Hugo

Who says that one group in society needs to have total power to make law and enforce rights? Anyway, this is old ground. Please read this thread and if you have anything to add after reading it, please do so. But to rehash it all is a waste of bandwidth.

If you don't have the right to steal your neighbour's land, enslave him to the military, or confiscate his money and give it to the poor, by what right do you confer this power on someone else? Hobbes did not know what he was talking about and contradicted himself. He claims that government arose because people need order, without government, there is only "warre". However, if the latter is true, then government could not have arisen. But if government arose, then the natural state of human beings without government could not be "warre". The Social Contract is a myth. No State was ever created by social contract. The idea was created to replace the defunct idea of Divine Right. The best debunking of this theory was done by Lysander Spooner. But again, this is old stuff. If you want to continue, you first need to read this thread, as before.

From what do they derive this power?

So who grants the right and who makes the law? The short answer is the State. Therefore, the State is not criminal because the State says it is not criminal. Funnily enough, that argument never works for those the State tries as criminals. Whose law? The Mafia have their own laws, and they are older than the laws of Canada. Why is it that the State's laws override the Mafia's laws? There's really no difference in their modes of operation. The answer, again, is that the State takes precedence because it can, because it is the biggest and most successful criminal gang of all. Yup. Well, this is two-thirds strawman. We both know the world will never be violence-free as long as anything lives on it, and we both know that "fair" is subjective. That leaves government. Definitely. Remove the State and you remove all it does without having any alternatives ready to fill the gaps (policing, health, etc). You also create a huge power vacuum because without first changing attitudes, people will just seek to create another State. The answer is to progressively try to roll back the State and replace what it does with market institutions. This is being done already, since the market operates in accordance with economic law and the State does not, the State is fighting a battle it can't win. This is why there are more private security guards than cops in the USA, and more court cases settled in private courts than State ones. The other part of it is to change people's attitudes and ideas. Again, perpetually falling voter turnout and increasing disenchantment show that people are growing riper for this, the problem is that they have not been shown a decent alternative. Hence my advocacy. Unlike you, though, I don't think the answer is to keep slogging away at our broken system. This is like sitting on a nail and not moving because moving requires an effort. Not very smart.

Not really. The unhappily married people have made a trade that they thought was in their best interests but really wasn't - kind of like when you buy a cheap product thinking you're getting a deal and later discover it's junk. The unhappy single people have not found a partner for exchange yet, basically, those they've met aren't interested in what they offer, or don't offer anything they're interested in. Over time, a lot of people will make progressively more generous offers. This is the way a market works. Just because you don't see "Wife for sale, $10,000" does not mean there is no market. Not really. You have not demonstrated that there are no prices. If there were no prices, would that not mean there are no exchanges being made, i.e. no marriages ever happen? An exchange needs a price. Why, and what's going to replace it? No, it is not. Marriage, employment etc. have an explicit act of consent. With a marriage, you have a wedding. With employment, you turn up for work. With a restaurant, you sit down and order a meal. The outcomes of none of these events are certain, however, by your conscious act of consent you are arguably submitting to these uncertain outcomes. However, for you to be governed, you need make no agreement. It will be imposed on you regardless. You can make one if you like, by voting, however, it is delusional to think that the State really needs this act of consent - those who didn't vote are still taxed. This proves nothing except that people like to talk. I am curious to know when you are going to satisfactorily distinguish between marriage and markets. I'm also curious to know how or when you are going to distinguish the State from a very successful organized crime gang, and provide some justification for your view that we need to live under the thumb of criminals. Never. The voluntary nature negates any possibility of involuntaryism. What you have said is called an oxymoron: it combines logically opposite and self-contradictory terms. While interesting in prose it is logically invalid and cannot be used as the basis of any argument. You are asking something akin to "when could the nonexisting exist?" Answer: never. If it exists, it is no longer nonexisting.

