You use the public schools not because you are supporting the state but because you want education. Same goes with roads. You do not vote for any other reason other than political reasons of social change. This is the main difference.
You vote only to bring social change, so it implies that you as a libertarian support using violence to to eliminate violence. Which is a logical contradiction.
Again, I recommend watching Molyneux’s videos about politics and voting
I vote because I want to minimize government policies which affect my life. If the government allowed me total freedom, yet was brutally repressive of others with which I have no connection, I really wouldn’t care too much.
You presume I have a moral problem with utilizing violence to attain my ends. Hate to break it to you pal, but the only thing that stops me from being violent is my belief that cooperation is easier, and more efficient.
I wonder how effective voting has been in improving your life. It hasn’t improved mine.
I actually do not make the presumption of morality. You wanting to use violence to eliminate violence for reasons of either convenience or morality still makes it a logical contradiction.
Besides, if all you care about is convenience, FDR philosophy of starting with freeing yourself in your personal life is much more effective than politics. Can you imagine how much money would have to be donated to Ron Paul and how many libertarian worker-hours would have to be dedicated to debating in the chat rooms and reading books just to have the chance to remove 3 regulations and lower taxes by five percent? And even if we say taxes are lowered a lot, they will just print the money to increase the spending. And if you work hard politically to stop the spending, then a lot of government recipients will complain and that could lead to civil unrest. We’d see Molotov cocktails being thrown in the streets. Teachers’ unions will be enraged. We libertarians will literally have to shoot teachers to achieve our end of small or zero government. Anyway, that’s just to show how absurd voting is.
Think about it. If you say that violence is justified if it will help downsize the state, then by that same argument the state can say that we have to retain the teacher’s unions in order to prevent violence in the streets from happening. You are falling into the trap of your enemy by using a statist argument.
FDR has gained popularity fast because it offers a way for libertarians to achieve freedom easier and with greater return. Law of incentives is working perfectly fine here.
Haven’t been in the majority yet.
Yeah, but you still presume that I should be logical. Normative statements are morality-based IMO.
?
OK, well let’s vote in some reps who will vote yes on the FRB sunshine act.
Got to break some eggs to make an omlette.
Well, do you expect the state to just roll over?
I think that’s a bit of hyperbole.
I’m saying a justification isn’t necessary.
Well, I would say that argument sucks, because as it stands, a lot of states can’t afford to pay teachers anyways. Teachers don’t care about the state, they care about paychecks.
If I am still restrained by the arbitrary restrictions the state places on me, how am I free? Free from attempting to regain more liberty for myself, I guess.
I don’t post on this site much because it’s primary focus is academics and theories. While there is a need for great thinkers and philosophers of freedom that does not mean academics are the best tacticians.
People who subscribe to liberty are economically disadvantaged. This is reality not some fantasy assertion I am pulling out of a hat. People who subscribe to liberty are not going to be going out and purchasing 25% of the media like was done previously in history.
Sound strategy could be:
geographically organize at a county (or possibly state) level. I would cite the free state project as a good idea, bad implementation based on the goal and number of people involved. There is no good reason geographical organization should take more than one or two election cycles. If it does the target region was poorly selected.
dismantle government to the greatest extent possible saving the biggest battles or confrontations likely to gain the attention of the fed or neighbors for last (ie privatizing an interstate highway through a county). at a county level you can eliminate property taxes, public schools, local public roads, occupational licensing, permitting, zoning, law enforcement, etc. If you think about it at a county level you can pretty much dismantle all of the offensive government intrusion and enforcement that people have to deal with on a day to day basis. If you can’t envision that all state law is enforced at a local level or the benefits of not having to pay local government or local agencies of state government in federal reserve notes i can spell it out.
use the market advantage to allow capitalism to flourish again and become wealthy. use this wealth to prepare for the larger battles and continue to spread the philosophy. instead of just talking about the philosophy of liberty people in this geographical free zone are able to brag about how much more wealth per capita they have due to lack of local government.
Geographical organization is:
Legal
Requires no civil disobedience
Is leading by example
I can respect the principles and logic behind not voting but I question the strategy and consider it illogical. Make me a believer and cite some examples in history to support a non-voting or lack of geographical organization strategy.
I like this proposal a lot. I was thinking along those same lines, starting at the town level (government organization a little different in New England), abolishing all laws/programs besides state and federal, and working up from there, spreading throughout a state, than repealing all state laws/regulations. etc.
