It recognizes, for instance, that life has value, even though we don't come with price tags attached. And a just society ought to set a minimum value for honest work as well, irrespective of whether some people don't value it at all.
Only individuals have free will. Systems don't. How can an entity which is merely an aggregation of individuals have its own mind and function independently of these people? You need some Bastiat:
It is not because men have made laws, that personality, liberty, and property exist. On the contrary, it is because personality, liberty, and property exist beforehand, that men make laws. What, then, is law? As I have said elsewhere, it is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense. Nature, or rather God, has bestowed upon every one of us the right to defend his person, his liberty, and his property, since these are the three constituent or preserving elements of life; elements, each of which is rendered complete by the others, and that cannot be understood without them. For what are our faculties, but the extension of our personality? and what is property, but an extension of our faculties? If every man has the right of defending, even by force, his person, his liberty, and his property, a number of men have the right to combine together to extend, to organize a common force to provide regularly for this defense. Collective right, then, has its principle, its reason for existing, its lawfulness, in individual right; and the common force cannot rationally have any other end, or any other mission, than that of the isolated forces for which it is substituted. Thus, as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.
Autolykos
I appreciate the fact that you haven't accosted me verbally.
None of us, by the way, is really advocating "pushing the big red button". If you think we are, then you're attacking a strawman in place of our actual position.
I believe that a transition to a direct democracy will afford the people an opportunity to learn to govern themselves, rather than blaming the other party, or their own elected representatives, for all their woes. And I believe that the inevitable result of shifting responsibility and accountability to the People, given the right Constitutional limits, will be the development of an appreciation, first of local control, and ultimately of individual self-reliance and self-determination. If I assumed that ancappers just want to go straight to the big red button, it is because I have heard absolutely no transitional plan at this forum; and I have received plenty of flack for mine.
There's a difference between simply making mistakes and committing aggression.
If nukes and missiles, drones and tanks, are all sold off to the highest bidders, then that difference will grow potentially much smaller.
Nothing but private roads, yes. I don't think they'll all be toll roads
You honestly foresee no problems with travel and trade, when any a-hole along one's route can decide that the route is closed--maybe because he needs an extra $50 per vehicle today? Then what? Just hire a private road company on the spot to survey land adjacent to this plot, pay the neighbors to sell the land, and lay down the asphalt while the cars and trucks wait?
By the way, I for one am not just concerned with "America" - I'm concerned with the whole world.
Me too. That's why I'm interested in more than just maximizing the speed and efficiency for the economic development of Earth's natural assets.
Who do you think? The people who own the bridges.
If someone is rich enough to afford a bridge, what makes you think they need to let anyone pay to go across it? Or if he leaves it to his rich, stupid son--who doesn't want people driving over it--again, must we call the survey crew?
Sold off, parceled out, or left open to homesteading.
If there's no more nation, there's no more national forests.
That's exactly what I was afraid you'd say. Lovely, Autolykos. Barbed wire and no wild herds or roaming predators. And you care about the whole world--or just the whole human world?
I'd like you to please enumerate these functions and explain why you think they're best left out of the hands of private interests.
Courts of law, law enforcement, military defense, infrastructure coordination and development, monetary uniformity and stabilization, public safety/consumer protection, diplomatic relations, foreign trade regulation, etc. All such functions are best left to an agency that acts in the public interests, partial to none; because everyone has a stake in their just administration. No private firm can wield the power to force another country to stop unfair trade practices, for example. Courts of law ought not be directly dependent for revenue upon the parties in a suit before them. Private individuals, or firms, ought not be permitted to have weapons that can destroy small cities. And survey crews ought not be so overworked, as I indicated above. To say nothing of people printing fiat money for themselves, buying fancy cars and mansions(?), until everyone realizes that it isn't worth anything. How would you handle such functions?
I'll read your reply in the morning; I have to be up for work at four; and I don't feel great tonight.
It is human nature.
Well, it is human nature not to do things for free when you can get paid and thereby provide for yourself and your family. So, no one's going to fix the broken water-main if you push a Big, Red Button and make the government disappear overnight.
they're all the same: the Pentagon generals and the Chrysler CEO's.
