Hugo

His politics are driven by envy and greed. His view of history is woefully myopic and dimwitted. His theories display a lack of comprehension for human nature, a blinkered view of reality, and a gross misunderstanding of economics. He fails to reject violence and oppression. The American government runs a third of the American economy, a lot more than the Chinese government runs. It maintains a big military. It uses the judicial system to further its own power. It suppresses freedom of speech. It uses national symbols as a tool of State power. What else is there? With WWI came the abandonment of the gold standard, the imposition of massive trade tarriffs, heavy taxes, government control of the economy, conscription, the end of freedom of speech and opinion, mercantilism, the military-industrial complex and so forth. All of those things are profoundly anticapitalist. What's wrong with that? Did you believe the Chinese government when they reported bumper harvests as 30 million Chinese starved to death? You're telling me it is completely unknown for governments, especially Communist ones, to cook the books? Where have you been? I'm happy to amuse you. When you can stop laughing long enough to actually form a counter-argument, let me know!

I do. I'm an anarchist, I'm an enemy of all aggression and coercion. Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Lew Rockwell, Lysander Spooner, Henry Thoreau, etc. Strawman. I didn't say everything from Cuba is sooo untrue. I said that the Cuban government has a track record of oppression, murder and outright lying, so anything they say has to be taken with, at the very least, a huge grain of salt. It contravenes the forum rules, so try and be comprehensible. I think America is basically a socialist state, with a big, oppressive government and a distinctly imperialist foreign policy, and a neomercantilist economic stance. More to follow...

I don't know where you draw your assertions that I support the American socialist state. Erroneously stereotyping your opponents doesn't get you any points. What's New Socialist Man, then? No, they take as much as they want limited by how much they can get. "Need" is subjective. This is why economists typically talk of want-needs rather than needs. Only if you're over 100 years old, you have. Capitalism ended with WWI. What works of Marx and Lenin have you read? Perhaps you can give me your interpretation of the Marxist views on women and Jews. No answer to my point about how Stalin is the inevitable product of socialism, then. The CIA facts are drawn from official government figures. Given the paranoia and hubris of the Cuban government I highly doubt these figures are accurate. What empirical evidence can be gathered away from the secret police paints a very different picture. I know I'm intelligent enough to write coherent, comprehensible English without littering it with spelling and grammatical errors.

It's cheaper not to have any customers? Interesting theory. Stupid, but interesting. That's what built the railroads, my friend. That's a system that was pivotal in advancing our standard of living. They wouldn't fight. It's extremely expensive, and violent police forces would price themselves out of the market. What they'd do is contract to use various private courts when disputes arose with other police forces. Negotiation and arbitration is always cheaper and more efficient than war. And this is different from prison how? Bzzzt: Wrong! There's no room in capitalism for anything but what the consumers demand. Why else would Fair Trade Coffee exist? Why should they do anything about prostitution and drug dealing? Who's the victim? When did the practice cease? Again, look at Enron. Corruption is a good way to go out of business, fast. Well, you can't demonstrate that either with evidence (of which you have none) or argument (which is all self-contradictory anyway).

Right, and group B's district becomes impoverished by the crime, and lots of people move away. Then the criminals start spilling over into affluent district A to steal their plasma TVs and Mercedes. Real smart. No, because it looks really great if a company can say, "Yes, we totally failed in our obligation to our previous client and we did absolutely nothing about it. So, would you like to sign this contract with us?" I have already provided you with reasons as to why they would. You can't provide any as to why they won't. Basically, two police companies would form an agreement to share information. Both of them benefit. It does not make sense for them to be secretive. No, they don't poison their customers because killing your patrons isn't a good way to stay in business. What are you saying - that restaurants are just scheming up to kill all of their customers and only government is stopping them? What planet are you on? No, you can be sure they won't fall down because the companies who build and sell houses and apartments won't do any more business with contractors who construct buildings that fall down. Their customers don't agree with you. What's your evidence for this libel? I assume that if he's been successfully in business for twenty years, yes, he does. As opposed to State police, where 5 SWAT teams are (and I quote) "outgunned" by two teenagers with sawed-off shotguns?

