Hugo

And this is a fundamental self-contradiction, for how can a person be economically free when socially, he is not (or vice versa)? Also, the only actual method for social control is economic monopoly over at least some things since if the state controls religious life, then the state must exercise control over religious buildings and clergy. No, I'm sure they said it was raining sometimes when it actually was. However, in their political-economic works it's easier and faster to point out where they were right, than where they were wrong. That is the only way Marxism can be interpreted. Communist property rights can basically be summed up as saying that property belongs equally to all, that every person on earth has a one-six-billionth share of every thing on earth. Since this system is completely unworkable, property inevitably comes to be interpreted by proxy, and said proxy must be all-powerful. And you have tyranny.

This shows a real lack of understanding. Marx specifically talks about the abolition of property by the state and concentration of state power. In the Communist Manifesto he states that the proletariat must "win the war of democracy", and after that concentrate all power in the hands of the new ruling class, themselves. He speaks of "despotic inroads on the rights of property" (emphasis mine). Either he knew that this was totalitarianism, or he was literally a complete idiot with not the foggiest idea what he was saying. My instinct says the former, because despotism is a hard sell. The most brutal regimes on the planet have existed in the name of "the people". I think Marx believed that while democracy might bring Communists to power, their reforms would be so unpopular that democracy would have to be shut down soon after in order to bring Communist programmes to their conclusions without interruption. "Conservatism" is not a fixed ideology. Conservatism is a reactionary ideology of preservation of the status quo against perceived radicalism.

Then the social contract that supposedly justifies government is actually no such thing at all, because in that "social contract", there is no "we", there is no "basis of association" and there is no "made" - the parties are not defined, the terms are not defined, and the contract is not expressly consented to.

Totalitarianism, however, is built into Communism. Not by conscious design, at least not permanently (since Communist doctrine advocates "temporary" totalitarianism in order to put the Communist programme into effect) but by flaw. Communism cannot become anything other than totalitarianism. The doctrine is self-defeating: putting Marxism into practice destroys Marxism. Communism, like Nazism, does teach totalitarianism. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat concept shows that. Both ideologies believe that the goals of their Chosen People are best achieved with an all-powerful state, and both believe that the state should be supreme in all human activity. Therefore, Communism is of its very nature totalitarian. If you claim that a society where the state does not control and dominate every single field of human activity is not totalitarian, and that an ideology that teaches this is not teaching totalitarianism, I should like to hear your justification.

All Communist states become totalitarian, and this is not coincidence but is because of an actual flaw in Communist doctrine, yet another way in which it does not understand human nature. In the second stage of Communism (the stage that actually destroys any chance of ever reaching the mythical third stage), the state gains control over the means of production, and necessarily over everything else too in the lives of the citizenry. There can be no real freedom of speech when the state controls every printing press and meeting hall, no real freedom of movement when the state provides all cars, trains, and airplanes. What the state represents at this stage is a massive concentration of power, since to its planners and bureaucrats it grants power to control the lives of thousands or millions of people - where they work, where they live, what they eat, who they marry, what they read etc. In such a system that grants such vast power, the people attracted to government positions will be those with a taste and a lust for such power, just as surely as in the business world, those who are attracted to entrepreneurship are those with a lust for wealth. A lust for power rarely accompanies such attributes as compassion, sensitivity, and tolerance, and is usually accompanied by greed, ruthlessness, and other egregious traits. Furthermore, those who possess such traits will, by their greater cunning and ruthlessness, tend to ouster those who do not. Posts in the state become filled by egregious, power-hungry and ruthless people. Hitler was not the start of a process but the end of it. Socialism and statism had begun in Germany more than sixty years before he came to power, and in Prussia, even longer. The lesson to Hitler, and indeed to the German people, was that the state was power to do what you wanted. He just took that to its logical conclusion. This is why communist states always become totalitarian and despotic.

