Hugo

I cited Paul Kennedy. Which history book or historian are you referring to? It's interesting that I have mentioned several Keynesian theorems and two publications, whereas you have given absolutely no indication that you have even read anything by Keynes. You mentioned absolutely nothing of his theories, nor offered a defence of them. All you did was to say I was wrong, without justification, evidence or logical argument. Take it up with the economists who alleged it, not me. Have you read them, either? I'd like to see some evidence or argument for that before I blindly accept it. You have led me to suspect you don't actually know a single thing about Keynesianism.

According to Mises, W. H. Hutt and others, Keynes did not actually have a single original idea. Amusingly, he was simply repeating ideas that were widely held until Adam Smith refuted them - almost two centuries before him! Why Keynes is highly regarded as an economist is a mystery. You may be correct in that transactions will tend to grow capital. Money is not worth anything (at least, paper money). It represents capital. When you have more capital, you have more money. Someone will make more money, meaning that the value of a monetary unit goes unchanged, or no new money will be created, which means that the value of a monetary unit will increase (i.e. prices will drop). Inflationary money is basically an act of fraud. It is the printing of money which represents capital that does not physically exist. Physical capital. Debt would not lead to extraordinary inflationary pressure if debt was taken entirely from government bonds. It isn't. Governments borrow money from the marginal reserves of banks, which is inflationary debt. If a government ever abolishes fractional reserve banking we can have this discussion, but at the moment it is moot simply because fractional reserve banking is a reality and is used. If I have a teeter-totter coated in oil and I drop a nail onto it, it'll roll towards one end of the other. We can concoct silly analogies all day, or we can get down to business. Your choice. No, Wal-mart is striving for the end of greatest return on investments. Mercantilism would make Wal-mart execs very happy (we have mercantilism, and they are very happy). If you listen to industry lobby groups it becomes very plain that the business world (small businessman, international corporation, all of them alike) has a deathly fear of pure capitalism, because it means they have to play hardball as opposed to arranging government defeat of market functions. On the contrary, Spain was doing exactly what Keynes - or the 17th Century economists he plagiarised - recommended they do. Hence their collapse. Refer to your Kennedy, specifically, the financing of wars with debt and government debt defaults. Once you inflate, you have two choices. You can deflate and enter a recession, or you can continue inflating until the currency is abandoned and the economy collapses entirely. It's like jumping out of a plane - you have to land, one way or the other, and the landing won't be soft and gentle. If I do this, will you undertake to read the links I posted earlier? I want to make sure you're not just hearing one side of the story. You wouldn't be able to make an objective judgement.

Not at all. The "inflation" you claim to see throughout history is not known as inflation. As capital increases, money will correspondingly increase, since money represents capital. This is a normal, noninflationary increase in the money supply. It is not the same thing as monetary inflation. Inflation is when the money supply is increased faster than capital accumulates, thus devaluing the currency and causing price rises as an immediate effect. This is what Keynes was talking about, and it is about this which he was wrong.

No, I meant an incident or period of deliberate inflation, or inflation as policy, such as the Weimar inflation, the John Law paper money scheme, the Great Depression, the Union greenback in the Civil War, and so forth. Inflation is not an "historical fact" in this sense, but a positive act, one that can be avoided. We can isolate these incidents of inflation-as-policy as opposed to inflation as an independent phenomenon (which, when it occurs as such, is not destructive).

The truth is that Keynes was incompetent to argue economic theory. For instance, he tells us that economic slowdowns must be offset by increased government spending. However, he admits that increased taxation defeats this, so increased government spending must come from a deficit: inflation. Debt must be paid off, which means deflation and economic slowing, and what is Keynes' remedy? More inflation! If you know of a single incident of inflation in history that ended in anything but economic disaster, let me know. But you won't, because none exist, from the ancient Roman coinage debasements through the Great Depression to the early 90s recession. This is the big flaw with Keynes: history keeps proving him wrong. You don't have to be an economist to see that, you just have to open your eyes a bit. Who are his practitioners? Lamentably, I don't think there are any people putting his theories into practice right now. Same fallacy, again. The fact that nobody whatsoever on this thread has blindly accepted your figures and that several have demanded to see your sources should tell you the problems with this statement! This is self-contradictory. If there are two fixed points, the only static places would be at those points. All other positions are necessarily fluid. This statement refutes your earlier position, so I invite you to make up your mind one way or the other! That was irony. I'm sorry that you believe that one could have an objective standard for favourite foods and colours, though. If your favourite colour is red, you are wrong. The correct favourite colour is blue (irony again). Clearer now? Since Wal-Mart is not macroeconomic this statement makes absolutely no sense.

