Story

Apparently Denver politicians and their enforcers are finding it impossible to deal with the Occupy folks because there is no Occupy leader that the officials can coerce into bringing the Occupy people to heel. Rather than having to coerce each individual protester, then, the officials are insisting that the protesters choose a leader for them to coerce.

So a group of the protesters (not all of them: they have no leader to compel them to do so) elected a dog to be their leader. The dog, through her agents, is now looking to meet with Governor Hickenlooper on behalf of Occupy Denver.

The Occupy folks are drastically wrong about a number of things, and economically clueless; but they do show how much trouble an unarmed voluntaryist community can give a coercive State.

Those with a mind to think should take note and remember.

time for rubber boolits.

Undoubtedly the State will eventually use force to get rid of the Occupy people, probably injuring a number of them and possibly killing a few; force is all the State knows. But they'll become martyrs and millstones around the State's neck if so, and they'll be remembered just like the students murdered at Kent State, the MOVE members murdered in West Philadelphia, the Weavers murdered at Ruby Ridge, the Davidians murdered in Waco, and so many others.

Hard-core State-worshiping conservatives may be convinced that whomever the State murders must by definition deserve it; but there are a lot of smarter folks out there who will see through the State propaganda.

To compare these [bleep] to Randy Weaver is beyond the pale

Too funny, they elected their most intelligent member.

At the moment, yes: none of them have been murdered yet.

Slow night eh?

The State of Colorado isnt exactly known for it's Gestapo like tactics...

I'm sure most of the protestors will leave on their own power. A few $hitheads will chain themselves to benches, trees, etc. They'll get just as hurt as the officers will dragging them to the Paddy Wagon.

Martyrs? I think not.

There are Occupy protesters in much harder-core jackbooted places than Denver--New York, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and like that. The fat lady isn't even in the building yet. We'll see.

I find it amusing how forum members bash cities for being "liberal cess pools" when it fits their agenda, and then another forum member calls the exact same cities "harder core jackbooted places".

OWS is a joke. There might of been a shred of credibility to a fraction of it when it started, but any and all of that has been lost a long time ago. And I emphasize MIGHT of been...

The remaining protestors are basically homeless people who are happy they have a excuse for their situation. The drug addicts, criminals and mentally deranged are all that are left. They need to go back under the bridge and leave the parks and other public places.

Bullsh**. The Denver police have shown remarkable restraint, and were even complimented for it by the "occupiers."

Just wishful thinking on your part, so you'll have something to bitch and complain about.

What do liberal cesspools have a lot of? Government, right? Lots of government translates into lots of dumb laws and statutes and regulations, which eventually require lots of jackbooted State thugs to enforce.

Liberals revere the laws and curse the thugs; conservatives curse the laws and revere the thugs. Neither group sees how inseparably connected they are.

Empty the jails and prisons, release those who have been oppressed; right Twinky?

And little Monkey Face posters here will remain unknown, un-met, and in their mind,...."Invisible"

Damned sorry to see the isolation inherent there.

"Life as we know it"

BRrrrr

GTC

Right into the arms of their victims, along with a fistful of free passes for the victims or their assigns to pursue the remainder of justice in whatever fashion seemed best to them? Hey--it'd be tough to come up with a better solution to prison overcrowding than that.

It'd also be a whole lot more effective in deterring crime than any prison I've ever seen--and I've seen a number of them.

And a whole lot cheaper.

It'll never happen, though: it'd take too much power away from the State.

"We'll see" is correct; but these freaks anger is non-directional with no clear goal. They're angry at a lack of drugs and no free obama cheese. They may fail.
US policy is not to negotiate with terrorists.



However, if their anger was turned towards congress, they might get indictments for theft.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonus_Army

"any prison I've ever seen--and I've seen a number of them."

Neat,.....great way to develop a "World View" if that's what you NEED,...

How, if I might ask does THAT qualify one to speak about FREEDOM ?

GTC

How can you really know about something until you've lost it?

Gimme a break....like we should waste the effort giving these intellectually vacant morons another 5 minutes of TV time.I haven't heard such wide spread stupidity since the 60's.....or at least the last Obama press conference...

As to "state worshippers",I see a lot more of that mentality coming from the "Left" than from conservatives....and it's a mantra of the Occupy Gang,if you hadn't noticed....."We want government to do everything for us...."

I assume that means clearing the streets of primeval ooze as well....?

Not real SURE about what you're asking there, sport, is that a "Trick Question" ?

Been FREE my entire life....Can't see that changing,....
Not in my immediate vicinity, anyhoo.

Must be a "Mindset" kinda' deal.

#1 No love lost when idiots who have never paid taxs or held a job protest in the streets.

#2 No love lost for the idiots who run state county and federal government and think themselves above the law of the land and the constitution.

seeing both groups stalled in the mud makes me smile.
I love it when things fall apart at the seams.

