Bitcoin Forum

Diverted from Governments and Bitcoin (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4960.0):

Contracts are a lousy way to describe societies, since the primary way people enter into them (by being born) starts them off at a place where they can't understand what they're agreeing to.  Plus, I tend to think of contracts as a lot less cut-and-dried than most capitalists do.  There's no such thing as having a human being's consent to everything.  But increasing the amount of consent required to impact someone's life generally reduces harm in a society.

So is the social contract valid?

He never said that.

I like Molyneux's definition of the social contract.

It sounds like eMansipator does not favor the first or last aspects of the social contract, but perhaps the second.

Forgive me if I'm making assumptions about your world view, but I can't imagine it will be long before you abandon the idea of citizenship or the state altogether.

What is the state at its core? A monopoly on the use of force. The sole authorized provider of law and law enforcement services. Why not allow private entities to compete for those services as well?

"Juris," in the original Latin meaning, is "oath." "Diction" as everyone knows, means "spoken."

Good luck forcing me to take oath.

So it's not?

He never answered your question.

Aren't there already plenty of governments to choose from?

I choose no government, where is the box for no government?  ;D

It's actually the 'contract' part of social contract that makes it impossible for me to express my views effectively by saying "It's valid" or "It's invalid."  Societies function through the commitment of their members--that's a technical description not a normative one.  Regarding the state and force, it seems to me that the primary force in question is concerning resources through taxes and fines, and concerning liberty through imprisonment or possibly conscription--let me know if I've missed something key.  The reason anarchy holds little appeal to me is that material resources are way more irrelevant to human beings than most capitalists realise; and that a great deal of internal changes in people need to precede any increase in liberty for destruction not to ensue.  My perception is that for most anarchists it is the resource angle that drives their eagerness.  The only way I could get on board with anarchy would be in a world that had addressed the internal change issue first, so I've got less than zero interest in anarchy theorists who aren't forging significant progress in that regard.

As above, I don't think either simple answer will effectively explain my position.  Perhaps you could elaborate on what you're trying to find out, what you mean by social contract, and/or what specifically about it is most pertinent here?

Antarctica, the abyssal plains, Luna, Mars...

None of which are practically accessible at this time.  But you forgot Somalia.  I'm not being ethnocentric and sarcastic--people in Somalia are just human beings trying to solve human problems.  I legitimately think anarchists should consider moving there and trying to do the same.

Perhaps not all people in the world are ready. I think I am. And want to seek out and cooperate with others who feel the same way. If only you'd let us try without funding the people who'll lock us up or kill us for trying. Theorising forever will of course get us nowhere. A lot of us are here because this technology gives us a chance to prove to you that we can do it. Look long and hard at what we are saying on this forum. Do you really consider us a violent threat to your way of life? A threat worth locking up or killing?

The internal issue is important. But we're never going to get anywhere if we're waiting for a uniform opinion on what it means to be human. If it means anything at all.

Isn't the non aggression principle a good start? Does it appeal to you at all?

"Anti-government" capitalists only have their lack of gumption to blame.

In a non-sarcastic way, I do believe you should pop out to Somalia and give it a try.  If the governments I pay taxes to ever threatened to invade a functioning anarchism you can be guaranteed I would oppose it loud and clear.  Just like my taxes are only a portion of their budget, my input is only a portion of their decision process, but I tend to be quite effective at making my input at least as proportionally significant as my taxes.  In this case because of my personal contact with you I'm pretty sure I could reach a very large audience.

Personally, I'm actually working on the internal change issue myself--it's the foundation of all functioning societies regardless of how they are organised.  But specialising is good, and experimental anarchism would provide valuable data.  Just make sure to keep excellent records!

The problem with "popping out to Somalia" is that compared to what we're used to, of course it will be a poor place to live. Relative to neighboring countries, it has grown incredibly fast from being at essentially absolutely nothing, and is, again relative to its neighbors, a good place to live.

The only significant barrier to progress now is foreign government intervention.

"We're" quite varied--for example I've lived in two of its neighbours for a significant portion of my life.  That's one of the reasons it's so obvious to me that the wealthiest 5% of the world's quest for more resources is misplaced.  To put it bluntly, if you're drastically wealthier than most people in the world will be in your lifetime, perhaps more resources are a lousy way to be satisfied.  That about sums up my disinterest with resource-oriented political ideologies.

Good point, hadn't considered that :)

Where did you live? Able to comment on what it's like?

In Mogadishu, people submit to competing warlords' governments in turns. On the roads, they submit to the highwaymen. In the countryside they submit to the kritarchy of Xeer. Somalis do not enjoy anarchy.

Why do they fight against the establishment of any sort of government then?

And the Xeer is a truly private law enforcement system, nothing wrong with that.


Honestly I'm not interested in talking with you FatherMcGruder, neither of us is going to convince the other of anything. In my opinion your argument doesn't make any sense and seems oppressive, and vice versa.

