Hugo

Then prove it, with logic and facts. Then by all means, return to debating with yourself. I'm sure you'll find yourself much more agreeable than I.

Au contraire, my dear Eureka, it is the mark of serious enquirer, the sceptic if you will, that he accepts nothing. You repeatedly threatened to educate me and enlighten me earlier in this thread, so please, go ahead and cite these works of Russell you are so keen to have in your argument. Where's your argument on 19th Century standards of living gone to, again? It's like a mirage. Every time we get close to discussing it, it vanishes in your bluster. The public goods fallacy is a circular argument. Public property exists, so we need public provision of goods, to support public property. Remove public property and the argument for public goods disappears. Your other fundamental error is to assume that the state is godlike and outside the system. The truth is that the state is made of individuals, and it is not an arbiter of the system but a player in it. From an ontological viewpoint, our freedoms are equal. Similarly, the only way to order a society is to agree that our freedoms are equal. Of course, you could say that you will trade freedom, but consider that if you were trading, you would do it of your free will, and so be free. If you agree to serve another man, have you actually given up any of your freedom? No, we do not. We subject the criminal to a punishment against his will. We decide this punishment not with consultation of the victim, but arbitrarily and nonsensically. We then proceed not only to fail to compensate the victim, but to actually force the victim to pay for the incarceration of the criminal. Justice is a commodity. People want justice, and they'll pay a certain price for a certain quality and quantity. The state does not have the mechanisms to respond to consumer demand as the free market does, so a state-delivered commodity will never reflect what people want. This is why our justice system outrages so many people. It isn't delivering what they want. A free market justice system will reflect what the people actually demand in justice. Our overcrowded jails speak to the fallacy of that argument. No, because the state isn't God, it is another institution. To "improve" on the monopoly situation by using the state simply proposes to solve monopolies with a monopoly, i.e. total nonsense. It wasn't. Yes, it was. Hyperinflation, monetary panic and so forth are exclusively the domain of state-issued currency. In hyperinflation, the eventual result is that people reject the currency. Where there are competing, private currencies, this is no problem. Where there is only one currency, it becomes a collossal problem. I can't affect your mortgage, August. Waste, and so the free market will find a way around it, as they have in the UK where water supply and power generation are private without having multiple water pipes or power lines. You can't do that. The condo owners own the condo. Unless the city government owns the city, the same example cannot be used. Of course, if the city government did own the city, it wouldn't be a government any more. Hold on, that's a non sequitur. How does a town council equate condo owners? How can you own something to "an extent"? Either you own it, or you don't. You don't own something "slightly" or "just a bit." You can own just a bit of something, but that is a different concept entirely. The government are robbers, August, and yet you continue to defend them. The only way you can say that government produces anything is that it produces what people may not want, at a price they may not want to pay, of a quality and quantity they do not desire, and then forces them to buy under threat of violence.

If you still have doubts that Che didn't give people a fair trial before having them shot, then don't take my word for it. Take Che's. I already gave you the quote where he denounces the trial and due procedure as archaic and worthless. It's my opinion that you've had your preconceptions of Che Guevara smashed, by his own words and the words of people far more intimate with the facts than you, and you're finding it a little hard to deal with, hence your floundering. I don't think anybody's going to get very upset with you if you acknowledge Che Guevara as the cold-blooded murderer that he was. Maybe Caesar, but she is even less acquainted with the facts than you.

I don't see it as inconsistent at all. Freedom is absolute until it crosses the boundary into the freedom of others. Anything else basically amounts to a defence of tyranny, that it is permissible for the freedom of some men to infringe upon others. To us in consensus. My freedom is more valuable to me, his to him, but together we can agree that our freedoms are equal. So therefore, we build a society upon the idea of equal freedom. You should know what a claim is. And in this case, the argument would probably hinge upon whether Man X had claimed the tree or just the shade from it. If the latter, then Man Y could do whatever he liked to the tree as long as that did not impinge upon Man X's shade. Prove it to the other man, ultimately. There is, of course, a difference between not having been proven and having been proven but unaccepted, and in the latter case, one man is simply wrong. If the two men could not settle their differences between them then, as you suggested in another thread, they should probably appeal to a mutually agreeable arbiter and agree beforehand to respect his decision. In such a case, they must "prove it" to the arbiter, whose decision then "proves it" to the men themselves. If both men consented, they could duel for it. Why? What are your grounds for legitimate claim? Morality. To argue for the latter basically states that you have no respect for your fellow human beings, which means that you are bucking the trend of humans as social creatures. I think you are confusing the moral with the practical. Even if you can assert a "claim" to my possessions by using force, does that make such a claim moral? That depends upon the people, doesn't it? No, the exchange is mutually advantageous. A robbery is more advantageous than a trade, but only to one party, which goes back to my point about freedoms. If you like, by co-operating instead of fighting we are trading freedom instead of robbing it from each other. Who makes the law and what gives their laws moral legitimacy? What if two groups of unequal or equal size face off on an issue of law? In effect, each group gives effect to the "rights" of its members. That cannot be true. If rights don't exist without law, but law protects rights, then neither would ever come into existence because each necessitates the other. Opt out of what? Once again, to say that I can opt out by leaving is saying that the government of Canada owns Canada. The incentive to survive. Humans almost invariably can't survive without other humans, and if other humans refuse to deal with you because of some crime, you have to resolve that issue or die. Think about it. The criminal is not made to go anywhere, not clapped in irons, not forced under threat of violence to do anything. All that is happening is that the other people in the society are refusing to deal with him, as is their right. Basically, it's a deal. Live alone and away from us, or atone for your actions. Whichever the criminal decides, nobody will use force against him. Under the current system, of course, only the latter choice is open.

