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On March 11 2008 18:10 oneofthem wrote:
survival in the evolutionary sense is not the only judge. we are free to evaluate the societies based on other criteria of our choosing. this is rather basic.
the aim of the evolutionary approach is explanatory, not normative. it may shape a certain outlook on things, but to engage in this outlook is not the same as simply going over basic mechanics.
if you take the pda approach, one can say that being in a civil society is already getting in a pda, and this thread is simply a board meeting of such a pda that is not aware of its own nature.
Hum, that is exactly what I have been doing?
Of course you are free to evaluate however you want. I am simply saying than any anarcho-capitalist society will inevitably evolve into what we have today, because what we have today evolved from the anarcho-capitalistic status quo. Therefore, non-government is non-possible. This voids the whole anarcho-capitalistic discussion - in the non-governmental sense, it is impossible, in the PDA->government sense it is exactly what we have today.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
why did you raise issue with my statement then. there is nothing in your 'simply saying' that would contradict what i have said.
i was talking about the gesture of selecting normative economic policy based on efficiency alone. that sort of efficiency, talking about productive efficiency and growth, is not the same as evolutionary fitness.
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On March 11 2008 17:15 oneofthem wrote:
govt is not necessarily coercive, just like yer mom is not necessarily coercive.
Government IS necessarily coercive. If you don't pay taxes, you can rest assured they will throw you in jail.
it just has the position of having the initiative in organization and also the last say. leaving aside the absurdity of capitalists going against the concept of government in general, the simple fact is that humans are limited in their ability to process information and their organization follow patterns outside of their choices. in fact, the very space of their choices is very much a peculiar and open question. government happens to be the form through which public actions take place, and the question of participation is posed to the individual, whether to take part.
No, it isn't. The government doesn't ask you to pay your taxes, they force you to. And if 51% of the people vote in someone who says he's gonna take action that the other 49% resent, no one asks them if they don't want to participate.
leaving aside again the question of ultimate justification for govt coercion, we can admit that this is not a justified solution without saying that the individual then is absolved of all obligations and duties (not necessarily in the ordinary sense). we do this by treating cooperating with the government as a fully open ethical question. on the point of whether one should endeavor to contribute to society, help others, or simply choose the solution of most welfare or good life for all, the anarchist does not have any defense.
The anarchist position is that these choices should be just those; choices. Not mandates.
in fact, most of them sweep aside the question, saying coerced contribution is not right. but maybe it is right, maybe there is nothing honorable in rights in defense of callousness. if it is honorable, then surely it is still bad to be callous, even if you have the right to do so. that the right to be bad is given more weight than the badness of the activity speaks volume.
When yo say the right to 'be bad', you mean the right to be secure in ones own property. I think the right to force unwilling citizens to give up their money for a cause that someone else thinks they should is bad.
perhaps the central motivation for anarchocapitalism is reactionary self regard, that, we don't really give a shit about the rest of the bums and we'll frame our understanding of political theory on this crude impulse.
Anarchocapitalism is caring about everyones right to not be stolen from. There are tons of people now who voluntarily staff homeless shelters and donate food and time to help the less fortunate. No one would prevent this from happening.
if one is not under possession of such a logic, the very fact of arguing for the rights instead of the good is already taking a particular social attitude. this is fair game for condemnation.
The problem is, different people have different ideas of what is good. You're forcing your idea of good on everyone else and using it to justify theft.
if we even recognize the point of social welfare in the first place, and keep in mind the limits of human organization, it is easy to see that the govt or some form of centralised decisionmakign is arguably necessary. (the anarchist does not seem to object to forms of centralised decisionmaking, as the status of corporations and really the entire capitalistic system of production demonstrates. you are fine with a factory owner directing the behavior of laborers, and coercively at that) but at this point, already the question concerns instrumentality.
I'm fine with factory owners using coercion? Where did I say that? My whole point is that I'm against coercion. Corporations enter in to voluntary contracts with citizens. Governments force contracts down peoples throats. That is the key difference.
the effectiveness of a certain political arrangement of power and institutions that would be best fit to deliver the consequences we care about. on this point, the anarchocapitalist position is sweepingly blind.
