#1 |
#2 |
#3 |
Paste this URL into an email or IM: |
Click here to send this debate via your default email application.
|
Click here to login and CreateDebate will send an email for you.
|
What economic system do you feel works best and why? (Capitalism, Socialism, etc.)
Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, Marxism, Anarchy, etc.
Add New Argument |
I don't see any single system as being effective enough to use alone. Capitalism is great for trading products and using competition to drive innovation on things, but fails miserably as a social tool. Communism is great for trying to prevent classes and attempting to provide for needs, but because it relies on government for this it ends in a top-heavy system. Socialism is fairly good all-around but it has some invasive qualities because of all the bureaucracy. I think a good economic system would use capitalism to manage the exchange of goods, socialism to redistribute wealth so that there is less disparity between incomes and social programs provided by the state, with government and union oversight to prevent worker and consumer abuse. Side: Hybrid
Capitalism. Supply and demand is what drives the economy. Any perversion of this is a hindrance to the market. Side: Capitalism
Capitalism. Supply and demand is what drives the economy. Any perversion of this is a hindrance to the market. That's a bit like saying "Islam. Any perversion of this is a hindrance to Allah." Capitalism creates its own kind of market. The others have a different sort of market, or none at all. Side: Capitalism
Yeah, except supply/demand is a proven phenomenon whereas Allah is fictitious, so there's no comparison here. The fact that you would even make such a nonequivalent analogy tells me you're not arguing from any logical position, but rather out of petty spite. Capitalism is what has emerged from exchange. It's the evolution of the market, not the Islam. Statism, in any form, is the magical sky daddy ideology. Side: Capitalism
Yeah, except supply/demand is a proven phenomenon whereas Allah is fictitious, so there's no comparison here. The fact that you would even make such a nonequivalent analogy tells me you're not arguing from any logical position, but rather out of petty spite. Fine. I'll simplify for the less intuitive. Allah is a concept created by Islam. Using Allah to support Islam is arguing in circles. The market you speak of was a product of Capitalism, using it to argue for capitalism is tautological. You're saying that the capitalist market is good because it is capitalist, and if it were changed it would be different. Capitalism is what has emerged from exchange. It's the evolution of the market, not the Islam. Statism, in any form, is the magical sky daddy ideology. Capitalism is but one outcome. Others are socialism and communism. States evolved from anarchy, because power likes to exist, and people like to feel safe from gangs and death squads. Side: Hybrid
Allah is a concept created by Islam. Using Allah to support Islam is arguing in circles. The market you speak of was a product of Capitalism, using it to argue for capitalism is tautological. You're saying that the capitalist market is good because it is capitalist, and if it were changed it would be different. Bullshit. You compared capitalism to Islam because you know one can compare anything to Islam and make it sound stupid. Persons have been doing the same thing with Hitler for years... I guess you're just one of those types... Supply and demand IS the market, capitalism is just another word for this. Non-privately (statist) ran industries are founded in the interest of the state, not the market (or at least much less so depending on how restrictive the state is). So saying that "the best economic system is capitalism" is to say that the best economic system is the market. I know I say "free-market" as though there is a hierarchy spanning from a (total) regulated market to a non-regulated market, but really the only market is the (to the extent it is a)free-market. A non-moving river isn't a river, if you know what I mean... Capitalism is but one outcome. Others are socialism and communism. Capitalism emerged from the market. Socialism and Communism emerged from psychology. States evolved from anarchy, because power likes to exist, and people like to feel safe from gangs and death squads. Pretty much all true here. Statism is a parental projection after all. That's why it's the "founding fathers", or the "father land", or even "mother Russia". But eventually it becomes time to grow up. Adults solve there own problems. Children count on "mum and dad" (the state). Side: Capitalism
Bullshit. You compared capitalism to Islam because you know one can compare anything to Islam and make it sound stupid. Persons have been doing the same thing with Hitler for years... I guess you're just one of those types... Blah blah. I just explained why I used the analogy. I even made it simpler to understand. Supply and demand IS the market, capitalism is just another word for this. Then socialism is capitalism now, because it works on supply and demand too... Non-privately (statist) ran industries are founded in the interest of the state, not the market (or at least much less so depending on how restrictive the state is). So saying that "the best economic system is capitalism" is to say that the best economic system is the market. You mean the market run by private industry using supply and demand, and capital. Now then, why is it the best? Remember that there are different criterion for best. My criteria are that the best economic system serves productivity, does not hinder or threaten government authority, protects workers and consumers, and doesn't distribute wealth too unevenly. Capitalism emerged from the market. Socialism and Communism emerged from psychology. Capitalism emerged from the market, socialism and communism emerged from experiences with capitalism. Pretty much all true here. Statism is a parental projection after all. That's why it's the "founding fathers", or the "father land", or even "mother Russia". At least china has it right with Zhongguo (middle state). But eventually it becomes time to grow up. Adults solve there own problems. Children count on "mum and dad" (the state). Right, then we transcend our fleshy forms and become beings of pure energy and consciousness. Side: Hybrid
Blah blah. I just explained why I used the analogy. I even made it simpler to understand. Blah, blah. Re-establishing things you've already said. I know why you used you analogy, it wasn't to show tautology. At least, not entirely. Perhaps that was the conscious reason you've told yourself, but seeing as your analogy didn't follow it's far more likely you were trying to connect the stupidity of Islam to what I was saying. Then socialism is capitalism now, because it works on supply and demand too... In a way, yes, as you can have a free-market town that is also socialist. I'd imagine very few persons would want such a thing, but it could work. You mean the market run by private industry using supply and demand, and capital. Now then, why is it the best? Remember that there are different criterion for best. My criteria are that the best economic system serves productivity, does not hinder or threaten government authority, protects workers and consumers, and doesn't distribute wealth too unevenly. My point was that if it isn't privately owned (i.e. state owned), then it is an economic force outside of the market, outside of supply/demand. I say capitalism is the best because the most progressive societies have always been capitalistic. Perhaps in a way this is tautological, but it is also true. Just as evolution is the best means of progressing organisms because the most progressive organisms have always come from evolution. As I've said before, god could not guide evolution better than it had guided itself. Capitalism emerged from the market, socialism and communism emerged from experiences with capitalism. Check the link. Patterns in child-rearing methods (divided into psycho-classes) have a direct correlation to each kind of government. As our means of rearing children has become more humane, so has government. Guess what it ends with. =3 Right, then we transcend our fleshy forms and become beings of pure energy and consciousness. ... Are you saying that growing up and solving your own problems is about as likely as transcending into a being of pure energy? ... Really? Side: Capitalism
Blah, blah. Re-establishing things you've already said. I know why you used you analogy, it wasn't to show tautology. At least, not entirely. Perhaps that was the conscious reason you've told yourself, but seeing as your analogy didn't follow it's far more likely you were trying to connect the stupidity of Islam to what I was saying. Maybe you subconsciously feel that what you said is stupid and my statement exposed this? In a way, yes, as you can have a free-market town that is also socialist. I'd imagine very few persons would want such a thing, but it could work. I was trying to imply that your definition is too broad. I say capitalism is the best because the most progressive societies have always been capitalistic. Perhaps in a way this is tautological, but it is also true. Just as evolution is the best means of progressing organisms because the most progressive organisms have always come from evolution. Europe is a hybrid system however and it appears to be more progressive than us. Check the link. Patterns in child-rearing methods (divided into psycho-classes) have a direct correlation to each kind of government. As our means of rearing children has become more humane, so has government. So the natural step is to test that hypothesis by creating an artificial society with a specific rearing method to determine if it is a causal relationship. ... Are you saying that growing up and solving your own problems is about as likely as transcending into a being of pure energy? ... Really? Yes, for society. For many obvious reasons I don't care to enumerate. Side: Hybrid
Maybe you subconsciously feel that what you said is stupid and my statement exposed this? I've thought about what you've said from every angle my imagination allows me to and not once have I come to a conclusion that follows your analogy. Using Islam was just a means to connect what I said to something universally (at least on this site) considered stupid. I was trying to imply that your definition is too broad. I know. =/ Europe is a hybrid system however and it appears to be more progressive than us. Define "hybrid system". So the natural step is to test that hypothesis by creating an artificial society with a specific rearing method to determine if it is a causal relationship. ... Or by observing patterns in both the child-rearing methods and the government of that time across several nations. Actually, this way is much better because it will be nearly impossible to isolate variables in an artificial society. Not to mention how difficult it would be to even organize such a thing. Yes, for society. For many obvious reasons I don't care to enumerate. Society has become more and more humane since it's antiquity. Perhaps humanity hasn't truly begun yet, but it's getting closer and it's inevitable. Side: Capitalism
I've thought about what you've said from every angle my imagination allows me to and not once have I come to a conclusion that follows your analogy. The market as you consider it is a capitalist product so when you say that capitalism would be tainted because the [capitalist] market would change, you're saying the market would change because it would change. Just like how my Islam example is tautological. Using Islam was just a means to connect what I said to something universally (at least on this site) considered stupid. I didn't do it for that reason. Define "hybrid system". They are capitalist with a layer of socialism. ... Or by observing patterns in both the child-rearing methods and the government of that time across several nations. That wouldn't prove a causal relationship, just a correlation. Society has become more and more humane since it's antiquity. Perhaps humanity hasn't truly begun yet, but it's getting closer and it's inevitable. Your Utopian vision requires conformity that nature strongly fights against. Side: Hybrid
The market as you consider it is a capitalist product so when you say that capitalism would be tainted because the [capitalist] market would change, you're saying the market would change because it would change. Just like how my Islam example is tautological. That makes even less sense now that you've explained it. =p I said that the market is a capitalist product and that any variation on capitalism would hinder the market. Show me the tautology in this. You know what the word hinder means, don't you? I didn't do it for that reason. Then either you are an idiot for thinking it related to what I said or you are manipulative for trying to connect what I said to Islam. They are capitalist with a layer of socialism. If that really is the best economic system, then that's what would emerge on a free market. Logically, you should be in support of free-markets as this would prove your theory. That wouldn't prove a causal relationship, just a correlation. Governments are man-made. They are the result of the intersubjective ideologies of a given population. How persons are raised affects (you could almost say "defines") their ideology. So, when there is a correlation as strong as there is between child rearing methods and the affixing form of government it follows that there is a causal relationship. But hey, don't take my word for it. Lloyd DeMause does a fine job of defending his own research. Your Utopian vision requires conformity that nature strongly fights against. Wrong. You're Utopian vision requires conformity. Conformity to the state. With a state, one must conform to the ideologies and agreements of others. Without a state, one must only conform to reality. Side: Hybrid
1
point
would it be fair to say that government intervention arises naturally from the market, ie there is a demand for government intervention? The free market calls forth for it to be regulated(assuming a democratic government). why else would a democratic country have those regulations? Side: Hybrid
would it be fair to say that government intervention arises naturally from the market, ie there is a demand for government intervention? This is essentially my position. The opposite is that the market evolves alongside government trying to evade intervention. It's the red queen hypothesis in economic form. Side: Hybrid
1
point
Government doesn't care about psychology beyond how it affects property. It usually isn't illegal to support file sharing leased software whose contract doesn't allow for it, but it is usually illegal to actually do such. Another example, it isn't illegal to feel that graffiti is beautiful and that you would miss it were it to be gone, but it is illegal to graffiti. Government is nothing more then a coercive instrument, it arose out of either a desire or a need to apply force. Side: Hybrid
I agree with most of what you're saying. Government arose from religion. God is a parental projection as is the state. This is where you get the "divine" right of kings. After the separation of church and state though, the same psychology occurred. That's why they're called the "founding fathers" or "mother Russia". It stems from our subconscious desire to have a mommy and a daddy to watch over us. This is what I mean when I say government arose from psychology. I think religion was the only part about government that actually made sense. At least if your king had divine right (even if it was just a hoax) it would make sense to follow his edicts since God demands obedience. But once you realize there is no "God" backing up a politicians claims, there's just no logical reason to support government. Side: Hybrid
1
point
I don't believe we have a subconscious desire to have a mommy or daddy. I believe rather that we have a controlling desire for the maximum power over our own lives, this power may best be had by cooperation, submission to what would other wise kill you, or any other number of means. Government arose as a way to handle competing desires for power(which are/were mainly competing due to scarcity), this tool is controlled by the dominate force over it which is the net desire(this almost defines the culture of a society) of the populace that caters to government. Kings used to have divine right, when they lost that they lost support among the populace. Also society had different net desires then as well and when that changed the government did shortly after(granted that rebellion was a possibility). A monopoly on force can be a good thing, if that monopoly is your instrument most of the time or protects you at a comparatively low cost to what you would pay to all the instruments/people of force that would exist without that monopoly. Side: Hybrid
I don't believe we have a subconscious desire to have a mommy or daddy. I believe rather that we have a controlling desire for the maximum power over our own lives, this power may best be had by cooperation, submission to what would other wise kill you, or any other number of means. These things are not contradictory. One can both desire power and impose a parental projection on the state. Though, I get where you're coming from. I would say man is schizophrenic in that he wants both freedom for himself but still places blame and responsibility for his misery on an external entity. It takes great maturity to accept responsibility for everything in your life. When mankind reaches such a point, governments become obsolete. A monopoly on force can be a good thing, if that monopoly is your instrument most of the time or protects you at a comparatively low cost to what you would pay to all the instruments/people of force that would exist without that monopoly. A monopoly on force is a dangerous thing. It's not our instrument, it's the states. Einstein built the atom bomb for America so that Germany would not monopolize force and conquer the world. Germany surrendered before it's completion and Japan was already negotiating their conditions of surrender, but president Truman dropped the bomb anyway just to witness its power. He saw that soon the war would be over and there may never again be a chance to show the world the might of the U.S. government, so roughly 200,000 Japanese civilians died simply because one fool wanted to firmly establish his monopoly on force. A monopoly on force could never be a good thing in the hand of politicians. Side: Hybrid
That makes even less sense now that you've explained it. =p The burden of being abstruse? I said that the market is a capitalist product and that any variation on capitalism would hinder the market. No. You said that any change to the market would change [hinder] capitalism (which you define as a market). Capitalism. Supply and demand is what drives the economy. Any perversion of this is a hindrance to the market. Supply and demand IS the market, capitalism is just another word for this. Then either you are an idiot for thinking it related to what I said or you are manipulative for trying to connect what I said to Islam. It was a simple and obvious illustration of your mistake. That it has connotations was apparently fortuitous despite being unintended. If that really is the best economic system, then that's what would emerge on a free market. That just opened a discussion into the grey area of how we define what the consequences of a market are, and where the line between a market and government exists exactly. I could easily make the argument that the bureaucracy we now suffer and indeed our descent into inevitable socialism is the product, ultimately, of what the free market set in motion in a small government. I could also make the argument that we the people chose to extinguish free markets and cater to government as a choice from hundreds of market-government permutations throughout history, in a sense out of the meta-market we collectively chose this. There's also the argument that a free market cannot choose something out of its scope, the exchange of goods, and that you need something bigger with executive powers to change it. Governments are man-made. They are the result of the intersubjective ideologies of a given population. How persons are raised affects (you could almost say "defines") their ideology. So test it in an experiment to determine whether this merely sounds right or actually has predictive power. So, when there is a correlation as strong as there is between child rearing methods and the affixing form of government it follows that there is a causal relationship. That's just a really strong hunch. But hey, don't take my word for it. Lloyd DeMause does a fine job of defending his own research. Until you can demonstrate an ability to predict, it's just a defense of a strong hunch. Wrong. You're Utopian vision requires conformity. Conformity to the state. With a state, one must conform to the ideologies and agreements of others. Without a state, one must only conform to reality. No. I advocate a strong democratic government, which means that conformity is low. An anarchy requires that everyone works together with a strong sense of individualism and an instinctual-very strong sense of morality to overwhelm the desire to reap power. For everyone. If anyone is sociopathic, it fails because they will undermine the system. If anyone who seeks power exists they will undermine it. Side: Hybrid
No. You said that any change to the market would change [hinder] capitalism (which you define as a market). Capitalism. Supply and demand is what drives the economy. Any perversion of this is a hindrance to the market. Supply and demand IS the market, capitalism is just another word for this. Alright, let me break this down for you. Capitalism is the ideal means of a productive economy as buying and selling goods and service is the market. Capitalism emerged from the market via supply and demand. Introducing something in the market other than capitalism (i.e. state regulation) is not in response to market demand but rather state demand, therefore that which is not capitalistic is a hindrance the market and is a worse economic system. Do you understand? Capitalism (supply and demand) is the market. The price of goods is defined by whatever the demand values it as. Subsidizing market affairs introduces artificial prices that don't reflect market demand, thus hinders the equilibriums in the economy. It was a simple and obvious illustration of your mistake. That it has connotations was apparently fortuitous despite being unintended. Yeah, except there was no mistake. That just opened a discussion into the grey area of how we define what the consequences of a market are, and where the line between a market and government exists exactly. Governments tax, free markets don't. I could easily make the argument that the bureaucracy we now suffer and indeed our descent into inevitable socialism is the product, ultimately, of what the free market set in motion in a small government. I could also make the argument that we the people chose to extinguish free markets and cater to government as a choice from hundreds of market-government permutations throughout history, in a sense out of the meta-market we collectively chose this. There's also the argument that a free market cannot choose something out of its scope, the exchange of goods, and that you need something bigger with executive powers to change it. I would agree that man is not yet ready for anarchy. That's not to say that that state runs the economy better than the market, simply that our species is still immature and doesn't yet understand the potential of free exchange. So test it in an experiment to determine whether this merely sounds right or actually has predictive power. I would advice you to look into psycho-history. It's probably one of the most interesting things you will ever read about. I can't decide for you, you're going to have to look into it and decide for yourself if Llyod DeMauses' work follows or not. That's just a really strong hunch. There is also no correlation stronger. Call it the strongest hunch. Though I fully understand that in matters of the subjective it is nearly impossible to prove anything beyond conjecture. As I said earlier, you're going to have to look into it and decide for yourself if it follows. I've yet to find a better explanation. If you find one, let me know. Until you can demonstrate an ability to predict, it's just a defense of a strong hunch. The problem is that psycho-classes are not immediate things, They take generation to change and past classes never really disappear entirely. We can however observe various nations to determine if the same patterns arise and indeed they have. No other theory has shown such a strong correlation. A government's style is determined by the intersubjective ideology of the populace. If the populace wants democracy, the government must conform to this or collapse. A population's intersubjective ideology is determined by the values instilled into them as children on the aggregate. It takes great maturity to evolve beyond the values instilled into oneself as a child and this is why I say mankind is not yet ready for a free market. They still believe they need a parent to guide them, so they do. No. I advocate a strong democratic government, which means that conformity is low. An anarchy requires that everyone works together with a strong sense of individualism and an instinctual-very strong sense of morality to overwhelm the desire to reap power. For everyone. If anyone is sociopathic, it fails because they will undermine the system. If anyone who seeks power exists they will undermine it. No one person can conquer a nation. You need such trust and dedication from the population that you can tax them in order to expand your power. You need to be surrounded by idiots. In a nation of intelligence, the only way to amass power is by providing a service better than your competition and once you deviate from market demand, your power is lost. Man kind is becoming more and more intelligent. Soon the state will be obsolete. Government and religion are fundamentally the same. Just as man has evolved out of religion (more or less) so too will we evolve out of government. (is it obvious I'm on Percocets right now? =3) Side: Hybrid