Arrogance and a smug sense of self-satisfaction.

Then that would probably make you a legal positivist. The opposite opinion would be that laws are the rules as they are, morality is the rules as they should be. But neither viewpoint accurately describes the relationship of law and morality. To refute legal positivism, the fact is that in legal rulings judges often refer to morality when ruling in ambiguous cases. The refutation of the latter is that laws may be unjust, but they are still law. The most probable interpretation of law is that it is not a snapshot but a continuing process that reflects not only morality but also legal history. If you are viewing law as inherently subjective, you presuppose that rights and morality are inherently subjective too, that there are no "true" human rights. Of course, this raises the question of to whom is it subjective? Herding Jews into gas chambers might not have been immoral to Nazis, but it was immoral to the Jews. Well, this is what I have been saying for a long time now and I thought we could probably take that as read. My freedom is more valuable to me. The other mans freedom is more valuable to him. The only mutually acceptable conclusion is that our freedoms are equal and equally valuable. Who claimed it first? If Man X claimed the tree first, and he can prove it (which he can, by the fact that he was there before Man Y), then Man X has the rights to the tree. Because my will to use the rock was exerted before anybody elses. Perhaps you are claiming that "might makes right" and the only true right is that which you can enforce. By that standard, of course, you have no objection to the Holocaust or anything of that ilk, since the Nazis simply used greater force against the Jews. However, humans as a rule don't respect the right of might. Most animals do. A lion exerts his power over his pride, until a bigger lion comes along and kills him and his cubs. Humans, when put together, generally co-operate rather than fight. As reasoning creatures, humans recognise that the law of the jungle only benefits them as long as they are the strongest. Therefore, to settle for less in co-operation is a better option when one considers the future. Actually, for this thread it doesn't matter. There are a great number of anarchists who disavow property altogether, like Proudhon, Bakunin or Chomsky. Therefore, an attack on property is not an attack on anarchism, and if you'll read the title of the thread, that is what you are setting out to take apart here. Your assertions would mean that the only right is that which you can enforce, but when reading your prior posts on this forum I know that you don't actually believe that. What is the reason for this self-contradiction? I want to know what you think of as a "liberal democracy". I don't believe that any nation-state currently existing fits your criteria. Like Eureka, you are basing your argument on what you would like to be true, rather than what is true. You would prefer to believe that democratic government can safeguard rights and be just and fair, but history shows that no government safeguards rights and is just and fair. Basically, non-coercive law is law that does not require the use of force to bring criminals into submission. Under anarchist law, prisoners willingly attend their trials and willingly carry out their punishment. It is the existence of public property which prevents this currently. In a pure private-property society, a criminal can get away with not being punished as long as he can exist without ever setting foot off his own property or dealing with another human being for the rest of his life. Even if he had a large, self-sufficient farm, he would effectively be sentenced to hard labour for life. Where a monopoly exists in a free market, it is transient, or it serves a purpose on the market (i.e. to have a monopoly is more efficient than not to have a monopoly). The exploitative and long-lived monopolies we have seen in our semi-free market have all been the result of state sanction. Because, in the past, you have presented as fact that which has been proven false. Therefore, unless I have good evidence that you are speaking the truth, I am forced to believe that you are lying. Since I have no evidence that Russell ever said that which you allege, I must disbelieve your statement. These are the policies of state governments. Prove it. The free market killed slavery and child labour, because in the evolving labour market both ceased to be economically viable. The state only moved to abolish slavery and child labour after they were virtually extinct anyway. I already said to you: And what is your response? Another novelist. There seems to be a good deal of standardization in the computer industry without state control. The myriad technology companies have all agreed upon standards like USB, Firewire, PCI, AGP, RAM applications, and so forth. There also doesn't seem to be a lack of standardization in paper sizes, say, or in the sizes of pop cans. I'll give you a hypothesis. It's actually more than that, really, since it has already happened countless times. Somebody sets up a body to establish standards for safety and quality. Manufacturers and builders subscribe to these standards and if they meet them, get to place a stamp of approval on their products. Customers look for the stamp, those manufacturers who can't meet the standards go out of business. Similarly, if the standards body sells out and starts stamping unsafe products, their stamps become worthless, consumers distrust them, and manufacturers will cease to subscribe. For example, how many car manufacturers advertise how safe Consumer Guide found their cars to be? Yes. But unless you mint money that is of a certifiable value and backed by a stable commodity, nobody will accept your money. Therefore, money will be minted by people with large gold stocks, like banks, just as it was two centuries ago, when the money supply was more stable. That just takes us back where we started. What right to they have to impose a legal system on somebody else's property? Do I have the right to change the contract you have with your mortgage company? Why? The public goods problem. Basically, how to find private funds for public goods. How to make the individual pay for that which he'll get to use whether he pays or not. There are many solutions. But this problem is already resolved, in the form of condo fees, or "bundling" as it is understood in economic terms. Basically, you agree to pay for the public goods when you buy the private. If you don't like it, you find another condo. And no, this cannot be applied to Canada as a whole. The condo owners are the holders of the condo building in entirety, so for this analogy to be valid, once again, the government would have to own Canada in entirety. I think it can be said that a large portion of the evil in the world is tied up with failing to treat people as individuals.