I've lived in both Ethiopia and Kenya, which together account for roughly 90% of the Somalian borders.  Can only comment briefly on Somalia via second-hand experience (mildly better than third-hand a.k.a. "news" I suppose), but happy to answer questions on Ethiopia and Kenya.  I'd have to start by saying that most Ethiopians and Kenyans would laugh at your idea that Somalia is a good place to live relative to them.

I wasn't actually proposing that Somalis are living in a functional anarchy.  However, it is probably one of the best bets for someone to try and start living anarchistically without a government immediately preventing them.  Since there are both Somalis who will befriend you and Somalis who will try to kill you it is also a good place to understand the diversity of the human experience.

If it helps at all, as someone who doesn't identify strongly with either of your perspectives it appears to me that you two largely misunderstand each other.  The skill of creating meaningful dialogue with someone whose perspective you strongly oppose can be quite difficult to acquire--statistically two people who oppose each other tend to both veer further from reality due to human counterwill.

If you prefer you can move to a different jurisdiction and try to convince the populace there to elect someone who will dissolve their government voluntarily.  But those are the breaks of being a very small person in a very big world--we all have to share this little blue dot.

I'm going off of multiple studies done on quality of life stuff, such as access to water, healthcare, basic electronics and communication. Supposedly Somalia also has one of the best cellular services in the continent, at some of the cheapest rates.

The only choice if I dislike the government is Somalia ?
 :D

Well, for that specific comment I'm simply telling you what most Ethiopians or Kenyans I know feel like.  There are a lot of complicated factors in true quality of life and as I said before material factors don't always play the precise role that some people think.  What in particular were those studies trying to estimate via those metrics?  To build out the picture, the PPP-adjusted per-capita GDP of Ethiopia is close to double Somalia's, and Kenya's is close to triple.  Certain factors, like infrastructure, are heavily impacted by geography: Somalia is a long strip of arid land with its population heavily concentrated on the coast, while Ethiopia is a mountainous highlands with people spread across most of the country.  Commerce in Somalia is also tied heavily to socio-religious homogeneity, with the vast majority of Somalians being Muslim.  The fact that so many money/banking matters are religiously tied (after all Mohammed pbuh was a business man) keeps those aspects more secure from conflict than many individuals.

I'd be surprised if Somalian technology and cell services truly surpass Kenya though--the latter has one of the highest levels of technology in Africa, with services such as cell phone payments (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-Pesa) used by 90% of households, and reasonably inexpensive wireless internet access across most of the country--it's the telecommunications hub for the whole region.  You can walk into a one room shop in a fairly remote town and the clerk will be sitting behind the counter browsing facebook.  Actually it's my experience with "M-Pesa" cell-phone payments in Kenya that convinces me BitCoin will go global as the internet does--one of the biggest reasons I'm excited about it.  The highest volume use of M-Pesa payments occurs with family members sending money between cities and rural areas--since this describes the bulk of Western Union's international business it bodes very well :) .

The governments you pay for helped invade Somalia (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/War_in_Somalia_(2006%E2%80%932009)):


and earlier https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993) (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Battle_of_Mogadishu_(1993)).

Oh yeah, and for the last time, Somalia's current political situation is as follows:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Political_situation_in_Somalia_following_the_Ethiopian_withdrawal.png

I'm quite a lot more aware of who exactly invaded Somalia than you are, since I actually know people who fought in the respective wars themselves, was in Ethiopia during one of them, and I could tell you some pretty gory details.  You are just making silly assumptions--I'm not american, and have never paid american taxes.  And could you resize that image?  It's unhelpfully large.

You don't live in a UN member nation?

Unless anyone can demonstrate the validity of the social contract, I don't see why I should have to move anywhere. I wouldn't dream of suggesting the same thing to you. I'm working on internal change too. I think it's vital. I also think it will lead us to different conclusions, and we'll be waiting forever for everyone to be on the same internal page. It's my belief that the non initiation of violence is a universal principle that is presupposed by the act of debate. I will be acting according to this belief and the only thing that's going to stop me is violence. For a long time I thought that perhaps we should all move to an island somewhere, get some nukes and we'll be fine. This wouldn't help anyone but us. I'm not going to run and hide. I'm staying put and I'm going to show people that it's possible to live without being coerced.

Also, what do you think of the valuable data from 200 years of experimental minarchy? Namely the US constitution.

+1

Yes, it is very hard to have a civil discussion with proponents of the so-called "social-contract" when they advocate deporting or locking up in government-run rape cages anyone near their geographical area who disagrees with them.

You're digging a giant hole here buddy--I knew precisely what I was talking about.  During the first war I was too young to pay taxes, and during the second war the country I pay taxes to did not support the war with one cent.  And as a completely unrelated topic I opposed the war I was in the country during though not for reasons of anarchism but because of the complex politics involved which I'm sure you're quite ignorant of.  But all of these things aside, I said "functioning anarchism" and I suspect that Somalia is not your model of functioning anarchism.  And in interest of the larger discussion I ought to add that no matter who collects "points" from this particular issue it doesn't really contribute to a meeting and interaction of our respective ideas.  Me "getting to be right" in this paragraph is actually just a waste of both of our time--it says nothing about the validity or invalidity of our approaches.

