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Who here believes in it, and why do you prefer it over other systems?

If Socialism would alleviate the fear Americans face daily of how to provide for your family I would take it over capitalism any day.  We were brain washed as children to believe "America is Great" and free.  What a bunch of horse @#%#@.   I would love to live someplace where I can wake up in the morning and smell the roses instead of what we have today where all you can smell is the sweat of fear.  Hate, lack of empathy and total greed is what we have.   If you were not lucky to be born with healthy, secure middle, upper or rich class parents who did not divorce then there is no hope for you.  If one of your parents becomes disabled to soon then there is zero freedom and opportunity for you.  Your life becomes nonexistent due to the responsibilities of disability and the inability to cope with imprisoning your loved ones in a hellish nursing homes.  There is no help or assistance.  Only Fox news telling you its your fault.

Oh come on.  If they make use all beggers then we are easier to please.

Long forgotten would be that good life you mention, just little trinkets, cigarettes, maybe a free Obama phone would do the trick.

I think with technology progress and increasing automation (when "Luddite fallacy" will be no more fallacy) many governments will have no other choice than to reject market capitalism. Europe will be the first IMHO.

Earl Warren famously said that most people consider the things that government does for them to be social progress, and those things which government does for others to be socialism.

I find it useful to use a definition of socialism based on political theory rather than just the right demonizing the left and vice versa. And the closest thing I've found is that socialism is the ownership by the people of the means of production. In practice that ends up meaning ownership by the government.

So let's start there by saying that if I say that I'm in favor of socialism, it does not mean I am in favor of class-based transfer of wealth. If government paves roads, it owns the means of production of roadways. If government provides public schooling, well "production" might not be the right word there but it applies there as well. Many people on the right who are in favor of government building roads and keeping public schools will sputter, "that's not socialism" but my response to that is: get real. It's not necessarily left-wing redistribution of wealth (though there is an argument to be made, I'm not going to make it here) but it is socialism.

So, yes. I am in favor of some socialism. Government ought to own the means of production of some services.

That said, I am not in favor of redistributive practices. "Rob from the rich and give to the poor" does not sit well with me. What I prefer is more like "rob from the rich and give to everyone." That's not entirely accurate but illustrative. First, I take it as a given that the rich will bear more of the burden than those who are less rich. I am even in favor of a slightly progressive tax system. But even with a non-progressive totally flat tax system, most of the money would still be coming from the rich. So no matter what, even if government is stripped down to nothing but national defense, we're still going to be robbing (mostly) from the rich.

The question is: what to do with what we've robbed? I believe that the important thing here is that everyone ought to have equal access to whatever it is that government supplies by spending tax dollars. Roads? Everyone has access, rich or poor. Public schools? Everyone has access, rich or poor. If the wealthy are paying for it, they ought to have access to it too.

I also believe that the closer you are to home, the safer socialism is. I live in a city with municipal power but I would not support a plan for the federal government to take over electricity in the United States.

And i believe that important distinctions are lost in the din of "socialism" versus "fascism" when neither side is really either.

I could go on, but I did once a few years ago: http://splicer.com/2010/12/28/toward-new-right (http://splicer.com/2010/12/28/toward-new-right) in which I describe myself as a socialist republican. I've already crossed the TL;dr threshold here.

typically i like to play the devils advocate but i really dont even know how to formulate a single remotely defensible argument for socialism. if someone put a gun to my head and forced me i would just have to use irrelevant semantic quibblings, appeals to aesthetics, strawmen and red herrings like the statists of these forums.

Well, as long as there are other states, we will need a national defense because those other states will send people with tanks and bombs to annex us. It might not be Canada or Mexico either. So any strategy for getting to a post-statist world will have to be a slow one. So at the very least we need nationalized (==socialized) defense. Maybe only for a few dozen generations until humanity evolves but in my lifetime I don't see a non-state solution to the issues that face us.

Interesting insight, thank you for the well thought-out response.  Any thoughts on the novel by Orwell, 1984?  Also, when people who advocate socialism say, "Well that's just American propaganda that you're saying--that's not real socialism," exactly what are the differences between "Americanized" socialism and actual socialism?

If they did that they would bankrupt themselves.   The largest military in the world with more resources by far than any other military can't successfully invade relatively weak countries.

Japan didn't want to invade America because there would be a gun behind every blade of grass.  The national defence excuse for a state is actually pretty weak when you really examine it.

A stable and free economy that allows as many people as possible to support themselves is the most crucial thing.   There will always be needy people in society but you can't help those people if you have a failing or collapsing economy which is where socialism leads.   Rich economies are able to afford philanthropy not poor ones.

Government supporters always have different ideas of what they think govt should be.  It should always be what they want it to be.   If they actually thought about this they'd realise the concept is nonsensical, because people are always going to be fighting over it and generally the most devious and power-hungry will succeed and get what they want.  And funnily enough, that's exactly how the world is today.

We're agreed on all of this. Where we (seem to) differ is that I believe in enough government to enforce rules against force and fraud and… I'm skeptical about the argument that the defense argument is a weak one. If nothing else, a foreign army could take out California where we have enough gun control that we'd be sitting ducks if the armed forces disappeared.

I'm in favor of the sorts of things that support equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcome. I think those things do some good and while I'm willing to entertain the notion that eventually we'd be better off if everything were strictly voluntary, there is the question of how to get there from here and I think slower is better than faster and there is an order in which things ought to be changed. I think it would be a mistake to eliminate public schools or even welfare programs while we still have enormous portions of our crony economy being siphoned off into corporate bailouts and boondoggles. (Those things, while redistributive, are not socialism, though they certainly are not capitalism either)

Just a quick clarification on the terms.  Ownership by the people of the means of production does not work for purposes of discussion as a definition.  The simple reason is that today we have many political parties who advocate something other than that under the umbrella of socialism.  For example, the broad trends in "Social democrats".

Take Australia.  Definitely socialistic, but ownership of the means of production for the most part is in the hands of the people.  You see, taxes average 60%, and by varying the tax percentage you can effectively own that fraction of the "means of production" while leaving the ego of the business owner intact that he "owns it".

By your definition, title would have to pass to the government before "socialism" existed.  In fact, many businesses are essentially controlled and operated by the government even though they are private businesses.  They are simply hired by the government to do jobs for it.

Thus, it might be better to view socialism not as the takings, but as the givings.  There it is much cleaner.  The givings include both those to individuals, as in welfare, and to companies, which in that role are just an extension of the state.  By looking at the outflows, we see the scope of interventions in the free society of the state, and can critically judge them.

By contrast, were one to look just at 'ownership', what we don't know is what the evil state did with the money....if there was any, in reality after inefficient collectivist management, the net is likely a loss.  Which leads one to ponder whether the truly clever and most evil socialist would prefer the capitalist state, from which he could suck the most blood, between his retiring to the crypt before the sun rose.

A consider myself a 'socialist' but that is mainly because I rely on myself to define the term rather than accepting the spin that others use to color and contrast it.  A run-down of my philosophical chain of thought follows.

1)  Human history has been dominated by a hunter-gatherer mode of existence and that is the social grouping mode that we've evolved toward being successful in.  As populations have grown this mode is largely obsolete.  In this mode of existence individual variation in humans would account for, for instance, a somewhat larger production of game.  But these societies tend to be very equitable so the best one achieves for being superior is a little extra respect.

2)  In modern societies a modest elevation of one skill or another can translate into a lasting accumulation which impoverishes the rest of the group in some proportion.

3)  In even more modern societies like the US today, there a modest wealth accumulation can be leveraged in a sling-shot effect to create enormous accumulations and impoverish an even larger percentage of the population.

4)  Significant disparities in wealth inevitably lead to social strife and revolutions which are bloody and unpleasant.  In the proceeding interval (which can last for generations) totalitarian systems develop in order to protect the wealth accumulations and that makes life less than ideal for most people.

5)  The synthesis of 1-4 lead me to the conclusion that 'distribution of wealth' is necessary for stable and tolerable existence in society.

6)  Distributing this wealth in the form of education, health care, insurance for those who have the misfortune of being invalid or aged, etc, is to me the most logical course of action and will product the largest amount of human content.  If it can produce a society which the participants can be proud of then it is likely to have the credibility to be enduring.

Political parties lie and redefine words as a way of misleading people. I just went to a dictionary:

socialism noun
The theory, principle, or scheme of social organization which places the means of production of wealth and the distribution of that wealth in the hands of the community.

I'm pretty sure I don't understand your distinction between it being about the "givings" rather than the "takings." I'm not saying you're wrong, just that I don't know what that means.

When I see socialism, what I read is "forced monopolies on certain services, leading to restricted supply and/or higher prices than a free market would achieve".  

That's what means of production in the hands of the community means to me.  And of course, when we say community, we really mean it's in the hands of the government.

Socialism has a nice warm, fuzzy feel to it, along with the name.   Being against it almost makes you seem anti-social.   But I think when you look at the way it operates in the real world what you find is that socialism itself is anti-social.  It is about using force and coercion which most people regard as unacceptable in their private lives.

Being free market doesn't make you callous.  It's the only way to generate true wealth in society and is not incompatible with charity.  Quite the reverse.

Don't go to a dictionary, go to Wikipedia.  You'll see the entire group of definitions discussed in length. 

takings - money the government takes from me for whatever it does
givings - money the government spends on whatever it chooses to

I'm just saying that as a way around discussing the meaning of a word, which is sort of not productive, if you look at the 'givings' and/or proposed extensions or reductions of them, you can get somewhere.

Here's another way to think of it.  Let's say Canada turned anarchist.  Do you think there would be much support for the US government to go invade them?  Think about what they had to do to invade Iraq and that is a country where, let's face it, few Iraqi's and Americans knew each other.   Do you think people would say, yeah that's OK, go get em or would they be outraged at their govt killing peaceful people, many of whom would probably have friends or relatives there, etc...?

No, it doesn't. Think outside this typical US-AynRandian proprietarian filter bubble.

Or, better put, Libertarian Socialists (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism) would argue similarly about capitalism: The accumulation of property leads to concentration of power. And if there is no state to take over, it creates a state to protect itself. It's nothing else but the imperialist history of this planet.

If you call an island your property, what else are you than the state of this island, and a dictator even at that? Eventually the inhabitants of the island may start to rebel against you. So you invent religion to pacify them. When that no longer works, you give them "democracy" and laugh your ass off. Then there'll be a "libertarian movement" on this island and you'll laugh even more at all the people, as they seem to want to become just like yourself.

Agreeing on what constitutes "equal opportunity" has proven to be quite difficult.  Beyond the most basic human rights, no one seem to agree on a minimum level of "opportunity" every citizen should be afforded, or at which point should "opportunity" funding be stopped, and self-funding begin or otherwise be considered a missed opportunity.

Yeah, if there were a very substantial (and threatening to the power structure here) change in Canada's political structure, I'd give it ten years tops before the entirety of Canada were annexed by the US, or "liberated" back to British rule, mostly using US troops.

Fox News and MSNBC would flood the airwaves with disinformation that appeared to contradict each other but really amounted to a question of whether Canada was now a threat or a menace. The border would be closed.

Hell, now that I'm thinking of it, I'd give it ten months (maybe ten days) before the US was lending "military aid" (in the form of boots on the ground) to something they at least claimed had been the peaceful leadership. We might build something that looked a lot like Canada's old government to "help."

If a Republican were President at the time there would probably be massive protest. If a Democrat were in the White House, the anti-war left would stay home and quiet, just as they have since 2009.

The problem with anarchy is the existence of sociopaths, who expand their behavior to profit them until stopped by some form of threat. In the absence of rule of law, we would be ruled by the bullies. Groups of people tend to lead their organizations toward behavior much like sociopathy. And nations are perhaps the worst sociopaths of all. That is why when Thomas Paine called government necessary, he called it a necessary evil. If you think the United States would not roll tanks across the northern border to combat an anarchist uprising, you are deluding yourself.

Fully agreed. It's a principle on which reasonable people can and do disagree. It doesn't mean that the idea is invalid or even meaningless. Some people don't agree with it at all but I think it is the sort of question which must be asked when doing anything that looks like redistribution of wealth or pelf.

I'm a socialist. I do not agree with having a huge state with immense power over the people, but as a way of living I feel socialism is the most rewarding, fuck buying all sorts of necessary crap to make your neighbor jealous. I want a society that praises human interaction and a wonderful community.

From a socialist, my goal for Bitcoin is to rip all the rich countries from their third world oppressing thrones and create a more equal and richer world. If the world could work more as one, then I expect socialism, and in the end communism, would be entirely plausible and preferable for everyone.

Dunno if it will happen that way, my guess is 50/50 on extinction of civilization vs. taking the step towards being a type one civilization. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale)

But hey, I'm still young and naive, right?
 

Being a Canadian....I guess I am "socialist" by association of my Canadian citizenship. 
Although, the Europeans are socialist too, but their taxes are so much higher and they get way more benefits than the Canadian system, but their politicians stoled all the government money like the United States, and now their system is collapsing.

Canadians live under a socialist system of high income taxes, hidden taxes (in gasoline) and social services taxes.  Supposedly because of our low population of 33 million people , we pay higher prices on food, clothing, cars, electronics....  uhm why I don't I just say that we pay high prices for everything. 

You only get by in Canada, it is difficult to get rich. The definition for rich in Canada is $250,000 or more in savings.  For a good 90% of Canadians saving that much is extremely difficult, due to the high taxes and living cost.

The trade off for expensive cost of living and high prices is generally the social services...like unemployment insurance, disability insurance and old age pension.  Though these are under attack by our stupid government wasting tax payers money.

I just got back from a 10 days vacation in Miami,  Fort Lauderdale and Key Largo , Florida.  Mind you I have traveled all over the U.S for work in the past 15 years and have noticed the gradual decline of certain areas and the debt situation in States and municipalities getting worse.

The U.S has quite the same social benefits, but what I and many Canadians have noticed is that U.S income taxes are much much lower, the price for food, clothing and gasoline is at least 30% less than Canada when dollar is almost at par (why do you think that their are millions of Canadians crawling around in U.S malls).  Canadians make a list and shop in the United States whenever they can.

The problem with the U.S right now is that the citizens of American have elected one idiot president after another, who have pillaged and plundered the U.S tax payers dollars.  Yes, these politicians have stolen billions of dollars over the last 10 years at an alarming rate.  The U.S is bankrupt not because the citizens haven't paid their taxes, it is bankrupt because the U.S citizens tax dollars have been used to fund politicians expensive lifestyles and to bail the big banks out and pay for expensive external warfare.

Many U.S States and municipalities are broke and social services (benefits to U.S citizens) is what is going to suffer, so what are they going to do is raise taxes and because of this......... a more socialist type system will eventually be coming the United States.  Americans can expect higher and higher taxes, because the tax coffers are empty...all stolen by politicians, bankers.

At worst, American income taxes may reach that of what Canadians are paying right now.
Hopefully, the U.S will not reach the level of taxes taken from citizens like that of Europe which is really high.