Take notes?
GD right TAKE NOTES.

both groups are doing nothing. They are like a little boy tugging on his pecker because he doesnt knkow what to do with his hands.

useless turds. flush them all, I say.

Liberals worship the part of the state that steals from people (tax collectors and the politicians who drive them and the laws by which they are driven) and conservatives worship the part of the state that kills people (soldiers, policemen, military contractors, etc.).

Of the two, liberals are the more honest, because they admit that they want bigger government. Conservatives claim to want smaller government, but they only want part of the government to be smaller; they still want it to be big enough to impose their mores on their neighbors and the rest of the world. (To be fair, most conservatives seem to think that they really do want smaller government, and have not stopped to consider that a small government would not be able to invade two foreign countries at once or control what people put into their own bodies. Liberals are stupider than conservatives about economics, but conservatives appear to be stupider than liberals about reality.)

True enough. But you could just as easily have been talking about the Tea Party. Before they got co-opted and diluted into irrelevance by the political machine, they were pretty angry too, but they had no clear solution to any of the problems politicians had imposed on them other than electing more politicians.

Lots of people are angry at the government for a whole lot of conflicting reasons, but they seem unified in their conviction that the government isn't doing enough. Tea Party people want to see one set of laws passed, Occupy people want to see a different set passed, but both agree that more law-passing politicians would solve everything.

The upshot is that the government is still winning, for now. When we get a sizeable movement of people who just want government to go away, and couldn't care less who gets elected and who doesn't, as long as the people largely ignore whatever they say or do or decree, then we might have something.


Seriously? You've adopted the practice of calling government dissidents terrorists, regardless of what they do or don't do, as long as you disagree with them? You may be too far gone to save, then.

Kill them, you mean? Using police and/or soldiers, right?

In some areas, those LEOs are the only thing saving the OWS folks from severe azz kickings.....

George

If the majority can't use force to dispel the squatters what are their options? How would people in Barakistan deal with this? Just ignoring them would be a costly method if the merchants are depending on buyers to survive and the buyers refuse to shop due to the squatters?

I'm seriously asking what the solution is from a anarcho-capitalist's point of view. In my mind there's nothing wrong with martyrdom. I can't imagine these people would make good martyrs for a responsible society, though.

It's November 12th... Lets see how the winter of sub zero temps and OWS do... They will be back in the spring and push it until the cites are on fire... Then they will make the rounds on the late night talk shows... After that the fawning news media will cover each time one of the ows people run for office with trumpets blaring if one wins coupled with defining silence when they lose...

What you say would be true if you substituted neoconservative for conservative. Just because most neocons insist on identifying themselves as conservatives doesn't make them that. Conservative has a meaning. Liberty is its priority, but with the understanding that liberty is only lastingly achieved within the context of its traditional pillars, the most fundamental of which being the rule of law. Therefore, the goal of the authentic conservative is to conserve (and, where necessary, restore) said pillars.

You understand that Barak is an opponent of minarchism, right?

Hawk... I can't believe you actually used the words "understand" and "Barak" in the same sentence...

Barak has many of the fundamentals correct, so he understands quite a lot. His problem is that he misses the larger picture, i.e., that liberty, absent its network of traditional supporting structures, is unsustainable.

Kiddin' ya, dood!!

I have no quarrel with Barak. He has his well-reasoned (to a point) views, and I have mine. We have long ago agreed to disagree, no harm, no foul.

In other words, Conservatives want the government to do what it is constitutionally mandated to do (protect the nation and insure domestic tranquility),and Leftists want the government to do, what it was never intended to do(act as a vehicle for redistributive economic policies,and respond to every insane politically correct notion that crosses anyone's mind).

I find it ironic that the real enemies of personal freedoms in this country today, come from the Left Wing, not the Conservatives.

I think you'd better do a serious "reality check",and take a hard look around.I haven't encountered a single Left Wing notion or policy that is grounded in "reality".

What kind of anarchism does he favor? I need to replace the word.

He's an anarcho-capitalist. A minarchist is just how anarcho-capitalists refer to old school libertarians. Minarchists are not anarchists of any sort. What is called minarchism is close to old school conservatism, Barry Goldwater style.

I could be wrong (heaven knows it happens a lot) but I think that those of you who think Barak is defending the movement itself are missing the point. I don't believe he is justifying their stupidity, but rather pointing out their effectiveness at causing serious trouble for the gov't without, as yet anyway, organized violence.

The OWS movement obviously is way off track (if you can even say they have a "direction," which I don't think they do) but the lesson is there nonetheless. In the face of an occupying movement the gov't won't have any choice but to foreably remove them at some point. Then, will the Conservatives who say they're in favor of smaller gov't cheer or jeer? When that gov't we theoretically want smaller rises up in force to remove those with whom we disagree do we say "I may not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it" or set aside our small government sensibilities and turn a blind eye to tyranny?

