All the more reason not to participate in the charade, as you clearly have no choice to truly be free by working within such a system. You openly admit that the process is essentially futile and then wonder why I oppose participating in it. Hmm. Why would someone who opposes rulers choose from a highly restrictive package deal of rulers? It doesn’t make any practical sense to me at all.
As I said above, this isn’t a game. Real people are being robbed, and it’s silly to oppose laws and candidates that would minimize the robbery on the grounds that it’s still robbery!
Also, the “choice to truly be free” won’t exist whether you vote or not; you may as well vote for the guy who is less statist, regardless of what else you do.
Either the ethical principle is true or it is false. If it is true, then it should be consistantly applied. If theft is wrong, then theft is wrong, regaurdless of the degree of theft or who is doing it. It would not make sense to support “limited murder” and “limited theft” and “limited slavery”. If an individual proposes a policy of reducing the thefts by half, this does not mean that this policy should be endorsed as the ideal and the remaining half of thefts are somehow legitimate or necessary. What the state gives with one hand it takes with the other.
This is part of the problem with minarchism, I.E. that it’s ethically self-contradictary and inconsistant. I don’t think ethics should be reduced to a pragmatic and comparative cost-benefit analysis between two evils. What one may gain through one canidate to persue one value in one applied case is only gained at the expense of another value or applied case. In politics, the greater values must be sacrificed for appeasement of lesser values in the short-term. But liberty is too important of a value to be sacrificed to any degree.
Hence the need for a Ross Perot type, an outsider with a vast fortune and a willingness to spend it (he didn’t even accept contributions in '92).
I’m not a miniarchist! Stop saying that!
You’re right. It wouldn’t make sense to support any of those things, but it would make sense to prefer “limited theft” to “mass theft”, etc. when you are only given two options.
I absolutely agree that our situation shouldn’t be that. Unfortunatly, it is. We should take every opportunity we have to shrink the state, and that includes elections. That doesn’t mean we should not do other things (education, etc.), it just means we should take the opportunity.
I understand what you mean Ego, but imo you keep on encouraging a false dilemma, that is iscolated between choices A or B, that essentially involves perpetuating a system that has, time & time again, shown to be corrupt & abusive to the concept of liberty.
However, I do think that moderates should do what they want to try, & radicals should do what they want to do. Although, I think the elimination of the LP party would help both moderates & radicals, as it would allow moderates to infiltrate the two major parties, and if they get any reductions done, I’d imagine it could make the radicals’ job easier.
That is of course, assuming that those in power who do the reductions in government & etc., as Brainpolice pointed out, would not be holden to their status of power within the system, and from here I guess the argument goes in a bit of circle, as you could argue that the cycle would continue as those who reduced government would possibly not reduce at some point to keep mainstream voters in an effort to appear more electable, and therefore a rationalization is given that they need to compromise in order to keep on serving their initial principles, which is simply not true (Rothbard said similar, concerning the eventual Utilitarianism of the Classical Liberals, in Chapter 1 of “For A New Liberty”: http://mises.org/rothbard/newliberty01.asp).
Essentially, it would be playing into the popular double-speak of mainstream politics by “taking the opportunity”. Dubiously, I’d imagine it would be congratulated by mainstream sympathizers as some sort of sign that the Libertarians “got something done”, but to believe so would be essentially drinking kool-aid, at that point. I already see this occurring with libertarians concerning the beltway libertarian occurrence; I believe Brainpolice, in an entry on his blog, aptly addressed that as well.
As for me, I’m essentially on the fence; If moderates & radicals could somehow go about their business without (at least immediately) getting each other’s way, I don’t see how both couldn’t be worked at the same time.
First, you were the one to begin claiming a collective voice for libertarians. Second, I do not speak for all “libertarians,” I speak for all revolutionaries.
Second, I do not view this as a game; I view this as a strategy. If you are not accustomed to tactical thinking, then join your pals in the Ron Paul cult.
Third, you mischaracterize Agorism and then exepct the debate to be respectful? Bollix! Parlay those efforts? What efforts? Agorist efforts? Agorism as a broad movement has yet to be tried, however, in every “reform” governments only bow to the will of the people if the people actively oppose opression. The peel acts, for example.
Oh yes, it’s worked so well so far. [8-)]
I quite frankly don’t care about the moral arguments on either side. Voting, in anything other than referendums, is immoral because it supports the state, period.
However, that’s not the angle I’m coming from. If immoral actions must be taken to ensure that the United States government will fall, then so be it - just an example of chickens coming home to roost. My angle directly attacks the reformist nonsense as inefficient and a waste of time.