Obviously this "we" is not all inclusive. If we (all inclusive) care about something, then we wouldn't need to be coerced into doing it. So when you say 'we', what you really mean is that there are some people who don't care about it, but you force them to participate in it anyways. You put your subjective judgment about how to use their money above their own judgment.
the point is, most of your average 'anarchocapitalists' are simply alienated from government and society in general, and hence they respond to govt as if the govt is holding them at gunpoint in an alley. well, part of this perception is really their own attitude. one may in fact be involved in government without also 'being a slave.'
Lol. Anti-government is not anti-society. It is pro-freedom. And you say "as if" the government holds people at gun point. How can you even question that? If you don't give them money, they take you to jail. If you resist going to jail, they shoot you.
because government, as it stands, is how society operates. it is a begrudging fact of political reality, but one that has weighty functions, functions we care about. it is fine to argue about the forms of government, but one must do so on the condition of being a participant in society, with a sense of commitment to others and the general welfare.
There you go again, deciding what people must care about. Hey I think you must care about me getting an HD tv. I'm just gonna run over to your house with a 44 magnum and take your money so I can buy it. Since afterall, you say its okay to force people to care about other peoples needs.
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in any case, coercion and power in society extends far beyond the simple idea of government.this is a common blind spot for anarchocapitalists, in fact, this is the critical blindspot. if you are privileging somehow this vague idea(vague in the sense of incoherent without the concept of government) of a private group's coercive activities, while condemning the arguably more sophisticated, progressively minded, and introspective practices of government, your theory is pretty bunk already.
It's possible for corporations to act coercively, just like it's possible to commit murder even though we have laws against it. But there are safeguards against both. In state society, coercion is legalized. So even though it's impossible to get rid of all coercion, you don't have to sanction it. And lol at government being "sophisticated" and "progressively minded"; government is the most corrupt institution known to man, and they can't seem to stop going to war all the damn time.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
the distinction between 'government is not necessarily coercive' and 'government has coercive practices' is vast. im sleepy right now, but the rest of the stuff is essentially the same. you are operating also with a naive view of property. i dunno how else to say it, but property is a coercive relationship.
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Coercive PDAs do not by any means rely on public support. They rely on monopoly on brute force, which may be gained through a small, favourized and powerful elite (read: military dictatorships)
You're assuming that there is a coercive PDA to start with. Once one exists it is harder to get rid of, but since people would have the right to own guns, they would be able to resist. Since one wouldn't naturally exist, it would be incredibly hard for one to gain a monopoly. Once it started trying to take territory and extort customers, the other legitimate PDAs would band together to fight it. So it would require people to want a coercive PDA for one to come about.
or through general acceptance (read: modern democracies). I outlined why a modern democracy is more efficient given the current technological level in my original long-ass post.
General acceptance = public support.
PS: How the fuck can you stupid enough to claim that:
a) People don't go to war because they aren't evil and war isn't profitable.
b) People will revolt against coercive PDAs.
Question mark.
Watch it with the insults. Obviously we don't agree with each others position, but try exercising alittle courtesy.
a)Governments go to war. Individuals don't go to war, and corporations don't go to war.
b)If people didn't want coercive PDAs, of course they would revolt.
No, evil people do not live in a disorganized chaos. This was also meticiously detailed in my first longass post. Even if everybody was purest Hannibal Lecter evil, government would happen. Put four hundred crazy cannibals on an Island - do you think they are going to live in disorganized chaos, or do you think a hundred of them are going to team up and eat the other motherfuckers at leisure? Sure, as the others have been eaten, you will have the group fragmenting into some smaller groups, same thing again.
(SEE AMERICAN FUCKING SURVIVOR. DO THEY ORGANIZE, WHEN THEIR ONLY GOAL IS TO WIN INFINTE DOLLARS, OR DO THEY LIVE IN A DISORGANIZED CHAOS?)
BIG GROUP = STRONG
SMALL GROUP = WEAK
BIG GROUP SMASH SMALL GROUP. BIG GROUP REMAINS.
It's as simple as it fucking gets. And, no you cannot have a big group without order.
Just because people organize, it doesn't mean anarchocapitalism has to fail. As I said before, more people would have to accept it, but if enough people do, it doesn't matter if some people are evil because they wouldn't be able to impose their will on everyone else.
