Is education not a purpose in and of itself? In any case, violent revolution is worse than inaction.
It’s all fun and games until the American government let’s it blackwater foreign mercenary army and imperial legions across the Rubicon. 2012 is when the defaults start. Should get real interesting.
Oh yeah I heard about the Slovakian government relinquishing it’s monopoly on coercion.
If I catch a cold, and a day later I refuse to walk down to the chemist to buy some medicine that may make it slightly more bearable I don’t accept the cold. If I could, I would abolish the state right now, unfortunately I don’t quite have a button I could press to make the state disappear. Moving to a place with a slightly smaller state is ridiculous and doesn’t acheive anything.
I don’t get what you think moving to Slovakia would acheive, other than admitting the state has a greater right to that land than you do and wasting a good deal of money.
No it isn’t.
Defaults? Can you elaborate? I vaugley read of this a while ago, but it was little more than a passing remark.
If Blackwater intends on getting here in 2012, maybe I should make an effort to move to NH before then…
I’d just like to point out that I wasn’t trying to say “if you don’t leave, you consent”. I just think MaxLiberty has a good point: if you do not choose to actively resist or leave, you are necessarily saying that you prefer living under injustice to other alternatives. This doesn’t make it right, it just makes it exist. You don’t outright approve, as one would in free market trade, but you approve it more than alternatives.
I guess what I’m saying is that consent means nothing. At the end of the day, coercion and justice are both games of power.
And I would say using education and influencing politics, and other non-violent means of pressing for change are active resistance, as is direct violence necessary to preserve justice.
As far as most people go, they do not consent. Everyone would like ___ from the government. People don’t give full consent to their own lives either. They wish they were skinnier, the weather was different, etc. MaxLiberty’s point, where I would agree, is that when people don’t act to change their lives and conditions, they MUST accept/consent to what they receive.
How am I supposed to prevent the robbery?
I believe Social security officially goes into the Red in 2012. That’s when what comes in and what goes out doesn’t work out as a surplus. That’s when the Boomers begin to hit critical mass.
That is when America has to inflate, tax or borrow to keep it’s old folks in a semi-comfortable retirement.
Blackwater is an American company, but it employs foreign nationals as well as Americans to work under the flag of the American government carrying out security details and special ops. It has been putting a lot of capital investment into domestic spying/security and supplementary civil defense.
You can lookup Jeremy Scahill on Youtube. He’s the Blackwater expert, there should be loads of interviews.
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No it doesn’t.
Now then: are you finished trolling?
If you are free to go where you want are you a slave?
Yes. Just because I can go where I wish does not mean that I’m not a slave. What do you think being taxed to support X’s desire means?
Right, but isn’t it a conundrum, that if you claim you have no choice but to submit to coercion, that statism can ever be overthrown, because the only allowable response to coercion, is submission.
If submission was your only choice, then how can you ever believe that the state can be overthrown by resistance?
It just doesn’t jive.
Likewise, the argument about life and property, or avoiding violent state reactions also doesn’t jive. At all times, under the state and outside the state, you are susceptible to theft, rape and murder. Agreeing to submit, is no guarantee or (shouldn’t be an) illusion of abstinence on the part of the state from compromising your liberty.
In fact, I think that the more people submit, the more coercive and powerful the government grows. Just like in Stargate SG-1, worshipping the Ori gives them power, with no worship, they are powerless to act.
But again, the argument is that submission to coercion is a rational response. So there can never be dissent.
I haven’t seen anyone claim anything of the sort.
Slavery has a broader meaning that what is usually thought of. i.e. chains, whips, and being sold on an auction block. What is important to remember is that the slave produces wealth, whether by extracting mineral from the earth or working in the field, and the owner of the slave takes that wealth against the wishes of the slave. This is the economics of slavery pure and simple for if the one did not believe he could gain in material possessions or profit from enslaving another person why would he do it?
(This is Praxeology 101. That people act in order to make themselves better off than before they acted, but we won’t go into that here).
