The basic principle that government is by its essential nature completely incompatible with human 
nature is best demonstrated by specific examples in addition to theory. One such example is the institution of the family.
1. The Family Unit
When two or more individuals unite in a long-term bond based on attraction and unconditional love, there is formed a powerful unit of society. Powerful not in the sense of governing anyone else, but in the sense of supporting and encouraging each family member and educating children and resisting any outside aggression such as rules imposed for its conduct.
Some families accumulate wealth over several generations, which increases their strength; government does all it can to reduce that, by taxing income, then taxing spending, then taxing savings, and even taxing the event of death, in order to limit what can be inherited. In the coming free society all such tax will end, so any family will be free to become a center of accumulated wealth.
There’ll be no rules for forming families; whatever members want to do, by mutual consent, they will do – as determined by the self-ownership axiom. Let’s consider which family forms would be acceptable in a free society:
A Traditional, lifelong man-woman contracts or marriages
B Informal man-woman long-term friendships without a marriage contract
C Man-man and woman-woman friendships, long-term or permanent, by contract written or informal
D Ménages à trois, quatre, cinq… any number in consensual group “marriages” with any gender mix
E Polygamous marriages as in some Mormon communities, with one husband and many wives
F Harems, with several women at the disposal of one man, as in some Muslim communities
G Any voluntary arrangement including all of the above
The answer is G of course. This is the only answer consistent with human nature – the axiom that every human being is his or her own self-owner. That doesn’t mean all types of cohabitation would be equally popular, or effective in propagating future generations – not at all! But whatever people wish to do together is good.
What is not good, what is in face evil, has to do with something that forces a human being to act in a way contrary to his wishes. Since humans are self-owning individuals, an evil act is anything that interferes with that self-ownership. This is the best rational definition of evil. Clearly, any forcing someone to live in a way contrary to their wishes is a violation of the self-ownership axiom.
It logically follows that “good”, as the opposite to “evil”, must be “anything that does not interfere with
a person’s self-ownership.”
Today, government interferes with both the formation of families and with their dissolution, the granting of divorce. In order to marry, normally a couple must get permission from the State! and jump through many hoops and even pay it a fee for this intrusion. Then if they decide the marriage must end, they can split up only with the approval of a government court – even if the terms of the divorce have already been agreed! All that would be flushed away, in the coming free society; families will form and dissolve at the will of their members, and should there be any dispute about terms, free-market courts will be chosen to arbitrate.
In keeping with the market principle that the only obligations upon free people are those undertaken by voluntary, explicit contracts, it’s to be hoped that marriages will start with a prenuptial agreement. One that specifies what would happen in the event of divorce, and so save a huge amount of heartache later on. That way, the service of arbitration would be rarely needed.
Divorce rates rose rapidly in the second half of the 20th Century, right in line with the growth of the government industry. This correlation has an obvious cause: the ballooning income tax levied during that period. With rates so high, the second spouse usually has to go out and work to earn enough to pay the tax on the combined household earnings.
This income tax is not even properly enacted into US Law, yet it’s enforced as if it has been. Just one more great government swindle and boondoggle. The effect of this ill-conceived tax is to place strain upon every family. By obligation far more than choice, latchkey kids return from government school to an empty house; both parents are tired when they are finally able to get the whole family together. Dissatisfaction grows, tensions mount, and surprise, surprise! Every other marriage ends in divorce. A tragedy for all, particularly for the children.
In a free society no such burden will be imposed. If both parents work out of the home it will be by their own choice, and home-schooling will be so prevalent that children will be raised strong, self-confident and self-sufficient and so better able to withstand a breakup if one should occur.
It’s hard to tell whether the divorce rate will rise or fall, after society becomes free. The prevalence of
proper contracts that cover the eventuality would make it easier and less guilt-ridden, but the strains placed on any marriage would be far fewer, absent government and its taxes; so on balance the rate may well fall steeply. Whatever the case, members of the family will be far better equipped to handle it.
Belonging in a stable and loving family is surely one of life’s greatest pleasures and if that rate does fall, that pleasure will be enjoyed more widely and that in turn will greatly enhance the net happiness of all individuals in the free society.
2. Children
Children are integral and delightful members of any family and enjoying their company is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Children are either wanted, or not wanted; and for the sake of the species, let’s hope that the former situation far outweighs the latter. But a couple can enjoy sex without the least intention of starting a baby, and in the nature of the activity they may do so without actually considering the question at all and, horrors, an unwanted pregnancy is upon them. What to do?
In today’s bigot-ridden society there is no end of conflict about the dilemma. Since the apparatus of government exists, it will seek, sometime and somewhere, if not always and everywhere, to take the tough decision away from the couple – where it belongs – and make it on behalf of like-minded powerful voting bigots, who are strangely absent when the time comes to pay the bills and raise the baby.
In the coming free society, there won’t be any laws, and so decisions to terminate will be made only by the pregnant woman who is burdened with providing support for the life growing inside her body.
Abortion will be an option, but in a free market there will be another choice, that doesn’t exist today: a financial arrangement could be made with those who feel strongly that birth should be completed. Abortion will be but one of a multitude of Market Solutions. In essence those who disagree with abortion would be allowed to offer the pregnant girl money to deliver the baby, and then take him or her for adoption. Right now, government laws make such solutions difficult if not impossible, because of the widespread, ridiculous, and hysterical voter bigotry against baby trading.
Let’s attempt to settle rationally a key question: Whose life is the baby’s, anyway? See what you think:
A The baby, born or unborn, has the full self-ownership rights of every human being
B The mother owns the fetus prior to birth, and the baby owns him/herself afterwards
The answer is B. Birth is and rationally must be the moment when the baby acquires self-ownership and the mother relinquishes control.
Notice that in the free society nothing will prevent anyone trying to persuade a pregnant mother not to abort, they can offer payment in return for adoption. Or they may even pay her just to deliver the baby to term and do with her whatever she pleases.
Some may feel that the fetus is a potential human being and try to offer her incentive to agree that the right choice is to give birth. Such might reason with her that abortion may bring regrets, or psychological scarring, or loss of good reputation. Neighbors will still be free to wag fingers and say “look, there goes Hester, who aborted her baby!” and so forth. But ultimately a pregnant woman, like everybody else, owns herself, and therefore the choice is exclusively her own to make.
Once you get the premise right, and reason clearly, all sorts of confusing questions in today’s irrational community clear up like fog in hot sunshine!
Even so, that leaves one rather obvious question to be resolved: the brand-new baby has the right of self-ownership, but not the ability to do a whole lot with it. He or she needs help, to survive! Who is obliged to provide that help?
Once again, the answer is quite easy: obligation rests upon the person who decided to give birth, for free decisions always carry consequences and responsibility. That will almost always be the mother, but it might be a person or group who contracted with her, prior to birth, to adopt the baby once born, perhaps with a transfer of money.
Notice that in every case, the decision to give birth was thoughtful and deliberate and would not rest upon a moment of thoughtless passion. Accordingly, it’s hard to imagine any circumstance in which a baby would not be wanted, in the coming free society. That is a minor and incidental by-product of the change to freedom, but just this one improvement on its own could bring almost incalculable benefit in human society!
Just think: every child a wanted child!
Raising the a child or children will then proceed much as today, with enormous pleasure attending each stage as well as heavy responsibilities. And with lifelong love and affection; but with some key differences: no government spy will be looking over the parents’ shoulders with a threat to remove the children if the upbringing is not done according to its will instead of the parents’ will.
There would be no implication that the State owns the children – for there would be no State.
There will be no need for one spouse to work so as to pay a government tax on their combined incomes – for there will be neither tax nor government.
Until around 1950, it traditional that the husband ventured out to win bread, and provided for the wife to remain at home to do most of the child-rearing. The average take-home pay and taxes rates then in place made that perfectly feasible.
In the coming free society, it will again be a good option – though sometimes the husband may be the one choosing to staying home. In either case, both parents will also be keenly aware that their child likewise owns his or her own life and that that ownership must be respected. If the family relationship were to turn really sour, no laws would prevent the child from advertising for new parents to adopt him or her. Due to self-ownership, the child’s birth parents would have no property rights in the child!
Stefan Molyneaux brilliantly reasons that it is the parents who fail to raise children with proper respect for their self-ownership. The error of parents teaching their children to obey authority rather than to reason out the best choice, is a key source of the widespread, irrational respect for the authority of the State. Government schools merely take the already-established habits of obedience and transfer them to government. This fundamental failure poisons society itself in addition to endangering and crippling the functionality of the family.
Our education and development will begin in the home continue there until the full-grown child wants to leave home. Home schooling is by far the most effective way to get this important job done, and with the Internet so widely available there will be more and more options available to make the task easy and rewarding, even in this increasingly complex and technical world of knowledge.
Learning seldom takes place in a classroom, it happens only when the student wishes to acquire a piece of knowledge. The home will frequently be the place to impart needed knowledge. Families will be able to select an option from a whole variety of for-profit, parent-pleasing schools that will be available in the market. Increasingly with age and maturity, the child himself or herself will take control over what is learned and where and how. “Parent-pleasing” will rightly though gradually give way to “student-pleasing.” If a service of schooling is purchased, the child will of course have to find a way to pay the bills if he chooses options his parents dislike.
Today in a host of ways children are taught they are cogs in a system, that they must perform a small rigid function and occupy a fixed place in the apparatus of State and that it’s up to them to find out what it is and stay there.
It is hard to overstate how totally different the process of education will be in a free society. In absolute contrast, the young growing self-owner will be led to explore and exploit his own potential and wishes. Child-raising will be a process of helping build and support a society of confident, self-sufficient individuals truly able to be all that they choose to be.
3. Review
Families are as old an institution as the human race itself. They have survived many onslaughts caused by government, including the devastation of war. The liberation of the family in the near future will bring incalculable benefits to society and everyone in it.
Take a moment to answer these Questions to your own satisfaction.
In a free society, and despite the best intentions, a couple decide to split up. Who gets the kids, and who decides?
A Whoever was named in the prenuptial agreement
B Absent any marriage contract, the couple must work it out between themselves, or else bring it to an arbitrator, sharing the cost
C Each child will be split down the middle, with half going to each parent
D The children will decide with whom they wish to live
The best solution for all involved is D, if the children were old enough and mature enough to make such a huge decision. Remember, the phrase get the kids is misleading; no parent OWNS children. Children own themselves, and so have the right to decide their own futures.
If this is not the case, A is the second best solution – presuming there is a prenuptial, or even postnuptial contract. This is one very powerful reason to make sure there is a contract. If there is not, you are left with solution B. The free market would no doubt produce arbitrators, experts in the field. However, the arbitrator’s decision would apply only to those who took him or her the case – so would this would not work if the children were old enough to decline to be party to it.
In a free society, could children “divorce” their parents?
A Certainly, if they are old enough to know what they are doing. Knowledge that they can leave and seek other parents will give a powerful extra incentive to under-performing parents to shape up and treat the children with proper respect.
C No way; children stay put until they are 18.
D Only with permission from a court.
Answer A is correct. There’s a phrase, ‘old enough to know’, to work out, that age will vary with the child and so cannot – or should not – be specified by some outside party. If a child is really unhappy with her situation in a family, she will find that he or she is free to advertise herself on the internet, or elsewhere, telling prospective new parents why they will benefit by taking him or her in.
The action of ‘selling’ her merits in such a way will greatly help to file off any rough edges on her own personality – possibly to the extent that she finds out she bears some responsibility for the quarrel, whatever it is, and then changes her mind about leaving.
Brokers, too, may arise in the market to match unhappy children with parents wishing to adopt – and to ‘vet’ prospective adopters to protect children from possible predators. This freedom to change parents would have enormous benefit in the rare case of a dysfunctional family; today’s children see no option but to run away, and often to lead a degrading – and shortened – life on the streets. In the coming free society, such desperation will end.