Do you understand? Capitalism (supply and demand) is the market. The price of goods is defined by whatever the demand values it as. Subsidizing market affairs introduces artificial prices that don't reflect market demand, thus hinders the equilibriums in the economy. It understood but wanted you to expand it so it did not seem like a tautological argument. Thank you. Governments tax, free markets don't. It's called other things in a free market. Tiered service, premium goods, switching costs, tips, etc. I would agree that man is not yet ready for anarchy. That's not to say that that state runs the economy better than the market, simply that our species is still immature and doesn't yet understand the potential of free exchange. I would argue that some of us know and understand the potential of free exchange too well and that is why we asked for states. No one person can conquer a nation. You need such trust and dedication from the population that you can tax them in order to expand your power. You need to be surrounded by idiots. I would argue that history is full of single men leading others to conquer nations, to oppress others, to take advantage of opportunities for power. People are drawn to charisma, for starters, and this is a big part of it. In a nation of intelligence, the only way to amass power is by providing a service better than your competition and once you deviate from market demand, your power is lost. Man kind is becoming more and more intelligent. Soon the state will be obsolete. I explained this to you before. In the market better doesn't mean more good it means more fit as in more able to serve a niche. You're like the creationist who thinks that evolution is survival of the fittest, with fit meaning more muscle tone and therefore stronger. States are merely the product of our hierarchical nature. It would take maybe tens of thousands of years of evolution to remove that instinct from us. Then you'd just have a society of psychopaths. Government and religion are fundamentally the same. Just as man has evolved out of religion (more or less) so too will we evolve out of government. Neither will leave us. Both are emergent properties of our minds. You may as well say that we will evolve out of eating. Side: Hybrid
It understood but wanted you to expand it so it did not seem like a tautological argument. Thank you. Well, no problem then I suppose. It's called other things in a free market. Tiered service, premium goods, switching costs, tips, etc. All of which are voluntary. I would argue that history is full of single men leading others to conquer nations, to oppress others, to take advantage of opportunities for power. People are drawn to charisma, for starters, and this is a big part of it. Events such as these happen in response to an already existing state. Without an oppressor, there's no need for revolution. It becomes very hard to convince others to follow you when you stand only for your own power. I explained this to you before. In the market better doesn't mean more good it means more fit as in more able to serve a niche. You're like the creationist who thinks that evolution is survival of the fittest, with fit meaning more muscle tone and therefore stronger. No, this is the way you mean "more good". I'm free to use this word as I please and to me, being more fit IS being more "good". The better your company fits market demand, then more "good" it does for the economy. States are merely the product of our hierarchical nature. It would take maybe tens of thousands of years of evolution to remove that instinct from us. Then you'd just have a society of psychopaths. States should have died off long ago. The only exist now because they've managed to convince the populace into letting them "educate" their children for roughly 12 years. Twelve years! This is why there are more atheists than anarchists. Religion has become separated from education, so it's become much easier for persons to see the stupidity in it. Once politics is separated from education, the same will happen. Neither will leave us. Both are emergent properties of our minds. You may as well say that we will evolve out of eating. Hey, anything's possible. We may just evolve out of eating. ;) Seriously though, anyone can understand the hypocrisy of both religion and politics. It's a matter of social evolution. Given how rapidly psycho-classes have been shifting it could happen within one generation. Sure, this may be the biggest wall mankind has had to break down. Then again, we also have the largest battering ram. Side: Hybrid
All of which are voluntary. They are required for the service, just as many taxes are voluntary until you buy into a service. Events such as these happen in response to an already existing state. Without an oppressor, there's no need for revolution. It becomes very hard to convince others to follow you when you stand only for your own power. You've never heard of Mafia or gangs. No, this is the way you mean "more good". I'm free to use this word as I please and to me, being more fit IS being more "good". The better your company fits market demand, then more "good" it does for the economy. Are you aware of Dracunculiasis? In evolution a very painful pathogen developed as a niche existed, using our bodies for food and water. It is an example of fitness being contrary to goodness. In the market, similar situations can develop, for example hitmen and drugs are niches that would develop as natural niches, another is the pollution of the environment for cheap goods. That is why "good" and "fit" aren't really interchangeable. States should have died off long ago. The only exist now because they've managed to convince the populace into letting them "educate" their children for roughly 12 years. Twelve years! This is why there are more atheists than anarchists. Religion has become separated from education, so it's become much easier for persons to see the stupidity in it. Once politics is separated from education, the same will happen. Christians say the same thing, except that schools are to blame for a lack of religion. Anarchists are the twinkle-eyed idealists of the world. Religion will always exist as a coping mechanism. Christianity and Islam will die but New age will take its place, or some new religion like Scientology, or one yet unknown. The same is true for government. Hey, anything's possible. We may just evolve out of eating. ;) Except we won't. Seriously though, anyone can understand the hypocrisy of both religion and politics. It's a matter of social evolution. Given how rapidly psycho-classes have been shifting it could happen within one generation. It really cannot. People are hierarchical beings. Sure, this may be the biggest wall mankind has had to break down. Then again, we also have the largest battering ram. I would rather we didn't. A lack of community fosters behaviour that is savage. Side: Hybrid
They are required for the service, just as many taxes are voluntary until you buy into a service. You're ignoring the fact that you can choose to opt out of a regular company's service. Taxation is something imposed onto you until death or emigration (even then you're just entering another tax farm), just for existing. You've never heard of Mafia or gangs. Do you know what the word for the largest mafia of a given nation is called? The government. Again, the mafia exists in response to the already existing government. They represent the repressed demand of a nation. Without a government, there is no repressed demand. Are you aware of Dracunculiasis? In evolution a very painful pathogen developed as a niche existed, using our bodies for food and water. It is an example of fitness being contrary to goodness. In this case it is a matter of perspective. From the parasites perspective it is both fit and good (even if it is just for itself). So, the more fit it is the more good it does for itself. I get what you're saying, but relative to the market I still contend that the most fit companies will also be the most good to the market. Christians say the same thing, except that schools are to blame for a lack of religion. Anarchists are the twinkle-eyed idealists of the world. Religion will always exist as a coping mechanism. Christianity and Islam will die but New age will take its place, or some new religion like Scientology, or one yet unknown. The same is true for government. I'm sure you can see the parallels between religion and government. Both are parental projections (The heavenly father vs. the founding fathers). Both are dogmatic (the bible vs. the constitution). Both are power hungry and corrupt. When religion was the main proponent of education, everyone was religious. Now that government is, everyone's a statist. If education wasn't monopolized by the state, anarchists would be much more common just as atheists are much more common now that we've moved on from the middle ages. Except we won't. This is off topic, but I can see how it is possible. 95% of what we eat is discarded as waste anyways. It's very much possible that the 5% could be extracted and converted into a shot or something. Just sayin'. It really cannot. People are hierarchical beings. Then be hierarchical. You can have a best and a worst without fiat land claims and robbery. I would rather we didn't. A lack of community fosters behaviour that is savage. You're just saying that now because you still don't see how a society could function without all the most vital services coercively monopolized by a small group of wealthy mafia men. Side: Hybrid
You're ignoring the fact that you can choose to opt out of a regular company's service. As you can with taxes. For example, don't own property, or make an income over 20000 dollars a year, or found a religion and declare yourself a church and priest. Taxation is something imposed onto you until death or emigration (even then you're just entering another tax farm), just for existing. So are free-market premiums, switching costs, etc. Do you know what the word for the largest mafia of a given nation is called? The government. Change of topic. The mafia and gangs contradict your claim. I get what you're saying, but relative to the market I still contend that the most fit companies will also be the most good to the market. You evaded my topic. Good for the market has nothing to do with what is good for us. That is why we still use oil, despite global warming, and oil spills. When religion was the main proponent of education, everyone was religious. Now that government is, everyone's a statist. If education wasn't monopolized by the state, anarchists would be much more common just as atheists are much more common now that we've moved on from the middle ages. People are atheist and agnostic because schools are allowed to teach the facts, which imply a lack of need for god. The facts do not suggest this about governments and law. This is off topic, but I can see how it is possible. 95% of what we eat is discarded as waste anyways. It's very much possible that the 5% could be extracted and converted into a shot or something. We are talking about evolution, not technology. Certain insects have evolved so that their adult stage does not eat, they live a day to find a mate then die. We have large energy costs and a slow growth rate, our primary feature, the brain, requires two decades to mature. It is infeasible to expect that we can evolve to need no food. Then be hierarchical. You can have a best and a worst without fiat land claims and robbery. A hierarchy precludes the ability of anarchy to work. You're just saying that now because you still don't see how a society could function without all the most vital services coercively monopolized by a small group of wealthy mafia men. No, I say this because animals have evolved to be independent and they have no sense of morality like we do. Side: Hybrid
As you can with taxes. For example, don't own property, or make an income over 20000 dollars a year, or found a religion and declare yourself a church and priest. ... Ah, how silly of me. Opting out of government services is so simple, all you have to do is live a life of poverty and homelessness. =/ Oh wait, that doesn't work either since all (or most, depending on which country you live) goods and services are taxed anyway... So are free-market premiums, switching costs, etc. These are things you agree to voluntarily. Don't tell me you can't see the difference between the bed you make and the bed you're given. =/ Change of topic. The mafia and gangs contradict your claim. I don't know why you're bothering to complain about this "change in topic" as though I didn't immediately address your argument after saying it. But, whatever... Mafia and gangs are just small governments. I'm opposed to governments. There's no contradiction. Are you in support of gangs and mafias? ;) Ironically, since you didn't so much as touch on my counter point (Again, the mafia exists in response to the already existing government. They represent the repressed demand of a nation. Without a government, there is no repressed demand.) YOU have completely evaded my point, yet you feel an injustice for my "change of topic". XD You evaded my topic. Good for the market has nothing to do with what is good for us. That is why we still use oil, despite global warming, and oil spills. Wrong. We still use oil because oil is what backs the petrodollar, which backs the U.S. economy, which backs China's economy etc. etc. We still use oil because it's government demand. To claim otherwise shows either a sheer and embarrassing ignorance of the topic or a manipulative attempt to twist the facts. You know, looking back on this debates history, you've done a peculiarly good job at evading the things I've said. Like the paragraph preceding the one you're responding to in this point, which by doing so takes what I've said out of context. But again, whatever. Half of the market is demand, the "us". The other half is the supply, which is also us. Two persons are willing to trade with each other because they value what the other has over what they already have. Since the demand makes half the market and supply is half of the market, but both are made of "us"; it follows that what is good for the market is good for us. This isn't as complicated as you're making it. The market isn't an entity separate from us, it is us. People are atheist and agnostic because schools are allowed to teach the facts, which imply a lack of need for god. The facts do not suggest this about governments and law. He-he, you want to go down this road again eh. http://www.youtube.com/user/ http://fringeelements.flux.com/ http://www.youtube.com/user/spawktalk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Making such blanket statements as "the facts show blibbity blobbity bloo" means nothing, especially if you don't actualy show any of these "facts". Sure, you can say "but I've posted points elsewhere." Then again, I've debunked them all anyway. Persons support the state because they're taught to. You think you're special? Just because you want some "hybrid" government? You're just like everyone else. Everybody seems to think they know what's best for everyone else, what's best for society. You're ideology comes from your ego. If you somehow manage let it go, you'll see wanting the world conform to you is stupid. We are talking about evolution, not technology. Technology has an evolution of it's own. It is emergent, perhaps guided by our supply and demands - then again, our evolution is guided by natural selection. Certain insects have evolved so that their adult stage does not eat, they live a day to find a mate then die. We have large energy costs and a slow growth rate, our primary feature, the brain, requires two decades to mature. It is infeasible to expect that we can evolve to need no food. 95% of what we eat is discarded through the digestive system. It's the digestive system that kills us. We have such a large energy cost because we spend so much energy getting rid of the 95%. If we don't get it in the first place, there's really no reason why we all can't live to be 100+ years old. A hierarchy precludes the ability of anarchy to work. Another claim with no argument backing it. When you're not evading the things I've said, you're making hollow assertions and expecting me to piece your argument together using what little arguments you actually do give as clues. Do you understand what a hierarchy is? It's any system of persons or things ranked one above another. Government requires hierarchy, but hierarchy does not require government. Do I have to explain to you how this is possible or can I trust you're at least intelligent enough to understand this? No, I say this because animals have evolved to be independent and they have no sense of morality like we do. Animals have evolved to be independent, eh? Animals don't cluster together with like animals, eh? ... You sure about that? Morality is a play on words persons tell themselves because admitting a moral code is simply ones preferences super-imposed as rules on themselves and others leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Search yourself and you'll understand this is true. You prefer not to be robbed, so to be internally consistent you make it a rule not to rob. This is compassion (sort of). When you try to force these preferences on others via religion, government, etc. this is violence. Side: Hybrid
... Ah, how silly of me. Opting out of government services is so simple, all you have to do is live a life of poverty and homelessness. =/ Exactly. Just like private services on the market. Don't want to pay for premium, exclusive, membership, ensured services? Live like a bum then. Oh wait, that doesn't work either since all (or most, depending on which country you live) goods and services are taxed anyway... Same as private markets. What, you thought food was free in the market? I don't know why you're bothering to complain about this "change in topic" as though I didn't immediately address your argument after saying it. But, whatever... Mafia and gangs are just small governments. I'm opposed to governments. There's no contradiction. Events such as these happen in response to an already existing state. Without an oppressor, there's no need for revolution. It becomes very hard to convince others to follow you when you stand only for your own power. You said this, implying that without a state there would be no motivation to seize power. I corrected you by presenting gangs and mafias. Wrong. We still use oil because oil is what backs the petrodollar, which backs the U.S. economy, which backs China's economy etc. etc. We still use oil because it's government demand. To claim otherwise shows either a sheer and embarrassing ignorance of the topic or a manipulative attempt to twist the facts. We use oil because it is a cheap source of energy that is owned by a number of powerful companies which promote its usage in the face of growing worries about environmental harm. The oil spill has devastated the local marine ecosystem, one company's screwup has changed life for all of us. No single company should have that power. You know, looking back on this debates history, you've done a peculiarly good job at evading the things I've said. Like the paragraph preceding the one you're responding to in this point, which by doing so takes what I've said out of context. But again, whatever. I don't respond to emotional harangues, or irrelevant points unless they pique my interest. Maybe you should reflect on whether the point I ignored was applicable to the discussion. Since the demand makes half the market and supply is half of the market, but both are made of "us"; it follows that what is good for the market is good for us. The market is a human invention that selects for self-interest and thriftiness. Please read this, it is critical: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ Making such blanket statements as "the facts show blibbity blobbity bloo" means nothing, especially if you don't actualy show any of these "facts". I brought up Somalia, the Industrial Revolution and modern free markets as examples where lack of state oversight causes problems to society. These are examples of facts and few would argue that anarchy is a good thing when historically it leads to fighting factions. Persons support the state because they're taught to. You think you're special? Just because you want some "hybrid" government? You're just like everyone else. Everybody seems to think they know what's best for everyone else, what's best for society. This is an example of emotional harangue that I just ignore. You're ideology comes from your ego. If you somehow manage let it go, you'll see wanting the world conform to you is stupid. The only person here who is preaching that the world conform to him is you. I actually don't care, I'm happy as long as I have my own world for myself. 95% of what we eat is discarded through the digestive system. It's the digestive system that kills us. We have such a large energy cost because we spend so much energy getting rid of the 95%. If we don't get it in the first place, there's really no reason why we all can't live to be 100+ years old. Bunk with no appreciation for efficiency. Another claim with no argument backing it. When you're not evading the things I've said, you're making hollow assertions and expecting me to piece your argument together using what little arguments you actually do give as clues. I thought it was intuitively obvious on its own. If you have a society of hierarchical creatures, left to their own devices they will institute power and authority hierarchies. This is the emergent property that leads to tribes, factions and then states. Therefore a government must arise from anarchy. It is kind of like a fractal, actually. Do you understand what a hierarchy is? It's any system of persons or things ranked one above another. Government requires hierarchy, but hierarchy does not require government. Do I have to explain to you how this is possible or can I trust you're at least intelligent enough to understand this? The Mandelbrot set has self-similarity, a property of fractals. Wherever you magnify it, it appears the same as a greater or lesser magnification. So it is with hierarchies: families/tribes/towns/metropolis/states/ Animals have evolved to be independent, eh? Animals don't cluster together with like animals, eh? ... You sure about that? Spiders, a typical example, are lone predators of flying insects. Morality is a play on words persons tell themselves because admitting a moral code is simply ones preferences super-imposed as rules on themselves and others leaves a bad taste in their mouths. Morality is based on intuitive senses that have underpinnings in our evolution as social beings. Mores, folkways and taboos may change but the basic senses of right and wrong, empathy, reciprocation are near-universal. Side: Hybrid
