Political Theory

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

jackackman — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 07:31:25 GMT

no idea............ dear

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Anenome — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 06:36:20 GMT

Wheylous:

And what will happen to those who have a different idea of the right thing. Sounds like tyranny.

Careful. Same can be applied to minarchist or anarchist thoughts. Don't argue against morals. Argue against specific morals. Show that others are logically derived.

Sure, but when someone uses the words 'authority figure' and 'force' I worry about tyranny :P

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Wheylous — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 03:57:59 GMT

And what will happen to those who have a different idea of the right thing. Sounds like tyranny.

Careful. Same can be applied to minarchist or anarchist thoughts. Don't argue against morals. Argue against specific morals. Show that others are logically derived. For example, a quick breakdown of why the individual is not owned by everyone equally:

If everyone owns an equal part of me, then to move from A to B I must obtain permission from everyone. This is in fact not only impractical, but impossible: for you to agree to let me move, you yourself would need permission from everyone else to use your vocal chords. This reasoning is circular and would immediately freeze us all in a state of not doing anything.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Anenome — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 03:46:31 GMT

Libertyandlife:

Arguing with a friend on facebook, he says human nature is evil:

It's not that man is evil by nature, but rather that man seeks what we can call "plus factors." That is, to gain a value or to profit.

There are moral and and immoral ways to profit, and there are also evil values, but I'll ignore evil values for now. You can profit in a transfer in which the other party to the transfer profits as well: known as free exchange. Or you can profit at the expense of another, which is an aggression.

Moral systems are necessary to serve as rubrics on actions as people choose them, and these systems, if rational, should be in line with the non-aggression principle and respectful of rights generally.

Libertyandlife:
"Ideally farmers would be protected by the government (helping them when natural disaster ruins crops, finding better technologies for more efficient growing, etc). I would say that is a way society respects farmers..Oh and by buying their goods.

At whose expense?

Libertyandlife:

And whether you like it or not, humans are mostly needed to be governed by some sort of force.

Not quite, we only need a government to use force to end aggression within society, that is retributive and responsive force, never aggression.

Libertyandlife:
Humans are lazy. They would not do things if they were not forced to do them.

Not so. But even if true, they would not need the government to do the forcing, as reality itself will force them to work to survive or die. Obviously, people aren't lazy unto death.

Libertyandlife:
Hell they don't even do things when they ARE forced to do them. It would be nice to trust everyone to do the right thing without some sort of authority figure there, but that is not reality.

And whose idea of the "right thing" will you enshrine into law? And what will happen to those who have a different idea of the right thing. Sounds like tyranny.

Libertyandlife:

In absence of government, there will be chaos, and because of chaos people will start to band together to protect each other, and essentially what you have now is more governments being formed. It will start off with protection, then lead to someone being a ruler to enforce stability within that group.

This is sort of true, in the sense that an anarchist society is not practicable. But neither do we need as much government as you seem to be suggesting we do. If we did, communist countries would be far more successful than free societies. But, as it turns out, free societies and self-directed effort far exceeds the productive capacity and wealth of a command economy with centralized governmental decision-making.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Wheylous — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:06:16 GMT

Clayton, I think it was my own fault that I lost the data. I accidentally unfocused and used backspace :(

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Wheylous — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 00:05:21 GMT

I'm talking about before the 1700s, Before the Crusades, before the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and Mesopotamia, back all the way when humans were tribal bands composed mostly of families

Emotional appeal.

The family was essentially the first form of government.

Government requires coercion. Families are voluntary. You join families. Voluntary "governments" are not governments. They are voluntary societies. The whole foundation of his argument is rotten.

protection of those people within the group and to create societal order.

It seems like his argument is that the two are the same. Why does he include both?

formal societal structure, also known as government

False!

Here is his argument: Human nature is chaos, disorder. He thinks that government is order. Yet note that government has arisen while humans have retained their human nature. How come? Obviously, people do create order.

He must either concede that human nature is not disorder or that government is not order. Since government is a type of order, the only remaining conclusion is that human nature is not disorder.

Then you have others like the US, UK, France, and historically nations like Germany, HRE, Roman Empire, and so forth, who believe what is best for them is to acquire resources and lands from other people groups

This is caused by nationalism and non-free trade. Politicians in a country use nationalism to support non-free trade, using unsound economics to say that increasing the utility of other countries decreases the utility of their own country.

doesn't it make sense to accept the reality

Emotional appeal. Watch:

Hitler: "The Jews are what is keeping us from obtaining a stable social order and they cause chaos among us and are greedy. Doesn't it make sense to accept the reality that Jews maybe are not capable of order?"

See? He sounds so nice now!

He seems to think that police is the purpose of government. Then why isn't he a minarchist?

Furthermore, he seems to think that there would not be police in a free society. There would be.

You can concede as many points to him as you'd like. But pin him down on this:

Government doesn't prevent crime. Police does. What about police? 1) Physical presence 2) Threat of retaliation. Police would exist without a government.

If he thinks that human nature is crime, then why doesn't the army enslave us? The answer? Values. Values are what keep us from each others' throats. We genuinely believe that we shouldn't kill other people.

I had written so much more and so much more eloquently. But it's now last. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Clayton — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:51:04 GMT

SCREW BACKSPACE! I HAD TYPED A TWO PAGE RESPONSE TO THIS AND THEN IT GOT SIMPLY DELETED BY GOING BACK IN HISTORY!!!!! GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

It was beautiful, too

You have my sympathy, my friend. For some reason, the edit box on this forum sometimes refuses to accept focus for arrow-key and delete-key... when this happens, I Ctl+C, Reload, Ctl+V immediately to prevent this scenario. I just lost two solid pages of text a couple days back to the Evil Bitbucket in the Sky, whose chief minion is the Evil Mises Gnome Forum Software.

Clayton -

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Wheylous — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 23:48:15 GMT

SCREW BACKSPACE! I HAD TYPED A TWO PAGE RESPONSE TO THIS AND THEN IT GOT SIMPLY DELETED BY GOING BACK IN HISTORY!!!!! GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

It was beautiful, too.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Porco Rosso — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:24:02 GMT

Government is viewed as an extension of the family, and that's a bad thing.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Jack Roberts — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 22:18:20 GMT

I do think that humans are civilized enough to adapt to a society without a national government. But i do think at the moment that people are generally very uninformed when it comes to that sort of society. This is why I think it would require a sort of transition that could take generations. The government was not born over night and it will not die over night. But as long as we are moving in the right direction then we can be reassured. At the moment we are not moving in the right direction. They are moving towards move government and more centralization every day.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Clayton — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:52:26 GMT

Can you link to the original thread, rather than copying here?

I'll just rebut a few gems from the above:

families became the first form of government

The author is terribly confused. The defining feature of government is monopoly on force and law and the forcible collection of revenues (parasitic subsistence). It is true that in a more family-oriented society, such as gypsies, children and other extended members of the family under a patriarch contribute to the wealth of the whole family (collectivism) and that the patriarch's role in this might be advisory rather than productive (parasitic). But the author isn't even bringing this up. He seems to conflate government with any sort of social organization.

families grew larger ... for mutual benefits ... larger numbers [was] ... a great way to provide more food

The author assumes that there are no diseconomies of scale, that is, he assumes that "bigger is always better." The inevitable conclusion of this line of reasoning is already built into the assumption: a global government is the best imaginable sort of organization of human society because it is the largest possible group.

Each settlement was governed by a chief/king/leader/Council/Etc. ... to prevent the chaos of human nature

Presumably, the chief/king/leader/Council/Etc. was also populated by humans or were they extra-terrestrials? What prevented the chaos of their human nature?

Since there were no courts, police, juries, etc, there was no way for the man to be found innocent, and thus I had to take matters into my own hands. We need social structure. We need as much order as possible.

This is an ancillary problem and we know it is solvable by means other than a wise King pronouncing judgment on matters that do not concern him because there are many examples of societies where there is no such wise King and yet disputes generally get resolved in an orderly manner (Somali law, for example).

human nature left unrestrained will cause chaos

http://mises.org/daily/1356

Let's fast forward to know. Let's say we wiped away 95% of the US government's influence over society. Do you honestly believe we will transition nicely into some idealistic paradise where everyone respects each other?

Of course not. No one can possibly know the outcome of a rash, sudden and massive alteration of the legal status quo beyond the historical example that this has resulted in social breakdown every time. No one is proposing that we simply wave a wand and say "all government laws are hereby non-enforceable, null and void." This is clearly not the way out of our current predicament and the suggestion that anti-statist thought is proposing this or can only be proposing this is to strawman the issue.

I had a I.R. professor once who claimed that International Relations is anarchy. Of course, in the last 60 years or so we have tried to regulate it with international organizations such as the UN or strategic alliances, such as NATO. However, if you want a clear picture of anarchy, you need not look further than IR. No nation has a central authority over it, therefore it does what is sees fit to be best for itself. I believe that would be the most basic definition of Anarchy, no?

The author is refuting himself. The world has not destroyed itself in an orgy of violence despite the world's nations not having a single, unitary government to which they are all subject. That's precisely the point of anti-statist thought... you don't need a Leviathan to resolve every dispute according to its own interests and (arbitrary) judgment. In fact, such an organization actually erodes social order.

Clayton -

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Hard Rain — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 17:28:27 GMT

They will end in some sort of formal societal structure, also known as government

He conflates social co-operation with government several times in this piece. I think it best to go back to basics and actually define government, point out the gun in the room etc.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Libertyandlife — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:51:09 GMT

Here's his ultimatum reply during the conversation:

lol whoops forgot I was supposed to give a long detailed example.....Instead, I will appeal to historical precedent. Look at human history. I'm talking about before the 1700s, Before the Crusades, before the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and Mesopotamia, back all the way when humans were tribal bands composed mostly of families. The family was essentially the first form of government. After all, the mother or father could abandon their mate and offspring and become individualist and do their own thing. However, our species has evolved to be a social creature. We have realized that the best thing for us is to be in groups.

And so families became the first form of government, usually with the male as the leader, since he was larger and more able to protect the mother and children. The male was the first head of state then. Over time, families grew larger and maybe would merge with other families for mutual benefits. Again, larger numbers was a great way to bring about defense, but also was a great way to provide more food, to share ideas, to create social bonds, etc. And at the head of these groups of families? Most likely the strongest/most mature male leader. Unwritten rules began to be passed along. Perhaps you don't sleep with another persons mate, or take their food or tools, you don't come into their home without permission. And the person to enforce these rules? Usually that strongest leader.

Fast forward to about 7-10kya back, and you see the neolithic revolution take place. Humans became sedentary. They planted crops. They built up permanent or mostly permanent settlements. Each settlement was governed by a chief/king/leader/Council/Etc. There was government in place. And as earlier it served two purposes: protection of those people within the group and to create societal order. This was to prevent the chaos of human nature.

Imagine this scenario with no sort of order, where it is up to each person to look out for his or her own. I come home to my little shack to find my grain missing. I suspect it is my neighbor. After all, he seems to be a bit more fat than I am. He obviously took it. Since there is no governing authority to decide if something is legitimate or not, I can obviously take matters into my own hands. I go and accuse the man of taking my grain. He denies it. But I know he did it. A scuffle breaks out, and in the end the other man is dead. But after I return to my home, I find a nest of rats outside feeding on something. What is it? It is my grain. I just killed a man over grain that was eaten by rats. Since there were no courts, police, juries, etc, there was no way for the man to be found innocent, and thus I had to take matters into my own hands. We need social structure. We need as much order as possible.

I am not saying anarchy is nothing but chaos like you see in the movies. I am saying that human nature left unrestrained will cause chaos. If we weren't depraved people, I would fully support the lack of governance. There would be no need for it.

WE have seen that from the time of the first man start walking and crafting tools, there has been murder, war, theft, jealousy, and chaos.

Let's fast forward to know. Let's say we wiped away 95% of the US government's influence over society. Do you honestly believe we will transition nicely into some idealistic paradise where everyone respects each other? If so, I have a ocean front property to sell to you, over in North Dakota. There will be typical human actions. Murder, theft, chaos. And in the chaos, people will band together for protection and to offer stability in small communities, and voila! You have the same thing as before: government!

