The Minimum Wage and the Value of Labor

Economics Economics Questions
81

Autolykos

Under your hypothetical constitution, is any individual or group allowed to secede?

I thought about that, and decided that a secession provision would only de-legitimize the document for a majority of those to whom I wished to appeal–not ancappers, but average Americans, who still want the reassurances of a stable state. But it also occured to me that no such provision is necessary anyway: If Texas decided to secede today, what difference would it really make whether the Constitution made provision for it?

I don’t see how “seceding individuals” could be meaningful within any public system, since they would still be using public roads, still be subject to criminal and civil law enforcement, still feed parking meters, etc. I guess they could have the equivalent of diplomatic immunity; but that doesn’t even work well now.

How would it? Explain yourself.

You proposed ending all legislation; and I asserted that without law, force would be more likely to settle all disputes instead. For if it isn’t illegal to kill, rob, or to retaliate, and criminals still exist, then there would be no role for even private law enforcement: people would be left to arm themselves to provide for their own protection, banding together, presumably, to better ensure it–or else be individually subject to all those who don’t respect the NAP. For those who don’t want to join a collective, defensive group this would be one step toward NAP, and two steps back–and a real loss of freedom they enoy now. Further, I say that the government commits less real, violent aggression against its own innocent people–violates the NAP less egregiously–than real criminals would, absent government. Can I prove this? No. But I haven’t heard a convincing argument otherwise.

Please show me where you’ve refuted a single counter-argument of mine so far.

One of the main reasons I don’t often reply to your posts is that, in addition to being so snarky at times that I would be embarassed to take some of them seriously, I also get virtually no counter-argumentation from you: Accusations of logical fallacies don’t represent an opposing point of view. Often you also seem either to be feigning an utter lack of understanding of basic issues, or simply to be intellectually-lazy, or completely hypocritical. Here’s a quick list.

  1. How exactly do “we”/“society” place a value on something? (Is there not already a minimum wage, Autolykos?)
  1. I find this to be highly immoral. Can you prove me wrong? (Note that this will require proving that objective morality must exist.) (Would you say that the NAP is a moral system, objectively, Autolykos?)

You weren’t suggesting that initially, in your reply to Clayton. You were clearly talking about the capacity to make “wasteful” and/or “inefficient” decisions not being limited to people who work in the government. If you’re making a separate argument here, please be explicit about it

My very next sentence was: “Mail delivery is a relatively-simple, harmless enterprise. Law enforcement and military defense are not.” I was implying that I believe that the control of aggression would be greatly diminished without those government functions; I then went into greater detail with you, about the proliferation of private weaponry and the increased odds of its use, because you asked.

What exactly makes it “absurd” for all perceptually distinct roads to be owned by separate individuals or groups? I’d like you to make your thought processes explicit here.

Sorry, Autolykos. This is one of those ideas that one either appreciates as kooky, or not. I think it’s self-evidently anti-trade and anti-travel, as a good portion of human beings value control more than money, i.e. control of their little patch of highway, not making everyone else’s day a little easier, or making a few extra bucks. And there aren’t endless alternatives/other routes in the real, finite world.

Explain how capitalism must lead to Earth turning into a Death Star.

I didn’t use the term “must.” I said that capitalism is designed to maximize efficient use of natural resources. I mean by that that it is the fastest-running engine of resource consumption; and that it allows for the largest number of people to live at a relatively-good standard of living. This sounds great in the short-term; but over time, if unchecked, it will lead logically to resource shortages, overpopulation, and, finally, the profit-based exploitation of all available resources on Earth. In other words, it has no natural checks, no guiding authority to guard the interests of the general public.

How does a monopoly over legitimate use of coercion (i.e. a government) check itself? This is a very simple question.

Add this to your list above: It does so every single day. No, it isn’t perfect; but it is functional.

A monopoly over legitimate use of coercion is allowed to define what “legitimate use of coercion” itself is, and no one’s allowed to challenge it on its own definition thereof.

Challenges to illegal search and seizure are made every single day–and often result in the innocent and criminals thrown back onto the streets.

Dude, come on. What’s this “when” crap? You keep making these asinine assumptions with no logical or even empirical basis behind them. It’s just one bare assertion after another. Guess what? A bare assertion is a logical fallacy. Keep it up, you have a great track record there.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/12/30/81483/china-loses-steel-dumping-case.html

“No more general taxation”, you say, but you also say that “judges are paid from a public pool of revenue”. Where exactly does this public pool of revenue come from? It sounds to me like it must come from taxes, if people aren’t paying directly for the judges’ services. So why contradict yourself like this? Is it deliberate? Do you think none of us will notice?

Court fees are assessed by the court in question; but they don’t go right into the pocket of the judge; you send it to the county clerk, just like today. This revenue goes to the general revenue fund established by the Treasury; and such funds are disbursed from that pool of revenue in order to pay the judge, the bailiff, etc. No direct quid pro quo allowed. I’ve already posted my Tenth Amendment several times, which delineates all revenue sources, including once on this thread. If you want a little more detailed explanation of its operation, check out the “The evolution towards freedom: thoughts on panarchy and minarchy” thread.

What “experience” are you talking about?

Another one for your list above. What “destructive force” is used by any liberal democracy against its people that might even suggest that they cannot be trusted with their weaponry, Autolykos? And spare me police guns: they do way more good against criminals than evil against the non-aggressive.

What makes governments always and necessarily have a vested interest in preserving the lives and the earning power of “the people”?

(Misquote/strawman, by your own definition: I never said either “must” or “necessarily.” Yet I answer.) The government needs the revenue of its citizenry in order to perpetuate its existence. No people; no revenue: no government. And I use “People” sometimes to denote all citizens, not just these or those people, as well as to elevate them to the level of the Congress, and the President.

Here we go again. Another bare assertion

I know you’ll bristle at this; but just once, I’d like an explanation for how your ancap alternative would work in a given set of conditions, like with everyone printing their own money. Refuse if you must, Autolykos; but if you know of a thread that addressed it already, I’d appreciate a link.

82

DLD,

you are a man with a central plan for remaking the world into what you percieve to be a better place.
how are you not a statist when it is only a statist that would want to implement a central plan?

83

Jargon

I’m sorry if this seems evasive, but my replies to most of your posted questions wouldn’t differ much from those I gave to Autolykos on this same page. If you find them insufficient, I’ll try to be more specific for you.

I realize this sounds haughty and I will take full responsibility for that charge of being a pompous douche, if you can go back and show me the holes in my arguments. But I can’t permit you to ignore our previous discussion by continuing this nonsense. Also, you never satisfactorily expounded on ‘human nature’ and its relevance to corrupting a free market economy, something which you continually employ in arguments.

I stopped replying to the previous thread, because I got tired of going round and round what both of us would acknowledge is a fundamental difference of opinion about human nature. But I’ve since had some discussions elsewhere that might clarify a little what I mean. Some of what I post is from previous posts here; I frankly just don’t feel like researching whether I’ve already shown you it or not. And it’s all part of the picture for me. I’ve also been challenged quite a bit about my view of what is moral; so I included this as well.

