Hugo

So if I didn't vote, what then? Basically, democracy gives you two choices: play the game and accept the outcome, or don't play the game, and accept the outcome the players decide for you.

Is it "wrong to not 'pay up'" if you never wanted to roll the dice in the first place but were forced to against your will? If we see evil, we should devote ourselves to eliminating it, rather than shrugging our shoulders and ignoring the problem. Furthermore, evil left unchecked will grow. So a minimal government will grow and grow, like the initially minarchist government of the USA that, over the next two centuries, snowballed into the current Leviathan. Alright, you seem to believe that the government is necessary to preserve your fish. I'll prove to you that it isn't. First, I'll give a couple of examples, and then explain the theory. Consider the Atlantic Cod Fisheries. In this case, government protection and communal ownership clearly failed to protect fish populations. Now, consider the example of southern forestry in the USA, where private enterprise and private ownership averted a forecast catastrophic deforestation. The theory is that things owned by everyone will be cared for by no-one. The common attitude will be one of "let someone else worry about it", since nobody is designated as the caretaker. Basically, it is left up to government, or to conservation groups, but if government or these groups err or overlook the issue (as they have countless times before), all is lost. With private ownership, however, there is an economic incentive to conserve. Think about your fishing spot. If you own it, you have a vested interest in avoiding depletion of the fish population since this will deprive you of the future pleasure of fishing. If the fishing spot is owned by somebody else, they have the incentive to protect their investment by restricting your fishing. The only way this will fail is if the owner absolutely does not care about the value of his possessions in any form - monetary, aesthetic, etc. Such an irrational individual would doubtless not possess much for very long.

Well, then there you go. Sounds like tyranny to me. Why should it be called just to have a person swear fealty against their will to a man they don't support and recognise as their leader? Explain that to me, because I don't see how the government "technically owns" Canada.

There's too much omitted from your description. For instance, who owns the car, why, and how? Who is the driver, and why? How do we decide a route? Who proposes the routes we can pick from? The modern 'consensual' state is still made of individuals, so my point stands. You both say that some individuals should be able to coerce other individuals 'for their own good.' I say no individual has the right to coerce any other individual, and a crime is a crime, whether perpetrated by an individual qua citizen or an individual qua government. What if you and I picked a different candidate, who lost? Then we would have actually chosen not to have this person exercise power over us, and yet there he is. And you treat those threads as individual threads too. Furthermore, as the web itself is far too vast or complex to be seen, it is foolish to imagine that you could make a rational decision about the fate of the web as a whole. Yes. All anarchists are in favour of policing and law. The difference between anarchists and statists is that anarchists feel that the police should not be a monopoly, that no one group should have the sole 'right' to violence, and that law and policing should be polycentric rather than monocentric. You've already assumed that you and I are omniscient observers. Therefore, we know what the crime is. If I kill somebody and am never discovered, have I committed a crime or not? If I cut a tree down in the forest, alone, does it make a sound? I choose "society." You choose "domination." Under current laws, maybe, sometimes. However, history shows that monopoly is not sustained unless it has a Pareto optimality, in which case it is moral that it should be sustained. You also have to understand that markets compete not just within themselves but with other markets. Even if Microsoft completely dominated the computer market, they still have to compete with the manufacturers of big-screen televisions for the same consumer dollars. Therefore, the only true monopoly is one of the entire economy, or to put it another way, Communism. Anarchy promises the ability to attain monopoly in the same way as it promises the ability to sprout wings from your shoulders and fly. It doesn't rule it out, but it still won't happen.

