Charles Anthony

Someone who does not use ideas as duplicitous as "social contract" to hide acts of aggression.

Dear FleaBag, You can protect yourself against that. Are you afraid of that responsibility or do you just prefer shirking it? I do not trust other people's police. Why do you? On a somewhat related note: I can not remember the name of the crook-arsonist-fire-fighter but there was a guy in the U.S.A. who became a fire-fighter specifically because he liked setting fires. As a fire-fighter, he learned how fires were investigated and he learned the bureaucracy. He was successful being paid to put out fires that he set himself -- very sick and twisted -- for a long time. I do not agree with that but even if you are right, that is not a problem. You do not have to trust people. All you need to do is permit people to share the balance of force. Only a minority of states in the world possess nuclear arsenals. It is not sane to fear any one of them setting off a nuclear attack. Part of me wants to say "Do not bother." but I will say "I challenge you to present a convincing argument of why I should change my label." instead. Yeah, I am sure the people in Tiannamen Square where asked "Would you like a rubber bullet with your fries?" before they were mowed down. There is no safety in numbers if an individual has good reason to fear being in a mob. The mob provides a decreased probability of individual attack. That sort of safety is ridiculously limited. What do you suggest a potential victim of a home invasion/rape does? Call the police? Call everybody in the neighborhood to come over? Closer to home and at the risk of being perceived as disgusting, I would like to draw attention to recent events where the safety of individuals is instantly threatened: snipers and school shootings. What happens when an VampiroIndoPsycho walks onto a school campus and starts shooting? The crowd scatters. The absense of armed security guards protecting the school property lets the violence continue. The only thing that stops him is an act of individual self-defense and a balance of force. If every single person had the right to freely bear arms, very few of us would have to bear arms. We will not see people carrying grenade launchers. Are you kidding? I would never stoop that low -- maybe for an intellectual excercise but never in practice. I prefer the safety provided by the madness of my cosmic dreams.

I would say that you are misunderstanding. There is no problem with people who have no religious affiliation. There is a problem with people who are anti-religion. When a far-off and remote government or state does something wrong, are you going to advocate anarchy??? If you do not, you are being inconsistent.

Not always but I try because I can not think of any other rational approach to problem solving. I prefer to focus on "who owns what?" to arrive at the source of statist issues. Economics is just a method of balancing competing interests. People use economic thought all of the time without even knowing it. Have you ever had to run and catch a bus?? People with heart conditions make instaneous economic decisions when faced with such time constraints. Do you recommend that we do NOT look at things in terms of business? From what you say, it seems that leads people to be "too late to save themselves" with that approach. What is your criticism? You sound like you want your cake and eat it too. I would like to refine my snarky commentary in post #111 above. Of course we can not outlaw ALL emissions and I do not think that we have to do so. I should properly ask: Why not figure out what level of emissions our ecosystem can tolerate? After that, forbid emissions in excess of what can be tolerated. Sell permits or something.

You really are making a cause-and-effect with this one?? Come on. You can do better than that. Here is a possible reason: the affluent countries can afford the waste created by government intervention. Would you expect a millionaire to stop on the street to pick up a lucky penny??? No --- because he can afford to walk by and ignore it. Bending over is not worth the hassle. What if he walked by a silver dollar? or $100 bill? or a winning lottery ticket? At some point, he will reach a threshold where picking it up will be worth the effort. Until then, people in affluent countries are more comfortable accepting the waste and injustice of government intervention redistribution of wealth.

Why not??? Anarchists are the only honest people who truly promote Peace On Earth and all that stuff. Everybody else just uses it as a cover. Hold on. The realities of family dynamics and childrearing will change. From that, the perceptions will change but in a free labor market, we should always expect a wage gap. I am not saying that it is right or nor I am saying that it is wrong. Rather, I am saying that we should expect it. Similarly, I think it is disappointing that we have to pay hundreds of dollars for a pair of sneakers despite the fact that they cost a few bucks to make. Unfortunately, sneakers are a glamor item among youth and thus, the market exhibits high prices. People who just want to keep their feet dry are out of luck. Even if everybody in the whole world wants to go right back to work the instant their child is born, women will inherently be at a disadvantage in the labor force. Rather than thinking "Hmmm... what are the chances that this gal might get pregnant and I will have to replace her for a year's worth of maternity leave...." employers will think "Hmmm... what are the chances that this gal might get pregnant and I will have to replace her for a day while she is going through contractions and labor... " instead. Employers will NEVER think that way for a man. Thus, the woman who accepts a lower salary will be hired faster than a woman who waits for pay equity.