Playstation was a remarkable success. They succeeded in driving Sega from the hardware market altogether - and a few short years before, Sega had a share of the console market that Wal-Mart executives would have sold their children for. They're having enough trouble just with Iraq. It's no accident that the dollar continues to fall and US gold markets are buoyant, because since all wars are financed with deficits rather than taxes this is causing serious economic problems for the US, with runaway inflation causing rising prices and a plummeting dollar. They are one war away from economic crash at the moment. Don't commit it, then. You threw out a figure without any source, and then tried to discourage further inquiry by implying that anybody who questioned your figure would be ignorant. This is the fallacy of prejudicial language. Fortunately for this debate, August called your bluff and demanded a source anyway, and I see you haven't provided it yet! Actually, that was von Mises main claim to fame - to offer a solid refutation of Keynesian economics, and to be the first to plug the gaps in Marxist theory that even Marxists couldn't fathom, destroying Marxism in the process. Anyway, Keynes needs no debunking. He debunks himself. For example, in his General Theory in 1936, he directly contradicts the theory of monetary policy he wrote in 1931. Then, in the same book, he trips up again when he advocates inflation as a remedy for unemployment, and then later admits that unemployment can only be remedied by "a gradual and automatic lowering of real wages", which basically assumes that nobody would notice inflation and the consequent price increases happened. Every time a worker demands a wage increase in line with inflation, he destroys this Keynesian line of thought, because Keynesian inflationary full-employment doctrine depends upon this never, ever happening. Keynes was a fool. What principle do you use to hold yourself at a static point? Any compromise between the two is not based upon principles or doctrine, but upon purely arbitrary opinion, and there is no logically defensible resting-place. Either you're heading for one or the other. I'm an Austrian-school capitalist. It is only equitable because you say it is. It isn't defensible, being just your opinion. The correct capitalism/communism compromise is as objective as your favourite colour or food.

Did you ever get around to reading that link I sent you? Wherever voluntary human interaction occurs, that's a market. Perhaps the currency isn't money but that doesn't change anything. Nobel laureate Gary Becker did a lot of work on subjects like the marriage market, demonstrating that these fields of human interaction could be expressed in purely economic terms. Sure! Do you admit that we shouldn't assume Finns have formed a club just because they speak the same language, and might not necessarily be any more united than the English-speaking or Arabic-speaking nations? Waffle. You couldn't defend your viewpoints anyway, so now you bluster. It's a bad habit. You'd be a very good debater if you could refrain from this type of thing. No, you did not read, or you did not understand. You alleged that I claimed "Social, cultural and political groups do not exist, there are only individuals." This is in direct contradiction of paragraph 3 of my post. Who is "we"? Why do they hate them? More often than not, because they see them as a member of a group - yid, nigger, spic, chink, gook, etc. - rather than as an actual person. Take a look at the crowds not cheering for Team Canada! You refute yourself.

I'll give you two ways it does to start off. First of all, when you start a factory in Asia you need construction crews and materials, industrial plant and machine tools, computers and IT equipment, even air conditioners and vending machines. Where do the companies that supply all these things come from? The developed world - primarily North America. Secondly, this cuts prices of consumer goods. If you spend less on consumer goods you have more to spend elsewhere. Maybe now you can afford that big TV and give a Canadian guy a job selling it to you, warehousing it and shipping it to your house. Maybe you can buy services, which seem very difficult to outsource to the Third World. Have you had any luck getting your car fixed in Shanghai? How about having a new light fixture installed in Bombay? Your plumbing maintained in Nanjing? Your will notarized in Calcutta? Prove that outsourcing to the Third World is bad before you try and make that argument. They will get jobs supplying the new goods and services that people can now buy because of the money they saved shopping at Wal-Mart. Doesn't this stuff get tired? Weren't we forecasting mass unemployment and strife when we developed the spinning jenny and the steam engine? Things seemed to work out! Actually, he said democracy was the worst form of government except for all the others. An outdated concept. Micro-corporations are the way things are probably going to go, not the megacorporations dreamed up by William Gibson and other bad science fiction writers. Actually, capitalism creates decent wages, safety, human rights and environmental concern. We have these problems precisely because we don't have enough capitalism. By making these things social, state issues, we have just brought them before the tragedy of the commons. What a statement! Let's play a little game. "It is obvious to everyone except the people with the round-earth agendas that the earth must be flat." I recommend more Mises, Hayek, Hoppe, Friedman, Rand and so forth. Keynesianism is debunked. And as soon as that price rises, competition re-appears. Furthermore, this doesn't address the problem of a competitor who might also play the loss-leader game. Returning to the Sega/Nintendo/Sony example, when the Playstation was first released, each unit was deliberately sold for a substantial loss. Loss-leader strategy failed for Sega and Nintendo there, as it could very conceivably fail for Wal-Mart. Anyway, I don't understand how offering extremely low prices to the Canadian public is bad for the Canadian public. Democracy gave Hitler the right to exterminate European Jewry, too. There is no such thing as "one way trade." We generally call it "theft" when you take without giving back or "charity" when you give without receiving. Fallacy of prejudicial language. There are no stupid questions, Eureka, only stupid answers. Predatory pricing is not sustainable long-term and, when it occurs, it is of great benefit to the consumers. So, basically, Wal-Mart executives were smarter than Toys "R" Us executives, because they figured out a good loss-leader strategy and Toys "R" Us could not. What you want to do, then, is reward stupidity and punish intelligence. This is not possible. Either you are capitalist, or you are communist, or you are moving towards one or the other. Currently, we are moving towards communism. You cannot remain static in the gap between capitalism and communism.