Stay with me here–human DNA, the diversifying engine of evolution, is such that within a given family unit, two perfectly lovely parents will often have two perfectly lovely children and one perfect SOB of a child. Why is this relevant? The family is a DNA-microcosm of society: no matter how lovely the society and its rules, or how peaceable the leaders under their voluntary control of resources, born into their midst will be an equivalent ratio of kiddoes whose hearts’ delight is not in following an orderly, voluntary, peaceable system–whose delight stems from bringing chaos and misery to such a system and to its participants–and hoarding everything for themselves. Where we seem most to differ is not only in both the distribution of these negative traits among humans and within each one of them–all waiting to be brought out by adverse or opportune circumstance–but also in the likelihood of precluding such alternative, “survival-strategy” traits from arising in an ancap community in sufficient numbers to effect a “drift” toward statism–toward coerced guarantees of life, security from the basic fear for survival itself.

I would further argue that this drifting toward state is an “institution” of human nature, an abiding aspect of it, specific to no governmental system; and that an ancap society would fall victim to it by the same agency that ours has increasingly done so (Here’s where I lose half of my defenders):

Nature has understandably endowed Woman with a strong, at-times-irrational, literally-over-weaning impulse to shelter her children from fears for their survival and from the pangs of need itself. And in a more “enlightened society”, one in which decisions are made by ballot, or by contract, a woman enjoys a double influence: She has the right to vote, or to engage in a contract, herself; and she has an inordinate influence over the vote, or the contracts, of her mate. And whereas the male of the species is often inclined to be objective about the role of the individual in society, even where it involves his own flesh and blood; the female, not so much. How then can she guarantee a life for her offspring–especially a dysfunctional SOB–free from “fears for their survival and from the pangs of need itself?” By turning the alluring gifts that Nature has endowed upon her to that societo-evolutionary end, effecting, collectively as a gender, a leftward drifting of society toward a centralized state system.

If such a drift toward statism has not occurred, the society is generally far from “enlightened”–tends either to be male-dominated and rudimentary; or one in which the family unit/clan provides such need-guarantees itself, often at the expense of fostering self-reliance and individualism–or modern, objective thought.

Furthermore, I believe that humans, if they are to mature into fully-moral individuals, must face the full consequences of their actions as directly and as personally as possible. But most do not: They cede their free choice to others; they shelter themselves within groups–familial, political, sports, religious, etc.–and they act in the name of those they claim to represent. Within these contexts, loyalty is widely considered to be a virtue; to me it is a vice. For the surest test of one’s loyalty comes not in a defense of the innocent; but in a bold-faced, spirited defense of the guilty. Loyalty perpetuates immorality. (Frankly, I see it as yet another unfortunate offspring of the evolutionarily-understandable protectiveness of the human mother. But I still like women as they are.) Thus any human collectivism will be a breeding ground for human immorality.

Then why not collapse the state altogether–and, with it, all of the collectivist institutions that are sheltered and fostered by it? As state above, I believe that loyalty is built into the DNA; such that no eradication of a state apparatus will spare us from a “drift” toward the eventual re-emergence of the state–following, no doubt, a bloody clash of competing loyalties for control of natural resources.

But setting aside the remote possibility of a total collapse into human chaos, I also would not favor a collapse of the state because the current national and state borders act as man-made checks upon global population expansion and the wholesale economic development of the world’s natural lands. And I value this: I wouldn’t like to see the Earth systematically sold off in its entirety to the highest bidder: I want national forest and parks: I wish there were many more. I don’t want a world where its every aspect is converted into someone’s profit. This is admittedly an economically “unprincipled” position to take; but it further reflects a view of humans as attempting to escape their own limitations by instead transforming their environment–transforming Nature, instead of their human nature.

I also posit that only animals and children are truly innocent, and thus not to be held fully-accountable for their choices: not capable adults–no matter what befell them: their actions must always have consequences. I see instead that the state tends to corrupt this moral precept, and to infantilize adults, most detrimentally in the case of the defense of criminals–where this “compassion” comes even at the expense of an effective protection of children. This is the lowest pit of human dysfunction, and a grotesquely-distorted image of both morality and justice. Any society with any plausible claim to a strong moral code and a faithful system of justice must first and foremost offer special protections for the truly innocent, the children: It’s only right vs. wrong; and it must be black and white. In fact, in my opinion, a mature, adult society would also be a truly “childcentric” society–and one that afforded as much land as possible for the only other innocents of Earth, the animals.

If you want to know what I mean by moral, then I would say that morality must be founded upon a faithful determination of what is innocence and what is guilt: This involves an assessment of competence, intent, alternatives, and action, as well as a principle that I call relative proximity. The actions of children and animals are not appropriate for the fullest judgments of morality; because their alternatives are limited and not well-grasped by a fully-developed competence. To condemn them by blindly judging their reasoning as fully-competent, and judging their actions as fully-intentional, even without a full awareness of their limited alternatives, is to commit an immoral act oneself. Their innocent dependence upon others for their survival is a benchmark for the justice of a society: How well does your ideal society provide for the protection of the truly innocent–how moral is it?

But the final element in judging morality is relative proximity. If a child is drowning in lake shallows, it is more immoral for the man at the shore to do nothing than a man at the crest of a nearby hill. One child is close to you; some other child in harm’s way may be closer to someone else–someone who then has a stronger moral responsibility to that child, around the crest of the hill, than you do. Proximity also affords you a better opportunity than the person around the hill to judge for yourself the character and the predicament of the person in jeopardy in front of you, and to decide if this is someone worthy of help–someone in danger of death, through no choice of her own, in spite of respecting others’ lives.

In the case of a child, who cannot competently weigh all the alternatives and is relatively-dependent upon others all the time, it would not be fair to make a final moral judgment, even if it were technically her fault for her predicament. Also, relative proximity contains a pun: For the relatives of these children are in more intimate proximity to the child, and so have a stronger moral obligation than a stranger “on the crest of a nearby hill.” One is justified in assuming that such children are provided for by those in closer proximity, unless the opposite is apparent–and, morally, they ought to be provided for by their closest relatives; so some element of hands-off leveraging and social pressure may be appropriate, though not ultimately at the cost of an innocent life. I want to end welfare so as to apply such social pressure upon irresponsible parents, so as to discourage their having children in poverty, at others’ expense. Not only does this irresponsibility deny children a moral role model, but it endangers the financial survival of the state itself.

And so I favor a minimum wage, so as to ensure that those low-skill workers who do work will be rewarded with the means for the very survival that makes the state preferable to statelessness. And as a last resort, if this “social pressure” failed to force irresponsible parents to provide for their children, and somehow private charity were insufficient, then I would support state financial intervention to protect the lives of the children–and, for that matter, any truly helpless person–all truly innocent people–but not for irresponsible parents, or irresponsible people generally.