(I'll give y'all the answer: now is when you tell me that the definition of tyranny changes depending upon who is being oppressed and whether "we" agree with "them"...)

ps- just to be clear, this isn't directed at Mr. Coleman per se, though I did reply to his post

I have always maintained that Barak fails to factor into his "utopia" the problem of human nature. Barakistan would become a nation of warlords operating under the rule "might makes right".

Agreed.

lol No surprises.

Thanks, Hawkeye. I don't understand all the meanings of those terms and appreciate the help. (I still don't understand the differences but don't tell anybody)

If it starts with "anarcho," it refers to the conviction that government, no matter how constituted, is an evil with no redeeming value.

I don't agree with or understand everything Barak say but, I sure do enjoy reading his posts. He is great at getting people to think.

I don't agree with or understand everything Barak say but, I sure do enjoy reading his posts. He is great at getting people to think.

I don't think we disagree, do we?

In a free society, all those parks would be private property. Each would belong to some single private entity which would either be sympathetic to their cause, in which case they'd presumably be welcome to stay until the sympathy ran out, or unsympathetic, in which case they'd be trespassing and subject to ejection, forcibly if necessary.

If sympathetic, nearby unsympathetic businesses that saw their profits threatened would find various ways to bring pressure to bear on the park owners.

And from my viewpoint, every system OTHER than ancap fails to factor in the problem of human nature.

Everybody else says there are humans who can be expected to deny themselves and live altruistically for the interests of others above their own. Socialists say everyone is like this; oligarchists (including republicans) say a few people are like this; monarchists say one person is like this.

Anarchists are the only ones who admit that nobody is like this, and that anyone, given political power, can be expected to succumb to corruption.

Conservative in Florida? Conservative in Pakistan? Conservative in China? Conservative in England, France or Spain?

Does Conservative have a meaning to you, other than "the good guys, you know, the guys that think like me"...?

Sycamore

When they arrived with their leader i would have my Pitt Bull and him have a private meeting in the back room.

Reality check, Captain. If they had the equal access to force and violence, they wouldn't have become VICTIMS in the first place.

Go in to the neighborhoods that prisoners come from, go into their high schools and their homes. They do not have equal access to force and violence, either by size, or genetics or gender. Go look into a drug gang, free-enterprise right? Is the best businessman who delivers the best product at the best price the most successful? NO, it is the dealer who can intimidate or remove his competitors the most effectively.

Sycamore

wait for a freezing night and break out the water cannons....

And yet you believe that anyone, given economic power, would not fall into corruption?

I believe there are societies that are more altruistic than others. I believe there are societies that hold altruism to be a higher value than others, even if they fail to always live up to it.

For all the worship of "the market", most evidence I've seen is that business would rather not have competition.

Sycamore

There are two senses of the word, as you suggest. One simply means a preference for the status quo/distrust of change, the substance of which varies from culture to culture. The other refers to a particular, well established, American political movement. I'm using it in the latter sense.

Exactly right. It's only natural to seek to advantage oneself at the expense of others. That's where the rule of law comes in, the only effective form of which is that which punishes (after the fact, as a deterrence, absent prior restraint regulation) only authentic victimization as classically understood, e.g., theft, fraud, unjustified violence, etc.

Within the contexts of government, established business interests seek to partner with the state in order to disadvantage potential competition. In the context of anarchy, established business interests would seek to use force directly in order to disadvantage potential competition.

The solution is to have a government empowered to punish victimization, but not empowered to impose prior restraint regulations, since it's through the latter by which established business interests are empowered to disadvantage potential competition by a partnership with government in developing and enforcing said regulations.

In Barakistan who would have the power? If there is no authority then might makes right. If you have something I want and I have the ability to take it what's to prevent it? If I do take it then what is the punishment and who enforces it?

Once you decide who has the power then how do prevent them from becoming corrupt?

If you gave me two weeks' notice that the guy who raped my wife was going to be released at the corner of Main and High, and that whatever happened to him was his own lookout rather than mine, I'd scare myself up a bit of force and violence VP matter how poor or black I was.

I'm on my phone right now and a bit cramped. Do a Google search on "Franz Oppenheimer economic means political means" (without the quotes). The two are not parallel or analogous: they're opposites.

Do you hunt or fish?


Travis

The Jackboots are always socialists, they may be labeled fascists, or neocons, or communists, or any other ist, but when it comes down to it there isn't a far right or far left, there is only Liberty or tyranny.

Wall Street got into bed with government to line their pockets, and now they find they are sleeping with a hungry lion. And, OWS is sleeping with the hungry lion too.

The only good hungry lion is a dead hungry lion.

Everyone. No one. You'd have much more power over (and responsibility for) yourself and your own affairs than you do now. You would have much less power over others and their affairs than you do now.


