Maxliberty:This is why the length of time you endure the coercion matters. The longer you endure something which you claim to be a gross injustice and do nothing the more it appears that you are no longer being coerced but in fact are making a conscious decision to participate.
Knight_of_BAAWA:Only to those who view reality as a dream.
Maxliberty:This is a difficult concept for you I know
This is a difficult concept for you, I know, but just because a slave stays does not mean the slave consents. Further, just because the slave stays does not mean the slave has not accepted responsibility for making the decision to stay, even with the coercion. I don't know why you feel the need to always use fallacious arguments, but it's getting really old.
Maxliberty:In Somalia, there is no state. Why, haven't you moved there and removed your horrible burden?
Because everyone knows that only MaxLiberty ever does anything ever.
Again, demonstrate why I should. You're assuming what you ought to prove. Please stop regurgitating statist tripe.
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Anonymous Coward:The only problem is that Max views this as inaction.
He may, although it sounds a lot like a strawman.
Anonymous Coward:If you don't abandon your friends and family to run off to some third world sh*thole (if it were any good people would live there already, right?) and try to stay under the radar of whatever homicidal tin-pot dictator that claims the ground where you have set up camp then you are overtly agreeing to pay whatever cost is required to finance your own serfdom.
No one said being free was going to be nice. Or easy. There are no guarantees that everything will be hunky-dory under anarchism. You're selling the scaremonger version here.
I mean, you could stay in a 1st world oasis, where the rest of the world is raped for your standard of living, and where what little you produce (and the future guarantee of your payment for such) is used to mass murder people around the world. Where your homicidal tin-pot dictator slaughters thousands, with your tacit submission.
The game can be played both ways. I think us libertarians in the west get away with talking out of both sides of our mouths because we were fortunate to be born into a system with running water, medical capacity and relative peace. The grass is greener over here, and we did nothing to earn our lots except spring from the wombs of our mothers.
I've done a little traveling. It can be scary, but the West is a lot bigger than America. Just reminding those folks who think Oregon is a 3rd world country.
liberty student: Anonymous Coward:The only problem is that Max views this as inaction. He may, although it sounds a lot like a strawman.
Judging by his posts I'd have to say that's a fairly accurate representation.
liberty student:No one said being free was going to be nice. Or easy. There are no guarantees that everything will be hunky-dory under anarchism. You're selling the scaremonger version here.
Nope, I'm just going by his requirements for the colony.
You can't (morally) homestead land that is already occupied and most land that is unoccupied with, what, six billion people on the planet these days, is vacant for a pretty good reason. If it were nice there would be a Club Med there and if it were viable farmland there would be farms.
liberty student:The game can be played both ways. I think us libertarians in the west get away with talking out of both sides of our mouths because we were fortunate to be born into a system with running water, medical capacity and relative peace. The grass is greener over here, and we did nothing to earn our lots except spring from the wombs of our mothers.
So we should be forced to give it up just like the pampered little rich girl who didn't earn her inheritence?
We have our high standard of living because previous generations had enough freedom to invest and save the capital to create this standard of living and not because they just happened to be born on the American continent.
Cause and effect, you see.
You want to go run and hide or do you want to try to reestablish a framework based upon Liberty for the next generation just like people fought to establish it for you?
Anonymous Coward:So we should be forced to give it up just like the pampered little rich girl who didn't earn her inheritence?
I just wouldn't walk away strutting and preening about how good I have it, when I didn't earn it myself. I can't speak for everyone, but I have more humility than that. I've never looked for a handout. Or taken one graciously.
Anonymous Coward:We have our high standard of living because previous generations had enough freedom to invest and save the capital to create this standard of living and not because they just happened to be born on the American continent.
It has nothing to do with being able to print wealth at will over the last 50 years? It has nothing to do with endless credit that no other nation on earth is afforded? I'd be curious to know how many other countries besides the US face crushing long term debt burdens that are insurmountable? I don't know, but if there are any, I doubt it's more than 2 or 3.
