So. I think I'm an anarchist

Actually, I never understood what anarchism really means, as distinct from libertarianism. Those who support it seem to accept the idea that some organizations will arise naturally, and say that they would support and pay into systems that treat people justly and protect people's rights. What's the difference between that and small government?

Choice
 
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

Thats 1000 years ago. Couldn't we do even better now?

lemme make this really easy for you (though i will eventually read the whole article)

PRIVATE CREATION AND ENFORCEMENT OF LAW:

Anarchy?

No.

(and that's the headline!)

"Private Creation" of LAW and LAW ENFORCEMENT is simply setting up another form of government.

(What were the founders if not private citizens?)

Perhaps at the "local" level? The "communal" level? Who cares? It is what it is, another form of government, hence not anarchy.


Some days i swear that most "anarchists" just want a world where they get to play feudal lord, just as the "communists" chomp for their day at the top of some bureau.
 
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lemme make this really easy for you (though i will eventually read the whole article)



Anarchy?

No.

(and that's headline!)

"Private Creation" of LAW and LAW ENFORCEMENT is simply setting up another form of government.

(What were the founders if not private citizens?)

Perhaps at the "local" level? The "communal" level? Who cares? It is what it is, another form of government, hence not anarchy.


Some days i swear that most "anarchists" just want a world where they get to play feudal lord, just as the "communists" chomp for their day at the top of some bureau.

Incorrect. You get to choose which court to patronize. Government is an aggressively maintained monopoly over a few services, financed via theft. I fail to see how that is the same as private law. If I have a case against the government, who gets to decide the case? Oh thats right, the government. Can I appeal to my own court? No. The difference, is FORCE.
 
Incorrect. You get to choose which court to patronize. Government is an aggressively maintained monopoly over a few services, financed via theft. I fail to see how that is the same as private law. If I have a case against the government, who gets to decide the case? Oh thats right, the government. Can I appeal to my own court? No. The difference, is FORCE.


Here is the difference, one people agree w/ until they lose (so what's the point), and the other people generally disagree w/ so it must be implemented through the force of law.


One more time... "LAW and its ENFORCEMENT"

I understand it's kind of hiding in plain sight, but right there in the middle of ENFORCEMENT you will find the very word that gets at the heart of the matter....

think.

Now, i'm going to read the rest of the essay you posted, i don't really care to keep going back and forth over the headline. but feel free say your peace or whatever.
 
Iceland is just one example. England, I believe had private common law courts for quite a long time. The idea that a coercive state is necessary to enforce rulings is just plain wrong. Lets take Somalia, which by now probably has had some interim govt. forced on them by the U.N. They have private law.

The Rule of Law Without the State
http://mises.org/story/2701

Stateless in Somalia, And Loving It
http://mises.org/story/2066

Do you think the U.S. would fare better or worse than Somalia in a state of anarchy?
 
Hidden History: Where Organized Crime and Government Meet
http://www.lewrockwell.com/burris/burris10.html

[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]"Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators, and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class." [/FONT]
[FONT=Times New Roman, Times, serif]~ Albert Jay Nock, Our Enemy, The State[/FONT]
 
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Here is the difference, one people agree w/ until they lose (so what's the point), and the other people generally disagree w/ so it must be implemented through the force of law.


One more time... "LAW and its ENFORCEMENT"

I understand it's kind of hiding in plain sight, but right there in the middle of ENFORCEMENT you will find the very word that gets at the heart of the matter....

think.

Now, i'm going to read the rest of the essay you posted, i don't really care to keep going back and forth over the headline. but feel free say your peace or whatever.

If my private court and your private court cannot reach an agreement, we will choose another, neutral court to decide. At least, that seems the most likely thing to happen. Who knows what the market will choose as the most efficient way to solve disputes?

Now lets look at the enforcement part. Lets say you beat the shit out of my face with a baseball bat and steal $10k from me. I go to my court with witnesses. You are served with a notice that the trial is taking place, and refuse to come. Thats ok. The trial proceeds in absentia. I receive a judgement in my favor which your court recognizes as being legitimate. Lets say you choose not to appeal, because you know you'll lose. How do I collect the following?

1. My $10,000 from you.
2. My hospital bills.
3. My legal fees.
4. Another $10,000 from you as retribution.
5. Plus I get to beat your face in with a baseball bat!

I send out agents to go find you, beat your face in, and take whats legally mine, because I'm a busy guy. They find you but you apparently have no money. This information is relayed to your insurance agency which pays me, and your premiums go up a good amount. Now say you don't have insurance. Thats unlikely, but in that case the court will probably order your wages garnished until the money is paid back.

Thats how I envision it.
 
If my private court and your private court cannot reach an agreement, we will choose another, neutral court to decide. At least, that seems the most likely thing to happen. Who knows what the market will choose as the most efficient way to solve disputes?

