Here ya go, Barak: a thread for you to lay out in detail your utopia. Have at it, and please be sure to include all elements of your society, including size, borders, economy, defense, trade (domestic and foreign), currency, commerce, internal and foreign relations, etc.

Have at it.

Don't forget laws and court systems and where your going to get your water and electricity absent Fed regs!

He will just tell you that he's already done it.

Laws? We don't need no stinkin' laws. Every man can do what is right in his own eyes.

That would be a lot of typing. There isn't anyone I would want to convince that bad.

You may have a while to wait... he's working at the moment.

Penny

Being as it's Labor Day today, I'm laboring; so I don't have time to write a lot. However, I'll mention at least a direction for each of the elements you propose, and then you can either rebut or demand more detail in specific areas.

Size: Doesn't really matter, since a free society would be utterly decentralized. Could be a neighborhood, could be a continent.

Borders: They would be the responsibility of those who owned the land abutting the borders, and perhaps to a lesser degree those who owned the land abutting that, and so on. Mostly I'd expect the borders to be open almost to the point of nonexistence, unless they were borders with a specifically hostile neighboring entity. I'd expect self-limiting numbers of both emigrants and immigrants.

Economy: Complete laissez-faire capitalism, perhaps punctuated with small socialist communes. All currencies would be private, and there would be no legal-tender laws. The absence of a central bank would mean that interest rates, driven by the free market, would follow the society's general time preference and act as an automatic governor on the growth of the economy. All banks would be vulnerable to bankruptcy and collapse, which probably means that the citizenry would demand full-reserve banking.

Essentially, the economy of a free society, all things being equal, could be expected to grow more slowly than the economy of a central-bank fiat-money State during boom times, but to continue that same general growth rate during worldwide recessions and depressions. However, with all things not being equal, given that no government would limit productivity with taxes or regulations, I'd expect a free society's economy to consistently outgrow controlled economies even during boom times.

Defense: I assume you mean national or theater defense, rather than personal protection. That would be the responsibility of the free market. If conflict was expected, there'd be a market for arming to meet it; if no conflict was expected, it'd be more lucrative for people to get training in how to create things than to get training in how to destroy things.

Domestic trade: No coercive regulation, no restrictions, no taxes.

Foreign trade: Pretty much the same as domestic trade. For a citizen, there'd be no fundamental difference between trading with a domestic company and trading with a foreign company, except that he'd want to convert to State fiat money as late as possible and from it as quickly as possible to lose minimum value to inflation. (The foreign company he'd be trading with would most likely prefer to do business in one of his native sound currencies, but the foreign company's government would probably prohibit it from doing so.)

Currency: Whatever the free market came up with. Probably two or three general-purpose currencies would win out, along with a small number of special-purpose currencies tuned for things like long-term storage or micropayments. Most if not all of the currencies would be represented by digital cash.

Commerce: Again, no regulation or taxation. Insider trading, for example, would be accepted and common. Most transactions would probably take place using anonymous, untrackable means like digital cash, so "money laundering" would be meaningless.

Internal relations: Not sure what you mean.

Foreign relations: There wouldn't be any, at least not on a national level. I expect individuals and private companies would form all sorts of business relationships with foreign individuals, foreign companies, and perhaps even foreign States.

Law: Again, whatever the free market supplied. Probably some sort of general customary law would emerge, like the Law Merchant or English common law or Somali customary law, and folks with a marketable talent for it would make their money writing and selling books about the finer details of the law as it applied to particular technical areas.

Courts: All courts would be private; all verdicts would be non-binding in that they would have no coercive power, but ignoring the verdict of a reputable court would definitely be a career-limiting maneuver. There would almost certainly be no juries, except perhaps as historical curiosities when a particularly extravagant pair of adversaries decided to pay for them. No coercive subpoenas either.

Pollution control - how, and who, would enforce laws for being what was being put into the soil, in the water and into the air by large corporations, mining companies or say, people driving their automobiles?

And what of a rapist of murderer??

Courts. Private courts, operating on the basis of individual property rights in things like water and air.

Barak is still working... but I suspect he will say that the rapist or murderer should be handed over to the victim's family/friends/next of kin for justice to be served...

Penny

Dang! He's on the computer downstairs NOT working!

Penny

How would Joe Smallguy collect from say, Shell Oil - if Shell didn't feel like complying with the local neighborhood court ruling.

What if he's innocent? Shouldn't he have a trial first? Who would guarantee an unbiased determination of guilt/innocence?

Rapists and murderers are easy.

If the victim or the victim's advocates are insecure about the amount of evidence they have against the defendant, they can take him to a court and get a verdict to protect them; if evidence is not scarce, they can simply take care of him themselves.

It would be much less likely for a violent criminal to escape justice in a free society than it would for him under a State (as long as his aggression wasn't against the State or its interests, of course); hence I would expect much less violent crime in a free society than under a State.

If a State is prosecuting you, you have the advantage that States are corrupt and vulnerable to bribes and incompetence. Victims? Not so much. Victims are motivated: they'll keep coming and they won't let you off on a technicality.

Barakistan will work if we move back towards our feminine energy. I believe the reason Barak and Penny get along so will is because they both have strong feminine energy. My Lady and I get along well after 32 years is because we both have strong feminine energy.

The reason that anicent Ireland lived so well into the middles ages was because of strong feminine energy. Sure there were raids between clans but there was no all out wars between clans for the most part. When Christianity came to Ireland, if Ireland had been allowed to continue to combine the best of Druidism and Christianity, I'm convinced we would today see a very successful country of anarchy for all of us to emanate.

If as Hawk posted on another thread, we stuck in strong masculine energy so live with it, than other than just talking there is nothing we can do about our state of affairs.

Barak, give a hypothetical of how the country runs; create a Barakistan, describe it's day-to-day.

Also, would there be neighboring countries?

Estimated population of a functional Barakistan?

Yes, which would very soon be referred to as "the new owners".


reading Barak's bizarre telling of how his criminal law system would work kind of tells you why such systems were abandoned

Certainly not a State court system, that's for sure. All of us know of countless examples of miscarriages of State justice, and we can be assured that there are many others that we never hear about.

Essentially, humans are biased creatures; there is no such thing as a completely unbiased verdict.

However, using free-market forces, we can get pretty dang close. In a private court system, a particular judge's income would depend on the public perception of his impartiality and fairness. If Judge A is fairer than Judge B, then Judge A will steal Judge B's business and get rich, while Judge B will be reduced to wearing the blue vest at Wal-Mart.

Judges under a State, of course, can be as partial and corrupt as they like as long as they don't get caught at it, and as long as they can continue to bribe or intimidate people into voting for them.

If you were to establish a Barakistan somehwere on the planet, where would it be? Why?

Put it in hypothetical motion there now. How would it work?

Sorry, but I do not see how these notions could possibly work in the modern world, given the nature of man. Businesses would form their own armies, religions would form their own armies, and complete chaos would result. You could only have a measure of peace so long as everyone agreed to the exact same principles - fantasy land.

We HAD the best government ever designed - let's get back to it. The notion of creating a means of checking government to force it back into its intended box was never really elaborated upon and that is a notion that appeals to me.

The Constitution and KISS.

You're speaking a language I'm not familiar with. Sounds all New Age like.

That said, it is human nature, for better or worse, that males dominate society. We are not spiders. We are vertebrates of a high order. The norm, with very few exceptions, for such animals is male domination.

Look at a gorilla or [bleep] community, for example. Look at a pride of lions. Males are more strongly built, and produce high levels of testosterone, which increases aggression and determination to dominate. A female dominated society would be an aberration in the extreme for human beings. Human nature is fixed in this regard. To the extend that a society encourages the opposite, that society is at odds with nature, i.e., perverted.

+1

Somalia keeps popping into my head as I read this.

Sounds to me like anarchy would work in an insulated society with no outside aggressors or internal strife; in other words, it won't work. I place my faith in the wisdom of the founders and the Constitution that they created. It's incumbent upon their descendants to defend their liberties, and if they are unwilling to do that, then they do not deserve them, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin.

I can't even describe day-to-day operations of the US--especially not today--and it's not even hypothetical. You'll need to be more specific.

Neighboring countries? Heck, there might even be containing countries. It's unlikely that a free society will arise from somebody buying an island or a tract of land somewhere and starting his own country on it. That's kind of the opposite of freedom.

Free Men exist today, scattered around the general population. Occasionally, a pocket of them happen to either live close together or do business together or otherwise share something in common; that's the beginning of a free society. If it takes hold and grows, people who are Free Men will be attracted to it, and people who are Livestock will be attracted away from it.

If the State that surrounds it grows more onerous and oppressive, more people on the margin who were formerly undifferentiated will differentiate themselves into Free Men and Livestock, and once more the Free Men will be drawn to the free society and the Livestock will be drawn away from it.

If the free society is successful and prosperous enough to become widely known, that too will drive undifferentiated people to differentiate themselves and act accordingly.

When a free society is small, it's probably in its best interest to conceal itself to the extent possible from the State that claims jurisdiction over it. When it's big enough to secede and make it stick, that's what I'd expect to see.

I understand where you're trying to drive me: you want to maneuver me into a position where you can point out that States bordering a free society will invade, conquer, and crush it.

I don't hold with that--I expect we'll get into that later--but I would like to point out the underlying assumptions.

You're assuming that any State bordering a free society would automatically be alarmed at the concept of people living in freedom and liberty so close to its borders and immediately do its best to eliminate that liberty and bring them under its heel.

And this is the State that you're advocating?

That's what I mean when I say that the State is immoral and should be abolished. Yes, I have my ideas about what life might be like without it; but even if I'm wrong about all those ideas, the truth of the original assertion remains: the State is immoral and should be abolished. Even if it turns out that without the State we would all be living in caves and chipping edges into stone axes, the State is still immoral and should be abolished.

Barak,

So what happens if a gang of Hells Angels moves in, robs your house, kills your family and then moves on to another part of the "country"? How would a single person expect to get juctice when he perhaps doesn' know who was involved and where they have gone? Are you suggesting he would pay a private company to investigate and apprehend them? What checks and balances would exist to ensure the right people were apprehended and that the evidence was legitimate?

Regards,

Peter

You're a pretty smart guy, and I'm sure I could learn something useful from you if you'd take a break from the content-free sarcasm and post something of substance...

Anarchism was designed for handling aggression and strife. It's the only system I've seen that puts all the incentives in the right places. In every other system, the incentives always reward the corrupt, the violent, and the tyrannical. In a free society, peaceful, consensual interaction is automatically rewarded and aggression is automatically penalized--not by any higher authority which could be corrupt, incompetent, or lazy, but simply by decentralized free-market forces. (Which, of course, is another way of saying "human greed." Human greed is very dependable.)


I look around at what has been wrought either by the Constitution or under the Constitution, and any faith in it I might once have had evaporates and drifts gently away on the morning breeze.

The Framers may have been smart guys operating without the benefit of hindsight; but the whole concept of limited government has really turned out to be a ringer.


Absolutely.

But I expect I understand that a little differently than you do.

that ain't sarcasm, amigo.


what you describe is sort of a bastardized version of primitive private justice that went out with the Bronze Age....and anybody who has any experience with a real system which, although far from perfect like all manmade things, functions pretty well can and will tell you that your proposal is unworkable in execution. In fact, it is almost impossible to read with a straight face. Which I tried to do, since I respect your eccentric insights.


again, there is a reason your system exists nowhere on earth, other than in the fevered imaginations of anarchists.

You're a smart guy, Barak. It's a shame that you waste all that brain power fantasizing about things that cannot, in light of reality, possibly be. You'd be a real benefit to the cause of restoring the Republic established by the Founding Fathers.

If that happened--which it wouldn't as we'll see in a bit--I'd be due a truly enormous settlement from my Personal Protection Agency. Or, rather, from its insurance company.

And all its other customers would be looking on very closely to see whether it paid me or not. So would its competitors. If it didn't, those other customers would leave it in droves, and there'd be a premium war among its competitors to attract them. (No government protection for insurance companies in a free society.)

Given that, my PPA is going to spend whatever it takes up to the amount of the settlement specified in my contract to make sure I stay safe from Hell's Angels.

And given that, the gang of Hell's Angels is going to go looking for easier prey. However, the only people who aren't subscribed to PPAs will probably be those who are so poor they're not worth robbing anyway...whereupon the Hell's Angels will likely give up their lives of crime and take up knitting and Sunday-school teaching instead.

Go on...

What's fascinating about this thread (props to Sean) is how un-imagineable the lack of a State, the lack of governmental structures under which we were all born and have labored beneath our whole lives.... How fundamentally alien it is to all present to try and imagine life without them. It's like asking fish to write about living without water.

Seems like EVERYONE is a fan of big government. We just argue over the implementation.

The place (the ONLY place) I could see Barakistan working is a tropical island, like Hawaii, where food is easy and the livin' is simple. However, a place that nice would be conquered by an organized state soon enough, and that'd be the end of Paradise.

Which is what happened to Hawaii...

Barak,

Your trying to be far too logical...Many people don't commit crime for profit, they commit it for kicks or simply because they can...

Essentially you'd end up living in a feudal system like the UK pre about the 1500's or Somalia today...Perhaps the State as we know it today wouldnt be terrorizing you, but there would be plenty of people out there who would be..

You have to quit thinking in terms of "theories" and stating looking at how such societies actually worked...virtually every civillized/first world society in the world has moved away from such lifesyles; that really should tell you something...

Regards,

Peter

So, you get the impression from my posts that I favor big government? You mean because I don't embrace the fantasy of a society where no one seeks to exercise unchecked and arbitrary power over the lives of other? The reality is that there will always be those willing and able to surround themselves with enough thugs to impose their unchecked will on the remainder of humanity. Give that system enough time to develop, and it becomes what we call The State. The solution to The State is to impose on it the rule of law. That process is called the institution of government. It's that simple.

Not very knowledgeable about anarchy, but is there an example of an anarchistic society alive and well on the planet today? Ot is this whole thing a mental exercise?

Not really, any more than I'd be a benefit to the cause of digging holes in the backyard and filling them directly back up again. We've already tried the whole Republic thing, and we've seen how it works and what happens to it. Other countries have tried it too, with the same result. Unless you've got an argument that we today are somehow fundamentally better people than who failed to stay out from under the heel of the State the last time--and given your statements about the constancy of human nature, that seems unlikely--I'd rather spend my energy on something with a chance of success.

I do appreciate what I suspect you intended to be a compliment, though. Thanks.

Somalia.

Yep, and we know from observation that houses (by the standard above) don't work either, so we shouldn't build them, and we shouldn't live in them. We should start living without any houses at all. I mean, after all, each and every house that has ever been built either has fallen, or inevitably will fall, into disrepair and then utterly collapse. Therefore we should all just live out in the open.

I certainly can't see how anarchy would by design handle an external aggressor such as Russia or China. Say for a moment that your utopia did somehow happen here in North America. And lets further say that the Chinese and Russians want "lebensraum" and the abundant natural resources that we have here. How is your anarchist society going to handle an invasion by those entities? With no Navy or National Guard or even a small standing army, how would we repel the invaders? Invite them in? Pay them off? Guerrilla war? To what point and under what leadership? I can tell you from a military POV that anarchy won't work in a military environment or in combat. Combat seems like anarchy, and can devolve into it if tactical control is lost, but there's usually a heirarchy of command to keep things moving along, and recover from or exploit mistakes.

How would a nuclear deterrent be created and maintained? Saying that it wouldn't be needed is to deny facts. Not having defense capabilities able to react within minutes to an external nuke threat sounds like national suicide or servitude, take your pick. If the new anarchist nation decided it was a good thing to have, who designs, pays for and maintains the systems? Individuals? So now we're back to feudalism. The individuals with the most money and means hire and acquire the best and most efficient defense/offense methods. Then they decide that they need something, and that something is held by another group who want too much for it, or don't want to sell it, so you have mini wars over resources.

Pete E makes a good point too. Roving bands of brigands will be able to take what they want when they want it, and unless you're willing to either pay to have a security force, or do it yourself, the society would be vulnerable to that. How do you maintain a defense against brigands and still work at whatever trade you have? Heck, even if you hired the security guards, they may decide to take over if they want to, and how do you counter that?

The closest thing to anarchy that I recall in recent history is the French Revolution, and that ended with Bonaparte.