OK? So? You're stuck in the sandbox of acceptable political thinking... you need to break out of the sandbox and think about politics as it is. The Chrysler CEO and the Pentagon general are all part of the same apparatus of power. It's not "private is better than public"... that's bone-headed Republicanism. It's that free choice is better than enslavement. The Chrysler CEO isn't part of a system of free choice, he's part of a system of enslavement. He collects your taxes from your paystub and dutifully forwards them to the IRS. He lobbies Congress for favors for his company and utilizes the statutory law and regulatory system to club any potential competitors to death before they can grow to be a threat.
You can't escape it: Bad judgment, inefficiency and wastefulness are not exclusive to the public sector.
Who said it is?
Mail delivery is a relatively-simple, harmless enterprise. Law enforcement and military defense are not.
But surely food production is more critical to human survival than either of these. Without food, our law enforcement and military defenders would fall over dead. Clearly, the free market cannot be trusted with food production!
Must all public lands then be sold off, parceled out?
We have a $15T debt and nearly $100T in unfunded Federal obligations. National lands would be a good place to start the liquidation and we can keep rolling and see where we go from there.
Clayton -
Wheylous
And why stop at minimum wage? Why not free health care? That seems nice. Free transportation - we need to get places. Free food - durrr, you need to survive, right?
I'm not interested in taking away the ability of health care workers, or taxi cab drivers, or farmers to earn a living--forcing them to give away their services and products. I'm interested in preventing anyone from being forced to "give away" their labor for less than anyone's labor should be worth. And controlling the prices of all of those other things would leave the door wide open for favoritism in a way that the MW does not.
And I believe that Bastiat is in fact arguing for the validity of a collective law enforcement and military apparatus there.
I don't think you read that carefully if that's your conclusion:
as the force of an individual cannot lawfully touch the person, the liberty, or the property of another individual—for the same reason, the common force cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, the liberty, or the property of individuals or of classes.
I'm not interested in taking away the ability of health care workers, or taxi cab drivers, or farmers to earn a living
That's what the minimum wage does - it makes labor illegal.
DarylLloydDavis:Autolykos I appreciate the fact that you haven't accosted me verbally.
As far as I'm concerned, I'm acting no differently from before. So either I didn't accost you verbally before, or I'm still accosting you verbally now.
DarylLloydDavis:I believe that a transition to a direct democracy will afford the people an opportunity to learn to govern themselves, rather than blaming the other party, or their own elected representatives, for all their woes.
I don't know what you mean by "govern themselves", and I don't know what makes you believe that a direct democracy will give "the people" an opportunity to learn how to do that. Please clarify.
DarylLloydDavis:And I believe that the inevitable result of shifting responsibility and accountability to the People, given the right Constitutional limits, will be the development of an appreciation, first of local control, and ultimately of individual self-reliance and self-determination.
This seems to be in the direction of clarifying my second source of confusion above. But I fail to see how direct democracy will lead people to develop an appreciate of local control, let alone individual self-reliance and self-determination. A direct democracy still involves majority rule and a one-size-fits-all approach to decision-making. I think a better approach would be to abandon the notion of legislation entirely.
DarylLloydDavis:If I assumed that ancappers just want to go straight to the big red button, it is because I have heard absolutely no transitional plan at this forum; and I have received plenty of flack for mine.
I, for one, in no way consider that to be a justification for your strawman attacks - which, by the way, seem to be ongoing. And none of us is a priori obligated to provide you or anyone else with any transitional plan. Criticism can certainly be valid even if no alternative is offered.
DarylLloydDavis:If nukes and missiles, drones and tanks, are all sold off to the highest bidders, then that difference will grow potentially much smaller.
This seems to be a red herring. I was addressing your contention that people make "inefficient", "wasteful", and "bad" decisions all the time. You seemed to be equating such things with committing aggression, i.e. the initiatory intrusion, or threat of intrusion, upon another's person and/or property.
DarylLloydDavis:You honestly foresee no problems with travel and trade, when any a-hole along one's route can decide that the route is closed--maybe because he needs an extra $50 per vehicle today? Then what? Just hire a private road company on the spot to survey land adjacent to this plot, pay the neighbors to sell the land, and lay down the asphalt while the cars and trucks wait?
