Adam Kokesh being pushy.
I certainly don't agree with minarchism/limited government, but I don't think being borderline obnoxious is a good way to sell people on anarchy.
Oh, Peter's a big boy. I think he can handle himself. It was clear Adam held him to a higher standard, not letting him weasel around with the usual arguments. He demanded Schiff's 'A' game and never quite got it.
@Skeptical: Kokesh is a tool. He paints himself out as being aligned with Ron Paul... yet the Ron Paul camp wants nothing to do with Kokesh and Kokesh has lashed out at Ron Paul at length in the past. Kokesh is engaging in typical anarcho-troll behavior: obsessing on anarchy as the end. The anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-communists are no different than this Kokeshic right-anarchy... it's still a form of collectivism. If you have in mind some kind of "ideal society", then you're missing the point. The point is that if people really are free, they're going to do things you don't like - including having strong power structures and systems of privilege.
Of course, systems of privilege throw into question the meaning of what it is to be free. Clearly, we cannot say that the slave is free on his owner's plantation. And every weaker form of privilege than outright slavery still contains within it that germ of rulership, aka ownership. This has led me to a few points in my own thinking:
a) We should not expect "society generally" to not be insane. In other words, we should expect that "the world out there" is generally going to be screwed up, filled with oppression and misery, etc. This is not a point of despair, rather, it's a technical conclusion that follows naturally from trying to answer the following question: "How do you internalize at least some of the benefits of healthy social order to the healthy society itself?" Clearly, in the general case, there is no internalization of benefits, thus, there is no reason for the social order to be healthy, thus, the general social order will always suffer from a tragedy of the commons. The State may best be thought of as the scavenging rodent that feasts on the discoordinated elements of society who do not benefit from a healthy social order for whatever reason.
b) Thus, a natural order society must be essentially Hoppean... that is, it must consist in privatized "enclaves" that emborder themselves (not necessarily geographically...) and keep out undesirables and enforce some kind of social order within themselves. To the extent that such social orders insist on controlling speech and personal behavior in order to maintain certain social mores that reinforce the survival of the enclave itself - that is, are constitutive to the enclave's continued existence - they can be characterized as coercive, even aggressive. At what point such an enclave crosses the border into violation of NAP is not entirely clear to me... what is clear is that there is a line that can be crossed but that it is also absurd to insist that anything less than libertine mores is evidence of an aggressive social order.
c) The principle of the State can be critiqued on philosophical grounds - that is, ethical grounds - without translating this critique into any specific plan of action in regards to the expression of the State principle: the government. In particular, we can shrewdly apply the principle of the lesser of two evils to conclude that we do not need, nor should we even desire to, tear down all governments. Government in every part of the world is built layer upon layer. It is the top-most layers which are naturally the most odious, the most removed from any conceivable justification for aggression, however contorted, and which are the most wasteful, and exercise the most outlandish privileges and are simply the most deadly. We do not need to strip off all layers in order to point out that we don't need the top layer at all because there are smaller, more local layers that can do all the jobs that the top layer of government is supposed to be performing just fine. In short: secession, not anarchy.
Clayton -
Clayton:@Skeptical: Kokesh is a tool. He paints himself out as being aligned with Ron Paul... yet the Ron Paul camp wants nothing to do with Kokesh
One could say the same thing about Tom Woods. Or Peter Schiff. I think it really matters how you define "the Ron Paul camp."
and Kokesh has lashed out at Ron Paul at length in the past.
I see nothing wrong with calling someone out when you think they're wrong. Does supporting someone or "being in their camp" have to mean agreeing with them no matter what they say and do? Surely you'd attack him as an apologist or idol worshiper if he did that.
Kokesh is engaging in typical anarcho-troll behavior: obsessing on anarchy as the end. The anarcho-syndicalists and anarcho-communists are no different than this Kokeshic right-anarchy... it's still a form of collectivism. If you have in mind some kind of "ideal society", then you're missing the point.