Canada, survived the banking collapse of 2007-2009 because our banks were more prudent than the U.S and Europe, also the Canadian government managed the Government deficit much better.  I guess, it was luck or just better Finance Minister in the Canadian government than the rest of the world.

Anyway, if any government is irresponsible than its citizens will suffer, and the economic system will eventually have to change.

CrytoCoinMKT

oh yea. im not a minarchist myself but i definitely can make a pretty strong defense of minarchism. i can play the devils advocate for that position pretty well i think. socialism is a whole different game.

thats cool that you want that, i say more power to you. capitalism is about recognizing that some people do want to buy a bunch of crap the make their neighbors jealous and respecting their right to do that so long as are working to earn those things and not stealing them. its about freedom, the freedom to live a minimalist life OR not.

I'm still trying to figure out the diff between capitalism and socialism.  The basic premise (I think; someone correct me on this) of capitalism is to take profit, invest it in some business (your own or someone else's), and then make more profit and repeat.  Is this not allowed in socialism, or is it setup so that it cannot be done as easily or at all?

It depends. Sometimes a state will declare a monopoly on a certain good or service, making it illegal to go into business and compete with the state in that realm. Other times, the state will be such a big competitor that it is much more difficult to compete either for market or resources.

And then you have something much worse than either socialism or capitalism: cronyism. That's when the politicians pass laws that force people to purchase goods and services from their friends and from the companies that the politicians have invested in. That's the sort of thing that the USA has more and more of. While we're fighting each other about capitalism vs socialism, the politicians and their cronies are laughing their way to the bank. As the situation gets worse, each side blames the problems on the other. Fox News says it's the fault of socialism and MSNBC says its the fault of capitalism. But as long as we keep playing that tug of war, the cronyism goes unchecked and gets stronger and stronger.

That's why I *facepalm* every time I see the capitalism versus socialism arguments. It's classic misdirection.

That makes sense.  So in socialism, would the state be likely to own Apple and Microsoft?

If the USA nationalized the computer industry, yes. Again we're sort of getting back to the question of how we define socialism. In a totally socialist state, every business, every activity would be owned and controlled by government. I don't think that has ever happened anywhere, but you don't have to go very far down that road before things get very unpleasant. If you don't look at it as an all-or-nothing question, there are degrees of implementation. Some countries, for example, have socialized medicine but are in other regards non-socialist.

Right on smscotten,

I do find it curious how many get sucked into rabid negativity with the concept of socialism, while simultaneously being blind to many socialist pillars they peruse everyday, to great benefit to capitalism, and most find very agreeable.

You mentioned socialized defense, roads/bridges and other infrastructure.  Of course, one can extend this to US justice and penal system, banking system (the Fed, FDIC), farming industry, food & drug quality control, air, land & water traffic control, and countless other endeavors have all been socialized for many, many years, as the better and most cost-efficient practice of providing reliable and credible services and protection to citizens.

By exempting from taxation money flowing to religious organizations, US citizens have also agreed to socialize organized religion.

Yet, this radioactive reaction to additional socialism doesn't land with certain people in the same hypocritical light as those that are able to consider socialism without the filter of the "communist" baggage of the Cold War.

Somehow, any additional aspect where it's proposed as area that fits well for a socialist solution, aha! that is the area that will create a slippery slope and sink the universe into an orgy of Nazi proportions.

I don't agree that all of those things are better because of government's hand but yes, I'm in full agreement about your larger point that people just use the term blindly without considering the things that can rightly be called socialist of which they do approve. Hence the earlier Warren quote about people believing that things that benefit them are social progress while things that benefit other people are socialism.

So right on, back atcha.

That's because it concentrates power in the hands of a few, and places trust in them to do the right thing. More often than not, they don't.

There's a strange contradiction in public opinion where I live (UK): most people (rightly) distrust politicians, and many think the government is incompetent. Yet mention privatisation, and expect to lose your head...


I'd love to see the Government release their monopoly on these services. Then we'd see a truly efficient and cost effective service.

I don't believe in socialism, capitalism, communism, fascism, anarchism, or any other of these damn "isms", because the moment people gather into "groups" - you can no longer trust them. We need a new paradigm. Perhaps something that combines the best ideas of all these "isms"?

 A partially socialist math based form of government with the president being an all knowing all seeing algorithm ?

  Algorism   :D

were you just proposing bitcoin is a product of algorism?

I'd trust SHA256 over any politician....and yet, wasn't bitcoin created by someone with equalizing ideas, and now supported and propelled by the world community?  By folks in Cyprus and Argentina, the Greeks, the Chinese....oh...mined by anyone with a power outlet and mostly Chinese ASICs and Chinese computing equipment running *gulp* open-source code?

OMG, can't touch it...can't touch it!

OMG, I knew it! I just knew it! Al Gore invented Bitcoin!

There is enough room on this planet for all of these "isms" and then some.  Everyone has their own personal opinion on which "ism" they would prefer to live in and would be best for them.  No one should be able to force their "ism" on someone else.  If you really want to live in a communist society, you should be free to live in North Korea or Cuba.  If you want to live in a socialist society, then you have the USA, France, Venezuela...  Now we just need to find a place to make a little room for the capitalists of the world.

Well there is a huge range of disagreement on exactly what these terms mean. They mean so many different things to so many different people so as to render them almost meaningless. what i can do is explain what they mean to me.

Capitalism is the physical manifestation of the generally held belief within a society that the individual (individuals) who creates (create) a thing is (are) the one (ones) who has (have) the right to determine whether or how that thing is used. Socialism on the other hand is the physical manifestation of the generally held belief within a society that the members of that society share the right to determine whether or how that thing is used.

Without delving too deeply into the economic arguments in favor of the former, which are myriad and some of which quite complex and nuanced, there is one simple intuitive explanation that is, in my opinion, in and of its self sufficient to make the case.

Say you have 365 people living on an imaginary island in an imaginary society. Every day all 365 go to the river to catch fish with their hands. They eek out a meager living this way with each person catching 1 fish each day. One day someone gets the idea of creating a net. he thinks that if he makes this net he may be able to catch twice as many fish per day. In order to create the net he would have to go a day with out fish, a very large cost indeed for a person who is already on the brink of starvation. Under socialism he would get to use his net 1 day per year. it is very unlikely that he would decide to go a full day with out eating in order to have a net for 1 day per year. In fact everyone who ever thought of the idea would come to the same conclusion and no nets would ever be made and the society would net (no pun intended) 365 fish per day. Under capitalism anyone who made a net would get to use it every day, and so everyone would decide it was worth it, everyone would make a net and the society as a whole would net 720 fish per day. This simple change of allowing the person to keep the products of his labor for himself has made the society as a whole twice as wealthy.

obviously i oversimplified and took a lot of things for granted. for example its unlikely that EVERYONE would make a net even under capitalism but it ought to be sufficient to communicate the general idea of dispersed benefits and concentrated costs (its weird saying that because im used to talking about the problem of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs).

I think it would be a more appropriate parallel of socialism, to say that on his one day off to make the net the society as a whole shared a bit of their fish with him, on the understanding that with his new found technology he would share some of his extra fish back to society, what you describe appears to me to more closely parallel communism. ???

I think what's missing in the fish story is where the guy takes the day off to sew his net, then asks his neighbor for half a fish. The neighbor refuses and the rest of the island comes over, beats up the neighbor, and gives his fish to the first guy. Thereafter, everyone starts making sure to share their fish, constantly looking over their shoulders to see if their neighbors are watching them to see how much fish they are sharing. When one neighbor only offers a third of a fish instead of a half, another neighbor finks her out and the whole island comes and beats her up. Most of the island begins to live in fear. Meanwhile, a few people start taking days off even when their nets are in good shape. Eventually those people are hanging out, eating the fish the rest of the islanders bring home. Then an islander gets injured and can't go fish anymore, but when that islander asks for fish there isn't any left because so many people took the day off and got in line for the fish first. Those people, who want to keep their free fish coming, point at the people who are fishing and accuse them of not helping the injured islander. They beat up more of the islanders to keep the productive islanders working harder and harder and collect the fish for all the injured islanders who need help. Unfortunately, none of the people collecting the fish on behalf of the injured islander bothers to bring any fish to the injured islander, who starves to death. Now the group of non-fishing fish collectors start recruiting others to help beat up the few islanders that are left actually going out and getting more fish. When meeting to organize, they decide they need a name for the group, so they call themselves "government".

(I call this Albacore Shrugged.)

Sharing is good. Forcing other people to share seems like a good idea, but giving power over people invites corruption and abuse. When that happens, the people who organize the "help" get rich and the people who really need help tend to get the short end of the stick. Or, all too often, the long, heavy end of the stick—and they get it over the head.

Well there will always be inefficiencies and inequalities in groups of people, so wishing for equity from hundreds of thousands is, I think, right there with the unicorns and fairies.
Everyone is fine with capitalists exploiting the inefficiencies and inequalities of others with less capital putting their capital at risk hoping to capture more capital for themselves, as a reward for lending others their money.
However, when it comes to government and charity, we all seem to grow purist expectations.
There will always be inefficiencies and inequalities in every human endeavor.  For every pure dollar in value achieved, an organized society will have to waste some capital to mitigate the real risk of fraud, abuse, and exploitation inherent in our human condition (a.k.a. non-value-added greed and theft control, in government, and regulations).  At the same time we clap for more a productive economy, we must be prepared to invest in better oversight of the social and economic activity.

It is what it is.  Whenever you have doubts about how wasteful government or charity can get, sit down with a military contractor to talk, or better yet, visit the Vatican, it's beautiful!

About 5 minutes after the bright idea of a net struck someone, the idea of (what we commercial gill-netter fishermen would call) 'corking off' the entire river would occur.  Fishing would be fantastic for about four years...at least for the guy with the lowest position in the river...then mysteriously dry up completely.

Many years later it would be discovered that salmon return to the river in which they hatched to spawn on a four year cycle and 'society' would devise something called the 'Department of Fish and Game' who would modulate fishing effort such that the commercial and substance harvest would sustain for the lasting benefit of the entire population.

Yes, because Capitalism (and other forms of collectivism) is always a "state bastard" (Paul C. Martin): a complicity between the capitalists and the state terrorists.

Thank you for the 19th century view on society and the environment. We live in the 21st century now, and we have a good understanding of the dynamics and interplay between our actions and the reactions of the environment. As I've told you many many times, your views demonstrate your ignorance of a lot of things, and that renders you unqualified to speculate like you do in your own vacuum of knowledge.

Have fun throwing out your little ideas. But they're kind of worthless absent any further knowledge. Must I point you once again to this long post I made a long time ago? It seems I need to.

The post in question: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97243.msg1073879#msg1073879

wowowow so many strawmen and herrings guys come on.

Of course things are missing from the example. i could write a 10,000 page book and things would still be missing. the purpose is to demonstrate a problem that exists when individuals are forced to share the products of their labor with people who did not aid in the creation of those products.

wow guys, wow.

anyway i hope my comment helped to answer some of the OP's questions, that was its intent, not to outline a grand universal theorem of the universe.

Mainly 'readers'.

the quotation marks are throwing me off, is that a joke at my expense?

To come in again: I respect your expertise in environmental issues, but it simply does not follow that a system based on private property rights in place of government regulations and coercions would result in ecosystem destruction. Loggers and poachers are not the only actors in the system - conservationists would be free to 'homestead' the forests and take ownership of protected zones. With people such as yourself making decisions in the private courts, those rights would be respected and protected.

In the system we have now, governments make regulations in the name of environmental protection, while giving exceptions to certain well connected parties.

Yes...yes it does follow.

Your statement only occurs in exceptional small-scale cases where preservation of the ecosystems happens to be vital to the economic activity within the private property.  These two conditions are rarely aligned, and never over any significant land area.  RARELY.

The inevitable scenario is: individual property owners engaged in economic activity will have little incentive to learn or value what aspect of the ecosystem they could potentially impact.  These owners typically figure out the cause-effect of their actions once it's irreversibly impacted...if ever.

This goes on now even under the most intense regulatory regimes and in the face of evidence and enforcement.

Will you please state any example, anywhere in the world, where significant swaths of privately-held, economically-productive land have resulted in long-term preservation of the inherent ecosystems in the absence of intervention from regulatory action?

You know, just anywhere in the world?

dominicus, in a theoretical perfect world where we could track every molecule we might have success tying ecological health to property rights. "Waitaminnit, that's my water you're poisoning. I'm taking you to court, buddy."

And if someone gets poisonous chemicals into your food at home? Castle doctrine. Time to get your gun.

If people don't want to conserve the environment without government, why would they want to with?  If the point is not ultimately, "I don't care because I want to force people to do X instead of doing Y", then I'm not following; PETA could also make this argument; the hooded order could make this argument; anyone with any ideology at all could make this argument.  Yes, we can use government for any purpose we so desire; we could even kill all the Jews because fuck all, if we think it's right, we think everyone should think it's right--am I right?  Is it simply an unfortunate truth that preservation of the environment can only be achieved through force, or are we turning a blind eye to alternative methods of changing people's minds?

Further, isn't privately owned land technically the same as publicly owned land if it is owned by government?  And if the government is merely a collection of people who decide, invariably, what they will do on their private land, then the initial question is presented again: If people don't want to conserve the environment without government, why would they want to with?  For, it would seem to me, if we truly wanted to, we would be doing so right now, without need of government intervention, and the business owners who, of course, rely on our business, refuse to help us in our cause, would go swiftly out of business without our help--that is, except if there's still swathes of people who don't believe in your cause, which would be the case if the environment is still in extreme danger.  Therefore, your problem is still there: your problem is to change minds.  Without this, government or not, you can expect to achieve nothing, no matter what you fight for.


Don't we know where fluoride comes from?  :P

You fail to recognize that we already live in a world where you can sue and engage in private arbitration. We already have class action lawsuits. We already have demonstrators. We already have conservation groups.

You need to understand how property owners seek near term profits. Property owners do not seek alignment with neighbors to decrease or eliminate edge effects. Property owners do seek to create fences. Read the long post I made which I provided a link to a few posts back. Argue against it to make your point.

That's kind of the point. The EPA, among others, can force them. You know, that whole coercion thing you're against? If you don't want to, then tough shit, you do need to be coerced.

Sorry, I don't buy it. Apply that to other sorts of things that there are laws against. Do you say, "you can't stop people from killing each other. No, you can't. You have to change people's minds or else there is no purpose passing a law against murder."

Yes, I'm well aware of the straw man I've just built. I think it's a rather nice straw man.

That is somewhat the point I want to make.  There is a law everywhere in this nation against killing, and yet murder rates are all over the place in every city.  It seems to me that a law against killing, despite having much the same consequences, does not stifle murder.  Rather, I don't want to kill you because I have food, and water, and all the things I could ever hope for (chiefly, a computer with Internet access.)  If, however, it was a life and death sort of thing, and you had food and water, or the thing which could get me food and water, that being money, I would kill you if it meant my own survival.  Violent crime, it appears to me, is spawned from necessity, and there is a lot of that going on even in this nation, but violent crime is even more prevalent in places where one's survival is threatened.

