Which argument was that, you claimed that children are capable of rational argumentation. That’s not an argument.
But if it is so, why don’t you go debate with your child whether or not he should run into the middle of the road, or stick his fingers into electrical sockets. In the end it’s just fewer left libertarians such as yourself to deal with.
That’s a ridiculous strawman which you wouldn’t bring up if you had intellectual honesty. Thanks for showing that you don’t.
As to children, you’re right, I made no argument. It is a fact that children can make rational arguments. Not that I subscribe to the idea that the only justification for rights is rational argumentation. But if you do, then you must accept the conclusion that children have rights and that hitting them is a crime by libertarian standards.
How is it a strawman? You don’t believe that children should be coerced hence it follows the only way to stop them from doing these things is persuasion.Or are you simply calling whatever argument you find inconvenient a strawman?
No it isn’t.
I consider them interchangeable in that context.
I was arguing semantics. The word “consensual” fits the argument better than the word “natural” in my opinion. BTW the word artificial usually means man made, not state made.
The question seems to have gotten lost. Are we in agreement or not that there is such a thing as a consensual power relationship?
Actually the word I did look up is hierarchy
And there’s only one allusion to power, but no clear mention that hierarchies qua hierarchies entail power, except in the case of church or government. Now, of course, in the conservative world of revealed religions and church-states, hierarchies do rely on power, submission, coercion, etc. But that’s not true for the relationships that arise in a voluntary society.
But this is a disgression anyway. There’s no such thing as consensual power. To have power is to have the ability to force people to do things against their will – the opposite notion of consent and voluntarism.
I suggest you try googling for practical solutions to the problems you want to solve using coercion. The fact that you(like statists) lack imagination doesn’t mean that problems must be solved using violence.
I’ve already disputed this claim elsewhere. It is patently false to say that a child, by definition, is not capable of rational argumentation. There is no specific age at which one becomes capable of rational argumentation, and there are plenty of children who demonstrate an ability to comprehend the ideas of others and civilly respond to them. What do you think debate team in schools are? Do you think the kids on debate teams are incapable of rational argumentation? I’d dare say that most adults dont fare much better than a school debate team (and often worse). Furthermore, if the capability of rational argumentation is the prerequisite for having rights, I fear most adults don’t deserve them either.
The state is not egalitarian by it very nature, the state creates and enhances massive inequalities not only in rights but in terms of oppurtunity, status and economic well-being. The state overwhelmingly harms the average person to the benefit of a small few, no matter what form it takes, and there is nothing particularly egalitarian about that. Even the welfare state is not actualy egalitarian in its structure or effects. I think you’ll have to go in a lot of intellectual circles to prove that the most centralized heirarchy in any society is egalitarian in nature. The notion that the state (a highly exclusive and coercive oligarchy based on massive inequalities in rights) punishes elites while rewarding the masses is absurd.
The state rewards mediocrity and punishes excellence. That’s egalitarian.
Why is it?
And then are others who hit them over the head and take their toys, what’s your point? This argument is completely ad hoc.
Strawman?
I’d also like to mention that by the time the child is able to join a debate team, they’re still living on their parents property. If the parents wish to use force, then so be it. The child consents by continuing to live off his parents.
One either employs physical force or one does not. It’s simple really.
You’re just repeating yourself while ignoring everything I just said. The state leeches off of the masses to the benefit of special interest groups. That is not egalitarian, it is predicated on inequality and for all intents and purposes it intensifies any pre-existing inequalities in society. There is nothing egalitarian about a centralized coercive oligarchy in patronage with elites.
A child implicitly consents to literally whatever their parents do by continueing to live in his parent’s household? If that’s the case, then the parent can legitimately beat the child to death by implication of this premise, and you are essentially valueing property over life (I.E. the parent’s property right over the home trumps the child’s right to life). This is also identical to the love it or leave it argument commonly used for states. Of course, all of this fails because implicit consent is a morally bankrupt notion that essentially eradicates any meaning to the term consent.
Yeah. Physical force is the only way to stop children from sticking their fingers into electrical sockets. Really, can’t you see your arguments are laughable ?
In the case of the democratic state I disagree completely. Virtually all arguments attempting to justify the democratic state are framed in egalitarian terms. The state doesn’t accomplish its stated aims (no great revelation to anyone here), but it can nevertheless be defined in terms of them.
Furthermore, every modern state, whether democratic or not, appeals to egalitarianism to one extent or another as a justification for its existence. Every public policy is for the good of us all. Every dissenter is a threat to us all. Every war against the government is an attempt to subjugate us all. And so on.
Remember Hume’s observation that power rests on opinion. It is the body of egalitarian (mis)perceptions which lead us to accept the state which define the nature of the state, not whether or not the state actually produces egalitarian outcomes.
You’re correct that arguments attempting to justify the democratic state are egalitarian in nature. However, this does not make the democratic state actually egalitarian in nature, it just means that such an ideology is used as apologetics for democratic states, when nonetheless all democratic states are still coercive oligarchies with a significant degree of exclusivity. People can make egalitarian arguments for democracy all they want, but the reality will continue to be that they are not egalitarian utopias.
And once again this only shows the way in which egalitarian rhetoric is used to justify political power. It doesn’t actually make political power egalitarian.
What’s in question is the reality of what the state is, and it isn’t egalitarian.
I don’t recall saying that.
They are not just arguments in the air though. These are operational arguments, arguments which are used in pursuit of the state’s objectives, and arguments used to keep the state in power.
If we judge the nature of a state only in terms of its outcomes then we would have to say there are no democratic states either wouldn’t we? It might be an amusing exercise though. There could be the alcoholism and small apartments form of government, the statues and bad teeth form, the rice paddy and pile of bones form, etc.
What’s in question is the reality of the organizational structure of a state and the ruler-subject relationship, which is centralized and heirarchical. It’s not just in terms of the external outcomes (although that’s important), it’s in terms of the nature of the institution as such (prior to outcomes). There are no egalitarian or purely democratic states because that would be a contradiction in terms, as monopolies and oligarchies are not representations of any kind of equality or purely participatory decision-making.
That’s your own personal definition of the word. As the definition(s) I pointed to earlier demonstrate, there are many senses in which hierarchy is a form of power (and by extension if hierarchy can be consentual so can various forms of power.)