Personal feelings on Minarchism

[Marko]

@bloomj31

@Esuric

Okay, what would you eliminate: Social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, welfare checks, public education, public infrastructure, subsidized student loans, FHA (federal housing authority), minimum wage laws.

Everything except public education. Because it’s money that could be spent on the military or at least cutting taxes and giving it back to the people that earned the money.

Eliminating food stamps for Americans to fund killing Arabs for the sake of Israel.

[bloomj31]

@Daniel Muffinburg

I suppose that makes you a person of nasty character and a proponent of having nasty acts done upon people, as long as they are not Jews.

Maybe it does.

[bloomj31]

@Conza88

@bloomj31

This is about me venting things that have been on my mind.

Nah, that’s the front. You’re not going to change your mind, we both know that. You arrived a neo-conservative and you’re still a neo-conservative.

Your problem isn’t adhering to logic, or principles - it’s the fact that you don’t care about them. Your whole failure stems from an emotional & irrational cognitive dissonance.

There is no helping you, when you can’t even help yourself. This “discussion” is a waste of time for anyone who takes any of it, or anything you say seriously.

You’re an attention whore and this is just another prime example (there are countless others).

When the heat gets turned on, like it has many times (With LS & Knight) - you back peddle, do your little jig (“hey I’m no troll, I’ll read Hans Hoppe’s D:TGTF I swear!.)” Well how’s that going for ya? Would love to see your intelligent review of it… some thing that is based on more than laughable, “personal feelings”.

@bloomj31

Anyways, alright which question?

Scroll button, use it.

Alternatively: Ctrl + F

Alright, if it’s a waste of time, why are you having me waste my time writing responses to you?

[DanielMuffinburg]

@bloomj31

@Daniel Muffinburg

I suppose that makes you a person of nasty character and a proponent of having nasty acts done upon people, as long as they are not Jews.

Maybe it does.

Maybe it maybe does.

[Conza]

@Conza88

@bloomj31

Walter Block essentially defines a minarchist libertarian as someone who think that the government must exist to perform three essential roles. One is as a protector from foreign threats. Two is as a protector against domestic threats (civilian against civilian, etc) and three as a final adjudicator in any and all legal disputes. So basically, army, police and courts. I think that Block does a great job of defining the basic minarchist position. Then we can go on and say that some minarchists might be ok with certain limited social programs. To that extent, minarchists, like myself, are very light socialists. Hopefully that helps.

"Another inner contradiction of the theory of laissez-faire government deals again with taxation. For if government is to be limited to “protection” of person and property, and taxation is to be “limited” to providing that service only, then how is the government to decide how much protection to provide and how much taxes to levy? For, contrary to the limited gov­ernment theory, “protection” is no more a collective, one-lump “thing” than any other good or service in society. Suppose, for example, that we might offer a competing theory, that government should be “limited” to supplying clothing free to all of its citizens. But this would scarcely be any sort of viable limit, apart from other flaws in the theory. For how much clothing, and at what cost? Must everyone be supplied with Balendaga originals, for example? And who is to decide how much and what quality of clothing each person is to receive? Indeed, “protection” could conceivably imply anything from one policeman for an entire country, to supplying an armed bodyguard and a tank for every citizen—a proposition which would bankrupt the society posthaste. But who is to decide on how much protection, since it is undeniable that every person would be better protected from theft and assault if provided with an armed bodyguard than if he is not? On the free market, decisions on how much and what quality of any good or service should be supplied to each person are made by means of voluntary purchases by each individual; but what criterion can be applied when the decision is made by government? The answer is none at all, and such governmental decisions can only be purely arbitrary.