Where to start? First off, you quoted more than you posted, which quite apart from being a breach of netiquette is indicative of the true nature of this discussion. Not only that, but the bulk of what you even bothered to write was insults. You refused to answer my questions, to either accept or reasonably deny my analogies, and you even had the nerve to accuse me of evasion when I attempted to bring the topic back on track after you had derailed it, trying to discuss the irrelevant details of an analogy rather than its principle at any cost! You don't know what "debate" means, evidently, and this is not a great surprise as this is not the first time I have had to define basic terminology for you. A debate is an attempt to arrive at the truth by testing various viewpoints against each other. I am the only one who has posited any viewpoint, so this is not a debate, this is what you might call "nit-picking." I know that you have cited a link, and you are probably very proud of yourself. You give no indication that you have even read that link, since your citation is the first sentence only. You certainly give absolutely no indication that you've even heard of, say, Ackerman or Nozick, much less their objections to social contract theory. Your discussion revolves around the social contract, but since you refuse to clarify your understanding of the term or even show that you have an understanding gleaned from others, there's no point to it. This is, apparently, what comprises your "position" - somebody else's web page. Despite my repeated attempts to draw you out, you refuse to actually state a viewpoint. I don't think you have one, I believe you are being argumentative for the sake of it, and your actions so far have proven me right. Until you actually find a platform to argue from, can show some sign that you know the subject matter, or can show a little maturity, this "debate" is over.

It doesn't matter. They only have a slice of the retail pie right now, and as they grow, they pressure their competition to compete with them or die. Thus, we have Zellers, Sears, the Bay et al stumbling over themselves to become more competitive. Either way, the chief beneficiaries of this process are the consumers, the ordinary folk trying to get by. And, as I illustrated before with my Sega/Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft example, unless Wal-Mart ends up becoming the entire global economy they always have to run the risk of a competitor from outside the retail market, too big to buy out or bully, muscling in on their patch. Perhaps you should try reading some of the other documentation as well. For example, how slashing retail prices stimulates other industries and creates other jobs thanks to lower opportunity costs. If you wish to read more, I'd suggest this page as a good start. Give me a source that shows me how every share of the Wal-Mart corporation is owned by "a few very, very very wealthy people, mostly named Walton", please. Rhetoric. Facts only, please. So? So what? Your complaint about Wal-Mart is that you can't buy the sweary versions of songs or hardcore porn videos? You don't like the fact that Eminem's artistic vision has been compromised? This has been going on for centuries. Read Michelangelo's lamentations on being forced to paint the Sistine Chapel against his artistic vision. Wal-Mart creates jobs and competition, actually. Do you know what an opportunity cost is? Good. That's very beneficial to Canadians. I believe that's called, "Doing business." Force them to raise their salaries, and they'll prove you wrong! Do you think they really need the guy who says, "Hi! Welcome to Wal-Mart" when you walk in the door? Buddy... you are a socialist.

Calm down. You were using social contract to justify government before. Since you won't state your position clearly, you have no right to be angry at me if I don't interpret you correctly. I don't know how to explain this to you any more clearly. Why does my example not make sense to you? Perhaps you'll tell me where I'm going wrong. Are you saying that there are no such things as rights, and the moral limit of human action is what is physically possible? Or are you saying that there are innate rights, and I've just misidentified them? So, to you "participate" can mean "do absolutely nothing." I don't think you understand the meaning of the word. Participate: 1 To take part in something 2 To share in something It didn't say "to do nothing." What you have identified is not an action, but an inaction. Now you are scrambling around trying to redefine words in an effort to hide your error. This is very basic rights theory and one assumes that you haven't read much of it, if you don't know this. You're being awfully elusive about what this mysterious "social contract" of yours is. I think I've played enough games trying to draw you out into actually stating your position. It's about time you made your position clear. So far I've been telling you my thoughts, and you've been hiding in the dark, sniping at them. I don't think you have any coherent theory against which you are testing mine - but feel free to prove me wrong! You honestly can't see? I'm saying that you think this social contract is the result of market action. Market action must be purely voluntary and cannot include force. Wars are force. Social contracts in terms of states (what we're discussing here) have been brought about by war. Clear? No, it isn't. Check the dictionary - again. Ah. So for your example to work, we have to assume all humans have no legs, do we? You are trying to distract me. The original question is this: If I am prepared to do without "public goods" anymore, whatever the consequences, is it right that the state should continue to tax me and demand that I buy its services, these public goods, under threat of violence even though I don't want them? You are getting caught up in what those consequences might be. It's irrelevant. Answer the question and stop obfuscating. One assumes we're already in the Hobbesian war, then, because our existing "liberal democracy" fails to prevent thousands of cases of child neglect and abuse, every year. This just illustrates your blind prejudice. You are prepared to forgive the state massive crimes and injustices and overlook all its failures, but if you can concoct some obscure scenario (huts on islands, robbers and oil-patches, infants with abusive parents in such isolation that nobody even knows they exist) in which anarchy might not produce the absolute best possible outcome, you regard it as a failure. You are indoctrinated. Biased. Prejudiced. If you could think clearly, you might understand these things. No anarchist thinker claims that anarchy will create heaven on earth and destroy all evil for all time. We just think it will be an improvement.