A good accountant merely follows the rules the State lays out for him. This is not seditious at all. Alright, so you agree that the State is just a bunch of thugs like the Mafia but more successful and systematic. Now, why do we need them? If you oppose crime, why not oppose the biggest criminals of all? Well, people like you are actually the biggest thing preventing me from doing so. Go on, then, make that case. Not in this thread, buddy. So far you've admitted to me that there is no good a priori reason for a State, that the State is just a bunch of criminals who rule by deluding the public into thinking there's a double standard in law, and so forth. Yet, you're still a statist. So clearly, your prejudices against anarchy are running roughshod over your powers of reason.

Then you don't believe the State is justified, Thelonius, merely that they happen to have the ability to subvert everyone else to their will. And if this is the case, and you can't see a difference between the Holocaust and the Warsaw Uprising, that also means that you see no reason why I could not violently overthrow the State. So, when you admit that the State has no right to rule, that violence against the State is as justifiable as violence on behalf of the State, and you cannot argue that the State is pragmatically superior or grants greater utility, I am extremely puzzled as to why you cannot follow the logic of your own arguments and abandon your prejudices.

The international system is not entirely anarchist since it consists of predatory regimes all holding coercive power over their people. It is therefore in the nature of these regimes to be conservative and not to risk their own power and position. It is unlikely that the actions of a foreign State will affect them personally, but it is more likely that war against that State will affect them personally. Therefore, the vast majority of them will choose to leave other regimes alone, no matter how despicable, unless they actually believe it to be in the interests of the State to interfere, which is rare. However, in anarchist society individual people do have a stake in what goes on, and are likely to suffer personally from a criminal. In addition, most of them will not be criminals themselves. Therefore, the same incentive to ignore criminal deeds in the anarchist society does not exist. They would not recreate States since there are many ways to do this: labour unions, fraternal societies, churches, charities, activist groups, etc. The methods used obviously depend upon the action that needs to be taken. A labour union can be a very powerful, noncoercive force, particularly when its members are highly trained and hard to replace - a doctors union, for instance. A group that has the power to turn public scrutiny on dishonourable activity, such as an activist group, is also powerful. A fraternal society has the advantage of turning many individually powerless people (e.g. unskilled labourers) into a single, very wealthy consumer. But none of these things rely on coercion as the State does. Well, uprooting the Nazi regime resulted in a lot of upheaval and bloodshed too. Would you have opposed WWII? If so, why? If not, at what point do you say a system is not worth abolishing? They are not irrelevant concepts, just marketable ones again. They always were, in fact, it's just that we have given one institution a monopoly for a long time. This begs the question of whether or not I think there should be national borders at all. No, but to be a Statist and logically consistent you would have to believe that we need One World Government, and that all lower layers of Government must derive from this one.

Then the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising are equivalent, aren't they? No, it isn't. Stop making up strawmen. Again, you are making up strawmen. I have taken great pains to explain this to you. Don't pretend that you can't remember simply because you have no valid response to it. But they can't, and you know it. As you therefore reject One World Government I'm curious to know why it is you accept anarchy between nation-states but reject it within the states themselves. Are you sure that the various wars and wranglings that have given us our present-day borders are the most correct ones for humanity? If so, why? If not, why support them? So, you think that anarchy would remove the fetters in human nature, but that taking a group of individuals, granting them coercive power over everyone else, concentrating the overwhelming majority of the means to force in their hands, abolishing all competing institutions and creating a mythical justification for their coercion in the minds of the populace would not remove the fetters in their nature? By what miracle is this accomplished? The State already has everything that any criminal in an anarchist society could possibly dream of having, so how could anarchy possibly be any worse?

Plus ca change. All States depend upon the acquiescence of their subjects. Firstly, I fail to see why your acquiescence to a particular criminal gang means that I ought to similarly acquiesce. Secondly, I think that it is rather closed-minded of you to accept these protection rackets having never considered the possibility of a voluntaryist society free from protection rackets, or at least one that recognises all racketeers as criminals rather than just some. Then if we already have a sort-of state of anarchy between States, why is it so incomprehensible to you to break down the geopgraphical areas between which it is conducted? In short, unless you believe we need One World Government, what's wrong with anarchy that's right about the existing international order?

