Hi all. This will be my last post on this subject, I promise.
A few months back I made the state-critical animation George Ought to Help. I’m currently crowd-funding a follow-up animation called Edgar the Exploiter.
There are only a few hours left of the campaign in which people can donate and claim rewards.
Based on the success of ‘George’ I expect ‘Edgar’ to be widely viewed and discussed, and to be an useful as an accessible aid in spreading the understanding of liberty.
The campaign page, with an introductory video, can be found at: http://www.indiegogo.com/edgar-the-exploiter
Thanks in advance to all who donate or help spread the word in the final hours of the campaign.
Thank you for these videos! I just donated. I hope we get ones on every major subject.
When I shared George Ought To Help with my econ class, some people, including the teacher, said it was missing the social contract. I hope you do a cartoon on that topic in the future.
What did they mean by “missing the social contract?”
I hope statist grow up and drop the social contract argument some time soon, it really is the most immature argument I have ever heard.
I hope statist grow up and drop the social contract argument some time soon, it really is the most immature argument I have ever heard.
Do you mean professional propagandists or hypnotized population? The former will not drop their most efficient tool (well, maybe the second best after covetousness).
I was 17 when I first realized: “taxation is actually just theft.” And it was at the same age when I first made the connection in my Civics class that “government has a monopoly on government.” I hadn’t ever heard these arguments before and I was astonished to realized that I had never even understood it this way before and went on to discover that many others felt the same way (“taxation is theft” . . . “government is a monopoly on violence.”) I had already been a libertarian and always believed that my ideology excluded anarchism, yet as it turns out many libertarians do embrace the idea. Of course I’m still skeptical about how it would work, but I believe just getting others to understand that these statements are inherently true would make a huge difference. The implications aren’t even what concern me most, it is that people seem incapable of thinking in these terms.
But the point I’m trying to make is that most people, I strongly believe, are statists simply as a result of tradition. And perhaps even the Orwellian concept of “doublethink.” After understanding the two above points (that “taxation is theft” and “government is a monopoly on violence”), it is impossible to believe a social contract exists in any case other than something like Voluntaryism. I respect the philosophy behind the social contract (the big three being Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau) but no arguments for the existence of the state make the social contract legitimate. The state gets its legitimacy from itself, pure and simple. The problem with this should be obvious.
I’ve been meaning to donate ever since I heard about the campaign but I kept forgetting, when I finally remembered to check last night there was only 50 hours left so it’s a good thing your video had been on my mind. Quick question, IndieGoGo is a different format from ThePoint, right? As in, even if you don’t reach your total goal you’ll still recieve the donations?
Thank you for all your work promoting liberty, we really need professional, polished videos and presentations like yours to grab the public’s attention.
Hi Maggie, thanks for the kind words.
Yes indiegogo.com works differently to ‘all-or-nothing’ models like kickstarter.com, ThePoint etc. The donations are transferred immediately.
(There were a couple of big donations last night, reaching the target looks much more likely! about 18 exciting hours left to raise about $730)
Resist, I agree. The more you can inject libertarian ideas into the public circle, the better. If conservatives and liberals viewed taxation as theft, they may take their positions seriously at least. They may stop and think, “oh, maybe I won’t support funding cattle ranches in Colorado and I find this outrageous because this money was extorted” and leave funding for the “necessities.”
The social contract is the theory that government was originally formed when people under anarchy came together and mutually consented to give up some of their freedom to end the chaos that was going on. It is a way of saying that the State was formed voluntarily, and so taxation isn’t theft. But as Rothbard said in Anatomy of the State:
The State has never been created by a “social contract”; it has always been born in conquest and exploitation. The classic paradigm was a conquering tribe pausing in its timehonored method of looting and murdering a conquered tribe, to realize that the time-span of plunder would be longer and more secure, and the situation more pleasant, if the conquered tribe were allowed to live and produce, with the conquerors settling among them as rulers exacting a steady annual tribute.
One method of the birth of a State may be illustrated as follows: in the hills of southern “Ruritania,” a bandit group manages to obtain physical control over the territory, and finally the bandit chieftain proclaims himself “King of the sovereign and independent government of South Ruritania”; and, if he and his men have the force to maintain this rule for a while, lo and behold! a new State has joined the “family of nations,” and the former bandit leaders have been transformed into the lawful nobility of the realm.