Exactly. Just like private services on the market. Don't want to pay for premium, exclusive, membership, ensured services? Live like a bum then. There's a difference between voluntarily paying for a service and having your money coercively extracted so you and everyone in the country can fight over what it will be spent on. You can chose to not go with companies offering switching costs if you really don't want to. The same is not true with taxation. By the way, things such as premiums have time limits. Even if you agree to them, you'll eventually pay it off. You'll never "finish" paying taxes unless you're dead (or a hobo I suppose). Same as private markets. What, you thought food was free in the market? Again, you're conflating the voluntary purchasing of goods and services with the coercive extraction of funds seen with taxation. Food won't be taxed if there's nothing taxing food, don't be stupid. Events such as these happen in response to an already existing state. Without an oppressor, there's no need for revolution. It becomes very hard to convince others to follow you when you stand only for your own power. You said this, implying that without a state there would be no motivation to seize power. I corrected you by presenting gangs and mafias. You've managed to completely ignore what I literally just wrote in the very post you're responding to... again. Also, you've blatantly straw-manned me! Not once did I say anything close to the motive for power would disappear without a state. I very clearly said that without an oppressor there's no need for revolution, thus it becomes nearly impossible to convince persons to submit to your edicts. I mean, you even directly quoted me in your own post and you still managed to straw-man me. I'm beginning to feel ashamed of myself for thinking that there was any sort of intelligence in you in the first place. =( Mafias and gangs exist in response to the already existing government mafia. They represent a repressed market. Without an oppressor, there's no repressed demand, thus no need for a mafia since these goods and services can now be legally provided by legitimate businesses. We use oil because it is a cheap source of energy that is owned by a number of powerful companies which promote its usage in the face of growing worries about environmental harm. The oil spill has devastated the local marine ecosystem, one company's screwup has changed life for all of us. No single company should have that power. The oil spill happened because the way our economy is set up, it's cheaper to fix a mistake than to go through all the necessary precautions to insure they don't happen in the first place. If you really believe that no single company should have such power then you should absolutely support the abolishment of the state. We've seen time and time again that they don't prevent such things and in fact aggravate the problem (barriers to entry and whatnot). Rather than leave all the power in that hands of the state, leave the hands in the power of the persons. I don't respond to emotional harangues, or irrelevant points unless they pique my interest. Maybe you should reflect on whether the point I ignored was applicable to the discussion. 1. You're the one making emotional harangues and irrelevant points. If memory serves, back when I had some respect for your intellect you where still quick to spit out unnecessary insults anyway. ;) 2. You've been arguing at me for talking about how food can be easily replaced and that was waaaaayyy more off topic than anything else I've said in this debate thus far. It's one thing to disagree with the relevance of an argument, it's another to ignore it without so much as stating that you find it irrelevant. I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if I started writing off the points you find important just because I don't agree with them. I at least have the courtesy to tell you when I think you're wrong, less you start to think I'm ignoring them because I can't dispute it. ;) The market is a human invention that selects for self-interest and thriftiness. Please read this, it is critical: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/ Alright, I will. There's quite a bit to read here so if you're reading this it means I finished writing this post before I finished the article and will address it in my next post. I brought up Somalia, the Industrial Revolution and modern free markets as examples where lack of state oversight causes problems to society. These are examples of facts and few would argue that anarchy is a good thing when historically it leads to fighting factions. Yeah, hey then I responded by both showing you the reasoning behind how these things show just the opposite of the conclusions you've drawn and posted several, several sources to back up these claims. Now it's your turn. Show me how the information I've given you is actually wrong. Don't just reassert what you've already said again, you have to actually counter the points I've made for the debate to progress. Show me data countering the data I've given on the improvements seen in Somalia after the collapse of the state. Show me how the industrial revolution wasn't a step up from that preceded it. Show me something to counter my arguments. That's sort of how a debate works... This is an example of emotional harangue that I just ignore. Emotional it may be, but it's also true. You are just like everybody else thinking you know the one, true way for every ones lives to be run. There's nothing special or innovative about it. It's just another revolution. I support evolution. The only person here who is preaching that the world conform to him is you. I actually don't care, I'm happy as long as I have my own world for myself. Wrong. You're the one in support of the extortion racket. You're the one in support of a system of behavioral control. I'm saying there should be no government, that there is no "one" way to be. You say you don't care only because you still support that which does. Bunk with no appreciation for efficiency. Yet another denial of something I've said without so much as a single argument to support it. Tell me, in what way is dumping the unnecessary 95% not efficient? I thought it was intuitively obvious on its own. If you have a society of hierarchical creatures, left to their own devices they will institute power and authority hierarchies. This is the emergent property that leads to tribes, factions and then states. Therefore a government must arise from anarchy. It is kind of like a fractal, actually. A hierarchy is not dependent on fiat-land claims and the coercive extraction of funds. Companies don't have these things, yet they still have a hierarchy. Just because hierarchy "must" arise, does in no way mean an extortion racket has to. The Mandelbrot set has self-similarity, a property of fractals. Wherever you magnify it, it appears the same as a greater or lesser magnification. So it is with hierarchies: families/tribes/towns/metropolis/states/ governments/meta governments. Persons coming together to enact trade is rational. Persons coming together to enact coercive monopolies on the most vital of these trades at the promise of being able to supply for them better than they could for themselves is not. Spiders, a typical example, are lone predators of flying insects. Okay. =) But, chimps - of whom are much, much closer to us genetically, are not. Morality is based on intuitive senses that have underpinnings in our evolution as social beings. Mores, folkways and taboos may change but the basic senses of right and wrong, empathy, reciprocation are near-universal. Nothing you just said refutes that morals are simply super-imposed preferences. You understand that, right? Perhaps "right" and "wrong" are nearly universal, then again, so is the preference to not get robbed. ;) Side: Hybrid
There's a difference between voluntarily paying for a service and having your money coercively extracted so you and everyone in the country can fight over what it will be spent on. It isn't coercively extracted any more than your landlord coercively extracts rent from you or the grocer coercively extracts 25 cents for that apple. You choose to become part of a particular income and tax bracket, you choose to live in a state that has certain taxes and services. It's basically like a country-wide apartment. You can chose to not go with companies offering switching costs if you really don't want to. The same is not true with taxation. You can choose to not live in a state with income tax, property tax, sales tax, etc. By the way, things such as premiums have time limits. Even if you agree to them, you'll eventually pay it off. You'll never "finish" paying taxes unless you're dead (or a hobo I suppose). You'll never stop paying for premium or special capitalist services until you're dead or a pan handler. Again, you're conflating the voluntary purchasing of goods and services with the coercive extraction of funds seen with taxation. Food won't be taxed if there's nothing taxing food, don't be stupid. My entire argument is that comparing state taxes versus market service and goods rates is the same as comparing To-may-toes versus To-mah-toes. Po-tay-toes Po-tah-toes... better call the whole thing off. I mean, you even directly quoted me in your own post and you still managed to straw-man me. I'm beginning to feel ashamed of myself for thinking that there was any sort of intelligence in you in the first place. =( I was probably not paying attention when I wrote it, for want of jumping ahead to new arguments you were making. However with or without your distinction the rebuttal has the same meaning: in a stateless environment people will assemble into gangs or mafias or factions due to similar interests and the promise of power over others. In other words, revolutions or none, states to fight or none, power always seeks to emerge. Mafias and gangs exist in response to the already existing government mafia. They represent a repressed market. Without an oppressor, there's no repressed demand, thus no need for a mafia since these goods and services can now be legally provided by legitimate businesses. May I put this on a placard and mount it in an exhibit of idealism versus reality? The oil spill happened because the way our economy is set up, it's cheaper to fix a mistake than to go through all the necessary precautions to insure they don't happen in the first place. That is how a market naturally forms. This is why we must artificially create a high cost for mistakes like this through penalties. However if I had command, the penalty would be a public beheading of all the CEOs of that company, with their heads mounted on pikes in front of the corporate headquarters. If you really believe that no single company should have such power then you should absolutely support the abolishment of the state. We've seen time and time again that they don't prevent such things and in fact aggravate the problem (barriers to entry and whatnot). Rather than leave all the power in that hands of the state, leave the hands in the power of the persons. Thanks to the state we may sue BP, without a state the power they have would make them immune to punishment of any form. 1. You're the one making emotional harangues and irrelevant points. If memory serves, back when I had some respect for your intellect you where still quick to spit out unnecessary insults anyway. ;) I don't care what anarchists think of my intelligence any more than I care for Josef Mengele's opinions on medical ethics. Also, I respond to stupidity with derision, in case you hadn't noticed. 2. You've been arguing at me for talking about how food can be easily replaced and that was waaaaayyy more off topic than anything else I've said in this debate thus far. It's one thing to disagree with the relevance of an argument, it's another to ignore it without so much as stating that you find it irrelevant. You mean your statement that 95% of food is waste? It's ridiculous. I have a hard time breaking down such a statement that is so obviously wrong, but I will, since you just don't understand. Firstly, the 95% is an arbitrary figure you picked which in actuality could range from 0% to 100% depending on what the food is made of. Secondly is isn't a specific statement, as in "how much of the energy you gain from food goes to survival, or actual work?" or "how much of raw food goes directly to survival or work?" So to give a very simple example of where your reasoning sinks: It is typical of most people to use between 1500 and 2000 calories a day just for metabolism, I.E. maintaining homeostasis and organ functions. We can use much more simply for moving around, or thinking heavily. Food can be completely caloric or only partially able to be used. Do you know what roughage is? It is basically polysaccharides that we lack the enzymes to break down into the simple sugars which commonly are used for energy. Fruit, legumes, vegetables, etc. all have this. However some foods are almost entirely energy, like candies and fried foods. These foods are mostly broken down into energy and stored as fats. So if we're talking food to energy, it's clear that the efficiency is much better than 5% because many common foods are between 10% and 30% carbohydrates alone, not counting protein. If we're talking energy stored in the body to work, then it's much more complicated and a physics problem. However it isn't inefficient because most of the energy you take in goes to the brain and organs, and maintaining homeostasis. You cannot simply shut this down. Alright, I will. There's quite a bit to read here so if you're reading this it means I finished writing this post before I finished the article and will address it in my next post. The first third or twenty percent is most vital, it defines the problem and then lists examples from there. Yeah, hey then I responded by both showing you the reasoning behind how these things show just the opposite of the conclusions you've drawn and posted several, several sources to back up these claims. No, what you did was conflate economic success with social success, which is typical with libertarians. Now it's your turn. Show me how the information I've given you is actually wrong. Don't just reassert what you've already said again, you have to actually counter the points I've made for the debate to progress. You didn't actually give me information, but the links to agencies themselves. Show me data countering the data I've given on the improvements seen in Somalia after the collapse of the state. Show me how the industrial revolution wasn't a step up from that preceded it. Show me something to counter my arguments. That's sort of how a debate works... I believe I already did this when I said: Two decades of civil war is not better than a government despite increases in numbers of telephones and televisions and decreases in infant mortality. Civil war is not an improvement. Do I really even need to say this? It's like needing to tell you that war is inferior to peace even though the war brought us military research that later improved civilian lives. Economic success in the Industrial revolution is not a measure of social success. Hai capito? These are rudimentary errors that defeat your argument before any data is even mentioned. Emotional it may be, but it's also true. You are just like everybody else thinking you know the one, true way for every ones lives to be run. There's nothing special or innovative about it. It's just another revolution. I support evolution. You actually haven't a clue what I believe because this entire discussion and indeed each of our discussions has been about your ideology. Wrong. You're the one in support of the extortion racket. You're the one in support of a system of behavioral control. I'm saying there should be no government, that there is no "one" way to be. You say you don't care only because you still support that which does. I fail to understand how you cannot distinguish between not advocating changing people's lives because a state exists already, and advocating changing everybody's lives through a bloody war to end government. It's a bit like confusing a person sitting in a chair with a person that is walking. A hierarchy is not dependent on fiat-land claims and the coercive extraction of funds. Companies don't have these things, yet they still have a hierarchy. Just because hierarchy "must" arise, does in no way mean an extortion racket has to. A government is the end result of this progression. It is the product of power struggles and the desire of the people to have greater protection from enemies abroad. If your thinking was correct, governments would be rare historically, because anarchies (if they worked like you think they do) would be more productive, more peaceful and thus more prosperous due to the resources being used for something besides war. Persons coming together to enact trade is rational. Persons coming together to enact coercive monopolies on the most vital of these trades at the promise of being able to supply for them better than they could for themselves is not. Rational is not a synonym for desirable. Controlling the market by being a sole provider is extremely rational, as it is an act of self-interest with greater payoff than competing with rivals. Fortunately with governments we can make them legally bound to serve us, and be subordinate to us. You can't do that with a market, unless you have an army. But, chimps - of whom are much, much closer to us genetically, are not. They are communal animals, and therefore have an evolved morality. Nothing you just said refutes that morals are simply super-imposed preferences. You understand that, right? Perhaps "right" and "wrong" are nearly universal, then again, so is the preference to not get robbed. ;) I'll simplify. If society was made of super-spiders, everyone would be a loner, hyper-rational, and there would be no objection towards killing your neighbour or stealing his goods. Spiders never evolved a sense of wrongness for these things because they are not social animals. If you force us to evolve with no selection for moral behaviours, then evolutionary thrift will cut back moral senses that are less effective in a society of cut-throat businessmen. This means trust vanishes, fear decreases, aversions to homicide and robbery cease. Side: Hybrid
It isn't coercively extracted any more than your landlord coercively extracts rent from you or the grocer coercively extracts 25 cents for that apple. You choose to become part of a particular income and tax bracket, you choose to live in a state that has certain taxes and services. It's basically like a country-wide apartment. The "like it or leave it" argument works with a stateless society, but not with a state run society. If a bunch of persons decided to leave the states rule and start up there own little town and started to become prosperous, the state would eventually intervene and force their "services" on them. This is because the state has a fiat land claim. It "owns" every square inch of land from ocean to ocean (In the case of the U.S./ Canada etc.). You can choose to not live in a state with income tax, property tax, sales tax, etc. I don't know were you live, but I've yet to hear of a state where, just by living in it, you are exempt from taxes. Again, this argument is not valid for a statist because one cannot just leave and move to a non-state controlled city. You'll never stop paying for premium or special capitalist services until you're dead or a pan handler. If you're saying that you'll never finish paying for the things you need to survive, then I agree. Then again, this is true regardless of the state so is in no way an argument for the state. My entire argument is that comparing state taxes versus market service and goods rates is the same as comparing To-may-toes versus To-mah-toes. Po-tay-toes Po-tah-toes... better call the whole thing off. What are you talking about? Market services are dependent on the supply and demand of the market. Government services are dependent on the supply and demand... of the government. And in the governments case, having a vast fiat land claim and coercive monopolies on all the most vital services are the demands. Market: You want something, your money goes towards it. State: You want something? Government monopolizes it so yours and everyone else's money goes through the state so everyone can fight each other over how to spend the money, then what ever is left after the state takes a cut goes towards what you wanted in the first place. To-may-to, To-mavbdhifuergle. I was probably not paying attention when I wrote it, for want of jumping ahead to new arguments you were making. However with or without your distinction the rebuttal has the same meaning: in a stateless environment people will assemble into gangs or mafias or factions due to similar interests and the promise of power over others. In other words, revolutions or none, states to fight or none, power always seeks to emerge. No, order emerges. I'm not quite sure how to even respond to this, I mean after all that's been said you just brush it aside and re-assert what you've been saying all along anyway. Once again, I'll just have to point to history. Anarchic Ireland had no taxation and no fiat land claims, all they they had was a non-geographic voluntary agency known as a "tuatha" and everything worked out perfectly for over one thousand years despite England invading the country for several hundreds of years. Even with such a massive empire, England was unable to conquer Ireland. It had to spread religion first. Religion worked great against the simple and paranoid early man. Starting up a new religion now won't get you nearly as far. Actually watch this one. It goes into greater detail what I've been talking about and I'm getting sick of having to dispute the "counter points" you make that are addressed in the material I link you: http://www.youtube.com/ May I put this on a placard and mount it in an exhibit of idealism versus reality? Again, there's no "flat-screen T.V. mafia" or a "knitting gang" because these things are legal. There's no need to violently ensure these businesses survival. Once again you've re-asserted the things you've already said without actually making an argument. That is how a market naturally forms. This is why we must artificially create a high cost for mistakes like this through penalties. However if I had command, the penalty would be a public beheading of all the CEOs of that company, with their heads mounted on pikes in front of the corporate headquarters. Hmm, well I suppose we can't all be civilized persons... It seems you've decided to ignore the part were I said "The oil spill happened because the way our economy is set up". Last time I checked, the U.S. is a highly state controlled nation. Look, without a state, BP oil wouldn't even have gotten as large as it did. Without a state to protect businesses, they have to survive on their own merits. Thanks to the state we may sue BP, without a state the power they have would make them immune to punishment of any form. It's called a class action lawsuit, buddy. Courts have emerged without a state and worked out even better than their statist counterparts. http://www.youtube.com/ I don't care what anarchists think of my intelligence any more than I care for Josef Mengele's opinions on medical ethics. Also, I respond to stupidity with derision, in case you hadn't noticed. That's fine, except you're wrong when it comes to government. Just as wrong as anyone else proclaiming the nobility of the state. But ,as long as you still like yourself... You mean your statement that 95% of food is waste? It's ridiculous. I have a hard time breaking down such a statement that is so obviously wrong, but I will, since you just don't understand. Firstly, the 95% is an arbitrary figure you picked which in actuality could range from 0% to 100% depending on what the food is made of. Secondly is isn't a specific statement, as in "how much of the energy you gain from food goes to survival, or actual work?" or "how much of raw food goes directly to survival or work?" So to give a very simple example of where your reasoning sinks: It is typical of most people to use between 1500 and 2000 calories a day just for metabolism, I.E. maintaining homeostasis and organ functions. We can use much more simply for moving around, or thinking heavily. Food can be completely caloric or only partially able to be used. Do you know what roughage is? It is basically polysaccharides that we lack the enzymes to break down into the simple sugars which commonly are used for energy. Fruit, legumes, vegetables, etc. all have this. However some foods are almost entirely energy, like candies and fried foods. These foods are mostly broken down into energy and stored as fats. So if we're talking food to energy, it's clear that the efficiency is much better than 5% because many common foods are between 10% and 30% carbohydrates alone, not counting protein. If we're talking energy stored in the body to work, then it's much more complicated and a physics problem. However it isn't inefficient because most of the energy you take in goes to the brain and organs, and maintaining homeostasis. You cannot simply shut this down. Way to completely ignore the point, avesk. But, whatever... The average person excretes 0.8 kilos of feces per movement (which happens every couple of days for an average person). It takes roughly 7717 calories to equal 1 kilogram. Which means, for every 7717 calories a person takes in they excrete 6173.6 calories (80%) worth of waste in feces. So, assuming it takes zero calories to digest food (it doesn't), 80% of what you eat is still excreted in waste. How much calories you use to digest the food varies, as you said, depending on what the food is, how it was prepared, your over all health, etc. Which means, roughly 85-100% of what you eat is waste (either directly or used up to dispose of waste). http://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/ http://askville.amazon.com/ The first third or twenty percent is most vital, it defines the problem and then lists examples from there. I addressed this in my other post to you, it would be redundant to also discuss it here, so go there if you haven't already. You didn't actually give me information, but the