Plenty of authority, but no initiation of force.


Me, and the folks who work for me.

I don't have to wait for the government to mow my lawn: I either do it myself or hire it done, or both. There's no reason I should have to wait for the government to protect me; I can do it myself or hire it done or both.


That's my decision, if your crime was against me. Who else could possibly have moral standing to make such a decision?


You can't. Nobody can. Only anarchists understand this. The best you can do is keep coercive political power out of the hands of men so that the influence of their unavoidable corruption is minimized.

Just hunt. Never learned to fish: not enough water. But I'm much better at shooting than I am at hunting.

I try to be fair and read for comprehension when folks on here seem to be thoughtful and sincere, and sometimes that causes me to rebut.

However, in my experience, the statement shown above seems to be deliberate nonsense. Anyone else see it differently - can you enlighten me about what this poster is trying to do/say?

Would like to read this poster's definition of a "free society".

Prison free
3 free meals a day
Free medical care of the highest standard
Free protection from results of your actions
Free housing that is much better than the navy space wise.
Free gym membership, work outs.
Free mental health care
Free assistance in getting on SSDI upon release.


And the list goes on and on. What these goats think of freedom is the freedom from responsibility.


Why do I call them goats? Well, If you'll eat something someone else stole from the chow hall and carried around in his shorts, that's a goat.

It's easier to understand in context, where you can see which laws and which thugs are being referenced.

You need to substitute in your head the word "neocon" where he says conservative. He means neocons tend to hate programs ostensibly directed at helping the poor, but favor the increase in police power needed to manage the chaos which results from such leftist policies, while liberals love the liberal policies, but hate the increase in police power that was made necessary by the degradation of society caused by the liberal policies.

No government, and thus no commons.

Mostly I agree with you, but where do you get "of the highest standard" for medical care?

A friend of mine is a doctor who volunteers treating prisoners whenever she has a chance, and her assessment of prison medical care is somewhat different.

Hawkeye: Having zero previous experience with that poster, am saying thanks for your deciphers. Appreciated !

Free is free and everything else isn't, there are no levels. At the appearance of the first rule, freedom vanished.

There are only 3 crimes:
Injure the person of another.
Damage the property of another.
Infringe the rights of another.

In a free society there are no external rules, rule makers, or rule enforcers and the only rules that exist are self imposed. So long as no crime (as defined above) is committed there is no authority for initiation of force.

That's double speak. All I have to do is shoot you and take what you have. Those that work for you would then work for me unless they interfered in my shooting you then they wouldn't work for anybody.


You need to explain what you mean by that.



The government doesn't mow my lawn now. I do. The government doesn't protect me in the purest sense at present. Break into my home and I'll do the protecting. I'll have to explain to government later what happened but I think I can do that.



The vehicle we have in place for accomplishing this is the electoral process. It works poorly but that's because we have so many people who are easily beguiled by politicians. In Barakistan you would have the same electorate as we have now except for those that are killed off when they tried to break into my home.

Bottom line: Utopia exists only in the dreams of dreamers. So long as a world is populated by men having a sin nature it can't exist. Any imaginings to the contrary are only subjects to be argued over coffee around the campfire. You may as well be contemplating Heaven and Hell.

Not a bit of reality do I see.

You could gag a maggot. I knew I should not have taken you off ignore, Back to ignore you go you worthless [bleep].

This is why I speak of liberty, rather than freedom. Freedom is the absence of restraint. Liberty is the state in which the law interferes with your doing nothing that is your right to do. It only interferes with things you don't have a right to do. The latter amounts to acts of victimization, and nothing else. If you can't point to an authentic victim, then no crime has occurred.

Why move them on at all?

Just take the opportunity offered and build a nice strong electric fence around them about 16 feet tall topped with razor wire and contain them in one place where they can't cause any more problems.
Call it an inner city zoo where people can come and see the strange animals.

they've been doing a pretty fair job trying to murder each other so far......other than the MSM...and Barak apparently, nobody takes these assclowns seriously enough to do them violence, but at some point their illegal, unsanitary, and criminal-ridden encampments are going to be disbanded, as they should have been on day one.

whatever thou would doest is the whole of the Law. does that about sum it up?

In Ohio, by mandate of the district court like most of the other prisoner "rights". Our inmates are treated at Ohio State University. We have a local Doctor on staff, but they also do telemed conferences. We have chronic care clinics for everything under the sun. Inmates get name brand drugs, not generic. Medical staff on sight 24/7. We run ambulances out all the time. Inmates sit at a local hospital if they can't take a 2 hour ride, in a private room with two officers.

Dental, eye care, podiatry, dietician services, regular blood draws, special diet meals. Not to mention an entire mental health system built within our framework and overseen my the department of mental health.


These guys are treated better than I was in the Navy, and better than Vets are today.

Huh.

