Steph, do you not grasp that fallacies kill arguments?
You’re confused here–creating a strawman. Don’t do that.
No Steph, it can’t. We have preferences which can change. We can’t be modeled.
Which doesn’t explain C: the requirement for a coercive monopoly on B.
Bullshit. It has not, is not, and will never work that way. You have some odd view of humans that those in government will somehow always uphold the law. That’s very fairy-tale-ish.
You said nobody can compete with the government on use of force to counter coercion.
Objective is utopian.
but anyways… What stops me from gathering other people together to gather evidence on this person that robbed my home? Why do I need to pay somebody else to do it if this group of people I am with are knowledgeable enough to do this on our own? I don’t need to rely on anybody else. Now if I can’t find volunteers to help out in the effort then it would help to have a witness, of course, to see that I’ve collected good evidence. So maybe I would need to pull back in my efforts and find a third party. Some standards a third party would need to solve this case is knowledge (how to gather evidence) and moral character (does a good investigation). People can have those without having the need to be labeled or given a name tag that says “I am a government official”. That name tag doesn’t give them any special powers.
No need to review all my other posts. I’ve been repeating myself over and over again. So my side of the discussion hasn’t changed. Ah, maybe I should have just stopped. When you post and then don’t discuss it’s called lecturing and I don’t want to hear you lecture. But then again I could have just ignored your lecture, but I think it’s wrong. So I’m calling you out on it.
I think stephanie is pretty close to a natural law anarcho capitalist, I speculate that due to her coming from the Objectivist perspective she seems to use language and terminology at odds with what Rothbardians are used to using which makes for a lot of talking passed each other.
For example, there is routine equivocatinon over vague terms like ‘government’ which are tossed about without qualification . I mentioned this before and it was not addressed.
Here i will try a crude analogy to assist:
Surely there is a wide range of opinion , not only between peeople, but also within single individuals over time, as to how food might be prepared to be ‘tasty’, yet there is pretty solid criteria for determining if food is prepared ‘unhealthily’, obvious example is to have food covered in hazardous toxins or poisons.
In a market, the problem of how to ensure that food be prepared ‘healthily’ is solved in the way we are all familiar with, and I hope we dont require much more to be said about this.
Substitute poor security or poor rights-protecting in place of poor food preperation, and appeals to installing a monopoly institution to control the market and to be responsible for the quality of the product is a clear fail. When you say ‘agree to the law’ its like saying ‘agree to prepare food healthily’ and not much more insightful than that.
Also, a lot of Stephs comments seem misguided , like ‘governments have been permitted to initiate foce and that is why they have failed to protect individual rights’ well, who permitted this? i didnt? did you? the truth is that governments have permitted themselves and denied the permission to others
Indeed, as Stephanie repeats, the natural law is universal, and this is not argued against, but the institutions which aid agents to live in harmony under its dictates, must be market provided, and must be subject to profit and loss as all other important products and services must be.
Thats enough for now i guess… peace out…
Excellent! Great way of putting this. “must be market provided” I agree… peace out
As the token Randian here, I’ll state that the reason why I thought government was necessary was due to an assumption that government represented the natural form/process in which social interactions occurred in legal engagements. I pretty much abandoned that thought the first time I actually delved into the history of law both in the East and the West, and found that law actually originates more or less from “common law” (tradition, myth, faith, and etc). So there’s no logical reason to defend the existing structure that masquerades as a legal structure (in this case government).
But that’s just me. shrugs
Preferences that change? Meaning what? Sometimes you’ll be in the mood for initiating a bit of force? I’m talking about one basic law that applies to everyone. It’s never been done before, I agree. There’s no example to go by.
I agree it has never been done. I do not agree that it cannot be done. The problem is the laws the government has been given to uphold expressly provide for the abrogatioin of rights. That’s where the error is. Getting rid of government altogether just declares open season to the criminal element.
A monopoly on the use of retaliatory force (i.e., coercion in retaliation against its initiation) does not have to operate the same way as a coercive monopoly currently operates. That is why the government has to be funded voluntarily and cannot have the right to tax the people to pay for itself. The sole purpose of government is to protect individual rights from the initiatioin of force. Therfore it cannot have the right to initiate force for any reason.
Preferences that change = humans are not always constant in their values.
Rest is just a strawman.
A monopoly on the use of retaliatory force (i.e., coercion in retaliation against its initiation) does not have to operate the same way as a coercive monopoly currently operates. That is why the government has to be funded voluntarily and cannot have the right to tax the people to pay for itself. The sole purpose of government is to protect individual rights from the initiatioin of force. Therfore it cannot have the right to initiate force for any reason.