links to agencies themselves. I've linked you to the agencies as well as several studies, videos and papers written either by them or supporting evidence of them. In fact, many of the things I've linked you have supplied their own supporting evidence. =/ No, what you did was conflate economic success with social success, which is typical with libertarians. This shows your utter lack of understanding when it comes to libertarianism. Without a central bank or a federal government there's no monopolized currency or GDP to measure the success of a country by. To see if a country improved without a state you have to look at other measures such as the amount of doctors, life expectancy, things they can afford, etc. I believe I already did this when I said: Two decades of civil war is not better than a government despite increases in numbers of telephones and televisions and decreases in infant mortality. Civil war is not an improvement. Do I really even need to say this? It's like needing to tell you that war is inferior to peace even though the war brought us military research that later improved civilian lives. Economic success in the Industrial revolution is not a measure of social success. Hai capito? These are rudimentary errors that defeat your argument before any data is even mentioned. Jeez, you're thick. "It doesn't matter how much better the country got because it had civil war and civil war automatically makes a country worse than when it had a state regardless of what a booming success it was in every measure of quality of life, hurr durrrrrrr." I can't believe I have to re-re-re-repeat myself... again. =/ 1. The country saw astounding economic growth after the fall of the state. If civil war followed, then at the very least civil war is better for a country than one central government. This is an unavoidable fact. 2. These warring factions came from already existing governments (U.N. or otherwise). Which I oppose anyway. So saying that statelessness is bad because civil war ensued is like saying statelessness is bad because states don't like statelessness... Somalia got better to the extent that it was free to do so. These mini-states didn't have the kind of control the former state had and as a result the market became prosperous. Yes, there was civil war. Then again, the wars were a result of governments trying to establish rule, not market failure as you seem to be insinuating. You actually haven't a clue what I believe because this entire discussion and indeed each of our discussions has been about your ideology. You want some kind of "hybrid" government (just like nearly everyone else I've debated...) and you deny that a free market can function. So, I know you're full of shit. Kinda like how you can assume a religion that denies evolution is full of shit. I love how you call this my "ideology" though, as this is perfectly analogous to a Christian referring an atheists lack of belief in God as a belief. XD That's fine with me. I believe in non-belief and there's nothing wrong with that. ;) I fail to understand how you cannot distinguish between not advocating changing people's lives because a state exists already, and advocating changing everybody's lives through a bloody war to end government. It's a bit like confusing a person sitting in a chair with a person that is walking. Not once have I said anything even remotely close to "I advocate changing everybody's lives through a bloody war to end government." You're straw-manning me - AGAIN. You just can't stop with the logical fallacies, can you? Look, the state can only be abolished by educating persons on the disutility of the state. All revolutions have ended in a new state forming because the persons of that nation still believe they need a state. In countries without this mental dependency (like Anarchic Ireland/Iceland), no government formed. It took hundreds of years worth of invasion from both the earth's mightiest empire and most powerful and wide spread religion to finally take it down. And that was back when mankind was a bunch of superstitious star worshipers. ;) A government is the end result of this progression. It is the product of power struggles and the desire of the people to have greater protection from enemies abroad. If your thinking was correct, governments would be rare historically, because anarchies (if they worked like you think they do) would be more productive, more peaceful and thus more prosperous due to the resources being used for something besides war. It's like your unable to connect things I've said one or two posts prior ago to this one. Anarchic Ireland lasted over 1000 years... that's pretty historically significant in my books. The debate should end here, but somehow I know you still don't get it... sigh Rational is not a synonym for desirable. Controlling the market by being a sole provider is extremely rational, as it is an act of self-interest with greater payoff than competing with rivals. Fortunately with governments we can make them legally bound to serve us, and be subordinate to us. You can't do that with a market, unless you have an army. Right, because controlling the group that makes the laws with the laws has worked out great so far... Again, look at Somalia. After the collapse of the state it saw astounding economic growth. You don't need one entity to guide the market, just as you need no God to guide evolution. When one entity has a monopoly you see a shortage of that good/service at monopoly rates because they can get away with it. This abuse further increases when the monopoly is coercive, like the state. Without the ability to raise costs without a drop off of in customers you actually have to out preform your competition, which means becoming more efficient. I'll simplify. If society was made of super-spiders, everyone would be a loner, hyper-rational, and there would be no objection towards killing your neighbour or stealing his goods. Spiders never evolved a sense of wrongness for these things because they are not social animals. If you force us to evolve with no selection for moral behaviours, then evolutionary thrift will cut back moral senses that are less effective in a society of cut-throat businessmen. This means trust vanishes, fear decreases, aversions to homicide and robbery cease. This is just stupidity. You want to talk about idealism? You can't trust others to be "moral" when they've no obligation to be, especially when what is considered "moral" is subjective and based on ones preferences. And no, the state is not a way to solve this because the state itself is composed of persons. For the state to be the moral entity you seem to want it to be, it would have to attract all the most moral persons in the nation constantly, generation after generation. Which it doesn't. If you were a corrupt person, what sort of business would you be attracted to? Well, the state, obviously. The state has power over the market and tends to protect it's members. So, not only is the state not composed of the most "moral" persons in society, it actually attracts the most likely to abuse their power. Side: Hybrid
The "like it or leave it" argument works with a stateless society, but not with a state run society. If a bunch of persons decided to leave the states rule and start up there own little town and started to become prosperous, the state would eventually intervene and force their "services" on them. Private industry is on every inch of land from coast to coast, and some industries span across the continents. To-may-toes versus To-mah-toes. I don't know were you live, but I've yet to hear of a state where, just by living in it, you are exempt from taxes. Again, this argument is not valid for a statist because one cannot just leave and move to a non-state controlled city. You move to another state. Also, in this discussion, "statist" is another word for "sane" since a modern society cannot prosper without a government. If you're saying that you'll never finish paying for the things you need to survive, then I agree. Then again, this is true regardless of the state so is in no way an argument for the state. Private industry premiums versus state taxes. Po-tay-toes versus Po-tah-toes. What are you talking about? Market services are dependent on the supply and demand of the market. Government services are dependent on the supply and demand... of the government. And in the governments case, having a vast fiat land claim and coercive monopolies on all the most vital services are the demands. Private industry: everything you want, including land, has a cost attached to it, often by monopolies or hegemonies. State industry: everything you want costs money but via tax. Difference? In the first you can try to change the companies by competing with them, but they'll probably crush you. In the second, you can try to campaign and lobby if the prices are unfair. To-may-toes versus To-mah-toes. Once again, I'll just have to point to history. Anarchic Ireland had no taxation and no fiat land claims, all they they had was a non-geographic voluntary agency known as a "tuatha" and everything worked out perfectly for over one thousand years despite England invading the country for several hundreds of years. What is Ireland now? A state. It failed to keep up whatever equilibrium you believe it had. What is the rest of the world? States. How did they arise? Very complicated, different histories with the common theme of one group taking land from the other, over and over again for ten or so thousand years. Actually watch this one. It goes into greater detail what I've been talking about and I'm getting sick of having to dispute the "counter points" you make that are addressed in the material I link you: Did you know that creationists will try to argue that because some organic objects can calcify over a few years, this MUST mean that ALL fossils are only a couple thousand years old at most? All you're trying to do is say that a small sample must be able to represent the whole. A small sample that failed, by the way, and in the face of all the other systems that arose to support my hypothesis (basically every state). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Again, there's no "flat-screen T.V. mafia" So then this doesn't exist? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ or a "knitting gang" because these things are legal. You've apparently never invoked the ire or wrath or a group of old ladies. There's no need to violently ensure these businesses survival. Once again you've re-asserted the things you've already said without actually making an argument. I should think it obvious enough that anyone can see it. If you cannot, you're either completely deluded, or severely mentally handicapped. I patiently explained that gangs are a natural product of people seeking power who share backgrounds. I guess in your faery world people don't naturally associate with each other. It seems you've decided to ignore the part were I said "The oil spill happened because the way our economy is set up". Last time I checked, the U.S. is a highly state controlled nation. Look, without a state, BP oil wouldn't even have gotten as large as it did. Without a state to protect businesses, they have to survive on their own merits. Oops: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Using highly effective tactics, later widely criticized, it absorbed or destroyed most of its competition in Cleveland in less than two months in 1872 and later throughout the northeastern United States. And: In response to state laws trying to limit the scale of companies, Rockefeller and his associates developed innovative ways of organizing, to effectively manage their fast growing enterprise. In 1882, they combined their disparate companies, spread across dozens of states, under a single group of trustees. By a secret agreement, the existing thirty-seven stockholders conveyed their shares "in trust" to nine Trustees: John and William Rockefeller, Oliver H. Payne, Charles Pratt, Henry Flagler, John D. Archbold, William G. Warden, Jabez Bostwick, and Benjamin Brewster. This organization proved so successful that other giant enterprises adopted this "trust" form. Oh also: In one example of Standard's aggressive practices, a rival oil association tried to build an oil pipeline to overcome Standard's virtual boycott of its competitors. In response, the railroad company at Rockefeller's direction denied the association permission to run the pipeline across railway land, forcing consortium staff to laboriously decant the oil into barrels, carry them over the railway crossing in carts, and pump the oil manually into the pipeline on the other side. When Rockefeller learned of this tactic, he instructed the railway company to park empty rail cars across the line, thereby preventing the carts from crossing his property. Free market capitalism at its finest. The average person excretes 0.8 kilos of feces per movement (which happens every couple of days for an average person). It takes roughly 7717 calories to equal 1 kilogram. Which means, for every 7717 calories a person takes in they excrete 6173.6 calories (80%) worth of waste in feces. So, assuming it takes zero calories to digest food (it doesn't), 80% of what you eat is still excreted in waste. You're misunderstanding this. Remember what I said? The body processes your input into fat and energy. The rest which cannot be digested (I.E. isn't caloric to you) is expelled as waste. In other words the waste you expel isn't simply a load of energy (to you). It is something your body couldn't use, with the remaining mass absorbed into your body. Hai capito? This shows your utter lack of understanding when it comes to libertarianism. Without a central bank or a federal government there's no monopolized currency or GDP to measure the success of a country by. To see if a country improved without a state you have to look at other measures such as the amount of doctors, life expectancy, things they can afford, etc. Again, if you're measuring the success of a society in social terms, you can look at how much freedom it enjoys, the equality of wages and labour practices, the health of the people, the ability of them to organise in protest or speak freely, etc. 1. The country saw astounding economic growth after the fall of the state. If civil war followed, then at the very least civil war is better for a country than one central government. This is an unavoidable fact. No. It saw marginal improvement except for newborn weight which was a big improvement. Old monopolies fell which were stifling development. Of course, the west has much better economic success and social success, and has hybrid states. I wonder what that means... 2. These warring factions came from already existing governments (U.N. or otherwise). Which I oppose anyway. So saying that statelessness is bad because civil war ensued is like saying statelessness is bad because states don't like statelessness... You didn't even read the history of the Somali civil war. Read this: Somalia, a Horn of Africa nation, has been wracked for more than a decade by civil war, clan fighting, and natural disasters ranging from drought to flood to famine. Extensive television coverage of famine and civil strife that took approximately 300,000 lives in 1991 and 1992 prompted a U.S.-led international intervention. The armed humanitarian mission in late 1992 quelled clan combat long enough to stop the famine, but ended in urban guerrilla warfare against Somali militias. The last international forces withdrew in March 1995 after the casualty count reached the thousands. Approximately 100 peacekeepers, including 18 U.S. soldiers, were killed. The $4 billion United Nations intervention effort had little lasting impact. Somalia gained independence in July 1960 with the union of British Somaliland and territories to the south that had been an Italian colony. Other ethnic Somali-inhabited lands are now part of Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya. General Siad Barre seized power in 1969 and increasingly employed divisive clan politics to maintain power. Civil war, starvation, banditry, and brutality have wracked Somalia since the struggle to topple Barre began in the late 1980s. When Barre was deposed in January 1991, power was claimed and contested by heavily armed guerrilla movements and militias based on traditional ethnic and clan loyalties. The Conference for National Peace and Reconciliation in Somalia adopted a charter in 2000 for a three-year transition and selected a 245-member transitional assembly, which functions as an interim parliament. Minority groups are included, and 25 of the members are women. The breakaway regions of Somaliland and Puntland do not recognize the results, nor do several faction leaders. A government security force in Mogadishu has been cobbled together from members of the former administration's military, the police, and militias. The closure of Al Barakaat left Somalia's economy in tatters and hurt many Somali families who depended on overseas remittances they received through the company. A ban, prompted by fears that Somali livestock carried Rift Valley fever, imposed by Gulf states in 2000 on the export of Somali livestock exacerbated economic difficulties. Yemen lifted the ban in December 2001. You want some kind of "hybrid" government (just like nearly everyone else I've debated...) and you deny that a free market can function. So, I know you're full of shit. Kinda like how you can assume a religion that denies evolution is full of shit. In the land of false dichotomies that is your mind, I imagine so. I love how you call this my "ideology" though, as this is perfectly analogous to a Christian referring an atheists lack of belief in God as a belief. XD That's fine with me. I believe in non-belief and there's nothing wrong with that. ;) Government isn't a belief, the rules of that government are. It is a human social system. Lack of government is also a social system, because it must define the environment promoted, and the rules (in your case capitalism), which means you have a belief (that a social system with no government and only capitalism must work best, and how that capitalism is defined). These are your beliefs, since it is political, your ideology. I really hate stupidity, so if you don't know what an ideology is and cannot understand why anarchy must be an ideology and that it isn't analogous to atheism versus theism, but choose instead to beat your chest in proud ignorance, I will mock you. Not once have I said anything even remotely close to "I advocate changing everybody's lives through a bloody war to end government." Bloodshed is the precursor to your ideal of anarchy, or were you so foolish that you believed power relinquishes itself? You're straw-manning me - AGAIN. You just can't stop with the logical fallacies, can you? Look, the state can only be abolished by educating persons on the disutility of the state. You mean spreading propaganda and misinformation. In countries without this mental dependency (like Anarchic Ireland/Iceland), no government formed. It took hundreds of years worth of invasion from both the earth's mightiest empire and most powerful and wide spread religion to finally take it down. It had a governing body. Try researching your history better. It was also bloody, kind of like modern-day Somalia. It's like your unable to connect things I've said one or two posts prior ago to this one. Anarchic Ireland lasted over 1000 years... that's pretty historically significant in my books. The debate should end here, but somehow I know you still don't get it... sigh http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Right, because controlling the group that makes the laws with the laws has worked out great so far... It actually has, for those in power. Again, look at Somalia. After the collapse of the state it saw astounding economic growth. You don't need one entity to guide the market, just as you need no God to guide evolution. When one entity has a monopoly you see a shortage of that good/service at monopoly rates because they can get away with it. This abuse further increases when the monopoly is coercive, like the state. No, it didn't. The west beats it in every way, and I'm quite confident that most South American states beat it too. Without the ability to raise costs without a drop off of in customers you actually have to out preform your competition, which means becoming more efficient. Again, look into Standard Oil. This is just stupidity. You want to talk about idealism? You can't trust others to be "moral" when they've no obligation to be, especially when what is considered "moral" is subjective and based on ones preferences. I trust those around me every day without even realising it. When I go to buy groceries, I trust that the cashier will not stab me and take my money, that nearby drivers won't shoot my car to take it for themselves. I trust that I don't need to carry a gun in daylight while walking the street, because no one will see my lack of a firearm as opportunity to kidnap and sell me into slavery. This is made possible by our race's innately moral sense. And no, the state is not a way to solve this because the state itself is composed of persons. For the state to be the moral entity you seem to want it to be, it would have to attract all the most moral persons in the nation constantly, generation after generation. Which it doesn't. The state merely acts as an arbiter for those cases where we have moral disagreements. If you were a corrupt person, what sort of business would you be attracted to? Well, the state, obviously. The state has power over the market and tends to protect it's members. So, not only is the state not composed of the most "moral" persons in society, it actually attracts the most likely to abuse their power. No, power does. Any power. In a stateless society that means the local warlord attracts the corrupt. Our government may be held accountable by us, a warlord is accountable to no one. Side: Hybrid
