Hugo

And Iraq then moved into the Gulf instead. This is why I say that that policy didn't work: the USA may have successfully have played one minor State off against another, but that former State just became a problem at least as big as the latter State would have been, so nothing was really gained! R. J. Rummel. The atrocities that the Chinese State commits today are very small next to those committed under Mao. I consider this to be progress: a thousand murders is better than a million. None would be better still, but it is better to pass through a thousand on your way to none than to remain at a million, no? The collapse of the USSR put an end to that, and it wasn't due to US action either - it was due to the internal contradictions of socialism and liberalization, or Western influence, one might even say. I criticize Western States for propping up Saddam by trading by him. Iraq isn't a person, it's a country, and my definition of "free trade" doesn't include States confiscating money from citizens and buying things with it to give to foreign States, or using said money to facilitate deals between large corporations that walk hand-in-hand with benefactor States and beneficiary States. I think you gloss over the whole thing far too hastily. The internal pressures in South Africa between 1985 and 1988 were incredible and approached a state of civil war. The government has more powers and money than it did before, the economy is more statist, the pace of collectivization continues, etc. On what grounds do you say that the USA is more liberal now than 40 years ago?

Based on what? I think that, with an economy about to collapse and an army being bled white, they'd have settled for a return to 1914 borders if it had been offered. Actually, technically WWI was started either by Serbia or Austro-Hungary (depending upon whose side you pick). Germany was dragged in as an ally following the mobilizing of Russia, after Germany asked the Tsar to cease his mobilization or risk war, and the Tsar refused. What also happened in October/November 1917 was the Bolshevik Revolution, when the USSR pulled out of the war. Following that, vast numbers of German troops left Russia and arrived on the Western Front. Since France had pretty much run out of men to conscript and England was fast reaching that point, it's likely all three would have reached a peace agreement. The arrival of American troops and war materiel refreshed the Entente effort. Actually, a huge part of Hitler's platform was that Germany had been wronged in WWI and would rise again to take her rightful place in history. Most Germans sympathized with this viewpoint. They aren't soldiers, though, are they? They don't kill people - well, except for police officers, who are basically stooges of the State, just like soldiers. Next? How about first? You haven't addressed my point at all! So there were no Canadian servicemen taking part in the raids on Hamburg or Dresden, then? You deny that historical fact? You deny that they bombed civilians in Yugoslavia? No, it wasn't. They were a strictly combat force. Your ignorance does not cast the rest of your arguments in a good light. You're thinking of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, Sicherheitsdienst, Einsatzgruppen, Totenkopfverbände and Gestapo. Actually, I doubt you were at all - someone so ignorant of the SS would almost certainly never have heard of any of them (except perhaps the Gestapo).

Well, it didn't work in Vietnam, and it didn't work in WWII, and it didn't work with Iraq. Can you name me an occasion when it did work? Actually, pretty much all of the reforms demanded by the Tiananmen Square protesters have been granted. In any event, it's for certain that the Chinese government is now less brutal than it was under Mao Zedong. Since the dictatorships of Iraq and Cuba were not moderated at all by US encirclement and embargo, we're comparing partial success against absolutely no success at all. Given that choice, I go with the partial success. Western trade brings in the liberalizing influence which motivates forces against people like Saddam. Who reckons that embargos are a great contribution to the fall of Apartheid? As far as I know, the fall of Apartheid was to do with the increasing refusal of blacks to be oppressed, the influence of their leaders and anti-Apartheid activists, internal and border fighting, and the impossibility of a tiny white minority successfully governing a hostile black majority. If it were due to embargo, you'd think that Apartheid would have ended soon after the embargo was begun. It didn't. I think the embargoes were quite a small part of what happened and if they had not taken place, Apartheid would still have collapsed. Strawman argument. My point is not that China is liberal - it isn't. My point is that it's a lot more liberal than it was under Mao - and it is.