Adults generally ought to face the consequences for their actions. And one need not jeopardize their lives to secure the survival of another. If, on the other hand, a person is trapped under a fallen tree, and you can save him at no risk to yourself, then things change: Unless you had some way of knowing that this person under a tree were one who does not respect others’ right to live, then it would be immoral not to help. The lack of knowledge about the person who is not in mortal jeopardy is a legitimate “out” with respect to helping adults; as it is often, but not always, safe to assume that they are in the position they are by dint of their own bad choices. Not so, with kids, who are not fully aware of their alternatives–but who are increasingly less “innocent” as they approach adult maturity.

And, more generally, I find that the right to life supersedes all other rights. And whoever stands in the way of anyone else’s survival, whether on principle or not, voids their own right to life: Life would necessarily devolve into a survival of the fittest, essentially. By extension, all “lesser” rights, those other than the right to life itself, cannot be provided at the expense of any life-respecting human’s right to life. Thus we have the irony of mass killing and horrific wars for control of the natural resources that sustain life; thus we have states and borders that ensure this right to life to the greatest number. And thus all the protests of the rights “absolutists,” that their property rights and freedoms aren’t fully respected, fall mostly on deaf ears–on living deaf ears.

Since a state currently best ensures the survival of life-respecting people in this real world where not all people are so, it is the most moral possible system–for now. And since direct democracy is the state system that opimizes individual choice, it is the most morally-healthy system. The smallest political subdivision in America, short of the individual voter himself, is the voting precinct, wherein the individual resides and has the right and the power to vote for issues that most closely address his local needs and most faithfully reflect his individual choices. Thus it affords the fullest set of consequences for his choices; and the greatest potential for his maturity into a fully-moral adult. This is how I came to develop my localized system of direct democracy.

84

TANSTAAFL

you are a man with a central plan for remaking the world into what you percieve to be a better place.

how are you not a statist when it is only a statist that would want to implement a central plan?

If the central plan in question is a blueprint not only for dismantling the current state and instituting local autonomy, but also for using government as a punitive tool for teaching self-reliance and self-determination, such that it acts as a transitional system to a future without government, then ultimately I am not a statist: I am a realist. I have devised a real plan for a real transition. Most of the supporters of ancapism are neither realists, nor radicals.

85

@ DLD

Whew, that was a doozy. First of all I think it’s funny and quite fitting that you notice that women’s voting rights have initiated a leftward drift in politics. By observing the state as an active agent of change they are engaged in the illusion of government. They see that the government is a thing that does things, supposedly things that people tell it to do, so we should tell it to fight poverty. This is in my opinion, and I believe in yours as well, an immature understanding of the nature of the state. I can’t help but agree with this humorous observation. Yet somehow you engage partially in the psalms of the state, like forcibly altering the conditions of voluntary employment.

Now when you point out that many people are total SOB’s, I don’t disagree. How exactly is this an argument against AC or towards Statism?

On population: note how all developed countries have stagnant or declining birth rates. Underdeveloped countries have expansive birth rates because of the need for labor, lack of birth control, and lack of ambition beyond the family unit. Developed countries have quasi-automated production, education, birth control, and things to do beyond the family (like art, recreation, philosophy, going to the movies, etc.) Maybe the sooner we are developed, the sooner our population rate will stabilize (sorry Mises).

On nature: as a longterm hiker, I value nature also. Is there any reason why people cannot band together, pool funds, and by tracts of land for their preservation? Do corporations really want to try to turn Mt. Washington into a granite mine? Does the person who owns Mt. Washington (the State right now) really want to sell Mt. Washington as a granite mine? I think you’re assuming automatically that corporations will gobble up the land and for every tree that once was there will be a steel smokestack, blotting out the sun. The wealthier a society becomes, the more it values its recreation and the less it is dedicated to laboring, for that need is more and more provided for. Thus as systems of production become more efficient and require less land, while simultaneously people become wealthier, there is ample opportunity for concerned citizens to buy up land. In fact, they already do that now with the Audobon society and the Nature Conservancy. No aggression required.

On minimum wage: You can advocate MW all you want, but you will only be increasing suffering for the least fortunate of said society. Not only are the unemployable but they cannot build their resume from the ground. People assume that low-wage workers stay in those positions for life, but in a modern market society that just isn’t the case. Burger flippers are constantly being replaced by younger generations looking for positions of responsibility, and ex-burger flippers are taking their colors of experience to other employers as proof that they are employable and reliable. This is not Industrialization, where the poor must labor endlessly. We are past that and upward mobility is entirely real. In fact that is how the middle class came into existence.

You act as though there is no punishment for evil-doers within a free society but it’s not true: thieves would be taken from two or threefold, and life-takers would be taken from in the ultimate. Not only is this as good as the statist version of law, it’s better. It totally disincentivizes theft. Instead of a room, three square meals, and a TV, you get a period of servitude.

If you really value human well-being, why must you interfere with someone who wants a job. If there’s an employer and an employee who both agree to trade their goods/services, who are you to prevent them from doing so?

Also, don’t you realize that real wages rise in a market society? Technology and entrepeneurial management cut the costs of business, lowering the prices of products. So for example, a burger flipper might be getting paid a low wage, but McDonalds can sell $1 double cheeseburgers to poor people! Isn’t that a positive outcome? See the way that wages rise, is this: the worker does not get the benefit of the product he creates, but he does get the benefit of the products everyone else makes. The toaster maker gets cheaper TV’s and the TV maker gets cheaper toasters.

86

@Jargon

This is in my opinion, and I believe in yours as well, an immature understanding of the nature of the state. I can’t help but agree with this humorous observation.

Thanks for being honest about your agreement. You can then understand, perhaps, why I was reluctant at first to throw that observation out there, not knowing anything about this forum. I didn’t want to come across as a rabid sexist before getting a chance to establish that I have a thoughtful, serious point of view.

Now when you point out that many people are total SOB’s, I don’t disagree. How exactly is this an argument against AC or towards Statism?

I was mainly pointing out that AC societies would be no less prone to this “drift” than state systems–that it doesn’t matter so much how they begin: it’s where they end up. But the underlying problem that I have with comparisons between the two is one of transition. It seems to me useless to speculate about an AC society as though one were already in existence (in part because this is largely a male fantasy–one that females must come to equally value somehow.)

The state, however, already exists. My direct democracy deals with what we have now, and attempts to get us to something much closer to ancapism. The process of approaching AC is, in effect, changing human nature, and is two-fold: First stop subsidizing the proliferation of loafers and the irresponsible, generally, by ending welfare supports–thus discouraging single motherhood and large families, literally making changes in the gene pool, away from such dependency.(Also very touchy.)

And then directly impose the costs of government services upon those who require them, drawing a more visible line between large government and female dependence–even as opportunities are afforded for freedom from most government contribution by solving problems without its services. My hope is that this will both raise awareness of the “drift” issue, and turn the tide toward a broader appreciation of self-reliance, even among women.

On population: note how all developed countries have stagnant or declining birth rates. Underdeveloped countries have expansive birth rates because of the need for labor, lack of birth control, and lack of ambition beyond the family unit.