Private industry is on every inch of land from coast to coast, and some industries span across the continents. To-may-toes versus To-mah-toes. This is factually not true. I mean, this is an outright lie! Most of the U.S. is empty, unused. The only claim to this unused land is the state's fiat claim. Without this claim all this area is without an owner... I can't imagine how you wouldn't know something like this, so you must be purposefully being manipulative and deceptive. There's no "state of Walmart" on the map. XD Whatever it takes to pump out another post, eh avesk? =/ You move to another state. Also, in this discussion, "statist" is another word for "sane" since a modern society cannot prosper without a government. Both not true and totally out of context to our conversation, but okay. =) What you just said in no way defends you previous claim that one can simple chose to live in a state free of taxes. You're totally twisting your own words. There's that deceptive and manipulative streak again. =p Private industry premiums versus state taxes. Po-tay-toes versus Po-tah-toes. You voluntarily enter into a premium. This is true regardless of the states existence. If you are hoodwinked into a faulty contract you can appeal to the courts, this is also true regardless of the state. Taxation exists with a state, but not independent of the state. Looks like they're not equal after all! Private industry: everything you want, including land, has a cost attached to it, often by monopolies or hegemonies. State industry: everything you want costs money but via tax. Difference? In the first you can try to change the companies by competing with them, but they'll probably crush you. In the second, you can try to campaign and lobby if the prices are unfair. To-may-toes versus To-mah-toes. ... http://mises.org/daily/621 I'm going to try something different and post the supporting article first. Perhaps then you'll finally read it and stop embarrassing yourself by constantly bringing up "counterpoints" addressed in the articles I've linked you (and by me personally several times in this case.) Also consider that monopoly rates on a product like cheeseburgers has the chance of resulting in a customer choosing to go buy a hot-dog in lieu of a cheeseburger. So, in the end everything competes with everything and it takes a total market monopoly on all the most vital services as well as massive market regualtions and subsidies to have any real power to abuse the common man. Hold on... what's that thing, you know, that thing that has all those coercive monopoly on all of societies most vital services? ;) Lobbying to the state doesn't work because governments cannot produce wealth, they can only move it around so lobbying them does nothing but give them a chance to buy votes with your money. if the money doesn't go where you want it to go, sucks to be you. Welcome to America. Welcome to Democracy. What is Ireland now? A state. It failed to keep up whatever equilibrium you believe it had. What is the rest of the world? States. How did they arise? Very complicated, different histories with the common theme of one group taking land from the other, over and over again for ten or so thousand years. I don't know if you just forgot or something, but Ireland was stateless for over 1000 years. Despite hundreds of years of invasion from England. No other state has held up quite such an equilibrium. You're argument is essentially "we have governments, therefore statism is good". I know you know this is a logical fallacy. Did you know that creationists will try to argue that because some organic objects can calcify over a few years, this MUST mean that ALL fossils are only a couple thousand years old at most? All you're trying to do is say that a small sample must be able to represent the whole. A small sample that failed, by the way, and in the face of all the other systems that arose to support my hypothesis (basically every state). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaelic_Ireland#Warfare Do you have a hard-on for Christianity or something? Everything you say lately seems to be an attempt to connect anarchism to Christianity. No surprise here, but once again your comparison makes no sense. =/ Anarchic Ireland lasted for over a millenium. Sure, you can point to this and say "yeah, but it failed... eventually", but this looks stupid considering there are hundreds of examples of sates that struggled (and failed) to last even a couple hundred years, let alone a millenium. No state in Ireland lasted even close to a millenium. Hell, no state can even make that claim. So then this doesn't exist? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-bandwidth_Digital_Content_Protection I don't think you quite understand what a mafia is... HDCP is hardly a means to launch a state. Do you find it unreasonable for a company to want to eliminate the possibility of intercepting digital data midstream between the source to the display? Besides, if this was a companies way of attempting to initiate state-like control via... digital copy protection (XD) then assuming they haven't appealed to state for any special market advantages, there's nothing stopping customers from buying media players from another company. If every company uses HDCP, but market demand is for non-HDCP media players, then any firm that drops HDCP has set themselves up for a massive increase in their revenue. I should think it obvious enough that anyone can see it. If you cannot, you're either completely deluded, or severely mentally handicapped. Or you're wrong. very, very wrong. I guess we'll find out in a minute... I patiently explained that gangs are a natural product of people seeking power who share backgrounds. I guess in your faery world people don't naturally associate with each other. Ah, looks like my hypothesis proved correct. ;) First of all, I've said anything even close to "people don't naturally associate with each other." this is a position you made up for me. My entire view of the state comes from the observing association between persons. Second of all, gangs exist because they have some reason to exist (duh). For many gangs (mafias in this case), the reason for their existence is to profit from being able to supply a repressed demand. In this way they can expand state-like power. Without supplying repressed market, they are a gang looking for power with no way to convince persons to be ruled by them. So they don't. Oops: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil Using highly effective tactics, later widely criticized, it absorbed or destroyed most of its competition in Cleveland in less than two months in 1872 and later throughout the northeastern United States. And: In response to state laws trying to limit the scale of companies, Rockefeller and his associates developed innovative ways of organizing, to effectively manage their fast growing enterprise. In 1882, they combined their disparate companies, spread across dozens of states, under a single group of trustees. By a secret agreement, the existing thirty-seven stockholders conveyed their shares "in trust" to nine Trustees: John and William Rockefeller, Oliver H. Payne, Charles Pratt, Henry Flagler, John D. Archbold, William G. Warden, Jabez Bostwick, and Benjamin Brewster. This organization proved so successful that other giant enterprises adopted this "trust" form. Oh also: In one example of Standard's aggressive practices, a rival oil association tried to build an oil pipeline to overcome Standard's virtual boycott of its competitors. In response, the railroad company at Rockefeller's direction denied the association permission to run the pipeline across railway land, forcing consortium staff to laboriously decant the oil into barrels, carry them over the railway crossing in carts, and pump the oil manually into the pipeline on the other side. When Rockefeller learned of this tactic, he instructed the railway company to park empty rail cars across the line, thereby preventing the carts from crossing his property. Free market capitalism at its finest. I guess you just don't know much about John D. Rockefeller... I mean, there's no(t much) shame in ignorance, but at least attempt to self debunk. Also, take a look at this: Statism at its best. ;) You're misunderstanding this. Remember what I said? The body processes your input into fat and energy. The rest which cannot be digested (I.E. isn't caloric to you) is expelled as waste. In other words the waste you expel isn't simply a load of energy (to you). It is something your body couldn't use, with the remaining mass absorbed into your body. Hai capito? Wait, wait. So you're saying the massive lump of calories excreted is... useless to humans? Well that's.... exactly what I've been saying... 80% of what you eat is waste (to you, obviously) and the energy you use to remove the waste via the intestines is energy that could go towards something more productive. Humans grew rapidly in intelligence after learning how to cook food because it became easier to digest, so less energy was needed to do so. So, logically if you take in less unnecessary (useless) calories, you'll require less energy to remove it. Again, if you're measuring the success of a society in social terms, you can look at how much freedom it enjoys, the equality of wages and labour practices, the health of the people, the ability of them to organise in protest or speak freely, etc. So? In the land of false dichotomies that is your mind, I imagine so. There's no false dichotomy here. You believe the pricing system can't work without a system to manage it through the direct opposition of what is the pricing system... Which is stupid. No. It saw marginal improvement except for newborn weight which was a big improvement. Old monopolies fell which were stifling development. Of course, the west has much better economic success and social success, and has hybrid states. I wonder what that means... The west has succeeded to the extent that it is capitalistic. The U.S.S.R. was only able to last as long as it did because it observed market trends in America. Somalia went from being highly statist controlled to having free enterprise capitalism. That's why it got better. It didn't collapse into some "hybrid" government, so what your saying doesn't make sense. You didn't even read the history of the Somali civil war. Read this: No, I read it. Not only does that not even address the point of mine you've connected it to (another mistake?), but everything in it was addressed in the article(s) I've sent you. Which means it turns out that you didn't even read my article. =p Government isn't a belief, the rules of that government are. It is a human social system. Lack of government is also a social system, because it must define the environment promoted, and the rules (in your case capitalism), which means you have a belief (that a social system with no government and only capitalism must work best, and how that capitalism is defined). These are your beliefs, since it is political, your ideology. Have I not said that order is emergent? Order emerges. And I admit to having a belief. It's the belief in non-belief. =p Also, "governemnt" isn't a belief, but you believing in the necessity of the state is. I really hate stupidity, so if you don't know what an ideology is and cannot understand why anarchy must be an ideology and that it isn't analogous to atheism versus theism, but choose instead to beat your chest in proud ignorance, I will mock you. Then you must really loath yourself. Anarchism is an ideology in the same way that atheism is. Atheism is the rejection of theism, just as anarchism is the rejection of archism (statism). This is a perfect symmetry from any angle. Hell, statism came from religion. It's the same psychology. They're both parental projections. There's no more perfect symmetry in the world that I can think of than atheism and anarchism. http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=276683682183&topic;=11999 Read this so as not to counter with with a "point" already debunked in the link... again. =/ The only one beating their chest in proud ignorance is you. It's no surprise you've done nothing to show how my comparison of atheism and anarchism is illogical and have merely asserted it. That's all you seem to be good at. All of the arguments you make are debunked in the sources I've sent you, hell several times already I'd just copy/paste an argument right out of an article I linked you because I knew you didn't read it. I mean, you're hardly the first statist I've ever debated, but there's just too many "firsts" in the arguments you're making. Such as this one. You're literally the first statist I've ever debated to deny the obvious similarities between religion and government. Everyone else understood this. Everyone, but you. Bloodshed is the precursor to your ideal of anarchy, or were you so foolish that you believed power relinquishes itself? You're a very two-dimensional thinker, avesk. =/ If persons naturally wake up to the foolishness of government, then there's no need for violence since that generation's lack of support will naturally weaken the state. Governments end in one of three ways. 1. They collapse from their own greed after chocking the market just a little too much for it to be profitable. 2. Revolution. 3. Psycho-historic evolution. The first to almost always end in the uprising of another like government. The third ends with either ends with a new style of order (for that nation) that is a step up in terms of humanity. Of course, this is a rather complex model as it deals with the aggregate inter-subjective means of child-rearing, but the model ends with free enterprise. I highly recommend looking into it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory It had a governing body. Try researching your history better. It was also bloody, kind of like modern-day Somalia. Alright, you still haven't done any research on this apparently. I can only do so much, avesk. I'll link you the information, all you have to do is read it. I'm doing half the work for you so you won't have to continue making long debunked arguments. Here, I'll link a video this time. I'm sure you have at least the attention span for it. Though I warn you, it's a 2-parter, each about 5 minutes long. http://wn.com/stateless_iceland_1 Ireland and Iceland were bloody, but only in piss-ant proportions compared to the rest of Europe at the time. Did you forget that part? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking Ah, typical avesk fashion, posting a link without any argument or explanation as to it's relevance. But I suppose this is your last line of defense, so to speak. Nothing else you've tried has stuck, but calling "cherry picking" is better than nothing... Though, this complaint doesn't make any sense as I've mentioned about six anarchic societies and used each interchangeably depending on where the conversation has gone... that's pretty much it, I've proven you're claim that I'm cherry picking wrong. I mean, you might be saying that I'm only using Ireland because no other anarchies have lasted for any significant amount of time, but since that's not true it would mean you didn't bother looking into the others I've mentioned... well i had my suspicions. And yes, I listed the most significant of the stateless societies in terms of longevity, but then again it wouldn't make much sense to purposely list something that was insignificant... which means you're basically complaining that I sited Ireland because Ireland lasted a long time... which I guess you find "unfair" or "manipulative" or something... which is childish and very stupid. Here's a list of several (but not all) stateless societies throughout history. Careful not to cherry pick it. ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities It actually has, for those in power. If by "those in power" you're referring to the politically connected, I agree. No, it didn't. The west beats it in every way, and I'm quite confident that most South American states beat it too. http://www.gogaminggiant.com/wp-content/ The third world is highly statist. Even more so than the Americas, so it makes sense that Africa is so poor. That, and Negroids in general are less intelligent than their Caucasian and Mongoloid counterparts, but that's an entirely different topic. The west has been more capitalistic for a longer period of time than Somalia or any of its neighboring countries, which is why we're so much better off. Also understand that Somalia improved not just in absolute terms, but also relative to all the neighboring African countries. Are you finally starting to understand the concept of getting better without yet being the best? This seems to be something statists just can't grasp. I trust those around me every day without even realising it. When I go to buy groceries, I trust that the cashier will not stab me and take my money, that nearby drivers won't shoot my car to take it for themselves. I trust that I don't need to carry a gun in daylight while walking the street, because no one will see my lack of a firearm as opportunity to kidnap and sell me into slavery. This is made possible by our race's innately moral sense. Funny how you can have to much trust for you're fellow man while simultaneously having no trust in them whatsoever... If you don't teach a child that thievery is "immoral", they steal and they continue to steal until they value their reputation more than the candy bar on the shelf. Morals are not innate. The conscience is a mechanism built into children by society. The state merely acts as an arbiter for those cases where we have moral disagreements. You've ignored my point. The state attracts the least "moral", not the most. Besides, the politicians don't make judgments in court, the judges (or jury) do. And judges come from a very thorough system of competition as they would without politicians. No, power does. Any power. In a stateless society that means the local warlord attracts the corrupt. Our government may be held accountable by us, a warlord is accountable to no one. Now you're just playing word games. The state has power, therefore corrupt persons are attracted to the state. I find it strange that you consider warlords as something separate from the state since that's exactly what politicians are. Governments are responsible for more wars and deaths than anything else. Side: Capitalism
This is factually not true. I mean, this is an outright lie! Most of the U.S. is empty, unused. The only claim to this unused land is the state's fiat claim. Without this claim all this area is without an owner... I can't imagine how you wouldn't know something like this, so you must be purposefully being manipulative and deceptive. There's no "state of Walmart" on the map. XD Except for much of Africa, Antarctica, China, North Korea and Cuba, private industry is everywhere. Of course if you want to make the argument that it physically must occupy the space then I suppose that means government is only where state buildings are planted. What you just said in no way defends you previous claim that one can simple chose to live in a state free of taxes. You're totally twisting your own words. Move to Africa if you don't like taxes, or Antarctica. You voluntarily enter into a premium. This is true regardless of the states existence. If you are hoodwinked into a faulty contract you can appeal to the courts, this is also true regardless of the state. If you are wrongfully taxed you can appeal to a court. I'm going to try something different and post the supporting article first. Perhaps then you'll finally read it and stop embarrassing yourself by constantly bringing up "counterpoints" addressed in the articles I've linked you (and by me personally several times in this case.) Read it. They just repeat what you said: monopolies cannot form on a free market. Look, I'll try to answer this VERY simply, since it seems that libertarians require "free market monopolies don't exist" as a central item of dogma. Evolution operates a lot like a free market. Are you following me so far? The competition for resources and ability to pass genes is a lot like competition for money and the ability to pass on successful market strategies. What happens in evolution? An ocean of single-celled life becomes, after two or three billion years, an ocean of multi-celled life, and then an ocean of animals, and niches are constantly dominated by a specific species until an accident happens which displaces it. Are you still following me? Do you see the metaphor here? Businesses if left to themselves will continue to grow in complexity, and thus size, as time progresses, and they will continue to dominate niches until some form of fluke happens to bankrupt or weaken them, however at this point it will always be giant corporations fighting each other. If you want to extend the metaphor, like evolutionary symbiotic relationships, businesses will work together at a small collective loss for a greater collective gain (otherwise known as price fixing). History demonstrates this pattern all the time. What prevents you from accepting this evidence is that you see a state and think "ah well, can't learn from the evidence" and so you keep firing already tried ideas at everyone thinking they're new or interesting. I don't know if you just forgot or something, but Ireland was stateless for over 1000 years. Despite hundreds of years of invasion from England. No other state has held up quite such an equilibrium. You're argument is essentially "we have governments, therefore statism is good". I know you know this is a logical fallacy. I said to this: All you're trying to do is say that a small sample must be able to represent the whole. A small sample that failed, by the way, and in the face of all the other systems that arose to support my hypothesis (basically every state). One collection of tribes doesn't negate the vast majority of states. You are not accounting for all the facts. Do you have a hard-on for Christianity or something? Everything you say lately seems to be an attempt to connect anarchism to Christianity. No surprise here, but once again your comparison makes no sense. =/ No. I am saying that your beliefs are just as crackpot as fringe Christians. Anarchic Ireland lasted for over a millenium. Sure, you can point to this and say "yeah, but it failed... eventually", but this looks stupid considering there are hundreds of examples of sates that struggled (and failed) to last even a couple hundred years, let alone a millenium. It was a period of constant war. Think Somalia but over one thousand years of it. Yeah, I want to live there. I don't think you quite understand what a mafia is... HDCP is hardly a means to launch a state. Do you find it unreasonable for a company to want to eliminate the possibility of intercepting digital data midstream between the source to the display? It is a means to enforce copy protection and collect royalties, so that other companies may legally display content. It's basically extortion, very organised and made possible through companies buying state favours. Besides, if this was a companies way of attempting to initiate state-like control via... digital copy protection (XD) then assuming they haven't appealed to state for any special market advantages, there's nothing stopping customers from buying media players from another company. If every company uses HDCP, but market demand is for non-HDCP media players, then any firm that drops HDCP has set themselves up for a massive increase in their revenue. They can and do buy other players without it, essentially bypassing restrictions, but illegally. This is because (chorus) Big companies like to buy state favours and this will always happen as long as disproportionate income exists and an authority exists, even if you call that authority Anarchic Ireland's councils or Somalia's Islamic Courts. Second of all, gangs exist because they have some reason to exist (duh). For many gangs (mafias in this case), the reason for their existence is to profit from being able to supply a repressed demand. In this way they can expand state-like power. Without supplying repressed market, they are a gang looking for power with no way to convince persons to be ruled by them. So they don't. Question 1: Do people form groups? Yes or no. Question 2: Do some groups like to feel better than other groups? Yes or no. Question 3: Do some groups like to work together? Yes or no. Question 4: Do some groups prey on the weak? Yes or no. Question 5: Are groups stronger than individuals? Yes or no. If you (rightly) answered yes to all five questions, then it must follow that groups of people will naturally form as the more powerful counterpart to the individual, and groups will exist that exploit individuals, or weaker groups. If you answered negatively to any of the questions, then you just dispelled the chief reason that we, Humans, evolved into social, tribal beings. Bonus Question: Were you homeschooled? No experience in a public or large private school? You've never witnessed social groups? I guess you just don't know much about John D. Rockefeller... I mean, there's no(t much) shame in ignorance, but at least attempt to self debunk. It reads like Answers in Genesis apologetics to be brutally honest. They try to dissociate the negative from themselves by creating a separate class of capitalists. I'll rewrite for you, so you might spot the deception: As common as it is to speak of "televangelists," most who use that term are confused about the role of religion in American values and fail to make an important distinction — the distinction between what might be called a biblical preacher and a political preacher. A biblically sound preacher, or True Christian, succeeds by preaching a more lordly, righteous, just sermon on modern social issues without any political suggestions, direct or indirect. The key to his success as a True Christian is his ability to preach biblical doctrine, for in a Truly Christian society our brothers need no political intervention. By contrast, a political preacher preaches primarily about influencing government to affect society and our values, or to enact legislation or regulation that prohibits ungodly behaviour. Do you see the sophistry? I took a word which means a little of both of these things "biblical preacher" and "political preacher" and dissociated the "political preacher" part from it, so that when you read "televangelist" you think only of "biblical preacher" and if anyone associates the other meaning you correct them or ignore them as mistakenly associating something else with the previously disparaging term "televangelist." Suddenly all the negative which surrounds "televangelists" goes into "political preachers" and the old word is whitewashed. Nifty trick, huh? http://www.fact-index.com/s/st/ http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/ Statism at its best. ;) So you want a BP-magnitude oil leak closer to our shores? Is that what you're saying here? I was reading recently about life in London in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. Back then there were no laws prohibiting the duping of waste into the river nearby London. Also, back then chamberpots were dumped in streets, butchers' wastes were dumped outside, corpses, and horse waste was simply shoveled off into the river. It gets better, you see, because nearby factories would also dump their wastes into the water. Do I need to go on? Because like we would expect, that river was also the water source of the city's working class, the wealthy bought imported spring water. Water treatments didn't exist back then, so you can imagine... the whole city was drinking water which was putrefied with sewage, corpses, rotting flesh, and heavy metals and industrial poisons. This is why we keep industry away from our cities when possible and tightly regulate wastes disposal, and sanitation. Wait, wait. So you're saying the massive lump of calories excreted is... useless to humans? Well that's.... exactly what I've been saying... I'll simplify for the biologically uninitiated. The waste you excrete has minimal caloric content, so using a mass->calorie conversion set doesn't work. You aren't excreting calories, but waste which cannot be processed further (to humans, I realise that microrganisms can break it down further but they have pathways which we lack). 