Of course not, but his economic illiteracy is frustrating.

Not enough data.  Is your client up to date on blocks, or is it still downloading?

To support my point, here is a report on American poverty in 2007.  This report is based upon census data, and the government's definition of poverty; which conviently is roughly households in the bottom 20% income bracket.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2007/08/How-Poor-Are-Americas-Poor-Examining-the-Plague-of-Poverty-in-America

From the article....

Forty-three percent of all poor households actually own their own homes.

The average home owned by persons classified as poor by the Census Bureau is a three-bedroom house with one-and-a-half baths, a garage, and a porch or patio.

Eighty percent of poor households have air conditioning.
 
Only 6 percent of poor households are overcrowded. More than two-thirds have more than two rooms per person.

The average poor American has more living space than the average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens, and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those classified as poor.)

Nearly three-quarters of poor households own a car; 31 percent own two or more cars.

Ninety-seven percent of poor households have a color television; over half own two or more color televisions.

Seventy-eight percent have a VCR or DVD player; 62 percent have cable or satellite TV reception.

Eighty-nine percent own microwave ovens, more than half have a stereo, and more than a third have an automatic dishwasher.

Noted.

FAIL!

I did not contest the claim that the Japanse have the lowest wealth disparity in the world, I was demanding support for your conclusion.  It does not follow that low wealth disparity implies that the poor are magicly those most affected.  The "most well off people in the world" is a vague metric, and I was giving you the chance to support this claim.  I actually know already that it's false by almost any real metric available; but quality of life is a hard thing to measure.  The poor in Japan certainly have access to much more quality of life than the poor in Kenya, but absolute comparisons are rarely instructive.  Your probably thinking of the UN's MDG metrics.  http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mdg/default.aspx  These would imply that Japan has long been in a tight matchup with some states in Europe for the top spot, but that's based upon the percentage of total national wealth that the bottom 20% possess.  This metric alone actually means very little with regard to quality of life, because nations like North Korea are automaticly removed from the comparisions because the government owns everything, so there is a bias from the start.  Also, how do you compare the lifestyle of a poor japanese family in Kyoto to that of a poor American family in Spokane?  Which has access to quality health care?  Living space per household member?  Effective public transportation?  Consumer products?  Internet?  Most of these issues are about comparable between nations except living space per person.  By any measurement, Americans (of any class) have, on average, the most living space per person compared to any of their class peers anywhere in the world; while Japan sits at the other extreme among first world nations.

I attack the singular example that you present as your support, not your principle, because there is nothing there to debate.  You believe that you are right, based upon your definition of the terms used, and believe that your's is the common usage of the term.  We believe otherwise.  I'd rather not be sucked into another circle jerk.  The irony is that, to some degree, I actually agree with your argument.  But you use an uncommon use of the term 'coercion' to attack the ideals of libs and anarchists based upon your overly broad use of terms.  Based on those overly broad use of terms, you badger us with your insistance that we admit that our system is no better than the alternatives.  Your argument is fundamentally based upon semantics.  You do realize that those definitions are usually numbered in order of their common usage, right?  If #2 sounds like our's but #3 sounds like your's, which do you think is the more common understanding of the term?  Does it really need to be said?

Hong Kong is far from an ideal libertarian state, the point is that it's closer overall than many other societies that it can be compared to, and is also more prosperous in almost every metric against those other examples.  However, corrolation is not causation, so this really doesn't prove anything.  It should give anyone trying to rationally compare nations a reason to pause.

Incidentally, Hong Kong actually is home to the only example of a modern and urban anarchist society that can rationally be argued to represent the ideology, and it was both entirely accidental and less than stellar, but it was still far better than the alternatives available to those who chose to live there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kowloon_Walled_City


The fact that Japan has teh lowest wealth disparity does not lead to the conclusion that they have the most well-off poor people in the world.  I demand support to this claim.

