Actually, this is a good description of many forms of natural law libertarianism, only there is one code ruling over men rather one government over men: ONE law, ONE acceptable interpretation thereof, ONE philosophy, ONE guiding principle, no deviations.
I think such a centralization of law would suffer from the same shortcomings of a centralization of enforcement.
I assume he’s reading. Although it’s entirely possible that he’s mulling over the possibilites.
There is a difference between morally right and wrong and necessary or unnecessary, beneficial or not beneficial. Things like murder and rape and theft aren’t illegal because they’re immoral. They’re illegal because a society that allows those things will quickly become unglued. See, what scares ME is that if you don’t think something is immoral, YOU’LL do it without asking: “is this really a smart thing for me to be doing?” Your utter dependency on decision making training wheels is probably the most alarming thing I’ve heard on this forum. It leads me to believe that humans are always one step away from chaos.
I’m not advocating a world government. Governments don’t have disputes at the same rate that individuals do. Besides that, the real world enforcers are militaries. They exist to punish other states for abuses. That being said, they also protect us from being abused by other states. I was trying to show you that your international court handles as many cases in 60 years as most district court judges handle in about…2 hours. And with much less efficiency and effectiveness. You have chosen to ignore this because to accept it would cause cognitive dissonance.
Except that the anarchist ONE principle is totally subjective because it depends on morality as its guide. Mine doesn’t. Mine depends on cause and effect.
Fortunately we have more “utilitarian” anarchists (David Friedman) who don’t rely on natural law.
That’s clearly a straw-man. No libertarian is walking up to people on the streets and saying ‘obey the non-aggression principle or else.’ That action itself would be contrary to the ethics we were trying to enforce. What Jacob is talking about, however, is precisely that. Enforcing law through violence.
There are numerous examples of people winning despite the odds, but the house always wins eventually. Just because it happens once doesn’t mean your who strategy should be based on those rare examples.
I think we are dealing with terrorism that has a religious base. Islam may be, by and large, a peaceful religion, but the more fanatic sects of it are given to violence in much the same way some of the fanatic sects of every religion are. The problem I have with your ideas are that you think that if we drop our guns, they’ll drop theirs. This is horribly naive in my opinion. Some people can’t be reasoned with. They only understand force. If you sympathize with radical islamists so much, I think you should go become one and live with them. They didn’t attack us just because we “harmed” them. They’d been waiting for us to do so because they think that Islam is the correct way to live. They look at us and think we are godless. Ultimately, they’ll want us dead. And you want us to dissolve the military?! No.
A limited government has occurred here in the US. But governments, as you point out, always are fluctuating. And so it becomes the people’s job to make sure that there is balance. Balance isn’t about stasis, it’s about making sure that the changes that occur in the government don’t ultimately tip it too far in any direction. The modern conservative position, which I advocate, is something of a balance between both worlds, in my opinion. Anarchy is too far in one direction, socialism is too far in the other. What’s ironic to me is that…you guys use the EXACT SAME terminology to justify an opposing position. It’s almost like socialism and anarchy are two sides of the same coin.
Why should it be illegal? It’s not immoral afterall…And what would you do if the cops tried to extort from you?
Please. There terrorists were 19 kids with boxcutters. If they can’t stop that with all the money we pay them they are more or less worthless.
The only way to enforce law is through some kind of violence or negative reinforcement. Moderators have the ability to ban. If they didn’t have this ability, they wouldn’t be moderators.
Nobody wants to drop any guns! Every one of your (jacob) response is a strawman
Because things like extortion are horribly undesirable. No one wants to be extorted. And maybe the cops do try to extort me, but so would your private cops, so it’s all the same.
If it’s so easy to be a terrorist, why haven’t we seen any more attacks?
Yes, you do. Your armies will not be as strong as theirs. You would drop your public army and spend all this time trying to build a private army and in the mean time, you’ll just get killed.
Anyways, I think I need another break. I’ll be back later.
And the assumption on your part here is that private law means lawlessness. I would refer you again to scholarly works on polycentric law. In the time you’ve spent here arguing with us, you could have actually learned something.
This is false. By way of counterexample: I don’t do drugs and I don’t drink. I believe that they are perfectly moral, yet I choose to abstain. Are you done being silly?
Yes, it’s a real shame that I won’t harm anyone because of these moral ‘training wheels.’ All of the cool kids like you are doing it, right?
But they do have disputes. There’s no ONE decider to stop them.
And this conflict would be avoided if only we have a world military that worked for our world government, right?
“The House” in your usage means the guy with the biggest guns. Someone who has read literature by people such as good ole’ Niccolo should know that having the biggest gun isn’t what’s important, it’s what you can do with it. As I pointed out elsewhere, an anarchist society is not only at an advantage because it is the defender, but also because it’s lack of central administration gives the invader no particular target that will win him the war. Also, a statist army is likley to use “conventional” tactics, fighting against a force that doesn’t play by it’s rules.
Of course, an anarchist society could be conquered, it just isn’t as likely as you would think.
You also assume that mid east terrorism against the US is simply a phenomina that has occured, and continues to occur because we are “free”. The ideological heads, and those who worship them might feel that way, and the US government screwing around in their lands doesn’t help with that perception, but such groups rely a great deal on local support. If you bomb people, they get angry at you, and they are more prone to believe that you are not only a baby killer, but a child molestor as well, a fiend. if they believe this, they WILL support people who try to wipe you off the face of the earth.