Secondly, one searches in vain in the writings of laissez-faire theorists for a cogent theory of taxation: not only how much taxation is to be levied, but also who is to be forced to pay. The commonly adopted “ability to pay” theory, for example, is, as the libertarian Frank Chodorov pointed out, the philosophy of the highway robber to extract as much loot from the victim as the robber can get away with—scarcely a cogent social philosophy, and at total variance, of course, from the system of payment on the free market. For if everyone were forced to pay for every good and service in proportion to his income, then there would be no pricing system at all, and no market system could work. (David Rockefeller, for example, might be forced to pay $1million for a loaf of bread.)11

Next, no laissez-faire writer has ever provided a theory of the size of the State: if the State is to have a compulsory monopoly of force in a given territorial area, how large is that area to be? These theorists have not given full attention to the fact that the world has always lived in an “international anarchy,” with no one government, or compulsory monopoly of decision-making, between various countries. And yet, international relations between private citizens of different countries have generally functioned quite smoothly, despite the lack of a single government over them. Thus, a contractual or a tort dispute between a citizen of North Dakota and of Manitoba is usually handled quite smoothly, typically with the plaintiff suing or placing charges in his court, and the court of the other country recognizing the result. Wars and conflicts usually take place between the governments, rather than the private citizens, of the various counties.

But more profoundly, would a laissez-fairist recognize the right of a region of a country to secede from that country? Is it legitimate for West Ruitania to secede from Ruritania? If not, why not? And if so, then how can there be a logical stopping-point to the secession? May not a small district secede, and then a city, and then a borough of that city, and then a block, and then finally a particular individual?12 Once admit any right of secession whatever, and there is no logical stopping-point short of the right of individual secession, which logically entails anarchism, since then individuals may secede and patronize their own defense agencies, and the State has crumbled.

Finally there is a crucial inconsistency in the proffered criterion of laissez-faire itself: limiting the government to protection of person and property. For, if it is legitimate for a government to tax, why not tax its subjects to provide other goods and services that may be useful to consumers: why shouldn’t the government, for example, build steel plants, provide shoes, dams, postal service, etc.? For each of these goods and services is useful to consumers. If the laissez-fairists object that the government should not build steel plants or shoe factories and provide them to consumers (either free or for sale) because tax-coercion had been employed in constructing these plants, well then the same objection can of course be made to governmental police or judicial service. The government should be acting no more immorally from the laissez-faire point of view, when providing housing or steel than when providing police protection. Government limited to protection, then, cannot be sustained even within the laissez-faire ideal itself, much less from any other consideration. It is true that the laissez-faire ideal could still be employed to prevent such “second-degree” coercive activities of government (i.e., coercion beyond the initial coercion of taxation) as price control or outlawry of pornography; but the “limits” have now become flimsy indeed, and may be stretched to virtually complete collectivism, in which the government only supplies goods and services, yet supplies all of them." - MNR, TEOL Chp 23.

Can I get your thoughts on this Bloom? Actually, I want your personal feelings… how does reading the above text make you “feeeeeeel” ?

@bloomj31

O god, I knew this would happen, I’m out of here, we’ve gone through this before.

You knew it would happen here… so why did you make this thread? Haha, apart from the obvious [;)]

[bloomj31]

@Marko

@bloomj31

Listen, Marko, if you don’t like the thread, why post in it? Just asking.

I don’t like the topic, but I like posting in it.

But if you don’t like me doing it, you are free not to open any more.

Hey, if you want to be here, I’m ok with it, but I mean are you just gonna post in my thread about how you don’t like posting in my thread?

[filc]

@bloomj31

@filc

@bloomj31

As much as I can, I try to let other people make their own decisions. Anyways, I’m not wise, I just understand my priorities.

Why not allow individuals to decide for themselves if they want to fund a preemptive strike on Israel’s enemies? Or is that something only you can decide on their behalf?

That’s something I’d be less comfortable leaving to chance.

Err are you confused? What does chance have to do with individual preference?

And so you are admitting you would prefer to control people’s preferences?

[Nielsio]

@bloomj31

What I want to do with this thread is lay down what I think about minarchism and explain why I’m a minarchist.

@Esuric

Some questions: Do you support the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan?

@bloomj31

I do support both wars, [..]

You’re not a minarchist if you believe in pre-emptive wars fought on the other side of the planet. You have almost 1400 posts in this forum yet you still don’t know basic definitions. I can only assume you have no interest in learning what others have to say; or even listening to it. Don’t think other people won’t see through you. You have some soul searching to do.