And your point? My point was that you are wrong about anarchy. You opined that anarchy failed because it was not a good thing. I am pointing out that anarchy has never failed from its own internal problems but invariably from foreign military invasion. So, you're wrong and proud of it? Interesting. I gave you an example. Do you think that freedom of speech and association don't apply to the ACLU? Oh, I'm sure you can. It's just a pity that that was never your point! You originally said: The law, not the Patriot Act. So according to you, if someone breaks a law by, for instance, not wearing their motorcycle helmet or by driving an unlicensed taxicab, you think their civil rights are forfeit. If you were given a legitimate order to fire on US citizens (for instance, in a case of civil unrest), would you obey it? No, let me ask another question first: what's your service number? What is your unit, where is it stationed, and who is your commanding officer? What does SPORT stand for? I have a friend in Marine Corps staff who I can verify your answers with. Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious, as Oscar Wilde said. Many German Jews said the exact same thing in 1933. That's why so many did not emigrate, as they had faith that their government would never hurt them.

This has already been answered. I said to you: So, now you say, "but what if the city [condo] government owned the city [condo]?" I already answered that too: Does this mean I own your car, or some of it? Does it mean you own your car any less? Or does it just mean that you own your car, I own my lawn, and never the twain shall meet unless it be by our mutual consent? No. Government is a way to allow some people to coerce other people. If it didn't involve coercion, it wouldn't be government.

They aim for 100%. So do all their competitors.

I can talk about whatever I want to. And frankly, my end of the discussion is of much higher quality than yours. Historical anarchy has always been ended by foreign military force. From the American Heritage Dictionary: Let's see, the USA has very extensive territory, comprises a number of territories or nations (Guantanamo, Puerto Rico, etc), and is ruled by a single supreme authority. Or was the British Empire not really an empire either? Sure. In early April of this year, the ACLU filed suit challenging parts of the Patriot Act, but under the Patriot Act, the ACLU isn't allowed to discuss the lawsuit they filed. What law? The law that says you have to wear a motorcyle helmet? That you have to have a government permit to be a taxi driver or a landscaper? You've been told that freedom has a price, and you've been duped into it. Anyone who demands you pay them a price for your freedom is not a protector but an extortionist.

I'm not Canadian, and I'm an anarchist libertarian, so I can lecture the US about "big government" as much as I want, thanks.

The invasion of Iraq probably marks at least the start of imperial overstretch. This phenomenon can be observed in all great empires: Rome, the British, the Habsburg, etc. In all cases, it heralded the collapse of the empire. Basically, it follows the pattern that the empire will become so confident of its power and hegemony that it will start military expeditions in areas not crucial to its natural interest. Iraq is a good example. Whatever the sins of Saddam Hussein, an invasion of Iraq was not in the national interest of the USA. Once this process has begun, the overstretch will bankrupt and destroy the empire. An empire that recognises this process can retreat gracefully, like Britain, but when it fails to recognise its own imminent demise, it collapses catastrophically, like Rome. We'll see. The Patriot Act allows the US Government to imprison US citizens without Miranda rights, or their other rights under the US Constitution. US jails are full of people who are not criminals, but who merely defied government decrees. Drug users, tax dodgers, or anyone "illegally" doing any of the many, many things government has decided you need their blessing to do: landscaping, mail delivery, dispensing legal or medical advice, taxiing or commercial trucking, etc. etc. You are oppressed. You just don't see it. The US Government has made it its business to interfere in every little aspect of your life. Look how massive and bloated the budget is. Look at how heavily you are taxed. The US has become a socialist state, and it retains only enough freedom to ensure a little economic growth. Even that is in jeopardy. Who you pick in this next election doesn't really matter. Kerry will give you a massive government to coerce you into his vision of neo-socialist Utopia, Bush will give you a massive government to coerce foreigners into his vision of neo-socialist Utopia (and probably you, too). Either way, your life is not your own. Isn't that exactly what you're doing right now? "America is great! Terrorists are evil! It's all their fault!" That's akin to saying "I'm the sanest man in this asylum." What's more, you're actually proud of that statement.