How can one worship a god-king who is not a god? How can one faithfully believe in and give offerings to the Lightning Spirit? How can one set out to find a Northern Passage to the orient? You're seriously telling me that believing in something makes it real, or can turn lies into truth? How many fingers do you see, Winston? Read my post again - carefully, this time.

This is only a problem if you assume that Wal-Mart and the competitors that lost to it employed more people than Wal-Mart sells to. That, of course, is nonsense. The provision of lower prices is important and has helped a great many people. As has been said in this thread already, in a Wal-Mart store there aren't an abundance of rich people, but of working people trying to get by, to whom Wal-Mart offers more for less. Their dollars go further. And you want to take that away from them, to force them to pay more and lower their standard of living so that some company whose executives were too lazy or stupid to compete can get a free ride. Shame on you. I thought you were against corporate welfare? Says who? Did they also compute the extra purchasing power that Wal-Mart has given to every North American by lowering the prices they pay for goods? Wal-Mart does not employ a single minimum-wage earner in Canada. How are they driving down wages, exactly? If you really care so much about this, why don't you start hounding companies that pay their workers minimum wage only, like small businesses and mom-and-pop shops? Why - because you feel you have the right, or that others have the right, to tell people what they can and can't do with their own money in purely voluntary transactions? Again I ask, who died and crowned you King? Untrue. Perhaps you would care to know a little about Wal-Mart's history. They originally came about because they developed a fantastically efficient inventorying and warehousing system. This meant that their margins were greater, enabling them to open stores in small towns where many of their products (and thus, jobs selling those products) were previously unavailable, and residents who wished to purchase them had to drive many miles to go to a big town, and buy from the big store that did not employ any more people, nor pay them any more, but charged more because they were just inefficient. Which of their competitors do you shop at? If you buy from Zellers or similar, I hate to break it to you, but they don't pay their employees any more than Wal-Mart. Less, more often than not. Nor do they train them as well. If you step up a tier, and buy at Sears or The Bay, then you're paying more for the same, which means you're costing other people their jobs because of the increased opportunity costs of your purchases. You spend more on your towels, which means you have less money left over to buy a bathrobe, and the bathrobe manufacturer takes a paycut or goes out of business. Aren't you proud of yourself, causing unemployment and wage decreases, Eureka?

This thread is a nonsense. I would be flabbergasted if you could get the nation of Canada (all 30m of them) to agree on anything, let alone the entire set of values that make up an identity! What do you take as the Canadian identity? The opinion of the majority? Does this mean that the minority is un-Canadian? We have all sorts of different viewpoints on this forum, so who is the real Canadian, and who is the imposter with the Canadian birth certificate and passport? Is it Maplesyrup or Stoker? Caesar or Argus? They hold radically different viewpoints on virtually everything, so one of them must be out-of-step with Canadian "identity." The truth is that the idea of a nation-state is a fiction. The only aggregates one could truly be said to be a part of are those one joins voluntarily, and even then, you have to be aware of compromises in the mind of the individual. A lot of Liberal voters in the last election probably didn't agree with the Liberal platform, but compromised because they were afraid of the Conservatives. I believe most of the evil in this world (the murders and genocides, the rapes, thefts, massacres, pillaging and so forth) can be put down to a tendency to see people as aggregates rather than individuals. You would think we could learn from this, but evidently some of us can't.

I think a lot of people here have a serious Stalin complex. What you are saying amounts to this: "I don't like the way Wal-Mart does business. I don't want to shop there anymore. But that's not good enough. You have to stop shopping there too. If you don't, then I plan to use force to stop you. You will do as I say!" To which I ask, well, who died and made you King? This talk is more socialist nonsense, basically, bossing other people around, telling them what to do, and threatening to use force if they don't comply. Stop it, and leave other people alone, please, and realise that you are not a prince amongst men with a divine right to run the lives of other people. As August has said, there's no evidence that Wal-Mart is attempting to conquer the market and then become a greedy, extortionist monopoly. Their prices are the lowest around, generally, and that is why they are in the position they are in now. If they were to start raising prices, trying to bleed their monopolised customers, they are basically raising a sign saying, "Dying multinational company! Swoop down and have a feeding frenzy!" Other companies will quickly undercut them and competition will reappear. You might think that Wal-Mart could simply buy them all out or buy them off, however, I don't recall that happening to Sony when they muscled in on the videogame market lorded over by the cartel of Sega and Nintendo, nor did that happen to Microsoft when they muscled in on the same market a few years later (against Sony and Nintendo this time). The only way this could happen is if Wal-Mart becomes not only the only player in the retail industry, but the only player in the international economy - absurd. As to getting a union in and raising the wages, sure you can do that. I don't know why you hate Wal-Mart employees so much, though, that you want loads of them to join the dole queue. I'm certain I don't want to pay their unemployment cheques! Unions will raise the wages, which will mean that marginal employees will have to be fired. It's that simple. Artifically inflating wages is the chief cause of unemployment. If we had no minimum wage, we'd have no endemic unemployment. If you don't believe me, look at the figures right after Clinton raised the minimum wage. Over half a million newly unemployed immediately afterwards. These are always the marginal employees, too, who generally have no savings and cannot afford to lose their jobs. So-called leftist compassion. All I see here is hatred, ignorance, dreams of dictatorial power and cold-heartedness towards one's fellow man.