What's the most basic level? Co-ordinating thousands of workers and millions of components from Germany to Taiwan to produce a car? Doesn't sound very basic to me. I doubt you could do it. There are a great many industries where the complexity of the operation requires far greater co-ordination than running a police force. Airlines, for instance. You have to co-ordinate hundreds of flights, thousands of employees, tens of thousands of passengers, around the globe, every day, and it all has to fall in line with plans you made a year ago, because some people book tickets that far in advance and don't want any disruption of their travel plans. And it all has to run within a given parameter of seamlessness because the airline business is very dependent on word of mouth. You think the State police can do this? If a piece of luggage goes missing it's usually back with it's owner in 48 hours. Compare the number of pieces of luggage never found again to the number of crimes never solved, or solved so late it doesn't matter anyway (Holly Jones, Cecilia Zhang). And the State police excel at this? Pull the other one. Their incompetence is legendary. Think of the Columbine shootings. Five SWAT teams stand by doing nothing while children are being shot. When have Apple and Microsoft sabotaged each other, exactly? Is it considered "sabotage" to try and offer a better product? Have they received a State grant of monopoly that removes the need for them to be particularly competitive? Yep. Moreover, I'd like to see some evidence for your libellous comments against them. You can lie to customers, but that only works once. Think Enron. They lied, and got away with it - for a while. Then they paid a very heavy price. How can nonviolence be vicious? Moreover, State power relies on guns. How can that be less vicious than nonviolence? I think you have confused capitalism with statist neomercantilism. I think you'll find that the worst offenders in the corporate world are all recipients of State pork, government contracts and grants of monopoly power. Assuming your creditors and the press are far too stupid to figure out where you've gone. You have a very funny view of humanity: alternately intelligent enough to conduct massively complex co-ordinations of activity, and so incredibly moronic that they couldn't track a con-man from one city to another. Perhaps if the government hadn't made so many programs to push people away from trade jobs and into white-collar work (university funding, civil service expansion, compulsory schooling etc) there would not be so few tradesmen. But because demand far outstrips supply, tradespeople can get away with a lot. However, this situation is self-correcting. Since the trades pay well, people are attracted to them more. Then supply will rise to meet demand, prices will fall, and tradespeople will have to offer greater integrity. It's really not hard to find a good tradesperson. When you speak to one, ask for references. If you aren't smart enough to do that, what can I say? You deserve what you get.

You don't post on Babble under the moniker "Fidel", do you? Based on what? I think you'll find that Far Eastern schools are better. Most of them serve healthcare tourists and Party officials. Cubans describe their system as "healthcare apartheid." Healthcare for the average Cuban is pretty terrible. Since Castro took power, Cuban life expectancy has gone from the best in Latin America to among the worst. The fact is that the decline into Stalinist dictatorships is an inevitable consequence of socialism. State planning of the economy is basically a vast manifestation of coercive power: you get to tell people where to work, where to live, what to eat, what to drink, where to relax, etc. People drawn to the role of making these decisions are overwhelmingly going to be people with a lust for power, and the lust for power does not accompany traits like compassion and honesty, but ones like ruthlessness, selfishness and greed. Marx basically didn't understand human nature. Socialism basically assumes that human nature can be wished away and that "New Socialist Man" can be created. Oh? Which parts aren't true? And when they do, I guarantee you they never see anyone pass them going to Havana. At least, not unless they're forced to at gunpoint, like Elian Gonzalez. It could also just be that they lack the cojones to get on an inner tube and float to Florida, braving not only the sea but Castro's security forces, who generally shoot anybody they find floating in the water. Perhaps you should go there and try to talk to a few when the secret police aren't watching. It's a culture of fear. Castro just finished a big roundup of intellectuals and critics who were all thrown in jail to serve decades-long sentences. If you want to read a load of rubbish full of holes and omissions pick up a trashy novel at the airport. It's less boring too. The same could be said of Hitler. Yeah, I'd say that murdering thousands of people was a pretty "bad point" too. The question is whether or not his dubious "achievements" were worth the price of thousands of human lives.