Assuming you're not arguing from the nirvana fallacy, I do think that private industry will do better with roads than the government. By your reasoning thus far, leaving food distribution in the hands of private industry should be an unmitigated disaster.
DarylLloydDavis:Me too. That's why I'm interested in more than just maximizing the speed and efficiency for the economic development of Earth's natural assets.
I have no idea what you actually mean by this.
DarylLloydDavis:If someone is rich enough to afford a bridge, what makes you think they need to let anyone pay to go across it? Or if he leaves it to his rich, stupid son--who doesn't want people driving over it--again, must we call the survey crew?
See above.
DarylLloydDavis:That's exactly what I was afraid you'd say. Lovely, Autolykos. Barbed wire and no wild herds or roaming predators. And you care about the whole world--or just the whole human world?
You don't intimidate me in the slightest. You might be used to verbally bullying others, but such nonsense will have no effect on me. I don't even care if you don't understand that.
Now then, when I say that I care about the whole world, of course I'm referring to the whole human world - because I'm a human and not some other species of animal.
DarylLloydDavis:Courts of law, law enforcement, military defense, infrastructure coordination and development, monetary uniformity and stabilization, public safety/consumer protection, diplomatic relations, foreign trade regulation, etc.
Your use of "etc." implies that this list is not exhaustive. An enumeration is typically taken to be an exhaustive list. Please provide one or I will conclude that you are unable to do so.
DarylLloydDavis:All such functions are best left to an agency that acts in the public interests, partial to none; because everyone has a stake in their just administration.
As Clayton has tried explaining to you, over and over again, everyone is partial. You yourself seem to recognize this when it comes to private industry and actually existing government. Yet you seem to have a cognitive blindspot when it comes to this utopian notion of "[acting] in the public interests, partial to none". I fail to understand why this would be the case, unless it's just wishful thinking.
DarylLloydDavis:No private firm can wield the power to force another country to stop unfair trade practices, for example.
A private firm can certainly stop trading with another country (or other organization) that it believes is engaging in unfair trade practices. Yet that doesn't seem to be enough for you. You want there to be certainty that no one will ever engage in unfair trade practices after a given point in time. Such certainty cannot exist, for the future is inherently uncertain. Perhaps it's this illusion of certainty that is your true wishful thinking.
DarylLloydDavis:Courts of law ought not be directly dependent for revenue upon the parties in a suit before them.
If they're not paid by those who use their services, then either they're not bad at all, or they're subsidized by one or more other organizations (who presumably are paid by those who use their services), or they're funded by taxation. I suspect you have the third alternative in mind. If so, then you're implying that courts of law have a higher claim over (part of) people's property than people themselves do. I fail to see how I personally can consider this higher claim to be legitimate, since it arises only by fiat.
DarylLloydDavis:Private individuals, or firms, ought not be permitted to have weapons that can destroy small cities.
Please explain why you think that organizations which enjoy imputed monopolies over legitimate coercion - i.e. governments - can (let alone should or must) be trusted to have such weapons. I suspect your answer will again appeal to the wishful-thinking notion of "[acting] in the public interest, partial to none".
DarylLloydDavis:And survey crews ought not be so overworked, as I indicated above.
If there are more of them, presumably they won't be so overworked. You seem to be overlooking the laws of supply and demand as they apply to various labor/service markets.
DarylLloydDavis:To say nothing of people printing fiat money for themselves, buying fancy cars and mansions(?), until everyone realizes that it isn't worth anything.
If people are willing to take fiat money in exchange for fancy cars and mansions, that's their problem.
DarylLloydDavis:How would you handle such functions?
I wouldn't. In the world I envision, it wouldn't be up to me, so I see no point in speculating otherwise. I only speculate about how people would likely organize and interact in a stateless world.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
I think he is referring to me. After all, I posed a question to him that he refused to answer:
What exactly does he intend to do with the people who do not agree with his morality? After all, the logical implication of the state is if you disagree with the state, it will murder you. Of course, many people prefer to live in prison than be executed by the police, but it does not change the logical implication.
