gotlucky: You do realize that words often have multiple meanings? Considering that rebuttal typically means "The act of refuting something by making a contrary argument, or presenting contrary evidence", vive was implying that the argument presented did not actually refute by etc. If you watched the video or even read the argument, you would see that this is a false claim. So, instead of Autolykos saying, "Hey, man, you are wrong!", he said, "Hey, man, what did you mean by what you said?". It's a far more charitable response, even if you don't think so. EDIT: It's also a real pain in the ass to have a huge debate with someone, only to realize that you have both been talking past each other because you were using the same word in different ways. Two of the most common words this happens with regarding libertarians are "anarchist" and "aggression". So, yeah, it's pretty foolish to demean defining words by calling it a game.
You do realize that words often have multiple meanings? Considering that rebuttal typically means "The act of refuting something by making a contrary argument, or presenting contrary evidence", vive was implying that the argument presented did not actually refute by etc. If you watched the video or even read the argument, you would see that this is a false claim.
So, instead of Autolykos saying, "Hey, man, you are wrong!", he said, "Hey, man, what did you mean by what you said?".
It's a far more charitable response, even if you don't think so.
EDIT: It's also a real pain in the ass to have a huge debate with someone, only to realize that you have both been talking past each other because you were using the same word in different ways. Two of the most common words this happens with regarding libertarians are "anarchist" and "aggression". So, yeah, it's pretty foolish to demean defining words by calling it a game.
Ok I've noticed this before. How is it that when I have addressed a third party about Auto, you come in to rescue him? gotlucky, you have a better approach to discussing things than your buddy Auto, but seriously, he's a big boy/girl (whatever he is; the Internet names can be misleading). Let him do his own talking. That's my recommendation.
I think that if he responded in a less strict and more approachable manner, he might get better responses. He seems to have some intellectual depth, but seeing him talk with some people on here, he doesn't exactly make the conversation inviting- unless, of course, you agree with him or you agree to follow his lead (hence, the game playing I was referring to). All I'm saying is he should be nicer in his approach to initiating discourse.
thetabularasa:I've never seen someone so unable to take criticism, especially over the Internet. I can't imagine how you handle it in real life.
Apparently by "take criticism" you mean "do what others want". In that case, I proudly stand guilty of being "unable to take criticism".
thetabularasa:I made one brief comment in the RANT/VENT forum (hence, the title) about how I find your insistent badgering about people defining this or that, and you can't let it go.
LOL, now that's an outright lie and you know it. Really, who do you think you're fooling here? But I'm supposed to give you the last word, huh? Well too bad. Go cry me a river, buddy.
thetabularasa:Others even "call you out" (as you put it) on it, yet you persist.
That's correct. I persist. I see no reason not to. Understand?
thetabularasa:Please stop, man.
No.
thetabularasa:I'm through with this.
LOL, I don't believe you.
thetabularasa:If you insist on being such a forum Nazi [sic] when people disagree with you [sic] or refuse to play your little definition game [sic], I will persist in responding with an appropriate picture [sic] that captures the essence of your online persona in some way [sic].
Wait, you just said that you're "through with this". Now apparently you're saying you're not "through with this". I suggest you make up your mind one way or the other.
That said, any pictures that you post won't deter me in the slightest. Do you understand? If not, I think you will eventually.
thetabularasa:Otherwise, for the record, I will politely ask that you please stop trying to entice me to converse with you unless I first initiate the conversation by directly addressing you.
No, I will continue to engage you as I see fit.
thetabularasa:I'm here to learn more about economics, trade theories with others on here and enjoy my experience while doing it.
Uh-huh. Well I'm not sure whether to believe you there.
thetabularasa:If I actually ranted/vented in the RANT/VENT forum [and elsewhere!], forgive me for hurting your Web ego [sic]; apparently you have trouble letting things go [sic], but if not for me, please, for those actually paying attention to this pointless [sic] back-and-forth, let it go buddy.
Nah, I think I'll persist. I think others will readily see that you've always initiated this interaction with me in the different threads.
Oh and by the way, your post didn't explain just what effect you expect your "calling out" to have on me. So try again.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
Since when did asking someone to define the term they are using become such a bad thing? Many times a discussion can lose focus because the parties involved aren't on the same page with what they are talking about, specifically because they understand the meaning of a word much differently then the other. Just explain what you mean and move on.
