A Step-by-Step, Logical, A Priori Refutation of Minarchism and 'Limited Government'. READ.

Is 'limited government' a unicorn?


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so what do you have against a state who only RESPONDS to initiation of force? why is it better if there are two or more "security agencies" (anarcho-capitalism) that respond to initiation of force instead of one?

The state doesn't RESPOND to force, the state IS force. Nothing you want your state to do can happen without INITIATING some level of force on it's people. If you are okay with the INITIATION of force to achieve a goal, that is fine for you to believe that. I however do not, and neither does NAP. I would never initiate force on you for having your beliefs and practicing them, will you do the same for me?
 
Yes, because the most logical thing to do to stop ONE individual from aggressing against another individual is to give an entire group of individuals the authority to aggress against ALL individuals.

If this is the best solution you have I certainly would prefer to live in a jungle. Luckily for me there are far better options.

But I suppose you favor government health care too? And government farms? And government factories? And government...

Either the government is the most efficient method of achieving productive results or it is not. You can't pick and choose. The market will do the same thing for health care, and roads, and PROTECTION as it has for cars and shoes and bread and milk and entertainment and computers and and and and and

you are equating two different things. competition that doesn't involve force and competition that does involve force. when two competing microprocessor companies compete in the marketplace, they compete on quality and can't use force against one another.

on the other hand, when you have your fantastical security agencies in anarcho-capitalism, they're competing over who is most brutal, because that's the only one that will be left standing. if security agency A has a client who was treated unfairly by security agency B, the two agencies will enter into a war. that's not the marketplace! you're confusing the market place with war.
 
The state doesn't RESPOND to force, the state IS force. Nothing you want your state to do can happen without INITIATING some level of force on it's people. If you are okay with the INITIATION of force to achieve a goal, that is fine for you to believe that. I however do not, and neither does NAP. I would never initiate force on you for having your beliefs and practicing them, will you do the same for me?

apparently you didn't pay attention when you read my post. how does the state i described initiate force? i'll paste what i wrote so you don't have go to back.

it's simple. if you have an organization that has a monopoly on the legal use of force in a given territory, in other words, a state, its services will be wanted. for example, individuals will want to sue when someone steals from them, they will want to use contracts, etc. thus, if the state charges a fee for those services, it can be financed without taxes.
 
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Then explain to me why ancient Ireland was able to have a complex stateless society for over a thousand years?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you talking about Druid society?

Very little is known about the Druids, aside from what their enemy, Julius Ceasar, claimed regarding them.

In any event, please tell me more about this society that you speak of, and how they were "stateless", and also "advanced".
 
Who said anything about voluntarily subjecting themselves to punishment.

This is where I think minarchists have the largest disconnect with the understanding of libertarian principle. NAP is about INITIATION of force. Once someone has murdered they have clearly INITIATED force, any response to such initiation of force is clearly that, a RESPONSE, NOT an initiation.

Unlike the barbaric nature of the state however, the likely response of a free society would be to order compensation or ostracize. The violence of the state begets the violence of the populace. If you TRULY love peace, stop condoning violence.

OK but my problem here isn't the NAP. It's how do you stop things from becoming a direct democracy in such instances. How do you keep the law fair. Don't say how the government isn't fair. I'm not talking about the current system, I'm ONLY talking about your purposed system. Yes I have a disconnect, but I'm willing to listen. I don't need to hear about how bad the other one is. I need to hear how it will exactly work in your system.
 
you are equating two different things. competition that doesn't involve force and competition that does involve force. when two competing microprocessor companies compete in the marketplace, they compete on quality and can't use force against one another.

Wrong. Two competing microprocessor companies will lobby government to initiate force on their behalf in the form of regulation to limit or eliminate their competition in the market.

on the other hand, when you have your fantastical security agencies in anarcho-capitalism, they're competing over who is most brutal, because that's the only one that will be left standing. if security agency A has a client who was treated unfairly by security agency B, the two agencies will enter into a war. that's not the marketplace! you're confusing the market place with war.