Now lets look at the enforcement part. Lets say you beat the shit out of my face with a baseball bat and steal $10k from me. I go to my court with witnesses. You are served with a notice that the trial is taking place, and refuse to come. Thats ok. The trial proceeds in absentia. I receive a judgement in my favor which your court recognizes as being legitimate. Lets say you choose not to appeal, because you know you'll lose. How do I collect the following?

1. My $10,000 from you.
2. My hospital bills.
3. My legal fees.
4. Another $10,000 from you as retribution.
5. Plus I get to beat your face in with a baseball bat!

I send out agents to go find you, beat your face in, and take whats legally mine, because I'm a busy guy. They find you but you apparently have no money. This information is relayed to your insurance agency which pays me, and your premiums go up a good amount. Now say you don't have insurance. Thats unlikely, but in that case the court will probably order your wages garnished until the money is paid back.

Thats how I envision it.


insurance? my private court?

you must have lived a sheltered life (there's nothing wrong with that.)

i think what you fail to understand is that if i beat you senseless w/ a baseball bat to steal your money i'll likely have no concern about shooting your "agents" on first sight, 'cuz i'd be that kinda guy.

eventually, when enough agents have been shot, there won't be agents.

i would own zero insurance (no premiums), i would not have "my court" and you would simply be shit out of luck.

(p.s. if you're the kinda guy carries around 10K in cash, you've probably got it comin' ;) )


in anarchy those who will survive will be those awake to how things in this world really work (and have good interpersonal communication skills.)
 
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insurance? my private court?

you must have lived a sheltered life (there's nothing wrong with that.)

i think what you fail to understand is that if i beat you senseless w/ a baseball bat to steal your money i'll likely have no concern about shooting your "agents" on first sight, 'cuz i'd be that kinda guy.

eventually, when enough agents have been shot, there won't be agents.

i would own zero insurance (no premiums), i would not have "my court" and you would simply be shit out of luck.

(p.s. if you're the kinda guy carries around 10K in cash, you've probably got it comin' ;) )


in anarchy those who will survive will be those awake to how things in this world really work (and have good interpersonal communication skills.)

Ok.

Then how was private law able to work in Iceland with barbarians longer than our republic was able to stay a republic?

Care to explain? I don't live a "sheltered life" btw, whatever that phrase means to you.

And one more thing. If you attempt to shoot my armed agents they will gladly kill you. And they're not gonna let you know they're coming either. Sounds like you'd be one of the first to go. :(
 
Read it.... What do you disagree with, what's wrong? Spell it out to me... :rolleyes: Reposting again because it was "oddly :rolleyes:" totally ignored...

Our Enemy, The State by Albert, J. Nock

There appears to be a curious difficulty about exercising reflective thought upon the actual nature of an institution into which one was born and one’s ancestors were born. One accepts it as one does the atmosphere; one’s practical adjustments to it are made by a kind of reflex.

One seldom thinks about the air until one notices some change, favourable or unfavourable, and then one’s thought about it is special; one thinks about purer air, lighter air, heavier air, not about air. So it is with certain human institutions. We know that they exist, that they affect us in various ways, but we do not ask how they came to exist, or what their original intention was, or what primary function it is that they are actually fulfilling; and when they affect us so unfavourably that we rebel against them, we contemplate substituting nothing beyond some modification or variant of the same institution. Thus colonial America, oppressed by the monarchical State, brings in the republican State; Germany gives up the republican State for the Hitlerian State; Russia exchanges the monocratic State for the collectivist State; Italy exchanges the constitutionalist State for the “totalitarian” State.

It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual’s incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was towards the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. The State was then a very weak institution; the Church was very strong. The individual was born into the Church, as his ancestors had been for generations, in precisely the formal, documented fashion in which he is now born into the State. He was taxed for the Church’s support, as he now is for the State’s support. He was supposed to accept the official theory and doctrine of the Church, to conform to its discipline, and in a general way to do as it told him; again, precisely the sanctions that the State now lays upon him. If he were reluctant or recalcitrant, the Church made a satisfactory amount of trouble for him, as the State now does. Notwithstanding all this, it does not appear to have occurred to the Church- citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.

There it was; he accepted its own account of itself, took it as it stood, and at its own valuation. Even when he revolted, fifty years later, he merely exchanged one form or mode of the Church for another, the Roman for the Calvinist, Lutheran, Zuinglian, or what not; again, quite as the modern State-citizen exchanges one mode of the State for another. He did not examine the institution itself, nor does the State-citizen today. My purpose in writing is to raise the question whether the enormous depletion of social power which we are witnessing everywhere does not suggest the importance of knowing more than we do about the essential nature of the institution that is so rapidly absorbing this volume of power.

One of my friends said to me lately that if the public-utility corporations did not mend their ways, the State would take over their business and operate it. He spoke with a curiously reverent air of finality. Just so, I thought, might a Church-citizen, at the end of the fifteenth century, have spoken of some impending intervention of the Church; and I wondered then whether he had any better informed and closer-reasoned theory of the State than his prototype had of the Church. Frankly, I am sure he had not. His pseudo-conception was merely an unreasoned acceptance of the State on its own terms and at its own valuation; he showed himself no more intelligent, and no less, than the whole mass of State-citizenry at large.