The point isn’t about a candidate, it’s about a fact that whoever they vote for, we are ungovernable.
You certainly are a statist (mini or otherwise)! You advocate a state; you advocate using a state; you support the state. How are you not a statist?
Your problem comes when referring to the choice as if it really had anything to do with more or less. Regardless of how you vote, regardless of who you vote for, the government will only expand by definition. In either case, you vote to give the government power to do X and eventhough it claims that X will roll back government power, the initial promise is that government will possess more power - also extra government regulations to come with deregulation as a middle of the road policy is inherently unstable no matter what. WIth a government deregulating, deregulations can’t work. This is what Mises proposed as the problem with state-socialism. No matter what, the end result will be, inevitably, tyranny. The only way to reverse this is to purge the system. The result of gradual deregulation of government vis-a-vis government, is that the deregulations will fail, the “market test” will be declared a failure, and you will further muddy the name of an already pitiful philosophy - libertarianism.
It’s funny that such a “conservative libertarian” would advocate state socialist means to end a state socialist system.
The problem is that the “moderates” - I prefer to term them as counter-revolutionaries - are also enemies of the revolutionaries. The counter-revolutionaries surrender themselves dragging the libertarian crest in the dirt along their trails of defeat; all of their work merely serves to reverse the progress of the revolution; even more, they’d sooner fight for the state than they’d fight for the revolution - Ego, for example. They are slime, snakes, traders, and whores for political opportunism. No, the moderates are not our allies, they are not our brothers. Whereas the revolutionary is a son of liberty, the counter-revolutionaries are just the bastards of it.
Very dramatic rhetoric, but I’m still waiting to hear how agorists expect to economically out-compete a state armed with a “magic checkbook”. It takes more than intentions to prevail, and even more than strategy… it also takes tactics.
Do I advocate a state that can’t initiate the use of force? Yes. What do you find objectionable in that belief? And yes, I advocate using the state in order to shrink it; so do you! To go to your agorist meetings, you will probably drive on state-roads, using a car that is created using state-regulations, etc. It’s simply the system we live in, and we have to work in it! Are you going to bash the people in North Korea who eat at the government bread-lines, too?
I agree somewhat with that statement; statist scum will use the always use the “failure of the (non-)market” to justify more taxes and more regulations. It’s why we need to educate people! It’s why we need to try to get in office ourselves (and not under the banner of useless, unwinnable parties)!
You could argue that being a politician is the same as being a slave-master or mafia-boss. I would agree… until I think about the alternative. Imagine if one of us were in office; working to cut regulations, cut taxes, cut the spending, versus a statist doing the opposite. Wouldn’t you rather a capitalist instead? Just because you don’t think we should have politicians (I agree with you) doesn’t mean they won’t exist if you cover your eyes and ears and abstain from voting or running for office. Is it fair we live in a system where we have to try to get the masses to agree to allow us to keep our own money? No, that alone justifies any violent revolution. But if you do cover your eyes and your ears every election-cycle, you’ll wake up the next day disappointed with more taxes, more regulations, more spending, etc.
Again, you could try to alienate me and everyone else that doesn’t believe in your exact path to the same goal. Good luck recruiting members of your revolution with that attitude!
As we have touched on in some earlier posts on this thread, it would henceforth cease to be a “state”, properly understood.
The continued usage of the term “state” as a descriptor of what really is an anarchic organization.
No, agorists do not. Agorists advocate functioning as far outside of the control of the state as possible.
I find this line of argument disingenous because it blames the victim and avoids the fact that we have no choice not to use those things. On the other hand, unless you live somewhere like Australia, voting is not compulsory so you do not have to vote in the same way that you have no choice but to drive on public roads. A distinction should be made between that which is truly unavoidable and that which isn’t. Voting is avoidable. You do not have to vote in order to survive and get by in this world. You do probably have to obtain food and use transportation. Libertarians are not hypocritical for functioning in current society. However, I think that anarchists are hypocritical if they vote because that is not necessary to function in current society and it is very counter-intuitive to or inconsistant with the principles.
The same tends to occur if you vote, no matter who you vote for. The state continues to grow and hold power. So why are you advocating voting as if it really makes a differance? You still seem to be partially clinging to the illusion that the democratic process truly is representative or participatory and can truly significantly change the status quo. The truth of the matter is that for the most part the institution ultimately does what it does regaurdless of your vote, which makes voting little more than a futile charade.
I technically agree with you; I was simply responding to Mr. Nic’s hyperbole.
Same as above, I’ll use that word when someone accuses me of being a statist or miniarchist to make my point.
