Starchild,
My comments interspersed below:
Roy
Coercion is appropriate when it is defensive, e.g. coercing a robber to give back your handbag, and can be an effective tool for justice. But when it takes the form of aggression – initiating force or fraud – it is wrong. I think you’re correct that warlords and dictators – and not just them either, but most politicians – are motivated more by a thirst for power than by altruistic motives. So long as the goal is to control government so as to impose your agenda on others, politics is, as the saying goes, war by other means.
When it comes to “coercion”, as always, the devil is in the details. Preventing a robber from taking your handbag would be a right that few would dispute. But what about bombing the city where the robbers repeatedly come from, so they will not come again? Can easily be argued as a form of “defense”. This is the argument that many countries (the most recent being Israel) use to preemptively strike “enemy” territory. As for initiating force. One could argue that law enforcement does not initiate force, but rather responds to someone who already broke the law. The law is about the threat of force, rather than actually initiating it. Granted, that police don’t always follows this principle, and sometimes do preemptive strikes of their own, like traffic stops.
As for “most” politicians being “motivated more by a thirst for power than altruistic motives”, and “war by other means”. The very word “statist” consigns people with certain beliefs into groups rather than treating them as individuals. Its a form of discrimination, in my view. Isn’t it possible for people to enter politics both for selfish and altruistic reasons? I think that’s the case for many politicians. I think most of us have the impulse to dismiss politicians, but they should be treated as individuals like everyone else.
Yet those who are merely greedy for power and money are arguably less dangerous than those who have an ideological desire to improve society in a way that involves “breaking eggs”. The author of the Narnia books may have said it best:
In C.S. Lewis’ view, MLK, Mahatma Gandhi, Jesus and the greatest warriors for justice in history would be dismissed as ideologues that “torment us” because of their dogmatic adherence to their principles.
Anarchy isn’t random, any more than evolution is random. I’m not even sure it’s true that a society operating as an organic ecosystem, without any central, controlling authority, is more unpredictable than one in which power is concentrated in a few hands via the mechanism of government. While it’s true that innovation and creativity would have greater latitude in an anarchic system, radical swings based on changes in who has political control over the whole system would be eliminated.
Actually, evolution IS about random processes! The random development of mutations allows some individuals to survive catastrophic events, while others die from them. Evolution favors the species as a whole, rather than individuals within the species. Anarchy too, does not favor the individual, but the behavior of the group as a whole. Groups with certain traits will win, others will lose. Evolution, like anarchy favors the most aggressive, not the most moral or just.
Government is like medical intervention. Medicine seeks to counteract the natural forces that result in disease and death of human individuals. Government seeks to counteract the aggressive tendencies in our species that results in the deaths of human individuals. Neither is a perfect solution, and only time will tell if either actually benefit our species as a whole in the long run.
Of course anarchy would not mean no fear of negative consequences. Anti-social impulses would likely be held in check by the threat of social disapproval that you mention, as well as by the discipline of market forces. Nobody would be able to count on a government bailout, on being “too big to fail”. “The outcomes may not always be positive, but the explicit effort counts” sounds dangerously like an embrace of the fascist impulse to lionize “men of action” – the old compulsion to seek leaders who will “do something”, as well as the bad habit of crediting intentions over results.
Japan backs its threat of social disapproval with strong legal enforcement. As for the “discipline” of “market forces”. As we have seen repeatedly in history, left unchecked, “market forces” leads to monopolies that dominate industries, reducing competitiveness and dictating market terms. Market turmoil can lead to those same monopolies failing catastrophically, bringing entire economies down with it. The correct solution is proper anti-monopoly regulation that will a) prevent monopolies in the first place, and b) prevent any from becoming “too big to fail”.
As for the “fascist impulse”. Again, I refer to MLK, Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela as “men of action” who acted on their deeply-held principles for the betterment of humankind.
Richard Boddie (Libertarian candidate for U.S. Senate from California in the ‘90s) used to joke about how Libertarians should append everything we say with “…and my intentions are good”, since the non-libertarian public cares more about good intentions than good outcomes!
Isn’t that what the Non Aggression Principle is all about? Good intentions? By espousing an idealistic principle without a practical way to implement it, Libertarians are in fact engaging in good intentions over good results.
Non Aggression Principle (good intention) + properly calibrated enforcement = good results
Roy
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Lol, on the “omletteism”. Warlords/dictators are more motivated by a thirst for power rather than any altruistic motives to “break a few eggs”. Applying the “russian roulette” analogy to government doesn’t really make sense. Anarchy is by its nature unpredictable, even random. There are no leader or formal organizations tasked to solving specific problems. You could be waiting forever for any “spontaneous ordering” to occur, never mind one that produces positive outcomes. When you elect a government, however, you are explicitly tasking them to solve societies problems. If they don’t do it, you can elect someone else to try. The outcomes may not always be positive, but the explicit effort counts.
