Theists often have some form of proof. It’s just not very good or very convincing proof. You have to imagine that the concept of god isn’t always a falsifiable proposition. God can be simply one’s metaphor for social hierarchy, or just a placeholder word for one’s interface with the numinous. Take the pantheist
God = Universe
Universe exists
God exists
This is 100% logical. To I assert that god=universe? Not really but without an adequate definition of god, any discussion on the subject is meaningless. That’s the problem with abstract concepts.
I know what coercion is, however I don’t see a list of, admittedly, crappy choices as absolute slavery. To be honest, I see it as a form of hyperbole. In a large scale society, you’re going to need some form of organization and specialization. for millions of people, you’re going to need a water supply, and certainly some water treatment. You can get by with bottled water, but if that requires people treating water. I “imagine” that given the need for tapping the source to water million of people, let alone the agriculture, someone might stand up and say I’ll do it. That’s at least possible. Are those stand up people slaves to the population? It’s a vital service, one that would have serious consequences if it breaks down.
Is it a form of servitude? Certainly. But that’s the alternative? You can stop doing it, which odds are the population would have to organize again, wait for someone else to stand up and manage the water supply, or stop living in cities.
Is the population in servitude to water treatment? A person needs food, shelter, and clothing, and it’s not reasonable to expect clean water for free.
In an ideal situation, it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement. I have you water, you give me goods and services for that water. But I don’t trust people, what’s to prevent the water treatment people from buggering off and doing something more lucrative.
The question of how the basic infrastructure is maintained in a market anarchy is a legit one.
People would be BORN into it, or immigrate into it. No one would be forced to live there., anyone who doesn’t CAN LEAVE. I certainly would expect some taxes, or some form of community service in lue of taxes. The best I could come up with in my imagination is taking private bids on essential services, or offering a choice when ever practical for essential services. It would be difficult to have two or three power grids, but not impossible. But again, this is my imagination, not reality, I don’t expect my system to last 2 seconds. But the same general rules applies
Be a member of society
Promote change in soceity
Leave society
Pick another society
Then leave.
Look, I’ll even agree it’s “not fair” that government has a monopoly on certain services. But unless you can come up with a way to break that monopoly, a viable solution, it’s not unreasonable to expect payment for those services. Sorry. You use the roads, the water, police, phone network, expect a tax for the government’s contribution. Don’t like it? Don’t use those services. Boycott them. I’m not kidding. Find your self a nice place, perhaps in Oregon, and start a commune that isn’t connected to any monopolized services. Start your own experimental society. This IS the sort of thing you can even get the government to pay for. It would be truly educational.
Well, the usual motivation is to gain and understanding of the world around them. Question away. I won’t question you questioning questioning things.
No one EVER said the state is right. The state is often wrong.
With a mugger, they are not concerned with rational argumentation, or the legitimacy of stealing. But the mugger does not disappear into a puff of logic if you question his right to steal. Muggers exist, which leads to to the question of how without a government is crime handled? I see this as motovations not to steal
Internal moral or ethical code
External moral or ethical code
Consequences
Crime is actually often not a truly lucrative business. But it requires little training to become a mugger. I’ll often get you a meal at the very least, perhaps the respect of your peers who are also muggers. They might even organize into a muggers guild and provide job security and use forms in triplicate using NCR paper.
But without the rule of law, how is crime handled? Ok, it wouldn’t be called crime, how is undesirable coercion and the acquisition of goods and services without express consent handled?
I don’t need to prove the state’s legitimacy. Whether it’s legit or not, a given society will still exist regardless of assigning a moral value to it. If you want to propose a change to the social order, you’ll need to present a case. What is the alternative?
If you don’t like the state, move to another one, form your own, or don’t use services offered by the state. There is a choice, just not a very good one. It’s not a state of absolute slavery, you can leave. Unfortunatlly all the really prime pieces of real estate are taken.
Somalia is pretty nice, and certainly in transitional period. You could move there and propose market anarchy. I’d even support you, well moral support anyway. I have no issue with anyone proposing a new political or apolitical model. I’d love to see how this works.
But this is where logic becomes illogical.