Excellent shot! Touche! Handheld computer-camera-phone, RSS or eyePods. I do not read newspapers. I rapidly learn "what-it-means" in an entertaining and more efficient way on this forum. Look at this forum: - tons of people online from different places, even from around the world - tons of people with opposing political views and agendas - each person has the equal ability (more or less) to comment, question, refute or promote perspectives We have a market for diverse "what-it-means" right in front of us. Newspapers are not fun and I do not need to read them. My fellow forum members do that for me. As a side note: over the past few years, I have mechanically found it more and more difficult to read print. I am developing the habit and instinct of constantly wanting to: - tab a separate browser so that I can refer to it later - search through the entire text for key-words - immediately double-check things or definitions with an online search engine etc. etc. I do not want to wait.

I am a fervent advocate of organized religion in general. Before I explain, I would like to indulge in some of this comedy. Bingo. We have finally come to the crux (please accept the pun) of the matter but unfortunately, our blindness leads us to miss the mark. If an "organized religion" does something bad, should we advocate and ridicule "organized religion"??? The anti-religious person says "Yes!!" with short-sighted glee. The reasonably intelligent person says: "No. We should attack the specific members of that organization advocating something bad." I challenge the anti-religious people to put the shoe on the other foot. If an "organized government" does something bad, will you join hands with me and advocate anarchy?? The anti-religious person says "Uh... yeah, but... uhmmm..." while spinning around in a circle. The reasonably intelligent person says: "I get it." However, my analogy needs to be refined. Organized religion comprises one of the few forms of government that is voluntary. For this reason, I advocate organized religion and I have hope for this world. I am going to cut this one off at the pass: I have no patience for arguments saying how people in backwards countries are coerced into following some religions. These objections are common and they make me laugh because they pale in comparison to the coercion of military powers and states. More importantly, free will can still keep violent religions in check. People who generally oppose "organized religion" are dangerous baffoons. They have no respect for what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom.

I have trouble taking your concern seriously. I am also doubting that you know what genetic modification means. Labelling something as GMO relates to the same produce. In other words, GMO cow milk against natural cow milk or GMO soy milk against natural soy milk or GMO tomatoes against natural tomatoes etc. Would you be comforted if both soy milk and cow milk were simply label "fluids" ?? Are you worried about getting tomato juice mixed up with cow milk?? I understand. However, those errors technically do not yield clones. They should be more properly called genetic engineering. It makes no sense to fear cloning or genetic engineering any more than you should fear factory farming.

Who knows? Should the strategy be to raise taxes higher such that it discourages and reduces emissions? or to generate enough money to repair the damage (is that even possible?) caused by the emissions? or simply to generate revenue? I do not think there is an objective answer. Why not outlaw polluting activities? We have the strong arm of the state. We outlaw smoking indoors because the smoking is dangerous. Why not outlaw emitting pollution? If I owned ALL of Canada, I would want my business to stay profitable for my life and for my children who will inherit Canada. Thus, would it make sense for me to permit my tenants to damage my environment in the short term if they pay taxes? I think not. I would outlaw polluting activities. Should that not be the strategy of the state?

Thank God! For a moment, I thought I would have to dig up some Gloria Steinem books for help! Comprendo. That is the "more likely to stay home when the kids are sick, etc." characteristic. I ask: so what? because men can do all those things too and baby-sitting is becoming more and more in vogue.

That doesn't exclude discrimination as a reason, though.It is discrimination. -- and it is the best assumption. No other assumption will have ALL of one group (in this case, men) at zero chance of whatever. Thus, you can bet your bottom dollar that it will CERTAINLY be in the back of every marginally responsible employer's mind. It is reasonable to expect employers to look down at a potential female employee. It is all about perception. Be more clear. Are you saying despite them being infertile, we would still see a pay difference between all men and all women? If so, that is correct. If you are saying despite them being infertile, we would still see a pay difference between infertile (men and women) and fertile (men and women), you would be wrong. The employer's can not see fertility and thus, the decision making will not be affected by fertility relative to sex. Go to a used car dealership. Paint signs that say "Might Break Down Randomly" on the hood of half of the cars in the lot. Do this every single night and keep track of the sales. Keep in mind: - all cars can break down - some brands of cars break down more than others - some of the painted cars may be in perfect shape After doing this experiment for hundreds of cars and hundreds of years, would you be surprised to learn that buyers avoided your painted cars? or that your painted cars sold for lower prices? In the end, whether your painted cars get pregnant or not is irrelevent to how the market will clear itself. Surely to goodness, I pray this example clarifies why women are observed to have lower pay than men. In a practical sense, you can not. The only way that you can eliminate sex discrimination as a factor is by examining statistics from people who are UNLIKELY to get pregnant. For example, golden ages? The trouble you will face statistically is that as people get old, both men and women end up being statistically the same (i.e. both drop in physical ability, both get sick randomly, etc.).

