An Agorist Company

[epi 1:10,000]

Your definition of violence is inadequate, and I think cuomo does the best job of showing why: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3810390

Please either post a link to something that's publicly accessible or put it in your own words. Otherwise, it looks like you're just making an assertion without backing it up. Giving someone a laundry list of authors isn't an acceptable substitute for a rational argument. If you don't believe me then read Dr. Seuss, Hitler and J.K. Rowling, in that order.

why would you not want to read other philosophers if for no other reason but to strengthen your argument and refute them.

Can you find fault with "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." -IK

Do we first have a perfect duty not to act by maxims that result in logical contradictions when we attempt to universalize them?

Can persons in a State of Nature agree to a social contract defining the rights of that newly formed society?

What is inequity? Inequity of power...   Inequity of opportunity....   inequity of biology?  Is justice merely a lack of coercion?

Alright, agorists, I need some help founding a sovereign agorist company. Through the power of the digital world this seems very feasible if all business is conducted online. Through what kind of agreement should such a company be founded upon? I certainly don't agree with limited liability. Give me some advice and perspective here.

What is this company producing?    Can it be whirligigs?
  

[1713883228]

1713883228

[1713883228]

1713883228

[1713883228]

1713883228

[1713883228]

1713883228

[1713883228]

1713883228

[1713883228]

1713883228

[NghtRppr]

why would you not want to read other philosophers if for no other reason but to strengthen your argument and refute them.

I love reading philosophy but if you're making an argument, you need to back it up and not send people off to do your homework for you. At the very least I need some kind of quotation but even better, put it in your own words.

Can you find fault with "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." -IK

No, I live by it.

Do we first have a perfect duty not to act by maxims that result in logical contradictions when we attempt to universalize them?

Yes.

Can persons in a State of Nature agree to a social contract defining the rights of that newly formed society?

Yes but it needs to be explicit. It may be that if I go into a restaurant and order a hamburger, I'm implicitly agreeing to pay for it but simply existing on my property isn't implicit consent of being governed.

What is inequity? Inequity of power...   Inequity of opportunity....   inequity of biology?  Is justice merely a lack of coercion?

Yes, that's what legal justice is. That's not to say morality is only a lack of coercion. Calling your grandmother fat or cheating on your partner are immoral but shouldn't be illegal.

[epi 1:10,000]

Is there any case when the government is justified in using coercion?
Say whirligigs are essential to life and fairly cheap to produce. There is a person dieing of an acute lack of whirligigs through no fault of there own.  Would it be justifiable for the state to use coercion to stop the whirligig manufacturer from excessively raising the cost whirligigs in the sale to this person?


Is calling your grandmother fat immoral?  If so, Why.

[myrkul]

Is there any case when the government is justified in using coercion?
Say whirligigs are essential to life and fairly cheap to produce. There is a person dieing of an acute lack of whirligigs through no fault of there own.  Would it be justifiable for the state to use coercion to stop the whirligig manufacturer from excessively raising the cost whirligigs in the sale to this person?


Is calling your grandmother fat immoral?  If so, Why.

No.
No, it would not be justifiable for a state to force the manufacturer to sell at a particular price. Nothing stopping a competing manufacturer from undercutting him, or, some random guy from buying one at the normal rate and selling it to the dieing person, either.

Calling your grandmother fat may or may not be immoral, but it's certainly not nice.

[epi 1:10,000]

Can persons in a State of Nature agree to a social contract defining the rights of that newly formed society?

Yes but it needs to be explicit. It may be that if I go into a restaurant and order a hamburger, I'm implicitly agreeing to pay for it but simply existing on my property isn't implicit consent of being governed.

Is living in a state implicit consent to be governed and if not why.  Maybe I'm a little dense but I'm not sure how the restaurant analogy applies to a broader social contract.

[epi 1:10,000]

Is there any case when the government is justified in using coercion?
Say whirligigs are essential to life and fairly cheap to produce. There is a person dieing of an acute lack of whirligigs through no fault of there own.  Would it be justifiable for the state to use coercion to stop the whirligig manufacturer from excessively raising the cost whirligigs in the sale to this person?