I would, if I were set on forming an incompatible society with the one I lived in whereas another compatible jurisdiction was available.  In fact, I regularly re-assess this possibility.  I've no idea what you mean by "the validity of the social contract" since I don't follow that model myself.  There is, however, the practical fact that human lives are interconnected and when one decides to start acting incompatibly with the community in which one lives one ought not to be overly surprised that the community sometimes objects.  Applies in a western democracy or the middle of Papua New Guinea.  Involving contracts in the situation doesn't seem to clarify the issue at all.

The same internal page isn't necessarily even desirable, but I do believe that reality itself is convergent, so if our internal change leads our map to better reflect the territory, we're all likely to benefit as social organisms.

An admirable decision.  I'm eager to have you demonstrate your position to me in this manner, if it is more correlated with reality than my own.  I've simply never heard a compelling cause for anarchy.  I'm under no delusion that our existing system is best--in fact I continually try to improve it myself for that very reason.

I think it's an interesting idea, launched under less than ideal circumstances, which hasn't scaled terribly well.
Come now.  I'm being quite civil since as you're well aware I've advocated neither.  Rather, I've advocated the availability of access to alternatives.

I'm curious. Since you don't follow the social contract model. Do you have any argument for why I ought to leave? It seems as if you're simply warning me, that should I step outside the social norm, I should expect violence. I don't claim any magical power of contracts to solve social problems. I view them simply as a way to objectively demnstrate voluntary consent.


I agree.


I personally don't think that anarchy would work if the government disbanded over night. I suspect there would be utter chaos followed by another government. What I want to see is a gradual seperation of state and all products and services, achieved through peaceful non compliance. I believe that seperation of church and state is almost complete, and that seperation of state and economics is under way. I don't have a predicted or suggested timeline for this. But for me, I can't bear the thought that from now until the end of time, human beings (or any sentient beings) will fundementally need rulers.


What do you think went wrong?

There's no "ought".  There's only the "if living under the tyrannical force of a democratic state is unlivable, well, there is actually an alternative.  So by your own measure it can't be so overly terrible can it?"  Under our current set of circumstances I think this is the primary reason that anarchy comes off as so much whining.  Almost anyone posting on the internet is enjoying a higher material standard of living than 5 nines of human beings in history.  It's kind of unimpressive that some of them would be sitting there thinking "It's horrible that I have to give a percentage of this away.  Now if only I had my own private army, I could probably avoid that!"  Hardly inspirational, is it?

Yes, but in your anarchist model someone who does things you don't like (tries to take your property) will be subject to violence against their consent, and quite frankly I don't see the difference.  Every society has some sort of rules which if broken lead to negative consequences.  However if we produce many of them the ones people want to be in will evidently be more desirable.  And right now you must accept that more people want to be in democracies than in anarchies.

In the final assessment I can agree that there probably exists a Nash Equilibrium at total nonviolence and therefore no further possible value to the external imposition of structure.  I'm happy to call it anarchism.  It's a long way away, but probably achievable if we don't destroy ourselves first.  I also believe there's likely to be a possible path from here to there both mentally and socially, with many intermediary steps.  I see present-day democracies as a mediocre but best-so-far environment within which the next step can emerge.

To whom, and when?  It's rather a long list.

Looking at it like that I can understand why you'd think that way. It's not how I look at it. I think it can be easily demonstrated that taxation is not a voluntary contribution. Even if the government went on to spend it efficiently on solving problems, it doesn't change the fact that the means are inconsistent with the ends. How can you teach children that stealing is wrong when their education is funded through theft? Do you suggest that because I happen to live in relative comfort, I should ignore the atrocities that are carried out using resources exctracted from me through force? I can't ignore it. I am not interested in a private army. All I need to avoid it is crypto, an anonamous decentralised currency and other like minded individuals.


I won't harm anyone who takes my property. I will take steps to prevent people from taking it. If someone does take something of mine, I will try to take it back. If my attempts to retake what's mine are met with violence, I will defend myself. I will report incidents of theft to the community, so people are aware of individuals who have no regard for property. I will offer the theif an opportunity to explain himself to me before reporting him, in the hope of finding a peaceful way to help him get what he needs. This is a huge topic, and basically I don't think there's any hypothetical scenario you can throw at me that would lead me to conclude that we ought to resort to giving one group of individuals a monopoly on law creation, enforcement and dispute resolution.


Exactly  ;D I see democracy as a stepping stone. I don't personally think that we could have had anarchy this whole time. Although I do think we're ready to start spreading our wings right now.


Yes, perhaps this should be discussed later in another thread?

These discussions always get to incredibly specific and pointless points.

In the real world it all comes to the point where if you don't have a very well educated, informed and politicaly active population sonner or later the people will get screwed by the power of the government, the corporations or both.

What's a pointless point?