Private schooling.

That is exactly what society is! Only if you're a solipsist. If you believe that each human individual is as individual as you are, then "society" doesn't actually exist at all. Social trends are merely coincidental movements of individuals.

You know what I consider "really dumb"? A three-word, ad hominem response. Allow me to illuminate my point a little better. The intelligentsia, or "people of sensibility" as I alluded to them above, have always considered the tastes of the masses (forgive my classist language for the moment) as vulgar. In ancient Rome, men of letters lamented the commercialisation of their religious festivals, for instance, in much the same way as Maplesyrup is complaining about the commercialisation of his television programmes two thousand years later. We're all here now despite these Roman sell-outs, and of all the problems humanity has faced in the two millenia since I don't think any can be attributed to excessive commercialisation. Most posters here are of above-average intelligence and inclined to intellectual pursuits, e.g. debating politics. Nobody so far in this thread has said anything good about mass-market TV or advertising. The best that has been said is that it should be left alone. Nobody said, "Hey, Jerry Springer is actually high-quality TV" or "I consider scantily clad girls wiggling around in a razor commercial to be quite avant-garde." TV advertising is essentially the same Jerry-Springer-esque medium. It has to appeal to the masses, because TV advertising is a bad way to reach a niche market. Specialist magazines, for instance, are much more efficient. Therefore, a successful TV advert must communicate in terms that the average viewer most identifies with. Like Jerry Springer, it must be virtually devoid of factual content, appeal to emotion alone, and be carefully crafted to generate a predetermined response. A TV advert that is simply a dry statement of benefits of the product will never sell anything. Imagery sells. SUV adverts don't usually talk about powerplant torque or cargo space, and when they do, it's merely a voiceover for the imagery: rugged, handsome men and women white-water rafting, climbing mountains, mountain biking and so forth. If you shut your eyes and listen to an advert voice-over it's amazingly banal. The current Acura RSX Type-S commercial is just a video of cars and a techno soundtrack. No facts at all, but pure emotive imagery. What's wrong with this? Nothing. Advertising is like the trashy romance novel, but like the novel, nobody's forcing you to read it, or watch it. If the novel is too trashy, nobody will read it. If the advert is too far-fetched or stretches the truth too much, the product won't sell. The sole purpose of advertising is to inform in much the same way as Michael Moore wants to inform. They'll use the facts - or something vaguely resembling them - but they definitely want the audience to have a particular reaction. But advertising, like Moore, is a feedback loop too. An advert cannot push people very far beyond what they already want or feel, or it won't be successful. Moore, too, was successful not because he opened minds, but because he appealed to the preconceptions of his audience. I think most people who went to see his movies already agreed with their conclusions, or at the very least their premises. Blackdog, I'm sorry I didn't reply to your post specifically but I think you'll find what I said relevant to it.

Are you sure? I've heard sarcasm works better.

If what you are saying is that rights are conditional on the attitudes of others, what rights do they have? We are all individuals, and society does not consist of "me" and "everybody else." Nothing has value until somebody places a value upon it. But people's market decisions, indicated by pricing, consumer demand and so forth, reflect what value they place upon things. It's not always simple. For instance, if somebody prefers a DVD player to health insurance, it does not necessarily mean that he prefers watching DVDs to being healthy. It might mean that the certainty of watching DVDs is worth trading for the possibility that he will become ill. There's several answers. Anarchists could simply all flee to some deserted island, as the Icelanders fled Norway in the 9th Century. Or people could become more averse to the idea of state interference, gradually rolling back state power until it disappears. You are saying - sorry, you are saying that "everybody else" is saying - that what is morally correct might not be possible, which would make it morally incorrect, which is a non sequitur.

