That's not the only thing that led to the downfall, there was a lot of religious bigotry that resulted in civil strife.  An irony, considering the main reason why most of the early settlers were escaping religious bigotry in Europe.

If I were to direct you to a non-fiction book that laid out, in great detail, an ongoing, unruly, untaxable & mostly free market society; would you bother to read it?

Fixed that for you.

Myrkul isn't a capitalist in any real sense.  Most people don't even know what it means.  I'd wager that you don't really do either.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.  There are no perfect examples of a free market, or of a communist nation, or even an absolute monarchy either.

When I get tired, my mild dyslexia creeps in through strange places.  I swear that was all correct when I typed it.

One generation's revolutionary is the next generation's bureaucrat.  That was a great part of the problem; Mao lived in an information bubble of his own making.  He didn't trust the "intellectuals" but those whom he did trust were no more worthy of such faith, and tended to be less informed upon the subjects for which they were expected to advise than the intellectuals who proceeded them.  Like anyone else, they were just trying to maintain the little fiefdoms that they had built up during the revolutionary period, even if that required deceiving the monarch in order to maintain political favor.

Yup.  It was a key part of Mao's ironicly named "Great Leap Forward" campaign...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Leap_Forward#Backyard_furnaces

God, I love Wikipedia.

Actually, most of those who grew up in the Walled City stayed in Hong Kong, and the ethos infected the remainder of the middle and lower classes across the city.  That is one of the contributing factors that makes Hong Kong the capitalist light that has largely led (nominally communist) China out of the darkness.  China would not be the industrial powerhouse without the established culture of Hong Kong to draw upon, and Hong Kong would not have been the same without the Walled City within; and I mean that in both a good and bad way.  Bear in mind that once upon a time, the communist leadership in China believed that they could teach rice farmers to refine iron and make alloy steel in grass fired clay kilns across the countryside; and that was how they were going to be able to keep those evil capitalist American navies out of their business.

Opps!  I just got caught with my own pants down.  You were referring to the English bill of rights!

Well, even then those idesa din't just spring up suddenly, they were largely deveopled over generations alongside common law, which itself developed due to a general lack of  interest or interference from the monarch or the noble class.

Which, in turn, was greatly influenced by the old Swiss Confederacy, as well as the Five Tribes Confederation. (http://www.iroquoisdemocracy.pdx.edu/)  I'm sure that you are used to being the smartest guy in the room, but you would be wise to not present your viewpoints with such confidence lacking support.  There is much that certain members of this strange forum in this little backwater of the Internet will teach you if prompted.  How they are prompted will determine if those lessons come soft or hard.

Be careful here.  Mild trolling is tolerated here, if the content has redeeming value.  But if you're just trying to stoke a semantic argument (one greater than the one that, largely because of you, has already be burning in this thread) I may decide to intervene.  To some degree, it matters how entertaining you are.

What?  At least I'm an honest mod.

That's not at all true.  Go back and read this thread, there are definable examples to at least 1291 (the foundation of the old Swiss Confederacy, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Swiss_Confederacy#Foundation) and some credible, yet undocumentable, examples of same that go back much farther.  Do you contest that the Swiss Confederacy was founded upon ideals that would be consistant with a modern sentiment of a "voluntary" society?  Bear in mind, that the foundation 'myth' (can't be supported with any historical documents) of the old Swiss Confederacy is the story of William Tell (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apple_and_the_Arrow) leading an uprising against a tyranical & absolute monarch, and that the 'Founding Fathers' of the United States appealed to the Swiss for financial support during the Revolutionary War because they believed they would find ideological like minds.

They did, and some rather wealthy ones as well.

EDIT: That particular book is part of my kids' homeschooling curriculum, for kindergarten.

That's been the case for over 100 years.  The funny thing about using machines to replace workers, is that those workers always seem to find some other useful skill for which to spend their time.  Just stop and think about how much more work you would have to do every day without a flush toilet.

I can garrantee that Myrkul would not agree that a freedom from want would not be a human right.  When Myrkul says "freedom" he generally means "liberty to excercise our basic human rights, without interference from third parties", but that would result in an awful lot of typing if he had to write it that way every time.

Freedom from want is not a human right, but a human does have the right to not be prevented from seeking out their wants by others; with the cavet that their wants do not harm others in their pursuit.

Neither is Praxeology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Praxeology) but it is most certainly a science.  The root goal of science is to be able to develop theories of the natural world, with the goal of making predictions.  As with anything outside of the hard sciences, it's very difficult or impossible to make a controlled test of a hypothesis; this does not mean that a well formed theory cannot be used to make effective predictions.   Praxeology is damn good at making predictions.  Other social sciences have varying degrees of usefulness in this regard.


Well, If I had kep[t reading, I would have noticed that you already agreed with me.


I disagree with this last part, at least partially.  While we can't prove anything, we can certainly demonstrate that the general trend has been towards greater freedom for the individual, however that is defined.

Is that what you think?  The first direct tax upon the citizenry of the new United States (as opposed to taxation of the states themselves) was the Whiskey Tax that resulted in the Whiskey Rebellion.  That was a tax on distilled alchohol that directly affected the livelyhoods of less than 1% of the population. 

And correlation is not causation...

[/quote]

Nope, but it sure as hell gives a good idea as to where to start looking...


As to this, I have no idea.

And it looks like we have really touched a nerve today....

Indeed.  That statement needs to define what "freedom" means to the observer.  Rights are not the same as abilities, and permission is not the same as liberty.

It worked fine for the lower class chinese refugees who moved there or lived there, although by most accounts it was somewhat like the City of Rapture from the first Bioshock, without the amazing bio-tech.  Children were unlikely to be well educated by any modern measure, and by 12 most boys were running freelance jobs of their own; often specializing in providing their neighbors with drinking water, sewage handling, etc., as there was nearly no infrastructure other than the buildings themselves.

It didn't work for the British government, however, and the walled city did provide a safe haven for crime, both 'organized' and otherwise.  The famous "Triads" were rooted in the walled city.  And since the entire thing amounted to Hong Kong's version of a homeless squaters' tent city, the colonial government decided to tear it all down and run everyone off.  It still took many years, because the residents were not the type to be run off easily, and the cops were afraid of going inside even in large groups; and with reason.  Any kind of arrest that had to be performed inside the walled city was akin to ZeroDarkThirty in it's operation, and almost as risky for anyone who looked English or was wearing a badge.

EDIT: The closest modern example of the anarchist order of the Walled City would be the neighborhood of Ajegunle in Lagos, Nigeria. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajegunle) The entire city of Lagos is an accident of history itself, and much of the city proper lacks "modern" infrastructure. (for which there is a particularly anarchist solution, with respect to drinkable water, known as "Pure Water" street sales.  Both the government and environmentalists hate it.  The government because it cannot be taxed and therefore undermines their own efforts at funding a municipal water distribution system, and the environmentalists because the empty bags are usually street litter afterwards)

Ajegunle itself is considered the 'darkest' and most crime ridden area of Lagos, and that is saying a lot.  Still, many of the young poor have been able to create their own way in life as a direct result of the DIY spirit from Ajegunle.  They tend not to have much respect for government regulations either, in part due to growing up in an area that is basicly ignored by government largesse.  Some residents of this area are highlighted in the economics book, The Stealth of Nations by Robert Neuwirth; which is something that likely could not have happened with residents of the Walled City since any old white guy walking around asking questions about how residents do business without governments is as likely to disappear as simply be ignored in teh Walled City.