Ok. If you have a monopoly, and it doesn’t use coercion, anyone could start their own company to provide defense services. What you speak of, a monopoly that does not use coercion, is an internal contradiction unless everyone agrees to it.
One week I might like Big Macs, but the next I might want a Whopper. And maybe someone will want certain laws rather than others. Who knows?
You’re talking about a fantasy. You expect everyone to abide by it at all times. That’s just sheer fantasy.
Then you are a lost cause. You refuse to acknowledge that humans can act in contravention of that law–and that some of them do and will. And some of them will be in the government.
Non sequitur.
Yes, it does. That’s what coercive monopolies are and do. You’re flailing away, trying to protect your failed worldview. Let. It. Go.
Keep dreaming.
Then it can’t be a monopoly.
Currently the problem is solved with government stepping in to declare who is “safe” and who isn’t. We should get rid of that function of government as well. Perhaps more does need to be said.
I agree and that is not what I want. That’s what we have now. I don’t want the market to be controlled by government. I want the government to protect inidividual rights without being permitted to initiate force to do so.
I didn’t permit them to do it either. The fact is, “freedom” is relatively new in our species’ history. Whoever is responsible for having permitted governments to initiate force in the past is irrelevant. What’s at issue now is who is going to continue to permit it? We are faced with a situation in which the government has taken over everything and is doing a lousy job of the one thing it is supposed to be doing - protecting individual rights.
People have to rebel this situation - I agree on that. But I do not agree that the concept of government need be thrown away. What needs to be thrown away is the idea that government should have the right to initiate force. Government is supposed to be the means of protecting the rights of its citizens. And even if every single citizen were law-abiding (and I’m talking objective law not the mishmash currently masquerading in its place), there would still be other nations of people opposed to such a free country. Those others are going away any time soon, are they?
In a sense, yes. And not just the important products, but any and all products or services.
The institution of government should be market-provided in the sense that the people who work in it must persuade the citizens to pay for its services, and cannot have the right to expropriate land or garnishee wages to effectively steal the means to fund itself. It certainly cannot have the right to set up laws that dictate to the market how it is to function.
The government at present does take money under the guise of using it for one purpose and then spends it on something else for which it was not given express authority. Like today, when monies are taken in property tax and spent on war. Or taken in respect of Social Security and spent on war. Or a million other things that it is taken for, and is then spent elsewhere, with no accountability.
The proper purpose of government is for one thing only - to provide the means for self-defense. Does this mean that an individual cannot defend himself from an attack? No, of course not! To claim that an individual has no right to repel an attack is to turn the meaning of self-defense on its heead.
But it does mean the individual cannot hire his own thugs to go round to the perpetrator’s house and exact his own justice on it.
What ARE you talking about? This is not about preferences as to what to eat. This is about a single law that applies to everyone - and the law is no-one can have the right to initiate force.
Any other rules, laws or decrees you may care to issue as regards how you will live or deal with others are yours to make up and require of others in dealing with you. If they agree to your terms, you’re both good to go. If they don’t agree, then you’ll both go your separate ways. You cannot force that person to deal with you and agree to the terms.
The only law that applies to everyone is the law forbidding the initiation of force.
Interpretation: Nobody can compete with this Military State of yours, Stephanie, and bring justice to it.
Eliot, you should clean up your last post. You’ve quoted and not quoted 2 other people and it’s very hard to tell what you have written from what Baawa and Stephanie have.
That is a non-sequitur. Government is the criminal element.
Government can’t protect rights without coercion. It can provide justice. It can provide restitution, but it cannot provide prevention without coercion.
Your entire argument, now running several days resolves to this simple logical error you keep repeating.
Preferences are preferences. If you are so unimaginative as to be unable to extend a concept, I feel very very sorry for you.
Tell me: how will you forbid the use of initiatory force with the coercive monopoly that your government must necessarily be? Please tell me you’re not going to rely on the goodness of humans; we’re trying that now. How’s it working?
Good point, I will do that right now.
How I would phrase it: Keeping government declares open season to the criminal element.
Stephanie, you do have a point.
Laissez-faire can only exist when natural law (what you seem to be calling “law of human interaction”) is respected.
The people who advocate competing law are not advocating individual rights, although they may sometimes claim they are (not very convincingly, tho).
Competing governments based on natural law are the only rational solution. Competing governments based on ‘preference’ is more or less what we have now.
Whereas some of the locals are certainly not.
Not everyone will. This is simply a fact.
I am unconvinced by your blatant assertion.
