True, but all that BTC won't do good if you're stuck in prison.

Semantics, my only weakness

I agree with you, but the people invading aren't going to make that distinction, and they'll either consider you an enemy, or expect you to fight on their team; either way, you're dragged into the problem the minority created, without anyone's permission but their own.

Frankly, the only way to avoid this issue, as of today, is to not live in the country which is being invaded.  If, in the future, we begin to assimilate and lose the borders, it becomes a lot more difficult to wage huge wars as we've done in the past, as it becomes painfully clear that the two warring parties are of the same kin--that is, they're both human beings first, as opposed to being, for example, Americans first and human second, or Chinese first and human second (ignoring how incredibly expensive it would be to wage wars in a voluntary society.)  If the old adage is true, "United we stand, divided we fall," then this planet has no hope; it seems the end-game of politics, then, is either a one-world state, or no states; I'm personally rooting for the latter.

But that shift takes time, and until then, there will be people who want to kill other people for whatever silly reason, and the people being killed will have to defend themselves; a military is but an organized people with the intent or expectancy of violence.

How's the ponzi working out?

Taxman!

The best and most inexpensive way I see Bitcoin and taxes getting along is if a flat tax rate is introduced; no more taxing your income, expenses, and existence, just a simple yearly bill.

http://www.mypersonality.info/personality-types/population-gender/

This gives some insight as to why this seems more the case; most people who are interested in Bitcoin have proven (in another thread, don't remember where) that we're <90% INTP & INTJ, which is very male-dominant.

I'm assuming the gossipy types of women fall under the protector personality category, which seems to correlate with the typical motherly personality; that's a whopping 43% of all women.

I'm so excited!

Except when a nation must defend itself against another nation's aggression; to be without a military is to have a big sign that says "please invade us", much the same way anti-gun legislation puts a sign on the citizen's face that says "please mug me."

I always delete my old bump before posting a new one.  That seems to be doing OK.

It's actually not that far off from being #1

Tell me--how many officers do you know spend their entire day by your side, from the moment you wake up to the moment you go to sleep, to ensure, if someone happens to shoot you, you will be protected.  None, of course; so when you say, "The primary argument in this discussion is whether the greatest good would be for the state to be the sole force of control toward the elements of violence and lawlessness, or whether in some fraction this duty should be shared by the people, which implies their owning firearms", what I hear is, "I really don't know where I'm getting at as I yet to understand this argument, but I'll just throw something together anyway since I don't like what that guy said".

"or whether in some fraction this duty should be shared by the people, which implies their owning firearms."  As we answered the question above--no agent of the state will ever be able to protect everyone from harm at all times--it must always be a duty owned by the individual to protect himself, in the very least until he can be helped by a professional peacekeeper, which doesn't actually necessitate a state, which throws the argument that any state given supreme authority, even over just a citizen's ability to protect himself (which would lead to a plethora of other crimes against him), completely out the window.  So now we must address the "happy medium".

To make an analogy, lets say you have the choice for cancer.  Now, you have these options: No cancer, or cancer.  But!--there is a happy medium here, a wonderful center, in which we can both compromise on; you can have just a little bit of cancer.  See, a happy medium; except, the medium here isn't preferable, and we all unequivocally say, "No, I don't want a medium, I don't want any cancer whatsoever."  To say, slavery is okay if it's done in moderation isn't better than "No slavery" or "Everyone be slaves", as we would rather there be no slavery.  The happy medium of rape: we can either have no rape, everyone get raped, or find our happy medium and have just a little bit of rape here and there.  No, we don't want any rape.  The happy medium of marriage: we can have freedom to marry who we choose, no freedom to marry who we choose, or a happy middle where government tells you whether you can marry same gender or not.  No, we would rather have the freedom to marry who we choose.

So the happy medium here is, we can protect ourselves, we cannot protect ourselves, or we can somewhat, occasionally, protect ourselves (of course, against people who do not have this handicap, because TDGAF about law anyway.)

But what I would really like to understand about you, is why you believe changing what a law-abiding citizen can do to defend himself against crime, would change the rate of crime (i.e. the greater good.)  Would the criminal say, "Egads, there's a law against gun ownership!  My evil plots, foiled again!"  Violence as a solution to violence, at its finest; keeps people distracted, anyway.  But as an aside, what criminals actually do, is notice that people are less armed than they used to be, and so it's just that much easier to rob a person.  The happy medium, here, is no happy medium; it's a painful medium, a completely unnecessary medium.  What we should be concerned with is why crime occurs, not how to stop it after the criminal is fashioned; we already know how to stop crime, it's by disincentive, e.g., "I have a gun, and if you try to rob me, I will shoot you, and if I can't shoot you, my friend will."  What we need to understand is why crime occurs, not in the .5% we idolize, but in normal people who commit crime out of necessity.

Anyway, I'm still baffled as to your reasoning here:

"...there will always be the 1/2 percent of humanity who is mentally ill and violent, who is psychotic, or who is sociopathic and inclined to hurt others, and many other cases, which although rare as a percentage, in a city of 50,000 or 100,000 will together create the need for a police force to keep order."

I agree, there will always be violent people.  But I don't see why we should put these violent people on a pedestal and call them kings, for the sake of "peace and order."  That sounds exactly like the opposite thing we should do.  And you're right, simply saying this won't change a thing; what I'm trying to do is convince people, through rational thought, why seeking peace through violence cannot, will not, ever, never ever, never ever ever, not in the millennium, not in the next millennium, work.  It's when people, lots of people, believe the same thing; that's when changes are made.