We have formed a contract, but not a social contract. The social contract is an impossible construct, as it is basically an excuse for government like Divine Right and is equally invalid. It is not a contract because it has no clearly defined terms, it is not between clearly defined people, and it is not agreed to by any consensual act. We may well have constituted a state by your definition, but we know how useless that definition is, and we definitely have not formed a state by my definition since the monopoly on law and justice and the exclusive use of coercion is not present.

Yes, it was crap. I don't know why you said it. Considering how much you profess a devotion to scientific method in other threads it baffles me why you would want to discard all evidence that shows the world exists. That's right. Then why have you, in the past, argued rights from a normative position? Negotiate with me, go to arbitration, or go to war.

You still are not addressing my point. I'm telling you that the state uses that force far more to further its own ends and violate rights than anything else. Murders committed by states far, far exceed any amount of murder by private citizens. The value of private theft is nothing compared to the amount of property the government forcibly expropriates every day in taxes and inflated currency. Speaking of which, if you were to print money and spend it, you'd be a counterfeiter, but when the state does it, that's just minting. You see? Doublespeak. Murder becomes war, kidnapping becomes arrest, slavery becomes conscription, robbery becomes taxation, spying becomes security, and fraud becomes an election campaign. There were indeed companies under Communist regimes too. They were just state-run and state-regulated, exactly like Nazism. You can read this column which quotes extensive first-hand accounts of what business was like under the Nazis. William L. Shirer also finds that Nazism was no friend of big business, having used them to get into power, Hitler quickly turned on them and broke them to his will after 1933. The Nazis purged the ranks of the entreprenuers and staffed them with their own bureaucrats. Company directors were stripped of their posts, which were used as rewards to the Party faithful. The similarities to Communist regimes are obvious. Donald Trump can believe whatever he wants to believe. Anybody can. As a libertarian I believe that is their right. The difference that the author of the CapMag article is trying to show is that the fundamental doctrine of the laissez-faire, libertarian school of thought is individualism and that men should be allowed to determine their own goals and be free to work towards them as far as possible, whereas statism believes that planners, experts or ubermensch should assign goals to other men and coerce them into striving for these goals. Trump can think of other men as tools, but in the libertarian system he actually has to respect their right to self-determination, because without coercion he cannot do with them as he pleases, but only as they mutually agree with him. The state, of course, has no such reservation and is free to use threats and violence to make men comply with the ends they assign. A tool has no choice as to whether or not it is used.

Not really. Pfizer is not state-run and is not particularly interested in furthering the interests of the ruling class, at least, not any more than any other company, which is to say that they will help the state if the state will help them. Hence lobbying. The state is basically used as an attack dog and people struggle to try and get control of the leash. A closer analogy to soma is probably the state education system: a wonderful tool for indoctrination into the state at an early and impressionable age. Consider that public schooling was introduced in the 17th Century by puritanical colonies in the interests of furthering theocratic ideals. Prussia led Europe in establishing state schooling, which furthered the rapid German slide into despotism. England was among the last states to introduce compulsory public schooling, and remained liberal much longer than other European states. The same pattern was also followed in North America, the most statist colonies and states were the first to introduce public schools, the most libertarian ones were the last. Only in theoretical Marxist dogma has Communism even plausibly been internationalist. Wherever Communism has been applied it has invariably and rapidly become a strong doctrine of nationalism. Consider how many wars have been fought between Communist countries - the cold wars between the USSR and China, the USSR and Yugoslavia, the hot wars between Cambodia and Vietnam, China and Vietnam. Communism is theoretically internationalist in that it favours union of the world proletariat against its enemies, Nazism can be said to be equally internationalist since it favours union of the master race against its enemies. Nazis had no problem accepting Austria, Holland or Denmark into the Reich and regarded them as kindred spirits. It generally wasn't mutual. Fascists are extreme statists. Anarchists are extreme antistatists. They could not possibly be further apart. The movement to legalise marijuana while also trying to criminalise smoking is similarly ridiculous and self-contradictory.