The economic angle of slavery is the main ingredient because without it, there would be no reason for some to enslave others. And our current situation with all taxes and especially the property tax, the income tax, and not to mention the federal reserve, that we are systematically robbed of the wealth we have produced.
Would A slave be any less a slave if he were allowed to keep 10% of what he earned? 20%? 30%? Even if the slave were allowed to keep 99% of what he earns and the master took a mere 1% it would still be slavery, and it would still be wrong!
As far as the more common thoughts of slavery, restriction of movement, (true this does not apply, we can leave but only to find ourselves slaves to another government, whatever that is worth?) rules on what can and can’t be done by the slaves, we can see some of this in business, a business owner can not allow people to smoke in his restaurant, manufacturers must follow guidelines set down by the master (the government), and we employers may not pay their employees less than a certain amount specified by the master.
If I were a mathematician and a statistician I might attempt to compile the different aspects and degrees of slavery and determine what percentage slave we all are. But then It would just be for the point of showing off my intellectual prowess because in the end, we are either free or we are not free, either we own our own bodies or we do not. Ether we own all of what we work for, or we do not and the state just lets us keep some. Either we are free to choose, or the government chooses for us in the matters it deems necessary, and it allows us to decide more trivial matters.
As a note to the more hard line anarchists, I too would push the magic button that eliminated the government, but that does not mean that I am unwilling to accept small concessions. Consider yourself as a slave to another man, of course you would petition him for outright freedom, and seek it in any way you can without ceasing. But at the same time, would you not also petition for better food, more lodging, a day off, the right to meet with your fellow victims, and so on?
The Minarchist who wants to cut government by 95% is doing a great good, and if he makes any headway at all he is doing good. All slave masters by owning other men were bad, but it can not be denied that some were worse, more brutal, savage, and despotic than others. Tell me that if you were a slave, that you would not welcome the oppurtunity to exchange a brutal slave master for a more “benevolent” master? Yes indeed the fact would remain that you are still a slave, but it can neither be denied that your conditions under the new master would be far better than those under the current. and I would accept the trade, not to say that I would give up on seeking freedom, but I would prefer to live under better conditions and with more liberties until that day comes.
I think moves to minarchy take anarchy from the fringe and move it to the political left and right, which is brilliant.
@ KoB, ok. I wasn’t trolling, I’m just trying to understand why we all accept coercion. Rationally.
Inspired by this thread: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/t/force-empowering-yourself/3018
And I completely agree with meambobbo:
Approve != prefer.
I prefer abiding by government law to being in a cell, but that doesn’t mean I approve of it. meambobbo started saying “prefer” and then changed to “approve” which I think is misleading.
Banned, that’s a much better word, which better describes what I was trying to say. I don’t think people here were arguing the virtue of aggressive coercion, only pointing out why it exists. At least I hope so - coercion is only virtuous in being used to secure justice, and that is a slippery slope. At some point, justice is sacrificed for order, and this may be preferable to attempting to enact perfect justice (Consider reparations for slavery or the outcome of war). Other times, justice is impossible, no matter how much coercion is applied (a sole man enacting a mass killing via WMD).
It’s also important to remember that some people will never approve of certain aspects of their life, holding out for idealism. For this reason, it seems preferences are more important from a societal context perspective than ideals. For example, a radical socialist may consent only to a purely democratic system with no ownership of capital goods and completely control of money and credit, but given a free, peaceful, charitable, egalitarian instance of anarcho-capitalism, he may prefer that to our current system.
I think this is something to consider. Our goal may be two-fold - convince those we can that anarcho-capitalism is ideal. Convince all others that smaller government is always preferable. Prepare to resist the rest.
If you view yourself as a slave and you have the opportunity to reduce or eliminate your condition then you are choosing to remain a slave when you have the opportunity to be free. As a slave you are choosing your current comfort level and slavery as opposed to an uncertain comfort level and freedom.
You console your cowardice by playing the victim card. You are afraid, I understand. The first step in becoming free is to face your fear. You will never be free until you are free of your own fears.