If you even sarcastically believe any of this then you don't understand how the 'true' marketplace functions. The ONLY way that a company of ANY kind can achieve a monopoly in a 'true' marketplace is to provide the greatest quality product at the cheapest possible price. This is in fact, not possible in a true market. As in a true market millions of different companies would exist, there would be no way for a monolithic corporation as you know them to exist today to provide the greatest product at the cheapest price to EVERY community. Each community would tend to favor local companies as they would be able to provide the good for cheaper, if for nothing more then a lower overhead and less transportation costs. This is all of course ignoring the obvious fact that a consumer who valued the protection of his own liberty would hardly continue a contract with a company he knew to be violating the liberty of others. Those who succeed in a pure free market of protection would be those that protect their clients the best without initiating violence. Just as the judges who survived in an open market would be those who time and time again offered the most fair and clear verdicts. People would simply not pay to go to a judge they knew would be unfair, or a 'protection' agency which violated the liberty of others.

In a market the thugs cannot fall back on a 'legal monopoly on the use of force'. They must simply please their customers or go out of business. Government never has that problem. They, because of people like you, have proclaimed themselves above the natural law of individual liberties, and so not only are they not DIScouraged from violating their customers, they are in fact ENcouraged to violate their populace. You see for the government pleasing their customer gets them less money, but forcing them to obey gets them more.

So please go ahead and tell me how 'government', the same entity responsible for more than 300 Million murders in the 20th century alone, is the side of peace, and the market is the side of war. It's nothing but an ex post facto justification for the initiation of violence on peaceful people.
 
apparently you didn't pay attention when you read my post. how does the state i described initiate force? i'll paste what i wrote so you don't have go to back.

Do you understand what a monopoly on force is? It is an initiation of force by it's very definition. Your entire premise is based on the initiation of force.
 
So please go ahead and tell me how 'government', the same entity responsible for more than 300 Million murders in the 20th century alone, is the side of peace, and the market is the side of war. It's nothing but an ex post facto justification for the initiation of violence on peaceful people.

tell me how the HUMAN RACE, the race responsible for more than 300 Million murders in the 20th century alone, is the side of peace, and the market is the side of war. It's nothing but an ex post facto justification for the initiation of violence on peaceful people.
 
Correct me if I'm wrong, but are you talking about Druid society?

Very little is known about the Druids, aside from what their enemy, Julius Ceasar, claimed regarding them.

In any event, please tell me more about this society that you speak of, and how they were "stateless", and also "advanced".

I don't think it had much to do with the Druids themselves. I believe Ireland's society was semi-stateless. It had kings/leaders but people voluntarily chose to "subscribe" to them. Iceland was pretty similar.

Check out some of these videos on stateless societies throughout history.
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForAnEmergentGov#g/c/C0AFF38F058C3D16
 
OK but my problem here isn't the NAP. It's how do you stop things from becoming a direct democracy in such instances. How do you keep the law fair. Don't say how the government isn't fair. I'm not talking about the current system, I'm ONLY talking about your purposed system. Yes I have a disconnect, but I'm willing to listen. I don't need to hear about how bad the other one is. I need to hear how it will exactly work in your system.

What is 'the law'? An arbitrary set of words written by one group of men imposed on other men? The very concept of 'the law' as you present it is an initiation of force.

My proposed system is to allow the marketplace of ideas to work as it always has and always will. Voluntary interaction. The only just authority in the world is that which is derived from voluntary mutual consent.

You seem like you may have a problem with the root of natural property rights and the right to retaliate. You own yourself. Since you own yourself, you own your labor. Since you own your labor, you may mix it with nature to create a product. If that product is for personal use, it is your property. If that product is for trade, the return is your property, and is funded solely by your own labor, which you own. Should someone wish to aggress against your property or your person, it is YOUR right, and YOUR right alone to retaliate (or in the case of a deceased, the right of your heir). No government has a right to retaliate for an initiation of force against you, for that government would then be initiating a new force of their own. You may delegate your right to retaliate by contract to another, by voluntary agreement. If you choose NOT to retaliate, that is also your right.
 