Around here, medical services are pretty good when they're provided, but the waiting list is months if not years long. It's not unknown for an inmate to die after waiting in line for three months for a simple X-ray. One guy in my software-development class (yes, I understand that that's yet another indulgence) has been in a wheelchair for a couple of years with a dislocated hip, waiting for somebody to snap it back in. Most of the guys are missing at least one tooth--some of them all their teeth--because the only dental instruments available are forceps. Prescription mess like insulin and blood thinner are provided, but OTC drugs are sold in the commissary at street-plus prices.

In short, it seems like the sort of system where nothing is made available unless the department has specifically lost a lawsuit.

Not that I particularly object. You know by now what I think of tax-funded government services. It just didn't square with what you'd described.

but what you've described doesn't square with reality....unless you work in some sort of rogure prison out of a bad movie. the feds and various prison do-gooder groups are all over state correctional institutions on medical care issues....and over issues far more trivial than what you describe.

I wonder, Barak, if you're not being played.

I have a friend who CAN'T stay out of jail. He goes in to get glasses, teeth, all the medical stuff, for free. He is basically homeless, and goes to jail a lot in the winter, when it's cold. That is my experience. But I do not WORK in a jail. You may see more than I do.

And that's a damn shame.

I was just curious. Because it seems to me you only frequent this site to draw people into listening to your stupid [bleep] theories.




Travis

And all this time I thought you were a pretty bright fellow who just liked toying with people. (shrugs) If that's the depth of your perception, so be it.

I think water canons would work well in winter weather. These nuanced big city liberal fecal heads are making a mockery out of law and order. Its time to drive these worthless scum back to the sewers they crawled out of!

I think a killdozer would work better than water cannons.

I haven't missed your larger picture. I've heard it, extensively, from you and others; I've considered it; and I've respectfully rejected it.

If liberty required a structure of long-standing traditions to exist, then it could never have come into being in the first place.

Back to the OP...



ie. a mob. Treat it like one.



Great, like Caligula, they elevate an animal to the office of elected official out of contempt.



The OWS are wrong about nearly everything, and a coercive state would not let them be there in the first place.

Don't forget the part about preemptive invasions of sovereign foreign countries, holding of prisoners without charges or access to counsel, torture of prisoners, execution of American citizens without due process, property forfeiture, creation of victimless crimes, no-knock SWAT raids (especially on raw-milk dairies), and so on. All that stuff is roundly unconstitutional and just as roundly supported and even cheered by many of the conservatives right here on the Campfire.


The real enemies of personal freedoms in this country today are in the government, in both parties. You or I may be an enemy of freedom, but unless we have enough political power to actually destroy other people's freedom and make it stick, we can't hold a candle to the effectiveness of the government.

Yes, it does. It used to have a different one--the one you're talking about. Today, when people say "conservative," they mean what I'm talking about, not what you're talking about.

If you don't like the idea of calling yourself a libertarian or a minarchist, you might consider "paleoconservative." But just "conservative" these days means neocon. Steve_NO, isaac, watch4bear, jorgeI, and like that. If you're going to continue to call yourself a conservative, you'll need to keep handy your speech about how you use the word differently from everybody else, or folks will get the wrong idea.

The_Real_Hawkeye is right.

I'm the kind of anarchist who derives all his political principles from the premise that every man owns himself, but no one else. That, along with a proper definition of "owns," will drive one to anarcho-capitalism, or ancap for short.

The other main branch of thoughtful anarchists derive their political principles from the premise that everyone owns everybody and is owned by everybody. Those are anarcho-socialists, or ansocs for short.

Then there are a bunch of non-thoughtful anarchists who just want to smoke their pot, or just want to maximize chaos, or just want to destroy things, or just want to pursue their own interests at the cost of anyone and anything that stands in their way. We generally call these folks libertines and stay the heck away from them.

It gradually came into being as those structures did, and as those structures approximated the forms which supported liberty. Liberty didn't just pop into existence in full form one day.

Napalm or white phosphorous would be much better.

Got a link or three to back that up?

Technically you could, but in real life you wouldn't, because there would be a couple of really unpleasant consequences to that choice, even if you happened to catch me completely unawares.

First, unless you and I are the only ones on a deserted island, there will be others around. When they hear that you shot me and took my stuff, the first thing they'll think is, "Maybe he'll shoot me and take all my stuff next." Unless you can present a really good justification for shooting me and taking all my stuff, you're going to find yourself under pretty heavy surveillance from the neighbors, in the very best case. In a somewhat-less-than-best-case situation, you might well have a little accident that leaves you in a state that makes it difficult or impossible to be shooting anybody and taking their stuff.