Not under anarcho-capitalism, because it rejects the notion of intellectual property. Property, after all, is rules applied because material goods are inherently scarce. Metaphysical goods aren't scarce, therefore, we don't need rules to allocate them. A public problem such as this often produces high transaction costs in a market, however, not nearly as high as statist solutions produce. But there are free-market solutions here. First off, you assume that a private fire department would put out non-client's fires. They probably wouldn't. They'd just stop them spreading to their client's property, create firebreaks, and so on. Therefore there is still an incentive for people to buy a fire insurance policy. Secondly, it's most likely that services such as fire protection would be bundled with property. Buy a house and you buy a contract with a fire department. Your mortgage company will probably require you to have such a policy or be considered in default. Rent a house and be covered under your landlord's contract. This is how public goods problems in condos are solved. Another method of bundling is advertising. Coca-Cola might fund a local fire department in exchange for having advertising space on the fire trucks. Plus, they could run TV adverts: "Coca-Cola: protecting your family from fire!" Many companies donate extensively to hospitals and other charities just for the publicity of being able to say that they did so. This is how the public goods problem of broadcast television has been solved, for instance. Thirdly, you assume that people are not charitable and are entirely selfish 100% of the time. This isn't the case. If people are willing to donate for Ethiopian children they'd probably donate to protect their neighbours from fire, too. Strawman argument. It's perfectly possible for a company that owns the pipes or power lines to lease them to power production companies. Competition is preserved. If there's only one pipe leading to a house, the owner of that pipe still cannot gouge the customers because, in a free market, the threat of potential competition is ever-present. As to whether it makes sense to have several pipe or power line networks in a city, if it's more efficient to do it that way, that's what will happen. If it isn't, it won't. The advantage of the free market is that expert minds will be applied to the problem, whereas with the State, the problem will be 'solved' by the decidedly inexpert minds of politicians and bureaucrats. Aren't the issues of whether or not the cat routinely scratches and bites its owners and also sometimes just goes to sleep instead of catching anything also of importance?

Continued: Oh look, I'm in a car accident! Which of the nine hundred insurance companies do I call? Answer: your insurance company. Next silly question. If your police company's coverage is inadequate they could either contract out to other police companies (much as companies like Dell and Microsoft subcontract their support and sales departments out to telemarketing companies), or they can watch their clients move to companies with better coverage. A mobile phone company that only covers 1% of the country isn't likely to stay in business very long, is it? In any event, if you're robbed in a street and whoever polices that street fails to do anything about it, those who pay for that policing are likely to find another police company. So a private police force will want to be vigilant, and if you're robbed on a street, it's likely that the question of who polices it will be answered when a guard rushes to your aid. Yes, Fidel. Whatever you say. Mobile phone companies need to be transparently communicable with each other and to have full compatibility. Again, market forces have arranged this perfectly. If a given measure is more efficient and judged to offer better value by consumers, it will happen in a free market. After all, an opportunity that isn't being exploited is an open invitation for any entrepreneur. Based on what? I've already cited an example where the cutting of manpower to zero had no effect on the crime rate. Where is your evidence?