Rocks exist
I question the legitimacy of rocks
It’s up to the rocks to prove their right to exist, I don’t have to prove negative
Well, bully for you, a rock certainly can’t provide a case for it’s existence, it’s a rock. What value is there in questioning a rock’s right to exist? None at all.
Now if you have an issue with the rock, for example if it interfering with public transport, shipping, or just generally in the way, and you want to get others to move it, you need to prove a case. Not much of a case really, rock is in the way, it’s to heavy for me to move, can you help me. Moving the rock will free up the road.
I actually do, which is why I bought up polarization. While I don’t anthropomorphize the monopolistic entity, nor the assertion that brainwashing on the state school level takes place beyond an our state vs their state mentality, I do recognize that dishonestly presenting otherwise a non polar value with only two choices is coercion. This is the tool of those with agendas in order to coerce them into thinking there is no other choice other than the ones presented.
You like children, don’t you?
This is rather why I prefer raw information, and making a determination based on the information.
I don’t see how absolute freedom can exist, I don’t see how absolute slavery can exist. I can question the right of a person to chain up another, and that’s all well and good. But even under threat of death, slavery is not absolute. One does have choices. If confronted with a person who wishes to hit you with a stick, mainstream Christianity only teaches two choices
Fight
Run away
There is a third choice
Remove the stick
A slave can pick (3) and question the legitimacy of slavery. Historically this has never been a quick process. President Lincoln for example is credited for freeing the slaves, and is seen as being a great man. I see him as being a demagogue who polarized the issue and sparked a war over this issue that he was largely responsible for. I won’t argue that ending slavery shouldn’t have been a priority, but the US solved a social problem by force of arms, and if I remember correctly spending 7 billion in 1870 dollars, loss of life somewhere between a half million to 3/4 million, economic damage likely equal to this, to address a social problem nations like England only spent millions on by “buying” the freedom of their slaves at $50/head IIRC. And to make matters worse, there was never an answer to question of “then what”. Dumping millions of slaves into the workforce was hardly a solution, which lead to starvation, slums, and certainly an assortment of “hey boy” laws in more progressive areas. A buy back program and education for those who wished to be members of society an educational program would have likely been cheaper and resulted in less death and hardship. Slave owners would get some feeling of compensation, even if it’s a token gesture, and slaves get the means of supporting them selves. Hell, spending $1000 a head owners could pay their slaves 25c/day for 10 years, and might even be PLEASED at the new system of not having to shell out hundreds of dollars from the get go to get people to work his plantation.
What can we learn from history
Assigning polar values where they don’t exist is a form of coercion and is the mark of the demagogue.
Absolute freedom or slavery is an ideal that only exists in a bottle.
Are you serious? You really can’t think of an alternative? I’ll give you a hint: it’s the primary way this sort of thing gets done all over the world today.
Food, shelter and clothing are all provided without government. Water is the necessary exception why, again?
When you say “leave”, do you mean secede (i.e., taking their land with them, etc.), or “go elsewhere”? I expect you mean the latter, but that assumes you have a prior claim on other people’s land, etc. Why should THEY leave - YOU can leave!
lieu
Gasp. Whaddaya know…bids, choice…almost sounds like a “market”
Yeah, right. The government would help out! They wouldn’t send armed men around to shoot your kids, burn your house down, and charge you with tax evasion, or anything. Really, they’re nice people!
How many of THOSE people live in cities, you know these little masses of people with population densities measured in THOUSANDS of people per square mile. Which brings us to another issue, waste management. What happens when you make a well next to a septic tank? What happens when this is on the order of millions?
What you suggest “might” work if the land has ample fresh water, and we choose to not live in cities.
And also, this ignores the issue of water treatment, which is ultimately handy in reducing the number of infectious diseases. It also ignores large projects such as various land reclamation projects which really served to maximize food output. Population grew, and we we grew dependent on the existing infrastructure. Interestly enough, such projects included signing treaties with many of the ingenious peoples late to early 20s century granting rights to tap x amount of water from x river, but now in the 21st century it’s economically viable to tap the river closer to the source bypassing the treaty stipulations.
How would such an infrastructure be maintained in a system without a government. Do you propose just not living in cities? Or better question, if you question the water monopoly, why don’t YOU resort to well water, rain water, and get off the pipes?