The second thing we need to explain is why coercive PDAs are necessarily stronger than non-coercive PDAs. The first, simple truth is that a coercive PDA is just a non-coercive PDA with an advantage. A coercive PDA doesn't have to coerce, always and in all forms. So, a government can be no-coercive wherever that might be the strongest option, and else be non-coercive just like the PDA, and thus only be stronger.
A government is coercive by its very nature. All laws it enacts that take away liberties (all that violate the nonaggression principle) are coercive. Again, if a PDA became coercive in anarchocapitalist society, the only way it could survive is if people wanted it to, otherwise it would lose all its patrons to non-coercive PDAs that would squash the coercive PDA. It's not like it can just click its heals and gain a monopoly.
My big, initial longass post also details why PDAs become coercive. Take the Egyptians - they start out as a non-coercive PDA (well, a fucking PDA can't coerce before it gains at least one member non-coercively). The Egyptians hunt and farm together and share the burden of raising children, which is, for obvious reasons, much more efficient than not doing so.
Well, however, we now have a strong PDfuckingA called Egypt. There are other PDAs around - let's Babylonians, Israeli and Zulus. Between some of these PDAs, there exists a balance of power, so that neither PDA benifits from going to war and enslaving the other. However, everybody who is not under their own hugeass PDA are going to get shafted. There is nothing to lose for Egypt if they enslave all insufficiently protected peoples around them. Which is just what has happened throughout history time and fucking time again - we enslaved Indians, Africans, Asians, Aboriginals, stole their land and raped their wives. Because it fucking works. The USA is here today, Native AfuckingMerica isn't.
While its okay to see how many times you can fit 'fuck' into a history lesson, it's not really relevant. Non of these societies were ever anarcho-capitalistic.
The only theoretical possibilites for a non-coercive PDA to stay non-coercive are:
- a) balance of power. Everybody has a non-coercive PDA to protect them. This has never happened, ever, in history. There may be a reason.
- b) altruism from a large-ass PDA, which essentially loops back into A - if a PDA actually gives a crap about non-PDA members, then they will, to this or that extent, actually be PDA-members. Not members-with-all-benifits, but members.
No, there is no reason why a PDA has to become coercive.
PS: How can, strictly speaking, a PDA be non-coercive? A PDA works like a corporation: you scratch my back, I scratch yours. What is the difference between withholding a service, i.e. food and protection, and threatning to excercise force? Is there magical difference between active and passive measures? You clearly define throwing your white ass in prision as coercive. How about, owning all the fucking farmland and not feeding you unless you do whatever the heck we tell you to, is that coercive?
Besides the fact that owning all the fucking farmland and not feeding you unless you do whatever the heck we tell you to, is unrealistic in anarcho-capitalist society and has only happened with government structure, the difference between withholding a service and initiating aggresion is that withholding a service doesn't violate anyone elses property rights. Shooting someone in the head does( their face is their property). By your logic, every firm ever is coercive. McDonalds won't give me my chicken nuggets unless I give them $4. How dare they hold out on me!
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EDIT: THE FOLLOWING POST IS NOT WRITTEN WITH A DISTINCTION BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS AND PDAs AS THE FORMER VIOLATING PROPERTY RIGHT AND THE LATTER NOT DOING SO. I HAVE USED THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHYSICAL COERCION (WHICH IS, OF COURSE, THREATNING TO VIOLATE A PERSON'S BODY, WHICH BY YOUR CLAIM IS HIS PROPERTY) AND NON-PHYSICAL COERCION (ALL OTHER MEANS, SUCH AS WITHHOLDING GOODS AND SERVICES). THIS DISTINCTION AMOUNTS TO THE SAME.
Seeing as you obviously don't understand the words you are reading, or are simply electing to not give actual replies, I am going to try going at this with short sentences:
FIRST: AMERICAN SURVIVOR
This is a television show.
Every week, all participants vote for one person to be removed from the island.
The person who recieves the most votes is removed.
The person who is the last to remain wins about a metric fuckton of dollars.
(They don't vote when they are only two people left, but that's besidse the point.)