Perhaps you have not seen the Patriot Act and its successor? Perhaps you are unaware that the US government now controls more than one-third of the economy? The differences between the American, Soviet and Wahabbist ways of life are really of degree. All these States believe that the initiation of violence and fraud can be just, all believe that people are too stupid or evil to be allowed to run their own lives, and so forth. It's worth noting that Afghanistan was the only war in which Soviet troops left their own borders. The USA, on the other hand, has sent troops to Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the Phillippines, the Middle East many times, and more besides. The USSR was pacifistic compared to the USA, at least in foreign policy. You don't think the Russians have a problem with Chechen terrorism? Perhaps Wahabbists don't target China because the Chinese only oppress the very small number of Muslims within their own borders and have no seeming desire to spread that overseas, and perhaps because the Chinese State is oppressive of all religions, including Christians and Buddhists. The USA does provide considerable backing to Saudi Arabia and used to back Iraq as well. The presence of troops is a very direct method of intervention and the Cold War saw the introduction of proxies - the USA does not have to risk any of its own troops when it can simply fund and train those of local tyrants, like Chiang Kai-Shek, or the succession of South Vietnamese despots. I would say that the Wahabbists are just picking their targets by threat level. Civilization as we know it failed to end in the oil crisis of the 1970s. In fact, that crisis was quite instrumental in, for instance, persuading people to abandon their gas-guzzling V8s. Economic troubles of the time can largely be attributed to the inflation and interventionism of the Carter administration - errors largely reversed by Reagan. The worst economic dislocation in American history was not caused by any natural disaster or shortage, but by inflationary money policy. Yes, they said that in WWI as well. What a crock that turned out to be. Analogy: Argus: "Americans don't like ham." Hugo: "Americans actually consume quite a lot of ham." Argus: "Not everything is about ham, Hugo. Especially to Americans." That doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Yes. It's hard to understand, but there are things in this world where the best way out of a situation looks painful. For instance, in a recession there is nothing a government can do beyond prolonging and deepening it. The only thing to do is ride it out. There is never going to be stability in the Middle East as long as the USA intervenes there and in such a heavy-handed way. The more they attempt to stabilize, the more destabilized it becomes because the local people resent the stabilizing agent and the manner in which it "stabilizes".

Firstly, anarcho-capitalism makes no prescriptions about the economic or social order of a society barring the rejection of aggression. There's nothing wrong with a communal arrangement. Secondly, as I've said, any society reflects the nature of people living in it, anarchist or statist. Thirdly, this author actually acknowledges the role of Norway in subverting and damaging Icelandic society in a quote, but ignores it because it's damaging to his conclusions. Fourthly, the accumulation of wealth is not a significant factor because the masses in an industrial or post-industrial society are always wealthier and therefore more powerful than the elites. Protection agencies, for instance, would be far wealthier if they catered to the common man (even against rich men). Mass marketing makes a lot more money, absolutely and relatively, than niche marketing. The protection firm that ignores this gives away its business to the one that doesn't.

I'm sorry, no, I don't agree that all property is acquired or created through violence. A lot of the property in existence now didn't even exist when Canada was discovered. As I've said before, Common Law establishes ownership relatively - who owns it more - and applying those time-honoured principles I'd say ownership can be decided by who committed less violence in acquisition. But you keep failing to address the question of whether or not majority consensus makes something right. If yes, any crime is permissible if you can get majority backing for it. If no, then just because the majority assents does not grant any kind of legitimacy to the State. Note that all States require the consent of the majority, even tyrannical ones, even if that consent is just grudging resignation or fearful acquiescence. So majority consent can be used to justify tyranny, dictatorship and so on as well. But that means that all the massacres and pogroms through history weren't actually crimes at all. Is that what you mean to say? Furthermore, if all rights are relative and granted by others, why does the State have the right to exist if I say it doesn't? Why does it have the right to tax me if I say it shouldn't? Actually, the feudal state requires a relative or non-absolute right to land ownership: the nobility must have the right to expropriate the peasantry and not vice-versa. A peasant only owns something as long as his lord says he does. Yes, most statists I have argued with eventually resort to insults and petty slander. It's a shame. There's unfairness in humanity. Some people are born smart, some good-looking, some tall, some strong. To actually make things fair and equal means lobotomizing the smart, disfiguring the handsome, stunting the tall and crippling the strong. To attempt equalisation without doing this is unfair, because it will mean that some people must be artificially prevented from employing the gifts that nature has given them. So you are saying that if a man earns and creates wealth from nothing (like more than half of American millionaires who never inherited a dollar), he does not have the right to give it to his children? Why not? Why do other people have a better claim on his money than he does? It cannot, because equality of opportunity is a complete illusion. God, nature or whatever you believe in makes human beings funamentally unequal. There's Stephen Hawking and there's the profoundly retarded. There's Brad Pitt and there's Joseph Merrick. Government has almost invariably been formed or furthered by one of those two. How do you think the biggest enabler of a problem is the cure for that problem? I would also like to ask you how you reconcile your arguments for statist wealth-distribution in favour of greater equality with your other argument that rights are subjective, relative and transitory?