Nonsense. Why in the heck does "anarchy" have to mean something other than "absence of monopoly on law"? After all, that's how most people understand it anyway: "no state". (Yes many people simply make the leap in their mind that "no state=chaos", so they use "anarchy" interchangably with "chaos", but still..."no state" is really the root of the understanding.)
I fail to see why "no state" is not an end to work for. It seems like that entire piece you wrote is based in nothing more than a semantic argument on how you define "anarchy" and "ruler".
Clayton:a) We should not expect "society generally" to not be insane. In other words, we should expect that "the world out there" is generally going to be screwed up, filled with oppression and misery, etc.
That's fine. You're entitled to your opinion. Kokesh would argue that people largely getting the psychological help they need (and growing up in healthier environments to begin with) combined with — and due in part to — the vastly more prosperous world we'd live in sans a state, would reflect a much less "screwed up" society generally.
Sounds pretty statist to me. Particularly the bold. This sounds very similar to the position Nielsio once described. However he in fact went a step further and literally admitted that there would be nothing wrong with an "enclave" not only forcibly preventing someone from committing suicide, but even from leaving the enclave under certain circumstances. I'm wondering if you agree with this.
It sounds like there is room for aggression in this position. Otherwise, I'm not sure how you could essentially claim there's nothing wrong with certain layers of government, which it sounds like you're basically doing. If this is not the case, please explain.
This sounds very similar to the position Nielsio once described. However he in fact went a step further and literally admitted that there would be nothing wrong with an "enclave" not only forcibly preventing someone from committing suicide, but even from leaving the enclave under certain circumstances. I'm wondering if you agree with this.
Well, as I note, I don't think that such enclaves need necessarily be geographical. The Amish, the gypsies, certain Jewish communities, even the Somali people and many other informal-yet-strongly-normed diaspora groups can be considered examples of non-geographical or weakly-geographical enclaves. What makes an enclave, in my opinion, is not territory per se, but some ability to maintain a durable in-group/out-group division where the benefits of being in the in-group are contingent on remaining in good standing. If you don't have a territorial boundary, then there's really no way to prevent people from leaving or, thus, forcibly preventing them from doing anything (since they may simply leave and do it elsewhere).
What I mean about what constitutes aggression being unclear, is that if you look at a patriarchical group such as the gypsies, the wealth of the community may not always be managed in a strictly propertarian manner - high income earners might have their income redistributed to some extent or whatever. But this is essentially a kind of "taxation"... which we would ordinarilydesignate as aggression. Of course, I would agree that if you can't leave and your money is being redistributed, then that is out-and-out aggression and clearly immoral. Then the question becomes whether there would be enclaves where such aggression occurs and nothing can be done about it from the outside. I suspect such enclaves would indeed exist and might even be fairly common. Of course, that's just speculation.
I made it clear that lower layers of government are "the lesser of two evils." When I say we should not desire to tear down all governments, I mean we should not desire to tear them all down at once. Because we have atrophied so far from a healthy, natural culture of independent-spirit, self-direction, kin and community solidarity, etc. we simply do not have the capacity to strip off all layers of government at once. We must remove the top layer and I think we need the lower layers in order to do this. To put it in concrete terms, you can't keep the Federal government from taking away your arms if your State government will not protect you from the Feds because they are unable, unwilling or both. At this point in time, the most effective deterrent against bigger government is lots of smaller governments. If we begin to see a reversal in the process of political aggregation and smaller powers begin to succeed in opposing the tyranny of larger powers, we could see the process build momentum and move to the next logical stage... the deterrence of State government through opposition by municipal or county government.
This resolves nothing. Peter Schiff is a small government guy. Adama Kokesh isn't. I see nothing here why that is a suprise. I see the contradictions that small government types face but Schiff and his ilk do not.
I don't think he was pushy at all. It's exactly the kind of debate and discussion that should be happening on a larger scale.
But while I'm okay with what Kokesh was trumpeting in principle, I'm a follower of Peter's much more pragmatic and realistic approach. It's possibly the more pessimistic view, but I see no justification for optimism in Kokesh's "all or nothing" strategy. I'm sure someone disagrees, but I doubt anything resembling agorism (or whatever Kokesh is supporting) could form using the adult-age generations alive today.