Now, the only incentive here is earn a metric fuckton of dollars. The people may opt to act purely out of selfinterest or do something else entirely. It really does not matter.
What happens in every single one of these shows is that a majority of the participants join up. They vote off each and every one not in the group, until only that majority is left.
Then, the group is fragmented into a smaller group, a majority and a minority. The new minority is voted out.
Repeat ad naseum.
In short: Self interest gathers in a large group and slaughters everything else. Pure evil (i.e. pure self interests) does not turn into chaos. It allies and dominates.
This is a pretty good model of human behaviour. Note how exactly the same happens in these shows as happened in the real world throughout the entire course of history. Note also how this behaviour contradicts your claim that if everybody was evil, there would only be chaos. There is nothing more evil than pure self interests, yet there is no chaos. There is order.
Note also that this majority group is coercive. After is has attained a majority of voters, the only thing you can do is join up. The only defense is trying to attain majority first.
SECOND: ARMED CONFLICT
Revolution is armed conflict. PDA vs PDA is armed conflict. PDA vs armed civilians is armed conflict.
The only way armed civilians can fight a PDA is by grouping (i.e. forming their own PDA). We now have a PDA vs PDA, or a war. This is the very thing you seem to consider impossible because it isn't profitable.
In other words, you have two theories which contradict eachother. Either, war happens or revolution doesn't.
THIRD: CHANGING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
Your assumption is that AnCap can work, while it has never done so before, because we can make people be AnCap-istic. Who is this we? Why hasn't it happened before?
Communism can not work because it, by your claim, contradicts human nature. Why can we not make people be Communistic?
FOURTH: WHAT IS COERCION?
This was an open challenge to you. By your claim, the difference between a government and a PDA is that a government is a coercive PDA. To properly understand how this is a difference, I wanted you to tell me what is coercion and what is merely exchange of services.
A government obviously makes laws. It then acts on its own members with (non-)lethal force in accordance with these laws.
A PDA also has to excercise (non-)lethal force. There is no other way to preven a lunatic from stabbing you with a knife. It actually does this towards non-members.
Maybe the thing here is that a PDA only excercises force to prevent others from excercising force. Essentially, you forbid the use of force for any other purpose than to prevent the use of force. Is this correct?
If so, what is the qualitative difference between physical force (i.e. muscle, gun, pistol, whip, fucking Egyptian pickaxe, Teutonic knight with a heavy lance) and other forms of force? Why is the use of the first kind of force necessarily evil (after all, by your claim, governments are evil, coercion is evil, and this is the reason you want AnCap - to get rid of governments)?
Here we go: We have an isolated room. In this room there are only four people. These are as follows:
- Healthy adult male.
- Crippled twenty year old girl, paralysed neck and down.
- Twelve year old boy.
- One year old girl.
Also, there is a machine in a corner. This machine, when a code is entered, dispenses food and water. As it happens, the only person to know this code is the healthy, adult male.
Now, by your claim, the healthy adult male should not excercise any physical force (this is evil, and we get a government, which is bad, while AnCap is good). Thus, he cannot take any physical action towards any of the others.
However, by your claim, the healthy adult male is entirely in his right to use other, non-physical means of coercion. Seeing as the other three people in question are completely incapable of getting food or drink on their own, it is obvious that the healthy adult male will completely dominate this group. Using his all-powerful means of coercion, he can make the twenty year old girl suck on his weener (else, after all, she is not getting any food, and she will most likely comply to this). He can do anything he wants to - he holds absolute power, and I figure people are going to be outraged if I start going graphical on what he does to infants, paralysed girls and a twelve year old by.
He would also have held this power if he was allowed to excercise physical force. Both AnCap and good old evil self-interest lead to the same thing. Clearly, there is something non-good about how we are defining coercion here.
It doesn't take extreme amounts of insight to realize you can have similar situations in real world examples, if less extreme. The main idea is that some form of non-physical power can be used in the exact same tyrannic way as physical power.