Again, police does not equal State police. Ah, the old Marxist "chaos in production" argument. I never took you for a Marxist, Argus. Perhaps you'll demonstrate the chaos which plagues industries like mobile phones, computers, the Internet, car manufacture, foodstuffs etc. where many different companies compete for the same customers. Why would they not? It's in their interests to share information. Apple and Microsoft co-operate where it is in their interests to do so, although they appear to be irreconcileable competitors. You make the mistake of assuming that government must co-ordinate things. You forget that the free market is fully capable of co-ordinating dozens of companies, thousands of workers and tens of thousands of components to bring you, for instance, a car in a very efficient way. On the other hand, the "organizing" work of the State in the USSR produced the very chaos and inefficiency you say that free markets will produce and the State can abrogate. Quite simply, the empirical evidence runs completely counter to your argument. A police company that is unwilling to work with other police companies is going to be very inefficient and expensive, and will thus alienate its customers. It will soon fail. Again, your arguments only work if you assume people are incredibly stupid and myopic, and if that's your view, why would granting these stupid and myopic people monopolistic State power help anything? Surely, if people are so idiotic, it would be best to curb their power rather than expand it. First of all, it's in the interests of police group A to catch a criminal pursued by police group B, because A never knows when they'll want a similar favour from B. Both can deliver a better service to their customers by co-operating. Secondly, group A would have to be idiots to assume that the criminal is only going to offend against the clients of group B. They stand to save a lot of money if they help to apprehend this criminal before he aggresses against their clients, and prevention is far cheaper than punishment. Consider mobile phone companies. They compete, but they share information and make their networks transparent to the competition. A mobile phone company whose network was incompatible with anybody else's wouldn't last very long at all. The free market has proven itself perfectly capable of producing standards of training and responsibility for employees in all walks of life. Even having a good credit rating is a measure of character, which is why many employers run credit checks against applicants. Consider IT training. Most certifications are from private companies like Microsoft, Novell, Cisco or Red Hat. Again, the free market will establish what a good certification is. If a company that trains security guards acquires a reputation for certifying unskilled thugs, it will soon go out of business because no police company will want to hire its graduates, and soon nobody will want to be certified by this training company because it just costs them money and does not get them a job. Right now, the State just decides arbitrarily what makes a good standard of police character and training. Considering the accidental shootings and wrongful arrests that policemen make, the widespread corruption of the police force, the ineptitude of the police in crisis situations (Columbine, anyone?) and so forth, evidently this standard isn't very good. But there's no direct way for the citizenry to demand better. All they can do is hope that one political party picks a method of police training reform that they like and that the rest of that party's platform isn't so incompatible with the rest of their views that they must reject it anyway. What keeps state police in line, exactly? You can be arrested, imprisoned, tried and then found innocent, and having lost weeks or months of your life languishing in jail for doing nothing wrong, you are denied any compensation and those who wrongfully arrested and detained you are not liable in any way. I fail to see how a private system could do any worse in this regard. You're more comfortable with State police being able to drag you off to their own private prison (and it is private - it's just monopolised) and lock you up for a few weeks on whatever pretext? Why? At least with a private system you could call your own police and have them insist that you be tried immediately or released immediately, otherwise, your police will assume that you have been kidnapped and attempt to rescue you. Where's the checks and balances against State police? In any event, it's highly unlikely that imprisonment would be used by a private judicial system. It's expensive and doesn't compensate the victim. More likely is a return to the concept of restitution for wrongdoing. They are subject to the most public scrutiny and influence of all: consumers. A police company that abuses its powers will be deserted by its customers and go bankrupt in short order. Consider that Enron, once revealed as dishonest, was deserted by its stockholders and investors in a manner of hours. Its existence as a company was over before the government even got wind of what was going on. I'm saying that a security guard has more incentive to do something about it. If his client is robbed he'll probably lose his job. On the other hand, a State policeman can turn his back on a great many crimes and still be secure in his position.

Actually, the evidence shows that wealth redistribution generally moves money around within groups rather than between them. Poor neighbourhoods have more tax money flowing out than in. The welfare recipients in poor neighbourhoods are being supported by the working poor. Stealing from the poor to give to the poor isn't a particularly amazing feat. Robbers in poor neighbourhoods do it every day. So according to you, condominiums should all be rank failures. However, just looking through the real-estate adverts, I can see a great many successful condominiums where the residents pay fixed fees for services such as landscaping, lighting, garbage disposal etc. Clearly, I don't need much of an argument to dispel this nonsense - the empirical evidence speaks for itself. If one person falsely pleads poverty as in your example, if the others found out, they could sue him for fraud. If they never found out (and it's hard to hide your financial status from your neighbours), then nothing would happen. But tell me, is this really so different from undiscovered tax evasion and welfare fraud? However, this scenario is unlikely in the first place because if a person pleaded poverty and complained that he couldn't pay his condo fees before signing the contract it would almost certainly be suggested that he go find a cheaper condo. Of course, if he did so after signing he would be in breach of contract, plain and simple. Says who? If a street full of people decided it wasn't worth paying for streetlights and that they'd be better off doing without them, who are you to tell them that their choice is immoral and that you will forcibly take money from them to install streetlights against their will? Maybe they're environmentalists and they don't see the point burning countless kilowatt-hours of power when they're all asleep anyway. Maybe they all have burglar alarms and guns and don't fear break-ins. Maybe they want to discourage people from driving down their street at night and think that not lighting the street would accomplish that. Maybe they live in a gated community that shuts its doors at sundown. Maybe they've all installed motion-detector lights on the front of their houses and have effectively created a more efficient street lighting system themselves. But according to you, all of these reasons are invalid and immoral, because you have decided they need streetlights regardless of their own desire, and you think they should be forced into buying them. There are countless charities now working for the welfare of children. Without the dead hand of the state there would be countless more. Your argument is self-contradictory. You assume people won't care about children, so the State must. But the State is made of people, so what makes them care about children?

