They are entering into voluntary agreements with them.
( Money, power, etc ) for the corporation going out and kidnapping conscripts.
You mean how you interact with your government?
I’m confused here. You made a bold and erroneous statement. When called on it, you start proposing these vague fantasies. You have yet to clearly explain what the individual has done wrong. Clearly anyone committing violence is wrong. Is this person profiting from or endorsing it, or are they ignoring it, or refusing to take a stand on it?
Obviously, if they are knowingly profiting from violence through a proxy, they are participating in a rights violation.
Which brings us back to the square circle, of yours, like Long, like Carson, constructing this magical world where bad things happen under the NAP, when in fact, bad things can’t happen under the NAP because it is logically incoherent.
Not necessarily. They are committing a wrong but they are not violating the NAP. It is like corporations that receive bailout money or lobby for subsidization. Committing such an act does not mean they were involved in the taxation. They are merely benefiting from the misfortune brought about by a second actor on another individual. Therefore strictly speaking, they have not violated the NAP. There are libertarians who labor under the false assumption that simply because something is BAD but is not a rights violation then means there is nothing we can do about it. So they try to legitimize it as not being bad because according to them if it was then we would need to make laws against it or use force. Obviously we can combat non-state forms of oppression with non-coercion [ persuasion, boycotts ]. Therefore something can be bad, yet not a rights violation and still be combated by libertarians through such persuasive means. That is basically one of the goals libertarians imply, that non-coercion is always more productive economically/socially then coercion.
Well I think it would be false to assume that everything bad in the world will suddenly stop simply because the state apparatus is gone. In the words of Edwin Walker, ‘If statism were the root cause of all social evil, what on earth could be the cause of statism?’ There is something more then just the state that exists in society which enhances itself through state action and the state is enhance by it through the same means. They are mutually exclusive, however if one were to fall then the other would change in power and scope.
This is garbage.
This is a strawman, and also garbage.
Do you have anything worthwhile to offer?
Why is it garbage?
So you don’t think that getting rid of the state will solve all social problems? I can recall you saying something similar to this in the Libertarian Movement: Proletariat movement? thread in which you said after the state is gone then all interaction will be voluntary therefore there will be no ‘social woes’
Because it’s completely incoherent fantasy. You can’t even answer your own scenario in a few simple words. You have to continue constructing elaborate fictions to make a point, which is completely irrational on it’s face.
It’s like, “Maybe if I ramble on pointlessly for long enough, LS will punch himself out in frustration and I can avoid owning up to the fact I don’t even understand my own argument!”
That was the strawman. Did anyone say anything about getting rid of the state?
Source it. Exact quote, with a link so I can check context.
What is fantasy in it?
No its more like maybe if I try hard enough maybe I can get LS, someone who I respect, to see my point of view without increasing his snide comments about my intelligence or inventing new degatory terms like ‘leftoid’ and ‘thickoid’ which are rapidly decreasing said respect for him.
Sorry it was in the Ed Herman and Noam topic
The market only works where there is no government [ a voluntary society of exchange ] therefore you stated that where the market is working [ voluntaryism ] there are no social woes. Therefore you concede that if the government were to fall and a market of voluntaryism were to evolve..there would be no woes.
First of all, I didn’t invent thickoid or leftoid. I am just the first person you heard them from.
Second, I’m not making snide comments about your intelligence. I think your positions and arguments are weak. If you care, then figure them out. Thinking you can continue to defend weak material, by posting long rambles, will not change my opinion that this is all rubbish.
You’re welcome to embrace it. I won’t live long enough to see a free society where you and BP go door to door like Jehovah’s Witnesses persuading people to join in your holy crusade against evils real and perceived. At least, I hope I don’t live that long. I will probably take end of life counseling if such a time is imminent.
You’ve proven nothing. I don’t see the word government anywhere in there, you created that association, not me. And that is dishonest.
It’s irrelevant regardless, because only an idiot thinks that the NAP applies only to the state. I am not an idiot (although apparently you would like to make me look like one). Even if I idiotically misspoke, I would take it back. But I didn’t, and you can’t show that I did.
Again, where the market is working (NAP in effect) there are none of your social woes. Where the market is not working, we do not have the NAP and so there may be social woes. It is logically incoherent to say that people would be socially oppressed when they have complete freedom. And that is what leftoids do. And that is what you are doing.
You have overwhelmed me.
You win. I give up.
I’d say your allies then, he hasn’t (as far as I can tell) called for any authoritarian decree, howevers others have (both left and right) but I wouldn’t call them libertarian, so its no issue.
Libertarian society doesn’t require additional implications at all, as it is just a society with adherence to the NAP, its a template, a foundation. You are conflating libertarianism with a more fleshed-out, all encompassing vision of society, possibly Eudaimonia.
And whatever “properly function” means beyond the NAP is just a can of worms.