When faced with this question, Daryl Lloyd Davis prefers to just hide behind this nonsense of "[acting] in the public interests, partial to none".
I patiently await his reply, though I expect he will continue to hide.
to ensure that all productive, full-time workers earn enough to support themselves in a basic existence
How are you going to define "a basic existence?" What if some people have different needs, like maybe I have twelve kids to support and you only have one, do I get paid more than you?
You are running into the problem of needing objective measures where only subjectivity exists...
Clayton
Well, it is human nature not to do things for free when you can get paid and thereby provide for yourself and your family.
It's also human nature for many private citizens not to pay for things if they can take them with force or fraud; hence the societal development of a collective defense, and the ascendancy of the state. I watched those Youtube videos: interesting perspective. But the level of conspiracy is absurd. Without saying so, it implies that the same elite folks have been attempting to farm humans, in one way or another, since the dawn of civilization. What crap. Even individual elites would be too self-involved, too flawed, too prone to rebel in their own right, to sustain a secret, centuries-long control of any nation's population, let alone the whole world's population.
It's that free choice is better than enslavement.
How is it that, on the one hand, you acknowledge that the big red button would lead to chaos, then on the other, you posit that a planet without governments would allow for free choice, and not free enslavement?
surely food production is more critical to human survival than either of these. Without food, our law enforcement and military defenders would fall over dead. Clearly, the free market cannot be trusted with food production!
Who's arguing for government control of food production--other than regulations "...indispensable to the protection of public safety..."(Amend. XIII)
Wow. You and I are at opposite poles, with respect to a vision for an ideal planet. It's always about trade-offs, Clayton. And I'll preserve our lands of public domain, and deal with the debt however these chips fall:
All debts contracted by and engagements of the United States entered into before the adoption of this Constitution shall be honored, unless implicitly or expressly invalidated by this Constitution; whereupon such pacts as these may be renegotiated to reflect a more responsible balance between the wrong of defaulting on a public debt or an international commitment, tarnishing an unparalleled record of global, fiscal good faith and generosity, and wrongs such as state-sanctioned commercial piracy and espionage, predatory currency manipulation, human exploitation, systematic international treaty violations and other totalitarian racketeering.
@Daryl: Of course we're at opposite ends... you're a statist, I'm anti-statist.
Clearly, it's not the "same elites" who are enslaving us today that enslaved people during the time of the Pharaohs... those guys are all dead. There is more genealogical heritage than you might care to face up to but even that is irrelevant because, at the end of the day, these are just human beings. As the second video points out, it is not their commands but our obedience which makes them powerful.
The point of the video is that everyone understands slavery is evil but we are still slaves. It is a form of "soft slavery" but the moral essence of slavery is still in operation. Taking from others what they have produced by the sweat of their own brow. That is slavery.
Because how you get from here to there matters. Revolutions don't work because revolutions don't address the root problem. Inevitably, revolutions just replace this government with another one - many times what replaces is worse than what is replaced and when you factor in the toll to human life and property in the process, it's always a bad idea.
Rather than violent revolutions, we need an ideological revolution. That is what LvMI and Ron Paul are all about. What is the revolution? The revolution is radical secessionism... secession to the level of the individual. It starts with you saying to yourself: "My masters have no right to take from me or order me around. From here on out, I will obey their orders and give up my property to them not out of obedience but out of prudence only. I will not cower before their nightsticks even as I steer as far clear of them as I can. I will never experience a drop of moral angst whenever the commands of my masters come into conflict with my own conscience. I will do what I know is right as far as is prudent no matter what my masters would think about it if they came to know."
Guido Hulsmann has termed this concept originary secession. It is the Individual's Declaration of Universal Independence.
The more people that realize the immorality of the status quo and choose to conform to its edicts solely as a matter of prudence and to follow their own conscience otherwise, the more powerful the ideological revolution becomes. People are emboldened by numbers. What starts as a trickle of anti-state "extremists" posting on online forums becomes a breach of the Hoover dam, sweeping in a new era of enlightened dissent to the new "soft slavery" of taxes, debt and inflation wrapped in a warm slice of Social Security that evaporates the day you're due to begin collecting it.