Anyhow, if we made a law that said, "If you kill someone, we will kill your entire family," murder rates could still be high or low, depending; I don't think history has shown this has ever stopped crime, which would imply that crime is not affected by law.  But in the case of murder specifically, the solution isn't to change someone's mind; the solution is for them to not have a reason to murder, which is essentially what we're all driving for, I believe, whether we're socialist or not.  This, of course, does not apply to organized crime, but the mafia isn't that much different than government in this respect.  Anyway, for now, until we get this mess sorted out, trying to change a murderer's mind isn't going to help the position he is in.

Comparing murder to ideologies is a bit different, though; murder isn't something we do because we believe in it, except for the tiny amount of sociopaths among us who don't care how they get their way, and I believe it's clear what jobs they prefer and what positions they strive for, but when it comes to global issues, such as saving the animals or killing all the blacks, it's really not something we should force on people, for we would all be saving the animals or killing the blacks if it was something we all believed in.  I'll be honest, I don't give a fuck about the animals, and I'd rather not kill all the blacks, I like some of those fellas, but I don't think I should force people to believe in the same things I do.

[y]es.

thanks 'for' the clarification.

I get that, and I agree that the reason most people don't kill has nothing to do with the law but you're overlooking a few very important points. First, that we have a mechanism in place to prevent people from killing again if we catch them. Second, that that mechanism is overseen by everyone who lives under that system, and each of those people has a voice in changing that system. I don't mean to be pollyannaish about government, but we truly do have safeguards in place in many parts of the world. The legal disincentive regarding killing prevents many forms of organized murder, for the simple reason that someone might fink you out. Murder is something you pretty much have to do alone or with very close and trusted conspirators. Even that is a huge gamble.

Finally, here's another correlation that I won't pretend is the whole story. Where (and when) the likelihood of being caught and imprisoned is higher, the murder rate is lower. People do, at least sometimes, consider consequences before engaging in violence.

I can surely see this happening; however, I believe this is more an effect of society frowning upon violence and murder, than there being a law; to take this a step further, I would say that people do not frown upon violence because there is a law, but that there is a law because people frown upon violence; it is because the to-be killer is connected with his fellow people that he is less likely to kill, for the same reason why he is less likely to go out in public naked--he feels connected with other people and we generally agree that we can settle our conflicts without violence.  Ergo, society first had to make the decision that they didn't like this, or at least their totalitarian leader decided it was bad (but of course, he's not typically going to stop himself.)  What may be interesting to see is, if a society agreed that killing was always legal, would murders go through the roof?  And would this be because there was no law against it, or because the citizens loved to kill?  If it's the former, it seems, death rates would go no higher; if it's the latter, they would've already been doing it to begin with.

Anyway, we're drifting; my initial point was, if government is the centralization of man's power, could he not make a conscious decision to how he would like himself to devote that power?  Must that power be taken from him for us to get anything done?  My only complain would be that we would be much too disconnected from one another to ever pull such a reality off--this is where centralization is the only way we could coordinate ourselves.  However, we are now so connected, we can freely talk to anyone in the world if we wanted, not to mentioned people in our very countries, states, neighborhoods; we're not at all disconnected anymore.  We can plan and plot by ourselves, now, from our very own homes.  I think we have the ability to reason and agree on the best way of running the general area in which we live, or at least find places we would enjoy better; I don't believe we must be forced, especially when the forcers are a minority of us (like PETA, or the hooded order, or corporations in the case of America), to better ourselves as another sees fit.  I believe, if a method of living is truly exceptional, it will stand out.  I argue that it is only through reason and peace that we will see an improvement in our conditions, as opposed to propaganda and violence; we did not achieve the idea of evolution by allowing the creationists to forever propagandize, ignoring calls of reason to state otherwise, and I do not believe we'll find peace and security through inherently violent governance, with a blind eye to attrocities.  I argue that government does not allow man to function, but man who allows government.

I fully agree that law should be and to a large degree is a reflection of a society's values. The people who break the law are more likely to be dissuaded by threat of violence and imprisonment than by peer pressure. If I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that we need to work on consensus about things like environmental impact before making laws about it. I assert that for much of it there is consensus, except for the minority who wishes to continue doing the things that the rest of us have deemed harmful. There are edge cases and points of controversy, of course, but pretty much everyone agrees that toxic sludge shouldn't be poured into the reservoir.

I know that's speaking in horribly general terms but in order to get more specific we'd really have to veer off topic further than we already have.

Yes.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/

I could go on and make a list, but it only takes one counter example to refute your point.

To give a broader perspective, an eighth of the world's protected nature reserves are privately owned (http://www.economist.com/node/748602). This is in spite of government interventions.

People don't need to be coerced into doing good things.

I completely disagree with this. It's dangerous to think that law should be a reflection of the transient 'values' of 'society'.

If 51% of people agree with slavery, does that make it OK?
If 51% of people think homosexuality is wrong, should it be illegal?

Oh come on. Don't be pedantic. I never said the transient values. Even the people who believe that homosexuality is wrong understand and approve of a system that preserves individual rights against the tyranny of the majority. Even if they are too narrow-minded to apply it to a specific case, they will almost all tell you that they defend the right for others to say and do things they disagree with. That's the whole reason the United States has a democratically-elected republican system of government instead of a democracy.

But for pete's sake, if the laws aren't a reflection of the beliefs of the people who are alive and part of a society now, then whose beliefs should they be a reflection of? Should people in Argentina make the laws for the people in Canada? Do we all get our laws handed down from visitors from another planet? Or maybe you get to be the dictator? Completely absurd!

The very idea you're talking about—that the majority shouldn't be permitted to trample the rights of a minority—that is a value. It is a part of the set of values that laws are founded upon. As values change, so too do the laws. If you have a better way, I'm all ears.

I don't know what kind of narrow definition of 'values' you think I'm using to think it is dangerous for laws to be based on values, but laws ought to be about right and wrong. Those sorts of beliefs are referred to in most of the English-speaking world as "values."

I'm hardly being pedantic, considering that homosexuality is still outlawed in many parts of the world. Add to that women's rights, political oppression... and you see why 'values' are a sticky subject.

In my opinion, laws shouldn't be based on any particular system of values, other than what is equitable between the parties at hand. Of course you can call that a value system in itself (nice circular argument), but I believe it's the only one which is consistent and fair.

Your damn "values" should stop at the point where they fuck with me AND vice-versa.

...And with incredibly rare-exception, criminal laws should not be applied to people who haven't done anything that didn't "directly" affect another.

BTW, You guys are making some great arguments here and it's been a very refreshing read from most of the tripe that's in other forums. Thanks!

Sorry to interject a random thought, but, I wonder if, in our world of global trade, where it's cheaper and more productive to compete in business than with tanks, if the concept of "standing armies for defense" is quickly becoming as obsolete as "building castles for defense?"

Which implies that the other 7/8 of the world's protected nature preserves are publicly owned. It sounds like the methods you advocate are about 1/7 as effective as government methods. I advocate both, to even larger degrees.

In fact, it's absolutely necessary. How often do you see urban and suburban areas becoming nature preserves vs natural areas becoming urban and suburban areas? As time passes, we end up with less and less natural areas. Once you learn about ecosystem services, this will scare you. See the long post I made to which I linked to earlier to understand better.

Also, please consider the ratio of the area of a nature preserve's land to its perimeter. This is a very important number. Again, read the long post I made to which I linked to earlier to understand it.

People don't need to be coerced into doing good things.
[/quote]

Not even worth replying to, given my above statements.

No, they should fuck with you if necessary. As an example, did you know that in many cities in California, you are forbidden to cut down oak trees of certain sizes? That's fucking with you. And I'm so glad for it.

The thing is, morals are subjective. You and I might be "moral" enough to know that slavery is wrong, and that homosexuals deserve equal rights, but that is our opinion.

If 51% of the people believe something, it makes sense that that should be the law, whether or not you and I agree with it.

Interestingly enough, you brought up two different examples which are opposites in terms of morality vs. majority. Arguably, slavery is wrong. The majority of people in the US believe this to be true. Yet you do not argue for hardliners that would legalize slavery. You're going against the minority.

The majority of people are against gays. Bigotry is immoral (by my standards), but the majority of people think that anti-gay laws are ok. I'm guessing based on the post, that you support homosexuals. You're going against the majority in this case.

You contradicted yourself. You supported the minority in the one case and the majority in the other. So how should laws reflect values of society? Why does it make sense that your morals should dictate laws, as opposed to the majority's views?

That's a gross oversimplification. When you consider that private entities don't have the power of compulsory purchase, (directly) enacting legislation in their favour, taxing for revenue, I think that 1/8th figure should be considered impressive.

Besides, the point wasn't about scale, it was to demonstrate that private property can be conducive to environmental protection.



Here's a perfect example of an unjust law - being coerced into preserving a species on behalf of those who want it preserved. I'm all for conservation, but it's something that individuals who support it should do themselves.

Precisely. This is why laws shouldn't be based on morals.


I couldn't disagree more. You're either contradicting yourself here, or you think the law should be subjective. The latter is worrying, in my opinion.


They are both hypothetical questions, I don't see the contradiction.

Laws should be based on principles of fairness, and natural rights (in oneself and one's property). No subjective "morals" should be involved.

What good is your point without factoring the relevance of scale? Is it due to you not understanding the issue?


But individuals won't. And that's the whole point. Thus regulations. Thank you for pointing out the ineffectiveness of your views.

I don't consider a law to be fucking with "ME" if it's necessary. And these types of laws are necessary because while an individual tree might not matter - as a national or global policy they certainly do: So I too am glad that they have this law.

However, your nonchalant and happy/wanting to fuck with me attitude (or in other words your taking pleasure in fucking with other people) now that bothers me. All I am going to say about this is go ahead fuck with people on purpose. See what that get's ya....

I am am somewhat surprised that with the advanced level of knowledge in here - that some in here still have no clue about the tragedy that's happened to our environment. And to those of you like this - do you not realize how much the temperature is expected to change by just 2050? Red Alert: Do you not realize the ramifications of this? This is far more dangerous that any so-called T threat or just about anything else. How the hell can you not get this? And are you effin crazy? We should all be extremely concerned about the environment and knowing-understanding that if we are to err - that it must be on the side of the environment. JFC, come on, quit rattling off crazy foxnews & teaparty talking points.

Maybe we're on the same page, for the most part. I'm not entirely familiar with your views, as expressed on this site, long term.

You might want to read this fairly long post I made some time ago: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=97243.msg1073879#msg1073879

"Principles of fairness"?
"Natural rights"?  You mean something like "Lebensraum ("living space") as being a law of nature for all healthy and vigorous peoples of superior races to displace people of inferior races"? (-wikip)

See below...


Individuals already have - that was my point! :D

Obviously scale is relevant, but we're not talking orders of magnitude here. 12.5% is impressive considering the powers that governments have!

I'm sorry that you think so low of your fellow man that you think coercion is the only means of protecting ecosystems... We humans are a better lot than you make us out to be. ;)

12.5 percent isn't enough. Scale matters.

Really, I think that the majority of us in here are on the same page for the vast majority of the issues - disagreeing mostly to small degrees. And I've been enjoying the read, so thanks I'll check out your post.

This is the first time i'm hearing these stats, what do they mean, exactly?

Check out my post now, if you would, please. And I'd say that I'm definitely not on the same page with many, if not the vocal majority here.

bitlancr claims that private property owners account for 12.5 percent of nature conservation. That begs the question where the other 87.5 percent comes from. Funny that he gloats over the idea that apparently the 12.5 percent is all that is necessary.

Excellent post! You took it to a level of thought that those who get their info from the boob tube almost never venture into.

Definitely, not on this issue. But...FWIW, you are speaking knowledge, logic and truth to misguided ignorance & feelings.

But your examples had to do with the law being based on morals.  ??? You said "If 51% of people agree with slavery, does that make it ok?" You implied that slavery is wrong. You're saying that we should follow your morals regardless of what the majority thinks.

Pragmatically, there is nothing wrong with slavery. So logically, if the majority of people believe in it it should be legal.


I think that you have your ideas confused with mine. My idea of laws is purely pragmatic: if the majority of people want a law, then it should be law. If the majority agrees with a law, then the majority will follow it. If the majority disagrees with a law, then more (not necessarily the majority) people will not follow it.

You, however, think that laws should be based on subjective opinions. You think that homosexuals should be allowed to marry just because you think it should be so. It has nothing to do with pragmatism (although bigotry is objectively bad). You also think slavery should be illegal, because that's your opinion. You don't care what other people think. That's why I said that you contradicted yourself. You supported the majority on one hand the minority on the other. You had no objective reason to go either way, or at least you haven't provided these reasons.

I, on the other hand, believe that laws should be chosen by the majority- whether I agree with it or not. I do not necessarily want people to pick the pragmatic option all of the time. Sometimes, "subjective" views, such as with slavery, must be taken.



First off, the gay question was not hypothetical. The majority is against gays, and they have no rights. The other was hypothetical, but I don't see why you asked it since it has no base in pragmatism. You apparently don't like subjectivity, yet you ask two subjective questions, one of which is not even based in fact.

The hypocrisy is driving me crazy. If laws are based on "fairness", then majority should rule. Why do you decide what is "fair" and what isn't. What makes slavery objectively unfair ? What makes discrimination against homosexuals objectively unfair? You say don't base things on "subjective morals", yet what you think should be law is based on your morals and ideas. In fact, who defined "fair"? Is it you? Is it me? I explained why mine made more objective sense- people are more likely to abide by laws that they agree with. If 51% of the people agree with a law, then 51% will follow it unquestionably. Explain why you deciding the laws based on your morals makes more sense.

Ironically, you mention "natural rights". Protip: You have no rights. Humans are the only animals who write up constitutions. Whatever you think is your "right" is subjective. Objectively, you have no rights. You are at the mercy of others. Murder, rape, theft, and other "crimes" have no real method of enforcement. The government may make murder illegal, but they can't bring you back to life if you're killed. Your "rights" are an agreement by the majority. There are some horrible people that would gladly murder or rape without consequences, but we do not give them that "right" because it is the subjective view of the majority.

As soon as someone brings property rights sans regulations into the argument, as it always happens around here, the proponents of such fail to make a case, but earnestly believe that they have made a case, precisely because of their ignorance.

Knowledge is key.

If you're one of those arguing for property rights sans regulations, you really need to formulate your arguments against the material presented in a post I made some time ago, but bears repeating, apparently, over and over. I quote the post verbatim here.

Content of post follows, including quoted remarks from the person I was responding to:


Okay, so let's go a little bit more in depth.


There are a number of flaws in your assumptions. We can walk through this.

To begin with, many species do not reproduce well in captivity. It took 112 years to yield a successful Sumatran rhino calf. Furthermore, poachers are simply not likely to expend such efforts, even if sanctioned, as it's much more profitable to simply poach, i.e. go out into the wild and kill. One need only look at the case of shark fins to understand the cost dynamics. Secondly, you are failing to acknowledge the public backlash in breeding megafauna for the cruel purpose of maiming (or in the case of pelts) killing the animal.