Accepted. Are you kidding me? You've been dropping my points like hot potatoes. I have been careful to address a reply to everything you have said, and if you can find an instance I have overlooked, post it now and I will give you a reply. The same could be said of democracy. It only reared its head well into the 20th Century and even then took a long time to even cover half of the world's population. Taking history into account, it's fair to say that the overwhelming majority of people - maybe even 99% - have never lived in a democracy. Does that prove democracy a failure? The demise of historical anarchist societies was universally brought about by foreign military force or the imminent and dire threat thereof. Iceland survived for over three centuries (far longer than the USA has existed) as an anarchist nation, until King Haakon IV of Norway invaded the island to "restore order" to the chaos that his agents such as Snorri Sturluson had created. Holy Experiment Pennsylvania survived until British Redcoats appeared and created a government by bayonet and musket. Anarchist Celtic Ireland was subdued by invasions from England. Anarchism in England itself was badly mauled by King Alfred, who sought to build an army to resist imminent Norman invasion. William I, upon the conclusion of that successful invasion, finished off English anarchism. Anarchist Somalia will probably exist until either the UN or the US decides it isn't fit to live and invades.

Actually, the USA lasted a mere 85 years. The Civil War was the failure of the American Experiment and the country that emerged from it was not the same, having abandoned most of the liberal ideals it was founded upon.

This is a pretty poor excuse for bowing out of a debate. I'm disappointed, especially after you bragged of how easily you could destroy my ideas. Anarchy is not "madness". There are a great many fine minds who endorse and who have endorsed libertarianism. The Libertarian Party is actually the largest political party in the USA (besides the Big Two, obviously). If I'm mad, then so are a lot of Nobel-grade economists, political theorists and philosophers. This basically amounts to an ad hominem attack. I am not insane, Thelonius, I have defended my ideas to you very well and you simply cannot understand them, or you cannot get over your psychological dependency upon the state. The state-citizen relationship is like the parent-child relationship, and a lot of children are afraid to cut the apron-strings and live in the real world. You're one. Your defence of statism is not grounded in reason but in emotion. What you said was that policemen promise to serve the public good, and you're fully confident that a "majority" of them wouldn't just promise that falsely for reasons of personal gain, and by giving them a monopoly on power, you are essentially trusting them without actually ensuring their worthiness in any way. It doesn't have to be that they are corrupt and evil, but perhaps they don't so much care for the law as they do for a stable income. But you are naive enough to believe that this is a workable system. Ah, a good old strawman argument. You can't beat one of those when you have no reasoned response, can you, Thelonius? I ask you once again: what is the difference between working children against their will and educating them against their will? Another strawman argument. The quality of your debate certainly drops off fast, doesn't it? It seems that as I refute your contentions, you just drop them one by one (e.g. monopolies, public goods, your misconceived First Law of Anarchy, the supposed lack of historical examples of anarchy, standardisation, currency, etc.) and now, you are dropping the entire argument. If you feel you've lost, just admit it, rather than blustering and slinging insults.

That's not an economic imperative. In a free market, a monopoly is only held when the result is Pareto optimal. The "need" for the Emancipation Proclamation was not ending slavery anyway. Read it. It wasn't a great document of human rights, it was simply a piece of wartime Union realpolitik that happened to be a stroke of luck for the slaves. Well, you can't have legalised slavery in a free market anyway because you can't alienate the will. Slavery laws would never be lifted in an anarchist system because slavery runs completely counter to anarchism. What I was telling you was that slavery laws followed the economic rejection of slavery rather than caused it. And as regards child labour, what's the difference between educating children against their will and working them against their will? Maybe they benefit from an education, but they benefit from a wage, too. So, the "majority" of policemen are, in fact, superhuman ubermensch. Is that what you're telling me? But the mechanism wields absolutely nothing since "democratic government" is an abstract concept. What that becomes when enacted is a group of individuals, with individual drives, the same as everybody else. The main difference with individuals in government, of course, is that they have a lot more power to further their goals than everybody else does.

Then why did you come here?