In the real world, those who work in and depend on governments will use their influence to make their own situation better, generally to the detriment of the rest of the population.

You can't have a politically informed population, fetokun. It's impossible.

There are thousand of political issues in the world and we're supposed to vote for politicans that supposedly can deal with thousand and thousand of political issues?

The US educational system isn't up to the task of informing the population what they should know about the issue. Even if they are, it would be an incredible amount of knowledges for each person to have.

Just because we know things, do you really think we would vote in our best long term interest?
 
Knowledge is dispersed all over the population. Accurate knowledge is difficult to assess if you're not an expert or rational. Never mind the obstacle of overcoming political tribalism and the problem of political irrationality.

Every bitcoiners here know how bitcoin and how the economy works, roughly. However, they are technically and economically savy. Do you really think your grandma/grandpa will be that savy?

As the economy grows, bitcoiners will find it impossible to keep up with bitcoin related information. Instead they will specialize into their niches. Some people will be well-informed about security. Others make a good living at writing fiction. Others know the economics of MMO currencies exchanges. Knowledge will become dispersed. They will be less and less likely to be able to make good decisions outside of the field of their expertise.

You mean there are anarchist factions fighting Ethiopian invaders, al-Shabab, the UIC, etc? I think not. I would think that like most people, Somalis mostly settle for the authorities that offer the best comfort and survival rate.

Perhaps, but it's not anarchy. I mean, the Saudi family privately owns and runs Saudi Arabia. Would you call that anarchy?


I was a capitalist once, too, you know...

Yes, I agree with you. You're basically saying "it's not possible to be an expert in everything about politics", wich it's something pretty impossible to disagree with.

But a basic level of understanding would be a good start.

By basic level I mean, for instance, knowing that if you leave in a market-driven nation you are required to "vote" with each purchase you make. So you must buy from companies whose policies you view as beneficial to society as a whole and not buy based only on the price.

And if you leave in places where the government has a huge whole and influence, just showing up on the election day is not enough. You have to participate through various ways (reading, sending letters, protesting...)

I'm sure these is incredibly trivial and obvious to everyone here, but until these small facts become trival and obvious also to the average Joe, any system (even the ideal system you or anybody here have in mind) is doomed.

There is no such requirement. It cannot even be feasibly enforceable and collective agreement is highly unlikely. People will almost certainly buy products that achieve their ends reasonably. That is the victor in the freemarket. Besides, moral obligations are arbitrarily subjective. What will happen, happens. Idealism changes nothing.

Discouse is not a waste of time.  It is very important to nail some things out. For instance, was your non-support of the war a voluntary decision on your part or was it because you happend to be too young in the first war and happened by chance, for various complex political reasons, that the country you next lived in choose not to support the second war?  I am getting the impression that you think taxes are voluntary somehow, however your taxes not going to support the war was apparently entirely by chance from external circumstances outside of your control.

Come now.  I'm being quite civil since as you're well aware I've advocated neither.  Rather, I've advocated the availability of access to alternatives.
[/quote]

What exactly should be done to me for not paying taxes?

You should have a party thrown for you and a medal awarded. Ticker tape parades, too, if someone wants to put one together and fund it. :)

Alternatively, we could fund the party by using the threat of violence to coerce money from people!

Voluntary is a complicated notion.  Is eating voluntary?  I certainly feel that for myself I choose to eat food of my own free will without coercion and happily.  But on the other hand if I don't eat I will die.  So do I truly eat under duress of death?  A lot of voluntary has to do with a person's attitude rather than the particular circumstances.  Nonetheless the availability of an alternative is generally considered to make something voluntary.

Are you telling me that if you had the option for your taxes not to support your children's education you would take it?  And more importantly, that you feel wronged when your taxes go to educate the child of someone who could not otherwise afford it for them?  You're not exactly currying my sympathy here--education has a pretty clear return on investment.  There do exist jurisdictions, not even just anarchist ones, where there is no government support for education--you are quite welcome to move to one of them.

On the contrary--if any community you participate in is doing unconscionable things, then you have the responsibility to speak out against it and use whatever methods are available to you within that community to prevent it.  If your community continues to act unconscionably you would do well to leave it.  How else can any community willing to act more conscionably gain traction?

At whichever step you do any action impacting the thief which the thief themself did not consent to, you have acted against their consent.  I agree with you that it makes a great deal of difference how such actions are performed, but this is also the case within a state.  Giving someone a fair trial with the opportunity to explain their actions, not using undue force against them unless it is necessary, etc. etc. etc. are all essentially your own standard above applied at a community level.  But at this point in history there's no such thing as a jurisdiction which obtains complete consent from all of its members all the time.

And you have a plan to do this in a non-disruptive way?  Then more power to you!  But if I were to sum up my response to everything above, I would say that you are trying to compare our present circumstances to nearly perfect ones.  This is the wrong comparison--rather a society deserves the support of any rational person if it is simply better than anything else available, including something they themselves are able to bring about without unconscionable action.  We are always bound by our material circumstances--that is the nature of living in a universe that is real.  But we have many tools available to improve those material circumstances--a meaningful life consists of a meaningful use of those tools.