You need managed water for cities unless you are lucky enough to live in a region near the source, and don’t consume all of it. Water treatment does a brilliant job in preventing the spread of disease. There are that use septic tanks and pipe water in. But guess what, they mostly don’t drink it, they buy bottled water, which depends upon road, fuel, the basic infrastructure. The few who don’t buy bottled water depend on wood for fuel to boil it. These are rural folks who don’t live in the city, living in the city if you population is in the millions, you’re going to burn through your wood supply. Don’t believe me? See Europe, hell see Japan, see sushi. Every old world culture at some point had an energy crisis. Mayan’s are great example. Near as I’m aware the water source were cenotes, which are ultra useful in the fact that they are already underground storage tanks. When it rained, the water would collect back into the preexisting cenotes. Great system, well, ignoring the fact that the water had been there for thousands / millions of years stagnate, and was the home to a very diverse ecosystem of micro bacteria, still they build some large citites near the cenotes. So long as there was a balance between the rain fall and storage, they were golden. Unfortunately this is were the energy crisis comes into play. Near as I’m ware they used wood for cooking, as well as processing the plaster to adorn their citites. This was high maintenance and required much in the way of wood. Trees prevented erosion, without which their topsoil went away, the top soil they had to import from swamps. Also, it’s suggested that the there was a dry period, where the rainfall was NOT adequate to refill the cenotes. They had to abandon the cities, they couldn’t support life, well, not thousands of people.
How is the basic infrastructure maintained without government.
If a wacky person wants to be a tax protester, I would likely say feel free so long as you don’t use any of the goods or services offered by the state, mainly the roads since it’s hard to introduce competition. My ideal would be for the state to own the poles, pipes, and conduit, and for either the state or competing services to use them, or on the flip side, make their own. But again, there would be a government to help plan this.
I would agree, there does have to be provisions to secede, like Hawaii voted to do in 1997 IIRC. It’s been a while since I read up on it, but IIRC they had a drought, a rare event for Hawaii, and accepted federal aide, and thus ended succession precession.
The major goal in my Utopian government would be to maintain the infrastructure, and be a central data bank for all information regarding the state. Don’t want to pay taxes, you don’t get access to services. Don’t like it, leave OR succeed (I modified it). I agree that there should be an alternative, ideally speaking. Unfortunately this opens up the possibility or my Utopia having a succession in an area that is a major water source, or mineral, which would open the door to super-duper monopolies, in their own handy dandy little states.
Man, freedom sucks.
That’s rather why I fraught for municipal cable, because I wasn’t happy with the cable monopoly. They were
costly
quality service sucked
internet was just a pipe dream.
City layed their own fiber, provided TV and network access, and boom the cable company followed suit.
Prices, well, pretty much the same save a multi-tiered system that is on par with dialup
Quality of service improved
Internet access is top notch.
However, I don’t pretend that municipal cable is perfect. It’s hard explaining the concept to people.
"You can get TV from either the big boys or the city. You can get internet access the telco, big boy cable, or city cable. But if you get city cable, you have to sign up for an ISP, you have a choice of three. "
Why only three, well, that’s all there is in the region, but anyone can step in and start their own ISP. The 4th guy pretty much ran it out of his house, provided instructions for hotmail access, and the city didn’t like that. To be an ISP you have to provide your own mail and web servers, otherwise you’re just a jackass not providing any service.
It’s rather the same deal with DSL too, except with DSL if you sign up, the telco is the default, people don’t read the forum and see there are other choices.
But my point is people get confused with the municipal option, as the city doesn’t provide end user service, that’s up to the ISP which they won’t recommend, only have a list for you to choose from.
No noes! “Hey kids, remember to wear your body armor, the government might send armed men to shoot you”.
One thing consistent about government is it’s hypocrisy. I don’t propose that they would pay for an experimental educational community dedicated to exploring an answer to the question how would a society work without a government. That would be totally illogical, and as such, exactly the sort of thing they’ll throw money at. I can’t claim the government doesn’t send armed men to shoot you, but this is pretty extreme and doesn’t really happen all that often. But you do have a choice, northern Cali has no shortage of cults. Oregon has no shortage of communes. In middle America you’ve got the Amish who don’t pay taxes unless they work for someone outside their community.