How far are you willing to go with this? Employment is simply a transaction, labour for money. If I contract with a female accountant, am I discriminating against male accountants? If I employ a male cleaner, am I discriminating against female cleaners? To reverse the transaction (not to change it's fundamental nature) and make it money for labour, am I discriminating against Zellers by shopping at Wal-Mart? If I buy a loaf of bread from the male-owned corner shop, am I discriminating against the female-owned one down the street? How will you address this?

Possession is the right I have over objects granted by rules, either moral or legal. In my case, I am appealing to moral rules, namely, that nothing shall interfere with free will. In this instance this is basically the Kantian argument that the only right is freedom. Freedom, as I see it, must be the only ultimate right because one man cannot lose his freedom without it being taken or abused by another, and there is nothing inherent to a man that would make his freedom more valuable than anothers. Of course, freedom has a boundary at the point where it detracts from anothers freedom, but that condition still does not elevate any man above his brothers. At any point you could completely moot the discussion by stating that you don't agree that freedom is the only right or even a right at all. However, that does not prove either you or I wrong, it only proves that you disagree with me. If he took it when my back was turned that would be an act of violence (seizure) exercised against my property. It would interfere with my freedom to use my possession (even use in a manner that wouldn't interfere with anybody elses freedom). Resort to force is wrongful because it interferes with free will. If this man cannot resort to force to acquire my rock, then his acquisition of my rock must be done with my consent according to my free will. No. That point is a non sequitur from my arguments. If it follows from yours, you'll have to give your starting point first so that I can see how. Then define your understanding of ownership and rights in such a way as to justify the governmental right to set limitations on the use of objects that came into my possession according to the rules of ownership I laid out above. I expect that your definition of ownership differs from mine because otherwise your position would be inconsistent. I just want to know what it is. I withdraw my accusation of lying on the condition that you give me an example of a "liberal democracy" as you define it. I don't reject all law, I reject all coercive law. The only morally just law is that which has been consented to by those it applies to. Well, some time ago I asked you to show me a monopoly that came into existence without state fiat. You were unable to. This brings us back to the question of who owns Canada. The government can only say I consent to their laws by being on their territory if it is, in fact, their territory. Otherwise, I could say that your act of breathing is your consent to giving me $10,000. Of course. This is how the government is able to violate our rights. It has told us that they are not our rights at all.

Then Kruschev would have created capitalism. Then I reject it, because I've never encountered such a proposition in any of Russell's works and, given your track record for false statements (e.g. the 19th Century standard of living - a point you have dropped again), I certainly won't take your word for it. I'm glad to see your argument is based upon mere presumption. This is a strawman argument that ignores everything I have previously written on this subject. I think you are just being facetious. You promised me that you could "rend asunder" my anarchist ideas, but so far all I've gotten is strawmen, historical and economic ignorance, and a failure to read my posts before you reply to them. Either join in a serious debate, or bow out gracefully. But it doesn't need to be. That's the beauty of it. There is absolutely nothing to prevent a bunch of people in an anarcho-capitalist society from starting up a worker's collective or a commune as self-sufficient as they liked. In the anarcho-capitalist society, the only limit is human creativity. Nothing is forbidden save the violation of another's freedom. Your thinking belies your preconceived ideas. You are so used to an existence of coersion and rules that you believe wherever a system exists, it must be bound by rules and coersion. You would realise that, in an anarcho-capitalist society, there would be no force to prevent voluntary socialism. If such socialism did not appear, the only explanation could be that people reject it and prefer the alternatives. Or Iceland, Ireland, Anglo-Saxon England, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, or Somalia. No, Communism does, because it stresses that only material things are of value and in all aspects of its doctrine, respects only the economic. Once again, there's nothing to prevent voluntary socialism in market anarchy. If people wish to be virtuous and work for rewards which are not of economic value, there is nothing in anarchy to prevent them. So, you are telling me that, according to you, my right is only equal to my success in using force to defend it? Bearing that in mind, it's highly ironic that you would accuse me of respecting only the law of the jungle. In your example, the second man would certainly have possession of the rock - wrongfully. And if these others you speak of discover my bloody corpse in the woods, dead at his hands, they're not very likely to respect his claim to the rock. And this is another strawman.

The question that raises is, what's the difference between the two? This cannot be true. No amount of advertising could have stopped electric light from replacing candlelight, cars replacing horses, electric ovens and microwaves from replacing open hearths. In this way, the free market or any part thereof cannot tell viewers what they want or influence their decisions save by the act of informing them which choices they have. Advertising is simply a branch of applied psychology. It is coarse because the public is coarse, and loud, brash, and sexual for the same reason. It offends people of sensibility for the same reason that the general public has always offended people of sensibility. This also ties into Maplesyrup's point: although Maplesyrup is incorrect on point 2. People have far more leisure time than ever before, since the expansion of wealth due to capitalism creates pressure on employers to be better competitors in the labour market, by offering more money, shorter hours and more days off. Whereas two hundred years ago, people might have spent 60-80 hours a week working, now most people only spend 40. Obviously they'll find something to fill this gap. It isn't that TV has encroached upon creative activities, rather that TV has expanded to fill a gap created by increased leisure time.