Yes, if at all.  It's not an overly interesting topic to me unless you are looking for a particular insight on it that I actually possess, or have one of broad import yourself to offer.  Suggestions for the former include a more international perspective.  Suggestions for the latter would be any general insights into the functioning of societies which would be widely applicable.

Which is why helping to educate, inform, and involve people with steering them both in a better direction is a very worthwhile pursuit.  And it's more possible to be much more effective at it than it ever has been in history--isn't that great?

You still are, you just don't really understand what the term means.

I would seriously doubt that.

I can't speak for him, but I think that it's proof enough that it doesn't really work long term.

"Either the Constitution explicitly authorized the government that we have now, or was powerless to prevent it..."

Discourse is not a waste of time, but pursuing a point simply because you hope I will have missed a key element of a situation is.  If you want to make a case for taxes being involuntary, make it directly.  Hoping to catch someone on a misstep is an emotional tactic to gain momentum for your argument--it lends no rational significance.  I could be the most bumbling debater in the history of humanity and still accidentally right.

If you live in and benefit from a community which has agreed to use taxation to fund certain activities of shared pertinence such as law enforcement, infrastructure, emergency services, education, etc. yet you do not pay your taxes, you become a leech on everyone else.  To prevent leeching most such communities will have a known and defined process for ascertaining your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and taking the actions the community has deemed appropriate.  If you can find a "should" in there somewhere you're welcome to try.

I didn't see a "should," just an implied threat of violence for not paying for "services" which not only were not requested but were forced on an individual, who had no choice in what service to use or not use. This is utterly morally disgusting.

Define "Benefit". Is somebody giving you an unsolicited drink freely and then sending you a tab for it at the end of the night really considered a "benefit"?

I, and I think others, often have a hard time separating statements of fact from statements of opinion. Here, you are stating the fact that if you don't pay income tax, you will have your property seized or perhaps go to jail. I agree with this fact, however it gives me the impression that you believe this to be desirable behavior. Do you have no opinion, you prefer not to state it, or find it irrelevant?

It's difficult if not impossible to have a discussion on what should be when all you are willing to say is what is.

Well, if I do not have authority over anyone else, and I no longer aspire for such status, how am I still a capitalist?

The Queen owns Australia and Canada .

In some ways is it better to have someone who owns the country because they have a vested interest in its welfare ?

The US president is well on his way to being a king . Why dont you just crown him already and get it over and done with? To me he looks like he is because you live at his discretion now that he can just sign an executive order that you are a threat to the country. Someone with the ability to do that is obviously the supreme ruler and you should all bow down and kiss his ring.

Case in point.

Capitalism has nothing to do with authority or influence over other people.  It is entirely about authority and influence over resources.  It's the 'anarcho' part that deals with human relationships.

Guess when Australia declared sovereignty ....... when we joined the League of Nations as a founding member state, not as a colony or dominion
And nobody knows because we didn't fight a war for it.  >:(
The Queen owns nothing outside of the U.K anymore and never had the legal right to do so

Whereas the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established:
And whereas it is expedient to provide for the admission into the Commonwealth of other Australasian Colonies and possessions of the Queen:
Be it therefore enacted by the Queen’s most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:
1. This Act may be cited as the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act.
2. The provisions of this Act referring to the Queen shall extend to Her Majesty’s heirs and successors in the sovereignty of the United Kingdom.

61. The executive power of the Commonwealth is vested in the Queen and is exercisable by the Governor-General as the Queen’s representative, and extends to the execution and maintenance of this Constitution, and of the laws of the Commonwealth.


You mean people ignore a piece of paper called the constitution ? I am shocked.. ;)

Put your hand up if you think you are party to a contract drawn before you are born just because you happen to come out of someones vagina on a geographical location ?

Wow.  Amazing.  Didn't answer my question, "What exactly should be done to me for not paying taxes?".  Danced around it a lot, though.


Good point.  The better question for eMansipater is: "What specifically do you, eMansipater, advocate be done to me for not paying taxes?  What actions does your community deem appropriate towards an individual who does not pay taxes?  Would you condone the use of violence against me should I not pay taxes?"


Exactly.  I did not request such services.  I did not have a choice in what services to use or not use.  And I don't even think the *quality* of the services supposedly provided are even acceptable.  Yes, it is morally disgusting.  And frustrating to debate.  If they would be forthright and simply state, "Yes, I advocate initiating threats of violence against you for not paying taxes", then you can at least know to dissociate from them.

The absense of coercion is required to make something voluntary. Since we're talking about how people interact with eachother, eating has nothing to do with it.


I repeat. How can you teach children that stealing is wrong when their education is funded through theft? I understand perfectly that some people can't afford education for their children. I understand perfectly that at any moment I could be struck by some misfortune that would put me in the same situation. I am more than happy to help people fund the education of their children. I am not happy having my resources squandered on what passes for public education. Good education has a clear return on investment. And forget it .. I'm not moving.