I say again, as flawed as our Constitution may be, and as corrupted as the system into which it has devolved has become, your description of anarchy doesn't seem either realistic or palatable. It seems to me it would be much easier to try and fix the flaws we have and repair the system, than it would be to abandon it for something that, to me, seems utopian and unworkable given the nature of humanity.

Your private protection whatevers could not function, they couldn't underwrite the completely unknown risks, and you would have no knowledge of their solvency or way to enforce it if they defrauded you, so your premiums would be both ruinously expensive and probably wasted money anyway.

They idea of using private judges is so weird and wrong I can't even begin to list the problems. Maybe when I have more time and energy.

If it worked, Barak, somewhere in human history it would have worked. It hasn't. Empirical truth in the laboratory of thousands of years of human history calls BS on the theory.

Your insurance company will repel the Russians for you.

Sorry, Barak, I couldn't resist.

Problem is, the rule of law is implemented according to a Constitution, and according to Christian precedent.

From the Constitution springs all manner of laws. Laws are the mechanism by which the state controls it's subject.

Christian "law" completes the package, providing rulings on morality and God only knows what else.

Combine the Constitution (with it's accompanying body of law) with the Bible and whadaya get?

Big Fat [bleep] micro-managing GOVERNMENT.

Now, I'm no anarchist, and I must say that I think Barakistan is unrealistic.

But let's be real here. There will never be "small government" in America. Nobody truly wants it- not even those who pay lip service to the concept.

You may be the exception, TRH. But you know better than most that modern conservatism does NOT want small government! And the liberals sure as [bleep] don't.

How are the medical/dental operations going to work?

You gonna have a MRI machine in that there Barakistan paradise of homeless,confused folks?

Mutual of Assured Destruction.

By "modern conservatism" I assume you mean false or pseudo conservatism. Real conservatism is pretty much all about small, decentralized, government, restrained by the rule of law. I don't care what fake conservatives believe.

If Barakistan existed, I'm for thinking the "free" country of America would soon enough conquer or undermine it. Can't have people living like that, don't you know. One of our big companies would get screwed in a business deal there, and we'd find a reason to send in the Marines. To establish the "rule of law" (parse THAT term!) and all...

And, with no disrespect intended towards our fine Marines, they'd say hoo-rah! And gladly storm that beach... In the name of freedom, of course.

And this would likely be done under the orders of "conservative, small-government" Americans.

No?

i enjoy the hell out of Baraks thoughts.....even if i dont agree with what he says all the time.....unlike asome ppl he does put alot of thought into his posts and does truely seem to be interested in what individuals have to say about his ideas to point out stuff he hasnt thought of yet.....

as far as using brain power to fantasize bout what wont be....i think just about all of us are guilty of that....in all reality Barakistan wont be happening but neither will me winning the lottery but its fun to think about and threads like this are alot more educational.....

TRH, my problem with the "rule of law" is that the Law is so damn... Plastic. It's malleable. It's situational, contextual, arguable... And in the end, the result is citizens ruled BY a bunch of laws, not laws constraining governmental power.

Because, who OWNS the law, practically speaking? The government in all it's bloated glory. A conservative government will apply the same body of law differently than a liberal government- which is proof of what I'm saying, right there...

It's putting the fox in charge if the henhouse...

i enjoy the hell out of Baraks thoughts
+++++++++++++++++++++++++

And he thinks those thoughts without Hallucinogenics, as well!

I only met one other man who thought like him but he was on the inside!

i understand his thought process.....might not agree with some of it.....some of it i would prefer over what we have.....i grew up as part of a huge family....rough figuring is i have over 100 first and second cousins.....most of my family is highly opinionated....im used to listening to ppl whos beliefs are different than mine....if they put some thought behind them im more inclined to listen more......

Barak has put alot of thought into this....its what he honestly believes is best.....but most importantly he really isnt an arse about it it and encourages ppl to put thoughts into arguments to try and prove the jist of what he is saying is wrong cause he WANTS to see any holes in his theories....

one thing to keep in mind is he has openly shared that he is autistic or has autistic tendencies(i forget which) so its a solid bet his thought process is different from most....push comes to shove he is less of an arse bout how he presents his self and his ideas than some on here i agree with more.....

Bob,

You don't have to be on LSD to agree with Barak's vision of utopia,but it would have to help.

I think, to be fair, that Sean should flesh out HIS ideal government/fantasy country a little.

Call it Nimrodia. Lets say it borders Barakistan. How would Supreme Ruler Sean handle, for example, a border dispute? Or an argument over a river that both share?

How would Barakistan handle Nimrodian guerillas intent on morphing it into a Nimrodian sister state? We know Sean is very pro-military... Gotta think he'd have and USE a strong military.

When oil is discovered in Barakistan, what happens? Nimrodia needs oil.

Seems like governments are kind of like guns... Or neighborhood Mafia "protection". If the other guys have some, well, you'd better get some too.

Rattler,

Now I get it,Barak is rainman,of sorts.

A savant.

If the world were full of Baraks,then Barakistan would work.

Trouble is,the world is not full of well intentioned gentle souls like Barak and Penny.

I think it's interesting that the main reason most of us seem to think that Barakistan won't work, is because of Nimrodia. Figuratively speaking.

Powerful evidence of Barak's assertion that State is evil.

Persuasively powerful,for sure. If you're 7 years old.

There's probably a better way to lure out your idol than by the "stalk with stupid posts" method.

An institution cannot be good or evil. Only people are evil. If people weren't evil, then almost ANY form of government would work...............

Well put rattler...Although I rarely agree with Barak, I do recognise he is a highly intellegent and a very interesting individual. Both he and Penny come across as very decent, people and even though we share a different perspective on life, I would be happy to share supper with them and listen to their thoughts..

Regards,

Peter

I would love to get over to Wales sometime, and Ireland and Scotland as well, for that matter.

Penny

Oh, and P.S. Don't assume that I necessarily share Barak's thoughts...

Penny

Not for one minute Penny, as I recognise a strong and independant women when I see one!

No, I think you and I have a different perspective on life because I am a some what cynical heathen!

Hi Penny!

Barak is simply... Barak. He's unique. I love, admire, and respect him greatly. He's absolutely the best man in the world for me. But he's not your "average guy" by a long shot...

Penny

Hi, Pat! How's life been treating you?

Penny

When I say "the rule of law" I refer to something very specific. It's the opposite of the rule of men, i.e., it's the opposite of arbitrary rule where the law is whatever someone in power (at any given level) decides it is at any given time, and what is illegal can even change retroactively. Under the rule of law, any individual who's reached the age of reason can, if he chooses, be certain that he is not at any time in violation of any law, i.e., those who are in power are restrained by the law from acting arbitrarily.

I think a healthy dose of Blackstone and Locke are needed. I find it hard to understand someone who claims to dislike state intervention in their life, yet votes for the most fascist President we've had since FDR.

Barak didn't vote for Obama, but maybe you're talking about someone else...

Penny

He's talking about JeffO.

Barakistan cannot work for one reason: human nature.

In considering living in Barakistan I think of a dialogue in 'A Man For All Seasons' between Cardinal Woolsey and Thomas More in which Woolsey asks More if he would rule England by prayer. More replied that he would try. Woolsey replys cynically, "I'd like to be there when you try." More desperately wanted an England as pure in thought and deed as himself but Woolsey knew how corrupt people really were. I think More knew it but wished it were otherwise.

Nicely played, sir.

I still don't think it's worth it, though. I think the State is about to work itself into serious trouble, and I would much rather see it work itself entirely out of existence than be replaced by another.

Only way it could be better is if their were two of me!

TRH is correct, I was referring to JeffO.

"Fascism"?

Bush bailed out the bankers. McCain would have bailed out the bankers, and given the alternative, he would have pumped money into GM (necessitating a government stake). I guess under a broad definition of Fascism, they both would qualify. But that's a stretch.

Simply put, the R's are more prone to intervention in people's personal lives than the D's. You just don't see it because you agree with the interventions!

I don't know about New Age but I do think on a higher plane of consciousness than most.

I'm not talking about male and female (gender or sex) dominated society I'm talking about our spirit or life energy. Masculine energy, hot, aggressive or feminine energy, cool, passive, if we cannot balance that energy than we are doomed to constant wars and destruction. I would like to think that as a species that clams to be the top of the food chain we can find someway to balance our masculine/feminine energy to be more productive.

If we cannot, than as a species we will die off and there is nothing a God, Jesus or Goddess can do about it.

Moore did write the novel Utopia and coin the word.

LOL!!!

How could you possibly know what plane of consciousness anyone else thinks on? The only accurate thing you can say is that you yourself think you think on a higher plane of consciousness than you used to.

However, for all I know, your own higher plane is seven steps below my current plane........

VA, Barak is beyond help or salvation. He is stuck in the 70's. I can't believe you would give him fodder for his ideolological nonsense.

Penny,

I can no longer give the man the benefit of the doubt. I simply cannot respect someone who disrespects the troops as much as he does. In this regard is no different than any other sheep who despises the sheepdog--at least until the wolves show up................

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.

There are arm chair politicians, and people who really contribute to bettering our country. Making cookies for convicts does not IMO contribute to the betterment of America. Delusions of competency here. Big difference between theory and practice. Let the silliness continue...

I suggest that you read through my past posts if you think that, as it cannot be further from the truth. I also think you should read the current health care bill brought to you by the Democrat Party if you would like to see an example of "intervention" into peoples private lives, brought to you by those same people you think are all for personal freedoms.

I am no apologist for the Republicans, as I feel that they have abandoned the small government stand that they used to espouse. The best hope that the Republicans have was Ron Paul, and they blew that.

Your assertions about McCain may or mayn't be valid, but since he wasn't elected, we'll never know. But I believe that he would be more restrained in the use of government power than the current occupant has shown himself to be, as his past actions in the Senate are much less radical than Ob@m@a's were. As to our Dear Leader being a fascist, what else would you call wholesale intervention and outright ownership of the banking, insurance, automobile and health care industries? It sure isn't free market capitalism.

My comment about reading Blackstone and Locke were IRT you're representations concerning from where our laws came. Yes, they were influenced by Judeo-Christian principles, but they were also based on other codes and principles as well, such as Greco-Roman and even all the way back to Hammurabi. To assert that they are somehow flawed because they are rooted in certain beliefs denies the fact that we have the most fair and evenhanded justice system in the world, no matter it's origins.

Does it make mistakes? You bet, sometimes big ones; but they are most times rectified and I would much rather take my chances in court here than I would anywhere else on the planet.

Has it become corrupted over the years by incorrect precedence and judicial legislation? Again, yes, but that isn't enough reason to throw out the entire system and replace it with a panel made up of the mob, or to institute sharia law. Name for me a better system than that set up under our founders, which was primarily based on English Common Law, and as such had much history and wisdom behind it. My bet is that you cannot, and you let your anti religious bias cloud your reason when it comes to our system of governance.

The Founding Fathers would have been very surprised to hear that those were their assumptions about human nature.

Especially considering the religious beliefs of the founding Fathers. But then , rewriting history is in vogue now....

CAD-CAM designs for aluminum foil hats to aid contact with beings from parallel universes when you gents have a few spare moments, please.

A minimum term of power of two years? There are a lot of assumptions about human nature there. In the private sector, somebody who pulls a stunt boneheaded enough can be out of business in a month.

oh, so you were there? OK, makes sense now...

Barak,

You go about invading a free society the same way that you would any other society, land your troops and begin taking control of things. If the locals resist, you kill them or subjugate them. Trust me when I tell you that you would know without question that you had been invaded, especially by a group as brutal as the Russians or the Chinese. The only freedom you would have is to fight or submit, and unless your anarchist security company was bigger and better than the invading force, or your populace had the same weapons, training and numbers as the invaders, you wouldn't be free very long.

It also wouldn't matter that Libertarians cannot use nukes. The invaders could and probably would use them at least as a threat to the population. Heck, they might even nuke someplace like say, Washington DC, which has no intrinsic worth as a port or rail center, just to make an example to the rest of the populace.

I would also have to assert that nukes are defensive to the extent that they act as a deterrent to those who also possess them. I rather think that in a nuclear world Barakistan wouldn't last long as a country if it had no nuclear arsenal with which to threaten the opposition with equally poor consequences, especially if it were wealthy in both natural resources and treasure.

Also the idea that if your private security force took over then you would fire them and never hire them again is farcical. What makes you think that they would give you the option to fire them? What makes you think that they would allow you to live?

All in all, anarchism as you describe it defies the history of mankind, and denies human nature. Men will always use aggression to gain what they desire, and will take from those weaker than them to do so. Some things such as the defense of the nation are the province of government, and as long as that government is answerable to the people, will not become tyrannical. It is up to us to ensure that it does not do so, and if we don't, then we deserve what we get.

I'll have to admit as you outline it you beat me. On a philosophical plane I beat you. Point.

Well some more points here.

1. In a truly free society with no government there would be a heck of a lot less people. If it were possible to end government tomorrow of the 300,000,000 people in this country 298,000,000 would be dead in no time because there would no government tit to feed off. That leaves 2,000,000 free people to live in a land mass of a couple of million square miles. That makes anarchy sound pretty good.

2. Seeing as no government is anarchy and government is anarchy, does it really make much difference one way or the other? Gentleman choose your anarchy!

Okay.


When you have to fight, you fight; it doesn't get much simpler. And yes, a defensive force has to be of a sufficient size to meet the threat if it's going to succeed. And yes, it's possible that the size of the offensive threat could be disastrously miscalculated, or that the entire attack could take the defender completely by surprise.

But all of those problems are military problems, not political problems. A State can make all the same mistakes, and may even be more likely to.


In a nuclear-armed world, then, defenses against nuclear weapons would be very important to libertarians.


No, nukes are offensive. Mutually assured destruction is offense meeting offense; there's no defense there. In order for a use of force to qualify as defensive, it has to be a direct response to a former use of force. Noncombatants, by definition, don't use force; therefore, killing them by the thousands or millions can't possibly be defensive.


Invasion and occupation--especially against Free Men--is horrendously expensive, as the Russians found out, and as we are finding out, in Afghanistan. Especially given the economic laissez-faire economic nature of a free society, a country that wanted access to a free society's natural resources might very well find it much cheaper in terms of money to buy the natural resources than to try to take them.

With high technology and completely free trade, as well, other countries might well have an interest in keeping the market open and undisturbed; an invasion might consume a prohibitive amount not only of economic capital, but also of political capital.


I was apparently unclear. A security force that did such a thing would never work for anyone else, just as a grocery store that began robbing its customers at gunpoint would go instantly out of business. The security firm would have to believe that by doing something like that it would get all the money it would ever need forever.

In real life, it simply wouldn't happen more than perhaps a couple of times to serve as bad examples. Customers would be too smart to hire trashy fly-by-night PPAs, and reputable ones wouldn't dare.


Quite the opposite. There is plenty of anarchism in the history of mankind, and anarchism is the only political system that makes correct provision for human nature.

Your reaction is understandable, of course; I had much the same reaction when I first began considering the claims of anarcho-capitalism. I've been studying it for a number of years now, though.


Of course--unless taking it can be relied upon to produce consequences more unpleasant than not having it.


You only say that because it's all you have experience with. Defense has not always been the province of the government.


No government is answerable to its subjects: that's schoolboy propaganda. The only sense in which it is is the de la Boetie sense in which a government that becomes more offensive too rapidly will bestir its subjects to rise up and do something about it.

I think it's unrealistic to think that a free society will result from the active, violent destruction of the State. Historically, that sort of thing simply results in another State, and frequently a worse one.

Given that, the idea of switching a geographical area suddenly from statism to anarchism doesn't bear too much thinking about.

I think a more realistic transition would be for a weakened State to slip gradually into irrelevance and impotence, while its subjects discover ways to get from the private sector the things they used to get from the State, but faster, cheaper, and better.

As such, as I said earlier, it would tend to attract Free Men and repel Livestock. That means that general-population proportions of Free Men to Livestock really don't apply. Rather than dying for lack of a government tit, the Livestock would be more likely to move to somewhere where somebody would be willing to run their lives for them.

Sorry for top-posting; I'm on my iPhone and it's way easier this way. Too damn nice an evening to go inside!

I think an appropriate counter to "Health Care Bill" would be "Patriot Act". Would you concur?

I appreciate your post, Mike, and I'm sorry I lumped you into the lockstep Republican crowd. My bad.