Now, let's add a twist to our thought experiment. We add three burly biker men to this room. Still, only the adult male knows the sercret code for food and water. We now have two possible scenarios again:
PDA, i.e. physical coercion is out:
- The burly biker men are completely powerless, and are subject to healthy adult's male every whim. They are disgusted to see what the paralysed girls consents to do. Coercion by non-physical force is, after all, not coercion. However, being good AnCap's by nature (even as laughable as the idea is, seeing as AnCap by your claim is not in human nature), they are powerless to do anything to stop this. Healthy adult male (if maybe somewhat twisted of mind) rules our room with an iron fist and orchestrates the sickest of orgies.
Non-PDA, i.e. physical coercion is in:
- The burly biker men tell the healthy adult male Hey, fuckwipe, stop mouthfucking paralysed girl or we fucking feed you your own poop.. At this point, we have the typical hostage situation: If neither party backs down, the healthy adult male chews down his own excrements and is killed, whereupon all others die of starvation. If either party backs down, the other holds supreme power. If they come to an agreement, (i.e. burly biker men do not feed adult healthy male his own (and their) excrements, adult health male does not oralize paralysed girl, healthy adult male provides food and drink for all parties in exchange for reasonable services, such as backrubs and occasional worship), we arrive at a much better equillibrium that the PDA-equillibrium.
So, as we can see by this example, ruling out physical coercion, while it does change the exact balance of power, is not necessarily beneficial for the whole group, nor necessarily harmful. It depends on the situation. While the typical scenario shows how physical force fucks shit up, this is clearly not necessarily the case.
The only thing which actually mattered in the above example was clearly a balance of power - total power, not physical. A total imbalance screws things up. There is nothing more balanced, in theory, about removing physical force from the equation.
And, thus, your only distinction between PDA and government (as far as you have presented it to me) vanishes. You either need to present a new one or rework your whole theory.
Appendix 1: You may want to claim that the core of the problem in the healthy-adult-male model is how he controls their access to food and water (which are necessary for life), and that there would not have been any problem if he did not. You may very well place each party in an individual, isolated cell which provided all they needed to survive. You now give healthy adult male the control of allowing these people to leave their cells to go to a common entertainment room for exactly one hour, before they are automagically returned to their cells. The adult male will once again be able to force the others to do just about everything.
Appendix 2: You may want to say that adult healthy male, by being the gifted man he is, should have all the benifits he is able to leverage from his power. By your claim, this is only true if his power stems from non-physical strength, i.e. sheer genius, technological advantage or sex appeal. The logic here is nowhere to be found.
Appendix 3: You may want to give the sucker argument that my hypothetical is unrealistic (it is, in truth, outright ridiculous). It does, however, merely illustrate, and accurately illustrate, what happens in any situation lacking balance of power. It also illustrates how physical force might just as well provide a balance as it might remove a balance.
Appendix 4: You may want to claim that adult healthy male is a sexually obsessed and twisted man, by no standards healthy, but very much both adult and male. Essentially, this is the hypothetical that people are not self-interested but altruistic, or that self-interest and altruism calls for the same behaviour is a given situation. This is, of course, ridiculous, but for the sake of completion, let's go there.
If self-interest and altruism coincided, there would be difference between PDA, government or anything. Nobody acts against both self-interest and altruism. If anything is against human nature, this is. (Actually, a distinction between self-interest and altruism is ridiculous. Altruism merely creates a self-interest for others' interests.)
People are altruistic and not selfish is the other possibility. This has time and time again been your reasoning for communism not working. You do after all claim to be AnCap, and the main tenet of capitalism is that people act out of selfishness, and that an AnCap system employs this self-interest for the whole's benifit. This is in conflict with the opening assumption.
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On March 12 2008 07:42 Zherak wrote:
EDIT: THE FOLLOWING POST IS NOT WRITTEN WITH A DISTINCTION BETWEEN GOVERNMENTS AND PDAs AS THE FORMER VIOLATING PROPERTY RIGHT AND THE LATTER NOT DOING SO. I HAVE USED THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN PHYSICAL COERCION (WHICH IS, OF COURSE, THREATNING TO VIOLATE A PERSON'S BODY, WHICH BY YOUR CLAIM IS HIS PROPERTY) AND NON-PHYSICAL COERCION (ALL OTHER MEANS, SUCH AS WITHHOLDING GOODS AND SERVICES). THIS DISTINCTION AMOUNTS TO THE SAME.