I am willing to accept that rights are not decided by force, but can and sometimes have to be defended by force. However, logic and evidence clearly show that the state is no fit guarantor of rights, is the greatest violator of rights, and that individuals defending their own rights without the state make for far fewer violations of rights. Brave New World is very sexually liberal and has legitimised and normalised drug abuse, which is definitely not in the agenda of neo-cons. Hopefully. I wish you luck, though, because you are dead wrong. The very labels 'left' and 'right' are misleading. During and after the French Revolution, the defenders of the ancien regime sat on the right of the hall, and its opponents on the left. Thus, conservatives were 'right' and radicals, 'left'. This meant that the libertarians and anarchists were also 'left'. With the transformation of the big state from monarchy to welfare-warfare state, which began its heyday under Bismarck in Germany, the conservatives under their new creed managed to change their label to 'left', and to label the classical liberals as 'right', which was a complete reversal. Now, of course, it is even more muddled - economically statist social liberals are the 'left', and economically liberal, social statists are the 'right', which really leaves the classical liberal with nowhere to be. As regards the creeds of Nazism and Communism, they are virtually identical. The viciousness with which they fought is easily explained: each side views themselves as True Believers, and the others as Heretics. Their war is a religious war, fought with all the hatred that all wars between Communists have always been fought. Each favours extreme statism, the state as all-powerful in all parts of life: economic, social, religious (state as religion), etc. Each favours the abolition of family in favour of the state. Each has a select group they regard as the Chosen Ones (the proletariat, the master race). Each will use violence to destroy their opponents, and many of those opponents are identical: capitalists and businessmen, Jews, banks, foreigners, classical liberals and democrats, etc. I disagree. Tyranny has the option of respecting or disrespecting rights, but it does not grant or create them. Otherwise, again, there would be nothing wrong with the Holocaust. There are no columns, but they are reflected on the bottom line. Consumers will reject companies they regard as unethical and immoral. Humans are unique creatures. I don't think you can make a comparison to chimps. As my wife says, the funny thing about humans and animals is that we are always the ones wearing lab coats and studying them.

Is it? Or is it that you're more awake than you've ever been? It's funny that the government take of GDP in the USA is around 30-35%, whereas in so-called Communist China, only around 20%. The Chinese actually run a freer-market economy than we do, since they don't have much in the way of a welfare state and a far larger slice of their government spending is on the military (and thus divorced from social spending). It strikes me as amusing that North Americans see themselves as capitalists and the Chinese as communists, when in reality, it's the other way around. Just an observation. Definitely. In some trades and some areas, it is practically the default mode of trade. My mother lives in rural Wales, and the official economic indicators are that her region is very poor. However, this picture is not accurate, because the Welsh generally see it as their moral duty to defy the English government and a very large proportion of the trade where she lives is black-market, undocumented and tax-free. I think the credibility problem lies with the regulators. The empirical evidence suggests that the free market regulates itself far better anyway. For instance, car manufacturers go above and beyond government safety mandates on practically every model sold these days, and the corruption of Enron was discovered by market-based action, not government, and the 'punishment' of Enron (i.e. its financial collapse) came about through the market too, before government had even thought about taking action. Regulation creates a vast opportunity for government corruption and bribery. Red tape and illegal activity can be overlooked for a price. In effect, what regulation does is to favour the rich and the powerful (who are well-connected and can afford to bribe) and the state, driving the smaller competitor out of business and harming the consumer with higher prices. Take prohibition as an example. People still bought liquor, but it was far more expensive. The cops who would take bribes got rich, and gangsters like Al Capone got rich, the smaller liquour vendor went out of business, and the consumer got fleeced. I'm sure I don't need to mention the Canadian government, rocked by scandal after scandal, and stories come in from every province and every party of how officials have favoured their friends in business. Certainly it is no secret that the US Government favours certain businesses and industries, and will cut red tape for its friends while stringing new tape for the others.

