So theft is OK, so long as the thief promises to repay, somehow, in some indefinite way, to some indefinite persons? Aha. How about he proves that?
Yes, what if the kid doesn’t work, or winds up in prison, or becomes a libertarian and refuses to pay his taxes? How will you be repaid?
Jon, I sent you a PM about my fudged reply. I must’ve hit Edit instead of Reply when posting a response to your post [:$]
I can do better, “freedom is slavery”, “war is peace” and “ignorance is strength”.
If only he were willing to read some real economics you could point him in the direction of the socialist calculation debate.
Thanks for this, I will certainly point some of these things out. The title of the thread that this is in is called: “Do rich people deserve their money” so yeah…
And I can stand it because I have gotten used to it. That forum is crawling with this kind of attitude and I have been there for years. Sometimes I like being the outnumbered one there. It is a really good example of how the ones who know the least amount of economics are the ones that are most likely to subscribe to socialism. Needless to say, it more often than not degrades into some ad hominem fest.
In an anarcho capitalist world how is crime handled, or is there any crime? I think Thoreau said that any society will quicly need a jail and a cemetry. I would add a psychiatric hospital.
How is the jail to be paid for? Along with the process of trial and jailing. Perhaps all the people who are not being jailed or expulsed should pool their resources to pay for it. But what if some of the people do not want to pay for it?
How are child custody disputes handled? What if one of the parties does not accept your wise counsels.
Like it or not a society has to have jail or expulsion for people who will not play by societies rules. If you are not composed of small autonomous communities then expulsion is impossible, that leaves jail.
So any way, what is your non-kidnapping solution to crime?
In order of asking:
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Private police forces.
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If there is a jail, which there might be for more repeat violent offenders and sexual predators (for instance, I’m just not convinced that there’s any way to deal with child rapists other than locking them up. Quoting Dave Mustaine: “If there’s a new way, I’ll be the first in line. But it better work this time.”), it could be paid for out of the income of the private police force, or it could be a different private company, which is paid by the private police or perhaps insurance companies to hold them.
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Mediation.
To the OP: The confusion seems to be about his definition of consent. Ask your opponent if he believes a victim of a mugging “consents” by failing to repel the mugger. If so, we know the root of his confusion. If not, see if he can show, logically, that the taking of property by force or under the threat of force is different when the “government” does it. (Spoiler: he won’t be able to.)
The issue is that if taxation is not theft because there is consent, then robbery or mugging is not theft for the same reason.
I think the confusion stems from his the definition of “theft” that is being used here, too. Geo8rge is using a very narrow definition of the word “theft” that boils down to “whatever the State says is theft, is theft”. Others are using a broader definition of the word theft, referent to universal principles.
The same could be said for “kidnapping” or “consent.”
The focus is on prevention and loss mitigation, rather than on retribution and punishment. Furthermore, a great many things which are currently crimes in the nominal sense, would cease being crimes: drug use, prostitution, building a house without a license, selling raw/unpasteurized milk, using gold as currency, etc.
Of course there is going to be crime, but if you look around, there’s really not that much of it in the first place.
The same way that the police would be paid for, voluntarily, through some sort of mutual insurance program(s). Also, keep in mind that jail could be “keeping someone locked up inside” or it could also be “keeping someone from interacting with the rest of normal, functional society.”
Dude. “Society” doesn’t have rules. People have rules. You’re stuck on the social contract/voluntary government fallacy, I’ve noticed.
For instance, you have no moral grounds to “kidnap” me for smoking a joint in my basement, no matter how much you disapprove of the practice, nor does anyone else. If I come over to your house and do it, I suppose you have a lot more freedom to do with me what you think is appropriate.
What you’re talking about is not a community.
In a community, you ought to know the people with whom you interact. Social reputation goes a long way, and strangers are generally distrusted (at least to some extent) until they can establish themselves with good faith.
If a stranger simply appears in town one day, has no credible story, and nobody to vouch for him, you ought to presume he’s a criminal until you can ascertain facts to the contrary. It’s pretty simple if you put your mind to it. A similar model is used by credit-rating agencies: if you don’t have credit, they don’t know how to price you, so they assume you’re a poor risk. Demonstrate that you’re not, and you get upgraded.
Social credit, blacklisting and ostracising are especially not impossible in this day and age, with all the technologies of the interwebs.
There’s no reason to presume that we’d have to devolve to Luddism, in “small, autonomous communities”. It’s not terribly difficult to imagine a web of small communities that trade and interact with one another for a great deal of their transactions.
News to me, as an Orthodox Jew. Please go tell Sholom Rubashkin that we Jews have our own court system and that there’s no need for him to remain in a jail cell - he can just go to a bait din which will rule that he didn’t violate any laws they know of.