If most children are schooled at home, how could they be socialized so as to mix well with children outside the family?
A Want of such “socialization” has been one of the ways government-school propagandists have scared parents into accepting the idea of handing their children over to government “experts” for twelve years. It’s a straw man; children meet other children everywhere they go, in the larger family, cousins, the playground, as so on.
B They couldn’t, and that’s a good enough reason for keeping the current educational system. Parents cannot be trusted to do right by their children; they are amateurs.
The answer is of course A. Government people ginned up fear and invented a non-problem, and then replaced it with a host of all-too-real problems.
In one of those multi-spouse, multi-gender “marriages”, won’t it be just too difficult to handle the children?
A Not necessarily. Such communal arrangements would be popular among laid-back folk who are good at improvising and working through with complications.
B Difficult, and perhaps destructive. A Manson-like commune is no place for young kids; if this is what freedom means, count me out.
C Yes it may be tricky, especially if one partner decides to quit; and it may be even harder managing the household accounts.
Both A and C may be the correct depending on the situation and the spouses involved. It’s hard to predict. One safety-valve is that if a child is unhappy as he grows old enough, he can quit. The possibility of increased complications is one reason such arrangements, though not in any way prohibited, may continue to be fairly rare.
With all that wealth concentrated in the hands of a few powerful families, won’t this free society quickly self-destruct?
A Indeed it will. This is a fast track to plutocracy – rule by a few rich tyrants as in Mexico.
B It won’t be “concentrated” and they won’t be “few.” Wrong premises.
C Freedom could be lost only if a government is instituted. Wealth can be used only to persuade, not to dictate.
D On the contrary, the wealth will be spread so wide nothing any would-be ruler could offer would be of any interest to anyone.
Answer B, C, and D are correct. Every family will be able to acquire wealth, and most of them will invest for their children and grandchildren. The few will be the poor families that fail to become wealthy and make provision for future generations. There will be much less poverty. Governments possess only what they can steal, without governments impoverishing everyone, attempting to tyrannize a family would be like a beggar offering his shopping cart full of goodies to Donald Trump or to Bill Gates.
Anarchy does not mean without law or order, only that all people at all times are free to pursue their own happiness. The foundational boundary is that no individual may trespass against another. Trespass might take different forms.
Some people think of trespass only in terms of physical violence, but trespass can occur without immediate threat of physical harm.
Taxation systems, for example, trespass against people who have not provided explicit consent to participate. Any deprivation of property rights is a trespass, regardless of how minute or incidental.
Tyranny of One, Tyranny of All
http://www.simpleliberty.org/tootoa/practical_anarchy.htm
Don’t sacrifice yourself, not even to starve the state. Because any money the state takes from us at this point is just a speck of dust compared to the universe of debt this monster has created. The paltry amount of wealth you’ll hand over in taxes will only delay the death of the state for a fraction of a second, so don’t feel guilty about making money to live and prosper with.
Guilt allows them to control how you react. Don’t let them. It will benefit you, me, and the liberty movement much more to earn, save, and prepare for when the old dragon finally breaths its last, puny puff of smoke.
So, get out there and make some damn money for yourself! Once you start earning you will start learning about how to keep it out of their grubby, little hands.
Do Not Worry About Paying Taxes
http://dailyanarchist.com/2011/06/08/do-not-worry-about-paying-taxes/
This is a libertarian communist site, so the posters here generally want a moneyless, stateless society, which makes taxation doubly impossible! a lot of anarchists around the internet have some pretty weird views on economics
Taxes & Anarchism – Libertarian Communists
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/taxes-anarchism-11092009
Pay your ransom and get on with your life. Maybe one day a significant amount of people that will stand up against the state. Until then, the state will get their money/assets anyway, and you can hardly be effective changing society or having a positive impact from inside a prison.
http://bigislandweekly.com/sections/opinion/ask-anarchist.html-20
The anarchist’s primary goal qua anarchist is to abolish the entire state apparatus. The state, is any organisation that requires the use of aggression (the initiation of force) in order to exist and attempts to maintain a monopoly on the use of force within a given region.
Such an organisation is necessary criminal, even if it is voluntarily funded. Merely abolishing coercive taxation will not alone, therefore, abolish the state, although it is certainly a desirable interim measure nonetheless.
It stands to reason that the anarchist libertarian naturally supports the replacing of taxation at gunpoint with voluntary alternatives such as user fees, lotteries, and endowments.
http://lpanarchist.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/alternatives-to-taxation/
If there is to be a government, I would think absolute state control of the water supply would be sufficient. Whatever amount of revenue you wanted for your government, just assess it as a water tax.
A Bill Gates might end up paying many billions of dollars for his water, that’s just the way it goes with governments and taxes. They keep your water safe and available, you pay for the privilege.
History of Taxation
The first known system of taxation was in Ancient Egypt around 3000–2800 BC in the first dynasty of the Old Kingdom. The earliest and most widespread form of taxation was the corvée and tithe. The corvée was forced labour provided to the state by peasants too poor to pay other forms of taxation (labour in ancient Egyptian is a synonym for taxes).
Records from the time document that the pharaoh would conduct a biennial tour of the kingdom, collecting tithes from the people. Other records are granary receipts on limestone flakes and papyrus. Early taxation is also described in the Bible. In Genesis it states But when the crop comes in, give a fifth of it to Pharaoh. The other four-fifths you may keep as seed for the fields and as food for yourselves and your households and your children.
In the Persian Empire, a regulated and sustainable tax system was introduced by Darius I the Great in 500 BC; the Persian system of taxation was tailored to each Satrapy (the area ruled by a Satrap or provincial governor).
At differing times, there were between 20 and 30 Satrapies in the Empire and each was assessed according to its supposed productivity. It was the responsibility of the Satrap to collect the due amount and to send it to the emperor, after deducting his expenses
The quantities demanded from the various provinces gave a vivid picture of their economic potential. For instance, Babylon was assessed for the highest amount and for a startling mixture of commodities; 1,000 silver talents and four months supply of food for the army.
India, a province fabled for its gold, was to supply gold dust equal in value to the very large amount of 4,680 silver talents. Egypt was known for the wealth of its crops; it was to be the granary of the Persian Empire (and, later, of the Roman Empire) and was required to provide 120,000 measures of grain in addition to 700 talents of silver. This tax was exclusively levied on Satrapies based on their lands, productive capacity and tribute levels.
The Rosetta Stone, a tax concession issued by Ptolemy V in 196 BC and written in three languages “led to the most famous decipherment in history—the cracking of hieroglyphics”.
In India, Islamic rulers imposed jizya (a poll tax on non-Muslims) starting in the 11th century.
Forms of taxation
Prior to fiat banking, a critical form of taxation was seigniorage, the tax on the creation of money.
Other obsolete forms of taxation include:
Scutage, which is paid in lieu of military service; strictly speaking, it is a commutation of a non-tax obligation rather than a tax as such but functioning as a tax in practice.
Tallage, a tax on feudal dependents.
Tithe, a tax-like payment (one tenth of one’s earnings or agricultural produce), paid to the Church (and thus too specific to be a tax in strict technical terms). This should not be confused with the modern practice of the same name which is normally voluntary.
(Feudal) aids, a type of tax or due that was paid by a vassal to his lord during feudal times.
Danegeld, a medieval land tax originally raised to pay off raiding Danes and later used to fund military expenditures.
Carucage, a tax which replaced the danegeld in England.
Tax farming, the principle of assigning the responsibility for tax revenue collection to private citizens or groups.
Socage, a feudal tax system based on land rent.
Burgage, a feudal tax system based on land rent.
:Some principalities taxed windows, doors, or cabinets to reduce consumption of imported glass and hardware.
Armoires, hutches, and wardrobes were employed to evade taxes on doors and cabinets.
In some circumstances, taxes are also used to enforce public policy like congestion charge (to cut road traffic and encourage public transport) in London.
In Tsarist Russia, taxes were clamped on beards.
Today, one of the most-complicated taxation systems worldwide is in Germany. Three quarters of the world’s taxation literature refers to the German system.
Under the German system, there are 118 laws, 185 forms, and 96,000 regulations, spending €3.7 billion to collect the income tax.
In the United States, the IRS has about 1,177 forms and instructions, 28.4111 megabytes of Internal Revenue Code which contained 3.8 million words as of 1 February 2010, numerous tax regulations in the Code of Federal Regulations, and supplementary material in the Internal Revenue Bulletin.
Today, governments in more advanced economies (i.e. Europe and North America) tend to rely more on direct taxes, while developing economies (i.e. India and several African countries) rely more on indirect taxes.
I for one don’t give a crap about anything but the right to travel and free commerce.
And I’m not even referring to taxes, or being forced to use expensive state solutions. Just being unmolested, unless I victimize someone.
I just want to get where I want to go in peace. And to interact with other people in whatever way we each agree to interact.
If the tradeoff, is never talking bad about police, assembly men, mayors, and so forth. Or of saying anything disparaging about those who’ve demonstrated the ability to rule over me and to control me. I’d gladly make that trade.
The funniest name I’ve heard of a government, is a despotate. The Despotate of Epirus being a fragment of the former Eastern Roman Empire in the aftermath of the Fourth Crusade in 1204.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Despotate_of_Epirus
A good name for a government beyond reproach, upon penalty of prison, or perhaps even death, would be Despotate.
I think the value and usefulness of a politician, such as Susana Martin – Governor of the Despotate of New Mexico, is quite self-evident without me adding my two cents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susana_Martínez
Governor Susana Martinez visits Clovis New Mexico in the 6 month of the 2767th year AUC. Ab Urbe Condita (2014th+753rd year of the founding of Rome and the Roman Agora)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs65d54YH1I
God Save the Despotate Susana
Awesome Hong Kong Agora
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NLbs4ET09U
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx-SO-GDi1w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VluLdhfi98Q
Hi Tor,
Sure, but is it possible to have free commerce and taxation?
I can’t see how.
The two things are mutually exclusive.
How are taxes to be collected? Levied? How will they be enforced?
How can we expect to buy and sell “unmolested” when this gang called government asserts its authority to take a portion of the transaction? And in order to do so accurately, it must be able to monitor such transactions. And down the road we go…
Taxes and free commerce – and even the right to travel – are always infringed if not turned into conditional privileges via taxation.
I don’t know offhand the definite answer. Perhaps for a brief time, but not in the long run. Maybe what I say isn’t logical. My belief that strongmen will be content with merely taking a great big piece of the action.
From a distance it seems Germany and Japan each have a far higher latitude of moral and economic freedom and are able to travel without fear of check point molestation.
Perhaps I am not seeing why there is more freedom in Hong Kong. To my eyes, many socialist governments only tax the crap out of large concerns thru VAT. But don’t bother much with the small fries.
I’m just saying I’d trade America Scenario Number 3 for Number 2.
From Bevin’s Scenario Number 2
“People are free to engage in profit making activity and keep most of what they earn. But people are forbidden to dissent politically”
I personally would give up all the so called American freedoms for the Hong Kong economic freedoms Bevin was speaking about.
I make this statement only along the lines of what you meant by settling for the rolling back of the march of American tyranny by few decades. To how things were in 2004, 1994, 1984, or 1974 for example
I think you are saying Americans live in such a moral straight-jacket situation, live under near Islamic-Sharia style prohibitionisms BECAUSE of taxation.
You might very well be right.
To be clear, here is my minority view made even starker, which I don’t think you’d find much of an improvement. You seem to be saying it’ll be worse than just higher taxes. Tax and tyranny always flock together.
Let’s imagine everything peaceful is permitted in Paris for example. But they have ways of knowing every dollar you earn. Then they tax you as follows: 50% tax every dollar above 50k, 60% tax every dollar above 60k, 70% tax every dollar above 70k, 80% tax every dollar above 80k, 90% tax every dollar above 90k and higher.