And that last part is the problem. Running a business in Canada is very complicated and can be overwhelming for the sole or lone businessperson - which daycares tend to be. Tax law alone is convoluted enough that you need to hire an accountant if you don't want to flirt with a tax evasion charge, which is a big overhead for a small business. Then there are required liability insurances and so forth, and heaven help you if you want to hire somebody under you - figure out their taxes, CPP, EI, comply with all the labour laws, etc. It's no picnic. And now the government will attempt to drive private daycare out of the market altogether, and the tax rates will start to climb since every government enterprise needs more cash each year to run, not less, and these days most of the taxes are borne by the poor.

The answer is in your question: most children. Some do not. The relationship is voluntary. Either party can opt out. The child did not opt to be born and to live, so they can commit suicide. They did not choose their parents, and they can disown them. One cannot disown the government. The "social contract" is a myth, concocted by Renaissance-era thinkers to replace the increasingly-rejected notion of "divine right" that justified government until that point. Social contract theory is itself becoming obsolescent, and the current argument for statism is the idea that human affairs and economics are far too important and arcane to be left in the hands of the masses and must be directed by experts. Government is cheating, August, it operates by coercion. You propose that the solution to cheating be further cheating, presumably, that the solution to murder be more murder, to theft, more theft, and so forth. In essence, you are telling me that two wrongs make a right. I think it is disingenuous of you to continue to insist on such a line without refuting or addressing my arguments against it. The state is actually ideally suited to the role of repeatedly violating such property rights as you have described, and to a fault, that is what it does! Both theoretical argument and empirical evidence show that the actual best guarantor of property rights are the property-holders themselves. No, it is akin to creating a society without coercion. And it has been done. Again, I say to you, nerve gas and nuclear weapons are useful. It depends upon your objectives. The objectives of the state are the continued power and privilege of the state, so yes, it is very useful for a select group of individuals. Everyone else suffers and chafes under it. But your arguments elsewhere in this forum state that you are lying here - or there. You decry the war in Iraq. Clearly it was within the power of the USA to invade Iraq, yet you protest on moral grounds - however, according to this argument, there are no moral grounds to protest on. No, actually Hitler declared war on all of the allies first. Will you answer my other questions now?

I have made this argument to Thelonius. As I have said to him, the only device government has is the threat of or actual initiation of violence. Ultimately, all the state can do or threaten is murder. What murder can be good, August? What initiation of violence, or aggression, can be ethical? The trouble is that states will appropriate all the checks and balances for themselves. In the USA and Canada, for instance, the devices by which the state shall supposedly be checked and balanced are themselves part of the state. This violates the second most important principle of Anglo-Saxon law: nobody shall be a judge in his own case. In the case of the state, when the legitimacy of an action of the state is brought into question, the state itself is the arbiter. This explains why the US government has grown from the minarchist, libertarian state it initially was into the massive, bloated Leviathan it is today. Clearly, the checks and balances in the Constitution do not work worth a damn. The Icelandic system existed for far longer than the modern USA has - several centuries - and never reached such a point. Why would a society without government need a constitution of government? Why would a society without legitimised coercion need democracy? In anarchy, the establishment of government becomes a public goods problem. Those who would establish a state will not necessarily be able to share in the benefits of it any more than those who sit idly by and watch them. Therefore, the only way a state will be fashioned in anarchy is the way all states have been founded, namely conquest and aggression, because that is the only way that the founders of the state can avoid that public goods problem. Elections are not negotiations. The majority of the people do not have a power of attorney from you, and you do not have one from them. Elections basically empower a majority to appoint dictators. As history has shown, and as Blackdog said earlier in this thread, it is easy for a majority to tyrannize. Because the existing government would aggress against these competitors and destroy them. This is the nature of monopoly. If you do not believe this, try setting yourself up in competition to Canada Post. You will be imprisoned. It is not permitted to compete with the state.

