Thanks, Walter; that's very illuminating.  Do you think the collapse of the dollar and the temporary breakage of the world economy will lead people closer to libertarianism, or closer to authority leading to totalitarianism?  It seems in the past, every time there's an economic crisis, people run to get protection from their political leaders, as opposed to pushing them away in disgust that they'd been working for the folks that done it to them.  They demand their leaders provide them with what they need to survive, as opposed to stepping outside of the box and just fixing the problem on their own.  However, with the advent of the Internet, it appears that people are far more informed about modern events and well versed in concepts of liberty and rationalism that such an event might provide an opportunity to escape such a system.  I fear that such a message hasn't spread far enough fast enough OTOH, and we'll have to fight through another 30-something year round of irrationality before the monetary system flops yet again and provides another opportunity for a critical shift in our methods of governance.

Cross-posting


People worry about who owns the roads because they have no idea why roads exist.  Nobody who owns a business and a road is going to deny you from driving on that road.  Simply put, they want your goddamned money.  They don't care if you're going to visit another business or going to see your grandma or traveling to the other side of the continent, denying anyone for any reason of driving on a road is counter-productive and bad for business.

But of course, this is why people who refuse to practice rationalism have such extreme difficulty imagining this.  "What if people charge me to drive on their road?"  Then people who don't charge will have their roads driven on; those who do charge lose business.  You lose more than you gain; the only way to enforce this without loss is with a state, but I won't get into that, as we're assuming it's gone.  "What if they make me drive on the wrong side of the road?"  Then, even considering they figure out a way to enforce this, you're likely to get into an accident eventually and thus, nobody will be able to drive on that road for a long time, and the same effect occurs as the toll-road dilemma: it's completely inefficient and fruitless, and the market punishes such behavior quite severely, a feature missing or must be enacted artificially in economies lacking a market.

So what about roads connected to no business?  Well, if people want them--and I don't know anyone who has an irrational fear or hatred of roads--then they'll build them themselves.  You want a road, but your neighbor won't pitch in to help, and so you refuse to build a road until he does?  Then so it will be; either find better neighbors or use diplomacy or just build it yourself.

I think it's funny; perhaps a state somewhere in Hypothetiland has taken over ISPs and offers government-owned Internet, and people are saying, "Well if the government didn't provide me with Internet, who would possibly provide it?  Who would own the cables?  How would we pay for it?  There's a good reason why the Internet is paid for with taxes, you know."  I'm sure this is the same rap given for socialized healthcare

This happens to me, though not lately; I'll experience extremely strong deja vu whilst in the dream and continue it as if nothing had interrupted it.  When I wake up, I try to remember if I was inducing the deja vu or if the dream had occurred in the past and I was experiencing it yet again.

I still think, at times, I'm only imagining that the dream occurred on a separate occasion.  I need to keep a dream journal.

Thanks for sharing this; very informative.

Okay pal, enough with the jokes.

This is the trouble with seeing oneself by a quality (i.e. gender, ethnicity, religion, political position), as opposed to seeing oneself as a person.  The only way to escape the cage is to see it.

It's not a matter of "I am a woman and you should respect me"; it's a matter of, "I am a person, so what does my gender matter?"  You only play into the sexist's game by accepting their label, and thus assume the very role you disliked to begin with.

Re: Opinion on the US

^

I don't think those countries are any better, for the record.

The speculation board isn't exactly filled with the brightest minds, if you haven't noticed

I don't know how you've misconstrued "no rulers" as "each for himself", but I'm happy to point you toward a job in politics if that's the kind of lifestyle you're after

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It's not like the roads are made out of gold; suburban roads are often rarely driven on (some do turn into major roads but most of them aren't), and don't need constant maintenance like the road you take to get to work with all the other people in a traffic jam and whatnot.  Fewer houses or not, poor or rich, it's a non-issue.

Road standards don't change depending on who built it; if everyone knows "I drive on the right", they're going to do it regardless of how you feel.  If you attempt to enforce your strange rule by force, you're probably not going to survive long.  Get mad if you want to

All of these things are already handled by individuals; the illusion is that taxation is necessary or these cease to exist.  We know this is false because if we want these things, and we've wanted for far more sillier things than infrastructure and health, then we will pay for businesses to provide it.  We must begin with the assumption that people aren't incredibly stupid and inept, for if they are, we really don't want them in any position of power anyway.