I’m not as bothered by this kind of rational action, of strongmen taking their cut of the action. Even unreasonable cuts.
What I’m most bothered by is irrational action, of strongmen prohibiting 99% of free market action due to their own prejudices and bigotry.
Of American perverse altruism that’s a kind of social leprosy really.
Immigration can be solved, just raise the entrance fee high enough, that you get the amount of immigrants you prefer. Why should one group pay nothing and get subsidies, while others pay more and more beyond their ability?
It’s like the ringing of their looter’s bells having been tolling so long, they’ve gone deaf and been driven insane from the constant incessant noise.
First Observed Non-human Fad: Chimps Sticking Grass In Ears
https://www.thedodo.com/for-the-first-time-chimpanzees-605888880.html
Physicist Says He Can Prevent Midwest Tornadoes
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/a-physicist-wants-to-build-1000-ft-walls-to-tornado-proof-the-midwest
One of Saturn’s Moons Has A Watery Ocean
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21600083-planetary-science
Water Ice Found At Mercury’s Poles
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/messenger/media/PressConf20121129.html
Trying to Cheer People Up Isn’t Helpful
http://www.today.com/health/stop-cheering-me-some-people-dont-want-hear-it-1D79852039
Amazon rain forests filled with villages and cities prior to Columbus’ arrival
http://news.sciencemag.org/archaeology/2014/01/searching-amazons-hidden-civilizations
Paul Joseph Watson & The Info War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w221YPENk2A
Smedley Butler and the Racket That Is War
http://sheldon.liberty.me/2014/06/27/tgif-smedley-butler-and-the-racket-that-is-war/
Iraq War Failure and Legacy With War Vet Andrew Fyfe
http://tiffanymadison.liberty.me/2014/06/27/video-army-vet-prof-andrew-fyfe-on-iraq-war-failures-and-legacy-2/
An Invitation Into Anarchy
http://dannychadwick.liberty.me/2014/06/27/an-invitation-into-anarchy/
When Collective Solutions are the Problem
http://kennethandrews.liberty.me/2014/06/27/whensolutionsaretheproblem/
5 Victories of Right Wing / Libertarian Fusionism
http://mattmiller.liberty.me/2014/06/27/5-victories-of-right-libertarian-fusionism/
Green is the new red thread:
8 Forms of Capital
http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/85573/ethan-roland-8-forms-capital
Individual tradable birth licenses
http://utopiayouarestandinginit.com/2014/04/02/individual-tradable-birth-licences-ecological-economics-finest-hour/
Clive Palmer & Al Gore Holding Hands & Going Green Together
http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2014/06/brash-mining-magnate-and-al-gore-walk-into-a-room-and-make-australias-climate-politics-
The Last Nomads and the Culture of Fear
http://www.patternliteracy.com/697-the-last-nomads-and-the-culture-of-fear
Explaining Permaculture
http://www.peakprosperity.com/podcast/85511/toby-hemenway-explaining-permaculture
Might be useful info, just ignore the calls to community sacrifice to enforced geographic stratifications
Don’t give up clover. I may attack. Sabotage. Mock. Ridicule. But then I will reach out once more. I believe in the diamond rule. Everyone is a valuable gem in some way.
You’re still in the game. You aren’t winning any battles. Or accomplishing your goals.
But there’s still a chance you’ll accomplish something. Perhaps like the Pakleds, you may yet catch Eric in a weak moment, and get “the thing you need. the thing that makes you go.”
Whatever that is, I can’t even speculate. I put the odds of your ever getting it at about 100,000 to 1 or worse. But still not zero.
If my odds estimate is correct, and you manage to post 10,000 times here, what are the odds you’ll have gotten what you wanted? How confident are you about probability theory? Enough to wager a million dollars?
Consider this pair of libertarian dice. They’re the same dice you use. But for arguments sake, let’s say this article was created by a libertarian, and the dice pictured are the sole property of a libertarian.
They potentially possess any rational properties their owners might say they do. Their dice, their rules, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dice
If someone like yourself were asked to say what numbers had been rolled, you would likely say 3,4,5 & 6. Perhaps you might even say the dice rolled a sum of 18. You are confident in saying such a thing, because you have a simple predictable approach to such things.
But a libertarian might just add up the numbers facing the viewer. Or the ones facing downwards. They’re his dice, and thus are tallied in whatever way he fancies.
So those same dice might total 1,3,3,6 and sum to 13. Or 1,1,3,4 and sum to 9. Things aren’t as cut and dried without a central authority, now are they?
Is that so terrible for you to contemplate? What are the worldwide rules for dice in the minds of 7.1 billion people. Are you sure it’s always the pips facing upwards that matter?
What about in Muslim countries? Are dice haram? Do you risk a violent attack for owning or rolling dice there? Do you know how to research such a question? Do you know who to ask, how to go to a bookstore, or to search for the answer on the internet.
A self owner would only use libraries provided by charitable organizations. Never public libraries.
I would never donate a book to a library. Then have them ID someone who checked my former book out. Then send them a notice that the book is late. Then issue them a fine for the price of a new book. Then put out a bench warrant for the person who checked out a book and didn’t return it.
I mean why should I want to be a part of such evil? I was kind enough to give my property to something that claims to benefit others. Then these library jerks weaponize my donation and use it as something to give them revenue. And find yet more people to threaten with cages and violence.
Larken Rose is just a guy with a wife. Who gives talks in public schools and other places. He’s not at all like your government you love so dearly.
It is your government of psychopaths that murders millions of people every year. Murders them for idiotic things that escalate out of control. Things like not returning a library book.
A book they never had to pay for. A book they received from someone who mistakenly thought he was doing a good deed for his community and neighbors. That’s not a very nice way to roll, now is it?
OK clover, can we finally solve your “roads dilemma” for illustration purposes?
Imagine libertarians came into total and unopposed power in a single county. And somehow pay a few trillion to the government and gained full autonomy. And reach agreement with other governments and entities.
I imagine they would take down all the signs and stoplights. Repurpose or fire any personnel who patrol the roads, maintain the roads, and so forth.
And then choose a rational way to create title in the roads. Then give title to nearest private property owner. Or sell the title to the roads intact.
Nothing would really change. New owners would preserve the value of the roads. Probably even take steps to improve their value.
No one is attacking the infrastsructure and common benefits of cities, utilities, roads, communication networks, and so on. There very well may be something we could all agree on. Let’s at least see where agreements can be made.
There’s plenty of common ground here, clover.
– – – – –
http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/ancient/Aristotle-politics-polis.asp
The Polis as the highest good – Aristotle
Every State is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always acts in order to obtain that which they think good.
But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Some people think that the qualifications of a statesman, king, householder, and master are the same, and that they differ, not in kind, but only in the number of their subjects.
For example, the ruler over a few is called a master; over more, the manager of a household; over a still larger number, a statesman or king, as if there were no difference between a great household and a small state.
The distinction which is made between the king and the statesman is as follows: When the government is personal, the ruler is a king; when, according to the rules of the political science, the citizens rule and are ruled in turn, then he is called a statesman.
But all this is a mistake; for governments differ in kind, as will be evident to any one who considers the matter according to the method which has hitherto guided us.
As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole.
We must therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order that we may see in what the different kinds of rule differ from one another, and whether any scientific result can be attained about each one of them.
Well shit, clover. This is Aristotle, and what he’s saying sounds a lot like some of what you’re saying. Do you see how you’re not that far from Aristotle? You might even win some arguments, if you start presenting your arguments as logically as Aristotle does.
I have to admit clover, I do not read your comments. They are likewise way too much garbage for me to read.
Nice talking to you as always, Jak sie masz!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFe5GVIMWNA
Morning, Tor!
Clover’s not here for you (or the other regulars). THe only reason I let his ptomaine posts through (and respond to them) is for the benefit of new visitors, who may be “on the fence.” Clover’s so unintelligent and obviously desirous of running other people’s lives that he inadvertently helps our cause. Who could read his ramblings and not begin to see the light?
Got it. I couldn’t resist mocking him and his million dollar gold-plated shopping cart of postings he never tires of foisting ad infinitum anon. When I started, even he thru me off my game, as did the slightest wind of dissent blowing thru. Thanks for this dojo.
I’m still flustered sometimes, but at least by dementors and not caspars like him.
It may be hard to believe, but even this partial decloaking and only taking occasional refuge in klingon english creolle is a chore for me. meQtaHbogh qachDaq Suv qoH neH – klingon for: only a fool fights in a burning house.
A professional presentation relating family to the state, and offering constructive suggestions for returning to our natural condition of freedom.
Man, Family and State – Stefan Molyneux, 5-24-2007
About a year and a half ago, I started recording libertarian podcasts in my car during my drive to and from work. It seemed like a fun way to kill the time in traffic, and it also gave me a chance to help clarify my thoughts with regards to various issues that people had written to me about after my first articles were published on Lew Rockwell.
At first, my podcasts were largely concerned with the economics of anarcho-capitalism, and details regarding the implementation of my theory of Dispute Resolution Organizations (DROs), and how they could replace existing state functions.
I was impressed at how quickly this turned into a very involved philosophical conversation. At first, a few thousand podcasts a month were downloaded ‘ then, this figure began to rise inexorably. In March of 2007, over 200,000 Freedomain Radio podcasts were downloaded, and tens of thousands of videos were viewed.
The Internet is a wonderful medium for philosophy, because it can instantly distribute ideas to hundreds of thousands of people, and through message boards, can stimulate fascinating discussions on the resulting topics. Plus, philosophy was originally an oral art form, designed to be spoken and discussed, not just read.
Also, because of the amount of time people spend doing things which preclude reading, but which do not preclude listening, such as going to the gym, doing groceries, doing laundry, going for a walk, or driving, podcasts can reach interested parties in a way that books never can.
The rigor of this new philosophical conversation was far beyond anything I had experienced before. As a community, we certainly talked about economics, politics and contemporary events, but it quickly became evident to me that where there is disagreement on fundamentals, there can be no real agreement on details ‘ and that, relative to metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, politics is a mere detail.
So, with the help of the listeners, I began to define the methodologies that we could use to help determine truth from falsehood ‘ largely based on the scientific method, empirical observations and rigorous logic. And we made great progress, or so it seemed . . . .
And then, my wife got involved.
My wife, a practicing psychotherapist, said something extraordinary to me after reading one of my tracts on moral philosophy and the evils of the state. Looking up, she said, “It all starts with the family.”
It all starts with the family.
We mulled this over for some weeks, and then I decided to expand the conversation from philosophy to psychology and, in conjunction with my wife, began to trace our susceptibility to statism from our very first experiences of family life. In a series of podcasts, I put forth the proposition that the state is merely an effect of the family, and thus in order for libertarianism to really take root and flourish within society, what was required was not only a reevaluation of man, state and society, but a rigorous moral examination of the most essential social unit: the family.
This is when the conversation really began to take off!
I received hundreds of e-mails from people about their experiences of authority within their own families, within the school system, within churches and other cultural institutions, which in general supported the role that our personal experiences with authority plays in our later susceptibility to impersonal authority, in the form of the state.
So far, this new direction seems to be really bearing fruit. If our adult susceptibilities to political hegemonies are rooted in our childhood experiences of authority, this helps explain why decades of talking about the evils of the state has done precious little to prevent the growth of the state.
If statism is primarily an emotional reaction, or psychological defense mechanism, rather than a rational deduction, then it cannot be opposed with logical argument alone, but rather must be patiently undone through empathy and introspection.
Naturally, to many this all sounds too ridiculous to be believable! Responding to the statement “I believe that the state is both moral and necessary,” with the question “Tell me about your parents,” seems like a blinding non sequitur. However, it can be a very powerful approach, since it is based on a simple and empirical observation:
No rational examination of the evidence would lead any sane man to statism ‘ yet statism is the default position in society. Since statism is so blatantly irrational, it cannot have become so widespread through rational argument. Thus, there must be another source to the pervasive belief in the virtues of governments.
