Dude, you need to broaden your reading. Spend a month reading some material outside of your special domain of interest. To think that the individuals you idolize and study are in turn well studied in the all the complex interactions of our planet Earth is to admit your naivete. Here are some recommendations:

http://www.amazon.com/Trophic-Cascades-Predators-Changing-Dynamics/dp/1597264873/

http://www.amazon.com/Where-Wild-Things-Were-Ecological/dp/1596916249/

http://www.amazon.com/Continental-Conservation-Scientific-Foundations-Regional/

Anything that requires more resources than one can muster requires organization. Any organization, by virtue of its existence, is a decision making body. Any organization greater than a size of two likely will require some type of system that allows it to act on decisions that all members might not be in favor of. Voting is one example.

I hope that answers your question. And I hope it pretty much puts to rest the ongoing discussion that has been occurring in countless threads here as to the slim viability of organization without coercion.

Next item on the list is the Oregon Institute petition. Before getting into it, if anyone here wants to take a preemptive stab at defending it, feel free to do so.

Hawker already pointed out to you that you might inherit the property. If you don't agree to it, then I suppose you can sell. The same situation applies to citizenship. You either apply for citizenship and agree to it, or you inherit it by birth. If the former, you're the one agreeing. If the latter, you can opt out and leave, exactly as in the inheritance situation.

Defend the homeowner's association all you want - by doing so, you are implicitly defending taxation.

That is what immigrants do when they land on US soil and apply for US citizenship (or another nation). The US owned the land hundreds of years ago, and slowly granted property rights to citizens, and those citizens knew full well the laws of the nation. It is exactly like the homeowner's association.


No, it isn't. When you buy a house and there is a homeowner's association, you're the owner of the house, but the homeowner's association was setup by the former owner of the land your house resides on - the developer. The homeowner's association is dictating to you rules you must abide by and fees you must pay, even though you own the house, and possibly the land. In the case of a condo, you don't own the land. Either way, it's a mixed scenario in which the original owner of the land (developer or nation) is stipulating to you rules you must abide by and fees you must pay to insure the well being of the community.


The homeowner's association essentially knocks on your door every month and demands a fee, even though you own the land and house. If you don't like it, move. If you don't like the nation you live in, move.


It's not a weak argument. If you were born into a nation with a set of preexisting rules, then as you say, too bad.

A homeowner's association exists to ensure benefit to all residents by maintaining a set of rules, usually having to do with the following:

• The appearance of one's house and yard
• The allowed modifications one can make to the house
• Security
• Landscaping and maintenance of land in and around the neighborhood, but not the property of any single homeowner
• Safety, especially for children

Homeowner associations are not governmental organizations, but private operations put in place by the developer of the tract. However, it is a classic example of micro governance at work. The association dues are basically the analogue of taxes, and the services rendered are the analogue of public services. The homeowners can vote on new regulations.

If homeowners are not happy with the situation, they can organize, vote, or leave. Again, this is like government. What it is decidedly not like is a decentralized idealistic libertarian society. The point is, organized tax collecting institutions which collect a fee to render a prescribed set of services to a population are generally inevitable and will arise from any society, even your libertarian society.

I don't think it's strange at all. His agenda is to call into question the value of regulations, thus it is predictable that he would leave that out. His argument suffers from bragging about the results of successful application of stringent regulations, while trying to imply that those results are natural consequences of ignoring those individuals and institutions who called for the regulations.

Moving on to the fifth paragraph, second section:


He is stating that it is a truth that we will never run out of fossil fuels. He really believes that? Or does he just believe his audience will believe that? In the second sentence, he comes close to contradicting his first sentence. But even so, who exactly is Robert Bradley? Ahh, he's the president of the Institute for Energy Research, which if you're even a half wit, wouldn't take you too long to discover its agenda, and who it is affiliated with. I think it would be interesting to see how much peer review Bradley's publications have been subjected to.

As for the third sentence, I will acknowledge that research into alternative sources of energy has a good chance of yielding clean energy - but such research is only likely to be forestalled by statements such as those made by Bast. As to the notion that those who aren't fans of Ayn Rand are the types who can't visualize alternative energy, well, that's just absurd.

We can begin with the second paragraph of the second section, although there's plenty of material prior to that worth dissecting.


He is implying several things here:

1. Regulation is not necessary. Look! The world is getting cleaner and better with time.
2. There are no environmental issues to be concerned about.

This is just one example of many misleading tactics employed by these propaganda organizations. With regard to point number one, he is failing in a big way to acknowledge that it is precisely because of ever more stringent regulations that these reductions in pollution have occurred. The Heartland Institute, and many like it, are fervent supporters of minimal regulation.

With regard to point number two, Bast's statement is delivered to imply that going forward, there is no reason to be concerned about environmental harm, as things by themselves are improving. This statement is designed to imply that those engaging in environmental research are alarmists, which happens to be a buzzword amongst these organizations.

Are you familiar with the concept of a homeowner's association and the association dues that are payable by its residents? I'm sure you are. I'm more than willing to have an in depth discussion with you about it. Feel free to start a thread on it, or we can discuss it here, but it could derail the thread.

The disservice brownlashers do the world community at large, to put it bluntly, is disgusting. For starters, let's take a look at this prominent purveyor of anti-science and his organization:

http://heartland.org/press-releases/2004/05/29/heartland-president-addresses-common-sense-environmentalism

Virtually every sentence in Joseph L. Bast's essay can be shown to be either manipulative, misleading, or guilty of presenting falsehoods and non-facts. Contradictions can be found, if one wishes to read the whole thing. This kind of propaganda is ubiquitous and unfortunately, convincing to those who choose to seek their learning material based upon what they want to hear.

In addition to dissecting the content of the essay's message, it would be interesting to show who funds the organization behind the message.

Without a doubt, there will be an attempted defense of the above cited essay, and I can already anticipate some of the ones who will make that attempt.

Let's take a moment and substitute some real world terms into your assertion. For example:

You have the right to pay a portion of your income to the government. Therefore, it is legitimate for the government to demand that you pay a portion of your income to the government.

I personally wouldn't make the original assertion, but you have, therefore we can conclude that you would deem it fair that the government demands that you pay taxes.

Further on, you state:


By substituting the term demand with your clarified meaning of it, we can conclude that you believe the following to be acceptable, fair and reasonable:

You have the right to pay a portion of your income to the government. Therefore, it is legitimate for the government to make a "forceful and insistent request" that you pay a portion of your income to the government.

Now that we have a fair synopsis of the point that you are trying to make in this thread (admittedly, we were all at a bit of a loss as to what you meant), we can see how absurd and inconsistently you choose to apply your philosophy to life.

If played randomly, yes.