How would you respond to this?

[ryanpatgray]

How would you respond to this line of reasoning? Or do you agree? By the way, I did not write this.

Thanks

@Someone Who is Not Me

Although many philosophers have come up with the idea of a social contract throughout the ages, I have never seen one nor signed it, nor do I know anybody who has ever even seen a social contract. As there is no such contract, it is impossible for me to be bound by it.

However, although governments have no legal basis for their existence, I don’t think it is realistic to advocate their abolition. At most, only about a half of a percent of the population is potentially willing to support anarchism and that means that it is politically impossible to achieve.

It is possible to build support for policies that will significantly reduce the size of the government. The fascist sentiment that dominated after 9/11 is almost dead these days, so there is now the potential for significant opposition to the foreign policy of constant war and to anti-civil liberties laws. If the economic crisis worsens in the coming months, there may be potential to develop significant support for monetary policy reform and for drug legalization (alcohol prohibition was ended because the government needed more tax dollars, so that is probably the argument to use to build support for ending drug prohibition). There is also the potential for many needed economic reforms, such as the elimination of corporate welfare and of subsidies for pollution. In the near future, the goal has to be to achieve what is achievable rather than trying to achieve something that isn’t achievable and alienating potential allies.

[kingmonkey]

I agree to an exent. I guess I would consider myself an anarcho-capitalist. I tried for a long time to deny it but have recently just accepted the fact that this is my philopohy and I should just go with it. I’ve always been a minarchist because I never believed the average Joe out there would ever realize the benefits of an anarchist society. I think more effort should be put into building upon the ideas of limited government and non-aggression. For a long time I rejected political parties outright, as many anarchist do, but now I’ve realized they are needed – for now. The people of this country, indeed, this world, have been conditioned to believe in the party structure. It gives them a sense of belonging I guess. It’s sad that the Libertarian Party can’t seem to put viable candidates out there that would boost the party in both membership and position. In my opinion the LP should focus on one important race and pour all it’s resources into that. A Libertarian governor or Senator would do wonders for the party and recruitment. I think if a party who worked hard to reduce the size of the government could gain some foothold in this country we could start to see progress made. The problem we face is, as the saying goes, getting libertarians together is like herding cats. If the LP or some other party could do that, could get the people into positions of power, then I believe we are one step closer to eliminating the state. Our current big government didn’t happen over night. It took decades and decades of people committed to eroding the founding principles of this nation to get it to where it is. It took a long time to condition the people to accept larger and larger government and we are now at the point were people couldn’t imagine a world where the government didn’t subsidize that or regulate this. It will take us a long time, provided we worked together in concert, to reverse this trend and get people thinking about limited government. Once you have that established it’s not that big of leap to just shutting down the government altogether.

[Black_Bloke]

His argument boils down to, “Even though it’s right, don’t act on it.” I respond with, “Because it’s right, act on it.”