Right here, according to R. J. Rummel. Low estimate of Castro's murders, 35,000, high estimate, 141,000. How does this excuse Castro from anything? I don't think so. All these people were doing was talking to Western journalists about standards of living in Cuba and the nature of Castro's regime. An awful lot of Americans have bemoaned Bush's administration to foreign journalists and I don't recall a single one being tried for treason and shot. Perhaps you can provide a link?

To be honest, Playfullfellow, I wouldn't care if legalising drugs made the problem worse. My conscience won't allow me to enslave another human being. Look at it this way. If you tell another human he may not do drugs - which affects only him - you are saying that you should have control over his body, which means he is your slave. They seem to be taking out their problems through other means. Maybe if they had more liquour they might not want to go out slitting throats and shooting clouds all the time? However, I've heard from several Arab friends that the drinking laws in Muslim countries aren't really observed anyway. Apparently, they make a good excuse if the police want to shake you down, but there's a lot of hard drinkers in Muslim countries. And yet, society failed to destroy itself. If we could get back the billions of dollars being wasted each year on the War on Drugs, maybe we could fund some help for addicts.

All the laws you have cited are unnecessary in the free market, and as I said, are a foolish attempt to control chaos. Monopolies don't arise or last unless there's an economic (not political) imperative, safety and child labour laws usually follow the changes they want made anyway rather than set precedents. In the free market, firms must compete in the labour market by offering a safe and rewarding workplace. For instance, by the time government got around to legislating against slavery and child labour, these practices were already virtually extinct. Truth in advertising laws are unnecessary since companies who lie don't survive. For instance, as soon as the news on Enron broke, their share values plummetted before the government had even moved against them. Even if the feds had never brought charges, Enron would have gone bankrupt anyway. So, let me get this straight. You think that men are fallible, so some men should be given arbitrary power and a monopoly over the exercise of violence? I think that men are fallible, therefore, it would be extremely foolish to give any one of them a measure of arbitrary power. You just said men were fallible. Now they're not fallible? Or they instantly become infallible when they don a police uniform? BTW, "police" in my sentence was the verb and "men" the accusative noun. Nice try at a spelling flame, though. I thought you said men were fallible? If fallible, how can they be trusted to keep such a promise once they gain the awesome power of government? You just said that we need laws for truth in advertising. So you expect that a corporation will lie, and we need to be protected, but you expect that a politician wouldn't lie and make false promises when he was trying to get an office of great power? Doesn't that strike you as extremely naive?

Oh, I'm sure they are. About 140,000 who weren't quite happy with him were shot without trial. Everyone else is in his torture chambers. In his latest roundup, just last year, he arrested a few hundred intellectuals who'd been talking to foreign journalists and sentenced them to 20+ years in jail. Read the link. It's not me who claims that, it's the International Trade Commission. $125m per annum is economic small potatoes. They are not blockaded and sabotaged from trade with the outside world. The only two countries on the entire planet who refuse to trade with Cuba are the USA and Israel. Read up.

So what? Putting a gun to your head is even more destructive than hard drugs - do you want to make that illegal again too? Then read up on prohibition.

That's exactly what I'm saying. I give you the brief American Prohibition as an historical example.