Now, we do have the bait din, which the government only allows to decide some civil cases, and prohibits from enforcing its decisions. They can hear divorces and marriages, but their decision makes no difference legally. The Orthodox are not able to secede from government, just to build a minor system within it.
Did you miss what happened to the Mormon culture?
Interesting. Bob steals from Bill, loans tohe money to Joe - Joe pays back Bob, and everything is all taken care of?
geo8rge - If this is an issue of semantics, why do you automatically assume that the legal definition of a word is the correct one?
Theft: the taking of property without the consent of the owner
Slavery: the extraction of labor by threat or coercion
Kidnapping: the apprehension and detainment of an innocent person
Murder: the taking of innocent life
The government’s definitions:
Theft: the taking of property without the consent of the owner - except for when we do it
Slavery: the extraction of labor by threat or coercion - except for when we do it
Kidnapping: the apprehension and detainment of an innocent person - except for when we do it
Murder: the taking of innocent life - except for when we do it
Words have meanings for a reason.
You would empower the government people to define words under the a priori assumption that whatever the government does is correct. But there is no reason to assume that the government’s definitions are the true ones, especially when they are so inconsistent that they destroy the concepts behind the words.
"The focus is on prevention and loss mitigation, rather than on retribution and punishment. "
That is very nice, but at some point you will find someone you refuses to cooperate with your rules to the point that they repeatedly do something you would define as criminal. At that point the voluntary stuff won’t work any more. Then what do you do?
A second problem with your ideas is that you assume there is a single absolute property rights system. There is not such thing. At some point you will find two reasonable people who both claim they are right, and you will have to chose between them. If the loser refuses to comply then either you use force on them, or your system of property rights falls apart.
As to private police, in the US bounty hunters are like a private police force. The aggrieved party, bailor, pays a private specialist to return the bailee to jail. The problem with private police comes when both parties to a dispute have a private police force, then you get a situation similar to the drug wars in Mexico.
"News to me, as an Orthodox Jew. Please go tell Sholom Rubashkin that we Jews have our own court system and that there’s no need for him to remain in a jail cell "
The Jewish court system has no means of enforcing, beyond shaming and perhaps excommunication, its decisions if the participants are not cooperative. If you need some muscle behind a court decision in the US, you need to go to the US government and accept US laws. Conversly US courts cannot adjudicate a ‘jewish divorce’(get), although they can obviously apply US law to the parties involved. I use Orthodox Jews as an example of the limits of your voluntary society idea. They have a very well developed system of laws and judges. Just no police. Their legal system evidently works reasonably well, and would be worth study from the liberterian perspective. The problem is that at some point you need force, then what? I also suspect that Jewish law is less tyranical in the US than Israel where it does have the state behind it, and there is less fear of Jews escaping into secular society to avoid those laws.
I am not familiar with the case of Sholom Rubashkin, under anarcho capitalism, what would have happend to him.
Theft: the taking of property without the consent of the owner - except for when we do it
In the US you can get relief by challenging the laws. Beyond that you are stuck, until society collapses. My point is that theft is a very specific thing defined by law. It is not taking your stuff without your cooperation. If you do not like society’s definition of theft you can leave, or try to change society, or overthrown the government, or hope that the government collapses. Once again theft is not an abstract, it is defined in laws.
My problem with your analysis is you claim you have this property rights system based on some absolute where it will be clear who owns what in all situations. In the real world there will always be cases where one obstinent party refuses to accept common sense, judicial orders, shaming, you name it. At that point you need the sheriff and perhaps the violence and coercion. I do not buy into the private police arguments as both parties will have their own police forces, or only the wealthiest will have a police force.
MacFall, please stop being silly!
Obviously geo8rge believes that Hitler was justified slaughtering Jews because his rise to power came democratically, and he was the leader of the government, which of course makes it’s own rules different than those of citizens. I’ve heard geo8rge is a big fan of the Pol Pot and Stalin too!
Hey guys guess what egalitarianism is supposedly a goal society should strive for and is just all around awesome and great…unfortunately no one seems to be able to give any logical justification for it…
I see it a bit different. Not that I think taxes are “not theft” but on the other hand I’m surely willing to pay some tax for a few things. I do not like the idea to make contracts with everyone, which I may or may not need. At least I’ve no idea on how much contracts I would have to sign. But imagine one could limit the taxes for things one really wants to be advocated. Imagine we could say. I’m willing to pay me taxes for
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police
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firefighters
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teachers
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or whatever
some points.
I surely would like to have such kind of choice. But as long as I don’t have that, yes taxes are theft…
Regards
Friedrich
Ok guys I think this statement takes the cake:
“society is the collective of all individuals past present and future and since they created you in every sense of the word they have absolute rights over you and anything you may do”
I don’t even know how to begin to respond to this.
Then buy from a firm which specializes in bundling services.