How does a person lose by getting what they want? The only loss is that which you perceive, not which they perceive, which amounts to "I know what's good for you better than you do", or the road to despotism. It's also foolish to imagine that TV is taking us down some road of crap. We always had crap and the "lowest common denominator" never demanded anything more. Today it's Jerry Springer and The Bachelor, 50 years ago, pin-up girls, trashy pulp fiction and freakshows, 100 years ago, cockfights and bareknuckle boxing, 1000 years ago, bear-baiting and pillorying. Not to mention all the other things that people do and did for fun and escapism - prostitution, drug abuse, S&M, and so forth. TV didn't invent any of those either. Of course, it's only my opinion that that stuff is crap, which is why I'm not about to tell people they should be ashamed to enjoy Jerry Springer, and I'd appreciate it if they'd leave my enjoyment of baseball alone too.

That would be true of Communism, because since the rewards of communism are not proportionate to the effort, it requires effort without reward. Anarchism is the polar opposite of Communism and does not rely upon any aspect of human nature. If everybody is evil, anarchy works. If everybody is saintly, anarchy works. "I think on the whole the sort of method adopted by Descartes is right: that you should set to work to doubt things and retain only what you cannot doubt because of its clearness and distinctiveness." -- Bertrand Russell, Lectures, 182. I've never come across any denial from Russell of the Cartesian axiom. Russell's work on epistemology and metaphysics mostly discusses how we arrive at knowledge, for example, that things are logical constructions whose nature we can only explore through 'sensibilia', our senses. He cited this as being proof against Descartes' demon or evil genius, whereas knowledge about an object derived without sensibilia is not. Russell also made an effort to get beyond the Cartestain problem with his work on postulates of scientific inference in Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, and argued for a priori knowledge that he termed 'animal expectation.' What you call an "unknowable assumption" is simply the assumption that nothing cannot think. Then around 40% of the electorate voted against the system of liberal democracy by refusing to participate in it. If we have 10 men in a room, does the vote of 6 of them to rob the other 4 legitimise their robbery?

Worse. I've seen French and Italian television. French TV is basically a stream of softcore porn and Italian TV is all sports and game shows.

It seems that you will disbelieve anything I say barring the Cartesian cogito, ergo sum. Nevertheless, I shall give it a try, but be aware that furthering your line of inquiry is likely to lead you down the path of solipsism, and this debate is fast changing from the political to the ontological. Just entitlement. The natural right is the right I can give myself without any other individual having granted it to me, nor that I have appropriated without infringing upon the right of another to give himself the right. If I am the only human being in existence and I come upon, say, a rock, I can claim it for myself and use it for whatever I want, constrained only by laws which do not come from man at all (i.e. the laws of physics). I need no force or any other human being to do this. To take into my possession. Because if a second man comes along and wants my rock, he cannot acquire it without resort to force or negotiation. He does not have the same natural right to the rock because I did not have to do either to acquire the rock. I just defined that for you. I don't pretend to be a great philosopher, but if you want the word of a great philosopher, you can always consult their works. See above. I am always the instigator of my own labour. Then, as I have been saying to August, this means that the Canadian government must own the entire country and everything in it, if my departure is required to escape their jurisdiction. If you disagree, then tell me what you would say is the justification for disposing of or attaching conditions to the use of what you do not own. Furthermore, if you believe that the state does have these rights over you, then China and Cuba are waiting. As the example of American progression from liberalism to statism proves, once there has been created a state there is no logical stopping-point for it. It will continue to accumulate power and eventually become totalitarian. That, simply, is a lie. Failing to file a tax return in the US is punishable by one year in prison. SIN fraud in Canada is punishable by the same. Try resisting arrest and force will be used against you. Monopolies don't exist in a fair market. A liberal democracy is not a co-operative because at least some of the citizens never consented to co-operate. I believe 77% of the Canadian electorate didn't vote for the Liberals. That's a pretty pathetic co-operative. Whatever. Wherever I have permission to do it from the rightful owner, and with anyone who also gives their permission (assuming I also consent to both). Ask them! How should I know? If they willingly consent to whatever it is I'm doing, either there's something in it for them, or they just don't care. Either way, I'm not violating their rights, which remain the same as mine. Actually, I gave you an alternate premise as well, and explained how both support my proposition. No, Sweal, it's a strawman. I said, "I can do whatever I like with this computer. I can use it as a doorstop or set it alight." To which you replied, "what if your act of setting it alight interfered with your neighbours?" Now, if you read above, you'll see that your question has already been answered. So either this is a strawman, or just a waste of time. Exactly. But before you start about "impact on society", the anarchist viewpoint is that unless you can identify a specific individual or individuals upon whom your act is impacting, there is no other party, no victim. There is no such thing as crimes against society, or victimless crime. Either a crime has a victim, or it is not a crime. But I can choose not to have a phone. I can't choose not to be conscripted. I suppose you could say that I have to be conscripted to pay the price for the great benefits the state gives me, however, I have no choice about whether I receive those benefits, either. Note how this can also be applied to taxation. Now, if you believe that this is correct, then you are claiming that it is acceptable to force a payment from somebody as long as you force them to accept a service in return, even if it's a service they don't want, or an act only you judge to be a service. For instance, I could rape a woman, claim that I was doing her the "service" of impregnating her or giving her the chance at being impregnated, charge her $5000 for my service, and force her to pay at gunpoint. If taxation is just, so is that.