Let me put it another way. I tell you that you have to give me $5 per hour as long as you are in a certain building. I promise to use force and shake you down if you don't provide it, but I say that I'm not being coercive because you are free to leave the building whenever you want. This is fair if I own the building, or if I was the legitimate authority over it as designated by the owners. However, if I don't own this building, and I am not an authority designated by the owners of the building, this is grossly unjust and is an act of coercion. Imagine if you owned the building, how unjust that would be were I to come into your house, demand money, promise to beat you up if you didn't provide, and said it wasn't coercive because you could get out whenever you wanted? Therefore, in order to see whether I am being just or unjust, coercive or noncoercive, we need to establish whether or not I am the legitimate authority over this building before we go any further. This is an analogy for government. You haven't established whether or not the government has legitimate authority over Canada, therefore, this argument that it is not coercive because I am free to leave does not prove anything. It's circular, because your argument is supposed to prove that government is legitimate and consensual (which would mean non-coercive), but your argument already assumes that it is legitimate and consensual in its premises. I think it natural because it's objectively reasonable. Other interpretations are subjective, and a subjective opinion is not defensible. A negative right does not actually require the participation of anyone. Your right not to be aggressed against would just as easily be upheld (more easily, perhaps) if you were the only human in the universe, therefore, how can it possibly require the participation of others? I'm saying that you have a self-contradiction here. You say that the social contract means that one must respect the instructions of the government, or leave the country. The Nazis came to power constitutionally, by the social contract if you will, and were always careful to give their actions a facade of legitimacy. By the letter of the social contract, the Weimar constitution, they were legal. However, you have said that some of their actions were a violation of the social contract. Therefore, you say that social contract justifies government, but also that social contract precludes government. If you can show me a state that arose without any violence or war, go ahead. But even those gains made for freedom in the social contract were often gotten from violence - the American Revolution, the Wat Tyler revolt, the English Civil War, the French Revolution and so forth. What powers are you going to allow your "fully liberal democracy", first of all? The term is quite subjective, so I want to know what this liberal democracy can do. Can it tax? Can it outlaw competition for the services it provides? Can it initiate violence in any circumstance, and so forth? No, I did. I think it was in this thread, actually. No. It is a known fact that humans tend to co-operate rather than fight. Therefore, if I'm not alone in this hypothetical world, I'm assuming that any other people I meet are more likely to try and trade or work with me than to attack me. First off, no, all you need for trade is two people with different goods and services to offer each other. As for machineguns, well, if I can't have them I assume others can't either, so I'll take my longbow, or my slingshot, or what-have-you instead. But anyway, this is ridiculous. You say that anarchy is not valid because if I lived alone on an oilpatch, did not have any means of making or buying weapons, and everybody else in the whole world wanted to kill or rob me, and they were able to get weapons or to overpower me, I might get robbed. The original point was that, if I lived on my own land and was self-sufficient, should I not have the right to refuse to pay taxes and to receive government services? I identify these boundaries using my brain, as do my fellow men. And if we can't agree, then we have to agree on an arbitrator to use his brain. And if we can't agree to that, then I suppose we'll just have to duke it out - but then we both end up as net losers, so that would be rather irrational to say the least. Probably by hiring someone to represent them. We'll assume the money will come from a loan, a charity or something (don't play another thought experiment to see how convoluted and unlikely circumstances can become before anarchy "fails"). If they aren't old enough to speak or seek help, then a relative, friend of the family or teacher might step in. And if all of that fails, then I suppose that the child won't be able to secure what's theirs. In cases of coercion, one has to decide upon a fitting restitution. In this case, the child and the parents would have to agree on when the child could consider itself "paid back" - perhaps at 15, perhaps after graduation from university, whatever. If they can't agree, once again, they'll have to agree on a third party to mediate. The coercion brings it into existence, yes?