And here I am. Speaking out and using the methods available to me (crypto currency) to prevent my own forced participation.


I have a non violent plan. No such thing as a non-disruptive suggestion for change. If by unconscionable you mean non violent, then you shouldn't have any objections to our actions. If by unconscionable you mean illegal, your argument is circular. If by "meaningful use" you're talking about a rational application of logic, consistent principles and empirical evidence then I agree.

Like any capitalist, monarchs have authority and influence over the resources in their kingdom. How can a monarch become an anarchist, yet remain a monarch?

I've yet to see this guy utter a word of sense.

It's arbitrary morality. There's no real basis for why man cannot own property.

Edit.

Heh. So, your solution is man should be reduced to nothing but only live to serve the whims and desires of his fellow man and somehow have faith that others will do the same?

In summary, it's voluntary communism that no self-respecting man will submit to. I certainly won't.

It encourages nothing. The key difference is the initiation of violence.

What if initiating violence is profitable?

All it means is that it is profitable for the initiator.

If you aquire your resources through violence, peaceful people will not want to trade with you. You would effectively be lowering the value of your ill gotten wares by limiting the amount of people who'll deal with you. You would have to invest in a considerable amount more for protection of your wares than the average peaceful individual. You will be forced to deal on a black market with other violent people and will incur the cost of all the added risk that entails (not to mention the emotional cost of ostracism).

I could go on on and on. Basically there'll be short sighted individuals who think that it's worth it. However I think it will be more profitable to deal with people on a mutually beneficial and voluntary basis.

Just the history of the Roman Empire alone refutes this claim.

Ok .. So lets say that you personally are shopping for a thing. You find two people selling the thing you're looking for. One of them has aquired the thing through violence, the other through voluntary exchange. Which would you personally rather deal with?

Whatever is cheaper.

Cheaper in the short term or long term?

It all gets acquired by violence eventually. As for the long-term, I can't even be certain of the results of my actions.

Would you agree that if you endorsed violent behaviour, you would likely be increasing the probability that you would become a victim of violence?

Not necessarily. There's a lot of people out there.

 :P .. Last try

Ok, if everyone endorsed violent behaviour, would you be more likely to become a victim of violence?

Sure. However, that's a big if.

Anyways, I'll make sure I am armed.

So the idea of volunteerism is to boycott the products of those who make their gains by violence.

A landlord must use violence, or the threat of violence, to make a living. If you do not pay his tithe, the rent, or follow his rules, he will violently remove you from or keep you out of the territory he controls for which he has no actual use himself.

An employer must use violence, or the threat of violence, to make a living. If you do not pay his tithe, the difference in value between your wage and that which you produce with your labor, or follow his rules, he will violently remove you from or keep you out of the workplace he controls, for which he has no actual use himself.

A usurer does the same thing, except with any capital in addition to territory and the means of production.

For the most part, landlords, employers, and usurers depend on the state to provide the violence. In the absence of a conventional government though, they'll have to procure it some other way. Keep in mind that violence isn't necessarily bloody and gory.

So, if one opposes government for gaining by violence, or threat of violence, he should also oppose landlords, employers, and usurers.

I depend on violence to defend the right to my life.

And so you should. If someone gets in between you and the means of production, or you and your home, he is infringing on your life.

That's a big part of it yes.


You would have entered into a contract voluntarily with the land lord to live on his property. I would expect that such a contract would require that you move out if you did not pay. If you refuse to leave when you are in breach of contract the land lord is within his rights to remove you. A point not to be glossed over is the fact that you would have been made aware of, and explicitly agreed to the rules in advance. The landlord does have a use for the land/house/room, and that is the renting of it to another person who's willing and able to pay the fee.


I think the above response fits this situation too.


What I oppose is the providing of goods and services at the barrel of a gun. I oppose governments because they will use violence to stop you from competing with the services they provide. Many businesses also presently rely on the violence a state can provide to limit competition. What I'm for, is an environment in which no entity can rely on the cost of hampering competition being outsourced to society as a whole.

I think I've finally figured out what's wrong here. It doesn't seem that FatherMcGruder respects property rights. That's quite unfortunate.

Why do anarchists drink herbal tea?

Because they don't believe in proper tea, heh.

Yeah, I don't see how you can respect one kind of property rights ("personal" property), but not another ("capital" property). How do you draw that line? It's almost certain that more people could live in your home than currently does. Can you (McGruder) give an argument against this individual using your home that doesn't also fit for a landlord and his property?

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I would say socialists or communists moreso than anarchists

The problem there is that the socialists and communists CALL themselves anarchists, and the press quotes it as if it were true. Remember, the people who subscribe to this philosophy have no qualms about throwing a bomb at you if you are making a "profit" at someone else's "expense" -- in their eyes.

I think it makes more sense for the anarcho-socialists and communists to call themselves Anhierarchists.

Why? Do you feel that it's possible to reject rulers but accept hierarchies? Do you have any particular hierarchies in mind that you consider tolerable, or is your concern with the collectivist anarchists' focus on hierarchies?