[DanielMuffinburg]

@bloomj31

@Marko

@bloomj31

Listen, Marko, if you don’t like the thread, why post in it? Just asking.

I don’t like the topic, but I like posting in it.

But if you don’t like me doing it, you are free not to open any more.

Hey, if you want to be here, I’m ok with it, but I mean are you just gonna post in my thread about how you don’t like posting in my thread?

Maybe he is.

[bloomj31]

Conza, when I read Rothbard, I feel like I’m reading an idealist who believed in the possibility of a better world full of reasonable, responsible intelligent humans working productively together. A man who believed that logic could guide us to understand how to organize society so that peace and prosperity would reign eternal. And I feel encouraged. Then I read the news.

[bloomj31]

@Daniel Muffinburg

Maybe he is.

Well, cool, let’s do it.

[Conza]

“This “discussion” is a waste of time for anyone who takes any of it, or anything you say seriously.”

That being, I don’t… [;)] [As far as I’m concerned, you’re a joke and a distraction. I’m happy to use you for my amusement, although I believe this place would be better off without you, but that’s for the “mods” and “admins” to decide.]

@bloomj31

Alright, if it’s a waste of time, why are you having me waste my time writing responses to you?

I want your answers. Please answer my questions OP. All of them are legit and warrant a coherent, lengthy, logical and well thought out post.

I just posted another one, the one you ran away from earlier. Would you be so kind? lol.

[bloomj31]

@Nielsio

You’re not a minarchist if you believe in pre-emptive wars fought on the other side of the planet. You have almost 1400 posts in this forum yet you still don’t know basic definitions. I can only assume you have no interest in learning what others have to say; or even listening to it. Don’t think other people won’t see through you. You have some soul searching to do.

As far as I know, there’s no rule that says minarchists can’t have hawkish foreign policy views. Walter Block even said that our three priorities are foreign and domestic defense and courts. He never said we couldn’t be hawkish or support Israel.

[bloomj31]

@filc

Err are you confused? What does chance have to do with individual preference?

And so you are admitting you would prefer to control people’s preferences?

If I thought it was necessary yes. But for the most part, I’d refrain from doing so.

[Marko]

@bloomj31

@Marko

@bloomj31

Listen, Marko, if you don’t like the thread, why post in it? Just asking.

I don’t like the topic, but I like posting in it.

But if you don’t like me doing it, you are free not to open any more.

Hey, if you want to be here, I’m ok with it, but I mean are you just gonna post in my thread about how you don’t like posting in my thread?

Can you read little chickenhawk? I said I like posting here. I love nothing better than to hound scumpties like you.

[bloomj31]

@Marko

Can you read little chickenhawk? I said I like posting here. I love nothing better than to hound scumpties like you.

So post here bro, I’m cool with it.

[DanielMuffinburg]

@bloomj31

Conza, when I read Rothbard, I feel like I’m reading an idealist who believed in the possibility of a better world full of reasonable, responsible intelligent humans working productively together. A man who believed that logic could guide us to understand how to organize society so that peace and prosperity would reign eternal. And I feel encouraged. Then I read the news.

Read the news, that is, the really old news. Jews have been persecuted and murdered for thousands of years. You are an idealist for believing that Israel and your fellow Jews can be protected by a falling empire, especially a socialist one.

[bloomj31]

@Daniel Muffinburg

Read the news, that is, the really old news. Jews have been persecuted and murdered for thousands of years. You are an idealist for believing that Israel and your fellow Jews can be protected by a falling empire, especially a socialist one.

What are we going to be protected by then?

[DanielMuffinburg]

Maybe you are cool it.

[Conza]

@bloomj31

Conza, when I read Rothbard, I feel like I’m reading an idealist who believed in the possibility of a better world full of reasonable, responsible intelligent humans working productively together. A man who believed that logic could guide us to understand how to organize society so that peace and prosperity would reign eternal. And I feel encouraged. Then I read the news.

Ok, now this time present counter arguments - not just "emotions" and “feelings”.

Also, you still haven’t addressed my previous questions.. don’t leave any unanswered.