Second, the folks who work for me don't just work for me, they work for a lot of other people as well. Most of their income comes from those other people. If their other clients hear that they let a client get robbed and murdered and didn't do anything about it, they'll lose all those clients to more responsible competitors and go out of business. So first they're going to do their level best to keep you from robbing and murdering me, to preserve their own business reputations; but if you succeed anyway they're going to track you down and bring you to justice, so that they can advertise that they've done so to their other clients.

In a free society, you'd already know about those two consequences, and it would be very unlikely that you'd be willing to risk them just to get my stuff. If you did, then your story and the photos of your broken body would serve to make it even less likely that the next guy would make the same choice you did.


Okay, authority.

Suppose I respect you as a gunsmith, and I have a barrel to set back, and so I call you up and ask you for advice about how to go about setting back a barrel. You give me some specific directions. I think they sound like good ideas, so I do exactly what you say, exactly the way you say to do it.

That's authority. You have authority over me because I have decided for my own reasons to extend that authority to you.

Now suppose you're not a gunsmith, but a bureaucrat. You hear that I'm setting back barrels in my garage, and you send me a letter threatening arrest and imprisonment unless I follow a list of specific directions. So I follow the directions.

In this case you have no authority over me, because I have not decided to extend any authority to you, and I'm the only place you can possibly get authority over me (unless I'm your child, which is dealt with under other cover). What you have is power over me: societally-legitimized power to initiate force against me.

Initiation of force (or, colloquially, coercion).

Initiation of force is when Jones commits an act of force or fraud against Smith without Smith having first committed an act of force or fraud himself.

For example, if Smith is peacefully conducting consensual, voluntary business transactions on a street corner, and Jones arrests him and locks him in a cage, Jones is initiating force against Smith. In a free society, this is unacceptable.

One more. If Smith is setting back barrels in his workshop (get it? Smith? Ha ha, I crack me up) and Jones breaks in to steal his HDTV, and Smith shoots him dead on the entry runner, then Jones initiated force against Smith (unacceptable in a free society), and then Smith employed retaliatory force against Jones (perfectly fine, even laudable in a free society).


Good point, but you're nevertheless required under threat of imprisonment to pay for that protection you're not using. In a free society, you'd be able to spend that money on something you actually did use.


Politicians are people who pursue coercive power. To get it, they must be good at beguiling people; therefore, they develop the skill. You can claim it's the people's fault for being beguilable, of course, the way it's a rape victim's fault for being female, but politicians have been beguiling their subjects ever since the first roving bandit convinced the first farmer that the money the bandit was extorting was for the farmer's own protection. Regardless of whose fault it is, it's the presence of the politicians that leads to the beguiling. No politicians, no beguiling.


I disagree.

The electorate we have now is in its vast majority a herd of thoroughly domesticated livestock where political matters are concerned. Livestock need to be owned, need to be farmed. Turn a dairy cow out of the pasture, ignore her when she comes to the gate bawling to be milked, and she won't last very long. She doesn't understand freedom, she doesn't like it, and she'll do whatever she can to become owned again; if she can't manage it, she'll probably die.

You can't have a free society with domesticated livestock; you need wild, independent, free creatures for that. A herd of African cape buffalo, magically transported into an American dairy farm, would in short order make a kindling-pile of the farm and be out in the wild places, where they would do just fine thank you very much.

There will probably always be people with a burning need to be ruled; such people will always be able to find plenty of folks with a burning need to rule. But neither will be the sort of people you'll find in a free society.

This occupy thing was OK to start, simply people exercising their constitutional rights. The Libs claimed it and tried to take control, but it's now a liability. They saw it degrade and scum bags take over. It was to be their Tea Party, didn't pan out that way. It has devolved well beyond redress of grievances. They wanted a "Liberal Spring" in the same light as the Arab Spring. Just like the Arab spring, all is not as what was conceived.


Now I wonder if I would walk through occupy Cleveland, how many "How many times I'd hear "Hey C/O!" More than likely I'd get my guts cut out.

Sure it did--on the sixth day of Creation. Liberty was the natural state of humanity until the first State came along to destroy it.

Persuasively argued, Barak.

From a naturalistic perspective (as opposed to a religious one), I would say that pre-civilized man was free (i.e., without legal restraint) but not at liberty (i.e., possessing only the freedom, acknowledged in law, to do that which is his right, which means basically everything short of victimizing others). Freedom is a mixed bag since your life depends on the next stranger you meet deciding not to kill you. Under liberty, however, all understand that killing is only justified in the law under very narrowly defined circumstances, and if you do it otherwise, the great force of the law will seek you out, make every effort to capture you, and then bring you to justice.

Barak seems to envision a world without a government, which has never existed in the history of man, and never will. When the government breaks down you end up with Somalia, war lords and feudal kings. There is always a power structure.


Hey, he wants no rule of law, Maybe he should move to Somalia

Agreed, and yes that's the world Barak envisions. It's a complete waste of his impressive intellect. He'd be infinitely more helpful if he directed his mind towards the advocacy of smaller government, the rule of law, free markets, and the right of private property, along the lines of a Ron Paul or a Peter Schiff.