On the other hand, in treating you the doctor will get experience he could then use to give better service to your neighbours. Maybe not so true for a broken leg, but consider the case of pioneering surgical procedures, drug trials and so forth. It isn't the case that public goods are always separable from private goods. Everyone who is buying a plasma TV now is helping drive the price down for the benefit of potential consumers later. In the same way, people who use a hospital today are driving the price down for people who will use it tomorrow. It is already more involved than the State. In the USA there are more private security guards than state policemen and more cases are settled through private arbitration than through state courts. Yes, and this is a method of tackling public goods problems. In another example, private policemen would be interested in catching criminals that hadn't done anything to their clients because the chances are that, eventually, they would. Similarly, private firefighters would be interested in fighting fires that broke out in the homes of non-clients to negate risk to actual clients. Consider too that having publicly funded fire departments artificially lowers the cost of risky behaviour likely to start fires. You pay taxes regardless, so what's the difference if you have a wood stove, no smoke detector, highly flammable furnishings, and smoke in bed? The financial cost of your stupidity is borne by other taxpayers. However, private insurance companies generally charge higher premiums to risky clients and offer discounts to sensible ones. This has the effect of rewarding sensible behaviour and making risk-taking individuals bear the actual costs of their actions themselves. If it wouldn't make sense, it wouldn't happen. You assume here that the free market is irrational and State action perfectly rational and efficient when all the evidence shows that the exact opposite is true, the free market is very efficient and the State very wasteful.

Aren't these all just examples of people providing their own policing without the necessity of a state police force? You're constructing a strawman argument. I did not say that less police equals less crime. I am saying that less state police will equal less crime. I've given you enough examples of private policing that you should be able to grasp the notion of it. If you agree that it's better to have someone on the spot, why is it important that he be a state policeman rather than a private guard? Read carefully. The policemen were on the scene too. They were less successful in stopping crimes than armed civilians. There's no hidden information here. Again, you assume your conclusion. Why would state police be better for this than private guards? Moreover, if civilians are armed, doesn't that effectively turn everyone into a policeman? Why, because the state has decreed that "the city" is public property? Surely this is an argument against the notion of collectively owned property, then! My point is that where private policing is undertaken it works better than where the state police serve instead. Your answer to this, bizarrely, seems to be to expand the scope and numbers of the state police, which leads us to, as Sweal has divined: Yup. In healthcare, Argus regards the public system as having failed, and he thinks we should try a private one. He lambasts you, Sweal, for proposing to throw more money at the public system. In policing, he regards the public system as having failed, so we should throw more money at it. He lambasts me for proposing to try more private policing. It is quite ironic.

Not at all, and Cartman (as well as others) can recognise that my position is consistent and logical. The one you falsely tar me with is the one he ascribes to the self-contradictory conservatives and to which you yourself fall under, to wit, that some coerced collective actions are moral and others immoral. My position is that they are all immoral. If you doubt this, please think of an example of collective action taken under the threat of violence that I have advocated. Then think of an example of any noncoercive action that I have not at least insisted on a person's right to perform. Basically, if violence is used, threatened or implied, it's oppressive. If it isn't, there's no oppression. For instance, Cartman has listened to my libertarian ideas and seems to have some sympathy for them. Perhaps that wasn't the case before he met me. I may have changed his mind, however, I never threatened to hurt him or steal from him, nor did I defraud him, so this is not oppressive. The collectivism of the actions concerned is really irrelevant, and people voluntarily undertake collectivist projects all the time. If a bunch of people donate food to the homeless out of pity and compassion, all well and good. If they donate that food because someone threatened them with a sound beating if they didn't, that's oppressive and wrong.