I don't know that this is the case. Do you have any proof? Are you also aware that India has a lot of problems with Muslim terrorism as well as Israel? I don't think they do represent world capitalism. I think they represent the hearts of the nations that have put thousands of troops on their soil to interfere with their politics and back up the sheikhs who obstruct and prevent natural captalistic wealth formation from the natural resources they have. They may not think of it in those terms, of course, just as you probably don't realise the economic nature of the actions you take every day. Why would gas reach $15 per gallon when the USA gets most of its oil from Alaska and Canada? If the price of crude reached that height, what makes you think that reserves in Texas, Canada, Siberia and the Urals would not be exploited? What makes you think that more attention would be fixed upon alternative fuels like methanol, and upon extracting oil from other sources, like shale? When oil becomes scarcer, why would our attentions not be turned to reducing our use of this now-expensive resource? In short, why do you think that the whole history of human progress and development would suddenly be abandoned and reversed just because of OPEC? You seriously think that humans have never faced a shortage of anything ever before? The Earth just offered up her bounty for all to take their fill? What? Why would he do this? They presently have no interest in infidels that aren't interested in them. In fact, they generally like doing business with them. It even says in the Koran that one does not have to fight the infidel but can live at peace. I think the real danger of suitcase nukes lies in the continuance of current policy, not the abandonment of it. Perhaps, for instance, it has occurred to you that without the backing of the USA and Western European nations, Saddam Hussein would probably have been overthrown by his own people a long time ago? If the consequences of your actions will include innocent deaths, do you think that means one should or should not undertake that action? I would like to direct your attention to Hong Kong and Taiwan. The influence of these offshore, capitalist islands on the Chinese mainland has been immense and has contributed greatly to the liberalisation of the Chinese economy and polity, as Chinese have travelled to these places for business and training and as offshore capital has flowed into the mainland. Compare this with the dimwitted American policy of embargo and encirclement, which led to the entrenchment of dictators in Iraq and Cuba, and to more crackdowns, more brutal rule and more misery for their people. Taiwan and Hong Kong didn't kill Mao, but they did help ensure that his successors have been progressively more liberal.

So you are saying that where there was violence there should always be violence and we should make no effort to change this? Why, then, would you argue for government limited by constitution, since governments have always been tyrannical? Why would I have a right to life? Define this right to life for me. Here is the flaw in this analogy: the right amount of food to consume is unique to each human individual. Therefore, to apply this concept to government, you should agree with me that the only government that can be right for a person is self-government. This is because any attempt to form a blanket government that applies the same amount of government to all is the same as an attempt to form a blanket calorific consumption figure that applies equally to all. You also assume that health is a universal goal of all humans, when it is not. People endanger their health on a daily basis for goals they perceive as more important, so to argue on this basis for imposed government is to say that not only do people have identical requirements but that they also have identical desires, wants and needs: total rubbish. No, what they show is that in a society where people have a tendency towards violence and aggression, government will not do anything to stop or control that. Therefore, government as a "cure" for the Hobbesian war of all against all is pure quackery, because if that is the inclination of people, government will not stop them, in fact, it will make it worse because it can give their murderous activities an extent, a cloak of legitimacy and a thoroughness they could never achieve as private citizens.

Then why is it that your "amoral rights theory" invariably ends up being exposed as no theory at all? "Do what you want to anyone you can" is not a rights-theory, it is the abrogation of rights.