Autolykos: National Acrobat:I think an important detail here is that the people before and after the delegation are different social actors. Before they were individuals within a state of nature and after they are citizens (Hobbes, Rousseau) or members of civil society (Locke). These different identities have different rights and obligations. Aside: I'm not a proponent of state of nature theory but this is an aspect of the narrative that that seems to be overlooked here. I don't see how that necessarily follows from the notion of delegation. Perhaps you'd like to (try to) prove otherwise.
National Acrobat:I think an important detail here is that the people before and after the delegation are different social actors. Before they were individuals within a state of nature and after they are citizens (Hobbes, Rousseau) or members of civil society (Locke). These different identities have different rights and obligations. Aside: I'm not a proponent of state of nature theory but this is an aspect of the narrative that that seems to be overlooked here.
Aside: I'm not a proponent of state of nature theory but this is an aspect of the narrative that that seems to be overlooked here.
I don't see how that necessarily follows from the notion of delegation. Perhaps you'd like to (try to) prove otherwise.
I don't believe proof is possible as a matter of principle, so no I wouldn't like to. But I will try and elaborate on what I mean.
If you read Leviathan or The Second Treatise, individuals within a state of nature possess a very different relationship to one another than they do after entering into the social contract. For Hobbes there are no rights, no morality (outside of self preservation) within a state of nature, and no forms of cooperation are possible because none can be trusted. There is no reliable enforcement of agreements and this danger of reneging prevents contracting. For him social relations are purely conventional and made possible by society which he equates with Leviathan. The social contract sets the member citizens into a relationship of subordination to a sovereign of some kind, establishing law and morality that can be enforced. So rights don't even exist in Hobbes' formulation until after the social contract. I'd say that individuals possess different rights and obligations pre and post social contract there. They are different social actors.
Locke is a bit more gracious to the state of nature and posits that cooperative and economic relations are possible pre-social contract, however as a matter of convenience the formation of civil society through a social contract and then delegation of political authority to a sovereign of some kind entrusted to enforce the natural rights of the members is preferable to persisting in the state of nature. Individuals in the state of nature have the ability to enforce their natural rights as they see fit, under the judgement of God alone. That is, individuals have the ability to take whatever they wish as long as it comports to their understanding of their natural rights. This creates the problem of being judge in one's own case and a multiplicity of interpretations of natural law. So the social contract is viewed as a way of overcoming this problem. A condition of entering civil society is the relinquishing of all powers to judge and punish others according to natural law (i.e. you can't take your neighbors property on your own prerogative).
So when talking about the theories that underpin the legitimacy of the US (particularly Locke) the argument that the state cannot tax because it was delegated its authority by the people who themselves as individuals cannot tax, seems to ignore the aspect that individuals could "tax" (use violence against one another) pre-social contract. When the delegation of authority was made, the individuals did have the ability to use violence as they saw fit. Post-social contract they could not because they delegated it away.
Autolykos: Nah, I think I'll persist. I think others will readily see that you've always initiated this interaction with me in the different threads.
I don't think others care that much about our very limited interaction on here LOL. Seriously buddy. As far as a last word is concerned, this is the Internet. I don't think it really matters. Being as logical as you are, I thought you'd grasp that.
thetabularasa:I don't think others care that much about our very limited interaction on here LOL.
That may be; but if so, then why bother appealing to me on their behalf ("please, for those actually paying attention to this pointless back-and-forth, let it go buddy")?
thetabularasa:Seriously buddy. As far as a last word is concerned, this is the Internet. I don't think it really matters. Being as logical as you are, I thought you'd grasp that.
You know what you wrote. As far as I could tell, you were upping the ante, or at least trying a different approach. It didn't work. My response was to demonstrate your failure to you. As you can see, I'm continuing to engage you as I see fit.
Oh and by the way, no amount of picture-posting will sway me either. But I expect you to zig-zag between ever-increasing levels of mockery and playing the victim. In the meantime, I'll continue to not shut up just because you want me to.
Is it just me who cannot see how your discussion is an "Awesome rebuttal to government taxation"? Seriously, could you guys just move this to somewhere private? Or is the presense of audience mandatory?
The interviewee is seen in this video performing verbal gymnastics. It's rather entertaining I suppose. What I wish someone would say is this:
It is not generally socially acceptable to steal from someone in an upclose and personal manner because that sort of interaction seems to almost universally trigger moral outrage. But if one steals from people in a circuitous, impersonal and distant manner then people don't seem to get quite as mad. No moral outrage, no sense of criminality even if logically they are the same, emotionally they trigger different reactions. It also seems to work better if the theft is done by people who have achieved authority status. It also seems to make people feel better to know that everyone else is getting stolen from at the same time.