To many libertarians, the answer seems clear: Children are turned into statists in public schools, where conformity and a deep, fearful “respect” for arbitrary authority is instilled day after day.
However, this cannot be the full extent of the story. Anyone who has spent any time around toddlers during the “terrible twos” knows that the willpower and independence of very young children is a near-superhuman force. It strains credibility to imagine that a single kindergarten teacher can restrain in 30 children the force that two parents find difficult to deal with in one child.
Thus it must be that many children are delivered into the public school system with their independence already undermined, and filled with unease in the face of arbitrary authority.
This lesson can only have come from their parents.
This does not mean that all parents are malevolent beasts out to destroy their children, but rather that the virtue of subjugating oneself to arbitrary authority ‘ which is another way of saying that arbitrary authority is always virtuous ‘ tends to reproduce itself generation by generation. Children who are subjugated to the mere authority of their parents ‘ without reference to objective values ‘ tend to grow up with a blind spot about the dangers of arbitrary power, and to assume its virtue in the absence of evidence.
This approach also helps explain another baffling aspect of libertarianism ‘ why people take political arguments so personally. How many times have you been involved in political or economic discussions with someone who gets irrationally offended by your arguments? Unless you are Condoleeza Rice, if you and I are discussing foreign policy, it has about as much relevance to our daily decisions as the existence of a gas planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. People rarely get offended about mathematics, but economics and politics seems to light an enormous fuse in far too many people.
At Freedomain Radio, the theory which may explain this goes something like this:
‘ – When most people are talking about the government, they are really talking about their parents.
‘ – When you criticize the government, most people unconsciously interpret that as you criticizing their parents.
‘ – If you equate government power with immorality, most people unconsciously hear you saying that their parents are evil.
This theory, while it might seem outlandish, has proven to be remarkably accurate in practice ‘ but there is no reason to take my word for it! One of the amazing things about philosophy is that we get to work with empirical data from our own lives.
Both I and hundreds of board members at Freedomain Radio have found this to be a very powerful and effective way of figuring out whether it is possible to have a rational discussion with someone about philosophy, economics, or politics ‘ but you can easily determine for yourself whether this approach has any value. Just ask about the personal history of those you debate with, and see if any patterns emerge.
When we talk about the state, we are really talking about authority, which is nothing more or less than the power that one person has over another. When children are young, each family operates as a kind of “mini state.”
Just as, in the democratic ideal, states exists to serve and protect their citizens, in the familial ideal, parents exist to serve and protect their children. Just as citizens are considered participatory members of the state ‘ though ultimately subject to its authority ‘ so children are considered to be participatory members in the family ‘ though ultimately subject to the authority of the parents.
The ideal within the democratic paradigm is that the more virtuous the citizens are, the less authority the state is justified in wielding. The same is true in the familial ideal ‘ parental authority should only be exercised when children are acting badly.
From Socrates onwards, the goal of an ideal state has always been considered the same ‘ to inculcate virtue in its citizens, and thus reduce or eliminate the need to exercise authority over them. The same is true in ideal parenting, which has always been considered the process of inculcating virtue in children, so that parental controls and authority can be relaxed ‘ and ideally, eliminated.
However, libertarians understand that the modern state does not follow the democratic ideal ‘ in fact, it acts in direct contradiction to it. If the power of the state is inversely proportional to the virtue of its citizens ‘ in other words, the more moral people are, the less state power is required ‘ then clearly there is one sure method to increasing the power of the state, which is to make citizens more and more immoral ‘ either within their own minds, or in reality.
If citizens can be convinced that immorality is on the rise, and the power of the state can be “legitimately’ expanded, under the illusion that an increase in state power will reverse the trend towards decadence.
Of course, as libertarians well know, quite the reverse is true. Increases in state power ‘ banning drugs, the welfare state etc. ‘ always lead to increases in immorality ‘ both real and imagined ‘ and thus a vicious circle is created wherein the state feeds its own increase, a process which can only end in bankruptcy and collapse.
But where is it that people get the idea that power is legitimized by the immorality of those it controls? This idea must already have been absorbed by the time the children go to public school, since public-school teachers merely capitalize on this belief.
It must come from parents ‘ and this is primarily not the fault of parents, but rather of philosophers.
Societies which do not have an objective and commonly understood methodology for determining truth and falsehood, good and evil, inevitably have to end up substituting authority for virtue. Statism leads to war, science leads to conferences.
If, to educate children in what they should and should not do, parents have to end up invoking authority rather than objective values, then the best that they can do is to teach their children to be obedient, not to be moral. To conform, not to think. To bully or be bullied, but not to approach others as equals.
How many times do children hear these clich’s of parenthood? ‘Don’t be selfish.’ ‘Share.’ ‘Be Nice.’ ‘Be Polite.’ ‘Be Considerate.’ ‘Think of others.’ “Don’t push.” And so on and so on and so on. All of these injunctions to children are mere orders, empty of meaning, thought or reasoning. The silent expression at the end of all of these orders to children is ‘because I’m telling you to.’
Children cannot ask “why,” because there is no answer. Parents cloak these orders in the moral authority of objective values, but cannot explain how they came about, and so strenuously resist being questioned.
Thus the greatest sin for children becomes disobedience, not irrationality. The worst thing that they can do is not fail to think or examine evidence, but to defy the will of those in authority.
And what is the will of their parents based on? Objective reality? Rational values? Of course not. The will of their parents is based on the expectations of everyone else. Conformity with social norms becomes the eternal absolute, a dog chasing its own tail.
If children have this experience with their parents, how will they experience the state when they become adults? Will they be able to say that values exist independent of authority, which authority itself must be subject to? It seems unlikely ‘ almost impossible ‘ given their own experiences with their parents.
Most people do not have the willpower or intellectual strength to create values independent of their personal histories. In the realm of values, most of us just blindly reproduce what came before. Great philosophers are as rare as great scientists, and expecting the average population to reach such heights is like asking everyone to be a movie star.
Once children learn that morality is conformity with the will of those in authority, this allegiance is easily transferred to the State through the public school system.
And then, when some libertarian comes along, equating the state with evil, unconscious defenses rear their ugly heads, since what is really happening is that the original and irrational authority of the parents is being questioned. This is why people react to arguments about the immorality of the state as if you were waving a hot poker in their face.
As my wife said, “It’s not about the state. It all starts with the family.’
Having come to this realization, we have spent the last year or so in the Freedomain Radio conversation attempting to find ways to get through these psychological defenses, so that we can have rational debates about the nature of authority and virtue without provoking aggressive or defensive reactions in people. We’ve had some good successes, though there is always further to go!
I invite you to join in this conversation, because I think it is essential. I am as passionate and committed an anti-statist as I was when I was 16, but I think that now I have some new and powerful tools, both for understanding why this conversation has been so difficult in the past, and how to make it far, far easier in the future.
If we understand the emotional and personal sensitivity of these issues for others, we can design our conversation to get to the real root of the issues, rather than dealing with the mere symptoms, and focus on personal freedom first.
We cannot make men free by getting rid of the state. But we can get rid of the state by making men free.
Dear Tor,
“Most people do not have the willpower or intellectual strength to create values independent of their personal histories. In the realm of values, most of us just blindly reproduce what came before. Great philosophers are as rare as great scientists, and expecting the average population to reach such heights is like asking everyone to be a movie star.”
Exactly what I have been saying for many years.
As Ayn Rand put it,
“The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.”
― Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
This is why genuine intellectuals, as opposed to kneejerk conformist, garbage in garbage out “establishment intellechewals,” must take on the daunting task of awakening the sheeple from their “myth of authority” spell.
This is why posting to the Internet is not “doing nothing.”
This is why some self-styled “men of action” who sneer at those of us who are steadfastly fighting the war of ideas, and dare us to “start shooting why don’t you?” are either fools or agents provocateurs.
Molyneux is correct. As is Larkin Rose.
“We cannot make men free by getting rid of the state. But we can get rid of the state by making men free.”
The internal mental transformation is what counts. The tyrannical state exists because too many people want it to exist. Transform their understanding of the state, and it will cease to exist.
Poof! Just like that.
Yeah Bevin,
Your sure and steady course of letting what’s broken alone to decay and break down on its own does seem to be working and to be the way forward.
The west is just plain out of new innovations for the “division of plunder”
They’re not even going to fight self ownership rebels intellectually, just keep tearing down and neutering as many transfomative free market innovations as they must to retain social control.
Sergei A. Karaganov for CNN tells us the plan:
A few years ago, it was fashionable to worry about the challenge that authoritarian-style capitalism presented to Western democratic capitalism.
Western capitalism’s model of a society based on near-universal affluence and liberal democracy looks increasingly ineffective compared to the competition.
Authoritarian countries’ middle classes may push their leaders toward greater democracy, as in Russia, but Western democracies will also likely become more authoritarian.
Indeed, measured against today’s standards, Charles De Gaulle, Winston Churchill, and Dwight Eisenhower were comparatively authoritarian leaders. The West will have to re-adopt such an approach, or risk losing out globally as its ultra-right and ultra-left political forces consolidate their positions and its middle classes begin to dissolve.
Communism and fascism were born and took root in societies demoralized by war, which is why all steps should be taken now to prevent the outbreak of war.
At the same time, huge opportunities beckon in times of far-reaching change. Billions of people in Asia have extricated themselves from poverty. New markets and spheres for applying one’s intellect, education, and talents are appearing constantly.
The world’s power centers are beginning to counterbalance each other, undermining hegemonic ambitions and heralding a creative instability based on genuine multipolarity, with people gaining greater freedom to define their fate in the global arena.
tl;dr: the west should give up trying to lead. work to avoid major war. roll back the unattainable ideals of universally distributed wealth and return to 1940-1950s authoritarian conformity to be able to compete with the Asian Tigers
Dear Tor,
Consider three scenarios.
One. A society is 100% libertarian. Total adherence to the NAP. People are free both economically and politically. Examples: the Icelandic Commonwealth of the middle ages. Other, more obscure tribes in Europe and Africa.
Two. A society is part free, part slave. People are free to engage in profit making activity and keep most of what they earn. But people are forbidden to dissent politically. Examples, Mainland China, Singapore, Russia.
Three. A society is part free, part slave. People are allowed to dissent politically. They are allowed to vote. But they are highly restricted in their profit making activity and cannot keep much of what they earn. Examples: the USSA and most Western social democracies.
Among these three, the first will be the most prosperous. The second will be the next most prosperous. And the third will be the least prosperous.
Why?
Because prosperity hinges on economic, not political freedom. That is why the USSA is now losing ground to mainland China and Russia.
The two are of course related. Freedom is indivisible. That is why an anacap society will be the most prosperous of all, in the long run, beating out all others.
Bevin,
I think your assessment of the three scenarios is spot on.
My thinking is there is one scenario in particular that’s become a threat to everyone, the Anno Domini scenario.
This worldview, which wrongly claims the year is 2014, is a toxic, irredeemable mindset. Rather than engaging in a spirited competition in the marketplace with many other equally valid mindsets.
Rather than find places for a worlds where today’s buddhist year is 2557, Islamic year is 1435, Jewish year is 5774, and Armenian year is 4506, and many other worlds are also respected.
Anno Domini’s seek only to usurp and subjugate all other histories and reckonings. They are stunted cycloptic mutants, who will never rest until everyone else’s minds are as warped as theirs.
This uber authoritarian AD system, seeks only absolute power and total dominion over everything.
The AD Time Matrix Keepers arrogate to themselves, the authority to define every event in their terms. To name every person under their systems. To hold a unified web authority over every significant occurrence on this planet.
To banish all trade or existence outsider their watchful panopticon.
I refuse to dwell in their matrix. The year being 2014 is a fiction invented by a Monk who changed the rational AD – Anno Diocletian dating system into an irrational one based on an incorrect guess of a human birthdate. A human who may or may not have ever existed.