More touchy topics, no? I could get into a long, un-PC discussion about cultural differences and evolutionary survival strategies; but the bottom line is that even within the U.S. and Europe there are some populations that are shrinking, and some that are growing quite well, irrespective of technological development–aided by it, in fact. Yet not all of these cultures have an underlying respect for the principles that allowed for the development in the first place. And it isn’t impossible for a once-developed society to drift back into relative squalor and strife, just by virtue of population changes, effected through voting blocks, or through force of numbers. This is a growing concern in Europe, with respect to Arab populations and Muslim cultural law.

On minimum wage: You can advocate MW all you want, but you will only be increasing suffering for the least fortunate of said society. Not only are the unemployable but they cannot build their resume from the ground. People assume that low-wage workers stay in those positions for life, but in a modern market society that just isn’t the case.

I’ve already conceded that I’d support exceptions for part-time workers; this would allow for such experience-building. But I have a problem with allowing the unfettered free market to determine the moral course of humanity. It’s a huge lie that mid and large-sized companies are so competitive and efficient that they can’t afford to pay low-wage workers a subsistence wage, particularly if they’re no longer paying corporate or payroll taxes under my system. Everyone who’s had a job in a decent-sized company knows that they have all sorts of wasteful policies at all levels. They might very well need cut no jobs at all.

And I don’t buy the inviolate rightness of market valuation anyway, particularly with respect to wages. Hiring two people at $3 per hour, instead of one at $6 and one unemployed, is a distorted snapshot, not a full moving picture. Has the value of the labor really dropped in half, because of the absence of a minimum wage? Or has the door opened to de-valuing low-skilled work by virtue of a prevailing societal bias–a subjective disdain for the modest and unambitious? Can there be no dignity in the life of a person of simple needs in a just society? Does everyone have to live to work, instead of working to live?

On moral grounds alone, I say that honest, full-time workers ought to be guaranteed at least a substistence wage, at whatever job they choose. Some people don’t want to be anything but a burger flipper. Why should they be forced to climb higher, just to make ends meet? And over the course of time, much like the lack of welfare, the lack of low-wage jobs, if there is one, will either encourage job-skills acquisition, or discourage large families, or both.

Also, don’t you realize that real wages rise in a market society? Technology and entrepeneurial management cut the costs of business, lowering the prices of products

Yes, but among all of the cost-cutting to be done within a company, the wages of the lowest-paid workers should not be the first to yield, if they yield at all. Real wages can also rise without nominal wages falling first. There wouldn’t be a need for lobbying costs, for example, under a direct democracy either; and I stymie most regulation as well:

No administrative rule or regulation, except those indispensible to the protection of public safety, shall be enforceable where, regarding the regulated, a presumption of malice, neglect or imbecility inheres in the requirements thereof: But any irreparable injury to person or to property, private or public, whose proximate cause is a business or governmental standard or procedure violative of due care and common sense shall nullify the limited liability or the official immunity of the authorizing and enforcing officers, respectively, both in civil and in criminal suits.

You act as though there is no punishment for evil-doers within a free society but it’s not true: thieves would be taken from two or threefold, and life-takers would be taken from in the ultimate. Not only is this as good as the statist version of law, it’s better. It totally disincentivizes theft. Instead of a room, three square meals, and a TV, you get a period of servitude.

We may have to agree to disagree about the practicality of private police, courts, or retaliatory justice: I think it’s totally unworkable. Don’t feel obliged to read all of this; but here are some changes I made to improve justice:

(from Amendment VIII) All convicted prisoners shall labor no less than eight hours per day, five days per week, unless two physicians certify that they are physically or mentally incapable of as much; and only in so laboring shall able prisoners earn the privileges of hot meals, visitations, educational and recreational opportunities and personal, non-toiletry possessions within cells.

Amendment V – The intentional, knowing, reckless or criminally-negligent infliction of death or grave physical or psychological injury—a disabling injury that is not susceptible to humane, restorative care or natural, restorative healing, absent professional medical or mental health intervention— by an adult upon a minor, a post-partum human being younger than eighteen years of age, henceforth shall be a high crime: an offense so heinous and degenerate that, upon conviction and exhausted appeal of the convicted, the latter shall be confined by the state, apart from the public, until death.

(from Amendment VI) The right to a neutral audience from the jury shall attend the accused; and at the opening of trial the jurors shall be informed of this right and of the nature and cause of the accusation against the defendant; who shall take the witness stand to respond under oath to any germane questions of the presiding judge and the jurors.

The defendant, or the surrogate defendant, shall then call and question witnesses and present evidence, equally subject to the direct examination of the trial judge and the jury, and to the rulings and directives of the former, who shall guide the proceeding in a manner conducive to a full, reasoned and swift finding of fact and law.

Upon the ruling of the court that the defense has exhausted all relevant, material evidence, the judge shall call to the stand for the same full, direct examination any public officer materially engaged in the investigation, arrest or interview of the accused, including the clerk of the court, ending similarly with the aforementioned voluntary witnesses and their evidence.

(No more hiding behind defense lawyers; no more presumption of innocence, in spite of probable cause for arrest–or state prosecutor to overcome it; no more pleading the fifth; and no more passive jury: more personal accountability for all)

But to each his own, right?

87

I call discrimination - you don’t answer my posts :frowning:

88

I’ll get you tomorrow. Sorry.

89

There can be no systemic drift in that which does not exist, namely ‘state systems’ in an AC society. It very much does matter where they begin. Beginning in an AC society would make the establishment of a state immensely risky and equally improbable. Such is the way of a society in which there is no tax farm. Every decision must be based on risk because there is no spongy mass of humans to inflict the costs on.

Why not streamline your constitution: The federal government shall not regulate any industries whatsoever other than the defense and law agencies. The federal government shall not infringe upon these rights: A, B, C, D, F, etc. There would still be a statist version of order that people could still wrap their heads around. Also, ceasing to subsidize parasites is not changing human nature, it is closing certain avenues to human nature. That’s an important distinction. How about don’t give out welfare in the first place?

This is a simple problem. Currently the incentive structure is thus: make babies, recieve more welfare money. A better incentive structure is thus: consider the cost of making a baby before committing. In other words, cut out welfare completely. Then poor people who couldn’t afford it would not have eight babies and then be able. force people to pay for them

Nothing has improved the living standards of the worker and the middle-class like relatively free markets have. This lack of competition for bidding labor may well be a result of restricted market entry. If they’re paying less taxes then they’ll make cheaper stuff. Then not only the worker, but everybody wins.

And? What’re you going to do? Make the choice for them?

The rightness of the market valuation is based on its voluntary nature. If you really wanted to, you could probably get a group of workers wages really high… … that is, at the expense of all the other would-be workers. And then productivity would be lower. And the standard of living would rise slower. Full productivity raises the standard of living the quickest. There certainly can be dignity in the life of a person with simple needs: Real wages rise and demand for labor decreases thus increasing leisure time. On moral grounds I say, quit the demagoguing and let the people work if they want to, and let humanity as a whole grow.

Maybe it shouldn’t? But it is. And the last person who said this, and followed the principle, convincing business leaders to abide by it, caused the death and poverty of thousands, for ten years.

How is it un workable?

The amount of elastic clauses in there frightened me…

90

So in your revised system, the US federal government owns all the land. Private ownership of land within its boundaries is ultimately just a fiction, a fraud.