80% of what you eat is waste (to you, obviously) and the energy you use to remove the waste via the intestines is energy that could go towards something more productive. Humans grew rapidly in intelligence after learning how to cook food because it became easier to digest, so less energy was needed to do so. Intestines are part of what absorb the energy from the waste. They are doing their job. What you're asking is that we should be able to use cellulose as an energy source. Sure, go ahead, but remember that human experimentation is illegal. There's no false dichotomy here. You believe the pricing system can't work without a system to manage it through the direct opposition of what is the pricing system... Which is stupid. That's because it's more complicated than that. Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists think in very simple terms for complicated problems. In this case, what a hybrid system means is that capitalism is used to solve production problems, while government solves social problems. It's actually more complicated, but that's the gist of it. Capitalism works when no feelings or people can get hurt. Government works at keeping a population in line when certain social behaviours are expected. The west has succeeded to the extent that it is capitalistic. The U.S.S.R. was only able to last as long as it did because it observed market trends in America. Somalia went from being highly statist controlled to having free enterprise capitalism. That's why it got better. It didn't collapse into some "hybrid" government, so what your saying doesn't make sense. No, I read it. Not only does that not even address the point of mine you've connected it to (another mistake?), but everything in it was addressed in the article(s) I've sent you. Which means it turns out that you didn't even read my article. =p I'll use a chart for you since you seem to have trouble understanding me. WORST STATE + North Korea + 1970s-1980s Somalia (corrupt, oppressive) + 1990s-2010s Somalia (inter-faction fighting, free market) + + + + Average Western (democracy/monarchy, social programs, minimum living standards) + States Lie Here + + Ideal State (no idea if it can/does exist) BEST STATE Have I not said that order is emergent? Order emerges. And I admit to having a belief. It's the belief in non-belief. =p Also, "governemnt" isn't a belief, but you believing in the necessity of the state is. Just as believing in anarchy is a belief. Remember that anarchy besides the most rudimentary definition always has a social system attached to it. Then you must really loath yourself. Anarchism is an ideology in the same way that atheism is. Atheism is the rejection of theism, just as anarchism is the rejection of archism (statism). This is a perfect symmetry from any angle. Except that you don't believe in that anarchism. If you believed in that anarchism it would be a simple matter of "Do you accept government as viable? No. Okay, no belief." Anarchy to you means a lack of state followed by unfettered capitalism. Hell, statism came from religion. It's the same psychology. They're both parental projections. There's no more perfect symmetry in the world that I can think of than atheism and anarchism. That's because your thinking isn't very subtle. When you attach an ideology onto something that is the dialectical opposite of belief, it becomes an ideology regardless. Just as how secular humanism is a belief, an ideology, despite its parent atheism not being a belief or ideology. Just as Buddhism is a religion despite having no god. I mean, you're hardly the first statist I've ever debated, but there's just too many "firsts" in the arguments you're making. Such as this one. You're literally the first statist I've ever debated to deny the obvious similarities between religion and government. Everyone else understood this. Everyone, but you. I don't care if you debate points with pseudo-intellectuals and pat yourself on the back every time a random Joe can't counter your latest thought. When you debate with me you will be treated with respect insofar as your argument approaches reality and so far you have been arguing from a parallel universe. A government is a relinquishment of power to an authority that is a person, a real being. A religion is a relinquishment of power to an authority that doesn't exist in any real form, but is hijacked by a person claiming to be a proxy for it. Because apparently, the creator of the universe cannot speak in person. The first can dissolve in decades, years even. The second requires generations of deprogramming to flush out. If persons naturally wake up to the foolishness of government, then there's no need for violence since that generation's lack of support will naturally weaken the state. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Apparently not, when the state has police and the people have nothing. Governments end in one of three ways. 1. They collapse from their own greed after chocking the market just a little too much for it to be profitable. 2. Revolution. 3. Psycho-historic evolution. 1. No, otherwise most of the poor countries of the world would have collapsed by now. 2. Armed conflict. One state replaces the other. 3. Even if that were the case, evolution in social behaviours necessary for anarchy to work would require many generations, perhaps hundreds. No, what you really mean is that the population must unanimously favour a free market, then create one, then the wealthy and powerful may rule over peasants once again. You remember 19th century England, right? 4. If the government causes enough unrest, it may be that too many civilians resist for the jails to handle, and the government collapses that way. Alright, you still haven't done any research on this apparently. I can only do so much, avesk. I'll link you the information, all you have to do is read it. I'm doing half the work for you so you won't have to continue making long debunked arguments. Did you bother to look into Gaelic Ireland? Though, this complaint doesn't make any sense as I've mentioned about six anarchic societies and used each interchangeably depending on where the conversation has gone... that's pretty much it, I've proven you're claim that I'm cherry picking wrong. I mean, you might be saying that I'm only using Ireland because no other anarchies have lasted for any significant amount of time, but since that's not true it would mean you didn't bother looking into the others I've mentioned... well i had my suspicions. You listed Ireland, Iceland, and Somalia. Iceland: rule by chieftains. Not an anarchy. Iceland: rule by chieftains. Not an anarchy. Somalia: rule by courts and elders. Not an anarchy. Rhode Island: rule by House Masters. Libertatia (If real): direct democracy. Whiteway Colony: anarcho-collectivism, seems to have faded out. Kibbutz: socialist/direct democracy, see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities: Close to anarchy but a form of hierarchy exists where representatives discuss issues and resolution. Abahlali baseMjondolo: a form of democracy. So what you showed me are regions which have a lack of central authority, or the authority is very close to the people. The closest I saw to an anarchy is Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities but they still have representatives. Remember that an anarchy in its true sense is a complete lack of police, authorities, etc. Essentially, everyone is responsible to himself. And yes, I listed the most significant of the stateless societies in terms of longevity, but then again it wouldn't make much sense to purposely list something that was insignificant... which means you're basically complaining that I sited Ireland because Ireland lasted a long time... which I guess you find "unfair" or "manipulative" or something... which is childish and very stupid. Cherrypicking means to select data in your favour so as to give a skewed image of the situation. In the case of an anarchy (or rather stateless government) you would need to take all recorded anarchies and compare them side-by-side with all recorded states, to determine relative effectiveness. The west has been more capitalistic for a longer period of time than Somalia or any of its neighboring countries, which is why we're so much better off. Also understand that Somalia improved not just in absolute terms, but also relative to all the neighboring African countries. Are you finally starting to understand the concept of getting better without yet being the best? This seems to be something statists just can't grasp. Somalia had twenty years. It's done nothing to end the civil wars, and its Xeer system and free market is ill-equipped to fight off new factions. The same is roughly true of all those anarchies you listed. They were all either without militaries or able to be acquired by a nearby government. Funny how you can have to much trust for you're fellow man while simultaneously having no trust in them whatsoever... If you don't teach a child that thievery is "immoral", they steal and they continue to steal until they value their reputation more than the candy bar on the shelf. Morals are not innate. The conscience is a mechanism built into children by society. Not that I agree with you, but you just argued for government. Now you're just playing word games. The state has power, therefore corrupt persons are attracted to the state. I find it strange that you consider warlords as something separate from the state since that's exactly what politicians are. Governments are responsible for more wars and deaths than anything else. It's not a word game. It's a critical fact that in a market the businessmen will buy favours from those with any political power. It doesn't matter if you have a state, a chieftain, a warlord, a People's Council, etc. The political powers are corruptible. Funny how you can have to much trust for you're fellow man while simultaneously having no trust in them whatsoever... Humans are trustworthy for day-to-day interactions. When they have power, brought on by politics or money, they become untrustworthy. Unfortunately, the market doesn't regulate itself so that income is equal and everyone has equal power, so we need a government accountable to us that keeps people in line. Side: Hybrid
Except for much of Africa, Antarctica, China, North Korea and Cuba, private industry is everywhere. Of course if you want to make the argument that it physically must occupy the space then I suppose that means government is only where state buildings are planted. That's the thing, avesk. Logically you would only own the land (around where) your property is built on. Most of the U.S. is empty, hell, most of every country is empty, yet every inch is bordered and claimed. They do nothing to upkeep it. They don't do anything with it. The only reason for them to own it is so they can tax whomever decides to use it. Move to Africa if you don't like taxes, or Antarctica. Does that sound reasonable to you? Africa is highly statist and Antarctica is nigh inhospitable. I live in Canada. It's the second largest country in the world and has about 1/10 the population of the U.S. Does it not sound fair to allow Canadians to build non-government controlled towns? I mean, if anarchism really cannot work, then what reason is there to make it against the law to try? If it can't sustain itself then naturally the townsfolk would appeal to the state. Also, you would have proven your point that a state is needed. So, would you not agree that with such a vast landmass a small group of persons should be allowed to go off and form their own town? If you are wrongfully taxed you can appeal to a court. The problem isn't wrongful taxation though, because all tax is wrong. Don't misunderstand, I'm not saying tax is wrong based on moral grounds, I say it is wrong merely because it is inefficient. The pricing model works the best as it is the only real way to know where funds need to be directed as it is directly based on the equilibriums of supply and demand. It is in this way that taxation is inefficient. Once the taxes are extracted, how do you know where the money should go? Either the choice is arbitrary, or a vote must be done. How stupid is this! Taking the money, then asking them what they would have done with it had it not been taken. It would be much more efficient to just let the persons direct their money where they want it themselves and save the hassle. History demonstrates this pattern all the time. What prevents you from accepting this evidence is that you see a state and think "ah well, can't learn from the evidence" and so you keep firing already tried ideas at everyone thinking they're new or interesting. First of all, new? How many times have I cited Ireland? and that was 400-1400 years ago. I'm not proposing anything new, merely that there is new information available. Second, you're talking about oligopolies... which was addressed and debunked in the very first video I linked you on the topic of free-market monopolies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frm2_kazljw I said to this: All you're trying to do is say that a small sample must be able to represent the whole. A small sample that failed, by the way, and in the face of all the other systems that arose to support my hypothesis (basically every state). One collection of tribes doesn't negate the vast majority of states. You are not accounting for all the facts. How is this contradictory to what I said? Anarchic Ireland lasted a millenium, this proves it is sustainable. No state has lasted nearly this long which means, theoretically speaking, free enterprise is more stable than states. Sure, lots of states exist and have existed for a long time. Then again, lots of religions exist and have existed even longer than states. Does that necessarily mean religions are correct? It was a period of constant war. Think Somalia but over one thousand years of it. Yeah, I want to live there. Wars in Ireland were less common and to a piss-ant scale compared to the rest of Europe. Understand, persons of that time were insane by our standards all over (as expressed in Llyod DeMause's work on psychohistory), so obviously murder and the like was more common, but without the ability to conscript large amounts of men war was unprofitable and difficult to maintain. It is a means to enforce copy protection and collect royalties, so that other companies may legally display content. It's basically extortion, very organised and made possible through companies buying state favours. Then you already understand that without a state, such extortion can't happen. They can and do buy other players without it, essentially bypassing restrictions, but illegally. This is because (chorus) Big companies like to buy state favours and this will always happen as long as disproportionate income exists and an authority exists, even if you call that authority Anarchic Ireland's councils or Somalia's Islamic Courts. Order will always be, it's natural. The difference is emergent order is efficient because it emerged to be, just as your body is efficient because it emerged that way. Top-down order cannot be more efficient than emergent order because it didn't emerge through natural selection (or, as it's called in the market, competition). Therefore, it doesn't accurately represent market demand. Questions regarding group interaction Desire to control =/= the ability to control. Groups form, some groups end up stronger than others, but even animals understand it's not about if you can win, but how much you'd have to lose to do it. Wars are only profitable so long as you can get someone else to pick up the tab. Governments can do this via taxation. Companies don't have this, they only have fickle customers to rely on and customers tend not to support companies violently warring with other companies. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGT5QUJGmwc Also, I went to public school. Nifty trick, huh? Obviously they're going to make a distinction between the colloquial idea of robber barons and what they really were. That's the whole point of the article! Besides, nothing you just said makes the article untrue. Capitalists can only out preform their competition so long as they supply a demand better than their competition. Political entrepreneurs do in fact lobby the state for subsidies and barriers to entry. It's true, so it seems once again you are merely trying to make what I say sound wrong, rather than actually show it's fault through any kind of logic, by arbitrarily connecting it to Christianity. So you want a BP-magnitude oil leak closer to our shores? Is that what you're saying here? I was reading recently about life in London in the late 18th, early 19th centuries. Back then there were no laws prohibiting the duping of waste into the river nearby London. Also, back then chamberpots were dumped in streets, butchers' wastes were dumped outside, corpses, and horse waste was simply shoveled off into the river. It gets better, you see, because nearby factories would also dump their wastes into the water. Do I need to go on? Because like we would expect, that river was also the water source of the city's working class, the wealthy bought imported spring water. Water treatments didn't exist back then, so you can imagine... the whole city was drinking water which was putrefied with sewage, corpses, rotting flesh, and heavy metals and industrial poisons. This is why we keep industry away from our cities when possible and tightly regulate wastes disposal, and sanitation. Alright, I should have made this clear from the beginning. When I spoke against regulation before I was talking specifically about state regulation. Obviously there will always be "regulation" in that there will be a regulated way to conduct business. If mass dumping is occurring to the extent that a town's water supply is in danger the townsfolk can either run that company out of town coercively, or through a class action lawsuit. Basically, the same way it's done now, only without the whole mass monopolies and fiat land claims. I'll simplify for the biologically uninitiated. The waste you excrete has minimal caloric content, so using a mass->calorie conversion set doesn't work. You aren't excreting calories, but waste which cannot be processed further (to humans, I realise that microrganisms can break it down further but they have pathways which we lack). I say: It's a lump of calories unusable to us, therefore a waste to take in in the first place. You say: No! It's a mass of unusable calories to us... http://mb-soft.com/public2/humaneff.html It's clearly a complicated issue, and there isn't a whole lot of research on it, but in basic terms we excrete 80% of the volume of what we eat and waste a lot of our energy disposing it. Energy that doesn't need to be taken in or wasted on excretion. Intestines are part of what absorb the energy from the waste. They are doing their job. What you're asking is that we should be able to use cellulose as an energy source. Sure, go ahead, but remember that human experimentation is illegal. Damn politicians. =p That's because it's more complicated than that. Libertarians and anarcho-capitalists think in very simple terms for complicated problems. In this case, what a hybrid system means is that capitalism is used to solve production problems, while government solves social problems. It's actually more complicated, but that's the gist of it. Capitalism works when no feelings or people can get hurt. Government works at keeping a population in line when certain social behaviours are expected. These social expectations come from the public in the first place. Won't the demand for these expectations exist with or without a state? As long as the demand is there, a supply will arise and there's no logical reason to allow that supply coercive monopolies on any industries and massive fiat-land claims that have nothing to do with social expectations. I'll use a chart for you since you seem to have trouble understanding me. WORST STATE + North Korea + 1970s-1980s Somalia (corrupt, oppressive) + 1990s-2010s Somalia (inter-faction fighting, free market) + + + + Average Western (democracy/monarchy, social programs, minimum living standards) + States Lie Here + + Ideal State (no idea if it can/does exist) BEST STATE So you understand that Somalia got better after the fall of Siad Barre? Who's to say that Somalia wouldn't have continued getting better? Who's to say America wouldn't also see improvement without our republic/democracy state? That's the point of citing Somalia. It is proof that a country becomes much more efficient once it is free of its very inefficient central government. To me, the best state possible would a meritocracy. Kinda like democracy, except you'd actually have to have a track record of proven economic theories and predictions to become a president or congressman. I predict that the next statist revolution will be towards meritocracy. The thing is, the economists with the most proven market predictions are anti-statists, which means from meritocracy you would begin to see a massive factorization of the state as the politicians would both have no desire to expand and conquer as well as know full well that the market tends towards self-balance. From here the state dissolves it's fiat land claim and most taxes (welfare being the last to go). Thus bringing an end to the great experiment known as "statism". Except that you don't believe in that anarchism. If you believed in that anarchism it would be a simple matter of "Do you accept government as viable? No. Okay, no belief." Anarchy to you means a lack of state followed by unfettered capitalism. That's it to my belief though, that government isn't viable. I only speak of capitalism because capitalism is what comes into play without a state. Just as you would speak of science to a Christian as science is the only viable means to explain the universe. That's because your thinking isn't very subtle. When you attach an ideology onto something that is the dialectical opposite of belief, it becomes an ideology regardless. Just as how secular humanism is a belief, an ideology, despite its parent atheism not being a belief or ideology. Just as Buddhism is a religion despite having no god. I've "attached" capitalism to anarchism in the same way science is "attached" to atheism. The point still stands that anarchism and atheism are analogous. I don't care if you debate points with pseudo-intellectuals and pat yourself on the back every time a random Joe can't counter your latest thought. When you debate with me you will be treated with respect insofar as your argument approaches reality and so far you have been arguing from a parallel universe. A government is a relinquishment of power to an authority that is a person, a real being. A religion is a relinquishment of power to an authority that doesn't exist in any real form, but is hijacked by a person claiming to be a proxy for it. Because apparently, the creator of the universe cannot speak in person. The first can dissolve in decades, years even. The second requires generations of deprogramming to flush out. So a governments authority is a real person, therefore it's better than religion? Isn't the problem in the first place that persons can't be trusted with power? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Apparently not, when the state has police and the people have nothing. I was actually talking about the inter-generational dissolving of state support. But, even in a "here and now" context, if everyone in the U.S. simply didn't pay their taxes next year (obviously, not a likely situation, but likely hood isn't the point here) the state couldn't do much about it. They'd run out of money long before they'd manage to manually coerce the money out of the population. There's much more civilians than there are military and in the end the military is an empty threat as killing and wounding civilians ultimately hurts the government anyway. 1. No, otherwise most of the poor countries of the world would have collapsed by now. 2. Armed conflict. One state replaces the other. 3. Even if that were the case, evolution in social behaviours necessary for anarchy to work would require many generations, perhaps hundreds. No, what you really mean is that the population must unanimously favour a free market, then create one, then the wealthy and powerful may rule over peasants once again. You remember 19th century England, right? 4. If the government causes enough unrest, it may be that too many civilians resist for the jails to handle, and the government collapses that way. 1. The most poor countries of the world? You mean, like Africa? The same Africa constantly in some sort of war and upset? I mean, they're highly statist and hopelessly impecunious. At this point, I would be surprised if an equilibrium of near-calamitous state control vs. market sustainablility hadn't been reached. 