So what you are saying is that we shouldn't get rid of the biggest and most vicious group of organized criminals because another group of organized criminals might take over. Basically, your argument against anarchy is that we would end up with a State again, therefore, you propose a State. To coin an analogy, this is like refusing to treat a terminal and painful cancer because you think the patient will just relapse and get cancer again afterwards, and you think the cancer they have is somehow better than the cancer they might get. These groups operate consensually or are recognised as criminals. You somehow pretend that without the State, nobody would recognise criminal activity. This is a self-contradiction. If humans were unable to recognise criminal activity we would not have a State that could recognise it either, since it is comprised of humans. Therefore, if what you say is true, then under our current system we should be unable to formulate any kind of ethics or social mores. The very fact that you are here and are using the word 'criminal' demolishes this entire argument. All I needed to do was to point your gun at your foot and watch you shoot yourself in it. Unfortunately, these institutions are within the realm of the State itself. Thus a State is basically expected to police itself. The only true check and balance is the threat of violent revolution, which is no small undertaking with no guarantee of success. For an illustration, consider that the Nazi Party came to power according to the letter of the Weimar Constitution and thereafter abrogated all democracy in favour of tyrannical rule. Lincoln's government ignored States rights and instigated a bloody war against its own people. Roosevelt's government stole a huge amount of gold from the American people, imprisoned thousands of people without trial or due process, etc. That is another self-contradiction. Darwinism claims that the strong will overcome the weak, strength having been achieved by superior evolution to adapt to one's environment. There is nothing in Darwinism to explain why an individual would help a weaker one, and Darwin himself struggled with this paradox - the only argument he could come up with was the rather weak one of evolution of a species as a whole rather than of individuals. However, Darwinism would also identify a State as what it is: a means for the minority to plunder and pillage from the majority on a systematic basis. There's nothing in Darwinism to say that the State should benefit "all the others" at all, and sure enough, it invariably doesn't.

True indeed. We know a priori what the viability of a planned economy is. If the free market does not behave as we know, a priori, that it will, it therefore isn't a free market. In an age when a car or an aeroplane is made in about 20 different countries I find that a very, very weak argument. I'm not a business owner, but thanks for trying to derail the argument anyway. Now, since I'm not a complete idiot I suggest we get back on track. Because people in the private sector were given that money because others wanted to give it. people in the public sector get that money because it was snatched away from other people violently or under the threat of violence. Again, if the LCBO employees are justified, then so are car thieves. What a stupid point. I'll answer it anyway, perhaps foolishly. I tell you what, next time your tax return comes around refuse to file it. Then you'll find out where the end of that long chain leading to the LCBO employee lies. Send me a postcard from jail (the maximum penalty is five years in the slammer). Ah, so since the Government stole money from me and used it to give me services I never asked for, that's justified? I tell you what - I'll steal your car, sell it, keep 10% for myself and with the remaining money I'll paint your house purple. That would be perfectly OK, I expect. Yes. The reason the poor in Canada are poor is because the State gouges about half of their income. Oh, I do get something. I get something I never asked for provided in a grossly inefficient way in flagrant disregard for economic law and consumer demand. Whoop-de-do. Define a necessary good or service. Two hundred years ago, healthcare wasn't necessary. A hundred years ago, electricity wasn't necessary. Fifty years ago, telephones weren't necessary. Now, we have Sheila Copps trying to tell us that broadband internet is a necessary service. So, what is essential, and why? Why are you correct, and not another lefty who thinks that automobiles are essential? Where does the government intervention stop? I'll tell you where. It stops at a completely planned economy. No State that believes in these sorts of things ever relinquishes power. As long as people with this mindset are in the State it will gradually gather more and more of the economy unto itself until we are living in the USSR, with no food, clothes or shoes, no cars, no power or water most of the time, and so on.