There is an apex point in potential liberty, and it is not found sustainably under anarchy. It's only found sustainably in the context of strictly limited constitutional government with an emphasis on maintaining the rule of law; private property; and divided and decentralized governance. Perfection is not achievable, but its closest possible approximation can be found only within these parameters, properly fine-tuned.

Barak is fearful he might lose his 'prayer rug'!!

Ohhhh, NOW I see why you guys make all those disparaging remarks about Barak. Deservedly so I might add.

The main purpose of Occupy, IMHO, is to distract the media away from serious problems of the current administration. Gunwalker, Solyndra, illegal payoffs with federal contracts to campaign donors, southern border insanity and a further sinking economy are all being overlooked while Occupy is front page news. Why do you think all of the lefties from prez on down have endorsed it? Confrontation with authorities will just create a thicker smoke screen for the white house to hide behind while continuing to destroy our country. Lets hope for freezing rain and ice so the Occupods slink back to their parents basements without becoming heroes.

First, I'm much more interested in freedom than I am in security. If I have freedom I can make however much security I want; but by the time I have a State big enough to credibly promise me security, freedom is going to be awfully expensive and hard to find, and so much of my resources will be being confiscated to support the State that I might not be able to afford it even if I could find it.

Second, as illustrated above, it doesn't require a State to hunt down and persecute criminals; all it requires is a population that doesn't appreciate being victimized and is independent and self-sufficient enough to do something about it, rather than whining for rulers to save them. "Law," in such a situation, evaluates not to shrewdly written legislation composed by power-hungry bootlicking lawyer-politicians for their own self-serving purposes, but rather crowdsourced bottom-up cultural custom and tradition that may not even be codified anywhere, but are trained into everyone from birth anyway.

In a free society where assault, for example, is traditionally a crime, and it's perfectly clear before God 'n' everbody that you assaulted somebody, you're not likely to get off on a technicality.

On the contrary: human society existed for thousands of years before the first State was invented (or possible), and even after the State was invented there have been several societies that have gotten along just fine without one--some for longer than the US has been in existence. The State itself has gone through several evolutionary stages trying to keep up with developing technology and education. There's no reason not to believe that one day the concept of the State may become obsolete. (If it does, it may well be replaced by an equal or greater danger; but the point is that the State is by no means eternal or permanent.)

An example: in hunterer/gatherer societies, where nobody has a permanent address, you can't have a State because--among other things--you can't rob a population you mostly can't find, and if you could find them they wouldn't have much you could steal anyway. You have to wait until they settle down and start farming an immovable plot of land, and have a house you can threaten to burn and capital equipment you can threaten to destroy if they don't pay.

Today, in leading-edge crypto-geek circles, we're seeing a much higher-tech version of this same phenomenon. If you know what you're doing when it comes to computers, networks, and cryptography, you can make yourself and your property practically impossible to find. You can't be taxed if you make it prohibitively expensive to find you; and "prohibitively expensive" is fairly easy if when they find you all they've got is you and no property they can steal to pay for their efforts.

A few scattered pernicious tax "cheats" are no real danger to a State; but there are many efforts afoot to popularize the methods used by such people so that almost anyone, even people with little or no knowledge of how computers work, can use them with a bit of instruction, study, and preparation.

If even 10% of the population (say, the smartest and therefore richest 10%) made themselves untaxable, the State would be in increasingly serious trouble; it wouldn't take much more to make the State intractably hard to maintain and therefore obsolete.

There's also the advent of Bitcoin and other forms of digital cash; when digital cash becomes common, Jim Bell's Assassination Politics (Google it) will follow as sure as day follows night, and any significant concentration of coercive political power in one person will be equivalent to a death sentence. (My guess is that as a CO you'd be especially sensitive to this concept.) No State can exist in that sort of environment.

It's not just the US federal government that's on the way out during this season of history; the very concept of a State itself may not have much longer to go. What comes next? Interesting question. What do you think?

Very interesting question. A couple of Heinlein books, Friday for one, envisioned both small traditional states as well as "corporate states".
Even if the fabric of the United States broke down I still think it would re-form as something similar or several similar small confederacies.

State, tribe, still a power structure. All they have to do is make you afraid, which is the same as the government does. Even in hunter groups there is a leader, and in gatherer groups also.

Ancaps have no problem with the concept of authority; we think it's vital to the existence of society and have no wish to see it abolished.

It's coercive political power that's the abomination--the authority-free kind that's unique to States and criminals. You don't find that in tribes or clans.

I'm wondering how you can include Kent State woththe rest. If you were armed and a bunch of "students" were throwing bricks at you and yours, would fire upon them? A carefully thrown brick is just a lethal as a propertly aimed bullet.