I think you’re mistaken about what I was hinting at. You seem to be thinking I meant digging wells, or something. I meant paying people to treat water, the same way you pay people to grow/process food for you - note that it isn’t government that provides food, and yet it gets provided. (Note too that wherever government does take over the food supply, millions of people soon starve to death. Now apply this realization to the water-supply “problem”)
Technically speaking in the US, the government DOES actually provide the infrastructure for irrigation in most cases. That’s what the land reclamation project was all about, reclaiming huge areas of under watered land and turn it into a bread basket.
City water management is a big enough issue, irrigation is a bigger issue. How would this work without a government or central management. Do organizations just pop up to manage the water supply, build ditches, dyke’s, pipes. What’s to prevent such an organization from becoming a monopoly?
I accept that our present government is screwing the pouch on this issue, but how would this work without a government? How would the people weigh in the rights of the Klamath River people vs those in the high desert. Does agriculture or fishing take priority? Is it just market forces that determine what happens, as in what makes the most cash? If that’s the case, are are aboriginal rights taken into consideration?
If there is no government, what takes place to prevent the formation of land barons and surfs?
The government is not given a market demanded return on their investment, and therefore have no indication on what is really demanded. They can only know that it [what they supply to the market] is a desired service of some sort, and how many people actually demand it, but they cannot qualify the value of it. Hence, they deminish the true values desired by individuals, hinder the market, and inevitably the good of society.
That’s the calculation problem in short.
Organizations will pop up when demand is realized, and markets tend towards equilibrium, so demand will inevitably be satisfied. But if you’re positing a possibility of no private service realizing demand, assume the same conditions for government.
Perhaps metaphorically speaking, but you do essentially understand my question. Without the rule of law, or at the very least a list of drafted principles, in a system of no government, what’s there to prevent the formation of another government, one where an organization has a monopoly of essential goods (Food, Land, water). What’s there preventing someone from asserting authority by monopoly?
It seems to me, the major function of a government, as administrator it people within it’s jurisdiction, and enforcement of the rule of law. If people want to live in communities, rules or at least codes of conduct are VERY handy. Take the International Rules of the Road for instance, if two ships are headed toward each other, on which side do you pass it? Given the turning radius of a boat, if boat A goes port, and boat B goes starboard, they crash. It’s rather hard to establish at night which side was which, so they added lights, red for port, green for starboard. To establish right of way, if you see the red you’re the give way vessel, green and your the stand-on vessel. Oddly enough signal and traffic lights use a similar standard. On the open sea, where there are no laws, it makes sense to have an established code of conduct. No one is being oppressed by them, though I imagine if someone feels oppressed and questions the authority of who ever slapped them together, which to be honest I don’t know where they came from, they could defy them. However, organization makes sense, and being able to predict the actions of other ships helps prevent accidents. The choice, port or starboard, is rather arbitrary.
On roads, traffic circles are one of the most frustrating things. The convention is to signal when you exit them, not when you enter them. Those who signal entering them, and they are really small, suggests to oncoming traffic they’re going to turn to the right, and as such continue going. But if they want to take a left, well, it’s an accident waiting to happen. I’m not a fan of traffic circles, esp when they put things in the middle of the circle so you can’t see oncoming traffic, but if they exist it makes sense to establish a convention for dealing with them.
If people want to live in communities, conventions or rudimentary rules make sense. Often the choice of these conventions comes from something totally arbitrary. Why is red port, and green starboard? There could be a reason, such as green providing more illumination as as such made more sense having it on the side that wasn’t port, but why establish what side is consistently port? To establish a direction where ships enter and exit harbors. Why is port left? I have no idea.
Is there a reason to change the convention once established? Sure, but you would need a present a case for doing so.
Alternatively a convention of where we put the gas cap on cars makes a fair amount of sense, since one of the most frustrating things in getting fuel is dealing with those people with cars that have their intake on the opposite side of yours. I don’t care which side, as long as it’s consistent. Further more, since we have cars with different choice, and we can accept it makes it easier for others to get fuel if you pull to the forward most pump, I would submit that it would make even more sense that those with the least dominate side pull in to the forward most pump. I don’t propose any form of coercion other than presenting a model of a gas station, with cars with fuel intakes on opposite sides. If I owned a gas station, I would certainly propose the convention, and certainly offer a handy dandy brochure illustrating the advantages of a designated intake side, as well as non dominate sides take first pump, rather than the last available pump. My reason for doing so is enlightened self interest. You could argue my right to propose a change, but does that negate my reasons for change?