Please understand, my comments about the State, rule of law, etc are made in the context of "Barakistan" and the discussion that followed. I'm a fan of the rule of law if for no other reason than that I have a lot to lose if suddenly there weren't any.

My problem with modern American Conservatism is simple. They are the people, generally speaking, attempting to mix religion and government. And that ain't right!

Beyond that, it always kinda surprises me that I'm supposed to buy into the R's as "small government, fiscally responsible, yada yada yada...". They aren't, and I refuse to be intimidated into voting for them because they are (supposedly)!

Lacking R's with balls, elections come down to evaluating where the two parties are at, and the actual candidates. This last election, the R's were out of gas. They had their run, and they [bleep] it up. Time to bring in some new players and at least hope for some LIFE! And the D's clearly signalled that my one single-issue item (guns) was off the table.

Anyways... Let's take it to PM's if we want to explore this further. I joined this thread for "Barakistan"... Which is fun and funny... Not to talk about my politics. I'm done with that.

Ya, I was being fatuous with number one. The point I was trying to make is that with government anarchy it encourages the survival of non-productive people that could not survive under individual anarchy.

This is sort of what happened in Europe as Rome dissolved into irrelevance.

Are you sure you chose the right word to describe yourself, there?

Then name for me one successful anarchist experiment. There has never been one as far as I know, which seems to preclude the chances of their ever being one.

MAD was successful, and nukes are a defensive deterrent, by your own definition. If nukes are used against an aggressor who has previously used them against you, that is defensive use. For instance if Barakistan were hit by Russian nukes in a first strike, then B'stan's use of SLBM's in retaliation is a defensive use, especially if military installations are targeted. Your assertion that non combatants don't use force is also debatable, since the populace of an aggressor force is providing materiel and logistical support for their forces, as well as a source of combatant replacements, and as such are combatants, or potential combatants, in an indirect way. That is why WW II was so devastating, it was a total war, and that is the type of war for national survival for which any form of Barakistan would have to prepare, something anarchy would not support.

You say that defending against attack is a military problem, not a political one, but I see them as intertwined. Part of military success is good logistical support. Having thousands of different warlords-or "security companies" if you prefer, makes logistical support an impossibility due to different types of weapons that might be chosen by the different entities. Standardizing that can only be done by agreement, and agreement requires some form of government to reach said agreement. If there were no commonality of weaponry, then you have a logistical nightmare which will more than likely undermine any resistance that you might mount. That's just one example of why government of some type would be a requirement.

Another would be coordination of effort. If every one is off on their own plan, nothing will ever be accomplished, and the aggressor force will take you out piecemeal. To come up with a coordinated plan, you again need agreement, which again would require some form of government in order to get the proper steps accomplished.

This is all making my head hurt, because we're debating something that, IMO, will never and can never be. Good luck with your anarchical quest, but it sounds too much like a grail quest, and will probably end the same way-in disappointment.

I think so. I knew I was making a silly statement of sorts. Obviously the government isn't going to end instantly nor are 298,000,000 people going to die instantly. But I admit I'm tired and it's pass my bed time.

And speaking of bed time isn't 12.15 AM back there and don't you have to teach tomorrow?

Good night Hawk.

Sure is. Good night.

I have never flown in a philosopical plane (consciously), but I hear such a thing can really mess with the enemy's mind..............

Mostly I stay out of political posts, but Thomas Moore and Utopia have long been a pet peeve of mine. Every time I read it bothered me more. The first time I read it(and every time since) I realized that while Utopia may have been someones fairy tail, Idealized version, of what life would be like in their version of a perfect world.It had no basis in reality. I can write a story about a place that the weather is always perfect, money grows on tree's and all the women are beautiful and brilliant and madly in love with me. Guess what? It does not exist either. Nor will it. Because no matter how nice it would be, it rains for a reason. Money does not grow on trees, and brilliant women are smart enough to date somebody else. So while it would be nice for Barak to be able to live in Barakistan, unfortunately it seems to be about as likely as Moore's or mine. A few points.


First I agree completely All humans are corrupt and depraved so How can you create a society based totally upon logic assuming people will always do what is best for them and everyone else? People have never done anything like that in the history of the world why would they change now?

[

No in a truly free society there are three main options for "income" Number one-Make everything you need yourself Number two-The satisfied customers you are talking about and Number three-Take whatever you can get from anyone less powerful than you.

Which brings us to

What happened to all humans are corrupt and depraved? How is it that these same humans. Who have, almost without fail, given power to horrible corrupt putzes, Countless times. All in the name of politics. Suddenly wise up and disband the organized "security forces?" They wont even vote out a Chicago crook suddenly now there will be an armed revolt? Oh wait it wouldn't be a revolt cause there is nothing to revolt against, but you get the picture.




Invasion and occupation may be expensive but invasion and plunder can be awfully lucrative. In Afghanistan what the Russians really found out, Is that it gets really expensive to invade a country when there is another country (in this case the U.S.) willing to supply it with huge quantities of money, weapons, and supplies. Just like the U.S. did in Vietnam. However it is much less expensive to invade a stand alone country like Iraq. It only gets prohibitively expensive when you try to occupy or "pacify" it.

Not gonna dig through the lot of this, as I've read it all before.

I like Mr. B, he is, at minimum, consistent. And that is a quality that I can appreciate.

He is what he is....brings what he brings....and this place would be a little boring without him. I enjoy reading him.

No secret, with that.

Yep.

Mr. B doth rock.

JeffO

You have never read Locke or Blackstone have you?

Seems obvious enough...

Was reading Paine the other night, and he says the same thing. Government, like clothing, is a badge of man's fallen nature and although it is many times evil it is the lesser of evils as compared to no government at all. If men were all angels we would need no government.

Fend off invasion and establish some sort of attempt at objective dispassionate justice through courts and evidence and juries etc.

I REALLY like Barak and enjoy the debate but at the end of the day Barakistan is insanity, absolute total un-reason, lunacy, fantasy, utopian, unreality which if implemented would bring about untold human suffering death tyranny starvation crime lawlessness and on and on and on.

With world wide communism still alive and well and with the track record of all their crimes throughout the last century, I tend to lean towards being more of a statist than an anarchist. Some folks need chains, prison, killing and suppression, communists especially. Free societies are for good men of virtue.

Free societies are good for everybody. Don't fall into the trap of accepting Barak's definition of a free society. A free society not only doesn't require the absence of government, a free society cannot exist without government, since only government can create the framework within which we have liberty.

The definition of liberty is that state in which no laws are permitted to exist which prevent people from doing that which is their right to do. A free society is simply one where 1) the rule of law prevails (which is the opposite of arbitrary rule), and 2) no laws are permitted that would have the effect of preventing anyone from doing what it is his right to do.

What are our rights, then? Basically, you have the right to do anything which doesn't violate the rights of another. They are those actions, in other words, which would be morally wrong to prevent.

Now, more importantly, what is not a right? If, in order to exercise a claimed right, someone else is obliged to act in support of it, it is not a right. That eliminates such nonsense as the "right" to health care, the "right" to an education, the "right" to proper nutrition, the right to a roof over your head, etc. While you have an absolute right to pursue all of those things (so long as the legitimate rights of others are not violated in the process), you do not have a right to have them, since that would imply the existence of an obligation on the part of society to act on your behalf, e.g., collect taxes to provide you the necessary funding. That would be the FDR sense of the word "right." It's a fallacy. It's the communistic conception of rights. Not the American.

Rights, in other words, impose only a negative duty on others, never a positive one. Your rights inform others, including government, what they may not do to you, and what they may not prevent you from doing. They never inform others, including government, what they are obliged to do for you.

PS Contract rights are an entirely different issue, and the word has a different meaning in that context. I am speaking of political rights, not contract rights, which can indeed create legal obligations to act on another's behalf, but it is an obligation that was mutually agreed upon via contract. Not something one is born with, like political rights.

The same can be said of those "rights" arising from the existence of a fiduciary relationship.

You just described government.

Very well said. Consistantly impressed with your essay skills, TRH.

Thank you. Been working on that skill for a long time.

Don't stop!

Still need some improvement?

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

We all do or could! Striving for continued good work in progress is a life long endeavor!

TRH, I'll be curious if the actual practice of law changes your views any. You seem to see it as a pure thing, clean. My lawyer friends report it's more like working in the sausage factory... grin... you don't really want to know how it's done.

You can count on my vote when a candidate with your views runs, TRH.

Why? That'd be 180-degrees from your messiah, B. Hussein Obama; the one that you championed (and likely still do).

Wait till he realizes he has to take real code books into court rather than his pocket copies of the Constitution and/or Federalist papers.

You obviously haven't paid much attention to his posts if you actually believe what you wrote in your second sentence.

I think, therefore, I'd feel more at home in an academic setting. Thanks.

Private courts in Somalia evolved into the Islamic Courts Union. You ought to look into that to see how well that went.

It'd be very interesting to see what would happen on the evolution of legal precedent in such private courts, and how, exactly, any judgment could or would be compelled. Likewise, the same with response, testimony, or production of evidence.

You like to present it that way.

But the choice wasn't between what TRH represents and Obama. It was between McCain, tired and confused and fading fast at the end, with a whacko choice of a running mate, running at the head of a party that didn't even WANT him... a party that HAD an 8-year run and [bleep] it up royally, with the wheels coming off the cart of the economy at the end of the 8-year run no less.

That, or an articulate, smart person who at least seemed up for the job. Who's doing essentially the things that McCain would have had to do anyway, since Cheney and his boy Bush screwed things up so bad...

And those were the two choices.

I am ready, willing, hell I'm EAGER to get behind a truly "conservative" party or candidate- conservative in the sense that TRH espouses. Bring it! Strip the bullshit Puritan religious stuff out of the platform, get back to fiscal conservatism and small government, and I'm THERE.

In the meantime, all a guy can do is choose the better of the two choices as they exist every 4 years.

And, ya failed miserably at that one.

Yep, he got a BIG FAIL on that one. Les

Hey VA, since you are back with us, I'd love it if you'd flesh out Nimrodia a little (the imaginary country bordering Barakistan).

For instance, in what ways would it differ from the USA?

So where does the current POS, excuse me POTUS, fit into your above comments?

As to the latter, you're right (God that hurt). How do you justify voting for the Chosen One in that equation? There is nothing "better" about him to anybody who claims to be a conservative. Speaks to character.

George

Will do; later. Still waiting for Barak to actually flesh out Barakistan and how it would run.

A question Bob, isn't arbitration a type of private court by a private administrative law judge?

I know an arbitration lawyer who makes good money arbitrating civil law cases. He's in demand because he's good. Isn't this what Barak is talking about when he talks about private courts? Based on my experiences, I think sometimes going before arbitration might be preferable to going to court.

Ok, but... didn't he? Sure seems like he was forthcoming.

I'm off to go hike down into my long-range shooting canyon and hang some more steel plates. Probably carrying over 100 pounds on the way in.. but the pack will be mighty light on the way out! It's a PITA since they tank-trapped the road to the landing across the canyon there, gotta drop down through the timber on the left:



I sure hope Barakistan has some good long-range shooting spots!

Ya'll have a good day...

-jeff

Something's never happened, therefore it's impossible? What do you do for a living?

But free societies have existed, and they have successfully fought off invaders, and they've lasted considerably longer than the US has. Google up medieval Iceland and Ireland, for example.

Societies with successful elements of anarchism have also existed, such as the American Old West, underground free-market economies in prisons, and private law and courts in Poland under the Communists.


Saying that something was successful from a utilitarian point of view, and saying that it was right from a moral point of view, are two completely different things.


Only to the extent that the few people actually responsible for the initial attack are killed by the reprisal. For everybody else the reprisal kills, it's an initiation of force, hence aggression, hence offense--not a retaliation.


Barakistan would have no nuclear weapons. It's unreasonable to believe that one could attack even a military installation with nuclear weapons and not kill or injure any noncombatants. Even if the installation was in the middle of Siberia hundreds of miles from the nearest village, and meteorologists had guaranteed absolutely calm winds over it for however long it'd take for the fallout to fall out, it'd still have janitors.


That is and always has been a very weak argument, repeated over and over by the State's intellectuals until gullible people who want to accept it can manage to do so.

There are all sorts of fatal flaws in it, but I'll stop with this one: theoretically, everyone you pass on the street could be carrying a concealed weapon, and in the next ten seconds could draw it and shoot you with it, meaning that they all fall into the "potential combatant" category. Are you then justified in murdering them all in self-defense?


Total war is never necessary for national survival, only for winning a war of aggression. Sherman's march to the sea was not necessary to the survival of the North. Neither the firebombing of Dresden nor the atomic bombing of Japan were necessary to the survival of the US. Total war is always something that an aggressor commits on the property of his victim, not a defensive act that a victim commits on his own property against an aggressor.


If there were a market in a free society for military defense, logistical support would be part of that market. If the market disappeared, then of course the logistical support would disappear too, and the troops would have to be withdrawn--but that's completely appropriate.

Barakistan would not maintain troop garrisons in 135 foreign countries to no good purpose, because nobody would be willing to pay for it. I think that'd be a good thing.


Have you ever bought a replacement blade for your lawnmower? It fit, didn't it, even though it was made by a completely different company than your lawnmower? How'd that happen? Was the State involved, somehow? (Hint: no.)

Have you ever plugged anything into a USB port on your computer? Something where the manufacturer of the computer was different from the manufacturer of the USB device? How'd that happen? Was the State involved, somehow? (Hint: no.)

I'm in the IT business, and I see all sorts of spontaneous standardization, where competing companies voluntarily agree on how they're going to do something because the standardization will allow all of them to satisfy their customers better, faster, and cheaper.

I also see all sorts of failed attempts at standardization, where the efforts fall apart because the proposals are inferior. I think that's a good thing.

Standards imposed by the State tend to be determined on their politics, rather than on their merits, and there's no assurance that an inferior government standard won't live forever because its proponents are politically well-placed.


My company has quite impressive coordination of effort. Pretty much everybody in it does what is necessary to be part of the business plan and advance it in the directions chosen by upper management.

Do we all do that because the State has decreed that it's illegal for us to do otherwise? Of course not.

Would our business plan and our company fall to pieces without the State? Of course not.

We all do what we all do because it's obviously in the best interest of all of us. The organizers organize, the adminstrators administer, the managers manage, the geeks geek.

It all works out with precisely no coercion anywhere. I am at every moment free to do whatever I want rather than what my company wants, and my company is at every moment free to accept or decline my services.

The basic assumption is that people will always do whatever they think is best for themselves and won't bother with its effects on other people.

Under a State, then, which gives certain people coercive power over other people, you can expect the people with power to oppress people without to satisfy their own selfish desires. (Compare that with reality, and you'll find that it checks out pretty closely regardless of the kind of State you're looking at.)

In a free market (which you will discover, if you examine the matter, completely precludes the existence of a State, since every State must coercively distort the market and thus make it unfree), though, the only non-criminal way to obtain what you want is either to make it yourself or to persuade somebody else to give it to you. Thus your ability to satisfy your own selfish desires is contingent upon your ability to make somebody else happy enough to give it to you.

In a free market, everyone still acts only to satisfy his own wants, but the incentives are so arranged that in order to be successful his actions must satisfy the wants of others as well.


That third option turns out to be counterproductive in a free society.

No matter how powerful a gang of bandits is, it can't be more powerful than the host of victims it preys on, or else the victims wouldn't be able to support it--in the same way that a tapeworm that steals too much nutrition will kill its host and die.

Therefore, every gang of bandits is vulnerable to being crushed by its victims. If the victims don't rise up and crush it, it must be because on some level they think that the abuse and oppression they suffer is legitimate. When that happens, the gang of bandits becomes a State.

If a free society is defined as a society without a State, then by definition every gang of bandits can and will be crushed by their victims.

That's another example of an incentive that works under anarchism and not under a State.

Under States, one of two things generally happens with a gang of bandits: either they bribe the State to leave them alone, which means that bandit aggression goes unpunished, but private retaliation against that aggression is punished; or the State captures them and physically protects them from their victims, provides them with food, clothing, and shelter, and forces the victims to pay for all of the above.

In a free society, they are afforded none of the above benefits, and are completely vulnerable to their victims.


If you choose to explore the claims of anarchism, you will find that there are severe differences between a political environment based on universal suffrage and a free market based on competition for satisfied customers.


