Ron Paul vs. RonPaul.com

[ClaytonB]

Yes, but only in self defense. We don’t have the right to steal with the aide of the state. We do have the right to have legitimate contracts enforced and to be protected from harm. That is the difference.

But you’re being glib. Let’s say Alice steals $10,000 from Bob. Bob calls the police. He explains that Alice stole the money and shows them the footage. They believe this is a crime. Now, the police go to Alice’s house. She says it’s a private matter between her and Bob, that she wants Bob to call her and she’ll take care of settling it with Bob. But now it’s too late. The coercive gears of teh State have been set in motion. Alice does not have the option to call Bob up and settle the matter. Unless she complies to the nth degree with the police’s every command to be cuffed & stuffed, her life is in grave danger - and even if she does comply, she’s still in danger. Bob has set in motion an inherently coercive system, in the name of “self-defense” or recovering stolen property.

The fact is that, in a corrupted society, it is impossible to be free of corruption. Bob surely does need his $10,000 back - that’s a lot of money. And he may have no other possible recourse than to call the police to recoup the cash. But in doing so, he may be setting in motion an inevitable series of aggressive actions. The police don’t actually function for the purpose of recovering stolen property - that’s a purely ancillary function in their own view. Rather, they exist to punish and enforce. So, the peaceful citizen is faced with a painful dilemma: he can either eat the losses of theft, or he can unleash the aggressive wolves of the State on his aggressor.

In fact, this is the very danger of much of family law - there is so little room for the victim’s discretion. Consider the now highly politicized domestic violence. Should you be the victim of domestic violence and you believe that your attacker needs to be warned but not go to prison or something, then you might make the mistake of calling the police. But the thing is that the law requires the police to arrest no matter what - if DV has occurred, statutory law eliminates all exercise of human judgment whether on the part of the victim or the police. The net effect is that probably less DV gets reported than ought to be reported as victims make the painful choice of just “eating it” rather than seeing their spouse - who they love and need to not be in jail - jailed and then likely convicted and destroyed by the criminal justice system in perpetuity. One can argue whether police are the proper venue for intervention in these cases, but the point is that even asking third-parties - such as family, friends, church, etc. - for intervention is legally risky… should anyone who becomes aware of the situation choose to report it to the police, the same outcome will occur. So, paradoxically, I believe DV laws can actually increase DV in these situations where what the victim wants to happen is for an outsider to intervene and simply shame and warn the abuser, rather than spring them immediately into the criminal justice system.

Your wage is not immoral because you don’t do harm. You contract your labor. The harm is done by others.

The armorer for the abusive and aggressive police department can argue the same, no?

Your benefit is an externality and you have a right to use the state to enforce your payment. It doesn’t matter if your neighbors are using the state to their benefit or not. It doesn’t matter how your employer choose to fund your wage (so long as you don’t ask it to do harm on your behalf). Using the state in pure self defense is always moral.

See above … I think it’s virtually impossible to “use the state in pure self defense” and I think it shows a general lack of familiarity with how the police and courts actually operate that you think this is possible.

Ron Paul’s use of state enforcement (if that is indeed what he is doing) is only legitimate if he is acting in self defense. He must be either enforcing a legitimate contract or preventing harm to his property. It is not legitimate for him to ask the state to enforce a coerced, monopolistic contract on a third party. That itself is harm. He has every right to register RonPaul.com, but he cannot ask that it be stolen. Again, this assumes that ICANN is a coercive, monopoly.

ICANN is a coercive monopoly and the whole concept of “registering it first” is ridiculous. Since when does ICANN or the US Government have the right to create a universal namespace and then charge people to register names in that space on a paid, first-come-first-serve basis, giving rise to a secondary speculative market in… literally nothing?? Now, I’m not going to say there’s any easy solutions to this problem but what I will say is that Ron Paul’s property claim - as far as you and I can tell from here - is as good as theirs, according to the very rules of ICANN which made ronpaul.com “their property” in the first place! And further, Paul’s filing to have the matter settled is not aggressive action… that’s like saying that suing someone - and turning out to have been wrong - is aggression. What nonsense. He’s asking for the opportunity to tell his side of the story in a forum which has been established for this purpose. Sheesh.

Clayton -