If you're powerful, and/or well enough positioned, yes, but under the rule of law (properly instituted) it doesn't matter the extent to which you are personally powerful and/or well positioned, as the law will punish your victimizer equally regardless. So, if you're a powerful person, Barak, or one who tends to be highly popular and well positioned, I can see how absolute freedom would favor you, but you would be in a minority in this respect, which is why absolute freedom is wiped out wherever it's discovered by organized humanity, i.e., because too many people making their own standards with regards to the rights of others is a dangerous environment in which to start and maintain families in which to raise children. Most folks want an orderly, peaceful, and reasonably safe, environment for that. Thus the drive for establishing agreed upon rules enforced by someone in authority, such as judges, magistrates, elected sheriffs, volunteer deputies, militiamen, etc.

Of course such freedom has been held before, and perpetuated for periods of time - but not for long as measured in the grand scale of time. As ever, the enemy to such perpetuation has been, and is, the nature of mankind.

The smarter and more practical parts of mankind know this and have designed structures in efforts to perpetuate, protect and survive. Some of these experimental designs have been better than others, but all suffer and become corrupted to some extent by that same human nature. So, we try.

Dreaming is part of human nature - thank goodness. Unfortunately, dreaming can become a costly and wasteful luxury in the raw face of reality - in the form of sinful mankind.

For authority to have authority it must have power to enforce their decrees. 'Time outs' won't work with a lawless people. If you, the person in authority, tell me that I must do such and such how do you handle my response of "make me"?

Mickey;

Don't try to use either logic or reality. Edward is mentally incapable of grasping either, or of viewing any issue from a perspective other than the one he finds originally on the subject. It is part and parcel of his diagnosed deficiencies.

He's using the word authority loosely, such as "Rick is an authority on the history of baseball." He understands that's not how you're using it, but by being equivocal he can generate a logical sounding argument to support his position.

If you have authority over me, it is only because I have chosen to give you that authority. If I have chosen to give you authority over me, it would be counterproductive for me then to choose not to do as you say.

If I do refuse to do as you say, it's either because I never gave you authority over me in the first place, or because I have chosen to withdraw that authority in the meantime: either way, by the time I get to the place where I say, "Make me," you no longer have any authority over me.

If you have enough guns and enough thugs to man them for you, you can force me to do as you say whether I choose to or not; but that's merely power of the sort that governments and criminals have, not authority. Just because you have power to initiate force against me does not give you any authority to do so. As a matter of fact, no one ever has authority to initiate force against another.

The key is that the question of whether you are in authority at any moment is answered not by you, not by your boss, not by some vague notional electorate or constituency, but by the specific people over whom you are (or are not!) in authority. If they say you are, then you are--over them, and no one else. If they say you're not, then you're not, no matter how many fancy titles or degrees you have.

I think your essential question probably doesn't address authority at all, though. I think you're asking, "In a free society, what if somebody does something that violates the rights of another? What can you do to him if you don't have any authority over him?"

Retaliatory force doesn't require any authority--only a prior initiation of force--and standing to determine the form and extent of that retaliatory force can only belong to the victim, or the victim's assigns.

If I steal from you, who is some politician or some judge to claim that he understands the magnitude of my crime well enough to assign a penalty for it? The seriousness of a theft is highly subjective! The answer is that you are the only one in the world who is morally qualified to decide the seriousness of my crime against you and therefore the penalty that would be just. (If you're smart, you'll seek the counsel of experts in the field, because you'll want to pick a penalty that will have a comparatively small chance of producing negative consequences for you; but the final decision has to be yours.)

Doesn't take power or position.

Tomorrow night, get a knife, head down to the highway overpass, grab one of the homeless folks sleeping there, and try to drag him off at knifepoint.

I won't be surprised if you survive the ordeal, but you'll be heavily bruised, contused, and lacerated, and you'll know much better than to try anything like that again. Homeless people understand that their only power lies in numbers, and they're quite adept at using that power.


It's a fantasy. There never has been such a society, and there never will be. Wealth and power always influences monopoly "justice." Takes free-market competition to keep it honest.


A heavily crime-ridden society, you mean?

I heartily agree. That's one of the major problems with a State. Only under a State are criminals well enough protected from the consequences of their crimes to be able to prosper. Without a State they would be quickly beggared, maimed, and killed. Why? Because:


...and are willing to do what's necessary to achieve it.


Wow--there's a non-sequitur. Kind of like, "Thus the drive for housing the defenseless chickens in a sturdy, secure coop with a stout door that can be locked at night...and appointing a detail of foxes to hold the keys and keep watch over them."

The point is not the politics or even the realities of the situation; the point is that people still remember, more than 40 years later, that the government--specifically the National Guard--murdered four students at Kent State.

If the government murders Occupy folks in efforts to disperse them, people will remember that for forty years too, no matter how badly you think they needed killing.