Decriminalize Nukes, Hookers and Heroin or Give The Statue of Liberty Back to France

Miscellaneous General
1

Hello, I’ve been working on a book off and on for the past few years with a working title that is in the subject line. I know it’s long so I might just use the title, “Decriminalize Nukes, Hookers and Heroin” then have a subtitle of “…or give the Statue of Liberty back to France.”
Anyways, I’d like to refute the 200 or so most common arguments statists make. Below are common ones I’ve been working on or jotted to work on eventually. Feel free to add to the list or comment on the ones posted below. Ignore grammar and spelling errors for now. Thx

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Intro and preface section

Define freedom.. Do you want to be free?
Define liberty
Nirvana Fallacy
The Law
Broken Window Fallacy

Content

Decriminalizing hard drugs would lead to a nation of drug addicted criminals
If people were allowed to purchase tanks, chaos would surely ensue.
If people were allowed to purchase nuclear weapons, we’d all die.
Decriminalizing prostitution would lead to the rapid spread of STDs and more hookers
The American dollar is money
The government couldn’t stay in business if the income tax was abolished
Terrorists attack us because they hate our freedoms
Politicians would never kill their own citizens to further a political agenda
America is a free country
If you don’t like it, move!
Price controls help the poor
Government welfare helps the poor
Minimum wage laws help the poor
The FDA protects people harmful food and drugs
Taxation is not theft
You sound like a conspiracy theorist kook!
The government can’t violate my Constitutional rights
You are a utopian!
If only we could revive the founding fathers, rather than all of these lawyers we have in D.C. now.
Without license plates, chaos would ensue
Without drivers licenses, the roads would be much more dangerous
Assault weapons should be banned
The government is needed to build roads
The government is needed to provide a military
Completely open borders would bankrupt the country
The Civil War was first and foremost about slavery
Completely open borders would make us an easy target for a terrorist attack
Spreading Democracy into Iraq is the right thing to do
We need to stay in Afghanistan to win the war on terror
If the government didn’t bail out GM, the economy would have collapsed
If the government didn’t bail out the financial sector, the economy would have collapsed
Health care is a right
If it weren’t for Social Security, the elderly would be homeless
If it weren’t for Medicare / Medicaid, the less fortunate and elderly would be dying on the streets
If you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about
The Federal Reserve helps stabilize the economy
Inflation is a natural phenomenon
The American government is by the people, for the people and of the people.
The Supreme Court knows better than you
The problem isn’t government, it’s the Democrats
The problem isn’t government, its the Republicans
What does the Austrian economy have to do with this?
We just need to go back to obeying the Constitution
Abraham Lincoln was a hero!
You might be right with all of this, but is there a better place to live than in America?
James Madison is the father of the Constitution
Alexander Hamilton was a champion of limited government
Government is not slavery
The bank panics of 19th and 20th centuries were because there as no government regulation
A lack of regulation led to the financial collapse of 2007
If Americans vote for it, then that’s how it should be. We are a democracy!
Citizens directly voting for senators makes them more accountable
Government occupational licensing protects consumers
Inflation is when prices increase
Privatizing police departments would make everyone less safe
If the government wasn’t involved in education, poor children would be left behind.
Government regulation is needed to keep an eye on greedy millioaires
Monopolies should be broken up by the government
Government is needed for the courts to function
Government is needed for jails to function
Wars are fought between the people of opposing countries
Government welfare programs needs to be reformed, not abolished
Peace through strength is a motto to live by
Trust by verify is a motto to live by
The Constitution guarantees my freedom
Voting in the right candidate is the way to go about change
If the FAA didn’t exist, planes would fly into each other
Government doesn’t own my property, I do
Government doesn’t own my body, I do
If you have all the answers, why don’t more people agree with you?
Without zoning laws, my neighbor might paint his house pink
What would prevent rogue doctors from killing their patients if there wasn’t government regulation?
At least America isn’t a facist or communist country
The internet has central control/regulation… Oh wait!
We wouldn’t be nearly as advanced as a country if it weren’t for NASA
Without government run social services programs, children would suffer
If it wasn’t for FDR and the federal government, the Great Depression would have never ended
Freedom of speech has its limitations. For example, someone can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater
Companies that send jobs overseas are killing our economy
If government didn’t regulate pollution, smog and trash would be everywhere
We just need to shrink government
We need another contract with America from Congress
Red light traffic cameras rightfully catch those who break the law
Giant corporations like Wal-Mart hurt the small guy
The government isn’t THAT big
If it weren’t for the FDIC, I would be more likely to lose all my money
Without government regulation, free markets will frequently fail
Why has a free society never existed if it’s so great?

2

Wow man, that’s huge! I would advice, for you own sake, to limit the topics somewhat or you’ll never finihs the thing. Otherwise looks great. Just one advice, I’d move that “If you don’t like it, move!” too the very top as it is the single most important point with which people will most likely agree. If that goes though we’ve won. Good luck!

3

tl;dr

Nuclear bombs are inherently criminal because they can’t be used without harming innocent people (here on Earth anyhow), thus they are a threat and should not be decriminalized.

4

They are used (serve their purpose) my merely existing. How does that harm innocents?

5

my=by?

Actually, I can make the case for them contra states, but not in a totally free world. link

6

I’ll be getting three or four tickets in the mail today… lol

7

I would tend to agree. I haven’t gotten to the phase yet where I order what goes where. :slight_smile:

8

That’s missing the point entirely.