A Government's property must therefore be everything in the entire country, since they seem determined to use violence to defend their property from me (i.e. to prevent me from spending my income - sorry, their income - instead of tithing it to them as taxes). It also seems to include quite a lot of things outside the country in the case of many States as well. Substitute: A police officer that uses unreasonable force might be charged and the victim will almost certainly not receive compensation. So you are telling me that the entire country is the Government's property, along with everyone in it? We are all slaves of the State and everything we have, we lease from them and do not own? Otherwise, what right do they have telling us what to do with it or giving away shares in their operation? Yes, your lefty history classes might have told you this but there are a lot of instances where white settlers dealt fairly with the natives. For instance, the Pennsylvania Quakers insisted on treating the Indians as equals, on trading fairly for anything they wished to exchange, and if an Indian was accused of a crime the jury would always consist of 6 white men and 6 Indians. They even sent their children to live with the Indians. Of course, the Pennsylvania Quakers were later themselves expropriated by the British Government. Totally and utterly missing the point. Why? What makes them special? Why do only they get to own land? Do they have two heads? According to you it doesn't own anything. Why can't you keep your story straight over two paragraphs? Certainly! They can't force people onto their land, and if they want to, they're going to have to play nice or they'll lose all their business to corporations who will be more willing to meet consumer demands. Do you know why you can't sell ice to Inuits? Because they don't want to buy it. It's crucial that you come to understand this point. It's absolutely false. There are many groups and individuals that employ violence - the Mafia, the Triads, the Yakuza, and individual murderers, muggers, rapists etc. The Government just happens to the the greatest and most systematic instigator of all.

This is untrue. Read the treaties concerned. But you said: So since the Treaty of Versailles specifically held Germany accountable for the actions of its allies (and by implication for the actions of the Entente), you de facto admit that it was unfair. It is irrelevant to the point. The Waffen-SS was at least for most of the war a frontline combat unit, and my point has been that the Waffen-SS believed in their country and their cause at least as much as you and probably even more so. All your quibbling as to the nature of the SS itself holds no answer to this problem that Waffen-SS soldiers (or, if you prefer, most Waffen-SS soldiers or early Waffen-SS soldiers) were only different from Canadian soldiers in minor detail.

But Germany was made to accept full blame for the war. And you have said that this is unfair, therefore, the Versailles Treaty was unfair, so why are you defending it? If this is true and all the separate divisions of an organization are responsible for what an individual division does, then that means that you are guilty for the Somali incident mentioned earlier, and so is Revenue Canada, and so are the Canadian Public Libraries, and the LCBO, since they are all divisions of the same organization (the Canadian Government) and according to you, what one division does, they all do. Why do I need to explain anything? I can't see how it refutes anything I've said. Perhaps you can point out where it does.

I wonder how he plans to protect those employees who will all lose their jobs when their employer goes bankrupt under this legislation. He'll probably advocate new taxes to pay all their unemployment benefits, which means even less real income for those actually working. Net result: businesses closed, real wages not really any higher and lots more unemployed. Same old socialist policies, screwing the little guy. Of course, the politicians who do all this get to keep their jobs, and they can blame all their own failings on capitalism, as they usually do. Again, if State-run enterprise is truly the way to go, why aren't we running the whole economy that way?

It also means that everybody whose labour is worth less than $17 per hour and cannot be made worth more than $17 per hour will be fired the next day. Fiat minimum wage basically just buys unemployment. The last time the US Government raised minimum wage by 50 cents it was followed by almost 500,000 layoffs. Most of these were amongst teenagers, single mothers and blacks. But to play the same tactics as our friend Err, that's probably because he hates single mothers and blacks. Right? After all, we're just greedy, evil conservatives because we advocate these things, so he must be a racist misogynist.

USA - Not bankrupted by cold war with USSR. Why? USA - Besides Israel, only country to have an embargo with Cuba. The USA and Israel control every resource, good and service in the entire world, now? Is this going to be another one of those illuminaughty conspiracy threads? I know people without a high school diploma who make that without it being subsidized through taxpayers. My company employs about 500 of them. No, I call them "parasites" because part of their money is not derived from free exchange but by forcible expropriation under threat of violence. If the LCBO employees are not parasites, then neither are car thieves. $2000 per month is enough to have a house and a car. Not a mansion and a BMW, but what do you expect? It'd be even better if the government wasn't confiscating about $600 in taxes every month off it to support people like the LCBO employees. The government does embrace slave labour. To be a slave is to unwillingly be forced to work for someone else. The Canadian Government makes the average Canadian work for them for about half their working lives, whether they like it or not, on pain of imprisonment and expropriation (penalty up to 5 years in jail and up to double the amount they originally tried to confiscate). Oh, and you still haven't answered the question. Let me try again: If the government owning the LCBO is such a good idea, why not extend it to automobile dealerships, food stores, hell why not the entire retail industry? Can you read that OK?