Like capitalism, anarchy actually relies upon utilising the omnipresent "dark side" of human nature. Socialism denies it, and all statism has an element of socialism. Quite simply, anarchy relies not upon a citizen being virtuous, but upon the idea that he will not tolerate less-than-virtuous behaviour in his neighbour. Gary Becker says that there is a marriage market with prices, marginal costs and so forth. Wing Suen of Hong Kong University used his work as the basis for computer simulation of the marriage market, resembling a Tobit model. Becker has also done a lot of work into application of microeconomics to precisely the "market failures" you are talking about - marriage, family, crime and addiction, for example. For these efforts, Becker was awarded the Nobel prize in economics in 1992, and the National Medal of Science in 2000. "Earnest money contributes to efficient transacting in real estate markets. Engagement rings contribute to efficient relationship formation in what Nobel laureate Gary Becker refers to as the marriage market. The giver of such a ring pledges, explicitly or implicitly, to work toward achievement of a marriage between himself and his fiancée. By taking herself out of the general marriage market, the recipient of the ring puts herself at risk. Specifically, she risks that while she is off the market, so to speak, she will miss meeting someone else with whom she might have enjoyed a happy and fulfilling relationship. By accepting her fiancé's ring, she gives up valuable opportunity, secure in the knowledge that if her fiancé dumps her, the value of the ring will compensate her for the costs implied by those lost opportunities. Analytically, the fiancé's pledge of good faith (purpose, incentives, and impact on behavior) is identical to that of a prospective house buyer." -- David Labland and John Sophocleus, professors of economics at Auburn University, in The Freeman, January 1998, Vol. 48, No. 1. Water takes the path of least resistance, people take the path of greatest profit. As it stands, since the state has arbitrary power it makes more sense for airlines to have the state forcibly make the arrangements for a new airport. This is more "efficient" only if you do not regard parties other than the airlines as having any desired outcome. Quite simply, it's like saying that the most efficient way for me to acquire a television is to steal yours. It's true, if your interests are disregarded entirely. This is the same for other aspects of industry, such as outsourcing. If a firm stands to lose $5m from foreign competition, it makes economic sense to spend $500,000 on lobbying government to exact a protective import tarriff - even though such a tarriff impinges upon natural rights. Explain how. That's not a priori. Only if your family monopolises your business, uses force against you and expropriates your property. I think that is unworkable. Even if you got everybody who voted to all vote "yea" (impossible), it would simply mean that those who abstained will be oppressed. It's a misnomer. That sort of situation never arose in Iceland. Of course, with competition, if one police agency attempts to extort me I simply go to another police agency and say "that police agency is trying to extort me." As it stands, there is no competition, so when the state police extort from you ("traffic offence" shakedowns, drug raids, tax enforcement, etc.) you have nowhere to go. No, you are missing my point. If the state has the right to levy taxes against me, and I can only avoid that by leaving the country, that would have to mean that the entire country was the property of the state. If it were not, that means the state is violating natural rights by disposing of and attaching conditions to the use of property they don't own. No, it is not. You don't "negotiate" anything with the state. The state simply tells you what you are required to agree to on pain of imprisonment or death. Until you can provide some examples that withstand scrutiny, such an argument is as useless as "what if resources were infinite?" How can an attribute of you exist before you? It's plain to see, historically, that arbitrary power invested in a state snowballs. Take the USA as an example. The original government after independence was pretty libertarian, allowing for a state purely for the purpose of co-ordinating defence, as it was during the Revolution. After that, the state progressively awarded more power to itself with successive amendments to the constitution (e.g. the right to tax). Another point to note is that wars generally accompany an increase of domestic state power. The American Civil War ended the small state, after it followed central banking, state control of the economy, national debt (to this day, not yet repaid) and so forth. The First World War was followed by the embryonic welfare state, the Second by its completion, and the War on Terror leading us to the present situation where absolutely nothing is sacred, no aspect of human life is free of some kind of state interference, with the Patriot Act and so forth that allows the government to treat US citizens as POWs, denying them habeas corpus and their Miranda rights. This is what you get when you award someone arbitrary power. Inevitably, somebody will use that power to award themselves more power. Consider that the examples of anarchist societies I gave were not destroyed from within but from foreign invasion. It follows that the greatest problem facing an anarchist state is self-defence rather than any internal problem.