I can accept that strategy as well. Right now I am divided in choosing the FDR strategy, Hoppean secession or your solution which is also related to Hoppean secession. Regarding your question, Molyneux(in his book ‘How Not to Achieve Freedom’) said that libertarians have been trying to reduce the size of the state politically for hundreds of years and the state has grown exponentially. This clearly shows that political libertarianism doesn’t work, yet libertarians just don’t look at the facts. Now, this new strategy of inside-outside philosophical libertarianism has never been tried before but removing the state this way would be like how slavery was eliminated in the past. It is explained thouroughly in the podcast “Outgrowing the State”.
Voting to minimize the state (voting AGAINST stuff like regulations and spending) are not using violence. You are voting for the state NOT to use violence. No contradiction there.
If the government is a violent monopoly then it doesn’t make sense to participate in the system of violence to reduce violence. You do not infiltrate the mafia in order to eliminate the mafia. You do not join the church to convert priests into atheists. Libertarians will always be a minority because there are too many people dependent on the state. The mismatch of incentives here is enormous. As one commenter posted, voting and then losing means you implicitly accept the decision of the majority. People in this forum really need to read or listen to the free book “How Not to Achieve Freedom” by Stefan Molyneux
What you are proposing is telling the mafia to stop stealing from people. It just doesn’t work
How is voting an act of infiltration? You’re right when you say that you cannot infiltrate something in order to destroy it, but you can definitely infiltrate something in order to change it. The Marxists have proven that this is an extremely effective method (Ron Paul is doing the same). Who would have believed that Marxian propaganda could successfully confuse the entire world into believing that property and cooperative exchange is theft/exploitation? Marxism, and all of its cleverly disguised forms, has convinced, in may occasions sober-minded individuals, to act against their own self interests. Why can’t liberalism (or libertarianism) convince people to act in their own self-interests?
Voting in Ron Paul
If my enemy has a weapon, and I wrest control of it, them smash it to bits, I don’t understand how that is illogical.
Why not? And the mafia comparison to a democracy is BS, because the mafia doesn’t have to pretend to serve the interests of its constituents. This fact allows government more leeway for exploitation, but also leaves it vulnerable if the herd wises up.
Again, not quite an accurate comparison.
We all are dependent on the state, we just realize that there are other options. If you talk to enough people you begin to realize that the goals we are trying to achieve are the same. You just have to educate people about the systematic exploitation the state offers, and they will not want it around anymore.
Why?
Again, so far Molyneaux does not impress me at all. He is more concerned about achieving a perfect concept of freedom, rather than gaining any in reality.
No this is not what I am proposing at all. I think the notion of stealing needs to be put in its proper context. If the Federal Reserve owns all of the money and federal reserve notes and you use those notes to facilitate trade then you are not using your property to trade you are using someone elses property. So how can something be stolen you do not own? Now I agree with a characterization of theft but for entirely different reasons. Don’t convert a natural right to a privilege and then bitch about the privilege being regulated because it is a voluntary act. This is why I characterize it as theft but it is not the reason most people use the word.
If I trade an apple for an orange or fix something for a meal I traded property for property. I did not use Federal Reserve property but government still tries to value that transaction and extract a slice based on who gained in their sole opinion analyzing a mutually beneficial trade. If I do not pay them then they do in fact come and steal my property to get what they want. But most people refer to the IRS as theft and you got paid in Federal Reserve notes and are not facilitating trade with your own property.
My grievance is that government has grown to a point where it no longer respects natural rights and it doesn’t have to because the jury pool does not understand natural rights which allows government to successfully persecute just about anyone who does not convert their natural rights to privileges. I understand government does not like me to use my own labor and trade property because they assert occupational licensing. You can take your resume listing your skills around town to solicit employment (trade facilitated in FRN’s) and this activity does not require a license but if I knock on your door and solicit my skills to repair something government wrongfully asserts I am subject to occupational licensure to perform the same exact activity. Because I understand how natural rights are derived and that constitutional government does not inherently have the power to regulate natural rights only expressly delegated ones I have been driven to adopt more principled philosophical Misean views. And where government fails to assert a priviledged activity is being performed it levies a direct tax on property. All payments to government require payment in Federal Reserve notes so I am forced to be economically disadvantaged trading with someone elses property.
With geographical organization I see a huge opportunity to correct the economic disadvantage and eliminate all payment to government at the local level which will allow people to locally trade using their own property again so a slice is not taken out of the trade for using someone elses property.