Interestingly enough, though, those opportunities seem to be evading the US military.

I'm not convinced they even exist.

It'd take an awful lot of oil from Iraq, for example--an awful lot of oil--to pay for the immense amounts of American money that have been spent on that war. I'm not sure that much oil exists--and Iraq is apparently going to keep costing us money for a long time, or until the US economy and government collapses, whichever comes first.

Afghanistan doesn't even have oil, to speak of.


What other purpose could there be for one country to invade another?

I'm happy to see this reaction, actually: it means you (and other people) are thinking. Around the middle of 1999, this was pretty much me. "There are some pretty smart anarchists out there, and I really respect their intellect, their research, and their rigor, but I won't ever be able to go where they are just because anarchism can't work."

It was a big step to there from my State-indoctrinated picture of anarchists as black-shirted, slogan-screaming, Molotov-throwing mental midgets.

Because I'm a guy with an investigative spirit, though, I kept reading and thinking, and now ten years later I find myself squarely in their midst, where I would have sworn I'd never be.

There was way too much reading and thinking involved for anyone to have been able to argue me into anarchism; I ended up arguing myself there, with a little occasional help from people who were mostly willing to answer my questions.

So yeah--I'm pretty well satisfied if I can only get people to the point where they say, "This guy's an anarchist? He seems far too intelligent and not nearly violent enough to be an anarchist! Don't anarchists advocate utter lawlessness and chaos?"

From that point, some folks will choose to roll their eyes and go back to watching TV, and others will choose to investigate further for themselves. It's what I talked about before when I mentioned people self-differentiating into Free Men and Livestock.


And a free society would come much closer to providing them (and no one else) with those things than a corrupt, politics-infested State ever could.


Every society is for good men of virtue--if such men should ever exist. As a matter of fact, States require such men to survive (which, of course, is why all of them eventually fail).

Anarchism is the only system specifically designed for the other kind, where there are no positions of legitimized coercive power from which their evil can metastasize and spread to afflict hundreds or thousands or millions.

I thought it was myself, with the help of John Locke, that pushed you off the cliff into anarchism.

You found the combination of traditional conservatism and classical liberalism so repulsive that it drove you off the deep end.

Hey!

Look: I gave up the use of the term "government" for you. Even though I don't agree with your definition of it. I try never to use it anymore unless it fits your peculiar definition; otherwise I incessantly use the word "State," which you must admit has made me look a little wild-eyed and sweaty on occasion.

You figure maybe you could spot me the term "free society" to use as I'd like to without fighting you over it? It's not as though you'll have to step carefully to avoid it, the way I have to with the word "government."

Please?


Excellent.


Note to spectators: everyone else calls them "natural rights." If you're looking for them in a book or on the Internet, look for "natural rights," not "political rights."

Actually, "political rights" is sort of a weird term, since politics is essentially the set of arguments over who gets to initiate force and under what circumstances. (The anarchist's entry, of course, is very simple: "Nobody, never.") "Political rights," then, would seem more to connote positive "rights" than negative rights.

Good call, Barak. I should perhaps have said "natural rights," or "human rights." What I meant to refer to, however, was natural or human rights in the context of politics, which is what we were discussing.

And you've been living with that guilt all this time? How dreadful!

Actually, Locke and his ideas about the origin of private property are fundamental to modern anarchocapitalism.

But no, repulsion had nothing to do with it. As you tried to argue me back into conservatism, you were making me research my own minarchism, and I was finding successive inconsistencies in it, which made me unsatisfied with it.

Of course, conservatism has its own inconsistencies, so in order to eliminate inconsistency my minarchism got smaller and smaller, until at some point I finally dropped off the edge into anarchism.

It would have happened with you or without you, I'm sure, but you were the stimulus that drove me to the tipping point.

That's why I say I argue on the Internet not to win, but to learn.

Since Barak has his little utopia up and running, I'm curious as to how it'd fair with a couple neighbors like this: (note - neither is Nimrodia)

To the East, there is a land of roughly the same geographic size as Barakistan, and equivalent technology. To the West, lies the same. However, each has roughly 10% more population (not an unreasonable amount) due in large degree to their fundamentalist belief systems prescribing larger families, and infrastructure utilizing more command-control heirarchy. A large "worker" class, so to speak.

Both countries are rather militaristic, and at least amicable toward each other; neutral toward the strange Barakians between them.

The country to the East has a standing army, and in fact, the army is the largest "work force" in the nation. It is, essentially, a military state (not unlike several Asian states). The country to the West has a compulsory military service for all citizens between the ages of 18 and 22 (not unlike many European nations).

Both nations need natural resources.

The two nations conspire to destroy Barakistan. Agent provocateurs are set into action, deals brokered between these nations and the "private security forces" within Barakistan, and offense actions coordinated. Due to the fundamentalist beliefs of the aggressor nations, no compunction to killing Barakians exist.

The end goal is a division of Barakistan between the two aggressor nations, and of the natural resources of that land. Concessions will be made, and rewards given to the "private security forces" from Barakistan, and assimilation of Barakians that submit will be granted. Death, is the likely alternative.

The strikes were just launched, and coordinated between the two aggressors.

What happens now, Barak?

Forgot to add - the forces now attacking Barakistan only account for about 1/10th of the populations of the aggressor nations, and only about 1/3 of their total forces, but nearly 25% of the population of Barakistan. Both armies of the aggressor nations are highly trained, and well organized.

Naturally, Barakistan's insurance companies will unite in repelling the invaders. If they didn't, after all, they'd be fired and replaced by better insurance companies.

I'd hate to have to try to pay those premiums.....................

Besides, who do you think would be first in line to cut deals?

He doesn't disrespect the troops... his words have been twisted and other meanings hung on them (as happens frequently around here).

You can trust your own assumptions and taking of others' words for truth, or you can trust the words of his wife, who knows him better than anyone except himself.

Your choice.

Penny

Modulo outside action by third (fourth?) parties, Barakistan is probably reduced to guerrilla warfare, whereby the inhabitants make it as difficult, expensive, and bloody as they can for the eastern and western aggressors to extract those natural resources.

I'm thinking that that might work out to be pretty expensive, given that Barakistanians would be independent, tough, free-minded people accustomed to taking responsibility for themselves and in possession of significantly higher technology than theocracies, and Iraqis who are accustomed to living under the thumb of a brutal dictator have succeeded in making the US conquest of Iraq exceedingly expensive even in the face of an order-of-magnitude technology deficit.

And I suppose it's possible, perhaps even likely, that after years or generations the aggressor nations would become so impoverished by the conflict that they'd decide to withdraw, the way the Russians withdrew from Afghanistan (and the way the US will, eventually).

But I think you may have overreached yourself here, because obviously a State in the same position in which you've placed Barakistan would have no chance of surviving either.

What you want is a scenario in which a State (preferably a State worth living in) vwould survive, but a free society wouldn't.

Barak, just hope that Barakistan doesn't sit on an ocean of oil.

In other words, you die, right? Right.

What I want, is irrelevant. What you've designed, is what you've got.

Try an internal threat:

One of your "private security companies" has become quite successful. In fact, they are the largest private security firm in Barakistan, and one of the largest in the world. Their HQ is in Barakistan, as are many of their contracts.

They provide security for roads, bridges, power stations, houses, businesses, basically everything, at least to some level.

They've begun raising their rates, and rendering contracts more difficult to break.

Try firing them; when they hold the money, the guns, and the keys to everything they "protect".

Oh, did I mention that they also provide "protection" for all the "private judges", as well?

I already used this one on him years ago. That is to say, the private security company will eventually be charging money just to refrain from burning down businesses and homes, a la the mafia. Soon these payments will just be called tribute to the king.

So...can you design a State that can do a better job of surviving when surrounded by an aggressive force more than twice as big?

If not, then your example is meaningless, at least as an attack on anarchism.


For several reasons, your scenario is improbable to the point of irrationality.

One of the reasons is that as that PPA was growing (call it Amalgamated Security, Inc.), its competitors, casting around for ideas for marketing campaigns, would certainly hit on a scare scenario just like the one you've outlined. And the sort of people who live in Barakistan would believe it, too. Amalgamated would have to supply not just lower prices and better service to keep growing in the face of campaigns like that, but much lower prices and much better service--to the extent that its agents might well become so attached to the families they served that once Amalgamated started abusing its customers, they'd voluntarily move to Amalgamated's competitors, who would be happy to have them.

Another reason is that there's good reason to believe that in a free society, large corporations would be a very rare phenomenon. Under a State, just about every large corporation is somehow subsidized by the State either with tax money or with influence over State policy that discourages or prohibits competition. In a free society, the only tool a security company would have to become significantly larger than its competitors would be excellent customer service; and as we all know, smaller companies have better customer service than larger ones.

Thirdly, no private judge would dare be associated with a non-reputable PPA: it'd be death on his business. Unlike State judges, private judges would have to avoid all appearance of corruption or partiality. That would probably work out to mean that no judge would get significant business from customers of his own PPA; so a judge who subscribed to a large PPA would be throwing away a large amount of business. My guess is that one or two small PPAs might end up specializing in serving judges and nobody else.

There are other reasons, but my build just finished.

Nuclear weapons, as a defensive deterrent, would go a LONG way. Hmmmm....... seems Israel has been proving that point for us for a while now.



In other words, you can't see how to stop that from happening (corporate mergers, shareholders, payments to "quiet" investors, legitimate security to judges), and you're screwed if and when it starts.

Good to know.

Your utopia sounds great. In a vacuum. In anything approaching reality, with aggressive neighbors and inherent human greed, it's simply a cute theory. Kind of like communism.

I'm not a believer in Barakastan, but I can see right through your argument. It's like stating "First, assume there are flying pigs..."

There are no such states in existence right now, for extremely good reasons. A State that devoted the necessary resources to a military that made up 10% of the population would soon succumb to internal strains. As the "It hasn't been done before, therefore it cannot be done in the future" faction here would would say "Prove me wrong by showing a contemporary example of such a state". The only states that currently have high Defense expenditures as a portion of GDP are extremely resource rich, and thus would be unlikely to need/want to appropriate further resources in the most expensive way possible.

Also, I believe there's an assumption that private individuals in Barakistan would be limited by an NFA, and the invaders would only be facing small arms. I can tell you the first thing I'd be buying in Barakistan would be my very own Mark 19 and a heap o' ammo. I certainly doubt I'd be alone, and there'd be a mess of serious military hardware in private hands. It's a military hardware version of internet rule 34: if it exists, you can buy it in Barakistan.

So, what happens when a numerically/logistically/financially/militarily superior force occupies territory belonging to a much smaller group of uncoordinated but well armed guerillas? Ask the Russians about Afganistan after the muj started getting decent weapons...

I'd put all my $$$ on Country A and Country B leaving Barakistan inside of five years, utterly destroyed financially, and with military (men and materiel) assets equal to 1/2 of what they were prior to the invasion of Barakistan.


Regards,
Scott

You make some valid points.

"Because I'm a guy with an investigative spirit, though, I kept reading and thinking, and now ten years later I find myself squarely in their midst, where I would have sworn I'd never be."


That's where I started out. I've believed government, or any kind of "authority" other than genuine individual authority, to be a complete waste of time and effort. From as far back as I can remember I've scoffed at "government" and called them liars, theives and abusers (of the most malicious sort). No foolin', you guys, I've thougt about this stuff since at least second grade. It has always amazed me that people would tolerate someone commanding their actions, deeds and thoughts, let alone demanding money from them to do it. Just doesn't make sense. I'm sure it never will. I know I won't tolerate it and I feel deep pity for those who do. In fact it makes me sick in my stomach just thinking about it.


TRH.
"Free societies are good for everybody. Don't fall into the trap of accepting Barak's definition of a free society. A free society not only doesn't require the absence of government, a free society cannot exist without government, since only government can create the framework within which we have liberty."
----------------

Are you kidding me? Cannot exist without governemetn? My God, man... That makes no sense at all! Government is the one and only reason there are no free societies... and never have been. Government is and has always been mankind's number one deterent from being truly free. Freedom and government cannot exist in the same place/same time. If there is a government, any governmetn, they stamp it out... or at least inhibit it for all people within their chosen (claimed) landscape. That's what they do. That's all they do. It's all they know how to do. They live for it. That IS why they exist and HOW they exist and for no other reason. Human beings have rights. Governments infringe those rights. They can do absolutely NOTHING until they've infringed someone's rights. That they exist is an infringement on human rights. It is a necessity for their existance. It's step one to their existance, without it there is no step two, let alone the millions and even billions of steps they take and HAVE taken, ever after.

That people allow governments to exist, especially considering the history of them and their exploits, is what truly amazes me the most. If it were up to me, anyone who even suggested a government, or anything that resembled one, would be beaten to within an inch of their life. A second offense would be much, MUCH more severe! I like freedom. I know how to use it without offending or bothering others. Anyone who tries to inhibit my freedom or extort/coerce/intimidate(etc) me about my freedom for any reason or by any method is most definitely going to get an ear full... and then some. Fact is, if they push far enough they're not safe. That's the truth. And as far as I'm concerned that is as it should be. It's what I've believed since I was a small boy and for the life of me I can't understand why everyone doesn't believe the same way. It is the SINGLE most amazing thing to me about the human race past and present. I just don't get it. The only answer I can come up with that makes any sense is from the bible: "They're deceived." If they saw it clearly, and understood authority in all its simplicity and splendor governments would not exist. Governments are from the pit of hell. The very concept is of from the pit of hell. It needs to be sent back.

Arbitration works only because the parties agreed by contract before the dispute arose that it would be decided by some third party who isn't a judge....at least not a currently sitting judge. But you still have to take the award to a real court to enforce it.

and arbitration rarely works as the faster, cheaper method of dispute resolution it was supposed to be. I was in one that went on for four years, through thirty something days of evidence, then appeals of the award in the courts. would have been faster just to try the damn thing.

While you are a better source for understanding his views than the other members here, I have no need to take your word for it when I can clearly see all that Barak has posted over the last several years. Well, at least I was able to see what he posted until I put him on ignore--with contempt.

His political ideology makes it impossible for him to respect the troops, and that is why he continually makes disparaging comments about troops. You see, in Barak's little world, all governments are illegitimate and to be despised. Troops are nothing but agents of that illegitimate government, so it follows that they too must be despised. It is especially bad here in the USA, where all the troops are volunteers and fully support what Barak so despises. Therefore the ONLY option for him is to despise the troops as willing agents of an illegitimate government.

Yes, I am a born again Christian and have been so for the last 42+ years. As such, I do not question the sincerity of his faith. However, I AM tired of his disrespect toward the troops, and I just won't tolerate it. The troops deserve MUCH better.............

It's a good point.

After some consideration, though, I think I'd rather live in a cave and eat rats, and crawl out long enough to pop three or four invaders a month with my M14, than voluntarily pay somebody to kill innocents for me with nuclear weapons.

(Yes, I know the US government kills innocents with my money; but a victim is not responsible for the use a thief makes of his money. If I voluntarily paid the money to a company that advertised that it would use nuclear weapons on innocents under certain circumstances, that'd be a different story.)


Why should corporate mergers be stopped? What does it even mean to stop shareholders? Payments to quiet investors? What's wrong with judges having security? I'm afraid I don't understand you.

Actually, a book entitled "Target Switzerland" will answer your question nicely as Switzerland faced that problem during WWII.

Djibouti solved it's problem of national defense, it hired the French Foreign Legion. None of Djibouti has been attacked by it's neighbors. Barak would hire the French Foreign Legion backed up by the Barakistan Freedom Fighters Militia to defend Barakistan.

For indeed none can love freedom heartily, but good men: the rest love not freedom, but license: which never hath more scope, or more indulgence than under tyrants. Hence is it, that tyrants are not oft offended, nor stand much in doubt of bad men, as being all naturally servile; but in whom virtue and true worth most is eminent, them they fear in earnest, as by right their masters; against them lies all their hatred and suspicion. Consequently neither do bad men hate tyrants, but have been always readiest, with the falsified names of Loyalty and Obedience, to colour over their base compliances.

John Milton; Tenure of Kings and Magistrates

http://www.constitution.org/milton/tenure_kings.htm

I quote the above to elaborate on my earlier statement that freedom is for men of virtue, good men of self control and noble thought.