Do you understand what a monopoly on force is? It is an initiation of force by it's very definition. Your entire premise is based on the initiation of force.

no, it can also achieve that status using only retaliatory force. for example, let's say there is a potential competitor, your private security agency. For example, if your private security agency puts me in jail because you claim I stole from you, and the official government in turns puts your private security agency in jail, it does so only after the agency used force against me. Thus, the government used retaliatory force.

why don't you tell me specifically what action the agency i described takes where it initiates the use of force? funding is voluntary, payment to enforce contracts and things like that. action is completely retaliatory. it never initiates force. it's a monopoly because AFTER any other agency USES FORCE to achieve whatever they want, then the state goes after them, so in practice no other security organization can exist. has your organization initiated force once? YOU ARE OUT! but you are out ONLY AFTER you initiated force.
 
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tell me how the HUMAN RACE, the race responsible for more than 300 Million murders in the 20th century alone, is the side of peace, and the market is the side of war. It's nothing but an ex post facto justification for the initiation of violence on peaceful people.

Thanks for not responding to any of the points, I'll take that as a concession post.
 
What is 'the law'? An arbitrary set of words written by one group of men imposed on other men? The very concept of 'the law' as you present it is an initiation of force.

My proposed system is to allow the marketplace of ideas to work as it always has and always will. Voluntary interaction. The only just authority in the world is that which is derived from voluntary mutual consent.

You seem like you may have a problem with the root of natural property rights and the right to retaliate. You own yourself. Since you own yourself, you own your labor. Since you own your labor, you may mix it with nature to create a product. If that product is for personal use, it is your property. If that product is for trade, the return is your property, and is funded solely by your own labor, which you own. Should someone wish to aggress against your property or your person, it is YOUR right, and YOUR right alone to retaliate (or in the case of a deceased, the right of your heir). No government has a right to retaliate for an initiation of force against you, for that government would then be initiating a new force of their own. You may delegate your right to retaliate by contract to another, by voluntary agreement. If you choose NOT to retaliate, that is also your right.

can you go into details? suppose i go and steal your car. what do you do? how do you recover it?
 
can you go into details? suppose i go and steal your car. what do you do? how do you recover it?

It seems you can steal it back, or hire someone to steal it back. Of course then that person can shoot you for trying to steal it back, because it took labor to steal that car so he current owns it as a product of his labor.
 
It seems you can steal it back, or hire someone to steal it back. Of course then that person can shoot you for trying to steal it back, because it took labor to steal that car so he current owns it as a product of his labor.

in other words, a jungle.
 
no, it can also achieve that status using only retaliatory force.

No, it cannot. By claiming a monopoly on force it is initiating force on any person who does not agree with or comply with it's stated monopoly on force. It initiates force by it's very existence.

for example, let's say there is a potential competitor, your private security agency. For example, if your private security agency puts me in jail because you claim I stole from you, and the official government in turns puts your private security agency in jail, it does so only after the agency used force against me. Thus, the government used retaliatory force.

For example, you still can only view the world through a statist lens. My private security agency would never 'put you in jail'. What good does putting anyone in jail do? Does it replace property stolen? Does it fix damaged property? Does it unbreak broken bones? Does it revive dead humans? Clearly not. My private security agency would file suit against you for restitution in a private court. One that doesn't suppose to initiate violence against peaceful people, but exists solely through the market based on it's reputation for fair and impartial verdicts. You would certainly be free to appeal to a court of your choosing. You see, unlike your violent world of 'monopolies on force', the market decides based on performance. It rewards those that serve their customers. Government courts, with their 'monopoly on force', do just the opposite. They allow for the 'purchase' of courts with the pre-ordained mantle of 'monopoly on force'. Anyone with a 'monopoly on force' is accountable to NO ONE. They exist solely to feed their own power, not to serve their customers.

why don't you tell me specifically what action the agency i described takes where it initiates the use of force? funding is voluntary, payment to enforce contracts and things like that. action is completely retaliatory. it never initiates force. it's a monopoly because AFTER any other agency USES FORCE to achieve whatever they want, then the state goes after them, so in practice no other security organization can exists. have you initiated force once? YOU ARE OUT! but you are out ONLY AFTER you initiated force.

If the agency supposes to enforce anything with a 'monopoly on force' then it initiates force. If I were to say that your government has no business in my contract, would it INITIATE force upon me? Or would it leave me to be on my own? If it would initiate force, then you have lost your argument. If it would not, then it is clearly no monopoly on force.
 
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