First off, asserting that an (admittedly!) unproven argument or proposition is nevertheless true because it hasn’t been disproven is an argument from ignorance. Think about that.

Second, I talked about legislation, not law. I don’t consider the two to be one and the same thing. Why do you? Legislation is top-down law. Not all law has to be pronounced from on high. Before the advent of legislation, law was in the form of common law. Indeed, common law makes up a large part of legal systems even today. Common law is emergent - that is, it arises from the bottom up, through various settlements of disputes. In the absence of top-down legislation, I think one or more common-law legal systems would flourish.

I fail to see how asking questions necessarily implies snarkiness. When I ask a question, it isn’t to belittle you. I’m honestly interested in your answer.

Pointing out (what you call “accusing”) logical fallacies is logical counter-argumentation. How could it not be, unless you simply don’t want it to be and therefore you won’t call it that? Regardless, opposing points of view are entirely unnecessary when pointing out logical fallacies.

That doesn’t answer my question. Try again.

There is no objective moral system. Again, this doesn’t answer my question. Try again.

Yes, your very next sentence of the next paragraph was that. Typically separate paragraphs talk about separate ideas. The idea that seemed to be contained in your first paragraph was summed up in its last sentence: “Bad judgement, inefficiency and wastefulness are not exclusive to the public sector.” Were you or were you not trying to cover up the institutional and legal differences between governmental and non-governmental organizations? I certainly thought that’s what you were trying to do, so I felt obliged to call you out on that, as I consider it to be intellectually dishonest.

Anyway, you mistake me (and probably most other people here) for someone who doesn’t want any sort of law and order whatsoever. That’s absolutely not the case. The question is not “Whether order?” It’s “Which order?” I want to see property protected and (what I call) justice served - but I don’t think that will happen as much if the means to protect property and serve justice are monopolized.

How much, exactly, is this “good portion”? Can you delimit it in actual quantitative terms? And if the notion is “self-evidently anti-trade and anti-travel”, then surely you can demonstrate its self-evidence through proof by contradiction. So go on, then.

The fact that “there aren’t endless alternatives for routes in the real, finite world” is irrelevant. Part of your problem, as I see it, seems to be that you don’t see a lot of choices where they nevertheless exist. You, like so many other people today, have “choice blinders” on. I bet you live your life constantly thinking you have “no choice but to do X”. If so, I think that’s such a shame.

In other words, you think capitalism must (logically speaking) lead to Earth turning into a Death Star. You may not have used the word “must” before, but you might as well have. So please actually explain to me now how capitalism must (again, logically speaking) lead to Earth turning into a Death Star.

Do you even read what you type? Here’s a recap of this exchange, in case you missed it:

Me: How does a monopoly over legitimate use of coercion (i.e. a government) check itself? This is a very simple question.

You: It does.

Do you see how that does not in any way answer my question? Now please try again.

How often these days? Do you really know? Or are you just pulling claims out of thin air?

Regardless, this doesn’t refute my point about a monopoly over legitimate use of coercion being allowed to define what “legitimate use of coercion” itself is - because it doesn’t address it at all. Try again.

I’m aware that Chinese companies have “dumped” steel in the US. Your phrase was “when China drives steel manufacturers out of business here”. Given your use of the word “when” along with the simple present tense, you’re either referring to a habitual situation (i.e. “China habitually drives steel manufacturers out of business here”) or a future situation (i.e. “China will drive steel manufacturers out of business here”). In fact, with the habitual situation, the assumption is that that situation will continue into the future. So either way, you’re making a claim of certainty about the future. There is no logical way for you to do this - which was my point. Try again.

Maybe I misunderstood that part of your post. It sounded to me like courts would be paid by (losing) litigants, but judges wouldn’t be paid by the courts. The implication of this is that judges would thus be paid out of some other fund, which - given your reference to “a public pool of revenue” - further implies taxation. If you mean that judges’ salaries would be paid out of the courts’ funds, but not directly paid by (losing) litigants, then I stand corrected here.

That doesn’t answer my question. Try again. It’s up to you to explain exactly what you mean by the term “experience”, because you were the one who made the claim that “experience has born out the relative trustworthiness of liberal democracies in refraining from a use of destructive force against their own populations”. I did not make that claim.

Wrong, it’s not a strawman or misquote (I wasn’t even quoting you - if had been, I would’ve used quotation marks). You wrote that “governments have a vested interest in preserving the lives and the earning power of the People”. You did not qualify that statement, so logically speaking, it’s an unqualified claim, i.e. “governments always and necessarily have a vested interest in preserving the lives and the earning power of the People”. The fact that you didn’t actually use the words “always and necessarily” is irrelevant - they’re implied in any logically unqualified claim.

Yes, the government needs the revenue of “its” citizenry in order to perpetuate its existence. Businesses also need the revenue of “their” customers in order to perpetuate their existence. However, the way that governments obtain revenue is different from the way that business obtain revenue. Businesses obtain it by offering things that people want to buy at the prices asked for. Governments obtain it by threatening people with taking even more, kidnapping them, imprisoning them, and even assaulting and murdering them if they resist. I’d say that’s a big difference. It also goes against the notion that governments have a vested interest in preserving the lives and the earning power of the people. One must qualify that statement for it to accurately reflect reality: governments have a vested interest in preserving the lives and the earning power of enough people so that it can continue to obtain revenue from them by the above-stated means. There are other implications of this that I can get into later.

Again, you don’t provide any sort of logical or even empirical support for your bare assertion. Try again.

But in another vein, here - where do you think money originally came from? I’m not being snarky here - I’m honestly interested in your answer.

91

Wheylous

Because RP is constrained by popular idiocy. You, on the other hand, are on a forum chockfull of “radicals” and you are still defending some state fantasy (if I may).

Since arriving on this forum I’ve noted very little tolerance from ancappers for the compromises necessary in order to reach their end goal. Ron Paul is making one after another, including running for elective office in a representative democracy, running as a Republican, instead of a libertarian, and preaching the need for a return to the Constitution. He’s also written his own legislation, which tinkers with the state, like I do, rather than ending it: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.539:

All of these actions reinforce the state system in the short run. And he would be fantasizing, if he thought he were actually pulling the wool over anyone’s eyes, about his libertarian philosophy: He already ran for President in 1988 as a libertarian. He’s running as a Republican, because real compromises are necessary, not only to make real changes, but even to make more people aware of the need for real changes.

I didn’t write this document so that I could be accepted as a full member of the Ancap Society of the von Mises forum; I wrote it to appeal to the broadest majority of Americans–to those who might become a little more open to major reform, just by seeing a legitimate, published alternative to the current Constitution. If I’m guilty of any fantasy, it was in expecting that a forum dedicated to such a great thinker would necessarily be chock-full of realistic adults.

92

@Daryl: I fully understand and accept the necessity of dealing with the world as it is. If you want to be a Ron Paul, then do run for office, do maintain a consistent record of voting your conscience, do avoid leeching off the people and peddling your vote to lobbyists, etc. There’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with running to be on City council or mayor or state legislature. Many of the people in these offices scattered around the country are people of integrity and honesty but they are a minority and the minority status gets smaller and smaller the higher you go up the hierarchy of government.