Regarding the bomb-throwing quip, error, that's seems to be a sweeping generalisation and I'd want to see some sort of evidence to support comments like that. With respect, it seems more rooted in late-19th century history and the caricature of the bomb-throwing, cape-wearing anarchist than any 20th or 21st century reality.

Because I think that hierarchies spontaneosly emerge when cooperation happens. I've been in a meeting with anarcho-socialists and communists and what happened blew me away, it was fantastic. Nobody interupts, everyone listens and the whole thing goes swimmingly. However, there was a hierarchical structure that spontaneously emerged, served it's purpose and disappeared. It happens when we communicate, I talk, you listen and vice versa. There is lasting power to be had in maintaining a hierarchy for longer than it's natural life. This is achieved with violence and I am opposed to this. Governments talk, people listen, it's unilateral and perpetual.

I don't personally believe the bomb throwing anarchist rhetoric. I've seen enough evidence of agents provocateur to know what's really going on.

OK, good answer, but an "an-hierarchist" would want no hierarchies :-) The "hierarchies" I've seen emerge in collectivist anarchist settings tend to be voluntary and temporary (the temporary acceptance of someone to chair a meeting, for the duration of that meeting) and didn't suggest any power beyond that necessary - the chair of a meeting had to wait their place in turn to speak on a proposal, for example.

The bomb-throwing comment was addressed to error, but possibly deserves some clarity around it: I've also seen my fair share recently (http://wn.com/Agent_Provocateur_at_26th_of_March_London_Demonstration) and as far back as the Miners' Strike in the UK, so while I'm aware of the huge amount of negative publicity some anarchist have had generated around them, I'm also sceptical when I hear claims of violence against living creatures. I'm well aware that some anarchists support property destruction, which doesn't fit with my more pacifist beliefs, but I'm very sceptical of the media presentation of anarchists as violent thugs attacking poor, un-armoured, defenceless state employees.

Yes an anhierarchist would want no hierarchies at all, I bring the idea up to highlight what I see as an inconsistency. I feel that any prolonged hierarchy, such as those that exist in the workplace are valid and desirable so long as they meet a well defined need.

For example, maybe the valid and desirable duration a hierarchy is a "moment". That moment could be the duration of a meeting, or the duration of a period in time where a demand exists for a service. A perfect example of what I'm opposed to is what the record and film industries are doing. They served their purpose, met the needs of the market, but now technology has made their business models obsolete. The moment in time which the organisational hierarchy that emerged to meet the needs of artists and consumers in the way that the record and film industry did, is now over. Digital information is now almost entirely post-scarce. It's only because the cost of going around and persecuting people who share files is offloaded to the taxpayer can they continue to operate in their archaic fashion. I think that things of this nature are a big piece of the puzzle as to why we're so messed up at the moment.

That video in the link is amazing! Hadn't seen that one yet! Absolutely blatant!

You are simply describing the Misesian concept of "emergent order".  Anarchist meetings aside, have you ever gone to a Meetup?  Who is in charge?  Usually the guy that pays for the hosting fee on Meetup.com, and only so far as that goes.  Once the meetup is up and going, there really isn't a 'leader'.  If there is a crowd getting onto a city bus, there is no leadership, but rare is the event where someone is cut or pushed to get onto the bus, and never is anyone left behind.  No government authority is necessary.

I agree .. was that not clear?

That post wasn't really for your benefit.  I can already tell that you have spent time thinking about such things.

 :) thanks

Yes!  There are anarchists, and then there are anheirarchists!

I wonder who's paying for the bitcoin.org hosting?  :)

Yeah, I used to run an "anarcist" Meetup and was the leader (i.e. paid the fee)!   :-\

OK, to recap:

sortedmush argued (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5142.msg76993#msg76993) it makes more sense for left-anarchists to call themselves "anhierarchists" (presumably denoting left-anarchists' opposition to hierarchy), but then argues (http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5142.msg77053#msg77053) that hierarchical structures emerge as left-anarchist organise, the debate serving to highlight (as sortedmush sees it) an inconsistency among left-anarchists.

sortedmush's analysis is fair enough - there may well be inconsistencies. I don't personally see it like that, as I don't regard the temporary election of a recallable chair to be the imposition of a ruler, but it's a reasonable argument all the same.

What I don't get is: what is the difference between opposition to rulers and opposition to hierarchies? sortedmush highlights an inconsistency, rather than demonstrating that left-anarchists are opposed to hierarchies (indeed, sortedmush suggests that left anarchists embrace hierarchy to a certain extent). Does any one genuinely believe that anarchists can be split into those who are opposed to rulers and those who are opposed to hierarchies? For that matter, does any one see a difference between opposition to rulers and opposition to hierarchies? Or is it more nuanced than that, an opposition to rulers accompanied (or not) by an opposition to all other forms of hierarchy?