There's no moral imperative behind the illegality of drug use. It is a circular argument: drug use is illegal because it's wrong. Why is it wrong? Because it's illegal. I don't think this is an appropriate use of public funds, however, it seems fair to say that if we hadn't made drug use a criminal activity we wouldn't have these drug abuse problems in the first place. During Prohibition, alcoholism and alcohol-related deaths were much greater than before and after. This safe injection site is a band-aid solution to a problem that government created. If drugs are legalised, these sites won't be one-hundredth as necessary as they are now. The problem associated with drug abuse, especially the "social costs", are primarily about them being illegal. If drugs were not illegal, their quality would not be so dubious as to actually include toxic substances in many cases. The astronomical cost of drugs is because they are so illegal. The actions of the government to arrest drug dealers and raid grow-houses basically amount to causing a massive raise in the marginal value of a drug. If you wonder why Shaq O'Neill gets paid more than a teacher, it's because his marginal value is that much higher. If a teacher is tylenol, Shaq is heroin. This astronomical cost drives users to crime in order to fuel their addictions. Because using the drugs themselves is a crime, users don't feel safe using them in many places and have difficulty getting the equipment necessary. This leads to needle-sharing and other dangerous practices. The involvement of the drugs trade with other serious criminal activities like extortion, robbery, and organised crime is because the drugs trade is illegal. When something is pushed to a black market, it joins other items on the black market. When alcohol was prohibitioned, it became the privy of the Mafia. When it was legalised, the Mafia lost control of it very quickly. This isn't to say that drug use is great. It's not. But to say that you have a right to decide what is best for other people - to tell them what to do - is an argument for slavery, as I've said before.

Apparently not, since you think him worse than Castro. Castro is a real tyrant, who keeps his people in poverty (the US embargo means nothing, US-Cuban trade would be worth about $125m per year to Cuba), imprisons intellectuals, shoots dissidents without fair trial or any trial at all, tortures innocents including young children, and more. I'm no big fan of Bush, believe me, but I'm not so ignorant as to lump him in the same category as Castro.

You say that as though government was God, or some other supreme arbiter quite apart from the affairs of men. But government is not God, it is merely a group of human individuals like you or me. Therefore, the question for you is what makes these individuals the "legitimate enforcers of law" over you and me? There is a human tendency to want to replace chaos with order, to attempt to neaten up a perceived mess. The empirical evidence, however, is that chaos is better than order, and is best left alone. The chaotic free market provides a far superior economy to tightly regimented and neat socialism. By treating the threads as individual, and not attempting to deal with the (in our case, incomprehensible) web as a whole. You can mint whatever you want. Others will judge if it is trustworthy or not. Let me throw my first contention back into this argument. The state is just individuals. Why are some individuals to be trusted to mint money and others not? Same again. You won't police yourself, of course, but others will be interested in policing you, and you them. Apply the original point once more. If men cannot police men, why do you say that some men can police men? No, and you couldn't be trusted in that situation with a state in existence either. If there's little likelihood of another discovering your crime in anarchy, there's little likelihood of them discovering it under a government either. Or are you claiming that governments eliminate crime? So, I cannot be trusted, but other people (the government) can? If we were witnessing the Second Coming I might accept that, but the Kingdom of God doesn't seem to be forthcoming, which leaves us with the situation of men ruling men.

Within those boundaries, it is absolute. So what? Then there's no resolution. If the two men won't come to an agreement, won't accept arbitration and are doomed to eternal impasse, there won't be a compromise, will there? To demand, request or take as one's own. Now, you see, you're falling into statist patterns of thinking again. You're asking me to define how an anarchist society would work. I will not and cannot. The whole idea of the anarchist society is that people will select, in this case, whomever they want as an arbiter, on whatever principles they like. So, what do we need government for? No, you refuted my claim with insufficient argument. I want clarification. Why don't you see why first arrival is grounds for just claim? Then find an arbiter or make me an offer. Nothing. How is this an argument for government? Well, as you say, laws come from society. That's fine. However, the state isn't society, it's a collection of individuals who have taken on for themselves power to make the laws. And where's government? By explicitly removing it from your process, you are supporting anarchy. It's not been disposed of at all. I am still waiting for an answer to my question. By what right does the group of individuals who style themselves the Government of Canada demand that a group of individuals who do not style themselves the Government of Canada leave their own property if they fail to follow the first group's demands? From Merriam-Webster Dictionary of Law, 1996: How does what I said fit in with "coercion", exactly? You see, the others in this society are not threatening to do anything. They are threatening not to do something. Do you count failure to act as an action? By that rationale, aren't you starving thousands of children in Africa right now by failing to give them food?