This is a difficult concept for you, I know, but just because a slave stays does not mean the slave consents. Further, just because the slave stays does not mean the slave has not accepted responsibility for making the decision to stay, even with the coercion. I don’t know why you feel the need to always use fallacious arguments, but it’s getting really old.
Because everyone knows that only MaxLiberty ever does anything ever.
Again, demonstrate why I should. You’re assuming what you ought to prove. Please stop regurgitating statist tripe.
-Jon
He may, although it sounds a lot like a strawman.
No one said being free was going to be nice. Or easy. There are no guarantees that everything will be hunky-dory under anarchism. You’re selling the scaremonger version here.
I mean, you could stay in a 1st world oasis, where the rest of the world is raped for your standard of living, and where what little you produce (and the future guarantee of your payment for such) is used to mass murder people around the world. Where your homicidal tin-pot dictator slaughters thousands, with your tacit submission.
The game can be played both ways. I think us libertarians in the west get away with talking out of both sides of our mouths because we were fortunate to be born into a system with running water, medical capacity and relative peace. The grass is greener over here, and we did nothing to earn our lots except spring from the wombs of our mothers.
I’ve done a little traveling. It can be scary, but the West is a lot bigger than America. Just reminding those folks who think Oregon is a 3rd world country.
Judging by his posts I’d have to say that’s a fairly accurate representation.
Nope, I’m just going by his requirements for the colony.
You can’t (morally) homestead land that is already occupied and most land that is unoccupied with, what, six billion people on the planet these days, is vacant for a pretty good reason. If it were nice there would be a Club Med there and if it were viable farmland there would be farms.
So we should be forced to give it up just like the pampered little rich girl who didn’t earn her inheritence?
We have our high standard of living because previous generations had enough freedom to invest and save the capital to create this standard of living and not because they just happened to be born on the American continent.
Cause and effect, you see.
You want to go run and hide or do you want to try to reestablish a framework based upon Liberty for the next generation just like people fought to establish it for you?
I just wouldn’t walk away strutting and preening about how good I have it, when I didn’t earn it myself. I can’t speak for everyone, but I have more humility than that. I’ve never looked for a handout. Or taken one graciously.
It has nothing to do with being able to print wealth at will over the last 50 years? It has nothing to do with endless credit that no other nation on earth is afforded? I’d be curious to know how many other countries besides the US face crushing long term debt burdens that are insurmountable? I don’t know, but if there are any, I doubt it’s more than 2 or 3.
Let’s face it. I’m a Canadian. You’re an American. You’re our #1 trading partner. We sell you all of our natural resources, and you debt finance all of your consumptive goods off of Asians. Without your buying our resources with debt, we’d be screwed, and without the Asians setting up Americans for the greatest financial calamity ever, you guys would be screwed.
So please don’t play the “my grand pappie worked for it” routine. I don’t believe in Western Excellence. There are a lot of lazy, fat, stupid people who live a standard they could never afford (on both sides of the border) if they had to compete in an open market against the very asians who are now taking over their manufacturing industries.
If I did something like the liberty colony, it would not be to hide. It would be for publicity, for trade and for the idea of liberty. I’d want to broadcast it worldwide, 24-7 so everyone could see what it would be like. Sorta like Survivor meets Lord of the Flies meets Firefly. I think we could make a crap ton of money off it, and at the same time, inspire a lot of people to do the same or to join in.
Of course, I’m all for education, but I’m also for seceding economically and politically and socially from the state regime. And again, making it very public, maybe even establishing institutions to make it easier for others to follow in the footsteps.
Passing it off to the next generation, knowing I haven’t left it all on the field, doesn’t do it for me. I (personally) want to do more. Some people do not. That’s cool. Each has to do what they feel is best and what they are comfortable with. Needless to say if I had kids, my plans might be less radical. But I don’t.
Remember, you’re not staying to preserve your property or life. Those are already forfeit the minute you accept the coercion.