So you are saying that Nazis get to decide who has rights, and what they are? Why does nobody else - like the Jews - get to decide? Your argument basically comes back to the idea that the state gets to assign rights. My question therefore, is by what right does the state assign rights? Let me ask you, Thelonius, if you could tell me the difference between a state that rounds people up under threat of violence, dresses them in khaki uniforms and sends them to be massacred on some beach in Normandy; and one that rounds people up under threat of violence, dresses them in striped uniforms and sends them to be massacred at some death camp in Poland? First you said that property (i.e. the right to dispose of) was dictated by violence. Then you said that property could be stolen by violence, but not dictated by violence. Then you told me the former again. Note that I am drawing a distinction between that which is ethically right and that which is practically possible. Hence the reason why coercion is defined as violence or the threat thereof. The only device the state has is murder. If I don't pay my taxes, the government will threaten me with jail. If I still refuse, they will send the police to arrest me. If I resolve to defend myself, they will physically attack me. If I am determined to resist to the death, they will murder me. The only individuals who derive benefit from government are in government. I would define the state as being the rulers and those citizens who have managed to maneuver themselves into a position of net benefit from the extortions of the state (net tax-beneficiaries), who are not unlike medieval courtiers and retainers. Everybody else - the net taxpayers - are actually suffering from the attentions and efforts of the state. Aldous Huxley said that the ends cannot justify the means because the means become a part of the ends. As the only means the state has is violence or the threat thereof, no outcome of state action can be morally positive. Everything it does is wrong, just as surely as all property that is stolen from its rightful owner is ill-gotten, even if all that property was donated to charity or some other laudable cause. Morality is something that the individual must decide for himself. This is why nonaggression is so important - without it, there can be no morality, not for the aggressors (who are immoral) or those coerced (who are amoral).

If you are arguing with us that precendent and tradition are sufficient justifications alone for continuing to do things the way they have always been done, then you should be aware that that argument can also be used for reintroducing slavery, denying the vote to all except landowning white males, or even just the monarch, excluding Jews from public office, etc. I'm not implying that you support these things, just that tradition and precedent are very bad arguments for something. If something cannot stand on some merit other than how long it has been done for, it deserves to fall.

No, because the people who the agriculturalists need protecting from most are their government! Who will police the police? As it is with us in our time, those who commit the most crimes against us are our government, not those they profess to protect us from. Negotiation is not necessary when you exercise a monopoly by brute force. Have you tried negotiating your taxes? What makes you think that the agriculturalists would have had more luck? I'm just wondering why we had to have that argument when you have basically ended up confirming my position. And you're right back to contradicting yourself again. You have just denied that right is synonymous with power, and now you are affirming it again. Settle on one position, please. The problem is that in this 'governed society' the state uses the threat of force overwhelmingly to further its own interests and goals. This is effectively what happens if you allow thieves to have coercive power over you. They might work for you sometimes, particularly if they understand the economic expediency of allowing their slaves to produce something that they can steal in the future, but they will generally work for themselves at your expense. I see. So your rights only hold as long as the state is willing or able to defend them? You are telling me, then, that six million European Jews actually committed suicide between 1933 and 1945, and were not murdered at all, since once the state refused to defend or uphold their right to live they no longer had a right to live? That is the position you have just outlined for me.

Because you do not make rules for me. If you presume to transgress against my person or property, then it is my rules that are in play, not yours. Your rules only apply to your things. Illustration: if I am a guest in your house, do I have to obey your rules of the house on pain of ejection, or do you have to obey my rules?

So I assume you oppose same-sex marriage, then?