The police were "eliminated altogether" for a week and the crime rate wasn't zero. People were still reporting crimes, so that's the end of this argument. You also forget that if there are no police, not only may people not report as many crimes, but may also prevent more crimes themselves if they know there's no police to help them. I've read several accounts of the 1971 strike and none even hinted that actual crimes may have increased in any way during it. There's just no evidence to suggest that they did, be it from officially reported crimes or anything else. Consider another example. "On West 135th Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues is the station house of the 82nd Precinct of the New York City Police Department. Yet the august presence of the station house did not prevent a rash of night robberies of various stores on the block. Finally, in the winter of 1966, fifteen merchants on the block banded together to hire a guard to walk the block all night; the guard was hired from the Leroy V. George protection company to provide the police protection not forthcoming from their property taxes." Murray Rothbard, from William C. Wooldridge, Uncle Sam the Monopoly Man There was also a study done a while ago which demonstrated that armed civilians were more successful in driving off, wounding, restraining or killing robbers and assailants than armed police officers were. In 1996, 69% of reported crimes were violent or against property. That means 31% were, basically, not crimes at all. This is a vast waste of time and resources. It's completely pointless to be spending countless millions of dollars and man-hours hunting people who grow marijuana or won't wear a motorcycle helmet. If you go to your mall, you'll find that crimes and robberies are very low or nonexistent, and the guards are courteous, respectful, helpful and polite. They definitely don't intimidate anybody. This is because the mall hires a private police force. In public areas, however, crime is widespread and police are frequently arrogant, intimidating and unpleasant. The right-wing agenda for lower social expenditures and greater personal freedom can also be seen as an argument for less state police and greater private policing. As with all things, free-market measures get the job done a lot better, faster and cheaper.

I'll tell you something interesting, Argus. In January 1971, the NYPD went on strike for a week. Do you know what happened to the crime rate during that week? It dropped slightly. It doesn't matter how many cops you take away as long as you don't place any restriction on a citizen's right to defend himself against criminals or contract for his defence. They'll find a way.

Corrected. Government as it is colloquially understood is not "socialism", it's "tyranny". All that democracy has done is to give us a novel way to pick the tyrants: instead of choosing the eldest son of the last tyrant, or letting some guy claw his way to absolute power by any means necessary, we let the largest percentage of the voting electorate pick them. Socialism isn't necessarily tyrannical. There's nothing to stop fifty people forming a collective and organising their community on socialist lines. Indeed, such communities can be very successful and in a free world, I'd expect many such communities to spring up, and I'd wish them well. The problem is when you use the tyrannical power of government to try and force everyone into this mode of life. Then the socialism ceases to be voluntary and also ceases to work. Nazism, Communism, socialism etc. are different stripes of collectivism. Classical liberalism, libertarianism etc. are stripes of individualism. Collectivism is the actual mind-poison here: the idea that other people are in some way responsible for what you do, that other people owe you something, that you have a claim on other people and their possessions, etc.

Continued... I already made this point. The difference is that our government doesn't put bullets in anybody's head for being in an ethnic minority. They just treat them in different ways. Like I said, difference of degree, not principle, and the Canadian government certainly is not blind to gender, racial or religious differences. Evidently. These: the freedom to do what you want with your own body, the freedom to make contracts and partnerships with anyone you want, the freedom to trade with anybody you please, the freedom to refuse any proposed trade, the freedom to use your property as you see fit, freedom from aggression and violence, or the freedom to work for yourself and not as a slave. You lack all of these freedoms right now. You may have them partially, but when negro slaves were allowed to grow a little for themselves on the side, did that mean they weren't slaves anymore? Does that mean I have no business wanting more rights and freedoms? I should be happy with what the government gives me and go shut up like a good little slave, as you have?