That is false on it's face.  Of course he can choose to live in a culture that has not been "vulgarized" by porn.  He just has to choose to live in a sub-section of society that is less than ideally libertarian.  The ideal is unobtainable anyway.  Take a look at the differences between public life in the North Eastern US and the 'bible belt' southern states.  Adult businesses are hard to miss rolling down the freeway in some locales, but in the bible belt they are off the beaten path and harder to stumble upon unless that is what you are looking for.  This is a product of zoning codes and religious influence, not libertarian concepts, but those adult businesses aren't actually illegal in the 'bible belt' states.  Likewise, a libertarian society may, and arguablely would, develop exclusionary zones wherein like minded people self-segregate to limit their exposure to such social corruptions.  This kind of thing has been going on in the US since the very beginning.  It certainly has it's downsides, but it's not rational to still argue that such a self-governing sub-culture can't exist within a much more libertarian, and libertine, society.  The Amish have been doing it for 200 years.

Where did you get this crap from?

Ducks are off topic.

Yes, the OP's pool.

Who pays for the server and bandwidth?

Hold on for the ride.  You shall live to see your high quality socialized healthcare system utterly collapse.  You will not understand why, and your countrymen will blame government corruption or whatever else, but will also not understand it.  I understand it, and it was predictable a decade ago, probably more.  I'm not making a prediction, for a prediction would imply a possibility of error.  This is inevitable, and Spain is already long past the point of reform, even if that were politically possible.  You will watch as Greece & Ireland proceed your nation, but your turn shall come.

I don't disagree with the statement, "anarchism is libertarianism taken to it's logical conclusion" on general terms, it's the specifics that concern me.  All things being equal, I'd say that this is correct.  However, people are not always logical, and cultures don't always react to threats in a rational manner.  The differences between a libertarian state and an anarchist society may, in fact, be very small in practice; but I don't consider those differences to be trivial.  Prior to 1908, the lifestyle of the average American was very libertarian in practice, if not in fact.  For example, the average American would have nearly zero contact with official federal agencies over the course of his entire lifetime, and contact with state officials only on an occasional/annual basis.  There was no such thing as regulation of finance except at the highest levels, no personal income tax, no departments of energy, agriculture, education or even defense.  There was no Federal Reserve, and no fractional reserve banking.  All US money was specie or banknotes issued as wearhouse receipts of specie.  All loans were secured with an equal amount of long term savings, not on demand accounts with the backing of the FDIC.  All this was better than it is today in many ways, but worse in different ways.  Semantics aside, the average American born after the civil war could have lived clear till 1913 at least without any contact with any federal agency without even trying to do so.

All of that said, that same average American would have had exactly zero contact with any government in an anarchist society, but would it have looked the same if the federal government did not exist at all?  I can't say that it would have.  Certainly, slavery would have collapsed for economic reasons without the destructive need for a civil war to forciblely ended it, eventually.  But at what cost, then?  Two more generations of declining slavery versus civil war?  The end results might have been about the same if Lincoln had permitted the South to seceed, and slavery then die an economic death without bloodshed, but is that perferable if the cost was two more generations of humans owning humans?  And what, in a truly anarchist society, would prevent the return of that irrational culture, if not the collective threat of force from society at large?  I can't quite accept the argument that private security forces would rise to protect all facets of society.  I can imagine that such a force would rise that caters to black Americans, but what about Islamic Sharia law?  Sure, there would be forces that would protect the interests of daughters of white men, but about the daughters of those who proscribe to sharia themselves?  Do they not have the right to reject their upbringing?  Not according to sharia, but what incentive would a protection company have to intervene on behalf of them?  And if they did have such an incentive, wouldn't AyeYo's argument that such a society is, itself, coercive?  From my understanding of both, sharia is fundamentally incompatible with libertariansim.

Please review the subject of this thread.


The matters of scale do make a difference, but both still respond to the same incentives.

I'll concede that point.  Still, the membership of the UN don't grant the UN any kind of monopoly on force, nor any other ongoing power.  Governments are possessive of their regional monopolies.

We must have different understandings of the term "support" in this context.  In my world, neither apathy nor ignorance would qualify.


As I just said, you confuse the ideologies.  Libertarianism is not advocacy for the dissolution of the nation-state.  Nor is it an absence of social cohesion, otherwise considered to be 'chaos'.
It's not 'my' system.  I presented a defense of the anarchist concept of private security forces sans state.  Libertarians don't advocate for the dissolution of the state, but for it's limittaion to it's core purposes.  One of those core purposes is the defense of nationals from enemies foriegn and domestic, another is the enFORCEment of law.