If someone attacks you when you have done nothing wrong, you can persue justice, and defend yourself, but through the state, which is at war against it’s people at all times, you gain nothing. Osama hasn’t been captured, mid-east terrorism continues to threaten the US, and the government has been incompietent to end this criminality because it itself has a degree of responsibility for the current situation. There were plenty of ways to get Osama that didn’t involve the state, mainly a massive bounty hunt (Which wouldn’t require civilian deaths, also it wouldn’t be as easy to detect a lone assassin, or a group thereof, as opposed to a massive armed force).
It is far easier to adjust to the problem of force in anarchy, than it is in a state with a monopoly on Law AND enforcement. If you have a national military, how easy is it going to be to change the government? Also, the people voted in the politicians who got us here in the first place, what makes you think this won’t happen again? They have every reason to expand the size of the government at the expense of their neighbors, until the state comes for them too.
Mech. Good plan! Let’s “play the odds” wih people’s lives.
Stop strawmanning. He never said he wanted to be a radical islamist or that he was sympathetic to their ideals. All he said was that policies have consequences and our policies in that region have resulted in radical Islamists focusing their hate on the US. Period. Methinks they could keep themselves busy killing eachother and/or the Israelis in our absence. The history of blowback is undeniable. Yet you are suggesting a purely ideological motivated terrorism. This is the kind of absurd bull the American people delude themselves into believing. Our military is precisely the reason everyone hates us over there. And you want us to keep a socialist military?! No.
No. Fail. Governments, especially democratic ones, have the inexorable tendency towards growth. The people will tend to allow this growth and aggression against the minority of folk granted they get their bread and circuses. You do not advocate the modern conservative position. For one thing, conservatives are no longer categorically opposed to welfare. The modern conservative does not advocate the abolition of the fed among other things. These policies are supported only by paleoconservatives and libertarians. And Mr. Bloom gets to arbitrarily define how far we should go in any arbitrarily defined direction on an arbitarily scale. Yay cautious moderates! No we do not use the same terminology as the socialists. That’s factually inaccurate. if you don’t believe me read the thread started by Markus recently about communism and compare our rhetoric.
Jacob, What do terrorists have to do with anything? Are you sure you are a liberterian? Do you know how the market works? Do you understand that consumer demand coordinates production. Will there be a consumer demand to protect airplanes? If yes, then there is profit to be made and protection you will have. Your utilitarian argument is basically market fails when it comes to law enforcement and security. Utilitarian can only mean Markets! They are services and they are scarce, therefore, economic laws should apply. Show why markets will fail at providing these services. If you cannot, then you have no argument.
No, no they wouldn’t. Please reread everyone’s prior responses to previous criticisms in this vein, try and comprehend them and then come back here.
Because they have us pouring money and lives over there, the death by a thousand cuts bin Laden always wanted by his own admission. There’s no need for that. They have us where they want us.
In effect that’s what many libertarians propose doing, it’s just that enforcement of libertarian natural law doesn’t require literally walking up to everyone on the street and demanding obedience to natural law. If, however, someone violates the natural law in any way they will be punished. Now I think natural law is pretty efficient, but you run into problems when people form the unrealistic expectation of their particular pet philosophy becoming universal. For example, HL Mencken’s proposal for the sterilization all violent criminals goes against natural law, and many libertarians would cry foul if a successful, prosperous society were set up with this law; whereas, I would only oppose such a law on consequentialist grounds if it proved itself a detriment. As Mlee mentioned, this is more or less Friedman’s approach; it’s much more flexible than the “one world law.”
For that, you’ll need to do some reading. The simple answer would be, anyone can own a gun - that’s the most basic principle of distributed force. Ron Paul would like to allow anyone to own just about any kind of weapon, perhaps short of nukes. It’s the government monopoly that bans this, but if this weren’t banned people would be a lot more armed, and private security would be a great new viable option for entrepreneurs to get into.
Anyone can enforce their will, be that a guy in his living room with a revolver or a security company breaking up a gun fight. You’re misunderstanding the theory. You really do need to do some reading rather than rely on these forums only. Read and come back, read some more and come back. Otherwise you’re either going to waste days of your life posting here and getting entangled in sometimes silly debates when you could have gotten the same information from 30 minutes of reading free articles on mises.org. Just read one article that’s been suggested so far - the shortest one you want - and you’ll get a taste of how clean the arguments are, and it’ll be much more plausible how arguments against your other objections might be made.
You’re misunderstanding the theory. Need to read the articles! In fact, private security would protect you from the mafia far better than the police ever could or would, for the same reasons that Toyotas protect you much better than Yugos.
Need. To. Read. Short answer: security companies hold the criminal in custody and will honor and enforce the rulings, better than now because there will be competition to get it right. And just because there is competition doesn’t mean you can “shop around” for courts. Remember it’s still you as a potential criminal against the interests of society. That reality doesn’t change, it just becomes much more efficiently reflected in a market anarchy, for the same reasons that private car companies will make way better cars than Government Motors. You don’t have to see the future to know that GM’s next generation of cars will suck ass, so why is it such a stretch to believe that private administration of security and justice will show just how much the current system sucks?