It all boils down to human nature in my view. The Non Aggression Principle is certainly admirable, but it means nothing unless people adhere to it. Morals mean nothing unless people follow them. At this point in our evolution, we’re much more likely to follow our own selfish pursuits that collaborate with each other to the betterment of our species. This is what Jonathon Haidt meant when he characterizes us as 90% chimp and 10% worker bee. But humans are motivated by other emotions, such as fear. The fear of negative consequences - what you would call “coercion” - can be very effective in motivating humans to respect each other and work together. I would say that coercion is in fact the necessary ingredient to effectively implement the NAP in society. But as with everything, balance is critical. Coercion, or even the threat of coercion need not be violent. (I gave the example of Japan, where the threat of social disapproval is a strong behavioral motivator).
Roy
Roy,
I wasn’t attempting to contradict what you wrote, but rather to mimic it, in order to show that the kind of rhetoric you were using can be used to argue for anarchy every bit as convincingly as against it. Such as: Waiting for government to solve our problems is like playing Russian roulette with human nature. Because people can have good motivations, yet still produce bad results! See every ideologically-driven warlord or dictator who expresses a willingness to “break a few eggs” in order to build a “better” society. Call it omletteism.
If you don’t think political structures make any difference, why favor democracy over dictatorship? I think they clearly make a difference. Certainly freedom only works within constraints – that’s the point of the Non-Aggression Principle (NAP). It doesn’t say “Have unlimited freedom, do whatever you want!” It says you can morally do what you want only as long as you are not aggressing against others. To respect the NAP is to respect the rights of others, i.e. to act in a manner that cannot accurately be dismissed as merely selfish in terms of the negative connotations of that word.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
Roy_Ferreira
July 10 |
PStarchild,
You have not contradicted anything I wrote. In fact, by paralleling government with anarchy, you seem to agree with me that it’s human nature rather than political structures that are responsible for both good and evil in the world.
As for the “spontaneous ordering of individuals”. Waiting for that to happen is like playing Russian roulette with human nature. If it happens, hopefully the motivations of the individuals are good and people benefit. Much more likely that selfish motivations are at work, and that great harm is the result.
Also, “freedom” of itself does not bring good or bad. It’s what people do with it that counts. Freedom only works within constraints: you cannot use your own freedom to limit that of others. How do you stop “spontaneous ordering” from doing just that?
Roy
Starchild
July 8 |
Roy,
Statists frame anarchy as this scary external “chaos” to be opposed at all costs. But in reality, life is naturally chaotic and anarchies are just the spontaneous ordering of individuals. This can include great evil and great good because society is comprised of humans with this dual nature.
When left to their own devices rather than being managed by some centralized planning agency, the effect of people’s efforts can increase exponentially. This freedom is how the greatest human accomplishments are achieved, and is how all life progressed to its current levels of evolution before government.
By packaging “anarchy” as this alien force that undermines human society, statists are essentially refusing to allow the baby to have a bath, rejecting the great good that freedom can bring. We need that freedom to solve the many great problems society faces.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
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In Reply To
Jeffrey_Flint
July 7 |
I always find it interesting that people often differentiate between, segregate, “humans” and “nature” as if humans are not a part of nature. Similarly, people often differentiate and segregate “humans” and “government” as if humans were not a part of government, as if in fact the government wa…
Previous Replies
Starchild
July 8 |
Yes. I often note that taxation is theft and a form of slavery (not the worst form, but a form), and this is true precisely because of its scheduled/ongoing/systemized nature. But it being slavery doesn’t stop it from also being theft. In this case I just mentioned theft for comparison purposes – apples to apples.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
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FRNP
July 8 |
“Theft” is some rare unforeseen offense that catches the victim by surprise; when the thief has Your dumb @$$ on a schedule like a milk cow, You Are A Slave.
— mARTy
“Remember, your govt — wherever you are — considers you as a milk cow. And history has shown that if they need to, they’ll use you as a beef cow as well. Make sure you’re the one who controls your life, not some politician or bureaucrat.”
— Government Treats You Like a Milk Cow… Doug Casey Shows How to Avoid It
By Doug Casey, International Man
April 15, 2021, @LewRockwell, Government Treats You Like a Milk Cow…How To Avoid It - LewRockwell
https://twitter.com/Shawington/status/1468978079376633858/
Starchild
July 8 |
P.S. – I forgot to include the link to the eye-opening statistics about government theft in the U.S. exceeding “private” theft:
“The nonprofit Institute for Justice About Us - Institute for Justice has just released the 3rd edition of its Policing For Profit https://ij.org/wp-content/themes/ijorg/images/pfp3/policing-for-profit-3-web.pdf report, examining the abuses of civil asset forfeiture by local police across the United States. According to their data, local police departments have seized more than $68 billion dollars worth of personal property without due process over the last 20 years. In fact, since 2014, police have been stealing more than actual burglars—and most of that came from people who hadn’t been convicted of a crime.”