Bob only wants to get paid if he can stand to profit.  If Bob is the commander of a private security force for a rational reason, then he is going to weigh the risks before (or even after) taking the job.  The argument changes little regardless of how much Joe has, for itf the costs of the war exceed the resources of Joe, it doesn't make any difference.


Again, I wish I lived in the world you think that you live in.  Criminal organizations exist in certain locales because the police forces are either ineffective or corrupt.  In either case, such organizations persist where they do because they have a functional safe zone within which they can operate with near zero risk from local police interference.  Such organizations do not, and never have, operated in other locales because the police forces in those areas have neither problem.  Mafias, in particular, are a phenom begotten by government prohibitions, and are thus strongest in locales wherein the gulf between the degree of prohibitions and the enforcability of those prohibitions are greatest.

Which is why I'm not an anarchist.  I consider it an unstable society.  And any unstable society will, more often than not, lead to oppression and tyranny.  The framers of the Constitution built a republic with balance of powers because, as risky as that was, it was the best option available to them.  We may have better options in the age of the Internet, but I'm not any more convinced of that then you seem to be.
Sure it is, it's just a matter of scale.  The same incentives to avoid conflict, but not at any cost, exist just the same.
No, they don't.  The UN has no power not granted to them by the voluntary actions of the member governments.  At best, the UN is an established system of mediation.  At worst, the UN is a puppet organization that gives legitimacy to the collective aggressions of the largest member states.


I'd love to live in the world that you think that you live in.  Even the most progressive democracies of the modern world do not require the consent of the governed to engage in war.  The United States has not declared war in the constitutionally described manner since WWII, and even that would not have required the public support from even a simple majority of voters.

Joe isn't the commander of Bob's Army.  Bob is.  Once Joe makes that phone call, Bob is the one that has to weight the options toward resolution.  Bob faces, not just the prospect of defeat (and his own death) if he should choose to ignore mediation as a solution; but also (more likely) the expense of combat exceeding the perceived losses of his client, the desertion of his manpower, and the depletion of his resources.  Depending on the injustice that Joe has suffered, it can quickly become in the best interests of Bob to compensate Joe himself, and either seek restitution from the offender (or offender's own private security force) using the evidence available to him, or drop Bob as a covered client should the evidence favor that Bob is a fraud.  No one here can really say whether actual combat would be more or less rare in a anarchist society with any certainty.  The answer would be highly dependent upon unforeseeable factors and matters of culture.  That said, I find it unlikely that combat in the streets would be any more likely than such combat between rival mafia families or street gangs are in some areas today.  There is no formal mediation process between such criminal organizations, and by definition, these organizations are filled with violent criminals; yet, these kind of conflicts between such organizations are relatively rare for all the same reasons as it would be rare between private security forces that are (presumedly) comprised mostly of legitimate forces representing a broader and less violent cross section of society.  I can't even imagine how this could lead to a 'Mad Max' scenario of a constant state of low level warfare, as you seem to imagine.  But I won't argue that such a condition is possible.

Again, I'm a libertarian, but not an anarchist.  Like so many statists, you seem to confuse the ideologies.

There is a glaring example of such a "balanced" (stable is not the right word) state of anarchy that you statists continue to overlook.  There is no such government over the international negotiations of nations, as all nation-states interact in a condition similar to anarchy.  Of course, sometimes they do go to war, and sometimes the biggest dog dominates the others.  Again, I'm not an anarchist, but not because of the reason presented here.  Such security conglomerates can work, because they have in the past.  Call them what you will, but tribes, clans and city states all existed for this exact reason; but they all yielded to such organizations more powerful than themselves.  Humanity seems to have a natural tendency towards self-organization into such social structures.

And that is a valid opinion, but it's important to make a distinction between Germany the People and nation and Germany the government & their banking controllers.

Better yet, have him help you make a vid explaining bitcoin to his generational peers.  Retirees control an outsized amount of investement income as compared to the Internet generation that dominates this forum. 

If you intend to have bitcoin running on more than one computer, it's better to just have two independent wallets, and send a small amount of funds to the mobile one from the more secure home PC.  You can share wallet.dat files, but neither is aware of the other, and so once one of them were to send coins anywhere, the other wallet.dat file would be functionally void and then you would have a case wherein you would have to be copying your wallet.dat files back and forth.