Before we go on, let's enumerate some well known cases of poaching:

- Gorillas for bushmeat
- Elephants for ivory
- Sumatran rhino for their horns
- Sharks for shark fins
- Tigers (and other big cats) for their pelts

Cattle are not killed for their horns or hooves alone. Cattle is an industry, and it does not analogize well. Most of the public accept the cattle industry. Most of the public do not accept killing animals which are endangered for specific parts, usually decorative. All of a cattle's parts are used when killed. This includes muscle tissue, organs, bones, hides and hooves. As an example, did you know that gummy bears are made from cow hooves?

I can sense that at this point, you might feel poised to counter some of the points I've made, and if you took one or two individually, you might feel that you'd have a case. But we haven't even begun, as I haven't yet shared with you what the real reason is for why I declared your statement to be based on false assumptions.

So let's begin. Some of the following material is derived from posts I have written in the past, but I think it will have greater effect if I merge it together here with a few edits and additions. Please read it through thoroughly.

Ever heard of the Spotted Owl and the controversy surrounding it? What was all that about?

The Spotted Owl is a top level predator in the northwest. It was declared an umbrella species (otherwise known as a keystone or flagship species), and listed as endangered. The timber industry had an issue with this. Here's why. The purpose of listing the Spotted Owl as an umbrella species was because in order to preserve the Spotted Owl population, the old growth forests in the northwest would have to be preserved as well. That meant the timber industry would not be allowed to harvest existing old growth forests.

Why are old growth forests important? Because they offer what are called ecosystem services. Secondary growth forests do not offer all those ecosystem services, nor at the same level that the old growth forests do. And that's it in a nutshell. It has been demonstrated that the Spotted Owl can live in secondary growth forests, but it cannot viably breed in secondary growth forests.

Thus, species such as the Spotted Owl are declared umbrella species to act as a protective umbrella for their respective environments as a way to protect those environments in perpetuity, because once they're all gone, the possibility of regaining all those ecosystem services that those ecosystems provide is pretty much nil.

Biodiversity, it's very definition, implies diversity, which arises from the existence of thousands, tens of thousands of species within any given ecosystem. This then results in the ecosystem being able to provide its services, known collectively as ecosystem services. The goal is to protect biodiversity by protecting ecosystems. A general technique for doing so is to declare a top level species within its respective ecosystem as endangered (because it is endangered or will become extinct if its ecosystem is destroyed) as an umbrella species. The ecosystem is then preserved under the umbrella of the umbrella species. This protects biodiversity.

Myrkul provided an example of relocating the Scimitar Oryx to a Texan hunting preserve as an example of species preservation, but it is not a case of protecting biodiversity.

As long as we don't disrupt natural ecosystems, they will provide everything listed below:

- Freshwater supply and flood control
- Generation and maintenance of soils
- Ocean flood protection
- Natural pest control
- Amelioration of the weather
- The cycling of nutrients
- Pollination of plants

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, published in 2005, breaks it down like this:

Supporting Services:

- Nutrient cycling
- Soil formation
- Primary production
- Preservation of genetic resources

Regulating services:

- Climate amelioration
- Flood control
- Agricultural pest control
- Water purification

Provisioning services:

- Food
- Timber and fiber
- Fresh water
- Fuel

Cultural services:

- Esthetic
- Spiritual
- Educational
- Recreational

Other disruptive effects to the ecosystem services enumerated above include harvesting resources (collateral damage), toxic waste, atmospheric pollution, garbage waste, over harvesting (fish), pesticides, noise, etc.

What disrupts the above?

Reduction in the number of top level predators. Top level predators, such as raptors, wolves, cats, etc. regulate the ecosystem by preventing overgrazing of vegetation, which plays a role in providing habitat to the smaller organisms, all the way down to the microscopic level, which in turn plays a role in nutrient cycling, water purification, soil formation, etc. In other words, top level predators ultimately affect the health of the entire ecosystem. This process, where top level species affect the environment as a cascading effect are known collectively as trophic cascades.

As an example, let's examine the case of wolves. Numerous species of wolves were eradicated in the twentieth century (by cattle ranchers, incidentally). As it turns out, it was determined that they played a role within the dynamics of the ecosystems. Their elimination resulted in a deleterious effect on the ecosystem services, due to the removal of a trophic cascade effect.

When in the presence of wolves, ungulates generally do not browse in riparian zones. Riparian zones are the areas of rich vegetation along the banks of streams, creeks and rivers. The reason ungulates do not browse in such areas when wolves are present is because their escape route is hindered by the slopes of the river bank, the body of water itself, and the denser vegetation. When wolves are removed, ungulates in general decimate the vegetation in these riparian zones, which in turn results in habitat loss for numerous species, typically beginning with rodents, and cascading all the way down to the microscopic level, where numerous species exist within the soil. This loss of habitat within the riparian zones results in a huge loss of ecosystem services, including nutrient cycling, soil formation, flood control and water purification

Edge effects are another disrupting process to ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide. Typically, property ownership is the cause. The fracturing of an ecosystem disrupts its viability, by inhibiting migration, reducing territorial area needed by top level predators (see above), and this ultimately reduces biodiversity, which reduces genetic information, a resource required for medicine, material science, engineering, computer science, etc.

Edge effects are a direct result of ecosystem fracturing, which will be defined and discussed. There is a whole cascade of effects and interrelated issues that apply here. They are:

- The importance of wildlife corridors
- The dangers of ignorance
- Exploitation via corporations
- Lack of regulation
- Solutions via private enterprise
- Habitat loss
- Information loss
- Bioproductivity loss
- Natural capital
- Water quality
- Trophic cascades
- Policies

The list goes on. And on.

The whole substrate upon which humanity, society, and life depend on begin in the soil and water (essentially our planet), as nourished by the incoming sunlight from above.

Here's a thought for you: the very complex systems which naturally occur within the soil and above the soil define everything we have to support ourselves and they define everything we have available to educate ourselves (outside cosmology and related fields). There is more going on here than you think. Humanity thus far has been built from those systems, but humanity itself is also depleting, fracturing (and thus destroying) the very systems which allowed it to come this far.

Edge effects: What are they? Imagine a parcel of land that is fairly large and of a particular shape, mostly undisturbed. Let's say it's unspoiled rainforest. We'll begin with a circle 100 miles in diameter.

The circle: A circle 100 miles in diameter has an edge that is 314 miles long. It's area is a little more than 7,500 miles. The ratio of area/edge is 7,500/314 which equals about 24.

The fractal shape: A fractal shape with an area of 7,500 miles but with a ragged edge that is 1,000 miles long has a ratio of area/edge of 7,500/1,000 which equals 7.5.

Among the two shapes described above, each say being a rainforest ecosystem, the circle will generally be healthier and more viable. What does this mean? The circle, will in general, be richer in all of the following:

- Number of species
- Lower extinction rate
- More nutrients within the soil
- Lesser vulnerability to drought, heat, cold, etc.
- More information, complexity and potential knowledge to be discovered within
- Greater productivity within: (i.e ability to nourish, support and grow)
- Ability to support larger fauna

A circle was used above as an example. One could just as easily substitute a square instead and get similar results. Therefore, consider a square 100 miles on a side. It has a ratio of area/edge of 10,000/400 which equals 25.

Assuming that square contains rainforest (but it could just as easily be another type of ecosystem), let's now fracture it. We'll turn it into a checkerboard of 64 black and white squares. Black are rainforest squares. White are squares burned to remove the trees, and then tilled for agriculture.

Our total area of rainforest within the checkerboard is now half what it was. The original square contained 10,000 square miles of rainforest. It now contains 5,000 square miles of rainforest. But look at the change in rainforest edges. The original square had only 400 miles of rainforest edge. The checkerboard has 1,600 miles of rainforest edge.

And so we can get a sense of the difference between these two extents of land. Recall that the unspoiled square had 10,000 square miles of rainforest and total edges measuring 400 miles with a ratio of 25. Look at the ratio of the fractured checkerboard to get a sense of how less rich its potential is. It's ratio is 5,000/1,600 which equals 3.125.

Compare the two numbers: 25 vs. 3.125.

What are some cases which cause edge effects?

Repurposing of land: Examples include agriculture, urban and suburban sprawl, etc.

Clearcutting: Clearcutting by the timber industry creates edge effects. Make no mistake about it - the ecosystem has been changed, and replanting of trees will not revert the area back to the original ecosystem in a period equal to the time it takes for the newly planted trees to mature. The original forest was an old growth forest, and when the newly planted trees finally mature, the resulting forest will be a secondary growth forest, which does not provide the same environment as the original old growth forest.

Roads: Going back to the circle example, if a road is placed through the center, then an edge effect is created. Depending on the type of road and how busy it is, the effect is dramatic. Essentially, you end up with two areas, each half the area of the original circle, and each area having an edge length not much less than the original circle. This is one of the reasons (among many) why there is such opposition to the idea of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It's not just the idea of potential damage from oil spills (which is real), but the road systems which would need to be built to access the enterprise.

Fences: Land left in its natural state, but fenced, also creates an edge effect. A very damaging example would be the fence proposed along the U.S./Mexico border by certain politicians.

That's a start. Let me know when you want more, as there is plenty more...

No, my examples were based on a certain fundamental right called the non-aggression principle (Google it). You can call that a moral if you wish, but I find it better to distinguish morals as the fleeting whims and superstitions of society at a particular moment in time. I believe that certain things can be held as self-evident, and shouldn't change.

So in all of this, my belief in the non-aggression principle is the only 'opinion' I'll concede. Everything else follows.


When did pragmatism come into the question? Ouch. *gets up off that slippery slope*


No, they should be based on the non-aggression principle. Support in that is the only opinion. From there everything is logical and consistent.


I think two adults should be able to enter into whatever mutually-agreed contract they please, and call it marriage. That's their right. Can they go into a church and demand to be married there? No, that's the church's right to refuse. Their property, their rules.


To support slavery, you either must think the non-aggression principle is void, or that the slaves are sub-human, so it doesn't apply to them. We can objectively confirm what is human and what is not, so assuming one supports the non-aggression principle, one cannot logically support slavery.


This inevitably leads to the oppression of minorities, which by the non-aggression principle is wrong.


Does not follow at all. If 51% vote for law X and benefit from at the expense of 49%, that is the very definition of unfair.


Protip: humans have rights precisely because we have the intellectual capacity to make it so.

You fail to make the distinction between positive and negative rights - positive being the right 'to' something. All your examples are positive rights, which don't follow from the non-aggression principle. Negative rights, the right 'to not be' murdered, etc, do follow.

FirstAscent, thanks for adding that, though I already read it earlier.

We don't disagree on the importance of natural ecosystems - we just disagree on the best way to protect them, taking into account the human factors...

It may be that central planning is the best way to solve this particular issue (I'm not convinced it is), but even then, you're discounting the whole host of other issues that come with it; to name a few:

- states who flat out ignore the rules (tragedy of the commons)
- wars
- oppression of minorities
- disincentives of innovation, subsidies for the status-quo
- financial system dependent on perpetual growth

Don't put opinion in quotation marks. That is your opinion, and it seems to form the basis for your ideas. I did not argue against subjectivity. You did. So don't bring up opinions unless you're going to change your views. Your "opinions", or morals, are just as "fleeting" as anyone else's.


You brought up subjectivity. Pragmatism, or objectivity, is the opposite.

If you're against subjective laws I'd assume you'd support objective laws. Or do you just like arguing?


The non-aggression principle is illogical in itself. It is the epitome of subjectivity. It says that regardless of the consequences, there should not be violence. It says that violence cannot be justified, which is a subjective, and opinionated view.


So if a country votes to ban homosexuality, that's ok? Their country, their rules.


Yes, because of your belief slavery is not supportable. I believe that slavery is bad too, because of my own principles. Both of our opinions are subjective, regardless of what you call it.


Cool, your opinion says it's wrong. Mine does too, what's the point?


Actually, merriam-webster says that the definition is "marked by impartiality and honesty" Impartiality would imply not taking a side. If you support the 51%, you are not impartial. If you support the 49% you are not impartial. No law will ever be "fair" unless everyone agrees with it, and no one ever will. So why support the minority? You seem to assume that the minority is being oppressed always, and that's why you support them. Do Apartheidists deserve their ideas to be put into place?


Nope, we do not have any "natural rights".

Let's use an example: You'd say that freedom of speech is a right, I'm guessing (even if you don't pick some right you do believe in). But what about countries with no freedom of speech. Are they subhuman? Do they not have the intellectual capacity to have these so called "natural" rights? Actually, they're one step ahead of you in that they know that rights are subjective. They are invented. You have no natural rights. Your rights are "guaranteed" by the state, which uses violence to enforce them. Kind of ironic seeing as you're against aggression. The state may enforce freedom of speech or they may enforce the lack thereof.


 ::) Ok. Fine, then let's replace the right to not be murdered with the right to murder. And how do "negative"or "positive"  rights not follow your principle.

Gays have the right to marry (no threat of violence or imprisonment): Positive right, follows principle
Gays cannot marry (no threat of violence or imprisonment): Negative right, follows principle.

Thread overload condition detected.  Please use  overflow space (http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/96/pg1/srtpages) to ensure continuity.

How is that a circular argument? If you think that what you are describing—opposition to political oppression, sticking up for human rights, desire for fair treatment under the law, respect for privacy and human dignity, and belief in an individual's rights to behave in ways other members of society disapprove of so long as they do not harm anyone—are not values, then we have to have a conversation about definitions of words.

J603, there's too many fallacious arguments in your reply. To summarise, is it fair to say you don't support the non-aggression principle? That is, you believe unprovoked aggression is warranted in certain circumstances?

smscotten, the difference is all these values derive from one core principle - non aggression - and it's not a wishy-washy principle like "we're all in it together" or "power to the people," it's a well defined, logically sound principle. Try it: think of any of the rights that we take for granted today, and see how it is derived from the non-aggression principle.

I challenge you to think of a legal basis that is fairer - and by fair I mean doesn't give special advantage to any one person over another - than the non-aggression principle.

Soviet Union. Government owned all land, business, activity, and property. Setting up your own business, and using it to make a profit, no matter how small, was illegal and has landed people in jail.

In what geographical location of this planet is "the government" = "the people"?

I'm not arguing against the non-aggression principle. I'm arguing against one person being able to dictate that the non-aggression principle—or any other principle—be enshrined in law. Saying that a principle is self-evident is one thing; all that really means is that it is a matter of faith and which cannot be proven, but we believe it so we call it axiomatic. Saying that we hold this truth to be self-evident is another thing. That is stating that the group has come to consensus about the axiomatic nature of that principle.

If only 1% of the people believe in the non-aggression principle, it doesn't matter how fervently I desire it. It won't and should not be enshrined into law. Not until after you and I can educate everyone else as to why it should be. I believe that the necessity of substantial consensus about the laws is a higher principle than the non-aggression principle. But even if I didn't, if the vast majority of people don't believe in the non-aggression principle, how will you ever get them to follow it without employing aggression on a vast scale?