This logic is absurd. If there is no distinction (even though I clearly pointed out what the distinction is), then either all coercion is bad, meaning that every single decision a person makes is evil, or all coercion is acceptable, meaning there would be absolute chaos.
Seeing as you obviously don't understand the words you are reading, or are simply electing to not give actual replies, I am going to try going at this with short sentences:
Seeing as you don't understand how irrelevant your examples are or the difference between coercion and non coercion, I find it funny that you blindly persist without understanding how my replies prove you wrong.
FIRST: AMERICAN SURVIVOR
This is a television show.
Every week, all participants vote for one person to be removed from the island.
The person who recieves the most votes is removed.
The person who is the last to remain wins about a metric fuckton of dollars.
(They don't vote when they are only two people left, but that's besidse the point.)
Now, the only incentive here is earn a metric fuckton of dollars. The people may opt to act purely out of selfinterest or do something else entirely. It really does not matter.
What happens in every single one of these shows is that a majority of the participants join up. They vote off each and every one not in the group, until only that majority is left.
Then, the group is fragmented into a smaller group, a majority and a minority. The new minority is voted out.
Repeat ad naseum.
In short: Self interest gathers in a large group and slaughters everything else. Pure evil (i.e. pure self interests) does not turn into chaos. It allies and dominates.
This is a pretty good model of human behaviour. Note how exactly the same happens in these shows as happened in the real world throughout the entire course of history. Note also how this behaviour contradicts your claim that if everybody was evil, there would only be chaos. There is nothing more evil than pure self interests, yet there is no chaos. There is order.
Note also that this majority group is coercive. After is has attained a majority of voters, the only thing you can do is join up. The only defense is trying to attain majority first.
The rules of the game force participants to vote people off one at a time. All strategy must be based around this. This is not so in the real world, so it really doesn't matter what people do on Survivor (there are of course plenty more differences, but that is the most important).
SECOND: ARMED CONFLICT
Revolution is armed conflict. PDA vs PDA is armed conflict. PDA vs armed civilians is armed conflict.
The only way armed civilians can fight a PDA is by grouping (i.e. forming their own PDA). We now have a PDA vs PDA, or a war. This is the very thing you seem to consider impossible because it isn't profitable.
In other words, you have two theories which contradict eachother. Either, war happens or revolution doesn't.
I never said war can't happen, but I maintain its less likely then in state societies. You are taking the assumption for granted that PDAs will fight each other, or always try and become oppressive. It will often be in the interest of PDAs not to fight, since fighting cost money and lives and if your PDA is constantly getting into fights it will dissuade potential and current customers.
THIRD: CHANGING HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
Your assumption is that AnCap can work, while it has never done so before, because we can make people be AnCap-istic. Who is this we? Why hasn't it happened before?
There are a few brief instances of anarcho-capitalism working, but this is a red herring.
Communism can not work because it, by your claim, contradicts human nature. Why can we not make people be Communistic?
Because communism assumes people will work without economic incentive.
Your fourth argument does present a very interesting scenario. I find your logic to be flawed because you are saying that withholding a good from someone is coercion. If that is so, then you are 'coercing' me if I ask you to give me your computer for free and you refuse. All property rights break down, and you have pure chaos. In your scenario, for example, if both the man and the girl received an income of $500/month and the man instead of charging a blowjob charges $1 per meal, is he still being coercive? Where do you draw the line, in price, for what constitutes coercion? You are relying on the idea that people have the right to forcibly take from others. You have not shown that what you describe is coercion, you've just found one unrealistic situation where not allowing coercion puts one person in a bad spot. That would indeed be an unfortunate scenario for the girl, but it does not prove that government coercion is okay. It is not just unrealistic, though, it is not even similar to any conceivable real situation. If there is a monopoly of a particular industry in a town, and the people think the monopolist is charging "too much", the towns people have ways of exerting pressure on the monopoly such as they can all decide to ostracize him and cease selling anything to the monopolist, and his quality of life would decrease dramatically. In the real world there is also opportunity for another firm to enter the market. And of course, we are talking about one rare situation that has just about no chance of occuring in an actual anarcho-capitalist society, and ignoring all the untold millions who have been hurt or killed due to the coerdcive actions of government.