Actually, if you are not a lefty when you are young, your parents probably raised you to be a fine up-standing citizen who does not wait at the trough for a free-lunch.

No. You lowly Earthlings misunderstand. I play golf way up in the sky.

You are misunderstanding what I am saying. I am saying if you hold all of the other variables constant. We do that all of the time to study population statistics. If you take all of the possible characteristics that make up a human being, the only thing that men and women can NOT share is pregnancy. All of the other characteristics that you mentioned (focus on the home, agressiveness, physical ability, etc.) mean nothing. You may as well say women tend to have bigger breasts or more menstrual cramps than men. Let me put it a different way. Tally up statistics and on a scale from 0 to 10, quantify every single person in the world -- male and female. Include their wage, their ability to get pregnant and their breast size. To illustrate: John-Boy (home: 2; aggressive: 7; physical: 9; pregnancy: 0; breast-size: 0; wage: 7) Elizabeth (home: 5; aggressive: 3; physical: 6; pregnancy: 10; breast-size: 8; wage: 4) Esther (home: 7; aggressive: 4; physical: 5; pregnancy: 9; breast-size: 9; wage: 5) Zeb (home: 6; aggressive: 2; physical: 8; pregnancy: 0; breast-size: 1; wage: 9) etc. etc. Then, plot them on a multi-dimensional graph or, if you know any statistics, run a regression. I am suggesting that the most obvious co-relation between wage and the other variables will be pregnancy -- that is not to say that there is no relationship with the others. In fact, the breast-size variable will come very close to being indistinguishable from the pregnancy variable which makes sense. Notice how I did not use sex as a variable? It would not matter. My explanation as to why? is in post #17 above describing it as purely a market-driven force of employee-risk. Now, I ask the following hypothetical question/study: add the variable possibility-of-randomly-having-to-quit-work-for-9-months-straight or something like that (I realize that it is not measureable) and what do you think you will get???

Indirectly, yes. More accurately, I am saying if you can hold all other variables equal, it makes perfect sense to pay a woman less than a man and for a woman to expect to be paid less -- unless she can prove herself to be infertile. However, it is not possible to hold all variables equal on an individual basis for the reasons you list nor to question fertility. Thus, we see a statistical phenomena of women getting paid less. Women who are willing to settle for less pay will get hired quicker than women who wait for equity. By the way, that is called a market force. Analogously, we commonly refer to an average price for gasoline throughout large jurisdictions. Despite the price being a little different here and a little different there, all of the smaller jurisdictions follow the same trend of the market. At each pump, we have no idea who is willing to pay a little more for that gasoline or who really really really REALLY needs gasoline to survive or who just needs gasoline for joy-riding. On a large scale, we will observe all of the prices following the same market forces if you just look at global statistics. You can call that an economism perspective if you are reluctant to call it applying economics to the real world.

-- or the irrelevance and subsequent abolition of state marriage.

Hey CA, what's with this habit of yours of flitting from thread to thread. Can't you just carry on a discussion where it happens? Jumping from a specific topic to a general one with hundreds of accumulated ancient-history posts makes it very difficult to follow the discussion.Soon after I joined this forum but not soon enough, I discovered the Search function. However, the search function is not the best, as discussed here: forum Search function -- can it be better? I learned to appreciate the vast wealth of knowledge contained within the "hundreds of accumulated ancient-history posts" in this forum. After starting my own threads and arguing various positions, I found that previous threads and previous discussions of which I was being repetitive. Here is an example that spooked me: Abolish legal marriage -- perfect solution to treating everybody equally A New Approach To Marriage -- (warning: harebrained scheme) Furthermore, I found myself discussing points of view with other members who seemed to feign ignorance -- yet they were presented the exact same arguments in the past. I did not know whether they were being disingenuous or not. Thus, I asked about how these situations of overlapping topics should be handled. It also makes it difficult for people to contradict themselves or create run-around discussions.By the way, what is with all of your anti-Bush threads? Bush1 Bush2 Bush3 Bush4 Did I forget any? Oh! yeah! amalgamated-Bush5

Discussed here: Reviving old threads -- what is proper netiquette?