Freedom is not for base, profane criminals, rapists, child-molesters or the violently insane. We do not give total freedom to children or the mentally retarded.

The Italian City States as I understand it invented modern education and came up with the definition of the Liberal Arts. They felt that for people to be capable of self rule they must not only have smarts, but also have characters of virtue. They felt that education could help along the way of making men good. That could be debated but of course the context was Christendom for good or ill.

Bad people not only are not worthy of freedom they will never be free, as they are not capable of self rule.

Barak's theory might work if men were good but men are NOT good.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

My apologies Derby. I did not see your post until this morning. I would have certainly answered your question had I seen it.

Steve covered it nicely, as usual. Arbitration, if binding, is a preferable alternative and often succesful. I use McCammon Group, a excellent arbitration group of retired judges who have resolved numerous divorce litigations and some negligence suits for my clients. Choosing whether the arbitration is binding or non-binding creates it's own set of internal problems and, as Steve pointed out, enforcing judgments is outside the realm of an arbiter's power. Plus, as you may know, arbitration is limited to the civil arena and our friend Barak's concepts of how his jurisprudence would be established and maintained in re: criminal procedure and punishment just isn't workable except on paper....or the net.

Private arbitration was damaged in the 1920s by all the statutes that came out decreeing that its formerly non-binding decisions had to be enforced by State courts. It was cheaper, quicker, and more effective when the only thing one had to lose by breaking an arbitration agreement was one's reputation.

See, for example, Benson, An Exploration of the Impact of Modern Arbitration Statutes on the Development of Arbitration in the United States.

An elaboration of the fact that libertarianism has two halves: the universally accepted easy half ("I don't want the State running my life...") and the much less popular difficult half ("...and I have no interest in having the State run other people's lives either.")

A free society would better protect good men from bad men than a State does; hence bad men would find a free society unattractive and would seek rather to live under States that would protect and subsidize them (and perhaps even give them coercive political power) at the expense of good men. (As a small example, imagine what would happen to the US's problem with illegal immigration if illegal immigrants could no longer get free food/shelter/clothing/medical care/etc. from the State.)

A human free society could never be universal: humanity will always consist of both Free Men and Livestock, and the Livestock will always demand a tyrant to rule over them. It would be unlibertarian of Free Men to deny them such.

Private arbitration was damaged in the 1920s by all the statutes that came out decreeing that its formerly non-binding decisions had to be enforced by State courts. It was cheaper, quicker, and more effective when the only thing one had to lose by breaking an arbitration agreement was one's reputation.
++++++++++++++

To the contrary, court orders made arbitration a more viable option. Folks want their money from a adversary and couldn't give a rat's ass about the "reputation" aspect of failing to comply with a arbiters decision. A court order provides a enforcement option far more powerful than pursuing a collection effort from only inside the confines of contract enforcement limitations.

If you owe me 20K, your reputation was tarnished before and certainly during the adversarial arbitration process. I would want my money, if awarded and a option to have you locked up for contempt if you didn't honor the award.

Reputation worries? Please Barak, you've got to be kidding!

Why have most of you weighed in on this? Seems like most of you are happy with how things are now.

Didn't read the paper, huh?

Guess I can't blame you: it's a pretty thorough, involved treatment of some 500 pages. Here's just the abstract, though:

Yeah, that would get it attacked by the US as part of our corporate welfare program.

I don't see any difference in how things are operating with Obama than they operated with Bush/Clinton/Bush/Etc. and things would be the same with McCain with the exception that republicans wouldn't be complaining over the issues they are now even though the same things would be coming to pass. Seems the republican party did want McCain and if he isn't their pick again in 2012 someone just like him and who ever the (D)'s pick will be.

Thanks for the excerpt but it does nothing to change my comments from above. And no, Barak, I didn't read nor did I need to read a 500 page paper to address your comment. Sometimes, experience in the actual process itself provides more than an adequate basis to address the issue.

You show me a guy who doesn't have the weight of court enforcement of it's orders hanging over his head and I'll show you the guy who won't expend any effort whatsoever to satisfy an award or judgment entered against him.

JasonB...Until you get a little more time here under your belt, I wouldn't be questioning why members project themselves into a conversation. If you want to address a specific point, then do so, but your comment above will draw little more than an "Ahhh, that's cute" kind of response from folks who've put in their time here dealing with the abyss our friend Barak calls home.

Ah...but you don't have experience in the actual process itself, unless you've been practicing since before 1925.

Neither have I, which puts us on an equal footing.

Or perhaps not so horribly equal, after all, as it turns out, because I've read the paper (and several other works that reference it, among other things).

(grin)

Let me just ask you this: if private arbitration can't possibly work without State courts to enforce its judgments, then how could the lex mercatoria have been so successful for over four hundred years?

How does Barakistan defend itself from the Aggressors of the world. Could free men organize a defense against a neighbor like Saddam or Hugo Chavez in time to thwart an invasion and enslavement? Would Barakistan be a sitting duck for takeover?

Not illegitimate: immoral.

All governments are by definition legitimate--or at least legitimized: that's what differentiates them from gangs of thugs.


I prefer to see US troops in general as misled or deceived by the State's intellectuals, like most of the rest of the population, than as actively evil. Not all libertarians agree with me on that, of course, but I've known too many soldiers to believe otherwise.

You, for example: I'll bet you're under the impression that you spent your career defending American freedom, right? That's what I mean. Motivated by honorable intentions, but deceived by government propaganda.


Ah...you're one of the special-deference-for-the-military folks, hey? You think a soldier is somehow fundamentally worthy of more respect than a shopkeeper or an assembly-line worker? I suppose I can see, then, why you'd have a problem with me.

They did in medieval Ireland, several times. Of course Oliver Cromwell finally did manage to conquer them and make it stick, but he had to kill a third of them to do it.

Curious, since all things are hypothetical here, if the soldier's were actually saving your butt, I mean - invading army had guns pointed at you, soldiers came and saved your bacon, to what personal and societal regards should they be held? Would it be any different if it were a loved one instead?

And does it matter compared to people that were not being paid to be soldier's and therefore did nothing?

So . . .

Didn't you just disprove your entire premise?

A good question.

Of soldiers who were actually protecting Americans from invaders, rather than killing brown people on the other side of the world to save the jobs of American politicians, the standard government propaganda about defending American liberties would be true. It'd be a definite step forward.

I'd certainly be personally grateful to any soldier who saved my bacon, same as I would to a doctor or a lawyer or a plumber who did. Soldiers as a class, though, are just people with jobs that they do, some well, some not, and it's unclear to me that they're fundamentally worthy of any more respect or deference than any other tax-feeder.

Does that answer your question?


I don't understand. Can you rephrase?

"soldiers who were actually protecting Americans from invaders, rather than killing brown people on the other side of the world to save the jobs of American politicians"



sigh....you know, Barak, sometimes you sound just like Hugo Chavez

No.

If Ireland had been a State, Cromwell would still have been able to conquer it by killing a third of its population. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that if Ireland had been a State, Cromwell could have conquered it much more easily. The US conquered Japan, for example, by killing only 0.3% of its population--a proportion a hundred times smaller.

So no, Cromwell's eventually-successful conquest of Ireland does not demonstrate that States are more resistant to invasion than free societies; it leans further toward demonstrating just the opposite.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Read the book entitled "Target Switzerland" it will answer your question.

And Ireland is a free republic today with Irish culture on the rise. Where's Britain heading?

You are perplexed because I say that a free society cannot exist without government, since only government can create the framework within which we have liberty. I say this, however, because history has taught me that man's natural state in any sort of advanced society is to be in either one of two classes, subject or ruling.

The ruling class has traditionally been that class which controls the levers of state power over the remainder of the people, and tends to be a very tiny percentage of the over all population. The only two conditions which alter this situation are 1) when the ruling class is very distant from the people, and the people live as if there were no ruling class at all, or 2) when the people at large impose government to one degree or another on the ruling class and on the state's power (such as happened in England starting with the imposition of the Magna Carta), power which the ruling class would otherwise wield entirely according to its own whims.

Government is, in other words, the solution to the natural state of the majority of men in society, i.e., that of mere subjects to the state, and of the ruling class that wields its power. Government, by the imposition of the rule of law, restrains the state, its rulers, and its agents, thus carving out for The People various spheres of liberty, i.e., refuges against the state's power.

If, for example, while government is in place and functioning according to its properly laid foundations (as the Founders might have phrased it), an agent of the rulers of the state chose to arrest you (a non-member of the ruling oligarchy) because you were speaking out against a member of the ruling oligarchy (or one of its agents), then you are empowered by government (which has imposed the rule of law on the wielders of state power) to assert your rights. The state actor is then bound by the rule of law to either show legal cause before a neutral judge, or release you.

You were able, in the above scenario, to successfully assert your rights as against the state only because of the existence of government, which both established and imposed the restraints of the rule of law (the opposite of arbitrary rule) on the power of the state.

Stated more concisely, government creates the only framework within which authentic liberty can, in the natural order of things, exist.

In example number one above, practical liberty exists only because the rulers are distant and unaware of your existence, but should the rulers or their agents ever come into contact with a subject in that context, and there was no government to restrain them, the rulers may act arbitrarily with regard to that individual subject, there being no government to impose on them the rule of law. Liberty, in that case, is illusory, not real.

That leaves ONLY number two, above. Only when government is in place and functioning according to its properly laid foundations can all human beings living in a society of any level of advancement enjoy authentic liberty, liberty being defined as the legal freedom to do that which is your right to do within the context of a prohibition on arbitrary action by the state, its rulers, and its agents.

Certainly, I can rephrase. But you already answered it in a way.

Taking out the politics of the brown people comment, the context is that you consider a soldier, who is saving lives from invaders as no more or less important than any other tax payer, essentially since they are doing a job. Being a tax-payer and doing their chosen tax paying job is the criteria here.

However, a lawyer that is not financially compensated to save lives and therefore does not, is not be held in any different regard according to the premise that they are paying taxes for their chosen occupation.

I am not sure how many soldiers actually go into the service wanting to be used as a political pawn. But isn't the fact that they are knowingly accepting harms way in defense of an abstraction such as liberty, patriotism, and your (personal) rights and bacon, worthy of a twinge more respect than someone who isn't?

Does the gratitude only take place when you are personally served?

Good topic here.

What happens when your government becomes a tool of the ruling class? What do we do have a civil war to replace the ruling class with a new ruling class?

If we accept as a given, as I do, that there will always be a state power, the choice becomes 1) a state power which is bound up in the rule of law, i.e., under the control of government, or 2) a state power which is not bound up in the rule of law, i.e., not under the control of government.

It is the nature of the state to attempt always to free itself from the restraint of government. The degree to which this can be forestalled is the degree to which the government has been well designed.

This is the imperfect state in which we are forced to live in this world. It is this way because of human nature, and human nature is, for all practical purposes, immutable. Best we can do, therefore, is learn from history ways to make government better, as the Founders did. It will never be perfect, but in 1789 we came closer than any other society in the history of the planet. That would likely, therefore, be a good place to start in our efforts to restore good government.

This government and nation-state is over so where do we go from here? A civil war?

We are never going to get the present nation-state back to 1787. Heck, as soon as the ink dried the present nation-state started to unravel.

If human nature is human nature than there is no hope. Only war with occasional peace breaking out from time to time.

Hey, Barak, as one of those who formerly wore a uniform (one I volunteered and was honored to wear, to serve and protect this nation and it's people and way of life), let me render a hearty "[bleep] YOU!"

If you can't figure out that you just proved true every point ever made about your disrespect and disdain toward current and former military personnel, then you're more retarded than we'd originally thought possible.

Gotta ask a question, Barak: How often have you spent time baking cookies for, or doing anything for, military personnel, vs the same amount of time you dedicate to such activities for the scum of the earth (murderers, rapists, drug dealers)?

Actions speak louder than words, and your words just backed up your actions in regard to your true feelings toward military personnel that could, would, and have volunteered their lives to defend your sorry azz (and your family) against threats foreign and domestic.

And, you really think a nation of people like you would stand a snowball's chance in Hell against any aggressor? Delusional, has a new definition.

Well, human nature is indeed human nature, so there is no hope of ever attaining perfection in this world. We, therefore, have to settle for various approximations of perfection, as best we can arrange them.

Well as I'm a person who wore a uniform for about a decade during the Vietnam era, you are delusional if you really think you were defending the people of the US. What you were defending is the government not the people or the state. As a soldier, you are an employee of the federal government not the people. If some how a Fairy Godmother waved a magic wand and the present federal government disappeared and a new government appeared you would have been an employee of the new government. If the government had disappeared all together you would have been without a job.

The point is, that it's a propaganda myth that any military defends the people, it's the government that the military defends. Read our won Revolutionary War to see who defended who.

BTW: People don't have wars against other people, it's the ruling class of the government that has wars against another ruling class of a government. The common man is expected to support the ruling class/government in it's wars. I always wondered what would happen when a ruling class/government declares a war against another ruling class/government and nobody from the common class showed up.

I guess the younger class is smarter than I thought they were, eat, drink, and be marry for their is nothing else.

derby_dude;

Did you volunteer? If so, why?

If you didn't volunteer, then your reasons/requirements for joining were not the same as mine, nor those of anyone else who volunteered.

Plus one.

Yeah, yeah, I already know that my dereliction of duty in failing to render you special deference and respect for your military service honks you off.

It's not my intentional objective to honk you off, and I'm sorry you choose to get all hot and bothered over it; but profanity and insults aren't going to serve to get you any more deference and respect than you already have. Not from me, anyway. That's not the way it works.

The respect I have for you has nothing to do with your military service: it's A) left over from back when you seemed to be mostly a decent sort of chap on the Campfire, and B) bolstered by stuff like what you did for Elf.

Not special deference. Just a modicum of respect. Something that you seem unwilling to do, even as you will kowtow to felons on a regular basis.

That's' a good question and I'll answer it.

1. The draft was in affect at the time so volunteer or be drafted.

2. Nobody in my family was drafted so joining was the only option.

3. As a young 19 year old fresh from high school and having a Dad who was a real war hero of WWII, I bought the propaganda myth that I was defending the people.

4. It soon became apparent that the people didn't give a rat's azz what happened in Vietnam only the American government gave a rat's azz what happened in Vietnam.

5. We were supposedly fighting for freedom in Vietnam for the Vietnam people while in this country the government was doing everything in it's power to deny freedom to the people in this country. We were supposedly fighting to stop the spread of socialism and communism in Vietnam while adopting socialism and communism at a fast and furious pace in this country.

6. It became clear to me that all I was was a mercenary soldier for the federal government, a government employee and the people be damned.

7. The first six years I did because it was mandatory but the last four years I did for the fun and money.

Hope this answers your question. Today, knowing what I do, I would never join the military. Nothing against the military per se but there is no need for the military from a constitutional perspective except for the Navy.

You are free to believe that, but don't put words in my mouth. That's not at all what I said.

VAnimrod used to be a decent sort of chap on the Campfire? Interesting.

Just to foolishly stick my hand in the military service fire for a moment...

I was born in 1965. As a kid, the WWII vets were about the age that I am now. Even with the Vietnam war raging, the red dirt and helicopters and day's casualty count on the evening news every night, as kids when we played "war", it was Americans and Germans... we thought very highly of those vets, and I still do.

I remember the Vietnam vets. If I had to generalize, they'd be angry, sad young men in surplus army jackets with long hair. They were scary.

They were two completely different types of people, WWII vets and Vietnam vets. Obviously, world and societal forces were contributing to that; the world was a far different place in 1950 than in 1975! But there was more to it than that. And I think it gets into Barak's comment on going halfway around the world to kill brown people. Obviously, in WWII we did just that! But they were brown people who had attacked our country, quite literally.

Vietnam.... not so much.

Anyway, to cut to the chase, I could not possibly hold in higher regard someone who truly defended my country. And personally, I differ from Barak in that I respect our volunteer armies for what they THINK they are doing.

But Barak is right when he talks about going halfway around the world to kill brown people in defense of what amount to corporate interests. As a policy, I despise that. Words cannot express the depth of my contempt for the national policy, and national arrogance, and national sense of entitlement that leads us to somehow believe that it's OK for us to spend our blood and capital (and someone else's blood) in the pursuit of what amounts to MONEY.

'nuff said.

That's because most of you seem to be whores/shills for having everything stay on the same path it is on now.