You're telling me that soldiers are better people. Why? Anyone can give candies to children. What makes soldiers better - that they'll spray people with bullets after giving the candy out? I say that makes them worse. My wife showed me the research in one of her women's magazines. They had done all the studies, and found that generally the military encourages wife-beating to go no further than the offender's C/O. Regardless, this doesn't answer my question. Was my grandfather a better person for being irreparably mentally scarred? You told me that soldiers were better people. I'm asking how this is, if you're telling me that one of their redeeming graces is that they start bar brawls at least no more than the average civilian. Why were they cleansing it if not in their own interests? The Nazi state identified itself as synonymous with the people it was cleansing Europe for. If you can see the difference so clearly, why can't you tell me? I've been to Dachau. How many death camps have you visited? (In the USA): Under art. 69 of the Law on Military Service, as amended in 1990, draft evasion and desertion are punishable by disciplinary and administrative measures. Draft evasion and desertion are further punishable under the 1986 Criminal Code. According to art. 206: "1. The penalty for anyone who is of military age but fails to fully comply with regulations on registering for the military draft, fails to comply with an induction order or fails to comply with an order to report for training, and has been the subject of administrative action but continues to commit the same violation, is from three months' to two years' imprisonment. 2. The penalty for this crime in one of the following cases is from a year to five years' imprisonment: a) If it involves self-inflicted injury or self-inflicted harm to one's health If it is committed during time of war c) If another person is drawn into committing the same crime." Draft evasion in aggravating circumstances is punishable by five to 10 years' imprisonment (arts. 259 and 260). Surrender to the enemy and unwarranted desertion from a unit during combat situation is punishable by death. (art. 256) The situation was much the same during WWII. So anyway, now that we've clarified a little, what's the difference between A and B, please? You're very confused. A soldier makes somebody else sacrifice everything he has for freedoms and rights. In fact, he destroys freedoms and rights. What freedom does a corpse have? What rights do you enjoy on a slab? I prefer not to fight because I'd rather be a victim and greet God with a clear conscience than a murderer who bought a few years more on this planet with somebody else's blood.

Pardon me here, you guys are having an excellent debate, but if I may butt in: How would a person trained to accept and use brutal, lethal violence in the pursuit of certain ends be a "better person"? Is the fact that the wives of soldiers are beaten by their husbands far more often than the wives of civilians indicative that these soldiers have become "better people"? When my grandfather returned from Dunkirk having watched most of his childhood friends blown to pieces in front of him by German artillery and aircraft and tried to forget it by spending the next six months constantly drunk, was he a "better person"? Are the soldiers who get drunk on weekend leave in barracks towns and assault civilians in bars "better people"? Was Ghengiz Khan a better person than Jesus Christ, Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., because Ghengiz fought for his country and his people, but those cowards refused even to fight for themselves? I've asked this question of someone else and gotten no answer. Perhaps you can tell me the difference between these two scenarios. Government A rounds up civilians under threat of force, clads them in striped uniforms and sends them to near-certain death in concentration camps. It does this because it feels it is necessary to protect its own interests. Government B rounds up civilians under threat of force, clads them in khaki uniforms and sends them to near-certain death on a Normandy beach. It does this because it feels it is necessary to protect its own interests. Every life lost in war is wasted. Every bullet fired and every bomb dropped is an impoverishment of the entire human race. There is nothing a man can do worse than murder, and war is simply murder writ a thousand times over. The Nazis confiscated property. The US and Canadian governments confiscate property. The Nazis restricted freedom of speech. So do the US and Canadian governments. The Nazis made rules about who could marry whom. So have the US and Canadian governments. The Nazis believed that people of different skin colour or religious background should be treated differently from the majority. So do the US and Canadian governments. The Nazis outlawed certain modes of employment, as do the US and Canadian governments. The Nazis outlawed certain kinds of foreign trade, as do the US and Canadian governments. The Nazis outlawed foreign banking. Ditto for US and Canada. The Nazis artificially fixed prices and wages. Ditto again. The Nazis attempted to indoctrinate their youth with school programmes and extracurricular groups. Ditto again. The Nazis used national symbols as a tool for manipulation of the masses. Ditto again. The Nazi state was born of violence and conquest. Ditto the US and Canada. The only thing that really separates Nazism from our modes of government is the degree to which they do things, not the overall principle. Our governments have not rejected violence, force, theft, discrimination, slavery and so forth. So what would our lives have been like under the Nazis? Kind of like now, just to a greater degree. How would you know? You've never enjoyed freedom. Some people have a taste of freedom in their own minds, think their own thoughts, but you don't even have that. Would they not best be supported by trying to help them come home and live at peace? What good does it do them being in a place where death is hovering over their shoulder all the time?