Boing Boing – 21 Dec 20
US Police have stolen $68 billion in the past 20 years from American citizens…
The nonprofit Institute for Justice has just released the 3rd edition of its Policing For Profit report, examining the abuses of civil asset forfeiture by local police across the United States. Acc…
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
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Starchild
July 8 |
Paul,
Please see my further replies interspersed below…
Paul_R_Cavanaugh Libertarian Party of San Francisco
July 8
The spontaneous ordering of individuals is always a hierarchy with the strongest oppressing the rest to the largest extent possible in any society.
Not true. When people queue for a line, do the strongest always wind up at the front? No – at least in this society, lines usually form in order of arrival.
“When left to their own devices rather than being managed by some centralized planning agency, the effect of people’s efforts can increase exponentially.”
This is never true in any civilization where there isn’t a strong central government protecting those individuals from having the fruits of their efforts immediately stolen.
Sure it is. The most government typically does in regards to theft – in cases where government personnel are not themselves the thieves, as is frequently the case – is respond to it after the fact, often with as much or more emphasis on punishing the offenders as in getting the stolen property returned to those from whom it was taken. State power offers little to no protection against the fruits of their efforts being “ mmediately" (or later) stolen.
In regards to theft, see also the story at this link, which reports on how government in the United States has stolen more money through forfeiture – not even counting “ordinary” coercive taxation! – than non-State thieves over the past couple decades:
That’s why the vast majority of technological achievements have occurred under the umbrella of a strong government, usually either a world power or in the shadow of a world power. It’s one of the reasons that Africa and the New World were virtually devoid of technological progress since their kings lacked the technological ability to control (you would call oppress) the population to the extent necessary to make it safe to innovate.
I think you have it exactly backwards. The degree of oppression or control exerted by rulers over ordinary people in Africa and the New World was often just as great as in the so-called “world powers”. Think of the African/Middle Eastern slave trade, or the human sacrifices of the Aztecs and other mesa-american empires. Technological innovation is the fruit of liberty, not of state control!
I don’t know why this is always lost on you. The Renaissance didn’t happen until governments became powerful enough.
The Renaissance occurred first not under a strong empire, but in the commercial Italian city-state of Florence, spreading from there to other decentralized Italian city states like Venice, Rome, and Genoa, which crucially enjoyed high levels of international trade, something that occurs despite – not because of – government controls. Renaissance values centered not around State power, but around a spirit of rationalism and humanism that developed through art, culture, and science. See e.g. Where Did the Renaissance Begin?.
The industrial revolution didn’t happen until governments became strong enough.
I don’t find that credible either. What evidence do you have that the Industrial Revolution was the result of government becoming stronger? There is a fairly balanced and detailed analysis at https://jenni.uchicago.edu/WJP/papers/Harris_govt_and_econ.pdf which does not come to any such conclusion:
"The ever-important question, what was the contribution of the state to
the first industrial revolution, has not been satisfactorily answered in this
chapter…
The British way seems to have been the middle road: not an entrenched
constitution but not royal despotism, not super-rational and organised
Roman law but not total identity of law with politics, not completely
centralised but not overly decentralised, not a state taken over by big
business and robber barons but not a planned-from-above economy. Hind-
sight shows us that something in this mix did the trick, since Britain
experienced unprecedented economic growth, by both comparative and
inter-temporal standards, during the 150 years discussed here. But which
elements of the mix contributed more to growth, which contributed less
and which hindered it? More research by economic, political and legal his-
torians, pragmatically employing the theoretical tools of the various dis-
ciplines and better utilising some of the less-explored historical sources,
will be needed before a new synthesis can emerge.”
Rome didn’t invent virtually everything we have in civil engineering until they became powerful enough.
And what evidence do you have that these inventions were the result of State power? More to the point, how do you believe the growth of government helped the Mediterranean civilization under Roman domination? A 1987 essay by Nicholas Davidson published online at https://fee.org/articles/the-ancient-suicide-of-the-west/ traces the opposite effect – how that civilization slowly declined and eventually collapsed due to statism. This section offers a broad synopsis:
"The Free Market of the Ancient Mediterranean
Classical civilization was a middle class civilization. It stood at the pinnacle of a long process of democratization that had begun hundreds of years earlier. Broadly speaking, the aristocrats first overthrew the kings. The oligopolies they established were in turn overthrown by the upper middle class.