Let's face it. I'm a Canadian. You're an American. You're our #1 trading partner. We sell you all of our natural resources, and you debt finance all of your consumptive goods off of Asians. Without your buying our resources with debt, we'd be screwed, and without the Asians setting up Americans for the greatest financial calamity ever, you guys would be screwed.
So please don't play the "my grand pappie worked for it" routine. I don't believe in Western Excellence. There are a lot of lazy, fat, stupid people who live a standard they could never afford (on both sides of the border) if they had to compete in an open market against the very asians who are now taking over their manufacturing industries.
Anonymous Coward:You want to go run and hide or do you want to try to reestablish a framework based upon Liberty for the next generation just like people fought to establish it for you?
If I did something like the liberty colony, it would not be to hide. It would be for publicity, for trade and for the idea of liberty. I'd want to broadcast it worldwide, 24-7 so everyone could see what it would be like. Sorta like Survivor meets Lord of the Flies meets Firefly. I think we could make a crap ton of money off it, and at the same time, inspire a lot of people to do the same or to join in.
Of course, I'm all for education, but I'm also for seceding economically and politically and socially from the state regime. And again, making it very public, maybe even establishing institutions to make it easier for others to follow in the footsteps.
Passing it off to the next generation, knowing I haven't left it all on the field, doesn't do it for me. I (personally) want to do more. Some people do not. That's cool. Each has to do what they feel is best and what they are comfortable with. Needless to say if I had kids, my plans might be less radical. But I don't.
Remember, you're not staying to preserve your property or life. Those are already forfeit the minute you accept the coercion.
Someone has to go first and say, "I will no longer accept coercion" and then hope like hell that the people who think they will educate the next generation get inspired to stand with them or it's going to be short and bloody.
liberty student:It has nothing to do with being able to print wealth at will over the last 50 years?
The reason they could get away with that is because they are consuming the capital that was saved previously.
Looks like we ran out which is why there is such a debt burden to carry and every bureaucratic decision has an immediate effect unlike in times past where they could promise and deliver the moon without having to pay for it.
liberty student:So please don't play the "my grand pappie worked for it" routine. I don't believe in Western Excellence. There are a lot of lazy, fat, stupid people who live a standard they could never afford (on both sides of the border) if they had to compete in an open market against the very asians who are now taking over their manufacturing industries.
Who said anything about western excellence?
If you can't see a correlation between the 'freeness' of a society and the ability of it to produce real wealth I can point you a website run by some laissez-faire apologists I've heard about...
Maxliberty: If resistance will not be a deterrent then yes moving is your only option. I think I have stated several times that the thief is in the wrong, but it doesn't matter because the thief is always wrong. What matters is what are you going to do about the thief? If in the end the answer is nothing then you might as well quit complaining about the thief. If your not willing to save yourself then the thief will never be stopped. See you complain about the thief because you want someone else to do something about the thief. You are not willing to address the thief yourself so you expect someone else to do your fighting for you. How bad can it be to robbed if your not willing to take any action to change your situation?
If resistance will not be a deterrent then yes moving is your only option. I think I have stated several times that the thief is in the wrong, but it doesn't matter because the thief is always wrong. What matters is what are you going to do about the thief? If in the end the answer is nothing then you might as well quit complaining about the thief. If your not willing to save yourself then the thief will never be stopped.
See you complain about the thief because you want someone else to do something about the thief. You are not willing to address the thief yourself so you expect someone else to do your fighting for you. How bad can it be to robbed if your not willing to take any action to change your situation?
Ok, so you just agreed that if me and another person elect me as a thief, and I break into your house and steal your stuff, that you have consented to it.
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
This is absurd. Apperently a few people here don't understand what coercion is in libertarianism. This is uber basic stuff.
Jon Irenicus: Again, demonstrate why I should. You're assuming what you ought to prove. Please stop regurgitating statist tripe. -Jon
It is statist tripe. It's exactly the same argument statists use against libertarians all the time (the love it or leave it argument), except these "libertarians" are making them against libertarians. I really don't get it. It astonishes me.
Anonymous Coward:The reason they could get away with that is because they are consuming the capital that was saved previously. Looks like we ran out which is why there is such a debt burden to carry and every bureaucratic decision has an immediate effect unlike in times past where they could promise and deliver the moon without having to pay for it.