WWI was a war fought to end all wars, make the world safe for democracy etc. What it did was create the perfect scenario for a far greater and far more destructive war only 20 years later. In this regard Fortunata is exactly right: violence creates further violence, and attempting to end violence with violence does not make any sense. There was quite a long period in history where the Middle East was far more cultured, learned and wealthy than the West. We were primitive, barbaric and warlike by their standards. Part of the cause of the Renaissance was a flow of Islamic scholarly and artistic works into the West. Many modern economic and medical ideas, for instance, can easily be traced back to medieval Islamic societies. The Laffer Curve is basically Ibn Khaldun's theories revisited, and modern medicine and Christian theology owe a lot to Ibn Sina (Avicenna), a key influence behind St. Thomas Aquinas. The causes of the stagnation of this society are complex but a lot of alarming parallels can be drawn with the modern West: the entrenchment of the ruling class, increasingly heavy taxation and statism, expansion of the culture by war and conquest rather than by peaceable means (religious conversion, trade and the spread of artistic and scholarly work), the power of the military over the State, etc.

This is not borne out in any study of history. Was it violent when our nomadic ancestors moved to virgin land? Who was it violent against - the squirrels? Government first appeared when some tribes conquered and enslaved other ones, which was basically the end of the process of acquisition by nonviolent means. What you are saying, therefore, is that we need to violate property rights to have property rights. That makes no sense. To a person who does not want to sell, any price is too low. Therefore, this is robbery and extortion. Anything else cannot be true. One would usually need to find an agency to protect oneself. Market forces will ensure that the agencies that do best are those that serve the little guy best (mass marketing is far more rewarding than niche-marketing to the rich). Regardless, you assume that government exacts no price for this service and that government does not operate like an organized criminal gang. Neither is true. The cost for the dubious police and justice systems we have is high, and the main differences between government and the Mafia are in extent rather than principle. The Mafia does in fact operate like a police force and judicial system for the underworld. It also extorts by force and defends by violence its hegemony over a geographical area - like a government. A constitution is decided by the people it is supposed to control. It's self-policing. We basically give all the power to one group and expect them to police themselves, and this doesn't work. Just look at the USA and the massive accumulation of power by their government in total violation of the principles of their constitution. Violence is not necessarily unjust. Only the initiation of violence is. Well, for one thing, simply saying something is yours doesn't make it so. Lockean property rights requires that you homestead the property by mixing your labour with it. And it's not the case that a person's rights are decided by other people. All they decide is whether or not they will respect them. To say otherwise is to say that a murder victim had no right to live because the murderer did not grant it to him. If people cannot agree on this, what makes you think that a government would be any better? In a society where some people reject the rights of others, government becomes a mechanism for massacres and purges on a terrible scale. Take Rwanda for an example. The two principal tribes in Rwanda have a lot of enmity and don't respect each others rights. Does having a government prevent them from wreaking violence on each other? No! The Rwandan government was the key institution in the terrible massacres perpetuated there. The problem with your argument, as Blackdog correctly identified, is that it attempts to separate rights from morality when the two are inseparable. As you have seen, when you try to separate the inseparable you end up with an unworkable theory and a nonsensical argument.

Like Hitler, who was the man you said you'd use violence to depose? How does that make you any different than a pair of thugs vying for power?

I believe that the person who acquires property through negotiation and nonviolent means has a greater claim than an institution that acquires property through violence. Common Law does not interpret ownership as absolute but as relative anyway, so the question is who has the better claim to the land. Out of private individuals and parasitic government I choose the former. Individuals often acquire land nonviolently. Governments never do. This is the situation now! It's just called "eminent domain." But why wouldn't I just contract with a non-corrupt and stronger private security force? Why would I have contracted with a weak and corrupt force in the first place - or did they just suddenly decide they were going to throw away their entire business model just to exploit little ol' me? I'd go to another court that didn't have a reputation for corruption and get a second opinion. Then I'd get a third and take the best-of-three. I also wouldn't make a contract with a security firm that generally upheld the judgements of corrupt courts. Then I'd sell my claim to an agency with the power to get my land back, much as companies sell debts to credit agencies today, and as smallholders in Iceland sold their credit to the rich to other rich men who would be able to collect. Just the possibility of this was usually enough to make a man honour his debt, much as the threat of a collection agency is enough to make most people pay their bills. Again, if 99% of Canadians decided that it would be good to rape, murder and rob the other 1% does that mean it is legitimate? Yes: social structures built upon the initiation of violence of fraud are wrong. Wrong. Some people are net debtors and still have an equal vote. Some people exist entirely parasitically and still have an equal vote. Feudalism only granted property rights to people of select parentage. Therefore this is not a good comparison. By homesteading, usually. I found it first, therefore, it's mine. This basically means that nobody has any rights besides what other people want to give them. This therefore justifies the most horrible crimes in history.