The irony is that the only real difference between the so-called Civil War and the American Revolution was who won, the secessionists or the imperialists. The War Between the States was just an imperial struggle, a war waged by the US Government against its own citizenry. Regardless, the irrefutable point is that democracy is not a good check or balance on State power and abuse of power since it has failed, repeatedly and catastrophically. But not the initiation of violence, as the State is. We've been over this before. Using violence to defend yourself is not the same as using violence to take from someone else. Otherwise, as we have also been over before, there's no moral distinction between the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

The irony is that Hitler was the parasite. The Jews he lambasted acquired their wealth through free exchange, but Hitler acquired his funds by confiscation under force or threat thereof. The Jews produced and traded, Hitler stole and plundered. So it is with all States. As von Mises so rightly said, any State action will either use violence or the threat of violence. The parasitic existence, what Oppenheimer termed the "political means" as opposed to the "economic means", is the existence whereby one's livelihood is derived not from toiling to produce or trading with others but by forcibly taking what you need or want. One cannot judge a person or group by the crimes they do not commit but by the crimes they do. So I'm not particularly interested in judging the US Government by some piddling case in Arkansas when the court overruled some local ordnance, when it was also the case that the US Government destroyed untold amounts of property and killed, or knowingly caused to be killed, 620,000 Americans (almost 2% of the population) between 1861 and 1865. That comparison would be like weighing the fact that Ted Bundy always paid his credit card bills against the 36 or so brutal murders he committed. It just turns you into a desperate and unrealistic apologist.

How is it to be the for benefit of all? It's a system whereby a minority can exist parasitically by systematically robbing the majority. You may think democracy is a control, but the means of democracy are entirely within the hands of the State. As I said before, you can see minor failures in the Martin government of Canada, or in Bill Clinton's overwhelming number of "illegal" campaign contributions, or you can see a massive failure in Nazi Germany or Lincoln's USA, which perfectly illustrate that the only supposed checks and balances on a democratically elected State are within the control of the State itself. Once elected, there is really nothing to stop a party consolidating absolute power. It is not a matter of policy or design to stop a State turning upon its people, it is a matter of time and nothing else. The US Government was conceived as a libertarian, minarchist State to preserve property rights. It took that State exactly 85 years to turn on its own people in a massively violent and murderous way. The German State was conceived as a socialist framework for the prosperity of the German people, and it took that State only 62 years to turn upon its own people in an even worse fashion - perhaps their time was shorter and the effects worse because their State never had any delusions of laissez-faire or minimalism. This is a very bad analogy. The gun is not an acting agent with its own aims, desires, values and views. The gun won't try to talk its owner into firing it to serve the aims of the gun.

I'd like err to answer this question that Renegade originally asked. If he believes that the State should extend its control over other industries, perhaps all industries, I would like to know how he believes this can work in Canada when it has failed everywhere else: the USSR, Cuba, China, North Korea, et al. If he believes it should not, and the LCBO should remain apart, I ask on what grounds he is advocating that the LCBO employees should have a parasitic existence at the expense of the rest of the country.

I believe we debated on the nature of existence for quite a while before you bowed out having proved nothing. Your theory on the nature of rights is that there are no objective rights, so basically, you acknowledge that the State "should" or "ought" not to exist (these are normative arguments, which you reject), but only exists because it has the power to violently force itself on others - so to wit, the State is like a more successful Mafia. I fail to see how this is a compelling argument for the State over anarchy.