Within this thread, CartMan comes ever so close with: but just misses the mark. expropriated from the more recent Elizabeth May -- The Green Party Grabbing into CPC Territory? thread. I have no reports nor am I interested in finding any. However, I can offer logic to explain "a reason for it" instead. The reason is simple: as a population of laborers, men and women are physiologically unequal because women get pregnant and nobody can reasonably expect them not to get pregnant. An employer who hires a women is taking the chance that the women will have to quit work. That risk deserves a premium. Would you expect people to pay the same price for two identical cars? Yes! Would you expect people to pay the same price for two "almost identical" cars if you were sure that one of them could randomly and unpredictably be out of commission or less productive for 9 month stretches? No! Now put the shoe on the other foot: Would you be a client of a lawyer who would randomly not show up and have a replacement for 9 months of the year?

This is a question of the morality of democracy. Let us assume that your one vote makes any semblance of a difference. Yes, you should vote your own self-interest. How else can an elected official reliably determine and maintain the reputation of representing what the electorate wants? There is a different way of looking at democracy and voting. I could say that voting inherently is wrong and thus, you should not even vote. The reason voting is wrong is because you are swinging a double-edged sword. You are not only saying: "I choose this guy to be my ruler!" but you are also working to impose a ruler on your fellow voter. I would posit that we are not bothered by this breach of freedom because schizophrenically we know that such coercion is infinitesmally powerless -- yet we believe in the power of voting, nevertheless.

I feel that is an ignoble reason. Given that Saddam Hussein is now silenced by his death (much like Slobodan Milosevic's mysterious death in prison), his execution is worse than lying and fabricating stories in history books.

The golfers are rejoicing while the sky-hill operators are crying. I am genuinely worried about the hibernating animals and insects -- hell, everything for that matter. We may likely see a frightening upset in the ecosystem.

I believe you are afraid to answer my question and you are more comfortable condemning people without proof. I do not know and thus, I do not pass judgment on them. Neither of us know what the medics did nor do we have any proof.

Some anarchists want to move away from the negative stereotyping. Here is one view: Glen AllportMy simple retort is: abolish what? There is nothing inherent in the term "abolitionist" that suggests an opposition to coercion whereas the term "anarchy" unambiguously suggests an opposition to rule. I prefer the term "anarchy" for that reason. Call me a bloody hard-headed grammatically peculiar traditionalist. I see it that way too. I wonder: do anti-anarchists enjoy controlling others or are they simply afraid of self-control? Dear LoneFlea&Us, Only when one fails to wield it effectively over another. It is tremendously productive if you win.No. Violence and coercion ultimately fail productively because one person can not do the work of two people. [Despite the likely risk of Dooby-Dooby Doo thread drift, I can not resist the temptation of throwing this one out too: one person can not occupy the space of two people either.] Your perspective is exceedingly short-sighted and will lead people to play football with loaves of bread. Each individual benefits much more from free trade than from expropriation. It is immensely easier to mind one's own selfish business than to make sure that everybody is serving you under duress. In the past 24 hours I enjoyed a coffee, a banana and an avocado yet I have no idea how they got to Canada. I enjoyed an aspartame-enhanced soda and (for better or for worse) I know nothing about aspartame. Should I dream of conquering and controlling the people who deliver or create those products? I would rather be a movie star. Please, oh please do not tell me that I should look to The Almighty State to warn me of the dangers of aspartame. From what I gather, after many moons of haggling back and forth, you have finally stepped up and advanced your side of the discussion on to a different level. This seems like a break-through of yours, almost a concession: We agree. Let us look at things in terms of inevitable control and its efficiency. It is foolish (and I would say evil but that is a different argument) to think coercion makes things better. More importantly, mastering such control is ridiculous. I am going to step into the realm of supposition (like as if I was in the real world before) now and postulate that most modern-day and successful tyrants or dictators have gum disease and greasy hair. My theory comes from the fact that personal hygiene is a regular obstacle in life that mandates personal work. Outsourcing it is usually more cumbersome than doing it oneself and I wonder whether a successful tyrant has the time. Something has to give: either himself or the control he has over other people. A moment spent washing is a moment where he has no control over others. As such, the most stable situation is for us to be only in control of what we control best: ourselves. If you are talking about historical example, your statement is unfair because there is no level playing field. We can only point to maybe a tiny sample of anarchist history. I prefer ClearWest's statement: Being an extremist, I would play my own devil's advocate by saying that the most exclusive definition of anarchy is highly restrictive (as is the definition of "perfect competition" or "communism" as economic models) making a true anarchist society highly impossible to determine. On the other hand, One could easily say that historical example disproves your statement because all real-life examples were destroyed by external invasion. In other words, as a social model, anarchy is internally stable. What is the problem? I would rather face one adversary than a mob of coersionists. I can not imagine advocating the opposite.