I hold this truth to be self-evident, but will freely admit that there is some circular logic here: the more widely accepted a value is, the more likely it is that it will be a good value, and that likelihood increases over time. Majorities on specific issues, over time, are diminished if those opinions on those specific issues are in conflict with more fundamental widely-held beliefs. Therefore a legal system which slowly and with some difficulty shapes itself to the value of the society it serves will move, however slowly, haltingly, and with occasional setbacks, toward the greatest good.

One can perhaps take a shortcut to a greater good by decree, but it's difficult to get that to happen without force, and the force required to do that makes that greater good at best fragile and more likely corrupted from the core and therefore not a greater good.

I will say this: that I think I have illustrated that at least practically (and perhaps more than practically) the principle of consensus and the principle of non-aggression are one and the same. Because the only way to get something adopted without aggression is consensus.

Every location. A populace that does not consent to be governed has the option to violently overthrow their government.

…which addresses your point about as well as your post addressed mine. I did use the words "in practice."

All the NAP is saying is that no-one has a right to order anyone else around or coerce anyone into doing something they don't want to do.  Or rob someone.  Murder them.  etc

These are all self-evident truths.  If you think you can prove otherwise then go ahead.   The only reason people think otherwise is because of historical tradition.  But when you examine the evidence of these historical traditions, like the constitution for example, you find they are as false as most other traditions are, such as slavery.

imo, it is reckless to go around saying that if everyone thinks something therefore it is as good as being true.  Good men and women of any age need to stand up for the truth and give no excuses.  It's the only thing ultimately that has advanced the well-being of humanity as a whole.  Freedom and truth provides people with opportunity.   Bad and untrue traditions bind our hands and hold back progress.

I do not feel qualified to address your entire posts yet, I am still working to understand them.  You seem to have a different experience of the world, which may mean that we live in different places or simply have a different perspective, or different definitions.

For example, in practice, there are many levels of government in most geographies globally.  Often the government in control of some asset "means of production" is not the same government as that which is representing the local population.  So in practice, only very very small countries would come close to your definition for most of the assets.

In practice, popular revolutions are also not the best way to achieve civic representation any more than "the government" is "the people" anywhere on the planet.

At best "the government" is a very small subsection of "the people" and have convinced "the people" that they are sufficiently responsive to "the people" that those of "the people" that could possibly have any hope of successfully violent overthrow of "the government" if they wanted to do so, have other things to do instead that keep them busy.  That is most of the planet's geography currently.

Fundamentally, also consider whether advocating civil war as the backstop of justifiable authority is best way to achieve your desired levels of socialism?  The USA, in practice, has achieved very high level of Marxism through democratic incrementalism with relatively few civil wars.  We also get a lot of it through selling fear to our populace and terrorizing ourselves.  It also may not be the best method but seems effective for creating socialism in a population that rhetorically tends to demonize the notion.

I didn't mean very much by that, so don't worry if it didn't make sense.

The government does not equal the people. But in my opinion, acting as a proxy for the people is the only possible legitimate role of government. Furthermore, even uses of government I do not consider legitimate are justified by the proponents of those uses as being the will or mandate of the people, even (or especially) if those claims are dubious.

All I meant originally is that in practice when socialism is attempted it is usually done by government acting (whether legitimately or not) as a proxy for the people.

So, I was a bit annoyed when I thought you were trying to invalidate my attempt to form a working definition by bringing up an issue I think is valid but unrelated to the definition. I snarked back with a rather lame attempt to reduce your point to absurdity. It was a heat of the moment thing and ought not be taken seriously. I apologize.

I agree with you about the issues you responded with.

Might there be an example of a law that everyone in a geography agrees with?  (It looked like the assertion being made was that everyone agrees with the non-aggression principle.)  Given a sufficiently small geography, it is certain that there will be 100% agreement on some laws.

Look, the principle is all well and good as an abstract principle. But how do you get along with people that don't agree with it? Do you have the right to order or coerce them into behaving the way that you think they ought to? You said that a legal system ought to be founded on that principle.

So lets say there are ten people in your town, and your town has no law. All ten of you are gathered in the center of town and you say, "hey, here's this great principle! It's self-evident!" Now what? Does the fact that you said it was self-evident mean everyone will agree with you? So you write it down and say, "this will be the foundation of our legal system." And the other nine say, "waitaminnit, I never agreed to that. Take your legal system and shove it."

The principle has no legitimacy in action because you have no right to seek recourse against those who don't live by that principle. In fact, you have declared that you have no right to seek recourse. You can't make someone believe that no-one has a right to order anyone else around. What are you going to do, order them to believe it?

No, you get the ten people and say, hey, we need to have some system here. If we can agree on what the rules are, can we agree to follow those rules? If those people say no, you probably ought to live somewhere else. If they say yes, then you start the process of making rules about how to make rules. You agree on those things, and then you bring up your awesome self-evident principle and make a case for it being enshrined into your town's law. By now you have a standard for how something gets made into law. Maybe it's 51%, maybe it requires two-thirds of the votes, maybe your town requires total unanimity. If it passes this vote then you are all in agreement. If it doesn't you can get on your moral high horse and get out of town, or else find some way to live with these people who don't agree with your principle.


OK, so you are the ultimate authority on what is right and what is wrong, and nobody else gets a say? Sorry, you are basically saying that everyone is entitled to their opinions but only your so-called self-evident truth matters. I don't recognize your authority in this matter. I might agree with you, but not because you say so.


Oh good god, now you think I'm saying that people shouldn't stand up for what they believe in? Are we even having the same conversation?

Is there some example of how exactly would that work? Would those that are not agreeing to the NAP be advocating a right to initiate aggression?  Or are they simply claiming that there is some necessary or moderate aggression which ought be exempted from the general principle?
It might just be the point that one ought NOT get along with those that don't agree with it.

perhaps off-topic with the last argumentation but i feel the urge to add my two satoshis...

imo socialist influences in modern democracy are very healthy and hold a society more "together" depending on the subject.
In some parts privatization simply just makes things worse what can be see by many examples around the world.
(e.g. privatization of water in latin america or the energy sector in US)
Privatization is nearly always followed by aims of turbocapitalism to get the most profit out of something with the lowest investment of money.
As long as there is no serious competition that drives progress and innovations it's for the disadvantage of the people.

Water, Food, Electricity, Education, Health and Housing are basic needs of a society and every imbalance or shortage in its supply will disrupt social cohesion and split the society more and more.

I learned that the hard way with health when I realized after an accident with some serious operations that in a country without national health insurance
I would have payed more than 50000€ for my welfare and been in debt easily for the next ten years.
The ongoing discussion in US when Obama introduced national health insurance was totally irrational for me.

Most people that are questioning the benefits of a socialist system must look back in their life if they ever were in a situation where they had to rely on it.
When you hang around with guys from the underclass you suddenly realize how their environment became much worse in the last decade.
At least in my country capitalist outgrowth got more and more extreme which resulted in much more temporary employment, lack of places for children's daycare, expensive housing space,
shrinking minimum wage and the overall degeneration of a lot of services that were originally driven by the state.
Socialism is a passable way to keep some systems balanced in our society.

Besides I think most of us are living a luxurious life comparable to the upperclass in times of the roman empire.
Only difference is that we managed to outsource most of our slavery to third-world-countries.
out of sight, out of mind. but that's another story...

I agree. But do you have the authority to stop them by yourself? If you are the only one in town with the NAP idea, do you get to impose that idea on the rest of the people in town?

I'm saying that it doesn't matter how right I think I am, that I do not get to dictate my individual ideas of morality on all the people around me. That the rules of society (laws) have to be predicated on the beliefs of the people in that society.

And before someone jumps all over that, I do NOT mean that everyone in town has to be a Lutheran. I mean that the laws are a reflection of the common ground of beliefs about right and wrong. Most of us can agree on it being not OK to kill other people, and so it is against the law. Hawkeye is saying that the beliefs of the people in a society should have nothing to do with the law, that people cannot be trusted with their own values and morals and that HIS set of morals should be imposed on everyone else. I disagree.

We all also may be getting hung up on the context of the word "should." If we predicate the question on the premise that I am part of a society that has a voice in what the laws are, when asked whether the NAP ought to be the law, I'll probably say yes (depending on specifics of wording in front of me, details of the practical ways it is implemented, etc but yeah, I'd agree that that should be a fundamental legal principle.) But is that the most important part of the entire legal system? No, to me the most important and vital part of a legal system is that it ought to have the legitimacy of being the product of or at least the approval of the people it governs. I'd even go so far as to say that without that legitimacy, the principle of non-aggression is not even possible.

Somehow that means I'm in favor of slavery or gaybashing or some such crap. Well, that's news to me.

You may have missed some crucial information. The Affordable Care Act is not national health insurance, and it is not nationalized or socialized medicine. It is not even socialism, as people have claimed. It is a law requiring people to have health insurance at higher rates than ever before. The government is not providing that insurance. The same insurance companies that played a big role in getting us in this mess, now they get a lot more money than ever before. We do not have the option to decline their services or only sign up for a catastrophic high-deductible plan while paying for our regular services out of pocket. It is not a law to help people, it is a law to make enormous insurance and pharmaceutical corporations even wealthier than they are now.

If it were actual socialism, I would have supported it. I don't think that eg single payer is the right path, but I would have been completely OK with giving the "public option" a try to see what happens. The Affordable Care Act is just a scam to get the friends of Democrats richer. So, please understand that it's not just about Americans hating health or any such nonsense.

thanks for stuffing another hole of my dangerous half-knowledge. :P  didn't follow that in the news too deeply.

seen from that new perspective that is in fact an obvious case of companies getting their trimmed laws to profit from the people.
Man I'm glad that sector didn't get too much out of hand in germany. Though we have stuff like immunization schedules advised by governments, and lots of laws in favor of pharmaceutical companies to fill their pockets,
but at least health insurance runs really good and is paid directly by employer indepently from the loansystem. so like this employers would go on warpath if they have to pay more.
(as a freelancer health insurance is quite expensive though...around 200€ depending on your business).
There's still a big difference between treatment with national or private health insurance but the overall standard is really good.
I just couldn't believe my eyes when i saw some documentary lately where dentists provided free treatment for american citizens because they simply couldn't afford it.

The more i think about it the more i doubt that a similar insurance system would function in the USA. I often underestimate the sheer scale of it as a country with its socioeconomic differences in many regions.

Well, don't worry, I only stuffed it full of more dangerous half-knowledge. ACA has a lot of other provisions in it; there is a lot more to it than I described or could describe. And you're 100% right that the debate in the US is pretty insane. Republicans didn't want ACA because it is socialism (even though it isn't) and Democrats wanted it because if it failed it would mean the Republicans won the fight. So it really didn't matter how good or bad the bill was. The talking points are the same no matter what. Republicans calling Democrats socialists and Democrats calling Republicans meanies.


One of the biggest problems we have is that health insurance isn't insurance. Health insurance is a subscription. People here expect that if they have a full time job, they will never pay for any medicine or doctor's bills, aside from a nominal co-payment.

I pay my doctor out of pocket, and I have conversations with him about what the most cost-effective treatment is. Very often an older medicine is just as effective as a newer medicine but with a higher risk of side effects. If I go with the cheaper version I save hundreds of dollars every month and get just as good care. With health plans, doctors write out prescriptions for the newest, most expensive drugs because they aren't paying for it and the patient isn't paying for it, so you may as well get the absolute best option.

In the US, if you start talking about cost-effective medicine people freak out like it means cutting corners and getting shoddy care. But because I pay out of pocket, I get to make reasoned choices about the health care options in front of me and I'd like to think that I'm not making the whole health care charliefoxtrot here in the US worse than it already is.

Because very few people have to be concerned about prices and healthcare costs don't hit their paychecks in a visible way, costs skyrocket with medical waste. The doctors prescribe the most expensive stuff because it's the best, the patients don't complain because it costs them the same $10/month either way, the pharmaceutical companies love it because they're selling the primo expensive stuff and taking it to the bank. The insurance companies don't care because they just pass the higher costs on to higher monthly premiums, and the employer doesn't care (the employer probably cares, but it doesn't hit home) about the higher insurance rates because they have to pay the increase or be seen as "cutting back the health benefits" and besides, the employer can just give everyone a smaller raise next year so it doesn't hit their bottom line. The patient, well, the patient just keeps getting more and more of their paycheck going to health coverage, but it comes out of their check before they receive the check so it's hard to miss what you never had.

Unless people start paying for their own health care, this cycle will never end and eventually the country will be basically a "company town" where we all work for the health care industry. ACA guarantees us this future. If ACA required people to carry only minimal, high-deductable insurance (something that is actually insurance) it wouldn't be nearly as bad. But the minimum requirements mean that we'll never have the opportunity to directly pay for our regular doctor visits or medicine again.

And that's something people here in the US don't understand: paying someone to pay your regularly occurring bills is a bad idea, whether that someone is your employer, a commercial entity, or the government. I have insurance on my motorcycle. If I crash it, I'll be paid some money so that I can buy another one. I hope I never crash my motorcycle, but I have a plan in place to protect me financially in case it happens. I do NOT have an "insurance" policy where I pay a monthly fee for my gasoline. Why not? Because I know I'm going to buy gasoline. In order to offer me such a policy, the issuer would have to charge me more than I would pay at the pump, or else go out of business. There is no way that that could be a good deal for me. But people just don't seem to get that when it comes to, say, their annual checkups.

TL;dr: there is a lot more wrong with the US's health care system than attempts at socialism.

Sorry, but that post is pretty much trash. Aside from apparently not understanding what a trophic cascade is (you said  "Their [the wolf's] elimination resulted in a deleterious effect on the ecosystem services, due to the removal of a trophic cascade effect." when the result is actually an exacerbation NOT elimination of the trophic cascade, which results larger than normal ripples and damages multiple ecosystems in the cascade) the extremely TL;DR post said pretty much absolutely nothing about how it's best to preserve such environmental structures. All you have done is claim, as part of your opinion or wish, that such structures should be preserved, with no reason as to why, and much of the methods you have mentioned have been and are used by private property owners, as well as public.
So please stop pointing to that text as if it's some sort of a great argument for government-based environmental protection. It's not. It's a waste of people's time, masked in big words and oversized paragraphs.

Sorry, but, if that is what you believe, then you have no idea what the non-aggression principle is, and the rest of your argument is pretty much not relevant.

Law, by its very nature, is aggressive, and thus can't be the NAP itself. Thus it's a non-aggression principle, not a non-aggression law that we want.

I'm going to do something weird and compare the NAP to our favorite currency:
The NAP is basically a fundamental concept, upon which many rules and agreements can be built on. All it is, is just the understanding that "I will not initiate aggression against you, but will defend myself if you initiate aggression against me." (Which, by the way, does not mean "deadly force," you anti-NAP freaks! It could be as simple as yelling, "Git off mah lawn!") Like Bitcoin, it doesn't need a government to exist; all it needs is a person to hold such a belief. Each person who follows the idea that they shouldn't initiate force, that others shouldn't initiate force against them, and that they will defend themselves against force, is essentially like a single node in a NAP system. Other laws can be passed that try to interfere with this system, such as laws that take away your land, property, or life, but since the NAP is a distributed principle held by individuals, those laws are, on the whole, as effective as financial regulation law are for Bitcoin.
So for NAP to exist, it doesn't have to be enshrined into law and enforced by a government. It can, and is, enforced by individuals already (if you respect other's stuff and defend your, you already follow the NAP), and only needs more "nodes" to come to understand it and accept it in order to grow.