Genuine question: this isn't something I've studied for nearly 25 years, but I found it fascinating when I did. I was lucky enough to study political science at a college where the lecturers bucked the then-trend for "compulsory" membership of the British Communist Party, and I was luckier still to have lecturers who were interested not just in anarchism but anarcho-capitalism. So I'm curious to see what people involved now believe.

It seems to me that the hierarcharies formed by anarcho-capitalists, or more accurately, voluntaryists are not alway "top-down". Rather, the voluntaryists are part of many hiearcharies at the same time fulfilling different functions.

Many of them are temporal in nature. Others may be stable throughout time.

When I've been thinking of hierarchies, I've been assuming something like the Wikipedia definition (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hierarchy), i.e. there are "top-down" relationships. I think I'm getting it now - when anarcho-capitalists or voluntaryists talk of hierarchies they're discussing what I think of as basic networks - undirected graphs as opposed to directed graphs?

I can't say that I'm speaking for anarcho-capitalists as a whole, I think we're all battling with semantics in one way or another and these labels are a mixed blessing. When I say I'm opposed to rulers, I mean I'm opposed to the notion that we have somehow implicitly agreed to be subject to the will of others, or that we have any inherent duty to obey others. I have no problem with the emerging of hierarchical structures. I do have a problem with the initiation of violence to maintain structures that wouldn't exist where it not for the violence.

Hierarchy isn't a big deal to me. It's a tool, and I'm not going to tell people which tools they can and can't use. I'm just going to expose, ridicule, boycott and ostracise those who initiate violence.

It seems there's lot more of a difference between left and right anarchists than meets the eye.

I really don't get left anarchists opposition to hierarchy, mainly because of what I percieve as the inconsistency I outlined. I'd like to get a left anarchist's take on things, preferably in the form of a skype chat .. I do have a lot of questions.

If you manage to do that could you, with their agreement, post a summary here? I'd be interested, too. My knowledge of anarchism is primarily left-oriented, but it's very out of date. I know the broad historical themes, but not the current debates.

Will do  ;D

I concluded that they are inconsistent with regard to profit, on the sample size of one. Rather, I could not figure out why profit is evil.

IIRC, when left anarchists use the word 'hierarchy' it is only hierarchy in the form of coercive power relationships that they mean. Left anarchists have no problems with the implicit hierarchy formed from natural authority, for example.

I still don't get it. Perhaps the confusion stems from what is considered coercion. I don't get how owning stuff is coercive given my understanding of the word.


Me neither. Though I can understand that profit and wealth seem to correlate with evil.

Where or not owning stuff is considered coercive depends on how it is used. If the owner works their property themselves, left anarchists call that property 'possession' and have no issue with it. In fact, many left anarchists would wish the world of labor consisted only of artisans and syndicates. (When you combine this with the free market, one gets Mutualism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_%28economic_theory%29).)

When one has a working class (a class of people who only own their labor), then paying someone a fraction of what they produce to use the property is viewed as coercive (and many left anarchists will not recogne your claim to the property as legitimate). The reason why they find this coercive is that the needs of the worker compel them to work for someone like you, hence why they consider the "you can always work for someone else" retort to be invalid.

Contract or not, landlords cannot exist without the violence to remove people from their homes.

Ditto.

What's to stop business owners from violently eliminating competition to increase their profits themselves? Criminal enterprises, who do not enjoy protection from the traditional state, do so all the time.

I just don't think anyone has the right to use, or not use, their property to exploit or otherwise harm others.

My home? I can have guests, but the decision of allowing additional people to live her belongs to my landlord. If I did own my home though, and if I thought a portion of it would be most useful housing someone, I would sell that portion as a share.

It's kind of funny with you think about it, that people regularly do not own their own homes.

As long as a socialist or a communist hates and wishes to get rid of authority, he is an anarchist. If he tolerates authority, even in the form of a state that he expects to wither away, he is not an anarchist.

No, but it's what anti-government capitalists try to do, not seeing, or perhaps ignoring, the contradiction.

That's not hierarchy, because the apparent leaders don't have any rank over anyone else. They are partners.

Employers talk, employees listen, landlords talk, tenants listen, all unilaterally. These are authoritarian relationships.

Yes they can. They can wait until the person has left and change the lock. They can ask politely, pointing our the breach of contract. They can tell others that the person is in on their property without their permission. The person in breach of the contract is in risk of social exclusion.

Anarcho Capitalism doesn't mean that all landlords are required to be heartless bastards just because the community they live in functions on a respect for property rights.

Ditto


They'll have to pay for the violence by increasing their prices, thus encouraging competition. What criminal enterprises are you talking about? Drugs? Guns? These won't be criminal. They'll be subject to the market same as anything else. Except the risk (due to prohibition) won't be there. These enterprises won't automatically draw violent people.

There'll also be nothing stopping people from protecting themselves.
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But is it implicit and perpetual? If the landlord or employer breaches the contract that you both voluntarily entered into, you would be entitled to remedy. They cannot subject you to anything beyond that which you agree.

If employers don't listen, the employees can quit.