Is calling your grandmother fat immoral?  If so, Why.

No.
No, it would not be justifiable for a state to force the manufacturer to sell at a particular price. Nothing stopping a competing manufacturer from undercutting him, or, some random guy from buying one at the normal rate and selling it to the dieing person, either.

Calling your grandmother fat may or may not be immoral, but it's certainly not nice.

OK replace whirligig with water and manufacturer with lake owner.  I hardly see how someone dieing from an acute lack of whirligigs is in any position to look for competing whirligig manufacturers.

[smellyBobby]

Simple someone else will build a lake. I do not know why you can't understand this.

[myrkul]

OK replace whirligig with water and manufacturer with lake owner.  I hardly see how someone dieing from an acute lack of whirligigs is in any position to look for competing whirligig manufacturers.

Someone who is dieing from lack of whirligigs won't have to search out suppliers. If the case is well known enough to have attracted government attention, they'll be knocking down his door, each with a better price than the last.

Water need not come from a lake. There are rivers, streams, desalination plants, and push comes to shove, atmospheric dehydration. If there is a need, someone is going to supply that need.

[Vitalik Buterin]

Alright, agorists, I need some help founding a sovereign agorist company. Through the power of the digital world this seems very feasible if all business is conducted online. Through what kind of agreement should such a company be founded upon? I certainly don't agree with limited liability.

Your liability is limited. Your desire to escape physical governments necessitates that your physical identity does not become known to anyone, not even customers. Therefore, your business will be backed by an online identity, and if your liabilities exceed your assets by enough it will become more practical to throw away your online identity and get a new one than pay your debts, putting a cap on your liability.

Limited liability is not just some evil creation of government to prop up megacorps. You can have it in a libertarian society with contracts - make every loan agreement you sign have the text "if my business goes bankrupt I don't have to pay more than your share of what I can get by liquidating the business". Limited liability only becomes dangerous when its scope extends beyond contract nonperformance and government gives you the right to not pay damages if your business goes down. That cannot be put into a contract unless you make the contract with everyone you could potentially harm (which, incidentally, is what the ridiculous idea of a "social contract" is), and is corporate socialism.

[LokeRundt]

Through escrow services (also operating within 2nd realm) and good use of cryptography, this can be avoided easily.

[Jessy Kang]

Violence is simply force. Making an individual act (or not) under the use of threat of injury or death.

I don't understand most of this thread.

BUT, within my profession there are grossly unethical women who use verbal and emotional coercion to extract massive amount of money from their clients- often destroying lives in the process. Threat of abandonment, threat of neglect- these are just as effective as the threat of, or use of violence. If you send me, and a musclebound bodybuilder into a store to extract $100 worth of goods- I'll do it faster, without any physical contact, and with no more honesty or ethics than my physically intimidating counterpart.

[zen862]

So, in conclusion, claiming any part of a man is considered violence if the claim can be backed by force. Claiming a part through reason is absolutely voluntary and not violent.

Feel free to address any holes.

Thank you for being patient. I appreciate your time discussing this with me. I apologize for my anger and disrespect.

So you're saying if a simple man creates an object from gold, and then a witty man comes along and convinces him that he should give it up, that is justified?

People are generally not rational, look at the state of the world today and the sheeple that inhabit it. Global governance has convinced most that the systems we currently have in place are the best and they go along with it voluntarily but it does not make it Right.

Sorry for picking, I'm just interested.  

First of all, if you apologize for having a discussion with me again, I will not be pleased. ; )

Most organisms are hardly sentient. What is not moral is to claim the ignorant are entitled to the service of the competent. That is simply not a compromise.

We either let the will of the competent serve the ignorant (which they naturally will out of human empathy) in addition to letting the ignorant stumble upon knowledge as man has always done.

I see what you're saying, but how can you justify your argument on just letting things happen naturally? We've had natural societies for thousands of years, by that I mean questions of morals and so on haven't applied to the common man, and whilst there has been a great deal of empathy shown by the competent, the reverse is also true.