“Yeah, but you still presume that I should be logical. Normative statements are morality-based IMO.”
If you do not want to be logical then arguing with you is useless.
Your weapon analogy is the same as that used by Noam Chomsky. This is false. As I told you the incentives in place mean that the weapon you are trying to grab a hold of is Wolverines claws. Clearly, doing this is impossible as evidence by the abject failure of political libertarianism throughout history and the failure of the Ron Paul campaign.
Democracy makes the masses identify themselves with the state so your argument is a total fail. If the herd ever wises up to critical mass then there would be no need to participate in politics because we’ll just dismantle the state from the outside.
I have no problem talking to people about the exploitation of the state. I just have feeling that telling single moms to give up on welfare, farmers to give up their subsidies, the police to resign, soldiers that the lives of fellow soldiers were in vain is not going to work.
The record of history is very clear that political(i.e. voting) libertarianism has never worked. Molyneux demolishes the idea of voting in “How Not to Achieve Freedom”
Arguing usually is [:P]
So instead, you propose that we close our eyes and hope the state will go away. If your goal is to gain control of the weapon to destroy it, rather than point it at your enemies, that is unprecedented historically, so it would be hard to derive that it’s “illogical”, or “false”. It just exposes a bias on your part.
As I said, it’s a genius move by the state to deceive the public in that way, but it is also a gamble, because the state now must maintain the illusion of obeying the mob. If that illusion is broken, the state is regarded as illegitimate (which seems to be beginning already in the states).
How? Violent revolution? I don’t have time for that bull-crap.
It’s fortunate that these groups don’t constitute a majority where I come from, and the one’s that are around have become so apathetic towards the state, they aren’t politically active. Look at the gay marriage bill in CA. Most residents didn’t really care who got married, but a concentrated effort by a driven minority resulted in their victory, because the majority was essentially indifferent. Just don’t alert them to the fact that things will change, they probably won’t try to discover it for themselves.
So you believe in geographical organization. Voting anarchists into local office so the county can secede
from the state and then begin dismantling the new state or secede and not form a state at all?
Has anything like this been tried in the past? And do you know any anarchist right now willing to run for
local office. I’m sympathetic to involvement in local politics for the purpose of secession but at the federal
level voting is just hopeless. Even you can agree to that. Mises even said the democratic process
is less effective the larger a political entity is.
Not really secede (that would be crushed in a day), just repeal all local laws, and not enforcing any state/federals (there would be no local police), allowing the locals a taste of some freedom (local ordinances are usually the ones that affect people day to day, and the state police/ FBI can’t be everywhere all the time).
Not that I know of, although the Nazi’s are a good example of a relatively small and driven political organization starting at the bottom and working their way up to complete control of the government. There’s an economic collapse right around the corner for us, so maybe this could be considered a precedent.
Shit, I’d do it. I could care less who it is, a classic liberal or a libertarian minarchist is OK with me too. Can’t expect anarchy overnight.
Without gains in local politics, and congress first, I would agree with that. That doesn’t mean it will always be pointless, just have to have the right support base going in
.
That’s a good point, but if you’ve got grassroots movements sprouting and coalescing into larger blobs of support, you can expect larger gains to be won, especially after people begin to see what liberty really look like, the state won’t have a chance.
Let’s be strategically realistic. It should be more covert than overt. Everyone involved is taking a financial risk in each other relocating. Basically were talking about blood contract “we mutually pledge to each other our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor” and the terms need to be specific and clearly spelled out so there is no confusion.
Organize regular communication
Solicit potential like minded people
Assess strength
Select region
Analyze legal structure of target, state constitution, and state law.
Draft plan of action
Implement
You don’t secede from the state because that is picking a fight you haven’t won yet. You leverage state law with your newly created majority to gut and dismantle local government to gain economic advantage and maximize individual freedom. I doubt there would be enough numbers to impact a state in one or two election cycles. A county is probably the best starting point.
“Not really secede (that would be crushed in a day), just repeal all local laws, and not enforcing any state/federals (there would be no local police), allowing the locals a taste of some freedom (local ordinances are usually the ones that affect people day to day, and the state police/ FBI can’t be everywhere all the time).”
I’ve read many secession articles in LRC and Strike the Root. The idea is that if the federal government will attack a seceded state then people in other states will wake up to the brutality of the federal government and secede also. It’s based on the theory that government survives more on public opinion than brute force. I think eventually there will have to be secession from the federal government. Maybe not a sudden declaration of it but repealling laws and taxes is technically the same.