What I am proposing isn't off-topic; to solve the problem of people having guns, you would need a society which has no need for them; forcing people not to have guns still leaves you with a violent, crime-ridden society, except the people now can't even protect themselves; it's a pre-mature utopia, to say the least, and at worst, it's a complete dystopia, where people still have guns (illegally, as law has nothing to do with the lawless.)  I can't help the 1/2 percent, but I can help the people who commit crime out of necessity, which account for the majority of crimes today.  To stop the crimes born from necessity, you create a society which has all it needs, especially so when it has far more than it needs, and it spills into want; with the blackhole that is authoritarian socialism, our happy medium between anarchy and fascism isn't working out very well--where our kids are expected to pay off a debt they had nothing to do with to pay for their parent's welfare, on welfare because the money that was taken in taxes was squandered on war, interest, and more welfare, and in debt from loans made, without permission, etc. etc. etc.--and I really don't believe a dictatorship is the next logical step, despite our hurdling towards it now.

When people, all people, have all they need to be successful in life, they will be successful.  It is when we play this game of musical chairs, where somebody has to be the loser; that's where your violence, theft, rape, and threats come from; the gun just happens to make all those easier, much as the sword did in a prior time period, and removing the gun from the equation, or even controlling who has the guns, will never solve the underlying issue.

I believe this is the #1 point; if one has any desire for violence as a moral and legitimate means to solve non-violent problems, NAP makes no sense whatsoever.  The moment someone identifies the center of any society, politics, as a violent means to solve both violent and non-violent problems, the NAP becomes both plausible and preferable, and thus the libertarian standpoint is to replace the aggression at the center of society with non-aggression: I predict, once this occurs (and can only occur in the individual, never in politics), the violence we experience throughout the world, stemming from our current violent center of society, will change to peace experienced throughout the world, stemming from a peaceful center of society.

This is why authority is on the exact opposite side of the spectrum; authority is always backed with violence, and those who seek peace in this world will never find it through the libertarian polar opposite, authoritarianism, e.g. the state.  So, to seek peace, we must be peaceful, and many of us already are; to say it's okay for government to cheat, steal, kill, and threaten is to admit cheating, stealing, killing and threats as moral practices.

Which we, I hope, generally agree to be false.

My biggest problem with the idea of an afterlife is that it's too easy to not only not live one's life while they know they have a life on this Earth, but many of the crazier types love to prophecy the end of times; it seems every other year, there's a new date to when the world should end, and if you believe in an afterlife, this isn't frightening, but to those of us who believe we have just this one life to enjoy, it's the scariest thing.

If, in an afterlife, there was an apparent God, it would be impossible to deny Him; the problem is, we're not there yet, and so we can only say what's most likely.  If there's a God, He has not made Himself apparent; the various Bibles do not count, as they were written by men, and so belief in the Bible is belief that man would not lie, and I don't believe this to be so; how can we reject all mythology for just one?  Of over two-thousand Gods, how do we say only the one we believe in to be true?  Chiefly, as most religion is based on some mythos or another, I don't follow any religion, though I do understand when someone says that "feel" God's presence, which I'm okay with; it's when they claim God is this way or that, that's when it all goes out the window, since nobody can agree what God is like, not even the Bible's old and new testaments can agree, nor can its individual writers.

I just call them cents in the context of Bitcoin; out of context, I call them bitcents.

I have beef with there existing rulers at all; the property taxes are just a (unrelated to this instance specifically) piece of that.  This does not negate what I said earlier:


Are you saying this doesn't occur?  Because I guarantee you it does; the last time any entity said "no" to a larger nation, that nation invaded and forced their hand; of course, I'm referring to Iraq.

I use preev.com

Completely agree; I personally love linux as just a casual OS, but when I actually need to do work, it just doesn't work out.

No matter where you are in the world, you are subject to the larger nation's laws.  If the larger nation says, "get off this island, we're claiming it", you can never have enough guns to defend yourself against them.

Yes, the definitions take two sides; one implies political disorder and chaos, the other doesn't.  This is because people use the term anarchy in both ways; the first is to indicate a lack of politics, the second refers to the ideology.  The people who make definitions aren't infinitely wise, so it's up to everyone else to figure out what the word means, and there's some discrepancy as to what would occur in an anarchy, so the definitions must reflect that.

Anyways, what I mean by North Korea is, they don't have rules, because the ruler of North Korea can kill you for fun.  That is what I call complete disorder; when your ruler is so powerful, you can die for being accused of a crime you didn't do, that's a point in which there are no rules, since it's all up to the guy in charge whether he'll simply revoke that rule he created to do as he pleases, or not; after all, he's in charge of creating the rules.  Though you are correct to say that there is a maximum amount of law here, just as well, because very few individuals have maximum power, the citizens have no idea if their ruler will have a mood swing that day; that's truly a point where there are no rules, which cannot possibly occur even without government, as there would never be an allocation of power so great without it.  But I agree, I hope never to join them.

There is no real way to start an anarchy, just as you cannot start a religion named atheism.  It is the lack of rulers which indicate anarchy, just as it is the lack of God which indicates Atheism; it wasn't something that was created, it's something that exists only in the absence of something else.

Edit:  Check out this book for an excellent intro and argument for anarchy.