If your moral presuppositions are good and virtuous, as I suspect they are, it works and I'm happy to help develop this online presence you wish to get going. 

[realnowhereman]

BUT, within my profession there are grossly unethical women who use verbal and emotional coercion to extract massive amount of money from their clients- often destroying lives in the process. Threat of abandonment, threat of neglect- these are just as effective as the threat of, or use of violence. If you send me, and a musclebound bodybuilder into a store to extract $100 worth of goods- I'll do it faster, without any physical contact, and with no more honesty or ethics than my physically intimidating counterpart.

I promise you, you would get nothing from me.  You have nothing I want.  Force would work on me though -- I don't want to be killed or hurt.

Just because your method can work doesn't mean it will always work; force will always work though.  I am quite sure there are people who can be coerced in the manner you describe.  I don't see it as violence though; in the end it requires their voluntary action.

(NB: Above, by "force" I mean "greater force").

[Jessy Kang]

I promise you, you would get nothing from me.  You have nothing I want.  

You go dutch on all your dates? Split all expenses with your partner equally?

Force would work on me though -- I don't want to be killed or hurt.

But by the same token there are men who cannot be compelled, through threats or use of force to do what they don't want to right? Some people just don't want to be told what to do and are okay with dying over it.

Just because your method can work doesn't mean it will always work; force will always work though.  

I dunno always? Seems like an awful lot of people throughout history have died rather them submit to physical force?

I don't see it as violence though; in the end it requires their voluntary action.

Not sure- as i said this thread is a bit out of my pay grade. I probably have more experience with violence then nearly anyone here. Branding, electro-torture, crushing, hanging, freezing, sensory deprivation, asphyxiation, sewing, stapling, flaying and on and on- and the one thing I will not permit, as it has historically proven to be far more dangerous, with far more consequences, is certain forms of emotional coercion. Of course certain people are more resistant to it- but the same can be said of physical coercion. Is limiting freedom from coercion to those who won the genetic lottery and are mentally tough, somehow better than limiting it to those who are physically tough?

[realnowhereman]

I promise you, you would get nothing from me.  You have nothing I want.  

You go dutch on all your dates? Split all expenses with your partner equally?

Exactly how is my giving money to my partner the equivalent of me giving anything to you?

My partner can have whatever she wants that I have.  You can't.  You see I have a long term ongoing relationship with her, and a level of trust goes with that.  That trust was earned.  Your boast was that you personally could beat the body builder in obtaining goods from a store; my argument is that you have nothing I want, so the threatening body builder would get more from me.

Force would work on me though -- I don't want to be killed or hurt.

But by the same token there are men who cannot be compelled, through threats or use of force to do what they don't want to right? Some people just don't want to be told what to do and are okay with dying over it.

They will still be dead.  "Give me all your money or you die" will get the robber the money whether the victim ends up dead or not.

Greater force always wins.  Even to the extent of control over death.  If I hold the greater force, then I can prevent you from dying too.  So then even your life would be out of your control.

Just because your method can work doesn't mean it will always work; force will always work though.  

I dunno always? Seems like an awful lot of people throughout history have died rather them submit to physical force?

The key word there is "died".  That is the ultimate expression of physical force.  If you die then you have submitted to it.

I don't see it as violence though; in the end it requires their voluntary action.

Not sure- as i said this thread is a bit out of my pay grade. I probably have more experience with violence then nearly anyone here. Branding, electro-torture, crushing, hanging, freezing, sensory deprivation, asphyxiation, sewing, stapling, flaying and on and on- and the one thing I will not permit, as it has historically proven to be far more dangerous, with far more consequences, is certain forms of emotional coercion. Of course certain people are more resistant to it- but the same can be said of physical coercion. Is limiting freedom from coercion to those who won the genetic lottery and are mentally tough, somehow better than limiting it to those who are physically tough?

We have to get into arguments of semantics when the violence is inflicted on someone at their own behest.  I don't really want to get into that, but it's fairly obvious that willing participants in S&M games are not what we're talking about in this thread.  They key part is "against my will".