From now on, I will reckon only in Market Anarchist Time, as reckoned from the founding of Rome as a trading center hub. This happened in 753 BC. And todays (Mondays) date under the Julian calendar is 6/17. So accordingly today is 6/17/2767. If keeping the dominant Gregorian system its 6/30/2767.
Founding of Rome 4.21.753BC
http://www.ancient.eu.com/Rome/
Originally a small town on the banks of the Tiber River, Rome grew in size and strength, early on, through trade. The location of the city provided merchants with an easily navigable waterway on which to traffic their goods.
Greek culture and civilization, which came to Rome via Greek colonies to the south, provided the early Romans with a model on which to build their own culture. From the Greeks they borrowed literacy and religion as well as the fundamentals of architecture.
The Etruscans, to the north, provided a model for trade and urban luxury. Etruria was also well situated for trade and the early Romans either learned the skills of trade from Etruscan example or were taught directly by the Etruscans who made incursions into the area around Rome sometime between 650 and 600 BCE. Early on, the Romans showed a talent for borrowing and improving upon the skills and concepts of other cultures.
Exact Day/Month/Year is 6/17/2767
http://mb-soft.com/believe/txx/calend78.htm
What’s important about developing this alternate time reckoning system, would be that it commences upon the establishment of a trade center. And it’s significant days would be market accomplishments and market innovations.
No government type days would be recognized. Only things like harvests. Innovations. Cross culture bazaars and the like would be memoralized.
Julian calendar variance to Gregorian calendar
http://www.holytrinityorthodox.com/calendar/index.php?tzo=-7
Dear Tor,
Thanks. I believe that professional Austrian School economists would probably agree.
The historical evidence certainly bears it out.
Hong Kong is a near perfect example. Hong Kongers have almost no political say in their government for a century. Yet even American think tanks have repeatedly rated it as one of the handful of freest economies on earth.
Indians by contrast, as “champions of democracy” love to boast, belong to the “largest democracy in the world.” But with the exception of pockets of Internet wealth, India remains mired in poverty.
Why? Because prosperity depends not on any of the bullshit pacifiers that the PTB used to mollify the sheeple, such as “free and fair elections.” Prosperity depends on economic freedom,, however one can get it.
Continued discussion of Eric_G’s response. Again, selectively editing and altering the words until they’re closer to the heart and soul of the matter:
2) The “liberal” view is that, “well hey, shit happens, and it was all the man’s fault, the greedy rich’s fault, the church’s fault, the bigot/sexist’s fault, the rape culture’s fault, the white colonialist’s fault anyway,” really any straw man or scarecrow imaginable because there’s no personal responsibility or accountability ever for anyone else but
Mommy Dearest, the Nanny State, only she and her benevolent bureaucrat are empowered to intervene and prevent individual action, and free choice, and justify all the loot they stole and spent decades ago, but will now pretend, they’ve set aside, and are just now allocating the not yet dried inked newly printed dollars to this crisis.
Smug slaves in on their rented couches will opine of the biological overruling the logical decision. Yet never seeing the difference between logical market actions, and illogical state impositions.
Again, compounding poor societal construction with clamoring for even more forced at gunpoint decisions.
If you fail to parse populist mob impositions, from individual choices, then of course there’s no right choice, because you haven’t cleared away the obfuscating garbage to even consider the actual circumstances.
A 30 YO man and 25 YO woman become pregnant. They may be comparable with each other, they might have the means to support a child, so why not go through with it.
They’re fairly old for optimal reproduction already, but they are the 1% that can jump thru the artificial hurdles, and navigate thru the soviet obstacle courses. Double plus fantastic.
A vibrant 17 YO woman and a 20 YO man in his prime physically, but on parole for excess humanity without a license for example, would of course be threatened by Snarling Puritans with pitchforks into aborting their spawn, and be thoroughly poked and pummelled until they they accepted that no children shall pass until the child’s parents are so stable and frozen that they’re actually comatose.
There is no place in the soviet model for a biological decision or a biological brain. Whenever your limbic system is flooded with positive feedback for any reason, not initiated by the Ministry of Morality, turn your telescreen to 11 until your designated silicon-logical brain is able to rebuild your self-loathing and self-denial to a banshee shriek that completely drowns out and suffocates all of those natural and enjoyable chemical reactions.
The interesting thing is that allowing people to form adhoc markets and spontaneous order that suits them while dealing with biology and scarcity is somehow solutions that self-owners propose: How is this so, we incredulously ask?
Should we continue to let birds, bees, flowers, and trees propagate as they will. Or must we all roll up our Brave New Tunics and straddle and restrain each and every creature until they all understand that only Mussolini and Sons Can Make the Sperms Swim on Time?
With self-ownership, choose to carry your baby to term. Throw it in the nearest dumpster. Build an entire coliseum and cathedral complex around you hatchling. There ain’t going to be any public assistance. You won’t get any help nor condemnation with any of that.
It’s your baby and your bathwater. Only you’ll feel the full effects of the consequences. Only you’ll incur the harm. Only you will incur the foul. We’re all well ready for your kind.
We self-owners know all about the breeders and the needers. We’ll go ahead and live. And let them live. And you finger waggers and hands on hipsters.
But we won’t get fooled again. We won’t get dragged into living for them. Of for paying someone to stop them from living the way they want.
If you can catch them and brand them with a big scarlet letter A on their foreheads because they lack vision, and have abortions, go for it. Don’t expect us to care, or give you a round of applause for any of that.
In some cultures, “Take Me!” might substitute for the words, “I Do”.
Panarchy.
And that’s just two variables.
And that’s just two variables. … Among the (I guess) infinitely numerous choices individuals and cultures can embrace. Depending on their outlook.
Panarchy.
Panarchy is similar to concurrent self-ownership, only it deals with self-owners who align with like-minded people. It is another philosophy of self-ownership, only one that is discussed in bulk terms. As long as the state exists, it makes perfect sense to lessen the severity of it’s predations, by seeking strength in numbers.
Abortion as it now exists, is not compatible with self-ownership, and I suspect it would quickly vanish as a phenomenon, were the claws of the state to be properly clipped, and it’s gaping fanged maw, be properly muzzled.
A woman electing to undergo a medical abortion, as it is currently performed. Is undergoing the worst sort of self-mutilation. And by some of the worst sort of statist vermin you’ll come across, sneering butchers and human cattlemen who arrogate to themselves the high sounding but completely unearned lofty title of – Doctor of medicine.
Many of them are nothing of the sort. Doctors as a class seem to loathe self-ownership. They are always and everywhere leaving out all kinds of non-allopathic remedies. They are often blatant liars and unthinking mouthpieces for all kinds of ill-conceived propaganda and thought control. They hone their skills and bedside manners among cadavers, of all things!
Women in todays psychotic prison-like surroundings, are often forced into extremely dark and desperate corners by authoritarians of many kinds. Self-owners should never further complicate nor take away what few options women can still consider, especially during their most crucial and vulnerable moments.
What happens to unborn humans, is a symptom, and not of cause of what ails us. It’s mostly a vast irrational and illogical quagmire as a topic of discussion. Let’s confidently advocate for self-ownership, even where its hard to defend such an outlook against entrenched and well-funded opponents, and them move on to more fruitful topics.
To rule the world in such an unnatural way, the ruling class keeps conditions artificially inactive and unvarying, so that their irrational and fragile approaches to living, don’t all break apart and disintegrate, the moment you so much as reach out and lightly touch their high castle walls made of nothing more than sand.
Keeping government in power, is not unlike keeping frozen Carbon Dioxide around. CO2, or dry ice, must always be kept at high pressure and in near vacuum conditions.
At room temperature, it rapidly sublimates, which is to say completely evaporates into a fog and quickly drifts away and becomes atmospheric gas.
Government is exactly like this dry ice. It can’t survive without its crushing socially controlling pressure. And its prohibitionist choice destroying vacuums. Its elementary integrity quickly evaporates, when it doesn’t get its narrow and confining way.
Self-owners believe that if enough people will become self-owners, and stop granting anyone else power over them, all this pressure and restrictions on peaceful actions will rapidly disappear and evaporate all at once, almost like magic.
There is absolutely no way government can function or even exist if nobody wants it to survive. When nobody wants to work for it, it will have ceased to be. There is no dry ice anywhere on the Earth without humans tending to it, and there never will be, unless someone invests their time and makes the enormous effort that’s needed to keep it around.
The self-ownership movement is a simple, peaceful plan for liberating society, and is in no way connected to the notion that somehow government can be overthrown by violence.
It stands in enormous contrast to this idea for the following reasons:
First, violent overthrow would simply replace one set of violent thugs with another – there would have been no abolition of thuggery at all.
Second, if in practice it were possible to overthrow the best-armed organization in the world by violence, there would be no need to do it! – for that implies a huge majority able to do the fighting.
Third, a systematic program of initiated violence against the violent State would itself initiate force, which though arguably defensive, would violate the very principles of self-ownership we wish to implement and be able to enjoy.
Mass violence, then, is off the table. That doesn’t mean counter-economic actions are off limits. Rob authoritarian Peter and spend the loot on something nice for sale by self-owner Paul, if you can safely do so.
There is one thing that can be done immediately, which is for everyone to resign from any job they now hold that is in the government sector, or even partially connected to this anti-free market sector. If that should happen in sufficient numbers, the 10,000-year, blood-spattered, misery-ridden Age of Government would abruptly and finally terminate.
What other kinds of organized actions can you perform. If you’re not supposed to initiate violence you ask?
1 Make a Short List. Yes, that will mean shutting off the TV and getting out pen & paper and perhaps your address book and e-address list and picking out a dozen or so whom you think might be worth inviting to visit this website and discuss self-ownership and related topics. Be systematic.
Don’t try to predict who will accept and who won’t – there may be surprises both ways. But form the short list from people you think may feel as you do about what a nuisance government can be.
Include anyone you’ve heard expressing discontent with the way things are. If you come across a name of someone who appears to be complacent and accepting of whatever Fate hands down, accept that he or she may not yet be ready. Write this name in a list for future consideration, and postpone entry of that name for a later year.
2 Make the Call and Choose the Words. Raise the subject when you are in contact with the person face-to-face. This is most like a sales call. Sell the benefits to the prospect.
The way you introduce it should be in a style that fits you and the way you normally interact with him or her. Only this time, convey a seriousness of tone, and a conspiratorial spirit, that you are letting him in on the ground floor, of a really great opportunity, but that he shouldn’t wait too long.
Start by saying you have found something very, very interesting and might you suggest he or she take a look at it too? Mention something you remember he said, that tells you he might be. Say that – amazing though it may seem – the philosophy of self-ownership might actually bring about a huge change for the better, and you’ve already decided to be a part of it.
It’s probably good not to use a phrase like “learn liberty” because once people leave school or college, many have a sense that they know everything, though they wouldn’t admit this of course.
Most people feel they have nothing left to “learn” and don’t expect to be “taught” any longer. Better to refer to self-ownership as a vehicle to explore some interesting ideas about freedom. Then describe LibertarianCarGuy.com as it truly is: a place to conduct postgraduate study, at one’s own pace and in one’s own time.
Mention that it’s free of all charge, because “FREE!” is such an attractive word. Contributions are greatly appreciated, but not required. Be a bit careful with this though, because a zero price can also convey the idea of a zero value! Make clear to explain the site owner has removed the obstacle of money; such that there’s no mandatory cost to deter a favorable decision.
You can of course make use of all the excellent presentations found on the web or in print to give overview of the subject that may arouse a prospects curiosity and interest.
An important question prior to entrance here to ask: “is self-ownership something that appeals to you?” You’ll not want to take time with a friend who simply isn’t in the right frame of mind to work through and benefit from these discussions.