I am taking as my definition of property the Lockean standard, which is, basically, a thing that I acquire right of disposal over by being the first to appropriate it, the first to labour upon it, or by gift, bequest or exchange. Locke would tell you that this is a "natural right" which exists in humans even in an Hobbesian state of nature. Classical liberal philosophers. Of course, if your philosophy is collectivist, as per Marx or Lenin, then that isn't true. But collectivist property ideals hinge not upon ownership or non-ownership, but merely transfer of ownership. Private property is naturally consistent, e.g. I had it first, therefore it's mine. Force may be required to protect that but not to create it. Other notions of property are not, because they require force not just to protect, but merely to implement. Define "processes." If it passes through somebody else's labour, we would have laboured on it together. But it is impossible that I would not own the product or a part thereof without having freely given up ownership of it. But there is no option whether or not to pay the fee or receive the benefit. It's like a Mafia protection racket, I pay a fee for "protection", but if I don't pay it, I get roughed up by Mafia goons. In another thread you railed against monopoly and monopolistic practices, yet you seem to have no problem with state monopolies and monopolistic practices. Why this self-contradiction? Then, as August rightly says, you must see taxation as a form of enslavement. They simply differ in where the confiscation takes place. In conscription, it happens at the labour level, in taxation, at the monetary exchange level. Membership in what? If the state is charging me for membership in the country in that, as August said before, I can be charged taxes simply for living in Canada, it therefore follows that the state owns Canada and everything in it. My house isn't owned by me, it's owned by the government, because when I'm in it they can still tax me. Because liberty - the right to do as you choose - hinges upon property. You can only do as you choose with your property, which ties into your further point: There are actually two schools of anarchist thought on ownership of the self. The first is that we own our bodies and ourselves, since we can do as we please with them, which fits the Lockean definition of private property. The second is that we can't own ourselves, because what's owned can be alienated, and we cannot alienate our body or our will. We do not own ourselves, we are ourselves. For the purposes of this argument, however, it is irrelevant. If my body is my property, others cannot take or use it without my consent. If my body is not property at all, it follows that if it can't be my property it cannot be anybody else's either. You're constructing a strawman out of an example by attaching conditions to it, changing the example in a way you think is beneficial to your viewpoint. Attack the argument. Further, your example supports my viewpoint. You can do as you will with your own property as long as it does not infringe upon that same right in another individual. If my neighbour's property suffers from my burning of my property - soot on their walls or whatever - then I have violated their natural rights, therefore, I had no right to burn my computer in such a way. If the state existed purely to protect such rights, that would be a minarchist government as supported by people such as Ayn Rand or possibly our friend August (I believe). However, my argument against such a government hinges upon economics (the free market will provide better protection at less cost than a state monopoly) and upon pragmatic morality, in that the right to use force should not exclusively rest in the hands of any one body. There are further inconsistencies in the minarchist viewpoint but that would be a post (at least) in itself. By that standard, slavery is permissible because slaves choose voluntarily to be subject to enslavement. Of course, some slaves reject slavery, whether they act upon that or not - just as some individuals reject the state, whether they act upon that or not. Therefore, the argument of voluntary subjection is negated as soon as one person ceases to voluntarily subject. I only subject myself to the state under duress and coersion. None, because acceptance necessitates a free will, and before your birth your free will does not exist.