Someone has to go first and say, “I will no longer accept coercion” and then hope like hell that the people who think they will educate the next generation get inspired to stand with them or it’s going to be short and bloody.
The reason they could get away with that is because they are consuming the capital that was saved previously.
Looks like we ran out which is why there is such a debt burden to carry and every bureaucratic decision has an immediate effect unlike in times past where they could promise and deliver the moon without having to pay for it.
Who said anything about western excellence?
If you can’t see a correlation between the ‘freeness’ of a society and the ability of it to produce real wealth I can point you a website run by some laissez-faire apologists I’ve heard about…
Ok, so you just agreed that if me and another person elect me as a thief, and I break into your house and steal your stuff, that you have consented to it.
This is absurd. Apperently a few people here don’t understand what coercion is in libertarianism. This is uber basic stuff.
It is statist tripe. It’s exactly the same argument statists use against libertarians all the time (the love it or leave it argument), except these “libertarians” are making them against libertarians. I really don’t get it. It astonishes me.
Ran out? When Nixon went off the gold standard, it was run out. That was a dollar default.
I did. It’s the correct term to describe the notion that the West is so prosperous because it is superior, not because whatever benefits it may have in social structure, it can borrow and steal from the rest of the world at will.
You’re not free. The government owns your life, and it owns your property. You just think you are free, so you don’t struggle. So the social tension is lower and life seems less dangerous and more orderly. In 2012 when social security goes into default, you’re going to see that freeness start to disappear. The payback of living high on the hog for a long time will inevitably come due. Social tension will increase. Government will loot and bully more.
Freedom is a zero sum game. (I know, I know “Who said it wasn’t?”)
The whole idea of the LC just won’t work, nor should it. For one thing there’s no way to know whether the libertarians that would move to the colony would be good entrepreneurs, secondly I just don’t see anybody being interested in moving half way across the world to a country with a weaker government but by no means less coercion.
This whole prejudice against discussion is silly though. If we wanted to “act” without thinking it would be easier just to join the rest of the sheep in campaigning for Obama or McCain.
And this whole “accepting coercion” buisness is ridiculous.
Mike from nostate.com has moved from America to Slovakia and is renouncing his citizenship.
If I can find a way out of my Canadian citizenship that doesn’t cost a 1/4 million dollars, I will do it as well. Or I will have to come up with the cash.
If submission is the opposite of resistance, and resistance is not accepting coercion, than I am inclined to believe that submission is accepting coercion. It may be coerced acceptance, but it is acceptance nonetheless. Now if there was no resistance ever, I’d buy that no choice is being made. But people do resist, just like people do move halfway around the world to become stateless and live in a country that is poorer, and more authoritarian (although that is debatable).
The more I think of it, the more the issue of consent or non-consent appears to be moot. It’s about choice, not consent. There is no right to deny anyone choice.
I have not said anything in this thread about people joining the Liberty Colony. You are bringing this up as an option in this discussion, not me.
No, I view education without a purpose as inaction. He is referring to raising awareness with the purpose of gaining enough people to engage in violent revolution, hardly inaction.
It certainly undermines the credibility of the arguement that your a slave though. If someone is free to go, would you consider them a slave?
You need to get out beyond your suburb a little more. The world is a really big place with lots of places underdeveloped but perfectly liveable.
Remember, you said there is no plan B so you are resigned to accepting the state. Or are you talking about fighting now?
Right on Brother.
No, what I said was that your arguement that your being robbed loses credibility and certainly sympathy when you show no interest in preventing the robbery in the future. What is it you want the rest of us to do for you that you are not willing to do yourself? If your freedom isn’t worth sacrifice to you then why should it be to me?
A weaker government is less coercion. America was pretty much created by people fleeing other places. I would say the entrepeneurial spirit in America, is all things considered, quite good. I expect nothing less in the Liberty Colony.