3. Obviously social evolution entails a massive inter-subjective shift in political views... it seems a rather redundancy for you to bring up. Also, you've made a rather strange jump here. The nation will one day be full of anarchists, therefore archons will arise to rule over these anarchists... okay. =/ Did you bother to look into Gaelic Ireland? I did. What of it? You listed Ireland, Iceland, and Somalia. Well, those are the ones I've discussed explicitly. I've touched on a few others, like stateless America. Iceland: rule by chieftains. Not an anarchy. Iceland: rule by chieftains. Not an anarchy. Somalia: rule by courts and elders. Not an anarchy. A chieftain is merely the leader of a group. The "alpha-male" in any given group of friends can be called a "chieftain". That doesn't make every group of friends their own state. If you consider any system that involves hierarchy, regardless of if it's voluntary or not, a state, then you have a peculiarly broad definition of a state. Also, with Somalia, these courts emerged on the market. They're merely the markets means of mediation. Can mediation not occur without being labeled a state by you, hmm? I'm not going to go into the others as this debate is long enough already and I'm already pushing up on the character limit... So what you showed me are regions which have a lack of central authority, or the authority is very close to the people. The closest I saw to an anarchy is Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities but they still have representatives. Remember that an anarchy in its true sense is a complete lack of police, authorities, etc. Essentially, everyone is responsible to himself. No, you've chosen to define anarchy this way. I've told you time and time again that's not how I use the word. At this point you're just arguing semantics. Cherrypicking means to select data in your favour so as to give a skewed image of the situation. In the case of an anarchy (or rather stateless government) you would need to take all recorded anarchies and compare them side-by-side with all recorded states, to determine relative effectiveness. I've been comparing anarchies to states all along... literally everything I've said has been an argument either for anarchism relative to statism or against statism relative to anarchism. The idea that the only way to empirically compare states to non-states is to match the collective recordings of all states to all anarchies is stupid. It's not as though Ireland was unknown to the rest of the world at the time and was therefore given an advantage in survival that states didn't have. Hundreds of years worth of invasion happened with no avail. So, one can clearly see that it is at least theoretically possible for a stateless society to survive indefinitely. The same can't be said about statism as states have historically collapsed both from invasion and internal reasons, therefore have been unable to last nearly as long. Somalia had twenty years. It's done nothing to end the civil wars, and its Xeer system and free market is ill-equipped to fight off new factions. The same is roughly true of all those anarchies you listed. They were all either without militaries or able to be acquired by a nearby government. "Somalia" can't end wars because "Somalia" is just an imaginary fringe. The ones warring are Islamist and U.N. states trying to establish their own central government within this fringe. To be honest, even I was surprised to read about Somalia's advancements after the collapse of the Barre regime since it came from a collapse, not a conscious decision to abolish the state. Which means without the former government's monopolies, many services just stopped existing and it takes time to build up any economy of scale. This is something you need to understand, the chaos from a collapsed state does not justify the state. When settlers went into the Western United States, they knew what they were getting into. There would be no state, so they had to make proper arrangements, with police, law, and how land ownership was to be delineated. The result was that the territories had lower homicides per capita than the incorporated states. In mining towns, people realized that there would be no state monopoly on law, and so they would have to make the proper arrangements. And in fact, right up to the incorporation of California, many mining towns forbade state law and would bar lawyers or state police from entering the mining towns because state law was known to be so arbitrary, unfair, and burdensome to comply with the rulings. Medieval Iceland and Ireland had the same situation. Quaker Pennsylvania too. Early America is littered with examples of areas with little or nominal state presence, and much of the "American Spirit" was a description of this emergent law. People went into America knowing they had to order themselves, and they did. But when you have a population that has existed under a state, and has planned their affairs under the assumption that there would be a state and this state would have, while not static, an approximately steady form, this population will be jolted when that state has removed. And the result is anarchy in the pejorative. Somalia is a great example of this. In rural Somalia, where the population is largely nomadic or agricultural, the fall of the central state was a net benefit. This population hadn't arranged their affairs around the assumption of a state to maintain law and order, and so when the state was gone, well that just meant less taxes and less occasional harassment. The urban population, however, did not fare so well, as they had grown dependent on state police, law, and many things. Given the time that Ireland or Iceland had, Somalia too would be able to build up to the point where establishing a state would be nearly impossible. Not that I agree with you, but you just argued for government. I don't see how you could have got that out of what I said... Persons valuing their reputation requires a small group to have a massive fiat land claim and several coercive monopolies? It's not a word game. It's a critical fact that in a market the businessmen will buy favours from those with any political power. It doesn't matter if you have a state, a chieftain, a warlord, a People's Council, etc. The political powers are corruptible. Just having the title "chieftain" doesn't automatically give you the ability to sell market favours. The "chieftains" of Iceland and Ireland didn't have any market influence, they couldn't enact barriers to entry like state politicians can. =/ Humans are trustworthy for day-to-day interactions. When they have power, brought on by politics or money, they become untrustworthy. Unfortunately, the market doesn't regulate itself so that income is equal and everyone has equal power, so we need a government accountable to us that keeps people in line. And how is the government going to keep persons in line when it appeals to the most corrupt? Persons are untrustworthy with power, therefore we need to give a small group of persons near limitless power over the market? Side: Capitalism
They do nothing to upkeep it. They don't do anything with it. The only reason for them to own it is so they can tax whomever decides to use it. They build infrastructure upon it and guard it from other powers with military. Does that sound reasonable to you? Yes. The majority of us have suffered because of unregulated markets. What, you think unfettered communism was the world's only great mistake? So was unfettered capitalism, but you see it dominates the world and calling it the great failure of our time would deeply undermine trust in it. Does it not sound fair to allow Canadians to build non-government controlled towns? I mean, if anarchism really cannot work, then what reason is there to make it against the law to try? If it can't sustain itself then naturally the townsfolk would appeal to the state. Also, you would have proven your point that a state is needed. So, would you not agree that with such a vast landmass a small group of persons should be allowed to go off and form their own town? When you build a town upon government land you must pay for the protection they provide you through military, you must pay for the police, and the infrastructure that they provided. You cannot simply opt out of this as military protection is automatic and the infrastructure is something they paid for. Police are expected to maintain a certain jurisdiction. Of course, you could buy an island, or reserve land on the arctic. We all know already that capitalism fails when left on its own, so if you want to learn a hard lesson, go ahead and buy land for it. First of all, new? How many times have I cited Ireland? and that was 400-1400 years ago. I'm not proposing anything new, merely that there is new information available. Note NEW or INTERESTING. Second, you're talking about oligopolies... which was addressed and debunked in the very first video I linked you on the topic of free-market monopolies. How do you think Standard Oil succeeded? Special discounts were provided to the company by business partners who owned other businesses. The free market allows this. How is this contradictory to what I said? Anarchic Ireland lasted a millenium, this proves it is sustainable. No state has lasted nearly this long which means, theoretically speaking, free enterprise is more stable than states. First off, it was Gaelic Ireland, secondly it wasn't an anarchy. You simply assume that it was capitalist when it's more complicated than that. The important point here is that a single tribal jurisdiction is insufficient sample to judge it, or compare it with all the states. Wars in Ireland were less common and to a piss-ant scale compared to the rest of Europe. Gaelic Irish society was a warlike one and guerrilla warfare between clanna was commonplace. Young boys were trained in battle from 7 or 10 years of age. Young males organised themselves into small, semi-independent warrior bands known as fianna (singular: fiann), which engaged in constant training, hunting and raiding in forests during the warmer months. They would continue this lifestyle until they could join a chieftain's retinue and/or marry women. Stories of the fianna can be found in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. Then you already understand that without a state, such extortion can't happen. Without a state the owners of motion pictures would simply form an influential guild and weigh in on tribal government. Top-down order cannot be more efficient than emergent order because it didn't emerge through natural selection (or, as it's called in the market, competition). Therefore, it doesn't accurately represent market demand. First off, this doesn't address the fact that these anti-competitive behaviours must evolve regardless of state. Secondly, evolved systems are complex, brute-force solutions to problems that waste a lot of energy getting there. We could design a human being in several thousand years of science and research but it took the Earth four billion years to evolve us. Desire to control =/= the ability to control. Groups form, some groups end up stronger than others, but even animals understand it's not about if you can win, but how much you'd have to lose to do it. I'll make it really simple for you to grasp. Bigger groups are more powerful than smaller groups, which are more powerful than individuals, which mean that in power struggles there is favour towards building a big group. Since you're not very smart, try looking into the fianna of Ireland. Obviously they're going to make a distinction between the colloquial idea of robber barons and what they really were. That's the whole point of the article! Robber barons are as the colloquial meaning. You bought into the whitewash that MISES wrote up for you, because you are too vain to realise when a word categorically holds the words which fall under it. Besides, nothing you just said makes the article untrue. Capitalists can only out preform their competition so long as they supply a demand better than their competition. Political entrepreneurs do in fact lobby the state for subsidies and barriers to entry. Robber barons are both. You don't even have to appeal to the state to completely undermine the system, as Standard Oil demonstrated by striking special deals with child companies, and by acquiring rival businesses. Obviously there will always be "regulation" in that there will be a regulated way to conduct business. If mass dumping is occurring to the extent that a town's water supply is in danger the townsfolk can either run that company out of town coercively, or through a class action lawsuit. I JUST LISTED an example which you replied to, where under a free market, rivers were CONTAMINATED but the market DID NOT solve it. The market HASTENED the problem. In 19th century England, the townsfolk were kept poor and were violently beaten if they tried to organise because labour unions were illegal. The situation grew worse and it favoured the wealthy at the expense of the health of the majority of the townsfolk. I say: It's a lump of calories unusable to us, therefore a waste to take in in the first place. You say: No! It's a mass of unusable calories to us... I said: it isn't calories. Learn to read. Also waste doesn't exit the way it came in, when you undergo metabolism you create waste. These social expectations come from the public in the first place. Won't the demand for these expectations exist with or without a state? As long as the demand is there, a supply will arise and there's no logical reason to allow that supply coercive monopolies on any industries and massive fiat-land claims that have nothing to do with social expectations. Social expectations are cultural behaviours that come about as folkways, norms and mores. They are not bought and sold. So you understand that Somalia got better after the fall of Siad Barre? Who's to say that Somalia wouldn't have continued getting better? Who's to say America wouldn't also see improvement without our republic/democracy state? That's the point of citing Somalia. It is proof that a country becomes much more efficient once it is free of its very inefficient central government. When you have a corrupt and incompetent government, the only direction is "up." Of course when you have a competent and strongly regulated government, "down" is a much more likely direction. Especially when idiots are put in charge. Remember: simple thinking doesn't fix complex problems. That's it to my belief though, that government isn't viable. I only speak of capitalism because capitalism is what comes into play without a state. Just as you would speak of science to a Christian as science is the only viable means to explain the universe. I've "attached" capitalism to anarchism in the same way science is "attached" to atheism. The point still stands that anarchism and atheism are analogous. Capitalism is part of your ideology. There are many possible ways for a stateless region to run itself, communism is another way besides capitalism. Secular humanism is an ideology, atheism is not. Learn the difference. I predict that the next statist revolution will be towards meritocracy. The thing is, the economists with the most proven market predictions are anti-statists, which means from meritocracy you would begin to see a massive factorization of the state as the politicians would both have no desire to expand and conquer as well as know full well that the market tends towards self-balance. You really can't help but see things in simple terms. Whenever a stateless society exists it is inefficient because fighting depletes resources that could be used to defend against invaders and work for social programs. Therefore they are absorbed or transformed into a state. However the state will become overly bureaucratic from time to time so it may have a revolution into different kinds of government. A lack of state isn't a comfortable place to live unless you like to constantly fight. Removing the state, as you imply, simply means a return to plutocracy. There is no balance, because capitalism isn't about that, it is about acquisition of wealth. Communism is about balance, learn the difference. So a governments authority is a real person, therefore it's better than religion? Isn't the problem in the first place that persons can't be trusted with power? A real person can change. An imaginary person is immutable. Also, with Somalia, these courts emerged on the market. They're merely the markets means of mediation. Can mediation not occur without being labeled a state by you, hmm? They emerged from Xeer and Sharia. It's not as though Ireland was unknown to the rest of the world at the time and was therefore given an advantage in survival that states didn't have. Hundreds of years worth of invasion happened with no avail. So, one can clearly see that it is at least theoretically possible for a stateless society to survive indefinitely. It was assimilated. Try finding better examples. Most of these examples you bring up are either assimilated later or are unstable. Somalia is a great example of this. In rural Somalia, where the population is largely nomadic or agricultural, the fall of the central state was a net benefit. This population hadn't arranged their affairs around the assumption of a state to maintain law and order, and so when the state was gone, well that just meant less taxes and less occasional harassment. The urban population, however, did not fare so well, as they had grown dependent on state police, law, and many things. The Xeer too over, along with Sharia, for the legal code when government fell. However like I said before, without a large military the region suffers from infighting and risks assimilation. This is one of the duties of state, protection of sovereignty through military might. I don't see how you could have got that out of what I said... Persons valuing their reputation requires a small group to have a massive fiat land claim and several coercive monopolies? Government law enforcement. Just having the title "chieftain" doesn't automatically give you the ability to sell market favours. The "chieftains" of Iceland and Ireland didn't have any market influence, they couldn't enact barriers to entry like state politicians can. =/ What don't you understand about politics? When you have a ruling class, it has privileges above normal people. When money is involved, it means that those privileges can be bought. This is how corruption starts. You think in such simple terms, as if removing a state removes the power of authority. And how is the government going to keep persons in line when it appeals to the most corrupt? Persons are untrustworthy with power, therefore we need to give a small group of persons near limitless power over the market? Since you seem particularly handicapped here. I'll explain it. A government has the most power in a region. In a democracy or parliamentary monarchy, the leadership of that government answers to the people they govern through voting process and term limits. Separation of powers allows them to be accountable for misdeeds. The market on the other hand governs trade. When left unchecked monopolies and oligarchies form, as a natural consequence of both economy of scale, social interactions between businesses, and the incentive in the market for complete control to eliminate competition. Therefore the government is superior in power to market businesses, and the people are accountable to government, and it is accountable to them. Businesses are accountable to the consequences of trade with government oversight designed to block loopholes that allow for unethical behaviours. Side: Hybrid
They build infrastructure upon it and guard it from other powers with military. They build infrastructure on the land they don't build infrastructure on? Okay there... Yes. The majority of us have suffered because of unregulated markets. What, you think unfettered communism was the world's only great mistake? So was unfettered capitalism, but you see it dominates the world and calling it the great failure of our time would deeply undermine trust in it. That... has nothing to do with "love it or leave it", but whatever. Capitalism regulates itself via demand for regulation. So this isn't an argument for the state. When you build a town upon government land you must pay for the protection they provide you through military, you must pay for the police, and the infrastructure that they provided. You cannot simply opt out of this as military protection is automatic and the infrastructure is something they paid for. Police are expected to maintain a certain jurisdiction. Of course, you could buy an island, or reserve land on the arctic. We all know already that capitalism fails when left on its own, so if you want to learn a hard lesson, go ahead and buy land for it. You're not listening at all. I'm saying they move into a completely empty area and supply their own protection , buildings, water wells, etc. Also, capitalism has proven to work free of state intervention as seen in anarchic Ireland and Iceland. Note NEW or INTERESTING. You don't find a nation withstanding a millenium interesting enough to consider? Regardless of if you find it "interesting", it's relevant. How do you think Standard Oil succeeded? Special discounts were provided to the company by business partners who owned other businesses. The free market allows this. You're speaking, of course, of OPEC. Two points on that. 1. This still happens even with the state, so this isn't an argument for the state. 2. It wasn't a matter of businesses colluding to provide each other "discounts". It was about aligning the oil companies in a collusion to keep all their own prices high because oil is an inelastic demand. The problem is that in the market, everything competes with everything else. If oil companies collude and raise their prices to such rates that oil becomes more expensive than other energy sources, then persons will natural move towards these cheaper energy sources. The only reason why this process has been so slow thus far is because the U.S. economy is backed by the Petro dollar, giving the state incentive to keep oil alive despite it's price. First off, it was Gaelic Ireland, secondly it wasn't an anarchy. You simply assume that it was capitalist when it's more complicated than that. The important point here is that a single tribal jurisdiction is insufficient sample to judge it, or compare it with all the states. Why do I keep having to tell you this? Once should be enough. I'm not talking about anarchism in the pejorative sense. I use the word as it is defined by wikipedia; Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Given this definition, Ireland was an anarchy from ~650 CE - ~1650 CE. It had no state, so it is an anarchy. Without a state, what can work other than capitalism? Socialism? Perhaps. Socialism could work voluntarily. If you want to make the case that Anarchic Ireland was socialist, I'm all eyes. Gaelic Irish society was a warlike one and guerrilla warfare between clanna was commonplace. Young boys were trained in battle from 7 or 10 years of age. Young males organised themselves into small, semi-independent warrior bands known as fianna (singular: fiann), which engaged in constant training, hunting and raiding in forests during the warmer months. They would continue this lifestyle until they could join a chieftain's retinue and/or marry women. Stories of the fianna can be found in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology. Wow. A bunch of teenage boys got into groups and went on hunting trips. Ireland sure sounds like one war-torn hell hole. =/ Without a state the owners of motion pictures would simply form an influential guild and weigh in on tribal government. How do you figure? First off, this doesn't address the fact that these anti-competitive behaviours must evolve regardless of state. Secondly, evolved systems are complex, brute-force solutions to problems that waste a lot of energy getting there. We could design a human being in several thousand years of science and research but it took the Earth four billion years to evolve us. Who's talking about anti-competitive behaviors? The market only exists because of market competitiveness. the entire ethos of capitalism is built around the assumption of competition. Evolution is what is natural. Sometimes it involves brute force, but to go against what us natural will always require brute force. This is what the state is; brute force as a means to control the market. Even if we could build a human in a matter of a few thousand years, this would only be possible because of the first several billion that went into making us. Also, men aren't Gods. It's one thing to make a person and send him on his way, it's another thing entirely to build a system against his nature and have him conform to it. Sure, it's possible. It just isn't very sustainable. I'll make it really simple for you to grasp. Bigger groups are more powerful than smaller groups, which are more powerful than individuals, which mean that in power struggles there is favour towards building a big group. Since you're not very smart, try looking into the fianna of Ireland. I don't know, avesk. I mean, this is the same argument you just made in the last post. You've chosen not to debunk my argument and have instead totally ignored it so you can re-assert what you've already said over again... =/ Bigger groups are stronger than smaller groups, great. Two things. 1. It's not about if you can win, it's about how much you'd have to lose to get it. Economics 101. War 101. 