I think taxation is cumbersome and costly. Firstly, we have a pricing mechanism that doesn't work, because taxation disconnects consumers from the price of their consumption. Secondly, taxation hits everybody equally, whether they own three cars or they walk everywhere. We're already there. The 407ETR can give frequent users a transponder box. You get a discount for having one. Then they just spot your vehicle as it enters and leaves the 407 and send you a monthly bill. There's no reason why this couldn't be standardised. There are plenty of examples of the free market creating standards for itself, for example, paper sizes or the IEEE's Firewire/USB specifications. Assuming that the people on the ground also automatically own the airspace above them. It might not be so. Airplanes can also find alternative routes. Airlines might also bundle their flight patterns, buy the property along their routes and then sell it again with the clause that their aircraft will be allowed to fly over it in perpetuity. That would be a good point if it weren't factually untrue. Anarchism has existed in history already. Thingi Iceland, Celtic Ireland, pre-Alfred Anglo-Saxon England, Holy Experiment Pennsylvania and even modern Somalia are all examples of libertarian or anarchist nations. That's right, because anarchists hold that nobody has the right to steal. Statists hold that government does have the right to steal - and also to kill, to kidnap, to forcibly confine, and so forth. But unless they still own it now, all of it, they cannot expect me to leave if I don't want to be taxed. It's still a market. Marriage is a market in the same way as any other. It's the same old mutual-benefit search and transaction as ever. You choose a partner you think will be of benefit for you, they choose you for the same reason. Each expects a net gain and each agrees to trade something with the other. That's a market. That's not a market failure either, it's another market. Either your brother-in-law is trading his services for your goodwill, for a favour from you later on, or he is giving you his services for nothing. In which case, it is a trade in which something only passes one way. Since your brother-in-law consented to it, it's not coercion. Prove it. Dickens was neither an economist nor a historian. Why don't you show me some economic or historical commentary of the times? Would you say the novels of Stephen King are a good indication of how things are in the modern age? So when we say "government of the people", you interpret that to mean two or more people. So by that standard, then, Saddam's Iraq must have been a democracy since he ruled it with his two sons. Three people is a democracy. Who places it there, then? No, and I have already corrected you on this. The "first rule" of anarchy is the Non-Aggression Principle. Such a police force would not last very long. Would you do business with a police force that you knew was corrupt and took bribes? Any law, period, is an arbitrary one. The difference is that anarchist law is established by individuals, and is polycentric so that potentially all individuals can find an expression of law to suit them, whereas statist law is handed down by the fiat of a few individuals.

That's not what you originally said, which was: Are you changing your contention? It's disingenuous that you would do so without explicitly informing us. It would also be disingenuous to proceed with an argument having first informed us of only part of your proposition. Either you've changed your mind, or you were withholding information. There certainly is. You opined that in response to which I gave a link to a credible source who opines the exact opposite and backs it up with plenty of research. And then you never mentioned the point again, and instead started off on a tangent about despotism vs. totalitarianism. What would you think, if you saw this thread through my eyes? Which people? If it's not all of them, or at least a substantial majority, or with defendable exceptions (convicted felons, the insane), then it would be some of them, which would make it "oligarchy" since the opposite of "majority" is "minority" and of "many" is "few". What curbs does a modern democracy have on suppression of minorities that it has not placed there by its own hand? --- This can be illustrated by examining taxation and those government decrees of what the individual, or two or more consenting individuals, may do with themselves and their rightful property. To begin with, if we accept Lockean "natural rights" (e.g. that I own myself, I own that property which I can obtain without aggressing against another, etc.), then we must have a right to our property, and only our property. We can do whatever we wish to our own property, but may not interfere with another's property without his consent. If you don't accept Lockean property rights and don't believe that your own body belongs to you, then the rest of this won't make much sense. I'm assuming you do, however. Firstly, regarding taxation. If I own the products of my labour, then I must own my labour too, otherwise those products would not become my possessions. However, the state presumes to expropriate the products of my labour from me in the form of taxation (it can also expropriate my labour directly, in the form of conscription). Since one cannot rightfully take or use what one does not own, it follows that the state owns the products of my labour or a portion thereof. If the state owns the products of my labour, it must own my labour or a portion thereof, or the products of that labour would not be rightfully theirs. So if my labour belongs not to me but to somebody else, without my consent to its alienation, I must be their slave. Secondly, when government makes laws regarding what an individual may do with himself (e.g. drug laws, same-sex marriage, motorcycle helmet laws), then this violates the same right to property. I can dispose of my property in any way I choose as long as it does not infringe upon another's right not to be aggressed against. Taking the example of this computer, for instance, I don't have to make internet posts on it. I can use it for a doorstop, or pour gasoline all over it and set it alight - it's mine and I can dispose of it as I please. Similarly, nobody else can use it for a doorstop or set it alight without my express permission. But if the state can tell me what I may do with my own body, it follows that I cannot own my body, and the state must own my body, since I never consented to the alienation of my body. Therefore, if the state owns my body, I must be the slave of the state. The two options are that either I am the slave of the state, or that the state is stealing from me. Either is wrong.

It depends on whether or not you think being an intellectual, an anti-communist or a "counter-revolutionary" is a capital crime. The short answer to your question would be, "about as many as were convicted of something and executed by Hitler and Stalin."

Here's a quote from Che in 1959: "To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredon!" In 1959, Cuba had a population of 6.5 million. Within three months, Castro and Che (Che was Castro's chief executioner) had surpassed the pre-war Nazi rate of murder. Che's signature was on 1,897 death warrants (Yo Soy El Che!, Luis Ortega, 1970). Che admitted to ordering "several thousand" executions in the first few years of Castro's regime (Che Guevara: A Biography, Daniel James, 1969). These were preceeded by show trials or no trial at all, torture, false execution and so forth, and after executions Che liked to have the victim's family take a tour of the blood and flesh-spattered wall where the victim had been shot.