Of course “bad” things can happen under the NAP, like someone could practice Feng shui, or make abstract expressionist paintings, I shudder just thinking about those awful things. Its just that what is “bad” is very subjective.
You probably realised that though.
I thought it was all going to be chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
I can see BP and AC now. Their first business will be as anti-Feng-Shui persuasion negotiators. Then if things pan out and they get some contracts, they will expand to perform discount diversity assessments to make sure you are associating with a statistically significant racial mix, lest you discriminate indiscriminately!
They might even be able to market certifications. Like proof of not being a racist which could come in handy if you want to get a job on a granola farm as a professional tree hugger.
Ha ha - very funny - not.
Now I see why you have given up on your radicalism and subsumed a more pessimistic ‘get mine and screw everyone else’ mentality. Oddly enough Rothbard takes about this in his ‘Left and Right’ journal. Opening page even.
My comment was that there are libertarians who perceive the end of oppression after the fall of the state who is the biggest violator of the NAP [ not necessarily that people will all start obediently following the NAP right after that, to make that comment would be foolish ] You said I was strawmanning you, now you have just confirmed that you see no ills in the world [ ie no oppression ] if the market is working and the government is gone. Exactly what I talked about, yet in different words.
On a side note I will say this:
I wish you never left the LvMi for that period of time you were gone. Whatever you did and where ever you went embittered you with a hatred that is barely tolerable. You use to be the guy that everyone asked your opinion about when it concerned libertarianism. You would write out these long responses of just genius retorts that were so evidently libertarian that it was inspiring. You use to care about the movement of libertarianism. Whatever happened while you were gone changed you for the worse and perhaps I’m not the only one who notices it. Perhaps I am. Instead of scholarly responses, it is now customary to receive ‘this is garbage’ ‘that’s a fanasty’ and ‘I don’t have time fore this.’ Instead of caring for the movement, it is now ‘why should I care about anyone else’s rights but mine?’ Instead of inspiration, you hand out platitudes. No doubt this is going to piss you off. But I think you should just run a search on your name and go back and read some of the replies you gave months ago where you help people with knowledge, give them information on seccession movements etc. I’m not asking you to suddenly embrace thick libertarianism, just whatever hatred you’ve acquired from your sabbatical, get it off your shoulders. We may never see an anarchist state, but there are people here who think that it is worth trying for, I still think you are one of those people.
More or less, yes. The implication that I’m proposing something authoritarian is a non-sequitor, if not a strawman. I’m proposing (1) education and persuasion (2) disassociation and boycotting (3) mutual aid or voluntary beneficience. There is nothing intrinsically “authoritarian” about non-aggressive means for opposing non-state forms of oppression.
Actually the statement is correct - especially if you consider the effect of ideas on social outcomes. I can immediately think of one obvious sense in which the abolition of a given state, by itself, is not sufficient to produce a free and stateless society. If the people in a given society continue to hold authoritarian ideas, there will be nothing to stop swift rise of another state. The fact that libertarian anarchism is going to require some changes in the attitudes of people is patently obvious. The abolition of a given state, by itself, is not freedom. Freedom, in order to be meaningfully obtained, requires a social context in which it is respected in the first place. If people largely do not respect the freedom of others, then it is not likely that the abolition of a given state is inherently going to produce a libertarian social order. The state is not the only entity that can violate your rights - “private” individuals can violate your rights as well, and libertarianism is supposed to be opposed to rights violations in general. This isn’t even a particularly wide sense of “thickness” that I’m talking about in this context either.
Precisely. I wrote about this here: http://polycentricorder.blogspot.com/2009/08/rights-and-morality-political-and.html
One could think that X is bad without thinking that it’s a formal rights violation, and without condoning aggression or any sort of illegalization as a means to opposing it. Just because I think that someone has a right to do X does not necessarily mean that I will not object to the thing in question or advocate against it. The assumption that just because X is not a formal rights violation, noone can coherantly object to it, is itself an incoherant restriction of morality to politics or questions of legality. In short, this train of thought is a gigantic non-sequitor and a conflation of morality with legality in a way that makes no sense.
But this is very clearly false if we consider things other than physical aggression to be a social problem. And plenty of things other than physical aggression are social problems. Your claim here only makes sense if we restrict our sense of “right” and “wrong” to the NAP. We could have the NAP in effect, and still have social problems in which people are treated badly or face negative conditions in their lives - to say that these cease being social problems simply because the NAP is in effect is ridiculous. The NAP is not a ban on “social oppression”, it’s a general rule against aggression. But, without using aggression, there are plenty of ways that I can “oppress” you, I.E. make your life shitty.
You had me up to a point, but you’re losing me fast…
There aren’t any social problems that aren’t either actual physical aggression or the direct or indirect result of physical aggression.
Please name a few. I’d wager that all of them are going to approach some sort of positive rights idea.
Actually, it is very funny, because I love granola and hugging trees.