So, it turns out that we don't need a Big, Red Button. We just need to keep speaking the truth. We don't even need to evangelize it... it's self-defeating to evangelize. Only self-promoting ideologies need to evangelize. Only people with something to sell need to advertise. We're not selling anything. We don't directly benefit from people changing their minds and realizing the truth about the conditions in which they live. The primary beneficiary of waking up to the truth is the individual himself or herself. There is no hope for people who are under ideological sedation or who willfully refuse to see the truth when it is placed in front of their eyes. Maybe their conditions will change and then they'll be able to see. In the short run, no amount of jazzing up the truth will increase its general acceptance in the population. But the more "repeaters" we have... the more people saying "yeah, I see it, there's something seriously f--ed up about the world", the faster the change will happen.
The truth will win out in the end. Might be after I'm gone but it doesn't matter. I will raise my family to protect themselves from the predation of the Esatblishment and look for the day when the scales begin to tip in the favor of human freedom once again.
</waxing poetic>
This seems to be in the direction of clarifying my second source of confusion above. But I fail to see how direct democracy will lead people to develop an appreciate of local control, let alone individual self-reliance and self-determination. A direct democracy still involves majority rule and a one-size-fits-all approach to decision-making.
Besides shifting the costs of government services directly upon those whose activities necessitate them, thereby disincentivizing the use of government itself, making reliance upon it personally costly and potentially risky (as in court and police costs for frivolous suits and false arrests), my system also leaves open the door for local voting precincts, or any small political unit, to reserve the right to determine many of their own laws and ordinances by their own direct voting. In other words, if enough precincts refuse to participate in a national initiative on an issue like the legalization of abortion, then any precinct may, upon ratification, decide any new issue for itself. Furthermore, upon ratification, any precinct may elect to begin to dismantle the old, existing laws, as they apply to that precinct; so long as this would not violate the new Constitution. This is a system designed to dismantled the old one, the current one--when the people learn to appreciate the freedom of self-determination--of designing each and every community the way it wishes. It isn't ancap; because votes still decide issues; but it has a lot of potential to teach the People why freedom is always preferable to government control.
I think a better approach would be to abandon the notion of legislation entirely
And then what? That would leave wide open the distinct probability that force would decide all issues--primarily force of numbers, or force of might. That might not violate the letter of the NAP; but it seems to violate the spirit of it.
And none of us is a priori obligated to provide you or anyone else with any transitional plan. Criticism can certainly be valid even if no alternative is offered.
I'm free to criticize all of you for not offering an alternative--and yet I am offering one of my own. I'm also gathering in your challenges, taking them seriously, and refuting them when I can. It would be nice if this exchange were always mutual.
I was addressing your contention that people make "inefficient", "wasteful", and "bad" decisions all the time. You seemed to be equating such things with committing aggression, i.e. the initiatory intrusion, or threat of intrusion, upon another's person and/or property
I was suggesting that the capacity to commit aggression would be far greater, and far more prevalent, and far less controllable, were private individuals, with all of their random poor decisions, in possession of the weaponry upon which the government currently enjoys a monopoly. In effect, you would quite possibly add to the general level, or the numerical odds, of aggression by privatizing all weaponry, if for no other reason than as a natural result of accident/stupidity, followed by retaliation, ad infinitum. In such a case you would see less freedom than you currently enjoy--or freedom in name only.
I do think that private industry will do better with roads than the government. By your reasoning thus far, leaving food distribution in the hands of private industry should be an unmitigated disaster.
They might make and repair the roads more efficiently; but I don't see any orderly, unwasteful way that travel and trade could in any way be guaranteed--or even maintained--without a governing authority. By the way, would all existing roads be sold off; such that the next day, someone else owned the road outside your house--and someone else the road linked to it--ad infinitum again. It's absurd to anyone not hell-bent on defending pure private markets.