Lyndon Johnson's Great Society (communism) fighting communism. Like the old Sam Kinnison line about Rock Against Drugs making as much sense as Christians Against Christ.

You didn't say it I did but if there is no hope but war, war, and more war, than there can't possible be any hope.

Those are your words, not mine. Is Switzerland in a constant state of war?

Nope, but they are a small country with no drive to have an empire. I suppose when our empire dies and breaks up into smaller countries there will be hope again. Unfortunately, I won't be here and I don't see our nation-state breaking up anytime soon. By war I mean both internally and externally.

BTW: there were a few Founding Fathers that considered a Swiss style confederacy and government. Needless to say it was shot down. How can you have an empire with a small country and limited government.

A modicum of respect? I don't believe you. Here's why.

I show you quite a bit more respect here on the Campfire than you show me, and it's not enough for you.

If the respect you show me is the amount of respect you consider due ordinary mundanes, and the amount of respect you consider due you because of your military service is greater than the significantly higher amount you get from me, then it's clear that you consider yourself entitled to a special level of deference and respect.

Which I'm sure you get from lots of people. Why is it such a big deal for you that you don't get it from me? Why do you care so much what I think of you?

Size doesn't much matter. Look at England. They had a huge empire, and England itself is very small.

Tim, truer words were never spoken.

And that's why, dear reader, most "conservatives" do not truly believe in, nor desire, small government.

They desire a big, powerful federal goverment (I mean State... I mean... damn it TRH! ) that can project American power and influence around the globe.

In short, they desire a government capable of the maximum POSSIBLE intervention into the lives of EVERYONE ON THE PLANET.

Small-government conservatives, my hairy white BUTT!

Well, you got me there. It must be the people. The Anglo-Saxon has need to build empires and the Swiss, Irish, Icelandic, etc. do not.

I have no need, desire, nor ambition to control or build an empire. I guess I'm not an American.

Why don't you refer to hypocrites as hypocrites instead of referring to them as conservatives? The word conservative has a meaning which is quite the opposite of that which you attribute to it. If folks calling themselves libertarians started advocating big imperial government, would you do them the courtesy of calling them libertarians, or would you call them hypocrites instead?

VAnimrod calling out for a modicum of respect on the Campfire. This, from the guy being legally threatened by a WOMAN over his utter lack of any kind of reasonable civility- on the frikkin' INTERNET no less! This, from the guy who stands out as the single person MOST LACKING in basic respect for other people.

Think about what it takes, to push someone to the point of a lawsuit, over words on the internet.

Will wonders never cease.

Yup, he used to be quite popular, even among people who didn't agree with him. Everybody would have said he was a great guy. Something like, say, isaac is today.

Sometime later, though, his behavior convinced a significant portion of the population here that he was either a real buttwad or just chronically miserable about something. (Since I knew him before, I hesitate to believe that he's really a buttwad and just successfully deceived all of us for so long, but the second theory may have some merit.)

Why the change? I don't know if anyone knows for sure, but several things happened in his life between Time A and Time B.

One of them was that he got married.

You're losing it, dude. Empire, last I checked, was not one of the founding principles of the United States. The forces of empire won the Civil War against the forces of constitutional republicanism in the United States. That's what explains our current course. Not that we are Americans.

The kiss of death for many but not for you and I. We have keepers.

Ok, point taken.

I suppose I thought it was clear that I was saying that they were NOT conservatives, though!

But also, TRH, as I've said before around here, I get confused as heck as to what a conservative is or isn't. Put it this way. Toltecgriz, Steve, Isaac, etc have gone out of their way to tell me you are NOT one! And you've made it clear that you don't think they are.

And I know that by any "Campfire" definition, I'm not one. Yet, I look at my "conservative" friends, and I look at my life and how I've lived it, and [bleep] if I don't think that I've lived it more "conservatively" thay they have!

It drives me nuckin' futs, to be honest. I get eviscerated around here for not being conservative, and yet, it's a term that has no meaning. Not anything you can get your hands around it's throat, anyway.

Actually, I think most folks would tell you that marrying Penny significantly reduced the amount of buttwaddity I tended to spread around.

There you go.

If you're looking for internal consistency, though, neither conservatism nor liberalism will make you happy.

A look at the objective definition of a conservative may assist you in this regard. A conservative, in the context of the United States, is someone who thinks it essential that the principles upon which this nation was founded be CONSERVED. As between myself and the others you mentioned, which of us comes closest to the objective definition of a conservative?

Story of my life, which is why I'm not a particularly political person.

That, and the fact that when you step back and look at it, there really isn't much functional difference between the two parties. Oh, they keep their bases all fired up over the BS social-war issues, but in the end, it's the same results.

But the Forces of Empire were there from the beginning. The US has always wanted an Empire. Well that's not totally true. The Anglo-Saxons who primarily settled the North wanted a empire. The South settled primarily by Anglo-Celtic did not want a empire.

The constitution and federal government was set up primarily to build empire. The confederalists, primarily Anglo-Celtic, wanted a Swiss style confederacy. No empire building in that. The original constitution was flawed from the beginning hence the reason for the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights was an effort by the confederalists to put the brakes on the federalists and their empire building.

This has been the prime argument from day one: From the Federalists, conservatives, neoconservatives build an empire, from the confederalists no empire building. What confederalists want is a limited government, lazaire faire (sp?) capitalism, unlimited freedom to pursue our happiness as we see fit.

As I've said, I'm coming more and more to the conclusion that there is nothing that can save the present nation-state.

This nation was founder. I like that little typo!

By that definition, TRH, you've got it all over those guys in spades. Mainly due to their global militarism, but also because I don't routinely see you hammering on the religious social issues either.

The point they avoid- emphatically- is that you can't say you are both pro-small-goverment, and pro-big-military. Pick one.

Exactly. There was a split, but the forces of constitutional republicanism held sway until 1860. After that, each side took up arms against the other to decide anew which would hold sway in the United States.Naturally the Constitution was flawed. Everything this side of paradise is flawed to one degree or another. But to paraphrase Churchill, it created the worst possible form of national government, except for anything else that's been tried.No, not "unlimited freedom to pursue our happiness as we see fit." That would be anarchy, and that only results, due to immutable human nature, in its quick replacement by tyranny. What the Founders hoped to achieve was liberty, quite distinct from "total freedom to pursue our happiness as we see fit." Liberty is that state in which we are free only to do those things that we have a right to do, while the power of the state is restrained by the rule of law.

... whoops, missed a point.

A person cannot also say they are pro-personal freedom... and then be willing to lock people up over drug use.

They can't say they are pro-Constitution... then advocate what amounts to a state religion- Christianity.

etc.

Drives me nuckin' futs, as I said... grin...

Absolutely correct. Those would be hypocrites, not conservatives.

PS I fixed your mistake. The US Constitution determines things national, not (for the most part) state-level. I think the only thing the US Constitution imposes on the states is "a republican form of government."

For a look at how well anarchy works, look no further than Papau New Guinea.

JeffObama, could you please find a douche and wash the sand out of your mangina?

Not only are you off-base, but you're behind the curve.

Go figure.

And, someone will have to draw you a freakin' picture to even give you a chance of catching up.

An insult to my marriage? Wow.................

Ain't even gonna go there today.

B; the ONLY things that you do here are prattle on about a utopia that is impossible, about how wonderful your scumbag prisoners are, and about how worthless military personnel are.

Given that two of those three REALLY piss me off, is there any wonder that I'm not all sugar and honey toward you?

As for what kind of man I am, those that know me know that. Those that don't, well, you're guessing.

That you don't, is still a given. How 'bout checkin' with those that do?

Naw, that'd require something like proof, and a change of your world view; two things that thus far seem to be about as attractive to you as garlic is to Nesferatu.

Hey, JeffObama, how about explaining this one (on the other thread, please), since your messiah is still just that:
https://www.24hourcampfire.com/ubbthread...hn_Holdren_Obama_s_Science_C#Post3289149

The problem with people using drugs is the market it creates. To see the results of a free market drug use, look at Mexico. They're cutting heads off people and rolling them down the floor in dance halls to intimidate. It's near-anarchy there as well, at least no one responsible is in charge. That country demonstrates two bally-hooed concepts(or more) at once.

At any rate, few people go to jail for drug use any more. Selling drugs, yep. Put them away for a looooong time. Else the U.S. becomes like Mexico.

But, Gene, they're brown people, and poor, and just trying to make money, and drug addicts only hurt themselves, and if they do rob you then you must have had too much in the first place, and ..............................

Trying to guess JeffObama's whining in response.............

Mexico hardly has a free market for illegal drugs. Prohibition raises the prices far beyond anything like free-market levels, which provides all sorts of funding for heavy weapons, corruption, and murder. Kind of like in this country.

Bingo! Anyone else long for the crime free days of prohibition in this country?

Do you think Limbaugh should have gone to prison?

Yep.

Want to clear out the prison population?

Murderers (capital, mass, serial, 1st degree, and 2nd degree) get the death penalty carried out within 18 months. Tops.

Rapists of similar stripes get the same thing.

Pedophiles of any stripe get the chair.

No more TVs in prison. No more nice comfy living. No more work for pay. Try chain gangs and road work crews.

No more conjugal visits. No more prison ministries, and charity BS, and hand-outs. No more prison colleges.

Any gang affiliation in prison nets you solitary for a LONG stretch.

Try that for a while, and see what the boomerang rate drops to.

As you no doubt know, Afghanis aren't "brown." So we're blasting white people in Afghainstan. They're non-Arab Muslims.

Mexico isn't a free market drug producer, but it's close. It serves the market here in the U.S. which many would like to see become a free market, and become just like our neighbor to the South. If you like anarchy, you'll love Mexico. Or Papau New Guinea.

Gene, not me, dude. JeffObama, Barak, and it looks like their new recruit JasonB.

Most of that sounds good, plus ax any laws currently on the books where a genuine, injured victim can't be produced. Dealing with false convictions (intentional, accidental, or anywhere in between) needs to be in the mix also.

Prohibition raises the prices far beyond anything like free-market levels, which provides all sorts of funding for heavy weapons, corruption, and murder. Kind of like in this country.
+++++++++++++++++

How will Barakstan create it's funding for heavy weapons to defend against it? A Mexican cartel could let you Barakstan squatters and dreamers have a few months to till the land just right and, within a couple days, POOF!....easy overthrow and a thank you beating for prepping the new drug producing fields of what will then be known as Malo Barakistano.

Good luck with your PPA and private courts on that one!

Like I said, let's go back to alcohol prohibition since it was such a raging success. Do you drink?

False conviction = appeal. Something that a private court would have no real desire to do (no money in it).

Watch out, though. You're new found friend in Barak will be upset if you start agreeing that the death penalty for his clientele is a good idea.

I was addressing Barak and O and anyone else who feels dope should be legal. And who feels America is waging war on "brown people."

I'm in favor of capital punishment for murders, rapists, and pedophiles. And long prison terms for violent crimes. There are side issues, however, court mandated issues that require T.V. (for example.) Sheriff Arapiao has T.V., but has only the Food Channel and one other, can't remember which.

In my long career, I worked in a jail at one time, and never saw anyone there who didn't belong. I don't care if they're comfortable to a reasonable extent, so long as they're locked up very securely. Those who commit crimes in prison should get double the sentence as those on the outside who commit the same crime. And NO COOKIES.

Remember what they say about prison, "Go for the crime, come back for the sodomy."

Actually Sheriff Joe pipes in only the Food Network and the Weather Channel

An appeal doesn't keep the problem from happening again and again. There needs to be a way of dealing with the source of that problem.

Not sure if I would find enough qualities in Barak that I would want him as a friend, but I am seeing enough out of you that you couldn't be.

Great, so why not go back to prohibition?

Ah, my feelers are hurt. Waaaaaaaaaaaaa............... If you don't like blunt, you certainly won't like me or quite a few others around here. Your call. Ain't gonna worry me a bit.

As to that doesn't keep the problem from happening again and again. You're right. Nearly nothing does. Except the rule of law in other areas, which are not under discussion currently.

You aren't blunt, you chose to lie and I called you on it. There is a difference. How's that for blunt?

Not sure if I would find enough qualities in Barak that I would want him as a friend, but I am seeing enough out of you that you couldn't be
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

You're an insolent little goob for a new boy, aint ya'?

As for Barak, I sure could. The fact the sky is a different color in his universe is what makes this world go 'round,youngster.

As for VAnimrod...he's been a buddy for a few years now and with 85% of your 100 or so posts bringing the art of stupid up to the next tier, I wouldn't get too over-confident anyone gives a rat's ass about your valley-girl cackling.

I'm figuring you for an 11th grader who came in 3rd with the football team's mascot tryouts who just likes hangin' out in the basement smoking stepmom's reefer!

Find the lie you called me on.

BTW - your problem with the drug issue is that you're still in academia, likely as a student, and have ZERO real world experience with what drugs do. You haven't seen a sister shot in her face by her addict brother because he was having a bad DT day. You haven't seen kids sold into prostitution so Mom and Dad can get high. You haven't seen a child's eyes bitten out by an addict father. You haven't seen an infant with spiral compound fractures of both legs so bad he'll never walk, because boyfriend was DTing poorly. You haven't seen Mom's house burned down because the son (addict) was kicked out for being a thief and a user.

In short, you haven't a clue, and it's obvious.

BTW - some of those things, I have seen. Others have been seen by some that I trust.

The problem with unrestricted drug use and anarchy is both assume that people act in their own best self-interest and the interest of their neighbors. They don't, which is why folks prey on their neighbors and why gangs exist...a means of bad self-government when a just authority abrogates its responsibilty.

Thousands of crack-addicted babies are the result of drug addiction, and they have no voice or choice in their addiction. There is no such thing as drugs pricing themselves fairly here, or anywhere else, as a lot of the most addictive drugs (heroin, cocaine) come from outside the U.S. Which is another reason against a free drug-market economy.

All of it would be perfectly legal in a free society; hence prices would be very low: no more making a rock of crack for a nickel and selling it for twenty dollars. Mexican drug cartels would sell their drugs and do their kidnappings and beheadings in the US where Prohibition gives them high prices; whatever drugs Barakistanis wanted would undoubtedly be produced in Barakistan very cheaply.

Adventurous Barakistanis might even sell drugs in the US, where they might possibly out-compete the Mexicans, since Mexican druggies have the overhead of having to buy Mexican politicians as well as US ones. Barakistanis would only have to buy US politicians.


No Mexican drug cartel could take over even a decent-sized city--at least not without first corrupting its State officials. Barakistan would have no State officials to corrupt; corrupt judges and PPAs and such would simply be run out of business by uncorrupted ones.

How so? I imagine a private judge would happily take whatever business came his way, whether it was an appeal or not.

There'd have to be some sort of traditional limit on appeals, of course, after which nobody would pay attention anymore. I think probably two appeals, for a total of three judgments, ought to work pretty well. If you agree to three different courts, and two or more of them rule against you, your case is pretty much dead, I'd say.


The State shouldn't ever kill its subjects for any reason, no; but if Smith offends against Jones, then Jones is the only one with the moral standing to determine what the punishment should be.

If he decides the punishment should be death, and he's willing to carry out that sentence and take the responsibility for it, then that's his business and nobody else's.

Unless it was perfectly clear to all and sundry that Jones A) was guilty, and B) deserved to die, though, and it probably wouldn't, it'd be an almighty stupid thing to do for Smith to kill him (or take much of any other drastic action against him) without investing in a judge's verdict first.

Afghans are brown people.

Barakistan would have no State officials to corrupt; corrupt judges and PPAs and such would simply be run out of business by uncorrupted ones.
++++++++++++++++++++

What if the non-corrupt ones got taken in by one too many Freedom/Liberty crack festivals and meth parades and the corrupt guys were stronger and pounced on the oppurtunity?

I mean, the non-corrupt don't become corrupt inside this life-long siesta compound merely by exercising their liberty seeking right to smoke crack and meth all day, right? I mean, they have to do something really bad to become corrupt like smoking someone else's kid's crack without asking first,right? Am I getting the gist of it all?

I'm not sure: I have no idea what you're talking about.

Nope.

You'll get all that and more with the legal drug alchohol, along with health-threatening toxicity. (Yeah, I drink... grin...)

There are a couple (and there could be more invented someday) drugs that are, truly, as bad as the anti's would have us believe that ALL drugs are. I admit, as with most things philosophical, there's a grey area there, a fly in the ointment of legalization. Meth comes to mind.