It's a strawman to assume that murder is the prime issue. It isn't. Take away the murder and it's still the same. In the absence of any proof, why do you think ownership should default to the government? But the requirement to move somewhere else means ownership. It's a circular argument. Look: You are attempting to establish the legitimacy of government. You say that it is legitimate because you can leave if you don't like it. However, the requirement that those who don't like it must leave assumes that government is legitimate. Example: I march into your house and announce that you are now my slave. You ask how on earth this can be right. I say, well, it's right because if you don't like it, you can leave. Oh, and as a sop to democracy, we'll assume that the rest of your neighbours agree with what I've done. How does that strike you? Yes, ownership is nothing more than the right to control. Tell me something I don't know! Why does the Canadian government have sovereignty that can be retained? You're assuming your conclusion again. You are trying to prove the legitimacy of government with arguments that assume government is legitimate a priori. Except, of course, that unlike shareholders or condo owners, the government does not allocate votes to those who own the most. And also excepting that the government was never explicitly appointed a representative of the owners, unlike the corporate directors or the condo association. The voting process again assumes the right of the government to hold such a process, which is another circular argument. Again, if over 90% of the population voted to rob the remainder, would that be right? Property rights and contracts predate government by millenia. Consult your Franz Oppenheimer. Governments invariably have been formed by the violation of property rights - no government was ever formed by the mythical social-contract process.

If your arguments are weak and self-contradictory then it will certainly seem that way.

Well, for one thing I'm getting tired of people constantly asking me if any of my friends or family were hurt in the attacks. They might mean well, but the odds are strongly against it and it's kind of insensitive - it implies that if one of my friends or family were hurt or killed in a terrorist attack I'd just be sitting in the office like I didn't have a care in the world. Indeed. My point here is that it's a sad fact that politicians never pay for their own mistakes. The Enron executives, for instance, made some very bad and fraudulent decisions, but the people who paid for that were those executives and shareholders who bought stock of their own free will. But the price of the decision of American and British politicans to interfere in the Middle East was borne not by them, but by innocent people in the WTC and in London. It's sad, and it isn't just. What, like shooting 13 unarmed civilians to death and wounding more in Derry, Ireland? Or, going back a bit further, shooting at least 1500 unarmed civilians in Amritsar, India? As to the "they hate our way of life" nonsense, I've said this before but it bears repeating: If they hate secular capitalism and wealth, why aren't they bombing Hong Kong, Singapore or Taipei? If they hate Christianity, why aren't they bombing the Vatican? The reason for this Islamic terrorism is clear: it's because they do not want Western (particularly US) troops in the Middle East interfering in the affairs of their homelands. Perhaps they want to turn these countries into theocracies, but it's hard to make the claim that that's any of our business. As above, there are many places that lead a much more secular, consumerist, wealth-driven or Christian lifestyle than we do and have not aroused the ire of Islamic terrorism. Furthermore, is setting off a bomb on a bus that you are reasonably sure will kill civilians that much different from dropping a bomb from a stealth fighter that you are reasonably sure will kill civilians?