Ran out? When Nixon went off the gold standard, it was run out. That was a dollar default.
Anonymous Coward:Who said anything about western excellence?
I did. It's the correct term to describe the notion that the West is so prosperous because it is superior, not because whatever benefits it may have in social structure, it can borrow and steal from the rest of the world at will.
Anonymous Coward:If you can't see a correlation between the 'freeness' of a society and the ability of it to produce real wealth I can point you a website run by some laissez-faire apologists I've heard about...
You're not free. The government owns your life, and it owns your property. You just think you are free, so you don't struggle. So the social tension is lower and life seems less dangerous and more orderly. In 2012 when social security goes into default, you're going to see that freeness start to disappear. The payback of living high on the hog for a long time will inevitably come due. Social tension will increase. Government will loot and bully more.
Freedom is a zero sum game. (I know, I know "Who said it wasn't?")
If I did something like the liberty colony, it would not be to hide. It would be for publicity, for trade and for the idea of liberty. I'd want to broadcast it worldwide, 24-7 so everyone could see what it would be like. Sorta like Survivor meets Lord of the Flies meets Firefly. I think we could make a be ton of money off it, and at the same time, inspire a lot of people to do the same or to join in.
The whole idea of the LC just won't work, nor should it. For one thing there's no way to know whether the libertarians that would move to the colony would be good entrepreneurs, secondly I just don't see anybody being interested in moving half way across the world to a country with a weaker government but by no means less coercion.
This whole prejudice against discussion is silly though. If we wanted to "act" without thinking it would be easier just to join the rest of the sheep in campaigning for Obama or McCain.
And this whole "accepting coercion" buisness is ridiculous.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
GilesStratton:The whole idea of the LC just won't work, nor should it. For one thing there's no way to know whether the libertarians that would move to the colony would be good entrepreneurs, secondly I just don't see anybody being interested in moving half way across the world to a country with a weaker government but by no means less coercion.
Mike from nostate.com has moved from America to Slovakia and is renouncing his citizenship.
If I can find a way out of my Canadian citizenship that doesn't cost a 1/4 million dollars, I will do it as well. Or I will have to come up with the cash.
GilesStratton:And this whole "accepting coercion" buisness is ridiculous.
If submission is the opposite of resistance, and resistance is not accepting coercion, than I am inclined to believe that submission is accepting coercion. It may be coerced acceptance, but it is acceptance nonetheless. Now if there was no resistance ever, I'd buy that no choice is being made. But people do resist, just like people do move halfway around the world to become stateless and live in a country that is poorer, and more authoritarian (although that is debatable).
The more I think of it, the more the issue of consent or non-consent appears to be moot. It's about choice, not consent. There is no right to deny anyone choice.
The fallacies of intellectual communism, a compilation - On the nature of power
Anonymous Coward: meambobbo:I suggest we start saving, developing social ties, educating the apathetic and uninformed, etc. By organizing and raising power someday the cost of fighting injustice will be significantly diminished. The only problem is that Max views this as inaction. If you don't abandon your friends and family to run off to some third world sh*thole (if it were any good people would live there already, right?) and try to stay under the radar of whatever homicidal tin-pot dictator that claims the ground where you have set up camp then you are overtly agreeing to pay whatever cost is required to finance your own serfdom. All or nothing as it were. It's not like the libertarian movement has gone from total obscurity to getting a general showing through people like Ron Paul or anything like that in the last thirty years. I think Max needs to read the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare.
meambobbo:I suggest we start saving, developing social ties, educating the apathetic and uninformed, etc. By organizing and raising power someday the cost of fighting injustice will be significantly diminished.
The only problem is that Max views this as inaction.
If you don't abandon your friends and family to run off to some third world sh*thole (if it were any good people would live there already, right?) and try to stay under the radar of whatever homicidal tin-pot dictator that claims the ground where you have set up camp then you are overtly agreeing to pay whatever cost is required to finance your own serfdom.
All or nothing as it were.
It's not like the libertarian movement has gone from total obscurity to getting a general showing through people like Ron Paul or anything like that in the last thirty years.