Urge someone who seems amenable to just take a look at the web site. If his answer is “no” then fine; ask if him if he minds if you suggest it again in a year or so, and move on to the next on your list.
Never argue! Self-ownership depends entirely on self-motivation and on never trying to goad someone into acting in a manner he doesn’t wish to. There is no cause or justification, no matter how “good” it’s supposed to be, for doing this. Ever!
Answer prospect’s questions and objections by all means, but when he tells you his decision, be gracious. He’ll join, when ready; don’t try to teach a dog to howl like a coyote and run wild in a pack. It annoys the dog and wastes your time.
By the way, when you start getting a lot of responses like “Thanks, but I’m already exploring self-ownership somewhere else, you’ll know that Government Implosion and Dissolution Day is getting very close.
3 Follow up if you can, when you get his agreement to take a look at this web site and answer ask himself the “Entrance” questions, agree to a date by which he’ll do that. Then when that date arrives, follow up and ask what he thought.
Be prepared for the most common sales objection: “Gee, I didn’t get around to it” I was too busy, accept this answer once, but not in perpetuity over and over again. If he generally seems interested in living according to the self-ownership principle and the NAP, gently and tactfully impress upon him that it’s greatly to his advantage to make the time and to get around to it!
Often times, reluctant buyers “cherrypick” from the list of requirements and benefits, and take a quick look ahead at one or two of them and if they detect anything they don’t like, they quickly say “No.”
That’s really silly! The NAP and self-ownership as you know, is understood logically and incrementally, as one works from premise through reasoning to conclusions. With many of its tenets being surprising and unconventional, but sound nonetheless. To cherrypick in that way is completely back to front. Explain rationally and patiently why he would be better off not doing that.
4 Be Diligent, as an Advocate. Perhaps you’ll have no work to do at all, to answer questions and difficulties as they arise, as your freedom newbie friend works his way through the various topics of being a self-owner and choosing to comply with the NAP. But probably, there will be a few.
There may have be some which you yourself once raised, when you were still discovering this exciting and liberating way of thinking and living. With this in mind, continue to follow up, ask how far he’s gotten, encourage persistence. And answer, don’t avoid the questions.
Sooner or later, he’ll stump you, and then you’ll have to visit the website or go over all the material you thought you understood yourself, or ask someone senior and more knowledgeable here, and then proceed from there.
Make sure you do get an answer for both of your sakes, when you get a chance. As time goes on we’ll find out what the tough questions are
5 Keep an offline copy of at least the most crucial material in a safe place for later replication and backup. Sooner or later, government people might realize what this growing movement is teaching and how completely it will eventually undermine their future dystopia they have in mind.
How it will force them to beginning doing their own labor, because their plantations will all be shut down. By that time, if enough of us have prepped and made backup the horse will have already bolted; self-ownership’s future must not depend upon a handful of dissident websites being up and running.
Through direct action, we can easily get millions of copies of our philosophy out there, and handed down from adherent to prospect. Then, there is no possible way to stop its spread. The Nazis once famously burned books; but todays meda can be easily hidden and so easily replicated and proliferated that even the biggest and most menacing bonfires won’t work this time.
6. What government extinction day might be like The demise of government will not be announced; there will be no freedom leader – truly a contradiction in terms! – so if one should arise and start making speeches and asking for allegiance, recognize him as a fraud and steer well clear of him.
Government will just die, with a whimper, because nobody will turn up to work for it or bother to do what it commands. It’s never happened before, which is why it’s impossible to describe in any detail. It will be an event unique in history.
It may happen on one specific day, or more likely be spread over several weeks with one government department or entity collapsing after another, as former bureaucratic refugees scurry willy nilly, desperately taking up market eviscerating work elsewhere. Nobody knows.
But there is one partial precedent – and another in fiction. The historical one took place in 1989 in Eastern Europe. It didn’t happen fully, but although the populations there didn’t know they needed to be rid of all government, they did know they needed to be rid of the Communist kind – and they walked away.
Border guards just stopped shooting those trying to escape. The Berlin Wall was hammered down, literally. Joyful Germans climbed on it, jumped down and entered the West, and then joined celebrants from each side and danced and sang on top of it.
An unforgettable moment in human history! – and quite possibly a recurring pattern, with the much greater demolition still being imminent, and on the verge of happening again, now some 30 or 40 years later and across the Atlantic ocean.
The fictional precedent is found in Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged”, in which the freedom-seeking heroes walk off their increasingly frustrating jobs and retreat to a hidden mountain valley to enjoy each others’ company while chaos increases elsewhere without them. It’s a classic, must-read novel.
7. What Else to do, While Waiting
A Not much! – just enjoy life, as you would have done anyway, but with the exciting knowledge that it will soon change dramatically for the better, and that you are doing something to cause that to occur sooner rather than later.
B Don’t waste much time getting political, or joining demonstrations; they merely validate the system which quiet study and one-on-one promotion of self-ownership will eliminate altogether in time.
C Just enjoy the single life of freedom. Or raise a family, and homeschool your children at least as a supplement to their indoctrination if possible; have fun, work hard, develop and diversify your skills, make money. The “pursuit of happiness” is what life is for! Once again, a few more suggestions:
D Quit Government Employ. You’ll have to do this eventually, if your job is involved with government at any level, directly or indirectly – so the sooner you exit, the easier it will be.
Watch out for that “indirectly” bit; if your boss is a “defense” contractor, for example, he may not be around after Government Extinction Day. On the other hand if he makes road-paving equipment, he may see little change; roads will still need building and maintaining. Job-changing is not hard to do, nor is it at all uncommon – so provided you plan carefully, the change can be made be quite easily and painlessly.
The eventual departure of all self-owners from government employ, and then from all the rest of it, may be a large part of what directly causes the government to implode and disintegrate, so the sooner the better.
The more thoughtful and talented people who depart at an early stage, and who completely disengage from coercion entirely, the more this day will be hastened, for the quality of employees will then fall and so will that of its so-called “service” delivered to the public against their will and without their consent.
The functions of government will greatly suffer and so will the discontent with government increase and so the more of your acquaintances you can voluntarily enlist in this process, the better.
E Read! There is no practical limit to the amount of worthwhile reading you can undertake, about the many ramifications of liberty; and doing so keeps the juices flowing and the passion pumping!
F Consider Going Solo or at least being an independent contractor. In a regular job, you are exchanging service for money with a single buyer – your boss. You could just as well work for several “bosses”, by becoming a freelancer.
Whatever you’re good at, advertise that service, or offer up whatever goods you specialize in, if you choose to buy and sell merchandise. Do so widely, so that you gain several sustaining customers, each of them paying you only a little of what you need to get by.
In total, you may eventually discover you are quite a lot better off! You’re certainly freer, and no longer subject to the whims of one person, or organization. Trade in gold, silver, other commodities, or barter whenever possible, anonymously when possible.
The more people become used to exchanging with each other using real money, the easier will be the transition when market freedom day arrives and government fiat money becomes every bit as valuable as so much wallpaper, that’s been plastered on the walls they built all around us.
G Plenty are already doing this, even today; in fact a couple of centuries ago it was how most people earned a living – by farming, and commodity trading more often than not.
They were their own bosses, and sold their excess production on the market. Now, and increasingly as the Internet matures, there is a huge number of opportunities for going solo. Some use on-line stores like eBay to make a living. Or advertise their services and products for free on Craigslist and other online want ads websites.
It’s may be a good idea not to give up your day job until the revenue stream from your own business is steady and adequate, for failures happen way more often than successes.
By serving many customers, in the long term, it’s possible to make much more money than by serving just one. Always, remember the chart of demand, supply and price: and always be sure to give good value for another’s money or payment in kind.
H Save and Invest. The secret to wealth accumulation is to save a little of what you earn – whether from a lone customer, aka a regular job, or from many customers if you go solo. In either case, the effect is amazing.
Money saved can be invested in your own business if you run one; that’s perfect capitalism, plowing profits back in order to grow. Becoming an owner of capital and in control of the means of production.
I Keep Assets Secure – if you’re able to accumulate some. As governments funerals rapidly approach, the dying governments may lash out in all directions, trying to prolong their miserable existence for just a little while longer.
Be prepared for even more brazen attempted thefts – or even wanton destruction, such as the German Empire most famously ordered in early 1945.
Four forms of asset protection are worth considering, well in advance:
A1 Physical gold buried in places with precise coordinates known only to you and your heirs; gold coins, gold bars, gold in any form. Consider these supplementary remarks about security.
A2 Real Estate, free and clear, or even heavily mortgaged in terms of “dollars.” Why mortgaged so? – because when paper “dollars” lose all value except that of wallpaper, you can pay off quite easily the mortgage held with them, so enjoying a large real capital gain.
A3 Offshore Trusts and other entities, set up in tax-haven countries with a proven record of ignoring Uncle’s demands for info. This isn’t for most of us. And beware of charlatans on the Net, and beware of domestic trusts and other complex entities, where the FedGov may change the laws at any time. In general, this is a time-proven way for those fairly well off, to keep much of what’s theirs, theirs.
A4 Expand Horizons. Speaking of “offshore”, there’s a possibility of enjoying a whole lot more personal freedom while awaiting the end of the Authoritarian Age than most suppose possible. If you’re willing, skilled enough, and able to cross National boundaries periodically, there are all manner of opportunites at the plantation next door, even the one far across the ocean
J Delay Tax Payments. Not by breaking what the IRS says is “law”, nor necessarily at once; by all means, file on time. Just send in the form with only the calculation of what’s due.
Then make payments gradually later and later, as the time for government evaporation approaches. You’ll have to accrue interest for lateness. But who knows, when the moment does arrive, there will be nobody around to collect this fictitious debt, so you’ll have saved yourself a whole bunch of your own money.
K Conclusion:
Congratulations, you’ve just started, or are well underway, on the most exciting journey of your life, and maybe the most important venture in all of human history up until now.
You are a self-owner, surrounded by other self-owners, and soon to live in a better more enjoyable world, a more peaceful and more prosperous world populated in its entirely with your fellow self-owners.
As long as the members of a culture are there by choice, their choices must be respected no matter how alien.
The NAP only works when each individual’s equal right to self ownership is acknowledged by everyone else
Borat, Pamela Anderson, and the Wedding Sack
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY2p0L8F-Q
I think the answer is C. the moment when the baby acquires self-ownership and the mother relinquishes control, that happens along about the time of emancipation, sometime between birth and the age of 18, or whenever the baby grasps his or her emancipation and wrings control from the mother (or the mother gives it up). It’s natural law in action, imho.
I mean, the mother owns herself. When did she give up the rights to what she produced with her body?
“Our education and development will begin in the home continue there until the full-grown child wants to leave home.”
“Increasingly with age and maturity, the child himself or herself will take control”
For some people, in a free market society, and even under empire, the answer is, Never.
But I like the gist, “Just think: every child a wanted child!”
Anyway, I took a moment to answer these Questions to my own satisfaction.
In a free society, and despite the best intentions, a couple decide to split up. Who gets the kids, and who decides?
If the marriage contract stipulated the wife belongs to the husband, the husband decides. Any product of the wife is the property of the husband until emancipation.
“Only the mother has the final say.”
That happens when she says, “I do”.
Imho. YMMV. Batteries Not Included.
“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.”
-Bill Cosby’s mom
The problem with abortion is that it is usually preceded by an irrational action. “What were you thinking?” is often the question. The answer, of course, was that they weren’t “thinking,” the lizard brain was reacting to stimulus. Add brain-altering chemicals, designed to suppress higher levels of thought, and you can guess the rest. The lower levels of the brain know nothing of the future, nor consequences of activity.
Perhaps.
There is of course a viable and gestating conception of Libertarian Conservatism deep into its final trimester, and raring to hatch and violently spring forth into this world, mother be damned.