It appears to me that with the depletion of social power going on at the rate it is, the State-citizen should look very closely into the essential nature of the institution that is bringing it about. He should ask himself whether he has a theory of the State, and if so, whether he can assure himself that history supports it. He will not find this a matter that can be settled off-hand; it needs a good deal of investigation, and a stiff exercise of reflective thought. He should ask, in the first place, how the State originated, and why; it must have come about somehow, and for some purpose. This seems an extremely easy question to answer, but he will not find it so. Then he should ask what it is that history exhibits continuously as the State’s primary function. Then, whether he finds that “the State” and “government” are strictly synonymous terms; he uses them as such, but are they? Are there any invariable characteristic marks that differentiate the institution of government from the institution of the State?

Then finally he should decide whether, by the testimony of history, the State is to be regarded as, in essence, a social or an anti-social institution? It is pretty clear now that if the Church-citizen of 1500 had put his mind on questions as fundamental as these, his civilization might have had a much easier and pleasanter course to run; and the State-citizen of today may profit by his experience.


Excerpt. Pg 18-21.

Oh of course!!! Thinking that there would never be a state makes you a total LOON.. when we are born from the DAWN of time... since the BEGINNING of man... only 3 things remain forever constant, birth, death & the ever presence of the state!!! How stupid of me, forgive my ignorance... Man of man, what was I thinking!?? Pardon the interruption folks, I spent 13 years getting a PUBLIC / STATE EDUCATION..... OF COURSE THE STATE IS AS NATURAL AS AIR. IT'S EVEN BETTER! :rolleyes:
 
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Religion and politics are both the very same thing. They are both only, very old and very effective, means to control large masses of people. It has always only been that way, and it always only will be.

The ends do NOT justify the means.
 
Religion and politics are both the very same thing. They are both only, very old and very effective, means to control large masses of people. It has always only been that way, and it always only will be.

The ends do NOT justify the means.

Well said.
 
Ok.

Then how was private law able to work in Iceland with barbarians longer than our republic was able to stay a republic?

That tells me to question who the "barbarians" really are.

Care to explain? I don't live a "sheltered life" btw, whatever that phrase means to you.

That you don't understand how little regard people give all niceties, particularly law enforcement efforts (that apply to them.)

W/out a publicly excused, legitimized monopoly on "law enforcement," laws will be impossible to enforce.

Anything else would not be anarchy, it's just another form of government, albeit one that you feel represents your interests better than the one we've got now.

And one more thing. If you attempt to shoot my armed agents they will gladly kill you. And they're not gonna let you know they're coming either. Sounds like you'd be one of the first to go. :(

Power of reason is your username, yet you cannot read a hypothetical w/out getting wound up about it? It is what it is man, what you're proposing w/ new "privatized" courts would lead to nothing but armed conflict, or everyone simply ignoring those attempting to implement it ( one would lead to the other, though i'm not sure in which order.)

How are you going to "enforce" any "law" without "force?"

This seems so simple, explain to me why it isn't, and then we'll be getting somewhere.
 
Statement of Purpose: Voluntaryists are advocates of non-political, non-violent strategies to achieve a free society. We reject electoral politics, in theory and in practice, as incompatible with libertarian principles. Governments must cloak their actions in an aura of moral legitimacy in order to sustain their power, and political methods invariably strengthen that legitimacy. Voluntaryists seek instead to delegitimize the State through education, and we advocate withdrawal of the cooperation and tacit consent on which State power ultimately depends.
http://www.voluntaryist.com/
 
That tells me to question who the "barbarians" really are.



That you don't understand how little regard people give all niceties, particularly law enforcement efforts (that apply to them.)

W/out a publicly excused, legitimized monopoly on "law enforcement," laws will be impossible to enforce.

Anything else would not be anarchy, it's just another form of government, albeit one that you feel represents your interests better than the one we've got now.



Power of reason is your username, yet you cannot read a hypothetical w/out getting wound up about it? It is what it is man, what you're proposing w/ new "privatized" courts would lead to nothing but armed conflict, or everyone simply ignoring those attempting to implement it ( one would lead to the other, though i'm not sure in which order.)

How are you going to "enforce" any "law" without "force?"

This seems so simple, explain to me why it isn't, and then we'll be getting somewhere.

I've already shown you historical examples of private law working.... without a government (monopoly on force).... read the Somalia articles.... they have no government and yet they have laws that are enforced (shocker!).... and of course you need to use force, just in a defensive, as opposed to agressive way. Might doesn't make right. Are you ignoring the evidence I'm offering to you, or do you have a learning disability? I'm a patient guy though, so here's another article for you to read about Iceland.

http://mises.org/article.aspx?Id=1121
 
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