Even assuming you were right, and taxation were imposed by a majority, does that make it right? If you have ten men on an island, and nine of them vote to murder and rob the other one, does that therefore make it right? Oh, I'm sorry. Can I see the deeds whereby the government owns the country? Can I see the contracts where a government is made the duly appointed representative of every single property owner and individual in the country? But again you assume ownership. The condo association can do this because they own, or represent those who own, the condo. If the same is true of government then the government must own or represent those who own the country. The government represents 23% of those who own the country, and some of those it arguably represents only under duress. A condo association does not represent a portion of the condo owners, it represents all of them without exception. A board of directors represents all shareholders without exception. Government is not analogous. There is an option to withdraw from a condo association or from a condo, and there is an option to relinquish shares and stock. There's no opt-out clause for government. And if you say "just leave", then I'll remind you again that the right to ask someone to leave something if they don't follow your rules presumes that you own that something. Which is what you're trying to establish here, so don't assume your conclusion. Then you nullify your own point. Sorry. You tell me that morality is as subjective as a favourite colour, and then that you wouldn't support an invasion to change favourite colour - even though you just told me you supported an invasion to change morality. Your argument contradicts itself.

Because the recording isn't scarce. It can be electronically duplicated many times over without anything being lost. Concert halls and stadiums, however, have limited seating capacities. You should also note that the vast majority of a musician's money comes from live performances. They make next to nothing from record sales. Yes, you've been over this before. People have no rights beyond what other people grant them. I don't believe a word of it, and the only other person on this forum who expressed any kind of agreement with you is now banned. You are ignoring the fact that land is scarce and "intellectual property" is not. If I own Staten Island, nobody else can own Staten Island. But if I know the Happy Birthday song, anybody else can know it as well. August refuses to acknowlege the arguments for marriage as a market. The market consists of various single people looking for certain qualities in others and willing to offer certain things of themselves in return. The market has transaction costs and the withdrawal from the market after the transaction is a cost. I have told all of this to August, and pointed him in the direction of more in-depth explanations, after which he merely comes back and says (in effect): "no, it's not a market." No explanation, no argument, nothing. He wants family to be a government not because he can make a case for it, but because it supports his prejudices i.e. the "rightness" of imposed government which he has never challenged in his own mind.

I think Sweal's plentiful evasion and blasts of insults and foul language earned him that one.

Here's the thing: in order to attach conditions to the useage of something you must own (or represent those who own) that thing. Greg moderates this forum because he represents those who own it. I cannot, because I don't. So to say that by living in society you agree to taxes, this means that the taxing institution must own society. Is that what you are contending? The government may be the elected representatives of 23% of the electorate (less of the actual population), but how does that give them the right to extort from the other 77%? Again, this assumes ownership. I can say that if you're in my house you have to wear a top hat. If you don't like it then you can leave. But if you're in your own house I cannot demand that you wear a top hat or leave. For this to be fair, the government has to own the country.

Where did I agree? Where's my signature? What's the difference between this agreement, and the one whereby I say that every time you breathe, you have to give me $10,000?

Since people here are talking about me I'll take a moment to defend myself. This is what I posed to Thelonius: I don't see how that is accusatory or offensive. I took what I understood to be his theories and tied them into an actual crime that he would find reprehensible but which his theories would justify. I wanted to hear his explanation. This is what I posed to Sweal: and Again, I don't find either of those to be accusatory or offensive. I'm summarising what my partner in debate has said thus far and attempting to extrapolate it into an historical example. Initially, I asked for clarification, used phrases such as "from what I can gather" or "wouldn't this make", which are questioning phrases rather than statements, and thus my original point was not "You are a Holocaust-apologist" but "doesn't this make you a Holocaust-apologist?", and I took pains to make it clear that I expected the other party to defend himself against them - which should be indicative that the accusation was not serious but a rhetorical tool which I was using to make a point. I grew frustrated at the original poster's constant failure to justify or explain himself and to answer my questions. Having failed to civilly solicit a response I resorted to trying to bait one out of him. If you read the threads in question you can quite clearly see the back-and-forth between us where I repeatedly tried to pin him down to an actual answer, and failed. If you will, I made a point and asked the other party to attack it. Since he repeatedly failed to do so I think it was not unreasonable for me to have decided that he must support it. It's a sad fact that some people consider certain topics to be taboo and never to be discussed, but I believe we can never take that attitude because it can mask truth. All topics should be open for discussion, even if painful. Greg has indeed warned me about the use of the phrase, however, since Sweal has now gone I doubt I will need it again - he was one of the most obfuscatory and evasive of the posters on this forum and I generally don't need to go to such extremes just to try and get a response out of anybody else. If some people find my posts scathing, it's nothing personal, just the way I write.

