Wait, why not? If you really want to debate in a completely value-free sense, then using morally loaded terms like “aggression” and “non-aggression” are counter-productive, right? But as I’ll further outline below, we’re then approaching this debate from two different directions - you from the descriptive direction and I from the normative direction.
Here’s what I responded to:
I took this to mean that you were implicitly arguing that most governments are, in fact, voluntary. Having already assumed that you support what you see as “voluntary” and oppose what you see as “involuntary”, I took this to mean that you therefore support the existence of most governments in the world today. But I had also assumed that you were an anarcho-capitalist like me, which is why I saw your statements as being contradictory in that regard. Maybe I was too hasty in making either or both of these assumptions - if so, I’ll gladly stand corrected.
But furthermore, I don’t see how any government could not be the result of an emergent order and human action, as you put it - so I’m at a loss to explain why you qualified your statement with “most governments”. Can you point to one that you think is not the result of such, and explain why you think it isn’t?
Because, as far as I can see, the important part lies in the semantics being used and the value judgements being made. For example, you could define “voluntary” in such a way that, if someone held a gun to my head and demanded all of my money, and I subsequently handed it over, I did so “voluntarily”. If we don’t agree on the meanings of words such as “voluntary”, “involuntary”, “aggression”, and “non-aggression”, we’ll simply be talking past one another.
I oppose existing governments because I consider them to be morally wrong. Note that this is an inherently normative standpoint, as any kind of opposition must entail. But actually, I do extend the blame to citizens, as the root of the problem (believing that government is legitimate) does indeed begin with them.
Thanks for the clarification. When I see the word “must”, I immediately think “obligation”. If someone uses that word without conditionally qualifying it, it seems to me that he’s unilaterally imposing an obligation upon someone else. But when I talked about “an attempt at intimidation”, I was referring to your second statement to Daniel: “I doubt you will be successful.”
Well, it seems to me that you’re trying to bridge the is-ought problem with the above. Let me ask you this: what, in your opinion, leads you to consider “cultural customs and other informal institutions of governance” to be legitimate and “political discretion” to be illegitimate?
I sincerely hope that you’re not implying, in the above, that the drug dealer’s action is legitimate in your eyes. Otherwise, I don’t think I see your point here.
Earlier you stated that, in your opinion, “political discretion” is illegitimate, but now you refer to “legitimacy in a political sense”. This seems like a direct contradiction to me. How can you talk about “legitimacy in a political sense” at all if you think “political discretion” is illegitimate?
While your personal value-statements carry a lot of weight in the real world, they’re still yours. Presumably they carry a lot of weight with you, or otherwise you wouldn’t bother to make them at all.
Before I attempt to answer that question, can we agree arguendo that “governance” is defined as “a system of coercion and threat of coercion”? This comes close to Mises’ definition of “government” or “state”, as “the institution of coercion and compulsion of a society”.
Could you please provide one or more of these empirical observations? Otherwise, I think it’s modern voters who are confused.
In that case, a criminal band that is trying to subjugate a population is not a state? I just want to be clear that you’re defining “state” in a necessarily ex post facto sense regarding claims of monopoly on the legitimate use of coercion.
Maybe the easiest way for me to do this is by example. Any time people democratically vote on something, the losing minority is forced to obey the commands of the state (as expressed by the majority) even though they don’t want to - for if they did, they would’ve voted with the majority.
I don’t see the dispute revolving around the market share of coercion at all. Rather, I see the dispute as revolving around when it is legitimate for coercion to be applied or even threatened. This is what I meant before about the issue being what governance.
For example, here in the US, most people are fixated (at least publicly) on “obeying the law”. On one hand, this is just cultural backing of coercion, isn’t it? But notice how open-ended and, in the limit, totalitarian it is. “The law” can mean anything - all that matters is obeying it, whatever it may be. So even though this looks like an example of “cultural backing of […] coercion [being] enough”, I still don’t agree with it. I still consider it to be wrong and therefore oppose it.