Haha, quite an appeal to emotion. Or sickness in this case.
Indeed. Same with everything else.
I think the best way to attack the statist argument is by dismantling the social “contract”. The utter hilarity is that these same people who believe the actions which are evil and illegitimate and illegal can be justified so long as the State is the perpetrator will always cite the joke known as the social contract. What this argument amounts to is that if one happens to live in a territory they are automatically bound by the law. Yet the very reason why the word contract is present in this terminology is that there is not simply a one-sided expectation that the citizenry will abide by the laws but that the State will mutually uphold their end of the contract which is to not only defend the rights of the people but to obey the laws themselves.
The ignorance of people who invoke the social contract claim upon hearing that their leaders are no more than a “gang of thieves writ large” (as Rothbard would say) is astounding. A contractual obligation requires the acceptance of terms from all parties involved. Thus a contract is void (or penalties implemented) if one party breeches the said contract. Therefore so long as the institution of the State merely exists, and so long as the State funds itself through involuntary coercion (extortion and/or fraud) it cannot uphold its end of the “social contract” and obey the rule of law as it commands the populace to do. Henceforth the entire contract is void and the people are thus free from any obligations legislated upon them by the government.
In liberty,
Chris
Get this : thieves don’t own what they steal. As to the (hypothetical) property a thief has honestly earned, of course it’s his, but that’s irrelevant to the subject at hand. The state happens to ‘own’ only stolen goods. Only a statist like you can defend the ‘right’ of the state to enforce rules on the land it has stolen.
Why’d you run away from the last debate on this Juan? I’m not debating this with you, you didn’t have the intellectual honesty to admit you were wrong on continue the debate last time, as such, I’m not going to bother wasting my time on this.
I didn’t run away, I just got bored…and disgusted by your support for criminals and their ‘rules’.
You ran away. (And now you’re trying to save face).
Whatever. Here’s yet another explanation why the state has no right to set ‘rules’ :
Defending Open Immigration: A Reply to Hoppe - by Block & Gregory
“Whatever”. How weak Juan.
You’re free to think whatever you want. If you want to believe that I ran away, go ahead – It’s totally irrelevant. Your defense of the ‘rights’ of the state is still laughable, though.
It’s logical & all to conclude that The Thief is wrong, but he believes he is right & will harm and/or kill you to “prove” it.
The Thief doesn’t have a right to own the property, but how can you counter him? By “stealing” it back?
It’s about framing, and quite frankly, The State & it’s minions are more than quite capable of framing their stolen goods as "legitimately "owned property. I thought GS was challenging the concept of how a State can be prevented from “owning” (stealing) property, without some sort of counter-action (i.e. stealing it back) occurring.
I admit it’s easier to answer this in the context of a pre-existing stateless society (where it would be assumed that the thief would already be seen as the aggressor & individuals via courts would take action accordingly), but how does one answer this under the context of a State Society, when the State can lock you up for challenging it’s “right to theft” (which is what I thought GS was implying when he said “…why a common thief can own property and the state can’t”).
If my post is redundant (it probably is), than I apologize ahead of time for the minor anklebiting [8-|]
Because a common thief doesn’t steal everything he has? A common thief is still a human and can own things? A government is coercive expropriating territorial monopoly which forces itself upon the whole of the populace, whereas the common thief probably gets some property legitimately?
What if the State Government (or perhaps, The United States) was defined as a corporation, then?
It’s a shame government bonds and other voluntary forms of government funding undermine your entire argument then.
My point was that people have a double standard when it comes to the state. Granted, it’s minor, but libertarians on these forums love to claim that the state is nothing but a group of common thieves with a good PR department and then make statements about action against the state that they wouldn’t necessarily condone against common, petty thieves or even your average murderer.
This somehow gets me labelled as a statist.
You might want to rethink this statement.
If I buy a stolen TV from a thief, have I acquired that property legitimately?
This is considerably valid when you go beyond the abstraction of The State & remember the various agents (both consciously supportive of The State & unconsciously supportive of the state) that help compose The State (oligarchy notwithstanding). It gets morally fuzzy at that point, methinks.
No in both cases of consciously knowing you are buying stolen property (collusion), and unconsciously buying stolen property (via proxy, such as bootlegs).
However, I’d imagine legal consequences (I’m assuming under the context of a stateless society, but to some extent this is already seen even in civil courts over petty matters in the current State society) for the later, if demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt, would be considerably less than the earlier.
But they don’t. It’s a shame that you didn’t have a real response.
What if someone tried to define an apple as an orange?
I don’t see this as a good comparison; you can’t incorporate a piece of fruit, although cities can be (municipal corporation), which led me to think that perhaps states & upwards to countries (such as the united states of america) can as well.
I’m not saying this excuses anything, but has this argument been considered before? That if the state government was defined as a corporation, would be it easier for it to “justify” & enforce “owning” property?