Lets say that the US Federal govt. declared that Firefox is the national internet browser. This is not an act of coercion. Therefore, not every state action is theft/coercion
Nice try, but the recources needed to record it into the public record can only be gained through theft/coercion.
Every time time a government worker farts, there is coercion involved.
Would they then act to enforce the declaration?
Every state action is funded by coercive taxation (or theft via inflation).
Declaring Firefox the national browser is not coercion. That doesn’t mean it’s moral however. It’s definitely immoral for them to do anything that is not breaking down their powers. Or at the very least breaking down their abuse of powers; such as an immediate withdrawal from foreign countries.
What does it mean for Firefox to be declared the national Internet browser? Does it not mean that the only Internet browser which can be legally used is Firefox? Which, in turn, means that there would be a punishment for using any other Internet browser?
Logically, it would make more sense for the State to buddy up to someone like Apple or Microsoft. I can’t see them saying that Firefox is the national browser. If anything, I.E. would be the “national” browser as claimed by the State.
If someone who claimed to be the government, and that was founded by donations or his own resources claimed that Firefox is the national internet browser, that wouldn’t be theft/coercion. But of course, it wouldnt be government either.
It would be government, but it wouldn’t be a state.
All state action is funded by the initiation of aggression. Theft, nicely wrapped up in the term “taxation”, is just a subset of coercion or the initiation of aggression. Any attempt to enforce such a law restricting what browser people use is obviously coercion. The mere act of making the law, even aside from the fact that the lawmaker’s salary comes from stolen funds, is coercion as well. Another subset of coercion, less often considered by libertarians, is “pedagoguery”.
The lawmakers, administering government, make such laws, perhaps being genuinely well-intentioned, under the premise that these laws are in their subjects’ best interest. At times, civil laws are compatible with libertarian law (theft, murder, etc. being wrong), insomuch as these actions are judged to be punishable offenses. They are inferior to the libertarian approach, though, in that they lack any coherence in what the specific allowable maximum punishment will be for such and such a crime.
Far too often, legislators, perhaps for a lack of anything better to aim at, build upon the image of the state as the people’s wise overseer. The “nanny state” drafts laws which are not compatible with freedom, or defending against the initiation of aggression. Victimless crimes come under fire, or more impossible to deliver upon promises are made. The most notable act of pedagoguery which Americans have seemingly fallen victim to in our day is the assertion by politicians that, “Health care is a right.”
Submitting this claim to genuine economic reasoning provides the knowledge that it is not in people’s best interest. In fact, the policy will result in even greater poverty and death. The statist ideology fails this critical economic test in every attempt to assert such “positive rights”. Being economically ignorant whilst well-intentioned only half excuses such crimes by politicians.
In terms of finding a way to repair government officials’ crimes of pedagoguery, I feel that their actions can be interpreted as a threat. How serious about or how likely to enact medical socialism our current rulers are is hard to say, and these are questions for future jurors. We can nonetheless recognize the march toward “health care reform” as a crime in the process of being committed right before our eyes.
Government officials have not yet “raised the gun barrel towards us” in terms of mandating one browser or another, and I can’t imagine what exactly their case for doing so might be. Our ability to share information much more efficiently and organize ourselves beyond the lines lain down by various states is a great threat to state power though. We could probably find fault, going in both directions, with regards to government dealings with Microsoft. I know that every state would be happy to enact China-like censorship if their subjects acquiesce. I can’t give any examples offhand, but I suspect that other browsers are banned, de facto, by some government websites being only compatible with IE. In fact, one government website I use often works fine with both FF and Chrome, so I don’t know the breadth of this perceived problem of the hypothetical.
I don’t understand. Would it be government because that person said so? I think that’s analogous to me being the king of China because I said I was the king of China.
At any rate, such a declaration, while not theft or coercion, would be meaningless.
Obviously not.
Not every thief’s action is theft.
(But he’s still a thief. And he’s still stealing)