Just like in the film Aliens, right through the wayward hussy’s womb wall itself, if need be so that the sacred fetus can emerge and fulfill its important destiny of pleasing a complete stranger who deserves no say in the matter.
Just such a LibCon link from the Mises Institute is provided below.
Read the ingredients on anything in your kitchen. Why might they go to all the trouble of disassembling and then reassembling in a slightly different way nearly each and every component of nearly everything you eat?
Might not our entire diet already be filled with brain-altering chemicals, designed to dull centers of higher abstraction and disrupt our natural pathways of thought.
Thoughts such as those of self-ownership and sole responsibility for one’s actions? Thoughts of being free to be either responsible or irresponsible, so long as you and you alone bear the consequences of either decision?
Since self-owners dislike irrational government intrusions into their lives, let’s see if we can tar some individual we don’t like with that same broad brush of irrationality. Being promiscuous is irrational. Using drugs is irrational.
Aha, now look, the waters are muddied and murky. It’s not that I’m an intrusive creep whose definition of rational is so expansive, as to include what should be other peoples personal space.
Let’s see what these smug self-owners can accomplish when I use their very own terms of argumentation against them in an illogical, but cleverly sophistic, ad-hominem fashion.
Self-Ownership, Abortion, and the Rights of children: Toward a More Conservative Libertarianismhttp://mises.org/journals/jls/18_3/18_3_5.pdf
“For many libertarians, the thesis of self-ownership is the foundation of their political philosophy. Natural rights to life, liberty, and property, the protection of which is, according to the libertarian, government’s sole legitimate function. Derive from self-ownership, in particular one’s ownership of his body and its parts, of his capacities and labor, and, by extension, of whatever he can acquire by his non-coercive exercise of them…
Okay, sorry, I have to stop. I see some terms I recognize, but I see no common ground here for me at all.
The Government Owns Your Body
http://theconverted.wordpress.com/2009/06/26/the-government-qwns-your-body/
“Don’t let our natural instinct to help a child open us to giving the state the power to control our bodies. That is far worse than one 14-year-old girl making a bad or stupid choice and dying.”
Much better.
Abortion Rights are Logically Required by Libertarianism
http://dailyanarchist.com/2012/07/30/abortion-rights-are-logically-required-by-libertarianism/
“The anti-abortion position is weak, riddled with internal contradictions, and dangerously wrong. It uses the word “rights” in a self-contradictory manner that denies the framework from which the concept derives meaning.
Self-ownership begins with your skin. If you cannot clearly state, “Everything beneath my skin is me; this is the line beyond which no one crosses without my permission,” then there is no foundation for individual rights or for libertarianism”
Sounds irrefutable, and axiomatic to my ears.
– – –
Here’s an alternate scenario where irrational religionists are present and allowed standing and equal footing with rational self-owners.
A Market Solution For Abortion?
There’s no possibility of reconciling the opposites in this debate, for one side regards an unborn fetus as a person with full legal rights to life and to the protection of the law, even in some cases when it’s only a zygote, while the other sees it as a clump of cells entitled to neither. The first perception normally springs from religious belief, and that in its nature is never subject to rational analysis or refutation; hence the futility of trying.
There may, however, be a possibility of satisfying both sides, using the operation of the market. In contrast to political “solutions”, under which the losing side is always forced to submit to the winners, the free market normally leaves both sides equally satisfied; in fact, that pretty well defines what a market transaction is.
Here’s how it might work in this context.
Consider a typical situation. A young lady and a young gentleman meet and sparks fly and they have an unplanned, unprotected but steamy and thoroughly enjoyable sexual encounter. Neither regrets it, but after cooling down a bit they both agree to leave it as a happy memory; neither is interested in marriage. But the girl gets pregnant.
The young gentleman, being a gentleman, offers to share the least-cost solution with her equally, and that of course is to have an abortion. Let’s say it costs $10,000 plus some measure of trauma for the girl. They agree on a deal: he puts up $6,500 cash and she pays the rest.
The Third Party
Now enters a third party, an influential group that thinks abortion should be outlawed and that claims to represent the interests of the fetus. They say that this voluntary arrangement must not fly.
They argue that for it to proceed means over-ruling by deadly force the assumed wishes of the fetus, of being allowed to go on existing. They assume, without proof, that the fetus has the capability of so wishing. But they assume it anyway and do intervene. The dispute exists.
How can it be resolved? – as we saw, ANY political solution means applying force to the losing party. Either the couple will have imposed upon them the costs of bearing and raising a child, or the protesters will have imposed upon them an affront to their religious convictions. There is therefore NO political solution that satisfies all parties. Can the market do any better?
I think it can.
The protesters can come to the young lady and say, Miss, we think the fetus has an interest in this matter and wish to act in its behalf. We want you to give birth, and we’re willing to compensate you for the extra trouble and cost.
Note: the possibility that she will refuse to accept ANY such offer will be so rare as can be disregarded. It’s a basic principle of market economics that there is ALWAYS a price at which the market will clear. So if the protesters think that the life of a fetus is infinitely valuable – priceless – all that’s needed is for them to bid high enough to achieve the desired result.
The price agreed will vary, just as market prices always do. Some girls in that situation will factor in the anticipated trauma of the abortion and the possible consequent regrets, and accept a low price plus the promise of immediate adoption. She will give birth and then walk away, with all costs paid – or at least, all those over and above the $10,000 already committed.
Others may bid the price up, to the limit. What might that maximum be? – that depends on how passionately the protesters believe what they say they believe, but here’s one way to predict it.
In the alternative (political) case, the protesters favor imprisoning the young lady for life, as someone guilty of murder. “Life”, for a young lady, will be around 60 years, and at$30,000 per year that means a total of $2 million, that they are willing to spend on incarcerating this person for aborting her fetus.
So presumably, their maximum bid price to prevent it must be $2 million, less the $10,000 the couple is already willing to spend for themselves; $1,990,000.
So the market solution would appear to satisfy all parties – as it usually does. Has anything been overlooked?
What did you say? Who Pays?
Yes, I that sounds like of one factor we may have forgotten.
In the foregoing reasoning, we said the protesters are willing to pay $2 million to imprison the girl they call a murderess. But actually, that’s not quite right; the protesters actually want taxpayers to foot that bill. What they are really trying to do is to make everyone else pay the two million, whether those payers share their opinions about abortion or not. Once again, the political “solution” would impose force.
This being so, clearly the protesters are shown up as hypocrites. They want a solution that imposes force on pretty well everyone with whom they disagree; they are would-be dictators.
They are willing to commit massive theft, in order to punish what they claim, with non-existent rationale, to be “murder”. These usually religious folk are willing to break one Commandment – Thou shalt not steal – in order to rectify – if it even can – another – Thou shalt not kill. – As such, clearly they have lost all their asserted moral authority.
Does that mean, then, that there is no market solution? – No, not at all. It only means that the prevailing, market price of preventing an abortion will be a lot lower than $2 million. It will settle down to whatever figure the protesters are willing to pay out of their own resources, to achieve their own objectives. Being much lower, that does mean that some potential aborters will not accept the offer.
But whatever it is, it will surely be sufficient to prevent a very large number of abortions. Not all, but a whole heap more than are prevented today, when such a market is not even allowed to operate.
Any Adverse Consequences?
Before leaving this quite pleasing solution, let’s make sure it has no adverse consequences if the principle were applied elsewhere.
It might be argued that what it does is to set a price on human life. If $25,000 will “buy off” a planned abortion, why should not someone contemplating the murder of a grown adult advertise his intention and invite bids of money to change his mind? – would such an idea not transfer wealth from the most caring members of society to the most ruthless, and isn’t that an obviously regrettable outcome?
The first flaw in that argument is that the fetal existence purchased is a “human life”. The protesters believe that, but nobody else does. Therefore, the extension is not valid.
There’s also a second major flaw: the argument assumes that the intended victim of the proposed murder sits passively by. Clearly, he will do no such thing: seeing such an advertisement, he will ready his weapon and lie in wait. Assuming, of course, that other bigots have not used the political process to outlaw guns and the self-defense they provide.
So the intending killer’s costs would not actually be trivial – the unstated assumption – but would likely be prohibitive. Therefore this situation, of course, would never actually arise.
I was going to put together a much longer post, but I had to get to work. Point(s) being:
1) The “conservative” view is that you have to live with whatever you’ve done and wear it like a scarlet letter. Your family should make themselves available to help you cope, no matter what state your family might be in.
2) The “liberal” view is that, “well hey, shit happens, and it was all the man’s fault anyway,” so because there’s no one else, the state has to intervene.
Of course the biological decision tends to overrule the logical decision. Again, compounding poor decision making with more poor decisions. Either choice may or may not be the right one, depending on circumstances. For example, a 30 YO man and 25 YO woman become pregnant. They may be comparable with each other, they might have the means to support a child, so why not go through with it. On the other hand, a 17 YO woman and 20 YO man (on parole, for example) would best be served by aborting and if they want to have children perhaps wait until they’re more stable. In both incidences the biological decision is to carry the child to term, and the biological brain is being flooded with positive feedback to do so. The logical brain has a very difficult time being heard over the chemical reactions.
The interesting thing is that today we have both solutions you propose: If you choose to carry the baby to term you can get on the public assistance. If you don’t you can get help with that, too. No consequences, no harm, no foul.
Eric_G
Here’s an attempt at modifying your first point:
1) The “conservative” view is that you have to keep up the appearance of living with whatever you’ve done and make grand gestures of public contrition where you cry like Glenn Beck at a Fox News Reunion wearing your sins like a scarlet letter and profusely begging the Lord and the ghost of Saint Reagan to please grant you strength.
Your family should make themselves available to help ensure you get every promised dollar of stolen loot from the ever-gushing government spigot to help cope, no matter what state your family might actually be in.
In beer commercial terms. The conservative con is to sell themselves as Tyranny Lite that at all times is seen as “Government That’s Less Filling!”
The liberal con is that they too are selling the very same Tyranny Lite, but their sales pitch is that their “Government Tastes Great!”
Tyranny Lite – The Only Beverage In Town
2012 Federal Budget – In Billions
Total Spending Enacted $3795.547
Social Security $778.574 billion
National Defense $716.300 billion
Income Security $579.578 billion
Medicare $484.486 billion
Health $361.625 billion
Net Interest $224.784 billion
Educ, Train, Employ Soc Serv $139.212 billion
Vet Benef and Serv $129.605 billion
Transportation $102.552 billion
Commerce and Hous Credit $79.624 billion
Admin of Justice $62.016 billion
International Affairs $56.252 billion
Nat Resourc and Environ $42.829 billion
General Government $31.763 billion
Commun and Reg Develop $31.685 billion
Gen Sci, Space and Tech $30.991 billion
Energy $23.270 billion
Agriculture $19.173 billion
Allowances $0.125 billion
Undistrib Offset Recpts $-98.897 billion
Grammatical problems in this paragraph Tor:
Anyhoo.. Abortion will always be a difficult topic. What the anti-abortionists fail to understand is that not every parasite (baby) is perfect. Such things as preeclampsia, deformations and incurable neural diseases in babies mean abortion is the best option for all concerned.
I probably won’t win many friends on this issue, but I don’t see anti-abortionists as a particularly clever group. It’s all none of their business.
Thanks ЯΞ√,
If the paragraph could be modified to what follows, that would be outstanding.
“In the coming free society, there won’t be any laws, and so decisions to terminate will be made only by the pregnant woman who is burdened with providing support for the life growing inside her body.
Unless someone develops Star Trek transporter technology to beam the unwanted baby out of the her womb, and she authorizes this miracle. Any initiation of even the slightest degree of force against her wishes is the worst kind of evil, and in complete violation of the first axiom of self-ownership.
Anyone who has a problem with biological sovereignty will just have to keep their vivid imaginings to themselves, and stifle their irrational fears, unless they’re willing to put their money where their mouths are. And negotiate with each and every woman who doesn’t with to carry her baby to term.