Yes, August, marriage is government. Priests are government. Your boss is government. Buy a soda, you've got a government. What if the Catholic Church changes something dear to you after you become a member of the congregation? What if your boss changes the conditions of your labour after you sign? What if the soda turns out to be revolting? I keep repeating this and you persist in ignoring it: if you consent to it, it isn't coercion! If come up to you in the street and cut you with a knife, it's coercive. If you pay a surgeon to cut you with a knife, it isn't. The same act, but one has advance consent and is therefore not an act of coercion. But marriage is a market. It's even possible to construct models for the marriage market. Did you even read Gary Becker, who I referred you to several times now? I find nothing worth defending in the notion of intellectual property. It is just another government grant of monopoly. Without government I don't believe it could exist. That's true. The law is essentially a lottery. Some people get punished, some don't. Some people get punished differently for the same crime. Cops are also free to ignore certain crimes. For instance, my mother-in-law recently backed into somebody coming out of her driveway. The cop looked the other way. My wife did the same thing three weeks later and the cop gave her a $120 ticket (which she successfully fought).

Property rights exist for one reason: material resources are scarce and there are not enough on the planet to satisfy all human want-needs, therefore, we need rules to allocate them. Property rights are those rules. We need no such rules for metaphysical things, however, because they are not scarce. How many people know the Happy Birthday To You song, and is there anything preventing somebody else from learning it right now? Yes. All ideas are useless until successfully developed using capital and marketed. Hero invented the steam engine before the birth of Christ, but for it to become useful, we had to wait until James Watt marketed it properly. If the inventor cannot successfully manufacture and distribute his idea, somebody else will run with it and do it for the benefit of humanity. For instance, although they never invented transistors, the Japanese were the first to find a really good use for them. Logos and trademarks are a slightly different matter. It can be argued that the Nike logo, or the CK logo, or any similar design is a promise to the consumer that the product was designed and created by certain people. If it really wasn't, then it is a case of fraud, just as if I'd sold a car saying that it had a V6 engine when it really had an inline-4. Then you must be contending that absolutely nothing of any worth was written, painted or invented before the 17th Century, when the first copyright laws came into effect? It'll win out as long as consumers want it to. If they value low prices over anything else, then the company that can slash prices the most will win out, at least temporarily as everything in the market is. If they don't then I'd expect things like Fair Trade Coffee to do much better.

And they are. Taxation is theft. If you deny it, define taxation in such a way that it does not also define high-minded theft (many people on this forum have failed to meet this challenge). It kidnaps all the time. If a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty then to arrest and imprison him before conviction is therefore kidnapping. It murders whenever it kills someone, which the police do quite frequently. In an American example, a Mormon man was killed by his local sherriff's department in the escalation of a dispute where he refused to send his child to a State school (he was never aggressive or violent towards police officers and was actually shot in the back as he ran away from the sherriffs). A slave is a person forced to work for somebody against their will. I work for the government for half of the year even though I don't want to, therefore, I am enslaved by the government. It defrauds every time a party makes a campaign promise and then breaks it (I'm looking at McGuinty, Martin, Chretien et al). It counterfeits every time it inflates the currency, which it has done as a matter of course since before WWII. All of these actions are serious crimes when committed by private individuals, but when committed by agents of the State, they are not crimes at all. Why this double standard? Is justice in Canada not supposed to be blind and unprejudiced? But you don't. You don't serve me, and you don't serve Blackdog. So what you really mean is you serve some of the citizens within Canadian borders, and if that's true, why is it right that you should take money extorted from the rest and provide them with a service they don't want? War Measures Act, Quebec. Sure, it's among the best. But I already answered this question. Saying Canada is the best country is like putting Karla Homolka in a lineup with Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao Zedong and asking who's the most humane. Sure, it's Homolka, but that doesn't mean she's a saint! Then why did you do it in the Kosovo conflict (if not you personally, your comrades-in-arms)?