I could've sworn it was the merchants who built the first roads.

Imagine this: the state went away and nobody worked the roads.  They fell into disrepair; nobody drove on the roads anymore and it really started to hurt businesses; nobody would visit the shops and you couldn't get anything delivered.

Who has the greatest monetary incentive to get the roads in shape?  If Business A gets their roads built faster than competing Business B, they'll have mad profits; there's a rush to get the roads in shape to get a leg up over the competition.  Business C decides to skimp out on the quality and gets their road-builders A to speed the process up.  Road-builders A knows that they will lose business to Road-builders B if they don't keep their standards, but are eager to make a quick buck.  It is later found out that the road to Business C is already crumbling; Business C loses more business than if they'd just made a quality road and pay the price of it, while Businesses A and B flourish with their quality roads, and refuse to do business with Road-builders A due to their previous incompetence; Road-builders A eventually lose business to B, C, and D, and the labor is scooped up into C, as they're in the metro area and have a ton more roads to build; eager for more work, many laborers of Road-builders A accept the offer.  Business flourishes in infrastructure, as every brick & mortar business needs it; the people have their roads and the businesses have their commerce and all is well.

The market works fine, no state required.  Who builds the roads?--the people who gain from the roads being built, that being, all of us.

Would you do business with someone who used slave labor?

If not, and the other people you do business with agreed this was bad, the slave owner would either need to stop owning slaves or go out of business
If so, and the other people you do business with agreed this was bad, you put yourself at risk of going out of business along with the slave owner

I won't bother with a society which believes this is good for nobody wants to be enslaved, and a society which cannot grasp something as simple as empathy surely has no capacity to survive as anarchists for long; they're too busy installing a state.

Thus, the incentive of using slave labor is killed; the last resort is to ask the state to protect your slave-owning habits, but since that can't happen in a society of rationals, for what rational seeks a guiding force but his own, it's effectively squashed and business continues as usual.  Behold, ostracism.

Also: for the same reason that the rational does not need the state to dictate his actions, the rational has no need for a hierarchy of business; since every worker is equipped with the mental skills needed to run a business (it's kind of sad to note that they currently don't, despite 14 years of involuntary "education"), they can very easily form businesses together and share their wealth with each other as they see fit.  What good is a corporate empire on the local level?--it's just extra overhead for the worker, who gets what's left trickled from the top of the pyramid as our current system is now, and accepts it as he cannot see any other way to make a living, nor was he provided the skills required to see why it's screwing him over (though he will constantly complain about it to his peers) thanks to the corporate empire's bed buddy, the state, where there is no incentive to produce thinking adults via the educational system, merely productive ones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutualism_(economic_theory)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicalism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-syndicalism


Free market != capitalism

Let none doubt the power of propaganda.

I believe the most interesting aspect about these schemes is that you cannot apply them to bitcoin without applying them to all money; so it's not an argument of "bitcoin is a ponzi/pyramid scheme", it's an argument of "money is a ponzi/pyramid scheme", since it would be unusual to argue that one form of money is but not another, when they operate in the same ways.

In this way, the terms are being misused, solely on the basis that people are playing favorites; what applies to one isn't applying to the other, though the definitions of money and these various schemes never change.

Think about this another way:

A. Who has the majority of the wealth?
B. Do you really care if they have a bit less?

Whether you follow the N.A.P. or stick to coercion, what good to you is a person who is dead?  The assassination market is little more than the intimidation market; you kill one guy, another takes his spot.  What a waste of money!

Oh, that one.  Yeah I've had my replies deleted before as well; it's really upsetting when your posts don't deserve to removed but they are anyway.  It seems to be a trend with people who can't handle criticism of their theories, which is strange, as what's the point in making theories public if you're not seeking to learn anything from it?  It's a huge waste of time for the thread starter and the people replying.

False.  You have no idea what morality is, either, if you believe people can be with or without them.  Hawker, take my advice: take a class on philosophy, specifically on ethics.  It'll help.

Take care