Oh my god you're a fucking idiot trying to find something wrong with material you have no understanding of. I'm not even going to waste my time with someone like you. See here: http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/trophic-cascades-across-diverse-plant-ecosystems-80060347

Please, move to Somalia already.

Behold, read above an impractical, this-size-fits-me, health-meme of an opinion.

So little time for so many logical holes. Not a single paragraph, impressive self-serving cluelessness.

Well, let's start here: you seem to have left out the humiliating suffering of almost 2 Million citizens...sorry, 1.7 Million US households that declare bankruptcy EVERY YEAR at the inability to cover their healthcare expenses.  Many of them carrying the high-deductible traps or self-pay you feel so giddy about.  15 million others will deplete their savings to cover medical bills. Another 10 million will be unable to pay for necessities such as rent, food and utilities because of medical bills.

Do you intend to sell the notion that this "issue" will be solved when larger proportions of citizens go WITHOUT insurance?  At least I'm glad you jumped first.

For everyone else that might've found the above post interesting, but still be coachable about it, the difference between vehicle insurance and health insurance should be easy to comprehend: while your scooter has a known value at any point in time, a limited value both you and your insurance company can agree it's better to declare a total loss, no such cap actually exists for humans, especially for loved ones.  By law, no one can decide you're a total loss until the most emotionally involved human being decides to kill you.  Are there any parallels in the commercial insurance world to this?  No, human healthcare is in a category of its own.

Irrespective of whatever downward cost pressure may be obtained with your localized self-pay-want-to-haggle strategy, or your willingness to do research and become a pseudo-doctor that can fake "informed decisions" about which medications you take, or take trips to Thailand for the kidney transplant, when it comes to pulling the plug on your wife or your daughter, most people are inclined to do quite the opposite of haggling.

Healthcare and education....two aspects of life you really, really are best advised not to skim on.

Yeah, OK. So I'm still on board with the NAP being a principle that I at least generally support and adhere to (there is some disagreement as to the specific interpretation and that sounds just fine.) I have not stated any opposition to the NAP as a principle. 

I was never arguing that the NAP should or should not be a part of a system of laws; I was saying that in order for it to be part of a system of laws, it either must be a principle that is widely held by the people who live under those laws or else it has to be dictated from outside, which would itself not be in keeping with the NAP. So I stand by my earlier statement: first a system of laws should generally reflect the values of the people who live under those laws, second it would be nice to include that principle in a system of laws, as that would be a symptom of good (in my opinion) values in a society.

How authority accrues and is maintained is another interesting question.
The notion that majority rules (and can contravene an ethical principle) likely has many limits. 
Ought majority rule be the absolute measure for how and when to violate fundamental ethics?

There are some great benefits to cooperation, tolerance, and community efforts.  To what extent is there justification to make those efforts compulsory (possibly violating NAP) rather than voluntary (adhering to NAP).
Does accruing authority make that justification stronger or weaker?

Wow. That's what you took away?

OK, first the fundamental problem is that costs are too high. All the rest of what you're talking about stems from that simple fact. If costs were lower, there would be fewer bankruptcies etc.

Second, I have no idea how you got this from what I wrote:


No. Carrying insurance, which insulates you from catastrophic or severe expenses is good. It is something everyone should have. Carrying a health plan that insulates you from every expense and makes every decision cost-neutral, on the other hand, is a terrible idea. It guarantees that you will pay more for your healthcare than you would have without it.

It's simple math. REALLY simple math. I'm going to use round numbers that of course will vary from person to person but which have come from my own shopping for my own health plans.

A health plan that does not cover an annual checkup is $450/month. A health plan that does cover a single annual checkup (with a $25 copay) is $500/month. That means that for your annual checkup you will pay an extra $625. A doctor's office visit with complete physical will cost between $50 and $150, depending on where you go. Paying $625 for a $150 doctor's visit is stupid. Better plan? Get the most expensive general practitioner you can find and go three times a year out of pocket. Even better plan? Find a doctor you like and trust and go once a year, paying out of pocket, and leave the "office visit" line item off your policy.

Even if you have employer-provided insurance (I do not) if you think that money isn't coming out of the maximum that your employer would pay you, you're wrong.

Obviously where to set your deductible is a personal choice and will depend on income levels and other expenses. You ought to realistically assess what would be catastrophic and what would be inconvenient. If a $500 medical expense would bankrupt you and cause your family to starve to death, you probably ought to have a $250 deductible. If a $2000 expense would be a big problem but you could manage with a payment plan with the hospital or whatever, then a $2000 deductible isn't such a bad idea and will save you a hefty amount of insurance premiums.


Do I need to explain to you what an analogy is?

Do you agree that there is a difference between a plan that pays for regular, predictible, ongoing expenses and one that covers you for unexpected expenses? Insurance is about spreading the risk pool out, regardless of the kind of insurance it is. An annual checkup has no risk to spread. If your policy covers something that you know you're going to spend every year, then all you are doing is paying extra to the insurance company to get them to write the check instead of you.  


OK, just stop lying about what I wrote. Please.

It gets complicated, but I say yes, so long as the majority is talking about non-specific principles. The set of rules should be slow enough to change so as not to be distorted by momentary fads. I submit that the ethical principle does not exist without the people to think of it. So long as people have general consensus about these principles and there are checks in place to slow sudden implementation without wide support, there is not much to fear from an informed electorate. But even with an uninformed electorate there is less risk than trusting the definition of punitive law to a very small group of people without accountability to the people that law is supposed to serve.

This is inaccurate.  Health insurance is very much like insurance in general.  It is an actuarial exercise, and "value of human life" is an input to the calculus.

There is much argument and science that goes in to setting the value.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1808049,00.html

Governments also use this for deciding on policy and cost effectiveness.  Sometimes they change the value of it.  Sometimes that makes news.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/21/epa-value-of-life-changes-_n_812105.html

If you have worked in the health or life insurance industry, this would not be a point of issue.  It is very well understood, many articles in each of the major journals discuss it.
http://library.soa.org/search.aspx?go=True&q=human+life+value&page=1&pagesize=10&or=True

Notwithstanding this, you are certainly correct in that whether a caregiver chooses to attempt uncovered heroic efforts to preserve a life beyond what insurance will cover is an individual decision, and rarely an easy one.

Please explain to me what I said that was wrong, instead of acting condescending.

I guess I should have phrased that better. I understand why you would argue- after all the NAP says that self defense is ok (or at least it does recently; it hasn't for thousands of years). But here's the thing: When is self-defense be justified? If someone is trying to kill you, and they will not stop until they themselves are dead, at what point does self defense end and aggression begin? It is entirely based on the subjective view of the person "defending" himself. If the defender kills the attacker, they have committed greater violence, and thus they've stopped following the NAP.

That's why the NAP is illogical. The only way in which you could truly follow it would be to do nothing to defend yourself, or to avoid conflict in general. If you think that the NAP can justify self defense, then what's the point? You're saying that you're not going to run around killing everything unless they attack you. Congratulations, that's a philosophy that only rabid dogs have a problem with.

The killing the madman logic trap.  Good.
There are other logic traps as well (the famous trolly-cart where you can switch the rail to kill fewer folks, but switching it to kill someone is an act of aggression, so greater harm would be the outcome of zero aggression)

The resolution to these seems to be that the non-aggression principle provides guidance for the best outcomes.  That the notion of "moral authority", at least in degree, seems to rest on how clearly those outcomes are best, and how much aggression is needed to achieve those outcomes, with a very strong preference for none at all, and a high bar to any initiation of aggression.

The socialist's claim appears to be that creating cases of everyone suffering, for some outcome that benefits everyone (whether or not they agree to either undergo the suffering, or whether they agree the outcome is a benefit) is an acceptable degree of moral authority.  Provided the responsibility for creating these sufferings is spread among a sufficiently large number of people (such as voters).

Where this tends to fail (sometimes but not always) in real world is in the administration of the benefits, and the costs of doing so: balancing the flexibility of the benefit (for efficiency) with the arbitrariness of managing that flexibility (spawning corruption opportunities).

Well, in the case of the trolly, wouldn't the non-aggressive way be to not touch the rails? After all, you didn't put the people there... But by switching the rails, you've killed people that otherwise would not be killed. A better situation would be that you can either choose to kill the would-be murderer, saving the people on the tracks, or do nothing. But even if you chose to do nothing, it is not your fault, and you have followed the NAP.

Edit: You basically said what I said in the quotation. I wasn't reading carefully...

The "madman" logic trap makes more sense because in this situation, the defender is directly involved and has to make a decision. Their life, and the life of the attacker, will be changed depending on the action they take. One way or another a death will be their fault.

And logic trap or not, it only proves that the NAP is illogical. And what is the point of following an illogical philosophy that is basically impossible to follow?


Does it provide the best outcome, though? Take the revolution against Apartheid in South Africa. Initially, Mandella preached non-violence. He acted similar to Gandhi or MLK. What did his non-violence accomplish? Nothing. Then, once he started bombing government buildings, South Africa started moving towards equality.


Well, that's why I dont agree with socialism.

Good example, thank you for this.
Madman, trolly, apartheid.  The trolly is the only one that does not appear to involve self-defense and is one of pure initiation of aggression.  It also seems to be the one with which, you most disagree.

From all appearances, you have (perhaps) a better or more evolved principle for "minimal" aggression, as it applies in the real world rather than the purely philosophical.  It is less absolutist than non-aggression.  Maybe it is closer to the Asimov 3 laws of robotics, and the struggle to find the balance between the three laws?

Would the righteousness or effectiveness of Mandela's cause with respect to moral authority have been harmed if it started with the bombing? Or was the proof of necessity so integral to the moral authority that the bombing was acceptable as minimal aggression?  Determining the point of ethical authority for aggression seems the sliding scale for where socialism finds its social traction.

Socialism in contrast places a high value on social cohesion.  It assumes societal splits are bad, or put another way, that the bigger a society gets the better it is.  The relative weighting of the value of social cohesion vs non-aggression seems to guide many.  There may be a fear that lack of social cohesion may lead to aggression and that fear/distrust conjures a higher weighting for social cohesion.

Social cohesion may also engender societal fragility as well, in much the same way that mono-cultural farming can create famine.  I am not convinced that it is always a good, even if it is more productive.
I had recommended to me: "Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Black Swan Author).  From a discussion this weekend.  Going to have to digest that when it arrives.

Great discussion. I guess the NAP is vulnerable to a '51% attack' of sorts - that is to say if the majority support aggression, how can it be stopped?

Apartheid is an aggression in itself, so a certain degree of self-defense is warranted by NAP. The question is then: who are the initial aggressors, and does bombing government buildings overstep the mark of self-defense?

Really the only reason I disagree with the trolly situation is because it is so implausible. Real life does not just have two options, and I think that the best way to discuss philosophy is use realistic situations, as opposed to hypotheticals. I can see the value in it- and I'm sure that there are situations where people would believe that they must choose between the lesser of two evils. But there is always a third choice.

I think that the trolly could (sort of) be represented by appeasement prior to world war II- the Allies knew that giving Hitler Czechoslovakia would lead to violence and death, but they thought it was justified because they thought that forcefully stopping him would lead to greater violence. Of course, 40 million corpses later the Allies choice of non-aggression was a mistake. Had they stopped Hitler in Czechoslovakia, perhaps he never would have been able to occupy Europe and slaughter millions of innocents.

In this case, it appears that non-aggression led to greater violence.

However, say that you choose to pull the lever and switch the rails. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an example of this. Allied commanders knew that they had to do something to stop Japan- the country was going to fight to the death. They believed that they were saving more lives than they were ending.

However, the problem with any of these logic traps is that you can't know more than one outcome. We can't go back in time and stop Hitler, or invade mainland Japan. That's my main problem with NAP- There's really no way to prove it either way. However, just for the record, while I don't fully agree with NAP I don't agree with initiating aggression either.


I do believe that philosophy should have a base in reality, and that it should be judged based on realistic examples. Otherwise it's very easy to prove anything. I also believe that choosing a philosophy to follow is often detrimental. We should not allow a fixed set of ideals to determine how we act. Instead, everyone should have their own philosophy.


I think that his "righteousness" would have been affected had he immediately started killing Apartheidists. It is clear that he did everything in his power to negotiate with the government, but there's no negotiating with racists. Racism in itself is one of the most illogical ideals, and racists can't see reason. I think that they forced his hand.


I agree that forced social cohesion is not a very stable system. Obviously, if everyone truly agreed to one system and one society it would be stable, as it was based on the choice of the people. But if a government forces this cohesion, it creates paranoia and distrust, like you said.

That's why I believe that laws, and "morals", should be chosen by the majority of society. That way, there's less forced social cohesion.

I don't want to bring up a hypothetical, but if I use a real world example I'll offend someone, and that's not the point. Let's say a group of aliens from Mars come to Earth. They're different from humans in every way: They look different, they communicate differently, they don't even have the same genders we do. They even breathe nitrogen instead of oxygen. Naturally, the majority of Earth, let's say 90%, distrusts them, if they don't outright hate them.

The government has two options: they can force cohesion upon the populace. The aliens are given equal rights under UN law, and maybe are even given land to start settling on. 90% will be unhappy. Some are going to get violent. The majority of society will rise up, and probably end up hurting the aliens anyways. Society is completely unstable, as Earth devolves into a civil war.

Or, they can expel the aliens from our planet. This doesn't mean genocide, just that the government will not allow the Martians on Earth. In this case, 10% would be unhappy. A relatively small amount. The majority of people remain happy. The 10% might resist with their Martian friends, but ultimately they will have to concede.

There is still violence either way- whether it is the majority enforcing social cohesion or the minority attempting to. But when the majority takes control, there is more natural cohesion.

This is why I believe that "majority rules". Going way back in the posts, someone (I forgot who) said something along the lines of "If 51% of people are against gays does it make it ok to discriminate against them?"

I support everyone's equal rights. I want to make that clear. But in this case, I believe that supporting the 51% would be the more logical decision, as it enables more "natural" social cohesion. Society will be fractured in either case, but better to see the majority of society be happy then the minority. That being said, I would not take the "logical" decision and support bigots.


This looks interesting. I'll definitely check it out.

the trolly situation actually happened once in real life.

It happens all the time in other ways too, Organ donors who could save several if only they would die...

But also interesting, if we accept majority rule as the arbitrator of ethics.  This raises the question of the 51%.

Why not 55%, 66%, or 75%?  Is avoidance of aggression only worth 1%?  51% seems an arbitrary threshold, and also a low value on non-aggression vs social cohesion (which may or may not be good in some cases).
Some law seems to agree. Cloture=60% (US Senate), Delegation of Danish Soverignity 84%, US Constitution amendment 2/3 house + 2/3 senate + 3/4 States

Now that we are aggression whores, and will initiate aggression if enough folks think we ought to do so, it is just a matter of setting the prices and menu. :)

Should exacting a new type of tax require a super majority?  Does it depend on the claimed reason for the tax?

