If you are not an anarchist, then you are a statist.
Which is an oxymoron. You insist that government is a must when a priori it is not.
Yes they have. And you have continued to respond with your fingers in your ears, saying “nyah, nyah, i can’t hear you, i can’t hear you”
You have yet to make one rational refutation to any argument advanced against your position.
Now that is true. You insist upon promoting an irrational fiction, and refuse to check your premises. Which is why I have mostly stopped replying to you. Just because you claim to be for laissez-faire (but a statist) and capitalism (but not for competition) doesn’t make this discussion any more fruitful than discussing with a neocon or neoliberal true believer.
I think we are getting stuck on terminology here. I do not want the State. I want Objective Law. I want law that prohibits the initiation of force and provides criteria for deciding disputes, evaluating evidence and prosecuting criminals. You keep insisting that government has to mean an entity that initiates force and I reject that definition. You are accepting the kinds of government that have existed so far as being the only kinds that can exist, and I reject that position.
Here is another quote from the article nirgrahamUK posted (I think he may have posted it to the other thread but I still have the article open in another window.)
Another objection is that a society of many different legal systems would be confusing. If this is found to be a serious problem, courts will have an economic incentive to adopt uniform law…
So, how would this differ from what I’ve been trying to say, which is that THE LAW is the same for everyone. Government is the business of providing defense. Individual judges, courts, police - these can be provided by free market - but what does tend to happen is that everyone operates under a uniform law.
The problem governments have all had - even the government of the freest country yet (the US) is that they enshrined non-objective laws. They permitted the use of the tax method to raise funds. That’s where they went wrong. Yet, even so, with a few years of the most freedom our species has ever known, Americans were able to make huge ginormous advances in all fields.
But the government was doomed from the get-go. All it took was someone (probably involved in a military kind of business) to see that people who are free to be as productive as their abilities will allow, won’t be interested in getting into long drawn-out wars. And so they started laying on the taxes, and screwing around with the money system, introducing the Federal Reserve and taxes and more taxes. And now the US is pretty much ruined by statism.
I reject all of that. But I am cognizant of the fact that because humans have to choose to be rational, they can choose not to be. They can make errors. They need a system of government to resolve disputes and to deal with criminals. Such a government does not require “the State” to use the tax method to pay for it - is what I’ve been saying all along. I reject the method of taxation in its entirety. It is morally wrong and it’s also the cause of the collapse of any government that uses it. I reject the State issuing decrees on how I should build my home, or how fast I should drive, or whether I use paper or plastic. etc etc.
My point, which I’ve clearly not been making very well, is that how we govern ourselves and how we settle disputes among ourselves, requires rational objective law. The problems with all governments so far can be traced to the kinds of laws they employed.
It will make no difference whether people use the free market or the current set-up - if they do not set up objective laws by which to judge allegations of wrongdoing.
And yet you wanted to be precise in your terms. Please don’t backpedal. Now then: do you or do you not want a monopolist provider of law and justice? If you do, you are a statist and you do want the state. Period. End of discussion.
Trivial? We each do have the monopoly over ourselves. You consider that point to be small and of little importance?
You rail against the idea of the monopoly of government, and yet it is acknowledged by David Friedman in the article nirgraham posted that a system that starts out with competing laws will tend towards a uniform law.
And I do disagree that McDonalds has the right to disallow Burger King from starting up. It’s the same thing as someone new coming along to offer dispute resolution or a new judge arriving in town to hear cases.
The thing that governs everyone’s actions would be the same objective law.
I consider it to be a trivial answer, like the 0 solution to an equation. It doesn’t really do anything for us.
Ok. What’s your point–that competition will tend to result in some form of standardization? Welcome to the real world, Steph. That’s why cars usually have 4 wheels and a steering wheel.
Then you MUST disagree that a goverment has the right to prevent competition from itself, lest you be a hypocrite.
False alternative. Reminds me of the false alternative that people have with respect to self-interest vs altruism. Either you’re sacrificing others to yourself or yourself to others. How about a system that doesn’t require sacrifice? So, how about a system that doesn’t require the initiation of force, that in fact holds the initiation of force by anyone for any reason to be prohibited?
Government results whenever there is a group of people with different interests and needs and wants. It is how people resolve their differences. No matter what kind of system you select, you are selecting a system of government.
I need to check my premises? I’m not the one holding that there is only statism or anarchism, and nothing else. You are more like a statist than I am. Your system arrives at the same result as the most tyrannical of statist set-ups.
The competition is in the different individuals providing the services, not in the law itself.
Do we disagree on what individual rights are?
Do we disagree that the essential element for peaceful co-existence among individuals is that no-one initiates the use of force?
And I think it’s the most important part of the whole thing. The focus on the individual and individual rights has been missing from every previous attempt to achieve a peaceful and prosperous society.
Since we have already identified the essential law that is needed to govern human interaction - i.e., prohibit the initiation of force, why not start with that? Why reinvent?
I agree that one government does not have the right to prevent competition from itself. That is why there are different countries.
What I want to know is - what kind of law can you conceive of that offers an objective viable alternative to the law prohibiting the initiation of force?
It’s not. We already acknowledge self-ownership. Move on.
Then you can’t have a monopolist provider.
Because you want a monopolist provider, and the only way for that to happen is to INITIATE FORCE. You want X and not-X and the same time and respect.
Nonsense! Different countries != competition in any market sense. A better analogy would be A competitor to the federal government inside the US. Do you think that’s allowable? If not: you’re a hypocrite.
Your question is irrelevant. I want to know what kind of law you can conceive of which allows monopoly provision of retaliatory force which also must disallow initiation of force. I’ll be waiting forever for your answer, since it’s not possible to come up with one.
IRRELEVANT? Hah. So, you can’t come up with an objective viable alternative law to the one prohibiting the initiation of force. Gotcha.
The law that prohibits the initiation of force is the only law that’s needed. It is the monopoly. There is no need for a monopoly provision of services - there just needs to be a law that applies to everyone.
And that is how you have a government that does not initiate force - because the initiation of force is prohibited and everyone must abide by it. That is how you set the mechanism of “government” up so that it can do its job - protect the individual rights of all citizens.
U.S. Constitution is based on Natural Law. Natural Law is a rational law professed by libertarians. Yet, the U.S. monopolized this law and perverted it into merely good theater for it simply is a masked blissful criminal from the start by monopolization aka being a State. You want a monopoly of force aka Military State, which from the very “get-go” is outright monstrous and terrible.
Yours is “doomed” by being a Military dictatorship from the “get-go”.
Not everyone is an anarchist or statist. An anarchist is someone who believes that government is illegitimate, and a statist believes that government is legitimate to some extent. Someone who has not formed any belief about the matter at hand, the question of government’s legitimacy, is neither an anarchist or a statist. Hence, if someone is not an anarchist, it does not imply that they are a statist.
EDIT: However, if someone has formed a belief about this, and they are not an anarchist, it does imply that they are a statist.
Anyways, I want to start all of this in a new thread.