I agree with you that altruism is just taking a self-interest in the interest of others. I don't know if you meant that as part of your argument (I don't see it as such). If we pretend, for a moment, for semantics sake, that the distinction exists, I think we can agree that 99% of people are, to some extent, altruistic. Most people, by nature, also are more self-interested than altruistic, but still both. Communism requires people to be more altruistic than selfish, but anarchism can work within the confines of human nature; that people are more selfish than altruistic. No form or lack of government could work if people were entirely self-interested and not at all altruistic.
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 12 2008 05:31 CaptainMurphy wrote:Show nested quote +in any case, coercion and power in society extends far beyond the simple idea of government.this is a common blind spot for anarchocapitalists, in fact, this is the critical blindspot. if you are privileging somehow this vague idea(vague in the sense of incoherent without the concept of government) of a private group's coercive activities, while condemning the arguably more sophisticated, progressively minded, and introspective practices of government, your theory is pretty bunk already. It's possible for corporations to act coercively, just like it's possible to commit murder even though we have laws against it. But there are safeguards against both. In state society, coercion is legalized. So even though it's impossible to get rid of all coercion, you don't have to sanction it. And lol at government being "sophisticated" and "progressively minded"; government is the most corrupt institution known to man, and they can't seem to stop going to war all the damn time.
no. i owning a piece of land is by definition coercive. rights are in conflict as far as people can interact and occupy the same physical space, etc. and there are various other formulations in which no physical contact is necessary for rights to conflict. such as ip. you are basically taking serious problems like property and distribution as nonexistent, and that is the basis of yer philosphy.
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no. i owning a piece of land is by definition coercive. rights are in conflict as far as people can interact and occupy the same physical space, etc. and there are various other formulations in which no physical contact is necessary for rights to conflict. such as ip. you are basically taking serious problems like property and distribution as nonexistent, and that is the basis of yer philosphy.
??? Far from taking the problem of property as non-existant, it is the very basis of my philosophy. My philosophy is that stealing someone elses properly is universally immoral. Or put another way, the initiation of violence is universally immoral. To advocate any form of government is to deny this principle. And if you deny the validity of property rights, you are saying it is okay to steal. This is advocating utter insanity, because if the initiation of violence can be moral, then chaos will ensue. Please explain how you owning land is coercive.
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A question to CaptainMurphy: You see nothing wrong with child prostitution, is this correct?
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On March 12 2008 14:01 EmeraldSparks wrote:
A question to CaptainMurphy: You see nothing wrong with child prostitution, is this correct?
No.
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Well you said child labor is okay.
You furthermore said prostitution is okay.
So...
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On March 12 2008 15:42 EmeraldSparks wrote:
Well you said child labor is okay.
You furthermore said prostitution is okay.
So...
You asked if I found it wrong. I personally find child prostitution disgusting, but if the child voluntarily enters into the contract (ignoring the question of at what point does a child gain free will and reasoning skills and assuming that the child does), then no one has the right to initiate force against two people voluntarily engaging in sexual behavior.
I have a question for you; if the senate, following all the proper democratic procedures, votes to amend the constitution to legalize rape, does that make rape just or moral?
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No.
However, it's slightly more likely that one out of three hundred million people will be inclined to prostitute children than one hundred fifty million people.
Also, suppose the child does not have free will. Suppose the child is six. Now what? Can you 'initiate force,' violating the non-aggression principle?
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On March 12 2008 15:55 EmeraldSparks wrote:
No.
How is it unjust if it was decided by the democratic procedures that you accept as being able to determine justice?
However, it's slightly more likely that one out of three hundred million people will be inclined to prostitute children than one hundred fifty million people.
The scenario I described isn't particularly likely, but the idea that congress could pass immoral legislation we have clear evidence of. Slavery was legal for a long time, and the 'war on drugs' is still going on, and congress voted to send troops into Iraq (the latter two examples both being funded by coercion against the American people).
Also, suppose the child does not have free will. Suppose the child is six. Now what? Can you 'initiate force,' violating the non-aggression principle?
If the child does not have free will, then he can not enter into voluntary contracts and thus anyone having sex with him would be initiating aggression against him, so defending the child would not be an initiation of force.
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EPT
