And for my next trick
TA DA!
Indeed. Just looking at the dictionary shows that’s the case. But it seems people love to redefine words.
Or maybe Jon can post some references to validate his and Stranger’s peculiar usage of the terms ?
No I will just let this topic be swept up in the dustbin of history. Rothbard trumps all.
/debate
No sir…
Let me explain, for the scenario lets examine Mr. A and Mr. B
Mr. A lives on the outskirts of an anarchist society, Mr. B lives on the interior…
Mr. A has a large peice of land, so he hires a protection force, to keep an eye for intrutions from a neighboring community with a government, he develops a plan in case of invasion and uses resources adequate to protect his property…
Mr, B has a smaller piece of land, he can see all corners from his home, he pays a protection agency to drive by once in a while, but that is all, the rest of his property defence is firearms ownership and training…
- Does B spend as much as A?
- Do you believe a government monopoly on protection will do it for less cost and more efficiently than what these individuals pay for their specific needs?
But the government will use the purpose stated above to justify any activity…
So this is a democracy where the consent of the majority counts as the consent of the governed, or will you allow secession?
But it is not…
This has yet to work out well…
What is better than anarchy?
Contradiction. What you’re saying is: coercion is required to protect us from coercion.
What’s wrong with letting people decide what’s best for themselves? Do you presume to know what’s best for everyone else? If yes, why should you force your assesment on unwilling people? What’s wrong with voluntary association?
You’ll find that most of us are not anarchists because we have discovered the perfect system by which no one’s rights are violated. We simply reject the notion that institutionalizing coercion is a good way to protect us from coercion. It’s about ethics, not ‘efficiency.’
It’s no wonder that the Americans destroyed everything in Iraq since they do not understand the difference between a state and a government, and they thought they could just disband the state and then easily take back control of the country with a new government.
Man, was that wrong.
The only role for government is if people want to be governed. Like a voluntary business agreement, they can start being governed if the “government” wants to govern and the client wants to be governed. Either can stop this contractual arrangement.
If the consent of both parties is not happening, but the person is still being governed, it is a crime.
Better yet, these guys seem to think every property owner under anarchy is a state.
Wow this is fantastic! OK here are some thoughts.
First, I am a student of Barzel who is probably not well known in these circles but provides the following definition of the state:
“The state consists of (I) a set of individuals who are subject to a single ultimate third party who uses violence for enforcement and (2) a territory where these individuals reside, demarcated by the reach of the enforcer’s power.”
By government I mean the third party enforcer. There of course are other possible entities which could fill this role. So France is a state which at different times is ruled by different governments.
“Contradiction. What you’re saying is: coercion is required to protect us from coercion.” (I don’t know how to do those little quote boxes…)
Yes, this is exactly what I’m saying, it’s not a contradiction. People submit to being coerced by one party (the government) in order to gain protection from coercion by other parties.
It is my view that complacency is a form of consent. From what I have seen, this fits perfectly with Austrian concepts of choice. People are willingly choose one situation over another. When I pay my taxes, I choose to pay them rather than suffer the consequences of not paying them. When I choose to obey the law I choose to do it rather than suffer the consequences of not doing it. It doesn’t mean I prefer these options to any set of options that i can possibly imagine having the ability to choose from. But it doesn’t mean I have no choice. I believe governments are self interested and desire to grow in size and scope. That is the reason for number 4. The government changes the incentives of compliance, but the governed also have the ability to change these conditions. So long as most people are willing to consent to the current tax system I face the decision to pay the tax (consent) or go to jail. If most people are prepared not to consent, the options change (pay taxes or rebel, where rebel has consequences determined by the size of government and the extent to which others are also willing to rebel). The government must take this into account when choosing it’s policies and therefore the threat can be used to control it. I think we are doing a poor job of this in America right now. I think it is true historically that nobody has been able to achieve this indefinitely but I don’t think that means it is logically impossible (in fact, this seems like a positivist argument to me). Of course anyone can say they disagree with this characterization of “consent” but without offering an alternative framework which is more useful, we will just have to agree to disagree.