I think I've been over this before. All humans have free will. Any human can be distinguished from another form of life, but distinctions between humans are arbitrary and fleeting at best. Therefore, if all humans have free will, and there's no objective way of discerning if any humans are better than other humans, it seems logical to me that all humans must have the natural right to exercise their free will to the limits of physical laws and to the point where they start to encroach on the natural rights of others. Exactly, and this is a key concept right here: negative rights. The only real rights are negative ones, not to be harmed, not to be killed, not to be coerced, etc. They don't require any other human to do anything, just not to do something. A positive right, e.g. the "right" to a minimum standard of living, is not the same. Somebody else needs to take action to guarantee that right. What social contract is that? If the social contract is something different than government, and the social contract can even preclude government, that wouldn't make a good argument for government based on social contract, would it? No, it isn't, because as I said, the evolution of the social contract involves violence and coercion, which are non-market concepts. A market means mutual consent, whereas violence and coercion necessarily don't (or they wouldn't be needed). The value and results of the wars are really irrelevant. The very fact that they happened destroys the premise that the social contract is a market outcome. That's right. But getting away from that for a minute, if you don't agree with this premise of equal natural rights, then you agree that it is just or right for some humans to impose their will on others - more freedom for some people than for others, to put it another way. I'm interested to know what your argument for that is. "Anarchy" has a lot of connotations that aren't necessarily true. What it really means is absence of political power, absence of coercion. Of course, humans being what they are, you can't eliminate coercion, but you can try to avoid it. Of course, when we do this, it's important to recognise that governments are the biggest perpetrators of coercion on the planet, so they have to be first to go. I have been over this so many times, it just isn't funny anymore. Let me just cut and paste for you. To summarise: the government says that you must leave their jurisdiction if you don't like them. Then they say that the country is their jurisdiction because you didn't leave. It's circular. Why wouldn't a good band of city-dwellers come to work for me as security guards, if I've got oil? You don't need a logistical infrastructure for a market. Do you think that before we had currencies and stock exchanges human trade was impossible? Of course not. A guy could turn up at my door, and offer to work as a guard in exchange for food and board (and maybe a cut of the profits from this oil I suddenly have). It depends. I'll tentatively answer that (this is an area where anarchist debate goes on, and I haven't studied it in much detail) if the child is not able to leave, to fend for itself or find an alternative caregiver, then yes, because the parents "coerced" the child into being born, as it was done without the consent of the child, and therefore they owe it something.

I'm sorry, this is probably my fault. I meant "exist" as in a physical sense. Concepts like family "exist" but they are metaphysical, they don't have any atoms, they don't exist in the physical world. It's my opinion that metaphysical concepts are different from physical entities, and that metaphysical things can't own anything. Well, no, a bank or other lending institution probably owns some part as well. Basically, the company is owned by the individual investors, rather than by an abstract concept i.e. itself. I'd have to disagree with that. I think people have rights, and what society assigns people may coincide with what their rights are or may not. For instance, Jews have a right to live, but the Nazi German society denied them that right. I don't think that, at that time, Jews had no right to live, because I think that rights stem from being human and nothing more. I agree that society does make rules, but I think we're actually just disagreeing about definitions and not the fundamental concepts. I think you'd agree that Jews have a right to live, so the Nazis didn't destroy this right, but rather violated it. I don't think that's true, either. In the history of any government there are always distinctly non-market phenomena, all states have gained or sustained power through war, violence, extortion and other non-market methods. Can the product of these coercive acts truly be said to be non-coercive? I don't think it does. If all humans are equal in status and rights, and all humans have the right to be free from violence and to be free from the constraint of other humans on their actions, then it follows that the limit of any humans freedom is when he coerces another. That's a perfectly logical and consistent deduction. Obviously we are all constrained by physical laws. The point is that one should strive towards a voluntaryist society, where the rights I laid out immediately above are fulfilled as far as humanly possible. It's inevitable that people will violate these rights, and there will certainly have to be exceptions. David Friedman raises an interesting point that, if a principle of non-aggression is strictly followed, you would be committing an act of aggression by turning on the lights in your house, since the photons from your lightbulbs would hit your neighbours house. Therefore, he suggests that perhaps a principle of choosing the path of least coercion is more reasonable. This is why I suggest that you read more on anarchist thought, there are countless books on this stuff. Bam! Circular argument. If I live in the wilderness, who's robbing me? You can't have it both ways! You assume that I live in a society of many individuals when it comes to crime, but that I live alone on a mountaintop when it comes to buying goods and services. It's inconsistent.

What are your criteria, though? I don't believe there's an objective standard for measuring the degree to which one is a bastard in the colloquial sense, so please tell me what yardstick you are using for comparison. This is absolutely irrelevant. I only quoted it so that others could see how unfocused your argument is. Maybe, but if we're comparing wars with wars, then this completely refutes your original point. Bush started two wars that have killed tens of thousands (actual figures are quite speculative at this time), and in which some apparently isolated atrocities were committed (Abu Ghraib, shooting wounded prisoners etc). Hitler started the biggest war in history, which killed 20 million on the battlefield. His atrocities were widespread, systematic and ordered from above without a shadow of a doubt. Let's say, for argument's sake, that 150,000 people have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. If war damage is your criteria for evil, this would make Hitler approximately 133 times as evil as Bush, and not "as evil", which I would take to mean approximately 1:1. Only a fool would believe that his subjective opinion could be an objective fact. Again, totally and utterly irrelevant. You've taken an example used as an analogy to illustrate a different point, and attempted to turn it into an argument. Either this is an attempt to obfuscate the original debate, or you have a very short attention span. And anyway, you refuted yourself. "Majority opinion" does not make something fact, otherwise the earth would be flat and the sun would orbit it, deities would control the seasons, tides and other natural cycles, lead can be magically transmuted into gold and so on and so forth. So, just so we're straight: You think that Bush is as evil as Hitler, because if Bush had different circumstances he might possibly (which means possibly not, by inference) be as evil as Hitler. You seriously call this an argument? Actually, that's your point. Blackdog has identified your implied claim that, as you opine that Bush is as evil as Hitler, there is some measurable standard of evil, which would mean that lesser murderers would be less evil, and more bloodthirsty ones - Stalin or Mao spring to mind - would be more evil. If this is true, either we must all technically be "evil" (we've all done something), or there is actually some line before which one is "good" and after which one is "evil." Eleven million, actually, and nobody was killed in a crematorium. They were used afterwards to dispose of corpses. It's laughable that you would compare Hitler's crimes to Bush's when you don't even know the extent of either.

