So as not to hijack this topic: Should a free society allow for the viewing of child pornography? I’ve decided to make a new topic for a more focused discussion.
From here: http://mises.org/journals/jls/17_4/17_4_1.pdf
And again:
Another very important quotation:
You’re just being pedantic now, and side stepping the issue. The fact of the matter is that in the arrangement you advocate there is nothing you can do to stop the price of your house declining in situations like these.
Once again, this is just you being pedantic.
What do you mean? The problem of public goods is still relevant, the problem is that most people who raise them in opposition to anarchism consider them in a vacuum, which isn’t the case.
You can build infrastructure by buying land between two properties. Of course, you must still allow free access to other properties (e.g. allow simple crossing of a long road without demanding payment). Besides, there’s no reason land should be bought in square-like parcels. It’s like saying a 1000x20 m^2 production facility is public goods.
"Inequality, conservatism, feudalism, elitism. Better known as libertarianism."
Give me a break. Your principles and/or your application of them blatantly contradict libertarianism, and it doesn’t take a left-libertarian perspective to see why it is absurd to define libertarianism in terms of “inequality, conservatism, feudalism, elitism”. Clearly, you are being trollish and disingenous.
I’m not side stepping anything. You just described ‘problems’ which can’t exist. Since the issues are imaginary there’s no real need to solve them and thus no need for “feudal-like” arrangements.
The problem of free-riding is another non-issue. See Solving the “Problem” of Free Riding
Under libertarianism there won’t be a state around to pass laws against inequality, conservatism, feudalism and elitism.
Compare the mediocrity, the dysfunction, the frustrated gnosticism under the state’s ruthlessly egalitarian order to, say, a successful football team, a complex construction project, or Porsche’s brilliant financial coup of Volkswagen, and watch the Left’s pretty little lies perish.
Under libertarianism there won’t be a state to promote or back up inequality, conservatism, feudalism and elitism. Under libertarianism there is likewise no state to uniformly ban equality, liberalism, “alternative lifestyles”, communes, unions, and so on. So what’s your point? It does not logically follow from libertarianism that those things (your clear preferance for traditionalism and conservatism) become dominant or uniform, and the moment that you advocate them in such a way (I.E. as uniform or compulsory) you are no longer being consistant with libertarianism.
And here you return to the same false premises that have already been debunked. The state’s order is not egalitarian. The structure of the state itself is not egalitarian, and the structure of society that a state enables is not egalitarian either. So your claims are simply detached from reality.
Your rhetoric about “the left” (which is just a buzzword for you at this point) is amusing, as well as the fact that you naively attribute all success in the world to conservative values and assume that “the left” is opposed to such things per se.
I must agree with Brainpolice.
As an aside: as I lurk, it sounds as through Byzantine And GilesStratton are striving to sound like cartoon villain caricatures. This is all very entertaining! Keep it up.
I think some people on here dont know what feudalism is. Which wouldnt be a problem if they weren`t so eager to use the word.
All those activities owe their existence to the democratic state because the market could give a shit about them. In a free market, unions are trade guilds, and they don’t spend two seconds worrying over the fact that not enough women and blacks are becoming engineers. Communes–the only successful ones are patriarchal/religious. And even the convents require a priest to act as celebrant and confessor. Alternative lifestyles are just that: marginal and isolated.
Personally, I can’t wait for anarchy.
There’s a website about people like you:
No. I’ll continue to comment as I wish. I won’t tell you to shut up however; your ideas are hilarious!
Way to ignorantly lash out. You don’t know anything about me! Keep going, this is fun.
On the contrary, how about that notion that all people are equally educable so we should build public schools so everybody can be a genius. That one’s a real hoot. Or that employers don’t know who the best person is for a given job so we need to enact legal mandates to make sure they hire enough women and ethnic minorities. What a knee-slapper.
If this is directed towards me, I neither support public schools nor hiring quotas. I support no state action; I am an anarchist.
I don’t believe all people are equally educable, and I have had experience with employers hiring people for reasons that do not amount to merit. I do believe that all employers are not equally educable, for instance.
That premise is unjustifiable. The state did not invent equality, social liberal preferances, alternative lifestyles, communes and unions. There are people in society who have a demand for such things. The market, in turn, is capable of supplying those things. So long as there are people in society who have a demand for such things, a supply will tend to arise in the attempt to appease such demands. You’re very blatantly conflating “the market” with your demands as an individual, but “the market” tends to represent the sum total of demands of those who participate in it. There is no rational basis for you to claim that “the market” inherently will lead to a uniformly conservative society, other than to merely assert your preferance for it to.
It does not follow from the mere fact that a particular lifestyle is alternative or practised by a minority that it is not tolerated per se, or that it is illegal per se, or that it is completely isolated per se. All you’re doing is asserting your preferance for it to be marginalized and isolated, not proving a fact that it inherently must be.
Me too, because anarchy is NOT what you’re defining it as - a society that is even more heirarchical than what we have today.
It won’t be uniformly conservative. There’ll be plenty of places like Oakland, Detroit, Camden, etc.
Well I think it`s pretty clear Byzantie is an Amish hater. He is always going on about communes and alternative lifestyles.
They both gladly play the bad guy, but if you follow the argument closely, they make their arguments, and their opponents do not refute them with ideas or facts. Just dissent.
I think the people most irritated by what they say, are the ones who think that anarchy or libertarianism will guarantee social justice in the broadest sense of the word. Read carefully, and Giles and Byzantine never make an argument for coercing someone. They merely point out, that the state coercively supports a lot of social institutions that would probably wither from lack of support and special privilege in a free market.
And that really upsets some people, who ironically claim that their opponents (apparently including myself based on past posts) are conservative (attached to established order) when in fact, their notion of social justice is the state established position.
Also note, that while Giles and Byzantine are attacked for being pro-hierarchy, ask yourself honestly, does mankind naturally order itself hierarchically? I would say so. There are too many examples outside of the state to make the case.
And yet BP will argue that hierarchy by itself is a state institution and the post state world (anarchy) would feature a flat social order.
This is counter to honest discourse on liberty. The state seeks to make us all equal, it’s our differences that drive evolution in the market, in ideas, in genetics when set free. All preferences are not equal. All preferences do not share the exact same opportunity costs.
I can’t see how, with rigorous seriousness and realism, the post state world will not be closer to Giles and Byzantine’s model, and further from the flat model of the Rod Longs and Brainpolice.