That's why I'm interested in more than just maximizing the speed and efficiency for the economic development of Earth's natural assets
Pure capitalism theoretically ensures the most efficient, productive distribution and use of natural resources. And if that is the only moral value, and it is unleashed worldwide, it will most efficiently use up all of the world's resources. Add to that formula the complete privatization of all the Earth's land, as all of you seem to support, and every bit of it will be economically exploited, none left undeveloped, except the private property of those still holding out--an ever-shrinking few. I like that states stalemate one another's development and exploitation of the world's resources; and I like that America protects some of its best natural lands, e.g. Yellowstone and the national forests. I don't wish to turn the globe into the DeathStar (from Star Wars.)
Never owned a pet, Autolykos? No need for an ecosystem, or a food chain?
Please respond to the many already listed, or I might conclude that you are unable to do so. My investment in an exhaustive list is in direct proportion to my expectation of your investment in directly addressing it.
you seem to have a cognitive blindspot when it comes to this utopian notion of "[acting] in the public interests, partial to none
I understand that there is plenty of abuse in a government system. (I got a $154 ticket the other day from a cop who told me that I should have lied to him about wearing my seatbelt, so that he could write me a point-free ticket for that, instead of one for running a stop sign.) But at least that cop has a superior officer, and the department has internal affairs, and then there's the FBI--a system of checks and balances and a set of written, impartial laws that serve to ensure stability and accountability. If I have a blindspot, it is that I can't see where a purely private society would establish a stable system of justice, and with it, a functional, authoritative check on the excesses of private individuals.
A private firm can certainly stop trading with another country (or other organization) that it believes is engaging in unfair trade practices. Yet that doesn't seem to be enough for you. You want there to be certainty that no one will ever engage in unfair trade practices after a given point in time
When China drives steel manufacturers out of business here, by selling their steel for less than its worth--just to eliminate their competition--it makes no difference to them if one firm doesn't buy their steel. But if the government slaps a tariff on their steel, that makes a huge difference to them: if forces them to be just. Unless the whole world goes ancap all at once, there will all sorts of vulnerabilities for the one that does go ancap, economic, military, and otherwise. That's why a transitional plan is so crucial--and the lack of one, so disappointing.
If so, then you're implying that courts of law have a higher claim over (part of) people's property than people themselves do. I fail to see how I personally can consider this higher claim to be legitimate, since it arises only by fiat
Under my system those who force issues before a court pay directly for that service, just as though the court were a private enterprise--only the judges are paid from a public pool of revenue, not from private litigants. No more general taxation, only pay-per-use/serve.
Please explain why you think that organizations which enjoy imputed monopolies over legitimate coercion - i.e. governments - can (let alone should or must) be trusted to have such weapons.
Experience has born out the relative trustworthiness of liberal democracies in refraining from a use of destructive force against their own populations. Rare exceptions like Waco only prove the rule. Governments have a vested interest in preserving the lives and the earning power of the People. Businesses are focused upon eliminating the competition: those who are not their customers are not their concern. With respect to weaponry and justice, this concerns me.
It becomes your problem too, when you can't buy anything anymore. Vegetable garden anyone? Barter economy? Gold coins again?
In regard to the China question, have you read the petition of the candlestick makers?
TANSTAAFL
what if I have a sick parent that I need to care for and am only available to work 20hrs a week, how are you going to ensure that I am able to support myself in "a basic existence?"
There's no way to ensure that someone who only works half as many hours as others still earns as much as a full-time, low-wage worker-- enough to live on--nor, for that matter, if he worked only one hour. The point isn't to guarantee everyone a living wage, even when they don't work: that's what we have now, i.e. welfare. The idea is to guarantee that those who do work full-time are paid well enough to honor and incentivize honest work, a valuable function for a just and a stable society.
How are you going to define "a basic existence?
We already have a Consumer Price Index, a basket of goods and services that we track over time with respect to price and inflation. It wouldn't be difficult to average-out apartment rents in a given locale, plus average utilities, plus food and clothes, and public transportation.
What if some people have different needs, like maybe I have twelve kids to support and you only have one, do I get paid more than you?
This isn't welfare. It isn't an incentive to have more kids. It's a wage floor for individuals in a society that ensures that honest work, as opposed to irresponsible behavior, is rewarded and encouraged. And if it also has the effect of discouraging people from having twelve kids--people who couldn't possibly provide for them on their own--all the better.