The problem I have with you is two-fold. First of all, you want to re-write the rules of the game and then pretend that this is a “modest goal.” It is not. Re-writing the Constitution is not doable and I don’t even see why it’s desirable. The Constitution is crappy (even Ron Paul acknowledges its short-comings) but it’s what we have… it’s like that old saying “better the Devil you know.” The same is true of our entire statutory and regulatory structure. I do not desire any kind of sea-change in the law. Those who lobby Congress, lobby the President or pursue legal activism are misguided in the means they are choosing, even if they share the end goal of greater personal freedom - economical and every other form.

Second, you imagine that you are a libertarian but you are not, in fact, a libertarian. You’re not even a minarchist. You’re not even a Hayekian or CATO-institute or Reason-magazine libertarian. Judging from what I read, you appear to me to be a fairly run-of-the-mill American status-quo statist who wants to take the very radical step of rewriting, lengthening and complicating the Constitution in order to crystallize your particular conception of how American status-quo statism should be implemented. Your views come across as rigid and prejudicial and you expect people to be persuaded by arguments based on your assumptions that are not shared by others.

But even assuming you are a libertarian and I’m just completely misunderstanding and misinterpreting you, we majorly disagree on strategy. You simply assert that your strategy is “more realistic” but you refuse to take seriously the arguments I and others have put forward explaining why a secessionist strategy is the best route forward. A strategy of secession does not require re-writing any laws. It simply requires diplomacy and statesmanship to negotiate the “terms of divorce”, if you will. Let’s say California were to secede from the United States… no laws would change anywhere outside California and no California laws would change. Everyone would go on as they have always gone on. The difficulties would consist in arranging to compensate the Federal government for its land holdings in California as well as strategic withdrawal of its enforcement arms and administrative presence within California. All of these issues can be resolved without violence - we know this because this is precisely the process that many ex-satellite states of the USSR went through. Non-violent secession has been a regular occurrence throughout political history.

If California secedes, it automatically becomes more democratic. It is no longer affected by the votes and conflicting interests of the representatives of the 200+M Americans living outside its borders. California politics becomes the sole domain of California voters. So, even if your goal is “direct democracy”, a strategy of secession is superior. It better achieves democratization and that without ground-shifts in law. The process of reforming the law to be more liberal then becomes a social campaign rather than a political campaign. This is as it ought to be. It’s a contradiction of terms to impose freedom on people. The only way to increase human liberty is by persuading them to voluntarily choose their own liberty through reason and evidence. Legal activism (even Constitutional legal activism) is not the right tool.

Clayton -

93

Jargon

There can be no systemic drift in that which does not exist, namely ‘state systems’ in an AC society. It very much does matter where they begin. Beginning in an AC society would make the establishment of a state immensely risky and equally improbable. Such is the way of a society in which there is no tax farm. Every decision must be based on risk because there is no spongy mass of humans to inflict the costs on

Jargon, if you don’t want to depart from your AC loyalties, just say so; but don’t make up an argument like this that completely ignores my point: We ARE living in a STATE SYSTEM, and THERE ARE NO AC SOCIETIES. PRETENDING THAT IT ALREADY EXISTS IS “PLAYING WITH INTELLECTUAL DOLLS.”

You can’t just say, “Beginning in an AC society…” WE. AREN’T. NEVER. WILL. I DON’T WANT TO PLAY WITH YOUR ANCAP DOLLS. And my refusals to give you an unconditional thumbs-up for ancap theory is not an opposition to a life without government. Your and other ancappers’ suspicions and implicit accusations–that I would still prefer a state system to a free society, even were the necessary changes in the Peoples’ appreciation of freedom indoctrinated–are childish. Why would anyone not want to live in a free world? I just see way more obstacles to it than most of you do–including REAL “drift” in the REAL WORLD, today.

I’m proposing, and I have published, real changes to the current Constitution, by mechanisms that address the obstacles I perceive to be standing in the way of progress toward a stable free society. As far as I can tell it is the only alternative Constitution in print today. If you or your fellow ancappers want to do the world a favor, make an actual coherent plan of action for how you effectively and realistically deal with the current system, such that it transforms into an ancap society. And spare me the token vote for Ron Paul. Or protestations that there need be only individuals spreading the word individually. That “principled” tact is just intellectual laziness. At least Ron Paul has the guts to compromise.

Why not streamline your constitution: The federal government shall not regulate any industries whatsoever other than the defense and law agencies.

I believe that government has more legitimate functions than that–for now. And there ought to be regulations for all such functions–all government employees, government services and programs, and all government projects, etc. As for regulation of the private sector, the provision I posted on page 6 goes a long way toward ending most regulation of business, “…except those indispensable to the protection of public safety…” Spare me any more crap about how private business has no incentive to cut corners and costs wherever they can–like in the construction of buildings and the production of toys from China. I want, and I feel the public needs, protections against the tendency of business to risk the safety and health of some, for the sake of the profits of others–the cost-benefit/lawsuit-profit trade-offs.

The federal government shall not infringe upon these rights: A, B, C, D, F, etc. There would still be a statist version of order that people could still wrap their heads around.

Amendment IV – No citizen shall be deprived of life, liberty, privacy or property without a reasonable, impartial application of law: issuance of criminal bench warrants for specific objects, persons or places to be searched or seized, upon lawful establishment of probable cause; or else reasonable suspicion of criminal activity established on scene by direct police observation, credible witness affirmation, reasonably-incriminating circumstance, erratic or desperate behavior, or suspect self-incrimination; impounding of property only for evidentiary purposes, forfeiture, or for safekeeping with the consent of the owner or possessor; use of physical force sufficient only to subdue physical aggression, fleeing, or other bodily resistance to lawful detainment or arrest; use of deadly force only against ongoing, lethal endangerment of the public, or of law enforcement.

Also, ceasing to subsidize parasites is not changing human nature, it is closing certain avenues to human nature. That’s an important distinction. How about don’t give out welfare in the first place

I assumed that you had read the previous posts on this thread, where I stated that I do want to end all welfare; but that I don’t consider the MW to be welfare.

Nothing has improved the living standards of the worker and the middle-class like relatively free markets have.

I’ve already stated that my primary goal is not to turbo-charge the engine of the economy, nor to proliferate the human population. If that is your goal, then let’s just agree to disagree about what we want the planet to look like.

This lack of competition for bidding labor may well be a result of restricted market entry.

Huh?

If they’re paying less taxes then they’ll make cheaper stuff. Then not only the worker, but everybody wins.

If stuff becomes cheaper, then the MW drops, as it isn’t an arbitrary number: it’s linked to the CPI. So companies can do their part to lower the wages of their low-skilled workers and raise real wages at the same time, by using their tax savings to maximize production efficiencies, rather than, for example, giving the executives raises and bonuses, dumping money into lame advertising, etc.

Real wages rise and demand for labor decreases thus increasing leisure time.