I don’t understand how it’s counter-intuitive? If you have the chance to shrink (or slow the growth of) government by voting, why not? I’m not saying to abstain from doing other things!
Try to look at this way: you are voting in self-defense. In a normal, free-market situation, voting for a candidate that advocates 20% flat taxes would be the same as you putting your support behind institutionalized robbery, I agree**! On the other hand, if the current situation is one with steep progressive taxes, and the other candidate wants to steepen them, you’d be nuts not to vote** (among other things you can do)!
So far, nothing has worked. Not agorism, not voting, and, in modern times, not violent revolution.
Brainpolice wrote:
I don’t agree that voting is necessarily useless. The “state” is comprised of individuals. Yes, most of them are “the worst” (to use Hayek’s parlance), but IMO that is a FAILURE OF LEADERSHIP. The “heroes” of our society yield political matters to the “worst”. Agorism is (as far as I can tell) an extreme version of this, advocating complete withdrawal from the political system. I’ve been thinking of the problem more incrementally, and currently believe that much of the government can be “defanged” by incremental political means, e.g. my aforementioned idea of getting an Austrian into the presidency in order to destroy the Fed, ending overtly harmful policies such as the War on Drugs or imperial foreign policy, etc.
I guess I agree with you, to a degree, but whereas you look at “the state” as a given (and apparantly an aggregate, I might add), I view it as something that we can change and have an impact on by our decision to 1) participate at all, and 2) to what degree. I can see agorists being apathetic about the current political process given the current political candidates, but seriously, can you fantasize about a situation where a big, handsome, articulate and charismatic leader enters the race, using his own funds and eschewing contributions, with a platform dedicated to manuevers that would absolutely increase freedom (again, think Ron Paul combined with Barack Obama and Ross Perot)? And on the tails of this platform, also with their own money and eschewing contributions, an army of 300 similar leaders running for Congress, the Senate, and the governorships of multiple states (ala a more ambitious Contract with America)? Would you agorists be so willing to sit on the sidelines watching others vote then?
I wouldn’t find any of those things disappointing. The more the state taxes and regulates, the more incentive there is for people to engage in counter-economic activity. The profit potential of the counter-economy increases while the risks remain essentially the same or even decrease, meanwhile the state’s enforcement costs rise while its revenue decreases. The state grows weaker while the market grows stronger, and the peaceful institutions which will take its place, in the provision of security and arbitration and everything else that has a legitimate place in a free market but which the state has monopolized, will be buit before the collapse of the state and will ensure its collapse through competition with it. Even if the political approach were not morally objectionable, and had not been a complete failure these past few centuries, it still wouldn’t provide any way of peacefully transitioning to a voluntary society as none of the necessary institutions would be in place. The political approach not only doesn’t work, it’s completely irresponsible; to abolish the state without having already established some means of arbitrating disputes and protecting persons and property in its absence is a recipe for chaos.
I’ve been politely waiting for someone to say this! That’s awful! You want to raise the taxes, the regulations, the control exercised over other individuals in the hopes that it will convince them to join your revolution!? You are no better than they are! Is this an ego thing for you? I know this sounds incredibly rude, and I was hoping a certain other someone would express that sentiment, but I think the point stands.
Aside from the self-righteousness of that attitude, it doesn’t work. It’s incredibly dangerous to grow government in order to shrink it; there are governments much more controlling that the United State’s and they are still in power? How much worse would you make it for everyone?
Making slavery more tolerable is not a way to abolish slavery, it can only make it that much more difficult for those few slaves who resist regardless to find support amongst the rest.
Using political means to bring about an end to the use of political means is not only hypocritical, it’s also just plain absurd.
I’m not apathetic, I hope Hillary gets in. I’m not voting because to do so would be unethical, but I have been following the situation and I think Hillary is the most likely to lead to a continued erosion of confidence in the state. Obama’s got a cult following; he could start throwing people into gas chambers and millions of people would probably still think he was the second coming. McCain’s not likely to be a popular president, but he’s a Republican and that’s all the “if only we get the right people in office” types amongst the Democrats will see. Hillary’s just like Bush, but with a D next to her name, and she’s already hated by a great many people.
Sounds like a nightmare. If such a thing did happen, it would lead to a state with nearly unlimited resources that would probably become a worldstate before too long, and would leave us with statism for at least a few more centuries, so our descendants would be facing an even worse situation than we are right now.
Actually, I’d probably be too busy thinking up ways to kill all your candidates.
Rich333, you would advocate killing candidates who are working to shrink government? Just what are you doing to srhink government, aside from making threats to other capitalists?