2. There is no bigger group than the public. This is why the supply submits to public demand. This is why the state requires 12 years mandatory in it's government education camps, so it can indoctrinate kids in the nobility of the state. This all goes back to the states inability to control a nation based on coercion alone. The public has to be made to control itself via "leftists" and "rightists" etc. Robber barons are as the colloquial meaning. You bought into the whitewash that MISES wrote up for you, because you are too vain to realise when a word categorically holds the words which fall under it. The article is about dispelling the myth of the "robber barons", not about arguing the semantics of it. Don't be so superficial. I said: it isn't calories. Learn to read. Also waste doesn't exit the way it came in, when you undergo metabolism you create waste. Calories was a poor choice of words on my part. I should have said volume to begin with. You're being manipulative again. It doesn't matter if you've anabolically "drained" the food because you're still leaving 80% of it unused. Which is 80% you don't have to take in, in the first place. I JUST LISTED an example which you replied to, where under a free market, rivers were CONTAMINATED but the market DID NOT solve it. The market HASTENED the problem. In 19th century England, the townsfolk were kept poor and were violently beaten if they tried to organise because labour unions were illegal. The situation grew worse and it favoured the wealthy at the expense of the health of the majority of the townsfolk. You've yet to prove that the market hastened the problem. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but 19th century England was NOT a free market. "In the mid-19th century, Britain witnessed a lengthy and heated debate over the limitations to the powers of the Bank of England. Britain had been plagued with economic upheaval during the period 1797–1821, when it had abandoned the gold standard for an inconvertible paper currency. In addition, Britain's return to a convertible currency in 1821 failed to prevent a financial crisis in 1825, a crisis that generated widespread interest in the problems of money and banking." Looks like England had a rather active state to me. Also, you've already admitted in your own post that the state had made public organized parties illegal and violently enforced this law. By your own words 19th century England sucked thanks to the state. Social expectations are cultural behaviours that come about as folkways, norms and mores. They are not bought and sold. You don't understand the market. Not at all. Supply and demand are not limited to physical commodities. Also, by making social expectations the states responsibility you have turned it into something to be bought and sold as now politicians will supply the enforcement of certain social expectations in exchange for votes. When you have a corrupt and incompetent government, the only direction is "up." Of course when you have a competent and strongly regulated government, "down" is a much more likely direction. Especially when idiots are put in charge. Remember: simple thinking doesn't fix complex problems. You find the U.S. government competent? Well, if you say so... =/ It's one thing to create a chart and say "Somalia is down here, so it can only go up!" and "America is up here, so it's more likely to go down!". It's another thing entirely to actually go beyond the superficial and inspect why this is so, to actually look at the subtleties and mechanisms that make up the market. Simple thinking would be to say "good government is good". It takes a little more complexity to go beyond the superficial. You speak highly of state "regulation" but just in mentioning state regulation you are already assuming that which you need to prove. It is a loaded word. All state laws against certain action are controls. To regulate implies that the control keeps something regular such as a regular standard of quality. But, to just impose a control and call it a regulation is dishonest. All regulations are controls, but not all controls are regulations. Barriers to entry is a form of state "regulation". It does nothing to regulate the market, in fact it does just the opposite! A market free of barriers to entry is much more regulated. What you seem to be advocating is not so much a state as it is a union with military force. That's fine, but if that's what is needed for the market to function then that's what will emerge on a free market because that's what will be in demand. Understand? If something really is "good" for the market then it would emerge on its own just as a giraffe will emerge longer necks in order to get food because longer necks are in demand. There's no need to manually for their necks longer. Hell, if they can't grow their necks on their own then manually stretching them only serves to prolong their inevitable (and now, much, much worse) suffering and demise. Capitalism is part of your ideology. There are many possible ways for a stateless region to run itself, communism is another way besides capitalism. Secular humanism is an ideology, atheism is not. Learn the difference. You're not even trying to understand. Rather, you're banging your pots and pans together again. Capitalism is to anarchism what science is to atheism. One can be both for free markets and communism in the same way one can be both Christian and not believe in God. Sure, you can follow the edicts and what not. You can offer your income and base your life around it. But without a head to run it, it would be both stupid and non-functional. You really can't help but see things in simple terms. Whenever a stateless society exists it is inefficient because fighting depletes resources that could be used to defend against invaders and work for social programs. Therefore they are absorbed or transformed into a state. However the state will become overly bureaucratic from time to time so it may have a revolution into different kinds of government. A lack of state isn't a comfortable place to live unless you like to constantly fight. Removing the state, as you imply, simply means a return to plutocracy. There is no balance, because capitalism isn't about that, it is about acquisition of wealth. Communism is about balance, learn the difference. Are you communist now? A standing army of conscripted soldiers cannot be withstood on a free market because there is no state to conscript them and there is no tax base to ensure them. However, if a stateless town were to be invaded then each member would then have incentive to pay for protection (though, they would probably pay for protection long before it became a problem). Without a state, you don't need a massive army because you don't need to protect a vast fiat land claim stretching from border to border. All you need is enough to defend your own town and without a state to make surrender it becomes very difficult to conquer anything. First of all, because each person's property is sovereign you'd have to convince each individual to submit to you. This is by no means impossible, but it's particularly tricky to pull off as you'd have to both oppress these persons without destroying too much property since destroying everything would defeat the purpose of invading in the first place. Also, it takes time to amass an army on a free market and other persons are bound to find out that some group is advertising for their army. This tips off the other town to prepare for such a thing. How event's would actually be played out is any ones guess as the specifics of such a situation can't be known until the situation actually happens, but when you take into account that having less area to defend requires less protection and invasions become more difficult without a state to make surrender to you, it's easy to see how a stateless town cold easily defend itself. Anarchic Ireland is proof that a stateless society can sustain itself despite invasion, even if the invading nation happens to have the most powerfull army of the time. A real person can change. An imaginary person is immutable. A real persons can change, there fore a state is the best means of running an economy? I'm not saying the Gods of yore are better than politicians, merely that deifying any person is stupid. They emerged from Xeer and Sharia. So? It was assimilated. Try finding better examples. Most of these examples you bring up are either assimilated later or are unstable. Somalia is a great example of this. In rural Somalia, where the population is largely nomadic or agricultural, the fall of the central state was a net benefit. This population hadn't arranged their affairs around the assumption of a state to maintain law and order, and so when the state was gone, well that just meant less taxes and less occasional harassment. The urban population, however, did not fare so well, as they had grown dependent on state police, law, and many things. Look beyond the superficial. look at why England was able to conquer Ireland. It wasn't from military force, England had been trying it that way for hundreds of years. They needed the missionaries to spread Christianity first. This would have been a much simpler task 400-500 years ago as science was far from advanced and man was generally very superstitious compared to today. If memory of Christianity where to drop of the planet tomorrow, it would be nearly impossible to convince anyone in North America to join your cult. Pair that with the inability of a state to conquer a non-state via coercion an voila, a stable economy virtually unassimilable. The Xeer too over, along with Sharia, for the legal code when government fell. However like I said before, without a large military the region suffers from infighting and risks assimilation. This is one of the duties of state, protection of sovereignty through military might. The only protection a state offers is for the state from other states. It only protects you because you're it's tax base. What you're saying doesn't defend the state, it merely shows that states are power hungry war machines. Why do you think the U.N. and Islamist invaders attacked so fast and so hard? They did it because assimilation becomes exponentially more difficult as the market builds up an economy of scale. The need isn't for state protection, just protection. Which is something can can and is offered without the state and other states know this. The Iraqi state army, having an annual budget of $1.3 BILLION dollars (in 2002) lasted ostensibly for 41 days against the NATO statist armies, though effectively only lasted for 20 days and even that was prolonged by a sandstorm. The outcome was never in question. After the fall of the Iraq "army", guerrilla armies emerged and have withstood the U.S. army since. The U.S. army had a budget of $481 billion, plus an additional $218 billion devoted to campaigns in The War Against Terror (TWAT). The guerrilla armies worked with mere table scraps of abandoned material and yet are actually able to outlast the U.S. super-state army. This is because these guerrilla armies have public support were as the U.S. army does not. So, guerrilla armies remain because they are in demand. Demand for protection has already proven to be enough to defend against hundreds of billions of dollars worth of state military. So it seems that emergent armies are thousands of times more efficient than state armies. Could you imagine how quickly the U.S. army would have been obliterated if it tried to survive solely on what it could scavenge from the Iraqis themselves as the emergent army had? Pathetic. Government law enforcement. Voluntary interaction. What don't you understand about politics? When you have a ruling class, it has privileges above normal people. When money is involved, it means that those privileges can be bought. This is how corruption starts. You think in such simple terms, as if removing a state removes the power of authority. I know, how absurd of me, to think that removing those with the ability to corrupt the market with stop market corruption! =p This entire post has been very superficial. Most of it, like this argument, has been a sort of "pulling out" of your previous arguments because, as the old saying goes, the devil is in the details; and the details just don't support your arguments very well. You've totally ignored that I was talking about the chieftains of anarchic Ireland/Iceland. Chieftains of whom had no market influence and thus were unable to sell any privileges. A government has the most power in a region. In a democracy or parliamentary monarchy, the leadership of that government answers to the people they govern through voting process and term limits. Separation of powers allows them to be accountable for misdeeds. If they answer to public demand, then why is everything the government does coercive? Hmm? If government monopolies really were the best way to run things then persons would naturally gravitate towards state monopolies. There would be no need for coercive monopolies. The market on the other hand governs trade. When left unchecked monopolies and oligarchies form, as a natural consequence of both economy of scale, social interactions between businesses, and the incentive in the market for complete control to eliminate competition. You're stupid. You're actually fucking retarded. You haven't shown monopolies OR oligarchies to form on a free market yet I've shown you how they don't from every possible angle you could have based your argument on. You haven't shown this ONCE yet you continue to assert it as though it's already been established. It hasn't, because it can't. If a "natural" monopoly were to form and begin charging at monopoly rates, it would be only too easy for any other company to undercut their prices. Even in a monopsony (which just doesn't happen), anybody could start up a company and undercut their prices. The only thing stopping a firm from emerging and undercutting the corporate giants is if there are some kind of regulation stunting the firms growth. States can and DO do just that. Barriers to entry don't happen on a free market, so saying that monopolies happen on a free market and that only the state, the firm with the single most monopolies on earth, can stop firm monopolies is beyond retarded. Forrest Gump meets G.W. Bush retarded. Therefore the government is superior in power to market businesses, and the people are accountable to government, and it is accountable to them. Businesses are accountable to the consequences of trade with government oversight designed to block loopholes that allow for unethical behaviours. Loopholes? Just how the hell can their be loopholes when everything a firm does is based on supply and demand? Are they going to invent demands and then supply them so they can profit off themselves? You've shown nothing, avesk. You're just an arrogant idealist who thinks he knows what's best for everybody. Just like everybody else. Side: Capitalism
1
point
Labels get in way, so let me give you the idea in a nutshell. An economic system where the efficiency of our technology allows for economies of scale to be overcame, so every person can actually own stuff: particularly productive machines. Then the few things that shouldn't or can't be owned individually by everyone should be owned in a cooperative fashion, like natural resources. This brings the entire supply and demand equation down to raw resources, which tend to be in abundance(mostly eliminating the current basis of our current economy: ie scarcity). Side: Self-Interest
1
point
I would say capitalism. The private competition between businesses stimulates the economy. Side: Capitalism
Everyone who says capitalism is ALWAYS American. Brainwashing obviously has nothing to do with this. They have no idea of what socialism or communism is. The best economic system is a system where everyone has a job, enough money, easy and equal access to health, education, good security etc. etc. Capitalism will NEVER provide this. Socialism is the closest and (so far) the most effective and succesful out of all the other systems. Side: Capitalism
1
point
This question unfortunately leads to rather ridiculous claims, since there is no purely capitalist system in any country right now. The only reasonable economic systems out there are hybrid systems, but that requires a level of "greyness" that people find uncomfortable, and therefore you get folks in here who are claiming that capitalism is the only decent system despite the fact that any system they point to will be a hybrid one. Side: Capitalism
While it is true that there is no purely capitalist system, it seems that people point to capitalist aspects within a system. They will claim that the more socialistic areas rely on capitalism to maintain them. The other side argues essentially the opposite, stating that socialistic programs provide the necessary frame work in which capitalism thrives. While we haven't seen a fully Capitalist system, we have seen fully Socialist and Communist systems. We know they don't work. This historical evidence works in capitalists favor. We know what happens on one extreme, we have never actually seen the other. To combat this historical fact, supporters of leftist ideas will argue that we have never actually seen true Socialism or Communism either. They argue that past attempts were wrongly executed. This leads to new Socialist models with a twist or tweek on the old models. It looks great for a time and is hailed as success. It inevitably fails in the long run and is then is either claimed to not have been true Socialism or is not spoken of again. Side: Capitalism
1
point
While it is true that there is no purely capitalist system, it seems that people point to capitalist aspects within a system. They will claim that the more socialistic areas rely on capitalism to maintain them. What an utterly retarded pile of trash. Literally corporate propaganda which you are writing while at the same time pretending is being written by a third party. You simply write the most false, outrageously biased, upside down nonsense that you can, support it with literally nothing, and then seemingly expect a rational conversation. Look idiot, we the people are not stupid. We know by now that capitalism is a deeply unfair system which increases wealth inequality and leads to poverty for millions. Capitalism depends on social programs and tax money being fed back into the infrastructure just to stop there being a revolt. Your assertion that socialism depends on capitalism to function is just plain wrong and stupid. It is simply part of the never-ending stream of insidious propaganda which retards like you are extremely happy to digest and repeat, where you deliberately conflate capitalism with everything which has ever been invented and everything which has ever been bought or sold. Capitalism and money are not the same thing, so if social programs need money to function then that has absolutely fuck all to do with capitalism. Side: Capitalism
Your entire first paragraph could have been copied and pasted from 90% of your responses to everything. The rest is devoid of a point. I show that socialism relies on capitalism and you call me a lier. Cool story. In mixed economies, free actors in free markets are the engine. In non-mixed economies, communists have no sense of quantities demanded without looking to the prices of goods in free economies elsewhere. After it fails, things like you come along to say it wasn't true communism. And I don't know who else you are referring to when you say "we" but your insistence that you aren't stupid looks more like a personal daily affirmation than anything else. Go ahead and re-paste the first paragraph again. Save yourself some time. Side: Capitalism
1
point
Your entire first paragraph could have been copied and pasted from 90% of your responses to everything. Amarel, everybody who has ever conversed with you for longer than a period of 5 minutes can easily testify that you spend your entire life attempting to turn factual reality upside down. Show me any paragraph of yours in history where the common denominator is not: capitalism good, socialism bad, and I will give you a banana for being such a diligent little monkey and sifting through 5,000 posts to find one. The rest is devoid of a point. Translation: I'm not going to address anything you have written and then I'm going to pretend it's your fault. In mixed economies, free actors in free markets are the engine. Mixed economies don't have engines. That's cars you retard. In non-mixed economies, communists have no sense of quantities demanded without looking to the prices of goods in free economies elsewhere. Ahahahaha! So let me get this straight a moment. In non-mixed economies (which are always Communist by the way, because Lord Amarel says so), Communists don't know how much flour they need unless they check the price of flour in capitalist countries? Lol. That's simply pricelessly funny. 😆 It's almost as funny as when you deliberately misrepresent capitalist economies as "free" when of course the entire point of capitalism is that you need large amounts of capital to enter and survive in the market, making it the exact opposite of free. You honestly remind me of that Nazi guy who follows Indiana Jones around everywhere in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just completely consumed by self-interest, to the point that you are literally prepared to redefine and stretch reality around your own contradictions. And I don't know who else you are referring to when you say "we" I'm referring to the exact same people you were referring to buddy. Do you think you are the only person in the world who can deliberately misuse language for the sake of manufacturing ideological propaganda? Side: Capitalism
1
point
They don't know the price of flower. The amount of flour they need obviously has no correlation to how much flour costs. I wish you would just shut up because you are just so awe-inspiringly stupid. You have the spelling of a four year old and evidently don't even understand the difference between quantity and price. Side: Capitalism
0
points
Capitalism has proven to be the most productive sort of economy. Communism failed trying to supply itself and as for socialism, China, the leading socialist economy is rising, but still the US more than doubles its income despite less than 1/3 the population. Side: Capitalism
1
point
You do recognize that china, ussr etc didn't put into practice communist theory and that propaganda from both sides of the Atlantic during the cold war stole the labels and transfigured them into something horrid. Communism is basically a large surplus producing band society and band societies are the simplest social group(basically the family) that can be found the world over, actually this is called by some "primitive communism". The examples of communism most people know are really Totalitarianism, the communist manifesto talks about a form of government where at least 95% of the population is in control. I could continue with the differences,The main reason people don't actually know is because the red star, anti-capitalism etc made for a good ideology to use as propaganda. Also there are such things as market-socialism and you may be surprise to find that all anarchists are socialists, except for anarcho-capitalists but pretty much all other anarchists would claim that they don't understand the power structure of capitalism and are really not anarchists. Side: Capitalism
-1
points
1
point
As I understand it, countries like Sweden and Norway are more free than the US and they are not purely capitalist. Seriously, Sweden and Norway are just as capitalist as the United States except that Sweden and Norway have more social programs paid by taxes. That is hardly freedom and liberty. That is redistribution of wealth. Sweden is the most taxed country in the world while Norway is the 7th most taxed country in the world in overall tax burden. Tax The simple explanation is the difference in opinion of economic freedom. As with freedom generally, there are various definitions, but no universally accepted concept of economic freedom. One major approach to economic freedom comes from classical liberal and libertarian traditions emphasizing free markets and private property, while another extends the welfare economics study of individual choice, with greater economic freedom coming from a "larger" set of possible choices. Side: Hybrid
Let's take the example of the United States of America; powerful and capitalistic, but only at times. During the Great Depression, FDR had to institue socialist measures in his "New Deal", such as rebuilding of publicly-owned property to create jobs. Without this act of socialism in the economy, who knows how long and to what extent the Great Depression would have extended. Currently, the United States is in extreme economic turmoil, because of the capitalism that let banks exploit people. If there had been regulation, as happens in socialisitic economies, then there would not be such a problem. Without NAFTA, there would be 800,000 more high-end industrial jobs in the US, as it is they are in Mexico, because there are no regulations. Socialism is needed, at least to an extent. Side: Hybrid
1
point
|