51% is arbitrary. I was just using it to represent the majority. However keep in mind, that there's no way to disregard a law.

Say we vote on a new amendment. 65% of the house agrees. 65% of the senate agrees. 36 states agree. The law doesn't pass. Thus, the government has gone with the will of the minority over the majority. More people are angry now than if the government had passed the law, all in the name of fairness.

That's why I believe in the majority. It makes no sense whatsoever to give the minority what they want. 51% seems ridiculous. But it's more ridiculous to go with the 49%.

Building debate and delay in and create laws based on principle rather than specific instance help this. Most of the time 99.999% are opposed to murder. But then there is a gameshow host that makes some truly disgusting comments and 51% of the people want him dead. Fortunately, the laws aren't about that person. That person is protected by what the majority believes despite the momentary madness of the crowds: that killing someone who hasn't hurt anyone is wrong. Even so, it will take months if not years of debate and the authoring of legislation for the murder laws to be changed to accommodate the hatred of this one person. In that time, cooler heads ought to prevail and people are likely to realize that it goes against their values to make an exception to the murder laws because of something that was said on a game show.

I'm not saying it is impossible for the majority to exert tyranny over the minority but with checks and balances, the passage of time, and the enshrinement of people's rights into the law (which will come because the majority supports it) the risk of such a '51% attack' on a system of laws becomes much lower than with direct democracy.

I wouldn't want laws to come into play instantly. I still want a process for them to come into place. I just want a system where the majority rules. I don't think it's fair that the minority should have their way. Why do they get their way and the majority doesn't?

In the example you gave, I don't believe that 51% of the people would truly believe that the host should be put to death. Many people would be angry. Maybe some would want his show put off the air, or even to imprison him. But the majority of people do not want to put someone to death for something trivial like that.

Exactly. The argument for delay is get at what the people truly believe, not just what they would vote for if you caught them at the right (or wrong) moment. The downside is that if something gets into law it becomes difficult to remove.

We are missing the excluded middle (where the state does nothing).  It is less a matter of whether the majority or minority "get their way" and more a matter of whether some percentage of the population gets to use the power of law (guns and jails) to do something.  If so, what that percentage should be.

We get bad law when we act too fast.

The "mob rule" of satisfying a simple majority who elect to kill or steal from others for their benefit or satisfaction does not sit well with me at all.  
It does not make it any better that >50% will be angry for failing to kill or steal, it still ought not be done just to satisfy a majority (of those who voted).
Even if 60% are upset at not using the law to steal or kill, that might still be right and just, given the ethical breach for using the law against their fellow country people for that purpose.

There are even likely some things that are simply wrong to do even in cases where 99% vote that it should be done (Stupid Talk Show Host example).  The greater harm of murder over the harm of frustration with what STSH said on air doesn't provide sufficient justification.  The lynch mob should not have their way just because they show up with pitchforks and torches.

Voting may also be done under non-factual information, prevalent media spending, emotionalism, or all sorts of situations that may skew an outcome.  Upholding a simple majority as the arbitrator of justice and source of law has dangers and unforeseen consequences enough that we have "a republic, if we can keep it".

For civil matters it may be ok to have one level of majority, but for criminal (where life and livelihood are at issue) there is a higher bar in court cases.  But we do not extend this to our legislative effort.  We create new crime definitions and criminality through a simple majority of 51%, and often bundle much new legislation within a single measure.

The result being that we have ever-greater legal restraints and ever-greater judicial authority in a one direction path toward statism and socialism through democratic incremental addition.  The question is: at what rate do we proceed?

Hey, I'm not the one who said that removing one of the components of the trophic cascade removes the whole cascade itself.

You're an idiot because:

1. You think you have a point, but don't.
2. You're actually wrong about the specific complaint you have.
3. You're the one who didn't know about any of this stuff until I pointed it out, but you try and act like you did.

Read my long post again, and try to comprehend it - I know it must be hard for you. And read the recent link I provided so won't keep acting like an idiot.

But there is no middle. If a vote is made for whether marijuana is legalized, for instance, you can either have it (support one side) or make it illegal (support the other). Same goes for guns, civil rights, abortions, etc.


Agreed. I don't want votes to happen in a day. There would have to be televised debates showing both sides.


This assumes that the 51% is more prone to bad decisions than the 49%. Why is this so?


Same thing I said before: why is the 51% more rash and prone to violence than the 49%. The Westboro church is a very small percentage of people yet they're one of the loudest. If anything, the majority of people are more rational.


Same thing I said before. Why is the majority prone to bad decisions but the minority isn't? For example, what about gay rights right now? I think that we can agree that no harm can come from letting them marry. But even if the majority of people want rights, it doesn't matter because it takes more than a simple majority... And in that case the minority would be wrong.


I think that the amount of time spent on an issue will determine the accuracy of the decision. But why go with the minority's decision, if we can't reach a consensus?


I really don't know at rate we should proceed. I guess we should put it to a vote  ;).

There was civilized discussion until you guys posted this (although it was Rassah's fault, he came out of nowhere). Go argue somewhere else, or contribute. Calling each other names does nothing.

I don't need a set of laws to run a Bitcoin node, follow Bitcoin code rules, assign value to bitcoins, and send that values to others. Bitcoin let's be do that regardless of laws. Likewise, I don't need laws to establish ownership of my own property, to respect others property, to tell others if they are infringing on my property, and if needed, to defend my property. There could be laws respecting a NAP system, or there could just be me, telling people to get off my lawn, and threatening to shoot them if they do not (though that mapight get me in trouble in many places). Even in a community with majority who don't respect NAP and think everything should belong to everyone, that majority will be forced to respect the minority of NAP followers simply because the NAP guys will be defending their property. And yes, sure, the anti-NAP majority could come in guns blazing to kick the NAP types out, but all they will have succeeded in is kicking out a few of the NAP followers, no more than shutting down a few BITCOIN nodes. It's an idea, and those can't be killed (not easily).

You were confusing non-aggression principle (basically, "I will not be the first to initiate force") with nonviolence (basically, "I will not be violent, no matter what, period). NAP doesn't mean that no violence will ever happen.


Whenever someone threatens your person or property.



It's not so much self defense v.s. aggression, it's who initiated the aggression. As long as someone continues to threaten your life, they are continuing to initiate aggression. You can shoot them in defense, but you can also defend yourself by shooting their gun hand, by sabotaging their weapons, by hiring security to keep them away from you, or even asking why they believe you owe them your life and attempting to resolve the conflict without violence.


Same as above, it's not nonviolence, it's who initiated force. If the defender killed the attacker, he is still only responding to the initiation of force, and is still following the NAP. The only question is whether such extreme defense was justified, or if the situation could have been resolved more amicably (e.g. if the attacker was just drunk and waving a gun around, but was not serious about wanting to kill someone)


Rabid dogs, and anyone who believe they have a right to your property and life, and are willing to use force to obtain it. Forcing you to pay taxes or fees for things you don't need or wasn't, at the threat of being arrested, imprisoned, or shot, is considered initiation of force in NAP.


A question to the general group: What laws do you want to exist or to be implemented by a majority, which are not derived from "don't initiate force/screw with people's life and property?" Modern examples are typically bans on things.

1. You're an idiot because you think your post has a point, but it's just a huge waste of time in relation to these discussions
2. My complaint was that killing wolves disrupts the cascade, not eliminates it, and your post says nothing about the means of protecting environment ecosystems, just about how they work.
3. All this crap was covered in highschool oceanography and lowest level university geology class, so yes, I knew it.

I was pissed off, because I wasted such a long time reading your whole post, waiting to read something new or relevant, but it didn't answer anything about who should be responsible for protecting things, why it should be them, or how. It's basically a nature lesson, and the whole post can be summarized as:

Nature is complicated, therefore government is needed, because...

Apologies for disrupting the discussion.

FA is still here because we're conversing in an anarchistic environment.  If this website was operated as a democracy, we would have the ability to force everyone to gag his speech (and as a totalitarian regime, this thread would've been self-moderated, and only I would've had that power to literally wipe his messages as if they never happened.)  Instead, we allow ourselves (with the help of technology, of course) to decide whether or not we'd like to listen to him.  I prefer it this way, not because I want to, or don't want to, listen to FA, but because I don't want to give the majority the ability to gag me from everyone.  Here, we clearly see how rights work: I give FA the right to speak, for he gives me the right to speak.  Certainly, we could write down something on paper that said, "I hereby decree that the right to speak freely should be upheld" blah blah, but the writing is just intent; the only way we uphold this right is by allowing others the rights we would like to have; this is an example of actual change in the world, and not simply writing; if you've ever met an Unchristianly Christian, you'll know what this means.  Ultimately, this boils down to freedom: I give you the right to be free, and I am free because I give this right to others; those who disagree, who feel they have a right to be free while others do not, is what really kills me.  However, rights don't always have to be granted: the moment we admit that it is okay to kill, we allow ourselves to be killed; this is a very important case of when a right should not be upheld.  I don't believe I should have the right to kill you, because I don't want to be killed.  This is how law comes to existence; law does not highlight our rights, but highlights what rights we do not grant one another. 

This is precisely why it is dangerous to give our collective right to create and take away law from one another to a single entity, which is not required to subject itself upon that law simply because it is the only law-creation entity within its borders; it is essentially the same as saying, "I have no say in what rights you or I have; only the government has that right."  In this sense, government is always corrupt, as it assumes it has more rights than others, as if it were a god; once this entity amasses enough power, it can change the course of our lives in any way it wishes, for any purpose (lately, and probably always if I wanted to look into it, for wealth, and by extension, power; same goes for government and religion.)  It always begins with anarchy; all other organisms of the world, and the world itself, and all of space for that matter, exist in anarchy, just as there are only atheistic babies before they must (literally) be trained to be what specific religion they will take part.  The state lives upon that anarchy, and seeks to change it in the way it sees fit, by housing the world and renting it out to us.  We can certainly talk about the ways best to rule ourselves and our peers, but I believe this notion, that we can successfully govern everyone else but can't even govern ourselves, is becoming outdated; we know a lot more now than we did when we invented government, and I don't think we need divine forces (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_have_been_considered_deities) to guide our way any longer.

So, as I mentioned prior, the problem that environmental conservationists face is the same problem that I face; the problem is to change minds.  Government makes no difference; if man has power to give government, which would then be given to whatever problem there was, man has power to give where he so chooses; the difference is, does he have a choice?  For example: if getting involved with wars was something we collectively agreed on, we would be throwing ourselves at the military (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conscription), yes?

No, I disagree.  You're confusing problem with symptom.  The high prices (and poor overall outcomes) of US healthcare relative to other countries is a *symptom* of the dysfunction in the current system.  It is not, by itself the cause.

One of the big issues resulting in high individual pricing is that the healthcare revenue pool is currently not well-aligned with the cost pool.  This causes a huge amount of unpaid costs and preventable emergency care costs to be tacked on to those who responsibly have insurance and pay their bills, including business-financed health plans.  Again issue->misalignment, symptom->high prices to those that actually pay for healthcare.  Alignment of revenue & costs is a key part of the solution.  Freeriders be gone.

The other big issue is citizen unwillingness/inability to afford healthcare planning en-masse.  Why do people find themselves with crushing medical debt, unprepared, and even uninsured?  There's a whole number of reasons this happens, and only a few are individually controllable.


It may be a terrible idea to you, and I bet to many alert people with time to micromanage their healthcare, plan ahead, and have a stash of free cash for emergencies and "wellness" care.  This is not the profile of the average US citizen, this is not even your 30th percentile citizen.  I'm happy for you and you seem to have succeeded so far.  However I disagree your stategy is widely applicable, or that it's a good idea to export it to those who are known to be ill-prepared to execute it.

Partial self-insurance is not a workable/sound idea for a population who, for various reasons, is unable to save even for their own retirement.  75% of US people nearing retirement have <$30K saved.  Are you recommending these seniors, unable to save for a patently certain event like retirement, to go with the emergencies-only plan?  If not, then you're just advocating for a variation of the freerider program we had prior to ACA...a "freerider-light"?


Again, you may be good at negotiating, and it may provide you with instant savings.  The skill and inclination to execute this isn't common, and it's not a strategy that will succeed for your average (especially below-average) population.  There is an enormous, built-in imbalance of power in healthcare, and the patient is ALWAYS in the weakest (pun intended) position to negotiate.  Why hang your hat in the weakest of all pegs?

"...get to make reasoned choices about the health care options in front of me"....really now?  This must be close to verbatim what I read on a notice years ago...Human Resources smooth talk for higher premiums, higher co-pays, and higher out-of-pocket limits.  But hey, they're doing us all a favor, we should all feel good 'cause now we're all empowered and motivated, and have skin-in-the-game, and I guess the HR people can sleep at night.  I'll tell you, a decreasing amount of people actually find these statements convincing.  Not because they're not achievable by some (i.e. there's a bit of truth in every good lie), but because by now everyone is aware they're impractical for most.

I do agree there are costs to be saved, but I have little faith in these savings being realized by grassroots haggling (or pulling bootstraps for that matter).

You talk about regular checkups.  The costs to deliver these are tiny compared to non-preventive care.  Yet, a surprisingly large proportion of patients don't take advantage of annual wellness checkups even when included in their "subscription plan".  I assert that the rate of preventive care will always be hopelessly worse with self-payers.  Given the documented cost-benefit of catching conditions early, again another area your suggestions, as successful as they may prove to you, just don't scale and don't improve the overall system.

Really?  The cycle will *never* end?  Well, signs already point to this not being the case, but no one can rule out we'll go a few more years of escalating HC costs.
That being said, you paint an impossible unraveling.  We will NEVER become a "company town" where we all work to pay for HC.  The people will install some form of "single-payer" long before we're anywhere near your prediction.  Not a chance.

My prediction is that we'll be taking another run at a public option again in ~10 years time.  No "company town".

Thank you for that work of fiction. See here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=268056.msg2893060#msg2893060

I'll agree that there are root causes for the high prices, but if the prices were not high, people wouldn't be going bankrupt. Bring prices down (whether it is by government decree or market mechanisms—it doesn't matter for this part of the discussion) and people get affordable health care and don't go bankrupt any more and everyone is happy.

So the dysfunction in the system would be no big deal if it didn't drive costs and prices up, pricing people out of the healthcare market and forcing them to rely on insurance.


That's a real part of the problem, but last I looked at the numbers it was not the bulk of the problem. Maybe you have newer numbers?


Making more rational choices about insurance and out-of-pocket costs are a step in the right direction. Me doing it? Not so much. But if more people did, well, pharma companies charge $500 per pill because they know that the insurance companies will pay it no matter what, and because they can manipulate doctors and insurance companies into prescribing and paying for the newest medicines that are still under patent. When people start choosing 50¢ or 5¢ per pill alternatives, the pharma companies will lower their costs to compete. It may still be $5 or $15 per pill if they have a pill that is still covered by patent but competition with existing products will bring prices down, if only there is a little transparency and if we stop totally insulating customers from costs.

