Edmund, stop with the insults.
No one needs a licence to own a car.
Most people don’t need a license to drive a car. But then, most people don’t read the motor vehicles act before applying for a license.
One big herd, libertarians and all, moving to the sound of a marching band.
Again that is false. No one needs a licence to own a car, everyone needs to drive on state roads, the same would be with private roads.
scineram, you’re a bright cat. Rather than argue by assertion,let’s try to find common ground. Do you understand the legal distinction between a driver and a traveler?
When you move from your home to your friend’s home, operating a car, are you driving or traveling?
The latter. Everyone works in their own best interest as best understood by them.
Both? What does that have to do with ownership?
I think we’re talking past each other. Are licenses to operate a car necessary by law, yes or no?
Do you understand the legal distinction between a driver and a traveler, yes or no?
Officially, “you” are owned by the state as evidenced by your birth certificate. By “you” I mean your citizen identity. Any time you “register” something you are essentially passing ownership.
A licence is not necessary, only on government roads.
What is the difference between driver and traveler?
Officially, “you” are owned by the state as evidenced by your birth certificate. By “you” I mean your citizen identity. Any time you “register” something you are essentially passing ownership.
All I can say is, bizarre.
But it is true, and most people are completely ignorant about it.
I’ts not true. It’s hyperbole and projection.
A license is not necessary on government roads if you are traveling
A driver is someone operating a conveyance on roads for commercial purposes. A traveler is exercising his common law right of movement. A driver must be licensed (by law), a traveler requires no license.
Oh adventures in state land…
Why is it not true? I ask because I struggle with assertions posing as arguments.
With or without a state, jurisprudence still has value.
Thoughts:
- Stefan Molyneux is both completely nuts and seriously obnoxious.
- Stefan Molyneux doesn’t understand the distinction between normative and positive statements. As a positive matter, it may well be untrue that states arose to serve us, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t some normative justification for their existence in terms of welfare maximisation or something along those lines.
- As a positive matter, he implies that states only existed after the neolithic revolution since there could be no excess production. The latter statement is ambiguous and somewhat ridiculous and as a matter of fact some form of governance did exist prior to the neolithic revolution.
- Stefan Molyneux should learn what methodological means, it means some discussion pertaining to method.
- Stefan Molyneux would do well to acquaint himself with Malthus, at least as a description of pre-industrial society.
- His account of the industrial revolution is somewhat wrong. In particular, people did not move to cities because they were displaced but voluntarily; there was mass migration towards the cities and it was only this that could keep population rates from plummeting due to the exceedingly high death rates. Institutional factors cannot explain the entirety of the industrial revolution, granted, it occured first in a liberal Britain but it also followed in other less liberal regimes. Moreover, it’s not entirely certain that institutions were far more liberal after the industrial revolution than before it.
- What about the huge demographic transition that accounts for the standard of living (although, some have suggested that the Malthusian story fits pre-industrial society worse than is commonly believed).
- Intellectuals aren’t all that well paid in all parts of the world. In fact, it’s only in the US that intellectuals are really paid well. (And artists and priests well paid? You’ve got to be kidding me).
- Doesn’t his argument prove too much? If liberties were gained from the industrial revolution only because it lead to greater living standards for the “farmers” why wouldn’t we have more liberties today. At the very least, there are various regulations that seem to slow down economic growth without benefiting the “farmers”
- Scientific advances explain the vast majority of growth throughout history, with saving rates playing their part. Once again, Molyneux should do his homework.
- Since when do the general population think they’re owned?
- Superstitions, patriotism, enemies have existed for a long time, since long before “state capitalism” and “free range farms”, so his facts are somewhat off.
- If liberties are solely a function of profitability for governments, and governments everywhere wish to maximise profits, why don’t all governments employ the same “livestock managment techniques”? Namely those that maximise their profits.
- “A serf is most productive when he believes he is free”. Is there any evidence to support this assertion?
- Libertarianism is also an ideology.
- “Pimped-out”
Stefan Molyneux exemplifies everything bad about libertarianism. There’s poor psychology, factual inaccuracies, arbitrary definitions, nutty conspiracism and often a poor theoretical basis.
The general public do not know they are owned, or that they voluntarily demand servitude.
- it may well be untrue that states arose to serve us, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t some normative justification for their existence in terms of welfare maximisation or something along those lines.
Unconsciously people know the state are thieves. They say it publicly. But they stop to the wishful thinking lies the state throws them, because they don’t want to confront that hard fact and think about it. They prefer the cute view that the state is a necessary evil to protect and organize them. It’s reassuring and nicer. If you were in a prison cell and were offered drugs to make it seem like a beach and not a dark empty room, you may take it.
3-7 You are resting your argumentation on a risky axiom, that we know a lot about ancient history and that the statistical constructions that had been proposed are relatively close to the truth. That’s a very far reaching conclusion. For example, Kasparov made an essay destroying that statistical population calculations and proposed that humanity history, both written and prehistorical is much shorter and that would change all the assumptions we take on population growth.
The article is very interesting and not that long I recommend it; http://revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm
- Intellectuals aren’t all that well paid in all parts of the world.
They have the best pay ever. Stability, secure jobs, comfortable, few hours and freedom of research, only working from home could beat it!
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That depends on you view of history, if as I and many others proposed (new-chronology movement) history is shorter then it would be just almost linear evolution from the middle ages to now. That is, capital and knowledge (which could be considered capital) is the key, human (more humans and in other useful geography), discoveries, husbandry, farming, animal as strength, wheel, and with time division of labor that clearly depends on communication, that is roads and decent seafaring like the renascence, that allowed the division of labor, which itself its the explosion, posts, finances, better roads and better travel and we still there, instead of stationmasters and horses we moved to the telegraph, cables, and better use for cables (internet). I would risk to try the variables of the equation as human numbers, interconnection (as division of labor), knowledge and previous capital (as capital) and freedom (as institutions and beliefs that define the maximum benefit possibly achieved with all that before).
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It is based on the necessity you have to ask for permission, and on imposed orders on you, Still you can argue the semantics details.
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No, patriotism is based on the real modern states, like france, germany, before that patriotism was much lower. Patriotism is the base of states, it is the recipient that holds it, like a cup holding water inside.
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Because their control is limited, we are their property but a property that can not legitimately be owned because it already has an owner, that’s why there are problems. If they were to somehow telepathically control raised skeletons as work force or create robots there would be no problem. They don’t own our bodies, they have power of suggestion to place ideas on our mind backed by the fear of retribution. If they demand all of us wake tomorrow at five in the morning to see Obama walk his dog his order would be disobeyed. They have to give us enough pseudo-arguments to used them as shield to betray our inner freedom-loving conscience. No one wants to go 6000 miles away to die in a desert and they know it, but they are afraid of the government retribution so they will accept a excuse (like fighting terrorism or revenge for 911) to comply and avoid the inner fight in their minds.
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Think Soviet Russia, those who own property were far more efficient, it’s close to telling them they would own their property and then take part of away, maybe through lying, statistics, psychology. If it has been proven that letting a worker keep part of his labor makes him efficient, I would risk to suggest that the same effects would be achieved by making him believe he is keeping the fruits of his labor by deceit. Test it with a friend who is about to start a business, joke with him and say “ready to break you back to work for the federal government and start giving them half your hard earned income?” I bet he will get angry or depressed and his will to start the business will have lower, he doesn’t want to think about that, so he doesn’t.