Clayton...these things aren't going to work together...
If you have in mind some kind of "ideal society", then you're missing the point.
Thus, a natural order society must be essentially Hoppean... that is, it must consist in privatized "enclaves" that emborder themselves (not necessarily geographically...) and keep out undesirables and enforce some kind of social order within themselves.
Are you the one missing the point?
As per the OP,
Kokesh brings up Molyneux as a positive influence. i used to like him, but the idea of obljective morality is a joke. And a dangerous joke, idealists are the most dangerous people. The idea that we can "get rid of" the government is pretty unrealistic. The only thing, politically, that can happen is somehow we might be able to allowed out of the income tax system. Other people either here or there will form governments and take over your non-government (Im reminded of the native americans - they didn't have a free market court system yet, but there was no government...private contracts were signed and there wasn't an authority to hold the US government to it...).
Schiff just needed to say that the Europeans would have stomped all over some happy go lucky smiles and voluntary society. Schiff even recognizes the points that Kokesh made, but simply said that we need to get to point B before point C.
Kokesh's best point, that technology is making government redundandt or whatever, should have just been what he asked Shiff about.
I'm just gonna try and get a job at one of the policy tanks. F*** this kind of arguing. (I censored myself for you ninnies on here.)
I don't think Adam was being pushy, but that is just my opinion.
For those who don't know....Adam wants Lew Rockwell's version of society (absence of government)
Peter wants some government.
I don't know if we can say for sure that Peter "wants" some government, he's probably more resigned to the reality that it's never going to go away in our lifetimes. And perhaps more importantly, you have to admit that the marketability of minarchism is much greater than that of ancap. The difference in marketability and "appeal to the unread masses" between minarchism and ancap is so great that you're almost guaranteed not to change anyone's mind if you advocate for the latter. To me, the point-B to point-C approach is the only pragmatic & productive option.
except that minarchism as a political idea is about the only thing with a worse track record than minarchism as a social campaign. count me out, I would rather not bullshit people. I work on my own understanding of economics and tie it to real events in real people's lives, when I engage them. everything else is fluff.
"except that minarchism as a political idea is about the only thing with a worse track record than minarchism as a social campaign. count me out, I would rather not bullshit people. I work on my own understanding of economics and tie it to real events in real people's lives, when I engage them. everything else is fluff."
Agreed. If you say you support a little government, but you don't really believe in any government, you will confuse people. You'll have to explain why a little government is good and why it works. If you don't believe a little government does work, then you'd be lying. Lying confuses people.
How does minarchism as a political idea have the worst track record?
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
well can you identify a minarchist government that didnt become a beachhead for a mainstream legal positivist government? I just want to hear about one minarchy that wasnt a "starter set" for authoritarianism.
That's true (Jefferson's "tree of liberty quote" perhaps was accurate), but you could make the argument that an ancap society would also "evolve" another government infestation, either from within or invasion of external forces.
I don't think it's lying when I tell people that I think it's possible to run a peaceful society without a single centralized monopoly government (which sets off their "idealist youngster" alarm bells, no matter what your actual age). But then I follow up with a more realistic perspective, by stating it's an ideal to strive for which we'll never see in our lifetimes, because there's just too much ignorance and too many lowlifes out there now. This has a much better success rate for me in getting people to accept that government isn't the solution for everything.
You can call me a massive pessimist, and that may be true, but IMO anyone who believes we'll ever see a society with no monopoly on force in our lifetime is seriously underestimating the degree of willful ignorance, indifference, stupidity and propaganda embedded into the minds of most living adults. Some people want to be ruled over and told what to do, as long as they get their TV shows, sports and fancy restaurants. Many others have figured out that legalizing theft is easier than working.
I think the sooner libertarians learn to accept that reality, we can start looking more pragmatic, and perhaps turn the freedom dial in the right direction. Assuming it's even possible - human evolution has basically stopped. It seems to me that in general humans are getting dumber collectively, and the best we can do is slow down the decay.
Or maybe I've just been thinking about Brave New World and Idiocracy too much lately.