A vast development of trade between the ninth and the fifth centuries B.C. underlay this development. The central importance of commerce was self-evident to the ancient Greeks. As Plato has Socrates say in the Republic, “To find a place where nothing need be imported is well- nigh impossible,” to which Socrates’ interlocutor rejoins, “Impossible.”[3 https://fee.org/vnews.php?nid=1841#3]
The expansion of trade gave rise to a large and affluent middle class. Two of the criteria of aristocratic worth—wealth and military value—simultaneously passed to the middle class. Building on these assets, the middle class sought and in many cases achieved cultural and political influence commensurate with its economic power. By the peak moment of Greek civilization in fifth century Athens, the upper middle class occupied a position roughly analogous to that of the upper middle class in Britain after 1688 or France after 1789, as the cultural center of society.
If the Greeks, along with the Phoenicians and their Carthaginian descendants, were a thorough success as merchants, they were less successful in their political efforts. They experimented with every form of government without ever transcending the specter of political instability. But the political turbulence of the Greek world may have held unsuspected economic benefits.
The disunited world of the ancient Mediterranean constituted a de facto free market. States, each one seeking its own interest, competed against each other, with none able to gain a lasting advantage. In this setting, commerce flourished. The population and prosperity of the Mediterranean basin increased dramatically.[4 https://fee.org/vnews.php?nid=1841#4]
Little by little Rome swallowed up the states of the ancient Mediterranean, such as Mar-seille, Syracuse, Carthage, Athens, and Egypt. At first the benefit seemed enormous. The chronic war and piracy which had plagued the Greek world were suppressed. Briefly the world knew peace and order and was able to expand its infrastructure. The ancient world reached yet a new peak of population and prosperity.[5 https://fee.org/vnews.php?nid=1841#5] But the state which made this possible carried within itself the principle of its own destruction."
– From https://fee.org/articles/the-ancient-suicide-of-the-west/
What you consider oppressive power is the only thing that made the modern age possible yet you constantly attack it.
Innovations like the flush toilet and the modern arrangement of homes designed for comfort rather than majesty (e.g. with specialized rooms and spaces for separate purposes like bathing, dining, dressing, and storage) didn’t become widespread until a stock market developed that allowed enough wealth to be created independent of the ruling aristocracy for demand to spur innovation. (An insight I gained from a book I’m currently reading, “The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual – and the Modern Home Began” by Joan DeJean, published 2009.)
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
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Paul_R_Cavanaugh
July 8 |
These are all dogmatic assertions devoid of context. With such an oppressive evil government, one might wonder why there are far more people trying to get into this country than get out.
In fact while getting out is trivial and nothing more than a declaration of non-citizenship, getting in takes years or decades if it’s even possible at all.
The facts simply don’t match any of your rhetoric.
~ Paul
FRNP
July 8 |
When anyone else takes The Fruits of Your Labor & Your Earnings & Savings, under threat of FORCE, & uses them for their own aggrandizement & stuff You would never ever in a million years voluntarily support financially — Libertarian/libertarian or not in My extensive first hand personal public engagement Experience — :
• The #USgovt #militaryindustrialcomplex ( 80+ illegal unConstitutional criminal immoral violent bloody invasions occupations & crimes against humanity & millions of innocent strangers — per @WatsonInstitute );
• The #USgovt #industrialprisoncomplex ( putting violent felons & peaceful drug offenders in private single occupancy luxury rooms would cost Taxpayers less by almost half as much );
• The #USgovt #govtschools ( the most expensive & least productive in modern western civilization );
• The #USgovt IRS DEA …alphabet soup cesspool;
• The #USgovt corporate cronies Phizer LockheedMartin BigPharma ( & actually paying full market price up front for ) BigSugar BigAlcohol BigCorporateSports BigInsurance;
• etc etc
… — You Are A SLAVE.
Sober Libertarians ( blissfully ignorant Greens Reds Blues CommiePinkoSocialists et al drunk & pacified on #USgovt fumes get a slight pass for being hopelessly intoxicated & blind ) under the unfounded delusion that they have any semblance of “Freedom” under the #USgovt should just try to BOYCOTT funding even one of the above categories to verify how quickly “Mas’sa Sam” locks Your illiterate innumerate tail in prison for at least 10 years.
This Lady in Safeway Today had the right idea ( I couldn’t read the tag line/url of the org She is representing, but it should be merch for the @LPofCCC or SFLP ).
— mARTy
“None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.”
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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On Tuesday, July 11, 2023 at 09:44:00 AM PDT, Starchild sfdreamer@earthlink.net wrote:
On Jul 10, 2023, at 2:47 PM, Roy Ferreira ferreirar6248@yahoo.com wrote:
On Sunday, July 9, 2023 at 08:29:27 PM PDT, Starchild sfdreamer@earthlink.net wrote:
On Jul 9, 2023, at 7:44 PM, Roy Ferreira via LPSF Forum noreply@forum.lpsf.org wrote:
