A tyrant? He’s not the one advocating voting and using the system. He’s not even trying to use force. How exactly is he a tyrant? Or are you just trying to be dramatic?
He is correct in stating that the worst things get the more distrust in government occurs. To deny this is lunacy.
By creating more trust you are holding back the governments demise. If you’re ok with a smaller government instead of no government that’s fine, but please stop calling yourself an anarchist.
I said I often like to troll while debating, not instead of debating. Were I just trolling, it’d be pretty obvious. It wasn’t my intention to troll at all here, but when you start sounding like the retarded, barely sapient, neocons on protestwarrior.com, it just sort of happens.
How is use of the internet a use of political means?
Go ahead and continue to mischaracterize everything I’ve said. It’s hilarious.
The state is always brutal. You’re confusing quantity with quality. The difference between high taxes and low taxes is quantitative. The difference between taxes, high or low, and no taxes is qualitative.
rofl
Ego, I think you’re overlooking this :
The state is a criminal club. People voluntarily join the state because they realize it’s in their best interest to do so, just like people join an army to ‘share’ the spoils. Given that, the leadership of the club, army or state, don’t really matter. Imagine that a military chief one day decided that pacifism is the way to go. If he did that he’d get instantly killed by his subordinates.
The size of the state can’t be reduced from the top. If a libertarian gets elected he wouldn’t be able to do much, because the whole system exists for only one purpose - legal plunder.
He wants others’ lives to be as miserable as possible in hopes they’ll change their mind. He doesn’t have faith in other individuals to become capitalist if their taxes are cut. That’s why I made that statement.
While this is true I think you’ll find that this is occurring because the government was thrown into chaos before solid, reputable, businesses were created (or even any kind of infrastructure). This left a void that needed to be filled quickly, and criminals, who were already accustomed to using fraud and force, where more than happy to oblige. The reason we need to begin creating a working black/grey market now is so when the government evaporates it isn’t overrun by bloodthirsty savages that don’t mind screwing over people with guns.
You’re free to do what you wish but I feel that voting in “representatives” that are sympathetic to our philosophy does nothing but slow down the growth of the private market. People are more willing to pay taxes when it isn’t high. They’re less likely to distrust the government, which means they’ll continue to oppose our views. If they want a large government (for now it looks like they do) then I’m not going to stand in their way. I’ll continue to contribute to a black market and help get everything ready for when their system fails.
I’m not going to vote. I’m not going to involve myself in something I completely disagree with. There are more important things to do imho.
Let’s say taxes get so high that even pro-tax statist leftists agree that it’s unbearably miserable. Why do you assume they would want to eliminate them? Why wouldn’t they just cut them back to a less miserable point? At that point, several years (decades?) have been wasted.
Yeah but they’re voting for it, he’s just letting them live with their choices. It’s not like he’s working on the Hillary campaign or anything lol. It’s like you’re calling him a tyrant simply because he hopes the people get what they’re voting for.
I’m curious, why do you think people will suddenly become capitalist when their taxes are cut? During the industrial revolution socialism was on the rise yet people were being taxed less. I really don’t think taxes influence people as much as a nanny state would.
You’re still not getting it, or the mischaracterization is deliberate. Black and grey markets make life easier, not more difficult. As they expand and become more widespread, life for most people will become easier still.
Because it will take years to roll the taxes back to a bearable point. In the meantime more people will look for a way around the system for their own relief. Government is slow but the people are pretty quick to pick things up. While congress is bickering about how much needs to be cut normal people will be using a system that was created years in advance. At that point it wont matter how much taxes are cut, the people will have found a system that gives them what they wanted without the extra cost and force. The government will become less and less relevant until it is ignored altogether.
Agorism isn’t the end all be all to getting rid of the government but it is absolutely necessary if we want a stable world after the government is gone. Something needs to replace government institutions and I’d rather it be business that’s been working within this philosophy than some hyper-huge state backed corporation.
That’s a collectivist mindset. “They” aren’t all voting for the same person, and those of “us” who don’t vote still have to live with the consequences of the election. If elections didn’t have an effect on anyone but the winners’ supporters, no one would have any right to complain!
“They” is the majority and that’s who he’s talking about. It’s easier to convince individual people not to rule you than vote for a candidate and hope he/she doesn’t screw up to the point of dragging your philosophy through the dirt. One bad move by a candidate can become a huge train wreck that will take years to get out of.
If you’re worried about how it’s going to affect you then refuse to support it. Refuse to give your money! Refuse to submit to their rule.
If it were as simple as everyone refusing to give money, that would be fine.
Taxes aren’t voluntary though. I’d rather pay taxes and obey the law than risk being jailed.
It is that simple if everyone decides not to give their money. Hell even 10% would make a huge dent. Imagine if that 10% were also extremely vocal about not paying their taxes. What’s the government going to? Throw 10% of the population in jail for peacefully resisting? How do you think that’ll go over with the general population when their family members/friends are taken away for refusing to support a system they are morally against?
Then don’t refuse to pay your taxes, but just so you know… this isn’t going to be a cakewalk that we can vote our way out of.
Ego could you also address this:
If we can manage to shrink the state and open up the markets (and that doesn’t mean lowering taxes and increasing regulations and spending), people will notice the benefit. That, combined with education about economics in general, can cause the pendulum to swing to our side for the time.
No matter what we do, we’ll have to talk to people about capitalism.
The magic checkbook happens to be the state’s demise. Through inflation they doom all those who use their currency to ever-worsening boom-bust cycles and a mounting pile of debt. Besides this, the general inefficiencies related to the calculation problem mean that their capital (or rather plunder) would always be far less efficiently invested than on a free market.
Could you tell me how you came to the conclusion that if we lower taxes, and regulation, and educate others about capitalism, people will suddenly switch to capitalism? From what I’ve seen, socialism actually rises in the face of low regulations and taxes.
I’m just wondering what you’re looking at that makes you think your plan will have any positive effect.
Socialism rises in the face of low taxes and high taxes! 
Capitalism works, and people will notice it working. We need to educate people about markets to remind them that the bumps in the road the economy may face are the result of intervention, not a sign we need more.
The system exists for positive reasons, not normative ones. Most of those involved do not see it as “plunder” in this day and age; most think the government is benign or at least necissary for civilization. The state doesn’t need anyone malicious or evil in order to exist. Don’t confuse the results an institution produces with the motives of its members, because they are often two very different things.
The problem with a counter economy, as I see it, is the extreme difficulty in providing capital-intensive goods and services with a government as your sworn enemy. The obvious example of this is banking, through which the government can control much of the economy. As long as the government maintains control of the “commanding heights”, I don’t see how any counter-economy could succeed or even gain a foothold.
In my view its just a coordination problem, one giant negative externality. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down, and so no individual or small group has enough to gain by opposing a state in order to do so on their own. Most individuals don’t even have the incentives to adopt rational political beliefs, let alone act on them.
Ego, the goals of logic and rhetoric are often at odds. Typically the later requires the absence of the former in order to get people to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do, so I wouldn’t bother arguing.
My suggestion is to at least use proper tools for the job of figuring out how to reduce coercion: prediction markets. Libertarians aren’t at all immune to the biases and incentives which cause everyone else to adopt irrational political beliefs. Prediction markets make people put their money where their mouth is; they sift away much of the BS.
If an organization commits crimes on a massive scale, then the people who make this organization possible are criminals. That you claim “they don’t consider themselves criminals” is really beside the point - and also false. I’m sure that some or most of the people working for the state know full well what they are doing.