And I'm not exaggerating. There are pills out there where your doctor will prescribe you the newest $15,000 per month medicine and it will cost you a $10 co-pay. You could actually choose a generic where you would have to take two pills per day instead of one, but it is exactly the same medicine, and it would be $15/month. Why would a doctor prescribe the $15/month pill? there is a real benefit to having to take only one pill per day instead of remembering to take it twice. It's better for the patient to get the 1x/day pill. Why would the patient choose the cheaper pill? It costs the same to the patient.

And that is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the kinds of shenanigans the pharma companies pull because of the lack of consumer transparency.

And you know what else? Insurance companies LOVE to pay more. Why? Because they pass the costs on in higher premiums but the fact that healthcare costs skyrocket means that people are terrified not to have complete head-to-toe coverage. So the more crap the pharma companies (and other providers) pull, the more the insurance companies laugh their way to the bank.


This just is not true. I live in one of the most expensive areas in the United States and these days my income is significantly below median. I have zero savings. I probably will not have a real meal today because I don't have the money for it. I am as close to bankrupt as you can possibly be; I could probably file for bankruptcy today and have no questions asked. If I had a sudden accident that led to a $10,000 medical bill, I could set up a payment plan with the hospital and not even get a nasty letter or a ding on my credit record. I have done this, and paid my bills. It's not easy or fun but it is possible. A low-deductable plan, on the other hand, brings crippling monthly insurance costs. I would soon be homeless if I were paying for a plan with a $250 deductable and all my office visits and medicines were covered.

It doesn't take a lot of time and effort to "micromanage" your healthcare and it doesn't take a huge stash of cash. All it takes is putting the same attention into buying healthcare services and insurance that you put into buying groceries. Actually, a whole lot less attention.


I don't negotiate. I have never negotiated with my doctor. I pay my doctor my doctor's regular office visit fee. I ask what the cost is for a proposed treatment, I look up prices. I ask about alternatives. Again, this is not some special skill. It's called having a conversation with my doctor. My doctor says I'm one of his only patients that does that and he says he finds it refreshing. But it is not some magical medicine-negotiation-fu. It's just having a conversation, asking questions, and having my doctor make rational recommendations.

The closest I have come to a negotiation is when the NP wrote a new refill for 30mg tablets. I looked up the price and saw that the 30mg tablets were 90/month. If I chose to take three 10mg tablets per day instead it was $9. So I emailed asking whether she would write a new prescription for the 10mg tablets 3x/day. That was ten whole minutes out of my life.


You're absolutely right to be suspicious of your HR department telling you that, but I think that with a tiny amount of research you'll find that even if what your HR person suggested was a boondoggle that the general principle will save you money.


This suggests what I have been saying: people need to pay more attention and make better choices.


OK. I don't refute your prediction. But I'm troubled by the fact that the "solution" to the healthcare crisis is to intentionally make things so much worse that people become desperate enough to have single payer when there are solutions in front of us that could knock the pharma and insurance companies on their asses and bring health care costs back into reason.

Look at the portion of our economy that goes to the healthcare industry, compare that to what it was twenty or fifty years ago, and then tell me that my "company town" prediction isn't close to the target, if admittedly overly dramatic. And if you think that we're going to go single payer without setting it up in such a way that that proportion doesn't increase and go directly into the pockets of the people who currently run big pharma and insurance, you have more faith in the charitable nature of Congress than I do.

Well, quite frankly I don't see the point of it then.


Who decides when your person or property is "threatened"? It seems as though it would be very subjective. And what decides the limit of your retaliation. If someone stabs me, can I follow the NAP and shoot them? Or is that initiating greater aggression? If I shoot at the person, do they now have the right to kill me? Is their earlier violence justified because I encouraged greater violence?


So if it's all about who initiated the aggression, what is "initiation" defined as?

If someone insults me, is that an "initiation"?
If someone threatens to kill me, but doesn't actually go through with it, can I kill them in "self defense"?


Well that question about whether or not it's justified is what bugs me. It seems as though there's really no set definition for the NAP. It basically says don't attack people, but it's fine to kill as many people as you want as long as they threatened you in some way.

You can't start a fight, but you sure can finish it.


There's no debtors prisons anymore. If you don't pay taxes, then you don't get the benefits of paying them. You won't be shot...

But if the simple "threat" of imprisonment is enough to warrant retaliation, does that mean that I can steal from someone and then when the police come, I can kill them because they threatened to imprison me? And if paying taxes is a threat under the NAP, does that mean I can go around killing government workers?

For a "non-aggression" philosophy it seems rather harsh...

You know, it's a principle, not a law. Unless you're a sociopath, you know what it means. Admittedly there is a lot of room for misinterpretation, but that is also true of nearly any other principle. "Honesty is the best policy" unless of course the Nazis are asking about whether you have Jews hidden in your attic, which really doesn't invalidate the principle, does it?


If you refuse to pay your taxes, they will send people with guns to take you to your trial and will escort you to the place where you get to live while you're not getting the benefits of paying your taxes. If you refuse to come along you will have those guns pointed at you and if you try to run you will be shot. Whatever consequences are doled out, it is backed by the threat of violence.

That's not necessarily wrong but one ought not be in denial about it.

The owner of the property.


It is. One person may feel more threatened by an action than another.


You decide, with the understanding that others will judge you by how you respond. If you shoot someone for stepping on your lawn, without even a warning, that will obviously be considered as excessive use of force (you consider it as such, right?), and others may retaliate against you, either by seeking compensation, or ostracizing you.


If they are stabbing you, and you are defending yourself, sure. If they stabbed you and left you, and you are just seeking retribution later, that's a different issue.


That's between you, your shooter, and your community. If you initiated force by shooting that person, whether to rob him, or for no reason, then you basically gave up the right not to be shot, unless you figure out how to repair your standing in the community.



That's the difficult part that can at times be blatantly obvious, and at times might require judges or arbitration to settle.


Sure. Feel free to insult them back.


If it is a legitimate threat on your life, as in they make it known that it's not just a verbal threat without intent to follow through, then maybe? All depends on how you expect your actions to be viewed in the community you wish to remain a part of. The end result you are hoping for is to continue to have others respect your right to your own life and property. It's up to you in how you maintain that respect.



NAP is you living among a group of other people who agree to the NAP. If your neighbor started killing everyone who threatened him in some way, how would you react? Would you consider that your neighbor is justified in what he is doing? Or would you consider him to be using excessive force, and refuse to have any dealings with him? Hopefully the neighbor will take that into consideration, too. You could even split it to where the person he killed initiated minor force by tresspassing, while the neighbor essentially ignored the tresspass by not acknowledging it, and initiated force against that person's life. No one is claimingthat NAP is "as simple as..." That's where judges, arbitrators, and already established legal precedents come in. NAP proponents aren't advocating throwing the entire legal system out the window and starting from scratch, either.



As I understand it, it won't be a debt you have to pay, but a fine. Then if you refuse to pay the fine, you will be asked to serve a time in prison. If you refuse to serve in prison, you will be dragged there by force. If you refuse the force, you will be shot.


Hopefully there won't be prisons, or police, in an anarchist NAP society.  If you get summoned to show up in court because you aggressed on someone's property, and you refuse, then the issue is simply unresolved, and the person you aggressed against, as well as anyone on their side, can continue to ignore your right to your own property. Being ostracized and not be allowed to participate in community and business can be way worse than prison.


Technically, if they come for your stuff without reason, you refuse to give it to them, and they threaten to shoot you in order to force you to give it to them, then yes. Ethically you would be in the right. Just make sure you are aware of the consequences.
The issue with that gets more complicated, though, in that if they ask for taxes for things you have already used (drove on roads, got clean water, etc), then it's money that is actually owed them. They are in the right for asking for it. If it's for things you were forced to pay for, despite not wanting to, like wars, illegal spying, etc, then that's different.

From the way you describe it, it seems as though the NAP is just common sense. I guess I follow it anyways. I don't go around picking fights.

Also, I'm pretty sure that you cannot go to prison for not paying taxes. They may take the clothes off your back until you pay it, but if you have nothing to take they can't do anything.

Socialsim doesn't work because soclialism always devolves into cronyism sooner or later, no matter how good your intentions are at first. Crooks are constantly figuring out new and creative ways to seize the levers of power. They're a lot better at it than you. They're smart and they work at it 24/7. So while you're busy writing letters to your congressmen and whatnot, they're busy writing checks (among other things). Who do you think 'your representative' is going to listen to?

All you starry-eyed socialists out there better wake up and wake up fast.

I'm pretty sure that you can.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/lauryn-hill-starts-prison-sentence-tax-evasion-article-1.1393101 (http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/lauryn-hill-starts-prison-sentence-tax-evasion-article-1.1393101)
http://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/news/11079783/used-car-dealer-gets-30-months-in-prison-for-tax-evasion (http://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/news/11079783/used-car-dealer-gets-30-months-in-prison-for-tax-evasion)
http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2013/07/colleyville-pharmacist-and-son-get-prison-time-for-tax-fraud.html/ (http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2013/07/colleyville-pharmacist-and-son-get-prison-time-for-tax-fraud.html/)
http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/12/09/snipes.jail/index.html (http://www.cnn.com/2010/SHOWBIZ/celebrity.news.gossip/12/09/snipes.jail/index.html)
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/woman-sentenced-in-st-louis-to-prison-for-million-tax/article_5749051d-fe88-5837-a869-ddc2199400a6.html (http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/woman-sentenced-in-st-louis-to-prison-for-million-tax/article_5749051d-fe88-5837-a869-ddc2199400a6.html)

(and that's just from the first two pages of results in Google)

…and of course, there was Al Capone.

Tax evasion is a different crime.

There are three tax related crimes:

1. Tax Evasion. This is a felony and you can go to prison. 5 year maximum.
2. Filing a False return. This a felony and you can go to prison. Slightly less of a punishment than evasion (3 years max).
3. Failure to file a tax return. This is a misdimeanor, and it's unlikely that you will go to jail (even then the max sentence is 1 year so you won't go to prison). You will get a huge fine.

But #3 is assuming you have something to pay taxes for. Like I said, if you don't use any taxable services you can't be taxed.

Only reason I know about this is because of a new report about how some guy living on some compound is refusing to pay taxes, but the only reason the police is not going in there guns blazing is because he and his family/friends are well armed, and they don't leave the compound, being mostly self-sufficient. So the police just figure it's better to leave them alone.

wow a real sovereign living here in the us. link?

What's the difference between tax evasion and failure to pay taxes?

You don't know?

Tax evasion is lying about what you owe.

Thanks. Evasion suggests avoiding paying taxes (as per definition of evasion), so it doesn't sound that different from failing to pay taxes because you don't want to, e.i. avoiding it. I think tax evasion should be renamed tax fraud (i.e. lying), but I guess they'll call it whatever they want.

I don't know if you're counting me among the starry-eyed but if I have defended socialism it's not because I disagree with your first paragraph but because I prefer to see a straight-up socialist program which will sooner or later devolve into cronyism to one that starts up-front with the cronyism. As an example, given the choice between single-payer healthcare and the Affordable Care Act, I'd rather see single-payer.

You can reform or repeal socialism—not easily, but it is possible. Cronyism is with us forever, and doesn't even give us that few decades, years, or months of actual benefit before devolving and/or dragging the economy down to do more harm than good; it just starts biting us in the ass on day 1.

It's a lesser of two evils thing, not a desire for socialism. Except for courts, law enforcement, fire departments, roads, and schools (and probably more I can't think of off the top of my head). As stated before, I am in favor of that much socialism. Or at the very least saving them for the last to take away from government.

"Tax evasion" is a criminal subset of the larger set of "tax fraud" laws.

http://www.taxwhistleblowerreport.com/department-of-justice/tax-fraud-vs-tax-evasion---how-can-a-whistleblower-tell-the-differencewe-get-questions-all-the-time/ (http://www.taxwhistleblowerreport.com/department-of-justice/tax-fraud-vs-tax-evasion---how-can-a-whistleblower-tell-the-differencewe-get-questions-all-the-time/)

As to the earlier point about whether you can go to jail for simple failure to pay, it looks as though the law says you can.

In any case, even if you don't go to prison, lets say they repossess your house or some other belonging in your possession. They will send the sheriff to remove you from the property or to take away whatever it is they are taking away. If you refuse, the people with guns and badges will arrest you. If you resist, it is fairly unlikely you'll actually be shot, but you will likely end up face down on the ground with guns pointed at you while you are being handcuffed. The "threat of violence" is very real even if you file all your returns honestly and then simply refuse to pay.

People often confuse "socialism" with the concept of "communism." While the two ideologies share much in common, in fact communism encompasses socialism.
The primary difference between the two is that "socialism" applies to economic systems, whereas "communism" applies to both economic and political systems.

Another difference between socialism and communism is that communists directly oppose the concept of capitalism, an economic system in which production is controlled by private interests.
Socialists, on the other hand, believe socialism can exist within a capitalist society.

And Heidi Fleiss...  That's what she went down for too..

I thought she was paying other people to go down…

Sorry, cheap shot. I'm a bad person.

Socialism means your economic decisions are interfered with by others in the community (this can take many forms and is responsible for the various flavors and styles of suggested intervention)..

Socializm for weak people....

It's also for strong people.

Some people are just naturally better at things than other people.  On an evolutionary time scale humans are more adapted to hunter/gatherer modes of existence.  In this case, individual variation in abilities was 'buffered' since the small social groupings lived under fairly egalitarian systems generally.

In the modern world slight variations in abilities quickly lead to huge differences in competitiveness.  If that is not 'bad' enough, other structures are perpetuated which result in structural imbalances which favor skills in generally counter-productive areas (e.g., violence and/or theft/fraud), and they take on a multi-generational component leading to dynastic wealth accumulations.

I was lucky enough to have some skillz which produced a competitive advantage in my society.  I favor 'distribution of wealth' as a means of promoting more stable social systems and discouraging periodic violent revolutions and such.  Revolutionary events inevitably involve much suffering, and rarely achieve the initial goals...they tend to just shuffle the chips to a different set of power holders.  I define 'socialism' as a system which distributes wealth from people like me across society in order to promote a better quality of life for society in general.  Like making sure that old people are taken care of and everyone can have a decent level of health care for instance.

I also put my money where my mouth is in that I sometimes pay more in taxes than the average person earns.  I mainly bitch about taxes when the rules are rigged for people in my situation and I don't feel that I pay enough via various carefully engineered tax loopholes and the like.  The 'reward' that I get for pulling slightly harder on the wagon is that I don't have to fund death squads to help me preserve what I've got and trip over teaming masses of angry peasants ever time I go out in public.

I don't feel that a deadbeat deserves a high quality of life, and I don't know anyone who does.  'Socialism' offering a deadbeat a decent existence on the backs of people who are willing to work is a myth perpetuated by right winger Koch brother types in order to herd people into supporting political structures which facilitate an increase in their own dynastic wealth pools.

There's nothing wrong with a socialist system as long as participating in it is voluntary.  Socialists should be free to live in a socialist system and capitalists should be free to live in a capitalist system.

Amen!