There's no speculation necessary. The evidence still exists. I know of two stay-at-home mums who take in other people's children. Their price is a fraction of what a licensed daycare charges, and they are responsible people, good parents and eminently worthy to run a daycare. However, they are technically criminals, and won't do business with anyone they don't know and wouldn't trust not to rat them out to the 'authorities.'

How can a right depend upon other people and upon a certain level of social and technological development? In pre-industrial times, did people not have the same rights as now, or were these rights just being violated for everyone? What if I decide it is every man's right to have a flying car - until we invent them, are we all victims of systematic rights violations? If a person were not receiving education and health care, exactly who would be violating his rights? Bearing in mind that the rights to security of the person or to property, when violated, create clear and readily identifiable aggressors. How much education and health care is it a person's right to receive: elementary school and an occasional visit to the doctor, or ten doctorates, major surgery every month and clinical immortality?

It occurs to me that childcare would not be nearly so expensive as it is had government not gotten involved in the first place. Let's say you have a stay-at-home mum with two children. What's to stop her taking in a few more and making a few bucks, cash-in-hand? I'll tell you: government regulations, stipulations for training and insurance, requirements for on-site registered nurses, etc. All of these restrict daycare operations to formal businesses, who must take all of these requirements as operating costs and build them into prices. Quite simply, this is the government solution to a mess that government created. As Bakunin rightly says, any government solution creates another mess further down the line, and his suggestions as to what these future messes will be are likely to be very accurate. The situation is very similar to healthcare. Up until 1930, the price of private healthcare was well within the reach of all. Then government stepped in to fix prices and wages, and healthcare became unaffordable to the masses. Then government proposed to fix its mess by creating public healthcare, and now that's in a mess for which the government will doubtless propose another remedy soon, and the effects of which the next generation will have to clean up. How would this help? Currently, that woman will be paying a large slice of income in taxes. Whatever's left, she'll pay sales tax on virtually all of it (people in "relative poverty" don't save much). She'll also pay extra taxes on fuel and running a car (essential for parents), and so forth. If the government wants to help single parents, a good start would be to stop tying one of their hands behind their backs.

And they say you are mistaken. My argument is that there is no conclusive argument and no irrefutable proof. The very meaning of the word "purpose" is subjective. A human purpose exists only with thinking humans. Copper, however, retains its attributes regardless. Of course, and there are large numbers of people who deliberately kill themselves every year. Do you feel that invalidates your point about the purpose of life being "to be"? How do you reconcile that with your argument?

Yes, they are the same. Humans are predisposed to consume as much sugar as they can find when they can find it. It's an instinct. This is why chocolate is addictive and people will continue eating it even after they start to feel nauseous. The fight-or-flight drive is another instinct. No, and every soldier disobeys (or should disobey) his 'fight or flight' instinct. Neither means anything except that humans have the ability to overpower their instincts. It isn't speculation at all, just simple math. In a given lifetime the chance of having a fatal accident is X. If the lifetime lengthens infinitely, the likelihood of a fatal accident also increases infinitely. An infinite chance is also called "certainty", a probability of 1. First we need to establish that that will to be is actually the correct instinct. So far, you're not having much luck. This is basically a reiteration of your earlier statement and not an address to my point. You are still assuming your conclusion as a premise and cannot demonstrate why any evolution, instinct or choice has to be in aid of a true human goal and not a hindrance. Basically, you say: "Our purpose is to exist. Many things like evolution and instincts help us achieve our goal of continued existence, therefore, our goal is to continue existing." It's a circular argument. Analogy: Our purpose is to eat sugar. Our instincts help us achieve our goal of eating sugar, therefore, our goal is to eat more sugar. Or: Our purpose is to own more material goods. Our instincts help us achieve our goal of owning more material goods, therefore, our goal is to own more material goods.