Yes, there is: the Government is allowed to use violence. A corporation is not. The Government can use violence to assure its continued monopoly. A corporation cannot. A Government can legitimise its own crimes. A corporation cannot. And so forth. This raises a lot more questions than it answers. Who says it owns the land? Why is it entitled to a monopoly? How is Wal-Mart also entitled to a monopoly? If Wal-Mart is entitled to a monopoly then what is Sears, and Target, and Zellers, and so on? If Wal-Mart is entitled to a monopoly then they are not entitled to exist, are they? Certainly corporations are entitled to pursue a monopoly, and in effect that's what they all do. However, the State is the only entity which systematically uses violence to pursue its monopoly. Why is that legitimate? Why is the State allowed to do what it forbids to private citizens? They are not issued. If they were they would be tradeable, like shares. Votes cannot be transferred. Votes are also not the same since they give a person power over another who does not consent. A majority shareholder can dictate what happens to another person's shares in that company (which happens by consent) but he cannot run their life. However, a democratic majority can very easily run another person's life without their ever having consented: they can tell them where to live, who to marry, where to work, what to buy, where to worship, what to read, etc. Shareholding doesn't grant any of this, ever. What about those existing corporations and individuals who bought - or whose predecessors bought - the land off the natives in free trade, and the natives having acquired it through nonviolent homesteading? I would say that they have a greater claim than the Government, who only acquires anything by violently expropriating it from a person who acquired it by free trade or homesteading. Circular argument. The Government is legitimate because if you don't like it, you can leave. However, if I am obliged to leave if I don't like it that must mean that the government is legitimate. For an analogy, while you are in your house you must pay me $5 per hour. This is legitimate because if you don't like it you can leave. But I can choose whether I'd like to buy from Wal-Mart or Sears without moving house. Read my definition again, please. The definition of a State is an institution that monopolizes at least the services of law enforcement and justice within a given geographical area by coercion. This does not fit corporations who do not enjoy monopoly within a given area. For instance, I can use Microsoft Windows or I can use Linux without moving anywhere. Besides, if what you say were true then we already have anarchy. I could do if all the arguments you base this conclusion on weren't completely derelict and easily refutable.

But nothing protects the minority from the majority. Thus we see abuses against them, like the American and Canadian kidnapping and detention of Japanese citizens during WWII without trial or due process, like the Tuskagee Syphilis study, segregation, and more. All of these took place within democratic States. So basically, what you mean to say is that the democratic State gives the majority a cloak of legitimacy and a systematic thoroughness with which to exploit and abuse the minority. First of all, reputation is very important to a company. Corporations also have credit ratings that they have to honour. Secondly, the abuses that most leftists accredit to corporations are, in actual fact, committed not by the corporation but by a State - in collusion, certainly, but the State is the primary abuser. For example, Shell's supposed actions in Nigeria were not committed by Shell directly but by the corrupt and violent Nigerian State. Shell alone would not have done anything - going to war is simply too expensive for a corporation to consider, and if faced with the need for violence a corporation would simply pull out and do business elsewhere. States feel no such restraint because the money they spend does not belong to them and was expropriated rather than acquired in free exchange. If a corporation can externalize the costs of violence to a State, however, don't think they won't do it. But somehow, I don't think the answer to the problem of State violence and aggression is more Statism. The Montgomery bus boycott was completely successful, and enjoyed that success despite the opposition of the State. The ultimate boycott is when consumers decide that products are uncompetitive and cease to buy, as happened to Diners Club, for instance. But if a boycott is unsuccessful, that just means the majority of consumers don't share the values of the boycotters - and if so, who are you to tell them their values are wrong, yours are right, and if they don't do what you want they must be forced by violence or the threat thereof? For instance, let's say we had two corporations operating in Africa under anarchy. One is forcibly taking the produce of peasants at gunpoint, the other is offering a fair market price. The first would see falling productivity since the peasants don't want to be expropriated, so they will hide their grain, resist violently, and so forth. They will have to employ more thugs to extract less grain. Their prices will rise. On the other hand, the second corporation will see rising productivity since peasants will want to grow more so they can sell and get more money. They need employ no thugs since the peasants want to sell, they don't need to be coerced. Their costs are much lower and their production for a given investment higher. Their prices will fall. Therefore, in the stores, the products of the first company will be considerably more expensive than those of the second. The consumers will vote with their pocketbooks as they always do, and the first corporation must mend its ways or be run out of business.