I have not made rules for you to live by. I have made rules for myself, and you have broken them. If you make rules for yourself I won't break them. However, this rule that you can steal what belongs to me is not a rule for yourself, it's a rule for me, and you are not my moral agent - I am. Your argument, in reductio ad absurdum, basically means that the strongest person in society - a Hitler or Stalin - will have everything, and everybody else shall have nothing, and this will be morally correct and just. So I assume that you have no objection to the Holocaust, or the Great Terror, or the Cultural Revolution, or the Iraq invasion, or anything else like that. After all, the strong can do what they want, right?

What the hell does anything have to do with anything, Sweal? You're the one who thinks that arguments ought to take into account points of insane solipsism such as the possibility that the entire physical world does not actually exist. Anyway, I know that you are feigning ignorance for the sake of petty argument. I have seen you argue that the invasion of Iraq was immoral and wrong (here, here, and a great many other posts besides - use the search function) although it was clearly possible by dint of the fact that it was done, so I am fully aware that you can see a difference between moral and practical imperatives, and I am also aware that you will argue that morality is important and should guide at least some human actions - so don't even bother pretending the opposite now. Remember how I said I could demolish all your previous arguments using your own words? That's an example.

You've asserted nothing throughout this thread, then? Either you're lying in your teeth, or you really don't understand how to debate at all. Anyway, human beings are not objectively superior to one another since there are no objective measures for intelligence, wisdom, beauty, or anything else that may make one human superior to another. About all we can objectively measure are things such as size, weight, skin colour and so forth, but these have no bearing on judgement and wisdom - unless you are going to tell me some kind of Nazi racial superiority claptrap. Are you? And so the so-called Terrible Sweal concedes another thread (like this one) in his usual inelegant and clumsy fashion. Why don't you go troll somewhere else? Babble is suitably full of dimwits who won't challenge your prejudices too much and embarrass you.

Then you have a very confused idea of "service". Is the government serving me by stealing my property on a regular basis, telling me I can't do what I want with my own body and property, that I shall not buy or sell certain products, that I shall not say certain things, that I shall not print certain words, etc.? By that standard, are the Mafia not also citizens volunteering to serve? Those who get to dictate to others are rulers. The office holders of a democracy are rulers. Your argument is just a string of meaningless, apologetic catchphrases. It amazes me that when it comes to religion, you will decry blind faith in favour of a scientific, normative approach, however, when it comes to the state, you will abandon the scientific approach in favour of blind faith, twist words around to their opposite meaning, and be so self-contradictory as to offer arguments that depend upon the possibility that the physical world does not exist, or that wholly contradict your cries for equality elsewhere in this forum with calls for oligarchy and privilege, or that bely your claims that, say, the Iraq war was illegal and unjust by calling into question the very ideas of legality and justice on which you base those earlier statements - hardly scientific or even consistent at all! Indeed, I could take what you have said on these threads on anarchism and use it to systematically destroy or at least call into serious doubt everything else you have ever claimed here, without adding a single word of my own.

Really? I tell you what, then: I'll "try to defend" my position when you actually have a position. That sounds fair to me. I'm not a rhetorical punching-bag. I'm sorry that it offends you to have the massive holes in your arguments illustrated to you. Perhaps if I were a "complete berk" you could demonstrate it by shooting down my arguments, rather than ignoring them completely in favour of insults. Then you concede the point. If you can't defend it I will regard it as indefensible and move on. If you don't feel it's worth defending then I will regard it as weak enough to be overlooked, and move on. Then make a case for it. Is it not? Make a case for it. Really? Then make a case for it. Self-determination is a property right. You can't determine your course of action if you are not free to use your body as you see fit, and right of disposal is ownership. Conversely, if you have full freedom to use your body as you see fit you are perfectly able to determine your own actions. Therefore, self-determination is simply another term for self-ownership. Whatever.

Then I must confess, I have not the faintest idea why you are even bothering to post this stuff. To summarise, what you have told me is, "it is possible to steal things with violence, but that doesn't make it right." I hate to say it, but... Duh!