So the bottom line seems to me to be that only certain kinds of theft are going to be generally considered wrong.
The government engages in the sort of theft that people are willing to tolerate while the "street mugger" engages in a type of theft that people tend to find unacceptable.
You do realize that words often have multiple meanings? Considering that rebuttal typically means "The act of refuting something by making a contrary argument, or presenting contrary evidence", vive was implying that the argument presented did not actually refute by etc. If you watched the video or even read the argument, you would see that this is a false claim. So, instead of Autolykos saying, "Hey, man, you are wrong!", he said, "Hey, man, what did you mean by what you said?". It's a far more charitable response, even if you don't think so. EDIT: It's also a real pain in the ass to have a huge debate with someone, only to realize that you have both been talking past each other because you were using the same word in different ways. Two of the most common words this happens with regarding libertarians are "anarchist" and "aggression". So, yeah, it's pretty foolish to demean defining words by calling it a game.
Thank you.
I cannot understand why people take this so personally for some reason. Ego bruising?
Yeah. If you want to go deeper one has to challenge the social contract in the first place, or why one legal monopoly is legitimate at all. I don't think either Locke, Hobbes or the OP's argument address this so it's beside the point; The OP doesn't address the social contract (people had conflicting ideas of rights so created conflicting legal codes which led to violence, so they all agreed on giving the guns to Jonny Gummint and its monopoly on the legal code), which itself doesn't adequately address why one territorial monopoly is the most efficient or stable, or legitimate at all.
This then leads to speculation on how any anarchist community will interact in the international sense in terms of a stable legal code, to recall one of your earlier posts, right?
Getting back to the original post in the thread, yes, it's an awesome argument he poses in the video. He's spot on with his logic, and the other guy looked like a fool because he had no valid response.
seems to ignore the aspect that individuals could "tax" (use violence against one another) pre-social contract.
You talk about the social contract as if it were a tangible document that was signed at some point. Do you mean that the social contract came to being under an early form of the state, as a result of the state?
Willy,
I don't think the the social contract theory was intended to literally describe a contract, and I don't think that's what Hobbes and Locke meant.
Kind of weasel-wordish, but it's more of an attempt to explain why most people see States as legitimate in the first place, and why states have historically (in modern times) been the dominant political actors, instead of anarchist communities.
The 'social contract' could be better described as 'social consent'.
It's best described as bullshit.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Cortes,
Gotcha. I was just curious what @National Acrobat meant when he claimed that we could "use violence against one another pre-social contract" and then we "delegated it away" for the state. That's puzzling to me.
The Romans discovered they could rule a client province by installing one its citizens as a quizzling, a puppet ruler, the people would accept that and generally fall in line. Before that they'd been trying to rule them with outside rulers and had nothing but revolts.
Maybe we discover what it is about human beings that causes them to accept oppression when it's foisted upon them by the 'in-group' but not the out-group.
If we could discover that, it may be possible for us to change perceptions of who is part of the in-group and who isn't, and by the foment resistance to internal oppression.
I think Marx actually achieved this exact thing by recasting society as social classes, the bourgeoise versus the proletariat or w/e. But, Marx's categories were essentially true in feudal society's and then misapplied to capitalist ones. We need not make up things like he did.
The truth is, we are oppressor and oppressed. Where this gets muddled is the idea that 'we are the government.' That idea lends legitimacy to all state actions, as if the man killed by a cop has committed suicide or something.
It seems the government control of schools and information means they will always have a major advantage on controlling who the in-group is perceived to be.
Therefore, libertarians won't have a chance to reshape that view until that narrative becomes unsupportable by every-day reality. Meaning, sadly, once again, that the first chance for ideological realignment in the US can come only with a delegitimizing crisis, something much larger and worse than the '08 housing crash, which the intellectuals managed and shaped to their whim just fine.
It's gonna have to be something life-threatening to the republic. A major financial crash, or the debt exploding, or the dollar devaluing--or WWIII.
Were we communists, and thereby not aligned to the NAP, that would mean fomenting revolution ourselves, creating that crisis ourselves. But we cannot do it, not positively. But we can do it in reverse, in NAP-friendly negative terms.
By that I mean we can leave and then create a society which is free, and which will brain-drain, talent-drain, and investment-drain the US and the rest of the world. A seastead would be a great way to do that.
