis, which cannot be supported as a mandate.  To wit:




> What is justice? It is derived from a fundamental principle:
> 
> *Step 1: The fundamental principle:*
> 
> Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself.


Firstly, it is not a principle.  It is a mandate.  The two things are very different.

As a mandate, it fails for a few reasons.  Firstly, it has the "pulled out of a rabbit's ass" quality about it.  It is NOT fundamental.  It is NOT self-evident.  Is is merely a commandment of a very apparently arbitrary nature that anyone with an IQ above that of a boiled turnip is going to sense and reject, if for no other reason than they are having it forced upon them.  This is FAIL^FAIL, or FAIL-plex.

It is simplistic, making no distinctions for variance of context.  Shall I love my neighbor as he fixes to stab me through my heart with a 10" kitchen knife?  By the strict semantic construction of your "principle", I am law-bound to stand still and let him have my life.  

Your "principle" is semantically vague and grossly incomplete - therefore it is useless from the aspect of practicality and stands devoid of substantive meaning, and thereby of any authority.

The rest of your "law" fails catastrophically and _in toto_ because all of it derives and rests directly and explicitly from the failed mandate that masquerades as a premise.

All of this is not to say that there is perforce nothing of value here, but only that your construction is heavily flawed in its design.  This is a philosophical work and as such must be held to the highest standards and scrutiny because by subtext it demands behavior from individual men.  To do that, there must rest unbreakable authority.  This work stands utterly devoid of the least hint of an authoritative basis in fact, but hollowly rings, smacking of the wannabe tyrant standing on his soapbox in Times Square, spewing his demands of those around him.  That bird don't fly.

I am sure it could be repaired.  Good luck.

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## Foundation_Of_Liberty

> As a mandate, it fails for a few reasons.  Firstly, it ... is NOT fundamental.  It is  NOT self-evident.  Is is merely a commandment of a very apparently  arbitrary nature


Here is where "Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself" is derived (as you asked): 
http://www.eternalliberty.info/the-law-of-justice/

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## osan

> Here is where "Thou shall love your neighbor as yourself" is derived (as you asked): 
> http://www.eternalliberty.info/the-law-of-justice/


Yeah, I think it suffers from the exact same problem.  As a casual exposition it may be sufficient, but as a philosophical treatise moving beyond mere opinion, it needs work.

----------