I think Max needs to read the fable of The Tortoise and the Hare.
I have not said anything in this thread about people joining the Liberty Colony. You are bringing this up as an option in this discussion, not me.
Anonymous Coward: The only problem is that Max views this as inaction.
No, I view education without a purpose as inaction. He is referring to raising awareness with the purpose of gaining enough people to engage in violent revolution, hardly inaction.
Knight_of_BAAWA:I know, but just because a slave stays does not mean the slave consents.
It certainly undermines the credibility of the arguement that your a slave though. If someone is free to go, would you consider them a slave?
Anonymous Coward: You can't (morally) homestead land that is already occupied and most land that is unoccupied with, what, six billion people on the planet these days, is vacant for a pretty good reason. If it were nice there would be a Club Med there and if it were viable farmland there would be farms.
You need to get out beyond your suburb a little more. The world is a really big place with lots of places underdeveloped but perfectly liveable.
Anonymous Coward: You want to go run and hide or do you want to try to reestablish a framework based upon Liberty for the next generation just like people fought to establish it for you?
liberty student: Someone has to go first and say, "I will no longer accept coercion" and then hope like hell that the people who think they will educate the next generation get inspired to stand with them or it's going to be short and bloody.
Right on Brother.
Spideynw: Ok, so you just agreed that if me and another person elect me as a thief, and I break into your house and steal your stuff, that you have consented to it.
No, what I said was that your arguement that your being robbed loses credibility and certainly sympathy when you show no interest in preventing the robbery in the future. What is it you want the rest of us to do for you that you are not willing to do yourself? If your freedom isn't worth sacrifice to you then why should it be to me?
A weaker government is less coercion. America was pretty much created by people fleeing other places. I would say the entrepeneurial spirit in America, is all things considered, quite good. I expect nothing less in the Liberty Colony.
Maxliberty:No, I view education without a purpose as inaction. He is referring to raising awareness with the purpose of gaining enough people to engage in violent revolution, hardly inaction.
Is education not a purpose in and of itself? In any case, violent revolution is worse than inaction.
It's all fun and games until the American government let's it blackwater foreign mercenary army and imperial legions across the Rubicon. 2012 is when the defaults start. Should get real interesting.
liberty student:Mike from nostate.com has moved from America to Slovakia and is renouncing his citizenship.
Oh yeah I heard about the Slovakian government relinquishing it's monopoly on coercion.
liberty student: If submission is the opposite of resistance, and resistance is not accepting coercion, than I am inclined to believe that submission is accepting coercion. It may be coerced acceptance, but it is acceptance nonetheless. Now if there was no resistance ever, I'd buy that no choice is being made. But people do resist, just like people do move halfway around the world to become stateless and live in a country that is poorer, and more authoritarian (although that is debatable).
If I catch a cold, and a day later I refuse to walk down to the chemist to buy some medicine that may make it slightly more bearable I don't accept the cold. If I could, I would abolish the state right now, unfortunately I don't quite have a button I could press to make the state disappear. Moving to a place with a slightly smaller state is ridiculous and doesn't acheive anything.
I don't get what you think moving to Slovakia would acheive, other than admitting the state has a greater right to that land than you do and wasting a good deal of money.
Maxliberty:A weaker government is less coercion
No it isn't.
liberty student: It's all fun and games until the American government let's it blackwater foreign mercenary army and imperial legions across the Rubicon. 2012 is when the defaults start. Should get real interesting.
Defaults? Can you elaborate? I vaugley read of this a while ago, but it was little more than a passing remark. If Blackwater intends on getting here in 2012, maybe I should make an effort to move to NH before then...
"Look at me, I'm quoting another user to show how wrong I think they are, out of arrogance of my own position. Wait, this is my own quote, oh shi-" ~ Nitroadict
I'd just like to point out that I wasn't trying to say "if you don't leave, you consent". I just think MaxLiberty has a good point: if you do not choose to actively resist or leave, you are necessarily saying that you prefer living under injustice to other alternatives. This doesn't make it right, it just makes it exist. You don't outright approve, as one would in free market trade, but you approve it more than alternatives.