Emotional coercion is a tricky one.  The problem there is that you have to offer yourself willingly in order that emotional coercion works.  Physical coercion needs no willingness on the part of the person being coerced.

This is central to my original response to what you said: you and your emotionally coercive friends that you speak of have no power over me in that respect, as I have no emotional connection to you.  I do not fear the loss of your time, affection or presence.  How then will you coerce me to do anything (other than with physical force)?  My wife does, but it is still at my option, I have willingly placed myself in a relationship (just as she has).  Further: any force any private citizen uses against me might work, but it would undoubtedly be criminal.

The government is the only party that has the ability to use force on me without limit.

[Jessy Kang]

Exactly how is my giving money to my partner the equivalent of me giving anything to you?

My partner can have whatever she wants that I have.  You can't.  You see I have a long term ongoing relationship with her, and a level of trust goes with that.  That trust was earned.  Your boast was that you personally could beat the body builder in obtaining goods from a store; my argument is that you have nothing I want, so the threatening body builder would get more from me.

Ahh, sorry I did not mean to give offense. I should have used an example other than myself. I was trying to offer an example of non-physical coercion in an abstract sense rather than as a personal boast. No insult to you or your wife was intended.

[realnowhereman]

Ahh, sorry I did not mean to give offense. I should have used an example other than myself. I was trying to offer an example of non-physical coercion in an abstract sense rather than as a personal boast. No insult to you or your wife was intended.

I certainly didn't take it as an insult; no apology is necessary.  I was merely using myself as a counter example -- you personally couldn't get $100 worth of goods from my store without $100.

It's my opinion that, in the end, there is no such thing as non-physical coercion.  Every other form of coercion requires the individual being coerced to volunteer for the position they put themselves in.

Having said that, I realise that I'm wrong -- not as in your example; I don't think you can pick a random person from the street and emotionally coerce them.  However, there are a great many activities that humans can undertake that are perfectly legal (or if they aren't they should be), that they don't want made public because they are embarrassing.  The threat of their release would count as non-physical coercion I think.

I suppose we all have secrets that we wouldn't want sharing but the seriousness of the threat to reveal will depend on one's position.  It wouldn't affect me in the slightest to have someone publish photographs of me at a strip club.  It might affect a politician though.  I would imagine most of your clients don't broadcast the fact of their custom around either (in an ideal world of course they wouldn't care).

[NghtRppr]

Is living in a state implicit consent to be governed and if not why.  Maybe I'm a little dense but I'm not sure how the restaurant analogy applies to a broader social contract.

"My house my rules."

vs.

"Your house my rules."

It's customary for people to expect to pay for food they order in a restaurant. It would be hard to claim that you didn't know that was the custom. However, secession is what made the USA possible. It's just as possible for people to remain being governed or secede. There are two customs, though one is more popular than the other, it's still something that has to be made explicit.

[myrkul]

Is living in a state implicit consent to be governed and if not why.  Maybe I'm a little dense but I'm not sure how the restaurant analogy applies to a broader social contract.

"My house my rules."

vs.

"Your house my rules."

It's customary for people to expect to pay for food they order in a restaurant. It would be hard to claim that you didn't know that was the custom. However, secession is what made the USA possible. It's just as possible for people to remain being governed or secede. There are two customs, though one is more popular than the other, it's still something that has to be made explicit.

Maybe someone should have reminded Lincoln of that.

[MoonShadow]

Is living in a state implicit consent to be governed and if not why.  Maybe I'm a little dense but I'm not sure how the restaurant analogy applies to a broader social contract.

"My house my rules."

vs.

"Your house my rules."

It's customary for people to expect to pay for food they order in a restaurant. It would be hard to claim that you didn't know that was the custom. However, secession is what made the USA possible. It's just as possible for people to remain being governed or secede. There are two customs, though one is more popular than the other, it's still something that has to be made explicit.

Maybe someone should have reminded Lincoln of that.

Some did.  That's why he suspended habius corpus and imprisioned his detractors in the Northern states.  What, didn't learn about that in public school?