Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Brilliant move from Occupy Denver

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.