I guess what I'm saying is that consent means nothing. At the end of the day, coercion and justice are both games of power.
And I would say using education and influencing politics, and other non-violent means of pressing for change are active resistance, as is direct violence necessary to preserve justice.
As far as most people go, they do not consent. Everyone would like ___ from the government. People don't give full consent to their own lives either. They wish they were skinnier, the weather was different, etc. MaxLiberty's point, where I would agree, is that when people don't act to change their lives and conditions, they MUST accept/consent to what they receive.
Check my blog, if you're a loser
Maxliberty: No, what I said was that your arguement that your being robbed loses credibility and certainly sympathy when you show no interest in preventing the robbery in the future. What is it you want the rest of us to do for you that you are not willing to do yourself? If your freedom isn't worth sacrifice to you then why should it be to me?
How am I supposed to prevent the robbery?
Nitroadict:Defaults? Can you elaborate? I vaugley read of this a while ago, but it was little more than a passing remark.
I believe Social security officially goes into the Red in 2012. That's when what comes in and what goes out doesn't work out as a surplus. That's when the Boomers begin to hit critical mass.
That is when America has to inflate, tax or borrow to keep it's old folks in a semi-comfortable retirement.
Nitroadict:If Blackwater intends on getting here in 2012, maybe I should make an effort to move to NH before then...
Blackwater is an American company, but it employs foreign nationals as well as Americans to work under the flag of the American government carrying out security details and special ops. It has been putting a lot of capital investment into domestic spying/security and supplementary civil defense.
You can lookup Jeremy Scahill on Youtube. He's the Blackwater expert, there should be loads of interviews.
Spideynw:How am I supposed to prevent the robbery?
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Maxliberty:It certainly undermines the credibility of the arguement that your a slave though.
No it doesn't.
Now then: are you finished trolling?
Knight_of_BAAWA: Knight_of_BAAWA:I know, but just because a slave stays does not mean the slave consents. Maxliberty:It certainly undermines the credibility of the arguement that your a slave though. No it doesn't. Now then: are you finished trolling?
If you are free to go where you want are you a slave?
Yes. Just because I can go where I wish does not mean that I'm not a slave. What do you think being taxed to support X's desire means?
Right, but isn't it a conundrum, that if you claim you have no choice but to submit to coercion, that statism can ever be overthrown, because the only allowable response to coercion, is submission.
If submission was your only choice, then how can you ever believe that the state can be overthrown by resistance?
It just doesn't jive.
Likewise, the argument about life and property, or avoiding violent state reactions also doesn't jive. At all times, under the state and outside the state, you are susceptible to theft, rape and murder. Agreeing to submit, is no guarantee or (shouldn't be an) illusion of abstinence on the part of the state from compromising your liberty.
In fact, I think that the more people submit, the more coercive and powerful the government grows. Just like in Stargate SG-1, worshipping the Ori gives them power, with no worship, they are powerless to act.
But again, the argument is that submission to coercion is a rational response. So there can never be dissent.
liberty student:Right, but isn't it a conundrum, that if you claim you have no choice but to submit to coercion, that statism can ever be overthrown, because the only allowable response to coercion, is submission.
I haven't seen anyone claim anything of the sort.
Slavery has a broader meaning that what is usually thought of. i.e. chains, whips, and being sold on an auction block. What is important to remember is that the slave produces wealth, whether by extracting mineral from the earth or working in the field, and the owner of the slave takes that wealth against the wishes of the slave. This is the economics of slavery pure and simple for if the one did not believe he could gain in material possessions or profit from enslaving another person why would he do it?
(This is Praxeology 101. That people act in order to make themselves better off than before they acted, but we won't go into that here).
The economic angle of slavery is the main ingredient because without it, there would be no reason for some to enslave others. And our current situation with all taxes and especially the property tax, the income tax, and not to mention the federal reserve, that we are systematically robbed of the wealth we have produced.
Would A slave be any less a slave if he were allowed to keep 10% of what he earned? 20%? 30%? Even if the slave were allowed to keep 99% of what he earns and the master took a mere 1% it would still be slavery, and it would still be wrong!