But, most are fairly benign and possibly even beneficial in occasional use.

But that misses the point. Is this my [bleep]' head, my conciousness, my body... Or not? Is the State in charge of my conciousness, or am I? Do I have the right to do something unhealthy, or don't I?

How can someone be free, if the government asserts a right to control their conciousness?

As to the negatives, and they will exist, simply apply the same logic used with guns or cars. Plenty of death and mayhem comes from the ownership and use of those. Punish actual criminal acts, not the potential to commit same. Simple.

As to having sand in my mangina you are damn right I do! I'm sick of your bullshit. Come on, man! You are better than that. Stop using this place as your personal dumping ground for whatever it is that's bugging you. This is a forum with 10's of thousands of members. And YOU, sir, stand out as the single person most likely to be a rude arsehole to someone and ruin a thread.

I do, seriously, believe you are better than that. If you are- buck up! If you aren't- STFU!

I'm all for that.

If one person hurts another, he ought to be prosecuted for it. Taking drugs hurts only oneself (except in the case of pregnancy, see below); selling drugs is a consensual business transaction. There's no moral or Constitutional basis for laws against either.


How many drug-addicted babies were born per year before drugs were made illegal? The War On Drugs hasn't exactly improved that number, has it?


Prohibition makes drugs artificially expensive. High prices attract suppliers from all over. Repeal Prohibition, and prices will fall. Suppliers who must charge high prices will lose business. Except for drugs made from plants not easily growable in the US, local markets will replace higher-overhead foreign ones.

The lie was about my new found friend.

Not in academia in any capacity so you reeled in nothing there either.

So what exactly are you babbling on about? Are you saying those kinds of incidents would happen if drugs were legalized? Since drugs are currently illegal the incidents that you speak of must be in theory?

So why don't you stalwarts of purity want a return to prohibition? Think you might start getting the shakes or what?

No more than my Sicilian father.

While I oppose Barak on the subject of anarchy, he's right on the money with regard to his libertarian position on drug legalization. It's being illegal is what makes it worth anyone's while to import it and "push" it in the United States. Also, people have a right to consume anything they like, no matter how harmful to themselves (such as trans fats, alcohol, or heroin), so long as they are held responsible for any crimes or torts they commit. For a real crime or tort, there needs to be a victim apart from the actor himself.

Or many of my Indian coworkers.

Still: brown.

You missed my age by quite a bit. And what is it with big government promoters (such as yourself) always claiming anyone that disagrees with them is in high school?

You have an odd way of classifying people, brown, non-brown...they're not brown to me, any more than Americans are brown.

As for drug addiction, the simple view that making drugs legal solves problems doesn't pay homage to the laws of supply and demand. When drugs are legalized, it pretty well stands to reason that the usage goes up. That's true with any thing of value...add to the supply, usage goes out the window. Econ 101.

Look at tobacco use, which is regulated increasingly over the yeatrs. Supply in the 60s, when about 70 percent of people used tobacco (I think it was 69% of all Americans) was high, taxes low, and usage spiked. When our government raised taxes and costs, the supply went down over here (imports went up overseas).

It's specious to argue otherwise. The price of de-regulating drugs is a much higher usage, and while the price MAY drop in a country where there is no regulation, that won't be the case...it would be like tobacco and alcohol, and now, even soft drinks are being looked at for "sin taxes." Higher taxes mean a different class of criminals, and dealers will still deal illegally to sell a cheaper, tax-free product, and make lots of money. At our ultimate expense.

Individuals may chose to use drugs, their choice, and few go to jail for simply using drugs. However, there is an ancilary sociatal cost for it, and nothing can change that. I don't care what a person does so long as it doesn't affect me and so long as it's somewhat moral, but drug use affects us all in costs of addiction. It's both a moral cost and a financial cost. I don't intend to pay for additional services for drug addicts that increase with drug usage.

Many Americans are brown.

I don't care for the use of hyphenated or prefaced Americans. That's my world, and may be as unobtainable as anarchy is for a governmental system (or lack thereof) but it's still the way I prefer to see it.

BTW, that photo looks photoshopped...the brown buy in front looks like his head has been pasted on.

VADICKHEAD, I thought you were having your account deleted because you couldn't control your mouth?? You a liar too??

If so, he is the lightest shade of the bunch.

Barak I always enjoy reading your post and I find myself agreeing with you a lot.
But I believe a Barakistan system would fall victim to the very same thing that our current system has all but died from.
Mans uncanny ability to mess things up. Man is never satisfied and this has and will always be his undoing.
Any societal system has to be maintained, and as we all know to many people are lazy and apathetic. This leaves the work to fewer people and these people do not always agree. Some are dedicated to the system and work diligently to preserve it. But others are using the freedom that the system gives them to try to make changes. Individuals that do this are not much of a concern it is when they form groups that they become a problem. Some want change so they can satisfy their greed and power lust. Some want to make changes to protect others whether they want it or not. So slowly the system starts to erode and history repeats it's self once again.
It is not the system that fails man it is man that fails the system.

Pat

Government bans (and/or insinuates it will ban) magazines, pistols, rifles, and blah blah blah. People that never wanted them before suddenly want them because they are forbidden fruit.

I hope they pass the food laws so you can tell us how some poor bastard that ate a twinkie after curfew got the sodomizing he deserved.


Still see no one is wanting to discuss banning alcohol and how much good that would do the USA. Gee, I just can't imagine the reason(s) for wanting to skip that one?

His system is no system at all, as far as I can tell. It's simply the elimination of all the manifestations of state and government, i.e., 100% private sector, 0% public sector. Basically, think Range Wars.

What you say is exactly why States don't work.

Under a State, all those depraved people you talk about can get coercive political power to subjugate others, so that their evil can destroy hundreds or thousands or millions of lives, rather than just their own.

In a free society, subjugation is replaced by submission: you submit to whatever authority you choose, whenever you choose, and you withdraw your submission whenever you like. No one can long maintain power unless he materially improves the lives of those who choose to submit to him--else they'll offer their submission elsewhere, or perhaps nowhere at all. Evil men can still ruin their own lives, and perhaps those of a few others; but no one can wreak the destruction of a Josef Stalin, or even a George W Bush or a Barack Obama.

Your objection is a restatement of the classic, "Man must be governed, for he is incapable of governing himself." The classic response, of course, is, "How then can he govern others?"

So you are suggesting that there can be no system without a controlling government? Will individuals taking control of their own lives some how turn us into base war mongers?
Is it government that makes man civil?

Pat

Laws make men civil. Laws cannot exist in any meaningful way without someone in authority to enforce them.

Very true, which is why in every case where men are permitted to rule other men, tyranny is the result. Much better that law rule over men, than that men do.

One example I read somewhere that stuck with me pointed out that on two-lane non-divided highways, cars frequently pass within a few feet or even inches of each other at combined speeds of well over 100mph. If one of the drivers were to swerve into the oncoming lane, he could do a terrific amount of tragic damage.

Which is why every two-lane non-divided highway has a concrete Jersey barrier down the center: to prevent that from happening.

What was that? There aren't concrete Jersey barriers down the middle of every such highway? And the roads aren't flowing with blood? How is that possible?

The answer, of course, is that people can spontaneously organize themselves when they act solely in their own self-interest. The only time they have to be coercively organized by others is when the incentives God built into the universe are coercively distorted by a State.

The State applies coercion and causes a problem, which it fixes by applying more coercion--which causes two more problems, which motivates even more coercion, and so on. That's how States get so big.

You have yet to explain how the Law Merchant worked so well for much longer than the US has been in existence with no coercive enforcement whatever.

The impossibility of a phenomenon is frequently severely damaged by its actual occurrence in the real world.

Man WILL be governed because he feels an overwhelming need to be governed. In areas where that government is nearly non-existant citizens are unable to organize because gangs (read tribes) spring up to rule them without any rule of law.

As for alcohol, which my friend Jason wanly uses as a straw-man, it's not a question of "banning" it, as no one except fanatics want to ban it. It's legal already.

Drugs are illegal and will stay that way.

If your rationale matches it, well, that's where the hypothesis as to age comes from.

If you're older than that, and your ideology still matches that of an idealistic, though misguided and inexperienced, child perhaps the problem lies deeper than expected.

And, you're the most likely to whine. Go figure..............

BTW - only a few bad ones? Tell ya what, sport. How about you and your family relocate into this area. After dealing with the cocaine, crack, heroin, meth, and yes, certainly alcohol, addicts for a while; and all the attendant problems of break-ins, rapes, murders, theft, robbery, and the lovely detritus they leave behind, you then tell me that they are predominantly harmless.

This ain't a weed thing, though you consistently fail to understand that.

The colonies had no one in authority to enforce laws??

Laws are inanimate objects. When all is said and done it's man ruling over man.

Ok, I looked it up. It was a system of trade law. There were non-governmental courts that enforced them. Essentially, if you wanted to participate in that system of trade (strong economic motive) you had to agree to be subject to its rulings. It worked fine. I wasn't talking about trade laws. I was talking about the laws of civil society. You cannot permit a murderer, for example, to choose whether or not he wishes to participate in the court system.

Control can be taken by less than forceful means.
Those who hold the gold will always have the ability to control others.Those who lack scruples will take advantage of this ability. The need for basic necessities will always provide them with submissive victims willing or not.

Pat

The rule of man exists when men in authority are empowered to enforce their personal will on others. The rule of law exists when men in authority are empowered only to apply the law.

Exactly. See Hussein, and his supporters like JeffObama, for PRIME examples.

Earlier. The Wikipedia page on it leaves a little to be desired, but it's better than nothing.

Ya but you have to find honest men in authority to apply the law only. Aren't too many of them around. Back to square one.

No, because under the rule of law no one possesses a higher authority than the law itself, so all public officials are subject to removal and/or punishment when they themselves violate the law. Dereliction of duty and all that.

...except that the folks who interpret the law and decide whether public officials are subject to removal or not are...public officials!

Bed time, so I will leave you all with a reading from Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England:

But public officials who are answerable to the people in election.

Sorry I don't have a desire to be anyone's slave, but since that is the difference between the 2 of us you must be walking around harder than woodpecker's lips as things stand today.

Guess again, champ.

So Barak here's one for you. The dictionary says that anarchy is lawlessness and absent a government. So what do you call it when you have a lawless government such as our present national government?

Alcohol hasn't always been legal and if you are worried about death destruction and general mayhem eminating from those who are impaired, the best group to crack down on would be the alcohol drinkers. No one except fanatic zealots would want to ban drugs either unless you are to believe everyone of them just likes adhering to failed policies.

Do you drink?

If your rationale matches it, well, that's where the hypothesis as to age comes from.

If you're older than that, and your ideology still matches that of an idealistic, though misguided and inexperienced, child perhaps the problem lies deeper than expected. [/quote]

Sorry I don't have a desire to be anyone's slave, but since that is the difference between the 2 of us you must be walking around harder than woodpecker's lips as things stand today. [/quote]

Guess again, champ. [/quote]

That was what I was guessing. Under the current conditions, but sans the (D) after the names of the head honcho and so many others you would be ok with being a slave.

Do you drink?

That's what you call the rule of men, as distinct from the rule of law. Also called tyranny or despotism.

You said you were going to bed!

Well I've tried tyranny so I guess I'll try that anarchy thingy.

Jason, do you use drugs? If you do, you're already a slave. As to whether I drink, if you can show a need to know other than curiousity, I'll gladly tell you.

They are not answerable to the people.

In the best and most idealistic of all worlds, they are answerable only to the majority of the people who vote, which is very frequently a minority of the population; and then they're answerable only once every few years.

Let me put it this way: which politician--federal, state, county, city level, I don't care--is answerable to me?

Answer: none of them, of course.

And I've noticed that this is hardly the best and most idealistic of worlds.

First, anarchy has nothing to do with law or the absence of law. It simply means "without rulers" or "no rulers," in the same way that "monarchy" means "one ruler."

Second, every government is lawless. There hasn't been a single government in the history of humanity that has obeyed the same laws it imposes on its subjects. Extortion is illegal, unless you're the government; then you do it and call it taxation. Counterfeiting is illegal, unless you're the government; then you do it and call it monetary policy. Kidnapping is illegal, unless you're the government; then you do it and call it imprisonment. And on and on.

The fact that many are derelict in their diligence to vote does not discredit the system of voting.

A rapist put in prison is not kidnapping.

Lawful taxes are not extortion.

If the state, (ordained of God no less; Romans 13) does not collect taxes, and pay the policeman to arrest the rapist then the state is derelict before God Himself. If they do not collect the taxes for a military to fend off invasion; again, derelict before God, who ordained the human ordinance of government, flawed as it is.

Barak;

This thread has gotten cluttered up badly with a lot of rabbit trails and some usual bickering.

I enjoy debating these things with you. Of course I don't adhere to Anarchy, but the questions you raise are legitimate and ought to be answered seriously. Why have any government at all considering all the injustice they have perpetrated down through the ages? It is a GOOD question.

I think John Locke in his second treatise goes to great pains to answer this question in clear concise terms. I agree with Locke, almost in lockstep... oh my!

No, the system of voting stands discredited long before anybody actually votes or doesn't vote, simply because it's a way for some people to use the coercive power of the State to enslave other people. There is no liberty or respect for fundamental rights in voting. It's a less direct way of holding a gun to somebody's head to force him to do your will, but that's what it's morally equivalent to, at least if you win.

But surely you're not one of those who believes everyone has a duty to vote, are you?


It's worse than simple kidnapping, because that prison is used to protect the rapist from the just attentions of his victims, and because that prison is financed with money extorted from those victims. In other words, imprisonment even for a real tort takes a single victimization and turns it into a triple victimization.


What is a lawful tax?

Is it a tax that a majority of those who vote agreed to?

You could make the argument, then, that for the minority of the population that voted for it, it isn't extortion.

But for those who didn't vote for it, but who are forced under threat of violence to pay it anyway, it is absolutely extortion.

Ok...

Damned if I do and damned if I don't...

If you were serious in your convictions you would return to a state of nature in a wilderness area and divorce yourself from life as we know it. You could in fact do this in several places and avoid voting, taxation, police, military draft, and every other thing that is bad about "society"

I choose to remain in society. I prefer voting first and foremost to the other alternative of constant duels, and blood fueds, and mini-wars.

As a friend I would suggest you have been pickled in theory too long! What is it; the best intellect is one that can defeat nature??? 2+2 does not equal 4 and here is my proof... and so forth and so on.

Prison is not kidnapping. Rape in addition to rape, IS kidnapping.

As for this turning folks over to the mob, that used to be called lynching. You see how poorly that worked in the U.S. in the first part of last century. Also, if it is up to an individual to dispense justice, and one is a Christian and believes in the conceptof forgiveness, justice can never be served. The weakness of the mob rule system you advocate is that it ignores a community, a state, and a nation's need for justice.

A serial rapist can continue to be a serial rapist if his victims forgive him, under your concept. An innocent man who someone THINKS is a rapist can be killed, legally in Barakville, without hope of appeal. Or can be let go. There's no justice in either of those, as people can be wrong. The court system is set up to minimize wrongful convictions, but mobs are not.

Justice is too valuable a ideal to be left up to mobs, or individuals to deal out their individual concept of justice. Especially in the heat of the moment. It's near-sighted and really based on nothing but a bad idea.

Gene,

Not sure I am following you.

As a Christian I believe in carrying out "Public-Justice" up to and including putting evil doers to death, including rapists, child-molesters and murderers. Private vengeance seems to be forbidden not only by Jesus and Paul but also Moses and natural law reason. Folks ought to get a trial with evidence, proof, debate and a jury.

Self defense is not private vengeance and is lawful in the Old Testament and the New.

I am not a pacifist. I think Tolstoy was deluded and taught theory that overthrows Paul's plain statements in Romans 13. In fact I think Tolstoy taught dereliction because someone must bear the sword of just vengeance against those that do evil.

TRH has it right when he goes on and on about the rule of law. I agree. As Milton said, the sword of justice hangs over the head of the king as well as everyone else and justice is the supreme law of the land.

No I don't use drugs, but if I did that would make me less of a slave than if you consume alcohol. Do you?