Because it does not exist. When an aggregate is said to "own" something, it means that the individuals within the aggregate own something. For instance, a corporation owns things, but the corporation doesn't exist. The things it owns are actually owned by individual shareholders, and their shares tell you exactly what proportion they own. I think this "social contract" is completely arbitrary and subjective. It isn't based on ownership or property rights, you say. It definitely isn't based upon liberty and freedom, because it gives greater freedom to some and lesser freedom to others. I'm curious to know exactly what principle it's based upon. It is my interpretation that it is merely based on what a few men decided would make a good social contract or constitution, and as men, their subjective opinion is in principle no different from anybody else's, and therefore cannot justly form the basis of a coercive so-called contract. That would be a correct inference from that principle, indeed. Yes. In fact, I believe it to be the only social contract "government" because it is fully voluntary. As I have said, what you call "social contract" would be correctly termed "social extortion" because it grants some people power over other people without mutual consent. I can defend myself, or hire somebody else to do it for me. We'll assume that, as I'm not bound by the laws of the land anymore, I can own whatever I want. Therefore, if anyone does try to steal from me or violate my daughters, they should hope that they can win an argument with a volley of 5.56mm rounds from an M249 light machinegun. And in that case, I'd be quite happy if the police didn't come, as they'd be more likely to arrest me for defending myself than to arrest the criminal who violated my rights. Murray Rothbard is a world-renowned economist and the most prominent student of Ludwig von Mises. You should read some of his books. Anyway, custom and law are not indistinguishable. Law is a set of formalised rules set down by the state, enforced by violence. Custom isn't.

You can only establish relativity when there is an objective standard. We can say George Bush is taller than Hitler (or relatively tall compared to Hitler), because we have an objective standard to measure him by. Height can be impartially and objectively measured. Since there is no way to objectively measure evil (there are no units of evil), we can't say that Bush is as evil as Hitler: there's no objective way to compare "evil". Let me give you an example. I'm sure everyone on this forum thinks Hitler is evil, however, Hitler thought that he was good, and that Jews were evil, and he was doing the world a favour by getting rid of them all. Millions of Germans, and even foreigners, agreed with him. So, by siding against Hitler and with the Jews, we would be judged "evil" by millions of Germans, and also some Italians, British, Americans and yes, even Canadians, in the 1930s. The other great irony is that you are exactly the same, in principle, as both Bush and Hitler. Hitler thought Jews were evil and that violence was an acceptable way to rid the world of this evil. Bush thinks that Islamic fundamentalism is evil and that violence is an acceptable way to rid the world of this evil. You think that Bush and his supporters are evil and that violence is an acceptable way to rid the world of this evil (you said it would be great if he "flew into a mountain", which I took to mean that you wished him dead). You, Bush and Hitler are all the same. You just differ in the degree and the application, not the general principle. You all think that a subjective standard like "evil" can be used to judge people in a just fashion, and you all think that violence is acceptable. No, it is you that doesn't understand "subjective." "Evil" is not measurable, not quantifiable and not comparable. Now, as Blackdog said, it is perfectly possible to make objective criticisms of Bush. But to say that Bush is as evil as Hitler is about as valid as saying that he is as handsome as Hitler or as interesting as Hitler. Maplebear's further problem is that he makes a self-contradiction. He alleges that Bush is as evil as Hitler, but then claims that Bush's circumstances and power are different from Hitler's, which would make such a comparison invalid. Thus, Maplebear has made a judgement by means of a test he himself describes as invalid. The result of an invalid test is invalid.

