Or do I stand to gain more by favoring the state?
I promise I’ll give great consideration to all answers.
Is it in your personal interest to have a choice instead of not having it?
Do you believe that you owe yourself the duty of the truth? Do you believe that reality isn’t what you wish it to be?
you yourself are a sovereign individual. as long as the pesky state is around claiming sovereignty and considering you to be its subject, then you cannot express your sovereignty nor fulfill its potential.
Hmm…
Anarcho-capitalist > statist
freedom > slavery
truth > lie
prosperity > poverty
objective > whimsical
peaceful > violent
competition > monopoly
That’s all I can think of.. anyone care to add?
Without a doubt, you can profit greatly by using the state to advance your own prosperity.
Of course, you could also profit greatly by killing someone rich and moving into their house.
So the question is not whether the state can make you wealthy, but if you are willing to accept the moral arguments to justify using the state for that purpose, and whether you would be consistent when those arguments are used against you by someone else employing the state to get rich at your expense.
I really think, and I mean this with all friendship and sincerity, that you’re going about this wrong. You lack the philosophical and economic understanding to make this decision. Ancap is not a club. It’s a particular perspective on the world, rooted in ideas like voluntarism, ethics, praxeology etc. It is truly in your best interest, whether you end up supporting ancap or statism or something else, to understand these arguments, and evaluate them for yourself. We can try to make arguments for you to do this or that, ultimately you will have to decide, and I think we can both agree, you are better off making an informed decision.
Idk.. I try not to bring it up with people. I refuse to have the anarchy vs a good state or the socialism vs capitalism debate with anyone until they understand that the state we have right now is bad. Most people don’t just support government in theory, they support the US of A as the greatest nation on earth.
So, no I wouldn’t recommend telling your boss that you’re an anarchist. I did, but that probably wasn’t a good idea…
Fair enough, I will continue my research and if I come to something that makes me change my mind, I will change it.
Assuming you are defining the question such that your values are for “purely personal gain” without any hint of altruism whatsoever, then perhaps for a period of time, it’s good to be king or close to him. Of course success as an intellectual apologist (or one of any other kind) comes at the price of freedom, and expectance to tow the line always with the tyrant on whom one depends, but if this doesn’t conflict with one’s values then it’s probably not an incorrect judgement.
I’d say in those respects the only time not to be in the arms of the state is when it inevitably collapses, and one loses the source of one’s parasitic existence.
Perhaps one could employ Rawlsian thinking here. One stands to gain by favoring the state, so long as one will, in the state, be in a good position. Many of us here, actually, are in such a position, such as those who work in academics. If you will be close to the ruler, or in a class favored by the availability of cheap money and so on, then it works out well for you. But if you employ a “veil of ignorance” and imagine that it’s equally likely that you would be in Guantanamo, or an Iraqi, or a lender, or just a black teenager, then it’s not so clear. If I employ the veil of ignorance, I cannot imagine coming up with any answer but anarcho-capitalism. Of course, this veil happens to be real - your position vis a vis the state can change quickly and suddenly as different classes come to be favored during different periods.
But maybe this isn’t what you meant. Rather than asking “am I better off with or without it?” maybe you meant to ask “given that things are as they are, and my position won’t change much, am I better off supporting an unjust system or trying to fight it?” In that case, it seems that, by most metrics, one does best by being a statist, probably of the liberal type. The metrics I’m looking at are things like - attracting women, landing good jobs, and so on. I don’t see why this is important in deciding what one believes, though.
One would hardly be better off because of the state. It takes away jobs through minimum wages, it lowers productivity through taxes, it decreases man’s power over nature by destroying technology, it eliminates man’s intellectual side by undermining free expression, and finally it generally produces things either too soon (hastily constructed bridges, badly examined meat products) or it takes too long to make them (decades for new medicines, weapons etc.).
Depends on if you have any virtues, specifically justice.
Do you think beneficiaries of social security, welfare, medicare, medicaid think they’re worse off for taking government handouts? If so, why do they keep taking them?
Do you think people who got bread, by standing all day in a bread queue in Communist Russia thought they were worse off for all the Communism? If so, why did they keep queuing?
Because they had no other way to get the bread.
so was communism good for all these bread-wanters or bad? or do you have a sophisticated response?
and would your response not apply to all those things you listed, which involved the present regime?
No, but unlike communism, American socialism actually pays out big time to these people and they keep voting it back in. In fact, they keep demanding more benefits. Why is this happening?
Its no mystery; its a heavily investigated field of inquiry.
‘Public Choice’
Monopoly government is at the root
why, why, why…
don’t ask me why, but for some mysterious reason this echoed in my head:
The state makes mistakes in its handouts…
So I answer that firstly people insist that there are welfare troubles (not enough poor getting their share) so people vote for more welfare (even though it is because welfare is essentially free that it is overused to the extent that not everyone can get it). Secondly, welfare does confer a benefit on those who get food stamps and such but the people shouldn’t be clamouring for nasty government cheese when they could just free the market or take advantage of volunteerism like living at home (assuming parents or friends would let them).