Years ago I heard a similar definition/translation of "no kings" which someone was using to illustrate their point that, if we were truly a free society with equal rights for all, unless they could walk in to a hardware store and buy a sub-machine gun then one of their "servants" had no legitimacy in surrounding themselves with sub-machine gun toting bodyguards.

So what is the story on the state that prevents/hampers the rape victim from defending theirself against the rapist?

The inalienable right of self defense is part and parcel of natural law and is also sustained by God's moral law in the Old and New Testaments.

John Locke says that the all written laws of men must not violate natural law or God's law, and if they do they are not good laws. William Blackstone says the same thing.

So any law that stops you from defending yourself is tyrannical and in the American history of law... unlawful.

A superb, and concise, summary of that fundamental rule of law. Very well done.

This idea that voting is flawed from the get go and enslaves those that lose...

I ain't buying into that.

I'll grant you this; in our current climate of a totally divided society where the communist democrats have gained power it almost seems that your argument has merit; BUT we are in fact a nation on the brink of civil war, all divided and antagonistic, and our differences can NEVER be reconciled.

I would have to argue that in a society that is striving to sustain a representative republic then that society has to have at some basic level a common "creed" for lack of a better word, some common glue that everybody is working towards. In my mind it used to be the Declaration of Independence, the core ideals articulated there.

I have come to conclude that multiculturalism is simply sanctified suicide.

So in any case; if there is some common ground, tribal blood, religion, belief system, whatever, then elections are just selecting delegated representatives of the people to represent the people as magistrates in government that serves the people. I see nothing sinister in that.

But if an election results in the trampling underfoot of inalienable rights then you are correct, it results in slavery for the losers and either emigration or civil war is in order at that point.

But no way do I have nor do I believe that the voting process is flawed from the get go in its basic theory. Absurd! How cynical.

Agreed.

In fact, if the process of voting is fundamentally flawed, then no "private court" jury would ever be able to vote on the decision, no "private appeals court" panel of judges would ever be able to vote on the appellate decision, no private corporation board of directors would ever be able to vote on corporate directives............ I think you see the point.

How else could a cooperative group of people make a decision? Dueling? Arm wrestling?

But seriously, what other option is there?

Well said.

Barak asks;

What are lawful taxes?

I think that is a good question.

Some evangelical writers in recent years have damned the American Revolution as a lawless tax protest. I don't agree at all.

But I would like to hear the opinions of others- what are lawful taxes?

At some level I view my local school taxes as tyranny because they fund the local brain-washing mill of the public school that teaches the next generation to hate me and to cut my throat.

The ones that the citizenry agrees to.

What you say here is true of certain undertakings a government might endeavor to perform, such as wealth redistribution (e.g., welfare, foreign aid, etc.) and empire building, for example, but if you're talking about legitimate functions of government (maintaining a national defense, funding the operations of the courts, the legislature, etc.), taxing (on general principles) to support these things is not in the least immoral, so long as the collection process is objectively fair and equitable.

The problem with discussing this with you is that you don't recognize as legitimate any form or function of government. You also, perhaps perceiving your vulnerability on this point, distort the very definition of the word legitimate in this context, equating it to the word legitimized. The latter, however, implies a false or defective legitimacy, or one merely for the sake of appearances, not legitimacy proper. Once you deny the legitimacy of government (and even remove from our vocabulary the word to describe it, which is very clever, I'll give you that), then there's little to discuss beyond that, least of all concerning legitimate vs illegitimate taxation.

I know a principal that believes in state's rights and that the federal government needs to stay out of education.

I'm content in that usage of my taxes.

But I guess we can't pick and choose where are taxes go. Or can we? Or should we?

This will be a good discussion, I'm sure. Needs another thread.

Thanks, but I didn't realized I went "on and on about the rule of law." I thought I only referred to it when it was a part of the correct answer to a question.

Well said.

Which is precisely why the Founders established our nation as one of local internal self-governance, not national. They knew that our nation, even then, was too large and too diverse in views to long remain a union if laws affecting "the lives, liberties, and properties of the people" were settled for all in Washington, but that's just what has happened. The power to legislate concerning all these matters has been shifted to the Federal Government.

It's bad enough that the Federal legislature has been handed this power, but often it's the courts, not even an elected body answerable to the people in the election process, that's been given this job.

This is the problem. The Founders put in place very few checks on the Federal Government's powers in this regard precisely because the system they established didn't delegate to the central government any power to legislate concerning these matters in the first place. All such was to be handled at the state and local levels.Can't argue with that.

Excellent observation.

The historical axioms of just government in the American context are sublime aren't they?

Think of all the implications of the concept of the rule of law.

School tax is wrong simply because education is not a legitimate function of government. Parents are the appropriate teachers of their children, and it is they who are responsible for providing it, either directly themselves, or by hiring teachers/schools, if they can afford them. Another man's child, in either case, is not my responsibility.

Now there we disagree. What if the citizenry agrees, by majority vote, to institute a tax to fund an agency empowered to confiscate private homes and convert them into homeless shelters? Even if the citizenry agreed, by majority vote, this would be an illegitimate tax because it supports an illegitimate function of government.

Agreed. The fundamental premise of the tax itself must be legitimate, though that would fall to the premise that no law may be enacted or agency created that violates the fundamental laws of the nation. If the creation of the to-be-funded premise is illegitimate, then no funding structure for it, regardless of approval, may be legitimate.

A legitimate use, and taxation as a funding source then approved by the citizenry, would be a lawful tax.

Stated that way, I agree.

Wow. This thread doubled in length since last I looked in. I'll have to read all the new posts later.

Thanks for the response, TRH.

"I say this, however, because history has taught me that man's natural state in any sort of advanced society is to be in either one of two classes, subject or ruling."
----------

Make that "man's fallen nature" and it'll be a bullseye.


"The ruling class has traditionally been that class which controls the levers of state power over the remainder of the people, and tends to be a very tiny percentage of the over all population."
------------

Very tiny indeed. All the more wonder why the remainder are so willing to be ruled. And more important, why they bother to obey. Until Govv't grows to the point each one of us has an agent present at all times, to keep an eye on us, guide us and protect us, they needn't expect much from me in the way of obedience. If they're watching I pretend to obey. Other than that they can shove it. Even when they are watching, most of the time they can shove it. And the ones around here know I'll tell them that, too.


" power which the ruling class would otherwise wield entirely according to its own whims."
---------

That's the direction it's headed. Seems to be their goal. I'm surprised there were town hall meetings in Aug, why bother? The people don't need sold on obamacare, only the remaining congress critters need the sales pitch. I mean, it's not like we the people are going to get to vote on it or anything... There were no town hall meetings aobut stimulus packages or bailouts or seatbelt laws, etc. Gov't rarely asks people's approval and doesn't pay attention to their response when they do anyway, so what's the difference?

As far as the remaiinder of your post, I see all that and understand that's what people believe, but I don't like it and would rather not be forced to participate. The rulers believe they are better than, above, more important, etc. It's not true. Servants don't dictate to their masters, proof that they are liars and theives. Free and sovereign men have no rulers. These people have no greater authority than I, in fact their's is lesser than mine, hence the use of "servants". I still operate under my innate and God given authority. I'm created in His image, what can be above that? They can be equal to that... but won't. They've cast aside their legitimate authority in favor of that fictional one granted them by the state. Makes them feel big. Makes them feel important. Fact is, they're beneath me. Everything in the world system is beneath me. Doesn't matter where in the world I take a stand, the entire thing is beneath me. The simple truth is these people are the exact same liars and theives that I saw them to be as a small boy. Nothing has changed except that I now see them through the eyes of an adult and have years of observation to solidify my position. Hucksters. Parasites. They're the scum of the earth, all of them, each and every one. IMO there is no lower form of life than one that began life with the highest possible authority in the cosmos (equality) and discards it for a fictional authority over others just to make himself feel big. Self idoloters allowed to live as elite rulers by those who idolize them. Not only alowed but encouraged. Idolotry was spoken of in the bible. The entire concept was damned when Moses came down off the mountain... but people still haven't learned. The reason for that commandment is obvious to me. Most people take this the wrong way but I've said it for many years: Thomas Jefferson said "all men are created equal" and Archerhunter adds " Yeah, but the majority sure go down hill from there". They're beneath me. That's a fact. They chose that postition. The only power they have is that of the state backing them... at gun point, no less. Scum of the earth, I tell ya. Scum of the earth. Their's is a fictional power, a fictional authority. It only works for them while they're watching. And then, I'm only pretending... Answering fiction with fiction seems a perfect fit to me. Perfectly justified, especially in light of the course they've taken in recent decades. They don't obey their own laws. Everything is a double standard in their eyes. They stack everything in their favor and call themselves my servants... then expect me to obey... hmmph! Pretty laughable, actually.


I'll continue reading the thread as time allows. Much to do today.

Which is why, the Founders inform us, men establish governments, i.e., to rid us of rulers made of flesh and blood, and replace them instead with the rule of law. Free and sovereign men should have no rulers of flesh and blood, indeed, but free and sovereign men, if they wish to live in common society, must accept that they are not above the law itself, so long as the law is not patently inconsistent with natural law.

Fair is fair: Nimrodia

All voting is flawed because none of us know what we are voting for or against. I see that not only in public voting but also in private voting. See that all the time when I'm asked to vote for broads of directors, company policies, etc. It's impossible for me or anyone else to know everything about everything.

Voting maybe the best system we have compared to anything else but it most definitely is a flawed system.

All taxes are unlawful because they are collected by force.

Now if there was some way to subscribe for those government services I want or think I need, than collecting a tax from me to pay for the services I volunteeringly subscribe to, than that is okay but I don't know of any way to do that.

Actually, Madison wanted a clause that said the federal government could void any state law that the federal government thought was unlawful or didn't like. Madison lost that one or did he? Madison wanted to shift sovereignty from the states which were sovereign republics to the federal government.

The first seven articles of the constitution are as ambiguous as they are because of compromises necessary between the federalists and confederalists in order to get something passed. What the federalists wanted in a federal government is pretty much what we have today. It's also the reason the confederalists demanded a Bill of Rights which I'm sure glad they did.

The reason you're not following me is because I tagged to the wrong poster. The mob law thing was to Barak's view that justice lies in the hands of those offended against. The idea of turning over a burglar to a 75-year-old widow for justice ignores the rules of law and common sense.

Self defense is not private vengence, of course. Never meant to imply it is.

The Rule of Law, to me at least, means that men pass laws and so long as they are just, others must obey them.

Interesting, if true, since it entirely contradicts what Madison wrote in Federalist No. 45. You'll have to provide your source, of course.

Regardless, however, the Constitution as finally ratified very clearly divides powers between the Federal Government and the states, the Federal Government's powers being "few and defined" (and mostly outward directed), the states' powers being "numerous and indefinite" (dealing with all matters affecting the lives, liberties, and property of the people).

Please provide your source, however, including complete quotes from Madison.

No problem on the source I've mentioned it before: "American Creation: Triumphs and Tragedies at the Founding of the Republic" by Joseph J. Ellis.

I'm reading the chapter "The Argument" which is dealing with a lot of what we are discussing now. For example, I could never figure out why Washington was a Federalist when most of the heavy hitters from the South were confederalists. According to Ellis, it's because of Washington's experiences as commander-in-chief during the Revolutionary War. As commander-in-chief he had to dance to the tune of the Continental Congress as well as to the tune of the 13 colonies. As commander-in-chief he would have liked to dance to the tune of one government rather than to the tune of 14 governments. Washington believed the only way to conduct war was with a strong central government.

Madison was a radical for strong central government. I'm sure he took as radical a position as he could to have lots room for compromise.

One other thing I've learned from this book, well actually, there's allot I have learned, was that the radicals who thought the Articles of Confederation were just fine the way they were boycotted the convention in Philadelphia. The only players that showed up at the convention were the moderates who wanted to just modify the Articles of Confederation, and the radicals who wanted to scrape the whole thing out right. The radicals won and we can only imagine what would have happen and how the country would have looked had the radicals for confederation had showed up.

BTW: To truly understand the Federalists Paper, you need to get and read the Anti-Federalists Papers and Constitutional debates of 1787. The Anti-Federalists Paper is the rest of the story.

He was/is right.



Agreed. Wonderful, insightful, and ought-to-be-required reading (both of them).

I have already read both the Federalist and the Anti-Federalist Papers, thank you very much. I'm still waiting for those juicy Madison quotations, though.

Well, I don't have any Madison quotations so I guess Ellis is wrong.

... and McCain was different in this regard how exactly?

Yes, considering that I would have no trouble at all providing quotations of Madison's own words which contradict Ellis's assertions, I'd say he was wrong.

Funny, I don't recall a McCain proposal to put the IRS in charge of your health care, determining what is and is not appropriate, what you can and can't have, and how much you ought to pay for it.

Can you?

BTW - there are PLENTY of threads re: your messiah, B. Hussein Obama, the one you championed last year. Please, visit them and enlighten us all as to how wrong we are to think he's a turd and his ideas rubbish.

Well, we'll have to agree to disagree. I've read other history books that pretty well backs up Ellis, the Anti-Federalists Papers among them.

I think our disagreement is that I'm against central governments limited or otherwise. and you favor limited central governments. I don't believe ANY central government can be controlled or limited for very long. As I say, the more I study this the more I think Barak is right at least to some degree.

Yup, McCain proposed a tax credit for health insurance. That involves the IRS.

A credit is FAR different than having the plan administered by the IRS. Heck, you can get a tax credit for a hybrid vehicle, or a kid, or a set of solar panels and the IRS doesn't run the system for those products.

Big, BIG difference.

Yes, they do through audits and regulations. With the IRS you are guilty until proven innocent.

With the Hussein plan, there is no attempt to prove innocence. You will do as they command; you will have no recourse or appeal.

Again, huge difference.

Well there is doubt that Obamacare is worst than McCaincare but both are wrong to a con-nationalist.

Here's my tattered copy.

... and McCain was different in this regard how exactly? [/quote]

Funny, I don't recall a McCain proposal to put the IRS in charge of your health care, determining what is and is not appropriate, what you can and can't have, and how much you ought to pay for it.

Can you?

BTW - there are PLENTY of threads re: your messiah, B. Hussein Obama, the one you championed last year. Please, visit them and enlighten us all as to how wrong we are to think he's a turd and his ideas rubbish.[/quote]

Yup, McCain proposed a tax credit for health insurance. That involves the IRS. [/quote]

And supported semi-auto bans, banning gun shows, bail outs......

Looks a lot like my copy just not so worn. BTW: I believed you if you said you had one.

BTW: You made go back and look at Ellis's new book that I've been talking about, Ellis does have quotes of Madison and notes. I wasn't reading it like a text book with hi-lighter so I missed the quotation marks.

The quote in the quote box ain't me.

I read about half way through your first post and thought "I don't want to live there". Here is much better as imperfect as it is. Sorry that was as far as I got.

I was speaking more in general terms.

Look. Obama wants to bring ObamaCare. That's... scary.

Bush, I mean Cheney, brought us the Patriot Act and the DHS. THAT'S even scarier! I'm supposed to ignore that?

LOOK WHAT 8 YEARS OF REPUBLICANS IN THE WHITE HOUSE GAVE US! THEY SUCKED! IT WAS TIME TO FLUSH THE LYING SOB's!

(deep breath)

My point isn't that Obama isn't a turd; he probably is.

My point is that for all intents and purposes, things would play out similarly with either guy in charge. They were BOTH turds. Details might be different, but as viewed from space, as they say... same damn thing.

EXCEPT, Mr. VAnimrod, in ways that your Nimrodia thread has shown that we agree! With Republicans in charge, with Sarah frikkin' Palin a step away from being POTUS, we get more attempts to mix religion and government. We get more "adventurous" militarism. We get MORE hammering on the social conservative issues that you and I agree on!

I chose the guy more likely to NOT hammer those issues anymore. So he's trying to fix our FUBAR health system. Big whoop. I'll take that over a Repub ticket that was going to pretend teenagers don't screw, and put God back in the schools, etc.

And FINALLY. I'm gonna barf if you make us pretend that the Republicans are somehow less big spenders than the Dems. That's BS. Starting with Reagan, we got massive deficits due largly to military spending. I'm sick of that. And again, you and I agree- the military should be smaller, and more defensive in nature. That will NEVER happen with any of today's Republicans. Never!

I'll take a good-hearted attempt to fix the health care system over spending the same damn money on missile defense... or another bullshit invasion...