The resulting drains will bring about the US fiscal crises much sooner than otherwise. The governments of the whole world is reliant on basic similarity to keep their population in check. Provide a way out and that functions as citizen-competition, which can have a very strong check on the policies of those other countries, because politicians will be forced to do a political calculation as to whether, for instance, raising taxes to X level will result in another million citizens migrating to a libertarian seastead :P
Wheylous, thanks for sharing this video. I've actually been watching many of his other videos since I saw the one you posted. This guy is a ninja, the way that he is able to shine a light on the contradictory beliefs that his interviewees have.
Cortes: Yeah. If you want to go deeper one has to challenge the social contract in the first place, or why one legal monopoly is legitimate at all. I don't think either Locke, Hobbes or the OP's argument address this so it's beside the point; The OP doesn't address the social contract (people had conflicting ideas of rights so created conflicting legal codes which led to violence, so they all agreed on giving the guns to Jonny Gummint and its monopoly on the legal code), which itself doesn't adequately address why one territorial monopoly is the most efficient or stable, or legitimate at all. This then leads to speculation on how any anarchist community will interact in the international sense in terms of a stable legal code, to recall one of your earlier posts, right?
Basically, yeah.
The point about about international interactions deals with the centrality of sovereignty in the international community. I'm not sure how an anarchistic society would deal with international relations without some notion of sovereignty, and what that notion would look like I think is an interesting and unexamined question.
The social contract being a very important justification of internal sovereign power is intimately tied to this problem.
Willy Truth: You talk about the social contract as if it were a tangible document that was signed at some point. Do you mean that the social contract came to being under an early form of the state, as a result of the state?
I don't think the social contract was a tangible document (and I don't know of a social contract theorist who actually believes it was ever an actual document, even explicitly stating the exact opposite).
thetabularasa:Getting back to the original post in the thread, yes, it's an awesome argument he poses in the video. He's spot on with his logic, and the other guy looked like a fool because he had no valid response.
How about you respond to this post already?
National Acrobat:The point about about international interactions deals with the centrality of sovereignty in the international community. I'm not sure how an anarchistic society would deal with international relations without some notion of sovereignty, and what that notion would look like I think is an interesting and unexamined question.
Just what do you think is a "nation"?
Autolykos: Just what do you think is a "nation"?
I'm not sure I have a very well developed idea of what a nation is exactly, but I'd say it is a self-identified group along some informal or customary trait(s) like ethnicity, religion, language or region.
Why do you ask?
I asked because I wasn't sure what you think a "nation" is. Many people equate "nations" with states/governments.
A senator since 1963. Son of a bitch. Hawaii is stupid.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/senator-daniel-k-inouye-of-hawaii-is-dead-at-88/
Since I watched these videos, not a day goes by where I replay them in my mind. I'm seriously in awe of how this guy is able to control a debate or conversation.
What a waste of a life.
funny how the comment section has a guy saying politics did not make him, but war did, and he should be respected for war
Anenome:What a waste of a life.
Jan or the guy he is interviewing?
Inouye.
He typifies the kind of person who climbs the highest mountain in life, only to discover that he's climbed the wrong mountain.
Except, in his case, he never did discover he was on the wrong mountain, and died thinking he'd done great things.
When in fact he's done nothing great in political life because everything "great" politicians accomplish is terrible for society.
Sen. Ieyasu should have come straight and said it. The government has a right by virtue of being the most powerful entity and having a monopoly on force. It has a right because it has guns, badges and public support behind it. There's no need to logically analyse the legitimacy of the state, it is merely enough to acknowledge the fact that it is strong, and you, the individual are weak. In politics, just as in the animal kingdom, the weak are ruled by the strong. Democracy is nothing but a mass sham to keep the public oblivious of this simple fact. The populace has no bearing over public decisions, yet it still pretends to consent with the wise dictates of our overlords which the mass media drills in our heads, are intended for our common benefit. "Democracy" as defined in modern political linguo is finding the boot stomping your face agreeable after the fact it was stomped on.
EDIT: I didn't know that Inoye passed away while writing this message. I suppose I should pay my respects. Whatever he may have done or failed to do as a senator, he had a legendary reputation for his wartime deeds as part of the ethnic Japanese units in the United States Army, which were some of the most decorated soldiers in the war. Although I do not morally support US involvement in any wars it fought, I still view with respect true soldiers who gave everything for what they believed in.