With regard to efficiency, there are two issues. First, it is not my position that one need sell their soul for efficiency. However given that fact I think it is worth taking into consideration. With that in mind, it is a simple argument of specialization and economies of scale. This seemingly is acknowledged by Sage: “shoes are also produced on the market. Does everyone make their own shoes? No. Likewise, there would be a division of labor and specialization in the production of security.” So let’s consider the implications of market provision of security. First, I propose that individual production is nearly impossible (please note the “nearly”). This is because some people are bound to be better at fighting than others and they could take from those who are weaker. What is even more compelling in my mind is the fact that, if you were to produce anything else you would have to stop (to some extent) providing security. That is to say, if you ever pick up a plow you must put down your gun for some period of time. So all I have to do is wait for you to do this and then shoot you in the back and all you had is mine (this is not even considering the biological need for sleep). So all this really means is people would have to work together to provide protection. I’ll cover you while you sleep/plow etc. and you do the same for me. Let’s just assume that this type of contract is self enforcible. Still, this means that if I can organize a bigger group of people than you can, we can overpower yours and take everything you have. This causes an incentive to form the largest, most powerful (and most likely specialized) group of “protectors” possible. So what you end up with is just two states with two governments.
You mean love it or leave it ? What an amazingly clever concept…
Uh oh. No contradiction. Yes. No. No. Yes. No-Yes. Double plus good.
I contest that you are incapable of understanding my point and are an idiot battling strawmen.
Oh, you’ve just disproved the existance of governments. Fantastic!
Back in the real world, governments do exist and do they find ways to exercise power.
When you learn to seperate a factual observation from a declaration of preference, let me know.
Jon, your usage of the words ‘government’ and ‘state’ is non-standard. As to the France/Germany example : The German gov’t managed to control the French gov’t for a while. That’s what an invasion is. No need to make up your personal definitions for state and government.
Here is a perfect example.
Stranger did not say that the State could collect taxes without being a political entity (using Franz Oppenheimer’s definition of the political means) He said that the State, because of its bureaucratic nature, is self sustaining; able to exist without the need for politicians in the Capital to issue it orders.
Republican Governments exist to give a sense of legitimacy to the State, which pre-exist their current Governments and were originally formed under Monarchy.
Appeal to the masses. Most people don’t consider taxation to be coercion, doesn’t make it true.
This is clearly not a personal definition, it is the proper use that has fallen out of style. No purpose is fulfilled by having State and Government be synonyms. Precise language is required for accurate understanding.
Though the two terms are related, and even if they were inseparable, they still are not interchangeable.
Government, State, I still think they are the same. They both hold a coercive monopoly in a territory. This seems like fine hair separating going on here, what’s this intellectual exercise about anyways?
Complacency is not a morally binding form of consent. To consent to something means to take deliberate actions that constitute voluntary undertakings or agreements. Signs of consent must be especially clear and uncontroversial if they are to count as grounding political obligations. In light of this, mere acquiescence is surely not a clear sign of consent, and cannot ground binding consent.
If mere acquiescence did ground binding consent, then we would have to say that victims of robbery who did not violently resist were not actually robbed, but instead voluntarily gave away their money. Or as Hume recognized: “We may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean and perish, the moment he leaves her.” Clearly, this is absurd. Consent under duress is no consent at all.
Oh, come on. I just checked the dictionary - more than one. And yes, language is what ‘the masses’ say it is or use. It’s true that sometimes some terms get corrupted, but I don’t think this is the case.
Source(s) ?
Well, but they happen to be synonyms. Actually synonyms have no real purpose. By the way, state is also synonymous to nation/country.
Government[aka the mafia] governs/controls a country/nation/state/collection of subjects.
Yes, no objection to that. But in this case you’re creating a distinction without a difference. It’s true that some members of the government are regularly replaced but that doesn’t change the nature of government.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_state#Etymology
Also wrong. A nation is a group of people with shared ancestry; which is why Nation-State is not redundant. And why Austro-Hungary was an Empire and not a Nation.
Country is a muddied term, but it has more to do with the actual geography.
No, you are wrong on all counts. Do check English dictionaries, not wikipedia (which by the way doesn’t prove your point either).
Spare me the ‘racially aware’ nationalism or whatever you want to call it.