As far as the more common thoughts of slavery, restriction of movement, (true this does not apply, we can leave but only to find ourselves slaves to another government, whatever that is worth?) rules on what can and can't be done by the slaves, we can see some of this in business, a business owner can not allow people to smoke in his restaurant, manufacturers must follow guidelines set down by the master (the government), and we employers may not pay their employees less than a certain amount specified by the master.
If I were a mathematician and a statistician I might attempt to compile the different aspects and degrees of slavery and determine what percentage slave we all are. But then It would just be for the point of showing off my intellectual prowess because in the end, we are either free or we are not free, either we own our own bodies or we do not. Ether we own all of what we work for, or we do not and the state just lets us keep some. Either we are free to choose, or the government chooses for us in the matters it deems necessary, and it allows us to decide more trivial matters.
As a note to the more hard line anarchists, I too would push the magic button that eliminated the government, but that does not mean that I am unwilling to accept small concessions. Consider yourself as a slave to another man, of course you would petition him for outright freedom, and seek it in any way you can without ceasing. But at the same time, would you not also petition for better food, more lodging, a day off, the right to meet with your fellow victims, and so on?
The Minarchist who wants to cut government by 95% is doing a great good, and if he makes any headway at all he is doing good. All slave masters by owning other men were bad, but it can not be denied that some were worse, more brutal, savage, and despotic than others. Tell me that if you were a slave, that you would not welcome the oppurtunity to exchange a brutal slave master for a more "benevolent" master? Yes indeed the fact would remain that you are still a slave, but it can neither be denied that your conditions under the new master would be far better than those under the current. and I would accept the trade, not to say that I would give up on seeking freedom, but I would prefer to live under better conditions and with more liberties until that day comes.
Everything you needed to know to be a libertarian you learned in Kindergarten. Keep your hands to yourself, and don't play with other people's toys without their consent.
I think moves to minarchy take anarchy from the fringe and move it to the political left and right, which is brilliant.
@ KoB, ok. I wasn't trolling, I'm just trying to understand why we all accept coercion. Rationally.
Inspired by this thread: http://mises.org/Community/forums/p/3991/54273.aspx#54273
And I completely agree with meambobbo:
meambobbo:...if you do not choose to actively resist or leave, you are necessarily saying that you prefer living under injustice to other alternatives. This doesn't make it right, it just makes it exist. You don't outright approve, as one would in free market trade, but you approve it more than alternatives.
Approve != prefer.
I prefer abiding by government law to being in a cell, but that doesn't mean I approve of it. meambobbo started saying "prefer" and then changed to "approve" which I think is misleading.
Banned, that's a much better word, which better describes what I was trying to say. I don't think people here were arguing the virtue of aggressive coercion, only pointing out why it exists. At least I hope so - coercion is only virtuous in being used to secure justice, and that is a slippery slope. At some point, justice is sacrificed for order, and this may be preferable to attempting to enact perfect justice (Consider reparations for slavery or the outcome of war). Other times, justice is impossible, no matter how much coercion is applied (a sole man enacting a mass killing via WMD).
It's also important to remember that some people will never approve of certain aspects of their life, holding out for idealism. For this reason, it seems preferences are more important from a societal context perspective than ideals. For example, a radical socialist may consent only to a purely democratic system with no ownership of capital goods and completely control of money and credit, but given a free, peaceful, charitable, egalitarian instance of anarcho-capitalism, he may prefer that to our current system.
I think this is something to consider. Our goal may be two-fold - convince those we can that anarcho-capitalism is ideal. Convince all others that smaller government is always preferable. Prepare to resist the rest.
banned: Approve != prefer. I prefer abiding by government law to being in a cell, but that doesn't mean I approve of it. meambobbo started saying "prefer" and then changed to "approve" which I think is misleading.
If you view yourself as a slave and you have the opportunity to reduce or eliminate your condition then you are choosing to remain a slave when you have the opportunity to be free. As a slave you are choosing your current comfort level and slavery as opposed to an uncertain comfort level and freedom.
You console your cowardice by playing the victim card. You are afraid, I understand. The first step in becoming free is to face your fear. You will never be free until you are free of your own fears.