Every woman possesses absolute self-ownership, and has the exclusive right to make every and all decisions about anything within the confines of her physical person. She has no one she must defer to, ever, if that were the case, then she would be a slave.”
sigh, correction of error is also error… damn, damn, damn, mulligan
I have to admit I did not read the entire article. Way too much garbage for me to read.
So Tor when does a kid become his own? Is it at 2 years old? Anything he wants to do is his decision? What a joke.
So Tor you say that there will be taxes so you will have so much money. What are you going to do with it? There will be no roads or bridges because things like taxes pay for those. There will be no planes because it is an anything goes society. You say there are no laws or enforcement. Guns and explosives so are around. The guys with mental problems can take down all the planes they want. I forgot, there is no traffic control because taxes from the public pay for that.
I have said before, I have everything I could care to have in the society we have with a government. There has been no one here to explain what it will be like without laws, government or taxes. Eric says it would be a party every day. What happens when the party is over and you want to get somewhere to make some money? The bridge fell in because no one donated to pay for repairs so you no longer have a job. It would not matter anymore if there was taxes or not because you could not pay anything.
The point, Clover, is that the kid is not yours. His care is the responsibility of his parents and family. You do not have an ownership share in other people. Will you ever get that through your hydrocephalic head?
On taxes and “no roads.”
Sure, Clover. Because people don’t value roads. And they never freely pay for things they value.
They’ve gotta be forced. Well, forced to pay for the things you value!
Dear Clover,
A man and woman have a child. The child will indeed take time to become a fully autonomous, fully responsible adult human being. Different societies may indeed set the age of maturity differently. Rational people can debate what that age should be.
But what of it???
Where does some clover mysterious acquire the right to call himself or herself “Child Protective Services” and dictate to complete strangers how they should raise their child???
@Bevin – The answer to your question is 2 or 3 years old.
Once registered at birth (mandatory DNA blood taking and issued Social Security number while still in the hospital) the state keeps track of their herd and waits until they can talk. Psychologically they must have new minds before 5 to set the proper communitarian thought pattern.
Obama. Hillary and the other state actors now want our children to be placed into their daily indoctrination care at the age of 2 or 3. Pre-pre school programs are offered and encouraged. The parent(s) are just there to pay some of the bill for food and diapers, and the tax payer will to finish the job. Like the non-custody parent, they are to pay the child support bill for the other to do the deed. Ingenious use of Soviet training methods.
A most clever Progressive system- dumb down the parents and take the next generation of children into your care. Problem, reaction, solution.
Bevin in your society there is no debating because a libertarian would not do what others think is good anyway. I would think that in a true libertarian society a kid would have full control of his life at the age of 1 or before. As soon a the kid can communicate in some way to say no to something. Yes kids can and do communicate even before they can speak. I have seen some do sign language before they were able to speak. In a true libertarian society you never tell others what to do including kids.
By the way Bevin, when are you going to grow up? You act like a two year old. You often repeat what others say without a clue what it means. No no no. You say. Just like a two year old. Actually I believe that is true for most libertarians. If the government told them to not jump off a building Eric would be the first one off.
I like the one where Eric said people would not pay for roads under his system. There would be no income for him from car reviews. There will have to be horse reviews. I hope he has a lot of land to grow crops and has a lot of seed. I hope he is ready to not have electricity. Actually I lied, I could care less if he had anything.
Clover, there would be all the debate you like – just no coercion. Which Libertarians don’t like. But which you love.
The issue is simply this: Your life is yours; if you have kids, you’re responsible for them until they become sufficiently mature to care for themselves – that point to be decided by you.
But my life is mine. If I have kids, their rearing is none of your business. When they seem mature enough to strike out on their own – and express the desire to do so – then they ought to be free to do so. Because just as I own my life, they own theirs.
And you own neither of them.
PS: I’d avoid arguing with Bevin as he probably has 40 IQ points on you, at least.
Did you know there are about 300 species of clovers, and they’re a part of the pea family?
We’re probably a lot more alike than you’d think. I might be the only one who’s seen the YouTube video you’ve submitted a while back.
I think in person, you’re harmless and technically adhere to the official law of the land NAP. (not the real one of course)
I’ve probably been party to using govt to my advantage far more than you have back in my day. Except for your advocating suicide and things of that nature, you’re probably not all that bad.
You’re free to testify about the holy govt spirit all you like. Talking about irrational things like religion is frowned upon here.
But lucky for you, discussing the irrational religion of govt ad nauseum is a-ok.
Tell us more about the benefits of families with millions of members. And the politics of mutual self-sacrifice and unyielding compulsive authority structures.
Dear Clover,
You wrote
“Bevin in your society there is no debating because a libertarian would not do what others think is good anyway.”
As usual, you have it exactly backwards. There is only debating in a libertarian society.
Why?
Because the Non-Aggression Principle rules out the initiation of brute force coercion by costumed goons imposing the will of power elites or the whims of mobs.
Also, as usual, your reading comprehension leaves much to be desired.
I specifically stated,
“Rational people can debate what that age should be.”
Rational people. Not clover cretins, who lack the ability to derive higher level concepts such as “natural rights” and “individual liberty” from scratch, from first principles.
Dear clover,
PS: I’d avoid arguing with Eric as well.
He has at least 50 IQ points on you.
Dear Gary,
You wrote,
“Once registered at birth (mandatory DNA blood taking and issued Social Security number while still in the hospital)”
Damn. I didn’t know it had gotten that bad! I knew about “birth certificates,” but I didn’t know about the DNA sampling and SSN.
The clovers really do want to get a jump on controlling their cattle/sheep/lemmings don’t they?
Clover, I have to admit I did not read your entire post. Way too much garbage for me to read.
Stick around, you provide the very reasons for our claims.
@Bevin -“but I didn’t know about the DNA sampling and SSN.”
Yes the blood samples are taken and a little is used by the hospital for disease analysis, the rest is government property that is DNA sequenced and recorded. Hospitals have been getting paid to do it for several years.
Try and leave the hospital without giving them the infant’s name. They will demand one for their government forms and Social Security number issuance.
@clover – re: your writing “As soon a the kid can communicate in some way to say no to something. Yes kids can and do communicate even before they can speak. I have seen some do sign language before they were able to speak. In a true libertarian society you never tell others what to do including kids.”
I think you really are catching on. As soon as babies can mumble “NO” or make the sign language wave, I want them out of the house and looking for work. I think it is high time I stop supporting them when they can say NO on their own. I am not the Clover Welfare Department.
Bevin you are not smart enough to debate something. Your debating is bringing on links of mentally unstable guys like Larkin. The guy that wants to shoot cops for pretty much any reason. Is Larkin part of your libertarian non-aggressive people? Non-aggressive people do not stock pile guns and ammunition and threaten a bloodbath like some of your people do. Non-aggressive people work in a non-aggressive way and would not think of owning guns and taking joy in the thought of killing others like Larkin does and make you one of his killers in crime.
Bevin you should think about cleaning up your libertarian brothers before you start killing the police that want to take drunks off the road to save your worthless life.
That was a doozy, Clover!
Will you ever master the distinction between aggressive violence and defensive response to violence?
PS: Bevin is not only a trained architect, he writes masterfully in Chinese while you have yet to master elementary school-level English!
Clover –
One of the fascinating things about your posts is not their incoherence nor their illiterate construction but what that incoherence and illiterate construction reveals about your inability to organize your thoughts. Your mind is a chaotic jumble of unquestioned premises, non sequiturs (this is Latin, for “does not follow”) instinct and feelings that you struggle to put into words but can’t. Ever stop to wonder why? Your mind is crippled, Clover. You have yet to develop the capability to think in terms of concepts and apply them to particulars. It is this faculty – abstract, conceptual thought – that separates man from animals. Until it is developed, the human in question is little more than a two-legged donkey eeee-awwwwing at things it doesn’t understand or like.
Dear clover,
It’s a challenge to respond to your incoherent ravings.
For starters, I often feel the need to correct your atrocious grammar, spelling, and syntax first, just to make sense of what you scribbled.
Then I’m reminded that your illiteracy and authoritarian mindset are mutually complementary. Your failure to educate yourself in your native tongue, goes hand in hand with your failure to teach yourself to engage in independent thinking.
With that out of the way, you wrote:
“Non-aggressive people do not stock pile guns and ammunition and threaten a bloodbath…
Correct. But not in the way you intended.
Lawmakers and Second Amendment advocates have fumed over reports that DHS and other agencies were buying millions of rounds of ammunition, thus fueling the national shortage and driving up prices.
Nick Nayak, a DHS procurement officer, said at a House oversight subcommittee hearing in April that the department planned to purchase about 750 million rounds over five years.
The rounds are used for basic and advanced law enforcement training for federal law enforcement agencies under the department’s umbrella. The facilities also offer firearms training to tens of thousands of federal law enforcement officers.
The rest of the 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition the department reportedly aims to obtain would be purchased by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal government’s second largest criminal investigative agency.
ICE’s ammunition requests in the last year included:
–450 million rounds of .40-caliber duty ammunition
–40 million rounds of rifle ammunition a year for as many as five years, for a total bullet-buy of 200 million rounds
–176,000 rifle rounds on a separate contract
–25,000 blank rounds
Non-aggressive people work in a non-aggressive way and would not think of owning guns and taking joy in the thought of killing others… ”
Again, correct, but not in the way you intended.
Cop threatens to shoot lawful concealed carry owner, then arrests him! Officer now facing a federal lawsuit! (VIDEO)
Posted by Austin Petersen • 07 Sep 2013
“Put your hands right there or I’ll shoot you in the fucking back!”
http://thelibertarianrepublic.com/cop-threatens-shoot-concealed-carry-owner-arrests-now-officer-facing-federal-lawsuit-video/#axzz35jk0NKu6
You, sir, are a gem.
“Guns and explosives so are around. The guys with mental problems can take down all the planes they want. I forgot, there is no traffic control because taxes from the public pay for that.”
This is common. it is a claim that IF something you (rightly) dislike (terrorist) could possibly exist sans government then there is a case for government. They exist with government. They can just as much exist without a government. Remember, they attack not because of John Q and rock music but because of government interference in their past wars. So one could say that government causes terrorism.
Air traffic control? Give me a break. It will be paid for by the passengers of the airline. I would imagine that in Atlanta, for instance, Delta Airlines would pay for the air traffic control because they are the major carrier out of there. They have a very great investment in making sure their operation runs smoothly.
Think of the power-lines. Who will run the electricity? Who will erect the poles and towers? Who will make sure power made in Texas gets to Oklahoma? The answer is the people who have a stake in making money from electricity DO now figure all that out. Like wise the people who WILL make money without government interference will make sure plane A doesn’t hit plane B and makes it to airport X.
Remember, I don’t have to promise you a Utopia to make a case against having a government; I just have to be able to say 1: for government to exist is wrong and 2: without it things will be closer to Utopia.
Curious, Clover, what is your trade? I am a design engineer.
Morning, Sirirb!
Clover is a gem. I also strongly suspect he is (or was) a government “worker” of some sort. I – and others – have repeatedly asked him (her?) to reveal what he (she?) does for a living.
Cue the crickets chirping in the field…
Dear Rev,
Abortion is a hot button issue, even among market anarchists.
I agree with you on the abortion issue. Only the mother has the final say. Others may attempt to persuade, but if individual sovereignty is to have any meaning, no libertarian can possibly argue that
“The fetus is a human being. To defend the life of this human being, others may need to physically overpower and restrain the mother to prevent her from carrying out an abortion.”
As I have argued repeatedly, such coercion is especially outrageous in the case of rape, and a woman involuntarily impregnated is forced by “right to lifers” to endure 9 months of pregnancy then bear a child by the thug who raped her.
If libertarians allow themselves such a rationalization, then the NAP has been rendered meaningless. Clover has already won.