If nukes were legal, how many people do you know that would purchase a nuke and destroy a city? Furthermore, Would a law really stop someone with the evil intent and financial means from making use of it?

If nukes ever become $5 but manufacture, we’re screwed, period.

9

I’m now thinking of decreasing it to just 100 points.

Any additions? subtractions?

===

I came up with these few others last night..

Who would maintain public parks?
The government just needs to be run more like a business
Who would maintain national parks?
The government is needed to enforce patent and copyright laws
The FCC is needed to regulate the electromagnetic spectrum
Rich people would rip off the poo

Thoughts?

10

This is according to Rothbards concept of things having a “nature”, and the related universal ethical concepts which are epistemologically suspicious to say the least.

11

No, it’s not actually. Don’t strawman Rothbard.

As clear as day, use or threat… NOT merely OWN.

Except they’re not.

12

While I understand the Libertarian logic that freedom is basically an all or nothing deal – I believe Libs limit their (our) audience by discussing “radical” ideas that people are not ready to hear. I think the fight today should concentrate almost solely on the evils of government intervention in the economy.

There is a large audience waiting to hear this message. It is sickening to hear the “experts” talk about more regulation of this or that when their regulations caused the problem to begin with. And some of the arguments against Libertarianism are right – unless we have a free society first. Example; open borders WILL destroy the richer nation unless the welfare state is dismantled first.

PLEASE AE/LIBS focus on the important fight of today; the Machiavellian evil corrupt state and how every “good” intention leads to unintended consequences. How many average Joe’s realize that the sub- prime loans were pushed on the financial industry by gov. Or that HMO’s were the creation of gov. Or how public/private “partnerships” ruin the private sector and distort production and make them uncompetitive. People do not realize how the government has its filthy tentacles in every single area of the economy and how it affects them. I do not think most people care about the philosophy of freedom, most just care about their wallets.

Both left and right are ready to hear how evil government is. The left via military intervention, the right via economic and church intervention.

Loosely Paraphrasing Mises: “ each of us needs to throw ourselves into the important fight of today or there will be no tomorrow to fight”

13

Ethics of Liberty:

See dude.. he does use the mystical concept of objective"nature" where he looks at objects as something other than instances of the laws of physics. This fallacy is then extrapolated to the ethics paradigm.

14

I knew exactly what you were referring to. And yet, the previous quote outlines the true Rothbardian position, which makes what you eluded to earlier -a strawman.

There’s nothing mystical about it. What exactly is your argument?

What fallacy is that?

15

It is mystical since he includes in the set “nature of an object” properties that are not laws of physics, or more precisely that the laws of physics are a subset of the nature of objects, rather than the superset. Which is nonsense, but a necessary condition for “natural law” to exist as otherwise those claiming to it would have to use the means of physics to prove it, which they are not able to.

16

I think a book like this is a great idea. Make sure it is persuasive and short though! I would definitely buy a copy for all of my statists friends

17

“It is indeed puzzling that so many modern philosophers should sniff at the very term “nature” as an injection of mysticism and the supernatural.” - That it is. lol

I’m sorry, your objection is nonsensical to me. What exactly is wrong with this? (Footnotes from the source you quoted).

[18] Henry B. Veatch, in his For an Ontology of Morals: A Critique of Contemporary Ethical Theory (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1971), p. 7, states:

Recourse must be had to an older notion than that which has now come to be in fashion among contemporary scientists and philosophers of science… Surely, in that everyday world of common-sense existence in which, as human beings, and for all of our scientific sophistication, we can hardly cease to live and move and have our being, we do indeed find ourselves constantly invoking an older and even a decidedly common sense notion of “nature” and “natural law.” For don’t we all recognize that a rose is different from an eggplant, and a man from a mouse, and hydrogen from manganese? To recognize such differences in things is surely to recognize that they behave differently: one doesn’t expect of a man quite the same things that one does of a mouse, and vice versa. Moreover, the reason our expectations thus differ as to what various types of things or entities will do, or how they will act and react, is simply that they just are different kinds of things. They have different “natures,” as one might say, using the old-fashioned terminology.

Leo Strauss (Natural Right and History [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953]) adds:

Socrates deviated from his predecessors by identifying the science of … everything that is, with the understanding of what each of the beings is. For “to be” means “to be something” and hence to be different from things which are “something else”: “to be” means therefore “to be a part” (p. 122).

[19] For a defense of the concept of nature, see Alvin Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 71–81.

[20] See H.W.B. Joseph, An Introduction to Logic, 2nd rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1916), pp. 407–9. For a hard-hitting defense of the view that causation states a necessary relation among entities, see R. Harre and E. H. Madden, Causal Powers: A Theory of Natural Necessity (Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975).

[21] See Murray N. Rothbard, Individualism and the Philosophy of the Social Sciences (San Francisco: Cato Institute, 1979), p. 5.

18

Same with pretty much any bomb, missile, or artillery. Your lack of understanding of rights is just sad.

19

LOL, give me a break man. The things you named can be targeted at a tank or military installation without harming innocents. That they aren’t sometimes is irrelevant. Your lack of understanding of things that go boom is just sad. In terms of my take on rights, you haven’t actually said anything there.

20

Mea culpa.