I’m willing to accept that man is basically “good” and without an external moral code they will operate on their internal one, accepting the fact that their actions carry with it consequences. But we are all unique, and perceive the world differently.
Which again back to the case of the Klamath Irrigation. You have a river used by the aboriginal people. It provides fish and recreation. You have a proposition to irrigate the high desert for agriculture. Odds are the benefit to the greatest number of people would be the agriculture. However you have the rights of those who live there already, as well as the resource of fish which to be fair has suffered due hydro power. Without a government, how does one establish who gets priority? Would this demand to settle disputes naturally result in organizations popping up? Wouldn’t the organizations that favor the one with the most money naturally thrive? Without government, what’s there to prevent megalopolises from forming?
I not postulate no private service, only the threat of an alternative exist as a motivation to encourage services to improve them selves, and a given choice may be good for given conditions, but if conditions change there should be the option to change. Problem exists that in order to provide choice for delivered services in many cases, such as cable, power, telephone, you do have to invest more on the infrastructure that delivers it then you would under a monopolistic system. I’m no fan of monopolies , but I can’t ignore the fact that if you want a choice between two or more power companies for everyone, you’re going to need two grids. That was the big argument big cable used trying to stop municipal cable. The ultimate win was using a municipal network to measure power meters rather than employing people to read the meters. That made the investment worth it.
The problem I see is this, I try to buy things responsibly. I try to support cottage industry, I prefer micro-brews for flavor, and try to buy things that have the least environmental impact. However, this is not the norm, and I my self find my self in the position of having to choose between lower price, or what I see as being the greater good, the reduction of waste. All things being equal, I would not shop at walmart, and I certainly DON’T when I live at home. On vacation however, places like Florida the choice for produce is
Walmart 2miles
Anything else 5-10 miles.
If I’m lucky, there might be choice, but when there was, the quality of the produce at Wal-Mart was far superior. The milk was much fresher, and the prices were a good 40% lower for lettuce. As much as I hate Walmart, I would have hated to have burnt 1/3 to 1/2 gal of fuel to assert my ideals. The final choice was a compromise, major grocery purchase 20 mile round trip, milk and small purchases Walmart. Walmart got some dollars, and I burnt extra fuel, but both was kept minimal. Costco often gets my dollars for many things, except for milk which is a perishable.
Without a government, what’s there to prevent another Walmart from forming. Granted I accept Walmart exists, and as such “can” exist with with government, but there is at least “some” resistance by cities pushing it away as it tends to monopolize goods and services, and become the de facto source of employment. If there is no external influence is there, and the advantage goes to the company who can provide goods and services cheaper, doesn’t that suggest that the market will equalize and there is only one provider of that good or service?
Fair enough, I consider your assertion to be metaphorical more than actual, but OK. Without a government, what is there to prevent government from forming? I think that’s a fair question.
But, we have a choice where to live. Unfortunately the choice is pretty limited to this government or that government, but there is a choice. There is competition between governments, huge completions in some cases. The space race, getting to the moon is a good example. If I preferred nationalized health care over private, there are a number of places I could move.
That’s the problem with communities, communities by default hold a monopoly over the resources in a given area. If you don’t like the community, or something the community does you can
ignore the problem
leave the community
propose a change
This certainly was more of a problem IIRC among many of the Germanic tribes as there was a distrust of those individuals who were looking to adopt a new community.
After all, why would someone leave a community willingly?
But so long as we have communities, organization makes sense. It may be possible to have organization without forming an organization, but regardless of where, there are going to be some conventions of a given community, many of which are quite arbitrary, but often is a case of picking one direction, left, over the other.
The space race only proves how much money governments whose income is guaranteed can waste. With no legitimate claim to “their” assets and by outlawing alternative provision of the services they provide, governments are in fact the quintessential monopoly, so it is bizarre to ask for a monopolist to exist to prevent monopolies…
This thread has run its course and is now completely off topic, so I am closing it.