Yes, and if he wanted to sprout wings and fly he'd have a hard time too. Why would you even bring it up unless it was relevant? Either you are saying that Bush is like Hitler because he wants to exterminate ethnic minorities (which is ridiculous) or you are saying they are dissimilar because he doesn't (which contradicts your fundamental point). Hitler did not restrain himself from attacking and eliminating his famous and powerful opponents. Anyway, your very statements give the lie to your whole premise. If Bush was truly as powerful as you allege, why would he have to refrain from attacking Moore? And yet you provide no evidence. Cite a source or something. Do you know how? Oh, I think he does. The main thing about Hitler was that he was a dictator. If he had not been, he'd just have been an unhinged and anti-Semitic housepainter. Let's compare like for like. George W Bush started two wars, which in terms of casualties are very insignificant in terms of the wars of the 20th Century. The states he warred against were tyrannical regimes that murdered thousands of their own people. Hitler started the most destructive war in human history, with a casualty rate bigger than pretty much all other wars put together. The states he warred against were often democratic and far more liberal than his own. American soldiers have committed some atrocities in occupied territory. These are sporadic and isolated and don't seem to be part of any overall policy, at least, not one that is efficient and systematic in any real way. There's no hard evidence that Bush or any of his immediate subordinates actually ordered any of them. Hitler made atrocity a public policy. His crimes were very widespread and almost universal, wiping out (for instance) over 90% of Polish Jewry in a very exacting and systematic way. This was definitely official policy and the orders directing this policy bear the signatures of Hitler and of his immediate subordinates. George Bush committed to holding an election in 2004 and respected the results. His political opponents ran quite an effective campaign against him (bearing in mind how close the results were) and this campaign was often quite vicious. Adolf Hitler immediately suspended all democratic processes and set about murdering all his political opponents virtually as soon as he took office. He passed the Enabling Act, granting himself dicatorial powers, and the only checks and balances that existed were held by fictitious bodies. George Bush has launched no campaign of physical violence against any Americans. If any Americans have died as a result of his regime (impossible to prove) there is no public policy that caused them. Hitler launched a campaign of physical violence that killed 11 million of his citizens. It was definitely a matter of public policy and was carried out by the officers of the State with his approval and on his orders. I think your comparison of Bush to Hitler is a gross insult to all the people Hitler killed. You are downplaying and excusing Hitler's crimes by lumping him together with Bush. As Blackdog says, bandying terms like "evil" and "good" around does nobody any good, especially when it seems that you don't really recognise evil when you see it anyway.

If you are saying that there's absolutely no grounding for this speculation whatsoever why even make it? The fact that you said it at all said that, not only has it crossed your mind, it's actually struck you as a possibility. You think it's plausible that George Bush wants to exterminate native Americans and Jews. What is your evidence? I don't seriously consider an idea without evidence. If you do, then that speaks volumes about your lack of intellecutal integrity, and about the value of your posts, doesn't it? When they put a bullet in the head of Michael Moore, or Noam Chomsky, or any of the other very outspoken Bush critics, get back to me. Until then your argument doesn't hold water. Hitler's first move (before he even got into office, in fact) was to discredit, demonize and physically attack his political opponents. Bush doesn't even seem to realise that Moore exists, for all his public statements reveal, let alone be running some sort of smear campaign against him or having him roughed up by government goons. I further want some evidence that the Republican Party is a personal tool of George W. Bush. Prove to me that the GOP is akin to the Nazi Party and is devoted to doing Bush's every whim. Most Bush critics believe it's the other way around, the GOP calls the shots, and Bush is just a puppet. Oh, boy. I hope you have a single shred of evidence for that. You don't, of course. What's next? George Bush is planning to take over the world with alien UFOs kept in secret at Area 51 after he finishes controlling the minds of the American people with nanobots in flu shots? Prove it. No, you can't do that. You're comparing Bush to Hitler. Hitler did not permit any kind of dilution of his power. After he got the Chancellorship he made sure he broke German business to his will. You're saying that Bush has done the exact opposite. I don't see how that makes a comparison between them very realistic, to be honest. Here's an analogy. "Jerry Seinfeld is just like Bill Cosby. Seinfeld's white. Cosby's black. Don't you see the similarities already?" I think you've been reading the Inquirer too much.

There are 30,000,000 people in Canada. However, unless they own Canada (which they cannot, by definition, since "society" doesn't exist, being merely an abstract aggregate), they can't attach any conditions to the use of Canada as a whole, only the parts of Canada that they own as individuals. This means that any contract they draw up about any property but their own is automatically illegitimate, according to our customs of property law. I can attach terms and conditions to the use of my property. I can't attach them to yours, no matter how much I'd like to. The property right is a natural right, meaning that it is derived from objective observation and is established a priori. If I am free to act, then the products of my actions (my property) must be mine. The material things I use in my actions to generate my property are obtained with the consent of others or are obtained from nature without an equal or greater claim from another (thus preserving their freedom to act). If not free to use my property as I want, then I'm not free to act. If I'm not free to act, then he who constrains my actions is free while I am not. This means that there must be some scientific, objective basis which establishes why he is free to act and why I am not. This basis does not exist. Therefore, denying freedom of action and property rights is not consistent, not objective, not scientific and logically indefensible. The social contract amounts to the use of force to violate this right. I own land in Canada. If I stay on that land and never leave it, then I shouldn't have to conform to the rules of anybody else, otherwise they are violating my natural right. After all, if I exclusively own this land, then nobody else can own it, which means nobody else can attach conditions to its use. But they do. You argue that government or the social contract creates these notions of property. That's wrong, as Rothbard has demonstrated (law reflects custom, so rules of property existed before laws of property, and the law merely formalized and codified them), but I'll let it pass for now. The key flaw in that argument is that this "social contract" that establishes property rights then proceeds to violate its own rules. Why?

Can I see a copy of this contract, with their signatures? Of course not. The fact of the matter is that they are all in the contract regardless of their consent as well, which doesn't help your claim that the social contract is anything but a social extortion. Perhaps you can offer a justification of a contract in which some of the parties mentioned and affected did not give consent and, in fact, weren't even consulted? Isn't that basically a justification for theft and slavery? Because it grants rights and powers over property and people that the drafters of the contract had no claim over.