I would love to do an experiment with you, where we take 100 people out into the forest some place and tell them to just live. And over time we come back and see how the are doing. They will start in anarchy, with no one ruling over another, every person left to do for themselves what is best. They will end in some sort of formal societal structure, also known as government, or maybe even two or three smaller societies. Either way, they will naturally form to a model of government. Having authority and stability is as much nature to us as is pride and greed.

Now we can look at one last example of anarchy, and I am not even going to mention Somalia because I believe that isn't truly an anarchy, even though many silly liberals will point to it as being one. Instead, I will refer you to the international community. I had a I.R. professor once who claimed that International Relations is anarchy. Of course, in the last 60 years or so we have tried to regulate it with international organizations such as the UN or strategic alliances, such as NATO. However, if you want a clear picture of anarchy, you need not look further than IR. No nation has a central authority over it, therefore it does what is sees fit to be best for itself. I believe that would be the most basic definition of Anarchy, no?

So we have every nation doing what it sees is best for itself. You have some like Switzerland who fell like they just need to leave everyone alone, and it has worked well for them. Then you have others like the US, UK, France, and historically nations like Germany, HRE, Roman Empire, and so forth, who believe what is best for them is to acquire resources and lands from other people groups. This of course leads to conflict. Then you have those nations which believe it is their best interest to form a coalition with other nations, for mutual defense against the types of aggression practiced by the aforementioned. It is like how human individuals and family groups did when they first came around, no? Now, look at history when there has been a case of an empire dominating over IR. Say, Rome, for example. What happened when Rome fell? According to you, everything should have been better for the world. No one ruling over another, people to live as freely as they want. Instead, you have Germanic and Gallic tribes all vying to fill that power, up until you have the reign of Charlemagne. Various places in the world have seen this same thing happen over and over again. There is a vacuum of power, groups fight for that power, one or two groups become the dominant power, those groups decline and the cycle begins again.

If we have witnessed all of this throughout history, and continue to see it today, then doesn't it make sense to accept the reality that humans are not ready, nor have been ready in the last 50k+ years, nor will be ready in any foreseeable future, to embrace and live out anarchy? Shouldn't we then accept that we need to live with some sort of central authority? Shouldn't we also realize that this authority isn't automatically the best, and needs work? These are the realizations that I have come to.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

Clayton — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:45:53 GMT

Without government, we'd all kill each other. Oh, wait.

Without government, we'd descend into an orgy of violence and nasty, brutish behavior. Oh, wait.

Re: We need government or else we'd just kill each other

hashem — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 01:04:11 GMT

Libertyandlife:
In absence of government, there will be chaos...

Government is the source of chaos. They are the only institution with the respected authority to force everyone else to do or not to do things. They make and break their own laws as they go along. Astronomically higher amounts of crime have been committed by governments as compared to private criminals. Governments are the ultimate criminal organization because they institutionalized; that is, they're funded by the public, established and respected in the public's eyes, and the only organization which can do anything about it is the government itself.

This is purely because governments are monopolistic. And contrary to popular belief, they are monopolistic not because people have and continue to establish and support them. We need to destroy that myth; people never wanted the governments we see today. The governments of today were established through conquering and continue to rule through dominion.

That is, within their jurisdiction only they have the authorities to tax, enforce, and protect. Economics tells us monopolies will provide ever worse service, and the history of governments have demonstrated this ad nauseum. THE END.

But, this leads well into the rest of his question.

Libertyandlife:
...and because of chaos people will start to band together to protect each other, and essentially what you have now is more governments being formed.

As he would expect, the chaos caused by government (or as humans react to any chaos and spontaenously organize) has caused people to seek security and organization. As he admits, the result would be more governments, which would implicitly be the proper solution (because it's what people actually want), and the problem therefore is that monopolist governments currently are stopping us against our will (as all governments necessarily do).

As we have seen, people don't want monopolist governments. They want to establish and try all kinds, and they should be allowed to.