Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Barakistan

A higher plane is relative. However, based on your posts I doubt your higher plane is seven steps above mine.

OK, let me know when you guys start to lay 'em on the table for measure so I can leave.

Well, for one thing, there's the dual question of how one would go about invading a free society, and on the other side, how a free society would know that it had been invaded.

When State A takes over State B, it forces State B's government to make use of the already-established channels of authority to order State B's subjects to transfer their submission from State B to State A. What would State A do if there were no channels of authority and nobody to order around? Occupy every single residence separately?

And, in the absence of those channels of authority, how would the citizens of a free society know they'd been invaded? An unusual number of armed immigrants of a particular ethnicity? They might stick out, but on the other hand, most people in a free society would probably be armed.

But in a more traditional vein, it would be a mistake to assume that a free society would have no military force. It wouldn't be a force of conscripts, and it wouldn't be coercively funded; but if a market for it existed, people would make their living providing it. If there wasn't a market for it...well, that's the same as saying that not enough people believe it's necessary, which probably means it's not.


There's nothing incompatible between anarchism and a hierarchy of command--at least not if we're talking about market anarchism. (Some of the Proudhonian socialist anarchists kick at any sort of hierarchy--or think they do, anyway--but in the society we're talking about, the Proudhonians would most likely confine themselves to communes.)


Libertarians can't use nuclear weapons.


Nuclear weapons aren't defensive. They can't be: they're not selective enough. A society committed to opposing aggression can't very well go killing hundreds of thousands or millions of innocent noncombatants.


Well, who designs, pays for, and maintains the systems to, for example, manufacture shoes? Proximally the companies that have proven themselves able to make a buck doing so; ultimately the consumers who benefit from the shoes. I imagine free-market military forces would go much the same way.


In a free society, the only real source of income is from satisfied customers, and the only way to ensure that income into the future is to convince those customers that they will continue to be satisfied. War--even mini-war--is massively expensive and destructive, and customers are not likely to look kindly on a company that does that sort of thing with their money unless it's absolutely necessary.

It's a whole different concept than a State going to war simply because a military is a really cool shiny toy and somebody wants a legacy, and just taxing, borrowing, or printing when you need money for it.


Sure--that's always the case. The difference is that in a free society, the protection agency works for its customers and tries to keep them from turning to its competitors, while under a State the police work for the government and have no competitors.


If they take over, then what? First, nobody is going to want them for security ever again; second, the entire community will be against them from that time forward. Fly-by-night security companies might occasionally try something like that, but reputable firms wouldn't dare unless they'd already made all the money they ever planned to make.


My focus is liberty, not convenience. Nevertheless, I've studied anarchism long enough to believe that it's capable of providing much more convenience than statism is.

You're right, my plane is probably more like 15 levels higher, but I didn't want to seem arrogant...... After all, I have actual evidence that I have thought in a plane that went much higher than any plane you have ever thought in. Flight Level 410 to be exact. I have also thought in a plane much faster than any plane you have thought in. Mach 1.2 to be exact.........................

Oh yeah, I have also thought in a plane that was upside down, as well as thought in a plane that was three feet away from another guy thinking in his plane..................

As you can clearly see, there is no way that any of the planes you have thought in have come close ...........

All of that stuff that you're talking about is hard-wired into human nature, which is for all practical purposes immutable.

Just remember he's autistic, difficult to reason with someone mentally challenged. He don't bother me any longer, I reserve pity for him.

I would estimate his IQ to be in the high 140s, minimum. Intelligence testing was once part of my occupation.

The "evil" of the state was what the people turned to to avoid a a far worse evil....anarchy, chaos, the imposition of the will of the strong and the amoral on the rest. Barak's position is basically....assume away the last thousand years of western civilization....and then explain to my why what didn't work then will work now.


the inefficiencies and irritations of the overreaching nation state are Sunday school compared to the alternative. anyone who has read history would not take the trade.

Character testing is part of my occupation...remember that.

That was part of mine as well.

Remember, they would have competitors. If one company charges me $200/mo for a particular level of service, and another promises to charge me $150/mo for the same level of service, and they're both equally reputable, I don't have to be an actuary to tell what the better deal is.

Speaking of actuaries, though, I'll bet you'd have a hard time finding an actuary who would admit that there's such a thing as a "completely unknown risk." Even if there were, any competent actuary would be able to extrapolate usefully from six months of experience.


Great. I look forward to it.


You could have used the same argument in the early 1900s to prove that heavier-than-air flight was impossible.

Intelligence, as far as IQ, has little to do with the ability to reason with people or with common sense. In fact, at a certain point, it becomes nearly an inverse relationship.

not if you were arguing rationally....airplanes are technology, man has pretty constantly improved his technology.

the idea that man can be improved like a piece of equipment is a totalitarian concept. if anarchy depends on the perfectability of man, then it's drinking from Karl Marx's koolaid fountain.

You haven't a clue as to what my utopia would be.

Agreed.

I'm not trying to slam him. Arguing with someone so emotionally detached is akin to talking to your socks, but if it makes you happy.

A whole heck of a lot better than they do in our current 95% government-controlled system of health care, that's how. One of the ways we got away from free-market health care into the heavily-regulated industry we have now had to do with taxation--tax credits and penalties and such. (That's why most of us have our health insurance through our employers, rather than directly the way we have Internet service.) In a free society, the taxes and regulations won't exist.


Heck--with the innovation I expect the unmolested free market to encourage, I wouldn't be surprised if they had Star Trek-style tricorders.

Any institution founded on aggression is certainly evil.

Slavery, for example.

Anarchism is the only political approach that acknowledges that all humans are corrupt and depraved. Every other approach vests coercive power in one or more humans who are assumed to be high-minded and altruistic.