You’re actually arguing that low-skilled, low-wage workers, who, without a MW wage, would be making less than they do now, would be able to afford a place of their own, and a basic existence–when they can’t afford it now? Because a double cheeseburger at McDonalds will go down to $.69, or an Ipad2 will be $99? Of course this assumes that prices for all of the Chinese and Taiwanese products low-wage workers buy in Wal Mart would drop too–which they would not.

On moral grounds I say, quit the demagoguing and let the people work if they want to, and let humanity as a whole grow.

I’m trying to act on moral grounds, limiting population growth and maximizing moral growth.

The amount of elastic clauses in there frightened me…

The lack of specific direction in the current Constitution has already created a frightening, immoral mess. Lawyers will always try to twist any laws; that’s part of living in a civil society. That doesn’t mean no laws should be written–or only short ones with little words. Is there a written version of the NAP, in the form of written law?

94

I think you’re missing the general gist, here. Of course there isn’t an ancap society and never will be ancap society per se. Arguments that start with “Beginning in an AC society” are thought-experiments… Gedankenexperiment as the Austrians call it. A thought experiment is simply a type of argument that makes idealized assumptions about the world in order to flesh out the consequences of specific concepts. It’s like the use of “ceteris paribus” or “all things equal”… all things are never equal, you can never step into the same stream twice. But you’ll be perpetually confused and unable to even sort out your own definitions if you do not resort to some sort of idealization in order to set up the limitations of your definitions. Knowing that a definition only holds up to the level of ceteris paribus is valuable knowledge… it frees you to use that definition wherever you do not need to assume ceteris paribus and to correctly qualify your conclusions wherever they do depend on ceteris paribus.

Clayton -

95

This is what you said:

And then I said:

There can be no systemic drift in that which does not exist, namely ‘state systems’ in an AC society. It very much does matter where they begin. Beginning in an AC society would make the establishment of a state immensely risky and equally improbable. Such is the way of a society in which there is no tax farm. Every decision must be based on risk because there is no spongy mass of humans to inflict the costs .

and then you said:

What dolls? I was responding to your claim about AnCap drift. Where AnCap ‘ends up’. I know that there are no AC societies and we live in a state system. Obviously. Now, what is the relevance of such statement? The only way to consider the functions of a society that does not exist is through hypothetical models and that should be obvious.

Why “AREN’T NEVER WILL DURR” we get to AC? You haven’t given a reason other than throwing your hands in the air and making cybernoise.

Anyways, what virtue is there in compromise when the non-compromise solution is better? When only ignorance is the obstacle to a better outcome, compromise is intellectual laziness because it ignores and permits, not corrects, fallacious thinking.

Gigantic fucking elastic clause there. “For the protection of public safety”? Really? Can you envision no scenario’s where that tiny hole gets reamed out to a grand canyon of regulatory capture?

Neither do I. I just meant that you often use human nature as an excuse instead of examining the avenues which human nature is permitted to expand into by the state.

Cool so just ignore everything I said about economic growth reducing population growth rates and also all of the real world evidence out there to support it. Great.

oligopsonized labor markets. Google it.

Sure let’s just ignore history completely where the prices of goods fell faster than the prices of labor. Yeah let’s just ignore the fact that a blue collar worker can buy a machine that can go 100 mph and buy a house or an apartment today whereas 100 years ago he could not and had to share living space. Now that we’ve done that, I wonder how the hell he pulled that off? Neat trick, I wish he’d teach it to me.

Great combination of ignoring the population reducing effects of development and arbitrary appeals to a nebulous morality in which workers must consult a monopoly to become employed.

As long as you keep writing everything I say off as ideology there’s no reason for this to continue. It’s a fundamental copout. I can do it too: “STATIST SCUM. WHY DO YOU WANT TO GIVE EVERYTHING TO THE BANKSTERS AND BUREAUCRATS. RETARD, IT’LL NEVER WORK AND IT NEVER HAS WORKED. IT’S IMPOSSIBLE AND I WON’T HEAR OF IT. GO POUND SALT WITH YOUR FUCKED UP STATISM AND SHIT A BRICK OR SOMETHING. YOUR ARGUMENTS ARE BENEATH ME BECAUSE THEY WOULD NEVER WORK.”

See how easy that is? Not only is it easy, but it has no purpose other than to create a smokescreen for you to hide behind while I waste my time typing out thought-out responses.

96

Autolykos

Autolykos, you can’t say that I didn’t give you a second chance to express and defend your own beliefs. (Actually, you probably will say that.) But I’m not interested in trying to have a discussion with someone who sees it as a mutual attack, rather than a mutual exchange of ideas. This below just doesn’t cut it:

Regardless, opposing points of view are entirely unnecessary when pointing out logical fallacies.

And this is snarky:

That doesn’t answer my question. Try again.

Nor is this responsive to the larger point:

How much, exactly, is this “good portion”? Can you delimit it in actual quantitative terms? (It’s more of an evasive technical challenge)

So please actually explain to me now how capitalism must (again, logically speaking) lead to Earth turning into a Death Star.

How about you just re-read my initial posted explanation, or the others I made afterwards, if you’re not just being a pain. I was pretty clear. Or else ask a specific question that I did not already answer.

How often these days? Do you really know? Or are you just pulling claims out of thin air?

Aren’t you at all ashamed to so transparently try to evade acknowledging a direct, responsive answer? Why would I continue a discussion with you, when you won’t allow any progress to be made?

I’m aware that Chinese companies have “dumped” steel in the US. Your phrase was “when China drives steel manufacturers out of business here”. Given your use of the word “when” along with the simple present tense, you’re either referring to a habitual situation (i.e. “China habitually drives steel manufacturers out of business here”) or a future situation (i.e. “China will drive steel manufacturers out of business here”). In fact, with the habitual situation, the assumption is that that situation willcontinue into the future. So either way, you’re making a claim of certainty about the future. There is no logical way for you to do this - which was my point. Try again

How embarassing, Autolykos. Not that you didn’t know about Chinese dumping, but that you won’t just admit it:

Dude, come on. What’s this “when” crap? You keep making these asinine assumptions with no logical or even empirical basis behind them. It’s just one bare assertion after another

If you mean that judges’ salaries would be paid out of the courts’ funds, but not directly paid by (losing) litigants, then I stand corrected here.

That’s better, Autolykos. Thank you for that.

But once again you resort to being intellectually dishonest, or intellectually lazy:

It’s up to you to explain exactly what you mean by the term “experience”,(Are you kidding me?) Stop trying to grind discussions to a halt, Autolykos; they’re much more enjoyable when they’re advancing.

But in another vein, here - where do you think money originally came from? I’m not being snarky here - I’m honestly interested in your answer.

I’m sure you are, Autolykos. Let me recomment von Mises’ Theory of Money and Credit. I found it quite enlightening.

97

Daryl Lloyd Davis, are you going to answer my question:

In your ideal state, how exactly are you going to punish people who do not agree to a $10 minimum wage?

98

Clayton

The problem I have with you is two-fold. First of all, you want to re-write the rules of the game and then pretend that this is a "modest goal.

Why don’t you cite where I have used the term “modest goal” that you put into quotes. I thought it was actually quite bold–both the writing of it and publishing of it; and the nature and magnitude of the proposed changes.

I do not desire any kind of sea-change in the law.

Ah, then our previous discussion of the merits of your common law advocacy were an exercise in arbitrary argumentation? Sure, Clayton.

Second, you imagine that you are a libertarian but you are not, in fact, a libertarian. You’re not even a minarchist. You’re not even a Hayekian or CATO-institute or Reason-magazine libertarian.

I have explicitly stated on this forum that I do not consider myself a libertarian. Never have. I’ll find the post if you insist on my doing so. That’s part of the problem with this forum: it’s too specialized, such that everyone expects a certain degree of conformity. It’s comes across as more of a social-conforming/bonding site, really.

Judging from what I read, you appear to me to be a fairly run-of-the-mill American status-quo statist who wants to take the very radical step of rewriting, lengthening and complicating the Constitution in order to crystallize your particular conception of how American status-quo statism should be implemented. Your views come across as rigid and prejudicial and you expect people to be persuaded by arguments based on your assumptions that are not shared by others.

You don’t read far past your own pretensions, I’ve seen; which is why you continue to misjudge me, no matter my repeated, explicit statements that my ultimate aim is to reduce government until no government is necessary. I think that your continued obtuseness is especially disappointing because you appreciate so much more than most at this forum the necessity of accounting for the statist tendencies of mankind. I’ve yet to hear any credible proposal from you as to how to address that problem.

And I’ve never dreamed that my document would in fact be adopted as the law of the land; but like one of your heroes, Rothbard, I thought it wouldn’t hurt to put my own, developed ideas onto the public record–which is also what brought me here. If you don’t agree with them, fine. I’m not hacking into your email to impose my views upon you. If you don’t share my assumptions, so be it. Are you arguing that I ought not share them–ought not offer up my own prescription for what ails my own country? If so, go to hell. (And no lecture on comparative theology, please)

Let’s say California were to secede from the United States… no laws would change anywhere outside California and no California laws would change.

We had an exchange the other day in which you made an eloquent defense of radical secessionism–and made no mention of anyone but yourself–and your kids. If you have more to say about how you and your peers could cause a significant collective secession within the U.S., I’d love to hear it. But let’s not get carried away with the former satellites of the Soviet Union, unless one is now a free ancap territory–or free from annexation by Putin/Russia.

If California secedes, it automatically becomes more democratic. It is no longer affected by the votes and conflicting interests of the representatives of the 200+M Americans living outside its borders. California politics becomes the sole domain of California voters. So, even if your goal is “direct democracy”, a strategy of secession is superior. It better achieves democratization and that without ground-shifts in law

Great, Clayton. Just reduce the state in size and that’s much better: the nation of California. No chance that that might make things worse, considering their current budgetary problems–aggravated by the expense of recompensing the U.S. for the land itself. Or how about when Kansas secedes? As private individuals wouldn’t they be free to invite the Chinese to rent their land for military bases? Or, I forgot: Once an ancapper, always an ancapper–and their kids too. So nothing for the rest of the U.S. to worry about. Perfect.

The process of reforming the law to be more liberal then becomes a social campaign rather than a political campaign.

What are you saying? What system are you describing for reforming the law here. Are we back to common law? Your transition, like everyone else’s here, is ambiguous at best, and suggests intellectual laziness. It’s one thing to read endlessly the opinions and writings of others; it’s a different feat altogether to come up with something uniquely your own. I wrote something that uniquely expresses what I believe to be a moral step forward, because I felt morally obligated to do so–and I would have felt that proposing something that was not concrete, or was not implementable, would not have been as moral. To each his own.

And I’ll use this post to extend my gratitude for the precis on the nature of a thought experiment. I hope at least that it was posted tongue-in-cheek, as a rye jab. Otherwise, how pretentious of you to assume that I needed it. Again, I’m interested in the intellectually-challenging work of developing a concrete transition from where we stand today to where all mature adults would wish to be. I don’t want to jump past the crucial transition, to speculate about what would or would not take place afterwards. The transition is everything.

99

Yet all his actions have been almost entirely with the goal of reducing state power. Your goals are those of twisting state power.

Try to see the difference. This is what he does. He sees 5 agencies:

A,B,C,D, and E.

He wants to reduce government power. Hence, he cuts 3 of them. Because the amount of violence used by the state is objectively on the net less, this is an improvement for liberty.

In any case where he rediverts resources, say from a small chunk of foreign interventionism to giving aid to veterans, or from one large entitlement program to a much more trimmed-down version, his ultimate goal still remains “remove them all!” He uses compromise to work towards the goal of maximizing freedom. His goal is voluntaryist, his methods moderate but always with the goal in mind.

You, on the other hand, are proposing that the end result be a non-voluntary society. You actively work towards it and reject elements of voluntary, non-aggressive action.

The Constitution for Ron Paul is a tool to decrease government. To you it is a tool to legitimize the role of government in people’s lives.

I’d also appreciate an answer to my other questions interspersed through the thread.

100

I shouldn’t have put the quotes, I didn’t mean to imply you literally used that term. You have, however, repeatedly claimed about the unrealisticness of “ancap society” generally which is contradictory given the fact that you claim in this very post that your goal is the eventual elimination of the need for government. In any case, you posit that your proposed, model constitution represents some kind of achievable path to the elimination of the need for government (this is why I assumed you were claiming to be a libertarian, it’s not the first time you’ve claimed to desire the elimination of the need for government) and that the strategies which have been put forward by Rothbard, Hoppe, David Friedman and others are simply unworkable… a rather pompous dismissal given that you’ve obviously never read any of them in any depth and given that each of these men and many others in similar traditions of anti-statism have spent all or most of their careers studying the social sciences related to the State.

I’m not going to appeal to authority because you can trot out many more PhDs to oppose my PhDs… and it’s not about that. The point is that if you are seeking the truth, you should look under every rock. The mainstream views hardly need any repetition, they are all-pervasive.

No. The conditions for common law simply do not exist at present. They will not exist until people are freer to resolve their own disputes outside of the State’s monopoly courts. So, a return to common law is more of an end goal than a means or strategy. The strategy to getting there is discrediting and busting up the State’s monopoly on courts and reducing the scope and reach of its legislative and executive powers which subvert the natural course of law.

Share away, I’ve never complained about you posting here. The problem is that you are recommending more of the very poison which is ailing our country. Democracy is the problem, not the solution. You’ve never responded to the problems with democracy raised by regular, run-of-the-mill public choice theory which isn’t even Austrian.

Re-mapping costs and benefits from decision-makers is automatically a bad idea. You really have to have an insanely powerful argument why this is a good idea. Limiting liability and conferring privileges is a bad idea because it decreases the disincentives for wrong decisions and increases the incentives for wrong decisions. Yet democracy - and any other form of government for that matter but democracy is particularly bad in this regard - inevitably does this.

I object to your ideas not to your expressing them. You seem like a decent person and I think your mistakes are technical but they are mistakes.

Clayton -