This is one of those times when a reader had some very good questions that needed more space than a comment box would permit. Perhaps you have been having the same doubts about a free society. If so, consider this a hand reaching out to you, as well.
Without further ado, I give you reader DLH:
Who gets to decide what your "legitimate" rules are ? You ? Me ? or the Leader of the day ? Or can each of 300 million of us decide upon our own rules and enforce them as we see fit ?
There is always only one legitimate rule, the same one that has existed throughout history: Do not attack others. This includes "economic attacks" like theft and fraud. I didn't make this up. Think "The Golden Rule" and "The Wiccan Rede". This rule probably evolved along with humans as they began to develop society. Without it, we would still be animals in the jungle. Ignoring it, or making exceptions for the state, is tearing civilization apart.
You rant about the rules of the majority being forced upon the minority .. how else do 300 million people live together ? Move togather (sic) in some meaningful way as is required by our very close proximity to one another.
By respecting the equal rights of every other person. That includes not allowing a government to punish those who use self-defense against those who do NOT respect those rights. What works for a family also works on a much larger scale. The rights of two people do not trump the rights of an individual. Nor do the rights of 300 million or 6+ billion trump the rights of a single individual. Rights are not additive, but are individual. No one, and no group, has the "right" to violate the rights of an individual in any way. If every person in America voted to take your house or kill you, they would be just as wrong as if you decided to do the same to your neighbor. If an aggressor attacks someone, then the victim has the right to fight back. If you witness an attack you have the right to step in and stop the attack. You do not have the right to get together with a bunch of friends and decide that because you think that "Loner" might someday steal from you, you will beat him up today as a warning. Once you do this you have become the attacker. This is all government does, although usually they start with counterfeit "laws" rather than a physical attack. There is no need to violate the rights of the minority in order to live peacefully. This is statist brainwashing propaganda.
Proximity does not necessarily cause conflict. Only forced proximity and unequal "privilege" granted by the state, exacerbated by the creation of a parasite class who contribute nothing while living off the stolen property of their neighbors. And yet statists see this as "civilized".
How would 300 million of us, as we "governed ourselves" react for instance to.. global pollution ? Terrorism ? an economic crisis spawned in some foreign land ? a pandemic ?
"Global pollution" is a property issue. If someone is damaging your property, they need to be held accountable. They do not need to be protected by "laws" that allow them to pay a fine (which goes to the government, not the victim in any case) and either continue to damage your property, or go out of business, leaving the mess for someone else to deal with. "National borders" protect those who are damaging your property from the other side of an imaginary line. How is this right?
Terrorism is the weakest justification for government that has ever been grasped for. If the government would stop violating the absolute right of each and every individual to own and to carry any type of weapon they want, wherever they go, in any manner they see fit, without asking permission of anyone, ever, terrorists would go elsewhere. If government would stop sending destroyers and killers into their cities and villages, their reasons for being terrorists would evaporate. "Trade with all nations; entangling alliances with none". Wise words which the Rulers ignore at our expense. Terrorism is a government-created problem.
"Economic crises in foreign countries"- How is an economic crisis in a foreign land "our government's" problem? I admit, the US government has destabilized the world economy, but how is this a reason for continued government? If we were still using real money, instead of fiat IOUs, the world's economy would probably be stabilized and safe from prolonged crisis. Investing in America's real money could even protect foreign countries from serious economic problems. Instead, government manipulates the money supply, while forcing people to use the counterfeit "dollars" it prints. Government steals the value of even this phony-money by printing too much and causing "inflation". Then by allowing (or even mandating) dishonest banking practices like "fractional reserve banking", the government causes even more economic disaster. The thing is, prices don't rise; the value of fiat money goes down.
With a pandemic, people should be allowed to seek treatment from whoever they trust, using any medications they wish, without government intervention. Government "help" has a history of making things worse by not foreseeing the unintended consequences. Innovation is crushed under the government's regulations and by its FDA. No one ever talks about the people who died while the FDA wraps new treatments in a mummy of red-tape and backroom deals. Doctors are rationed by a broken licensing scheme that only rewards the ones who play politics well. Then you have the pharmaceutical company/government partnership. If pharmaceutical companies develop a vaccine, many people would choose to buy it. If it really works as advertised, the vaccinated people would have nothing to fear from those who chose other methods. You seem to also be ignoring the fact that wars, the main business of government, are prime causes of pandemics throughout history.
The problem is, with each of these examples I see even more reasons to get rid of the cancer of government. Or at least allow competition rather than monopoly.
And the final attempt at a coup de grace:
Has this world of yours ever existed anywhere, at anytime, for any meaningful length of (comment cut short)
Some people make the claim that anarchistic societies have existed successfully in the past. I just don't know. Michael Stahl, the Sandusky County Politics Examiner is a much better authority on this than am I. My thought is that even if none have existed in the past, we are living in a different world now. Technology, especially information technology, would empower the individual and make things possible that were never dreamed of before. Just because it has never been done doesn't mean it can't be done now, and it certainly doesn't mean it is not possible. Have you ever seen a flock of several dozen people fly over your head without an airplane?
Comments
There is this, also, to consider: anarchy is the natural state of the natural world. Mother Nature is a glorious riot of anarchic chaos, with everything and everyone acting in its own self-interest, unmoved by something so laughably artificial as "law". Sustainability and diversity are ensured not by top-down control, but by the unpredictable mutation of sovereign individuals.
Only humans are so arrogant as to believe that we can somehow invert this and replace it with a command-and-control system. (And yet we still believe it, even after thousands of years of failure!)
Ironically, we, too, despite the best efforts of government, live most of our lives in a state of anarchy; most of us have hundreds of thousands of interactions with other people that are controlled by no one but ourselves, and we manage to get along fine.
This is no accident, this is NORMAL. How can we not see that it is our natural, stable state?
Just observin'. :-)
Kent,
No, no hard feelings at all. It's your blog, your ideas and if you are a representative/voice of the "Examiner" and Libertarians in general then I have learned something, though probably not what you might think.
I think to a large extent you misrepresent the role of government in society. Certainly it is capable of distorting the truth, manipulating facts and advancing its own agenda, just as you have in today's post above. I mean to say governments are just as flawed as the people who make governments. To believe that somehow 6 billion individuals are going to act on their own, following your "one legitimate rule" is so far removed from reality as to scarcely be credible.
I find most of what you say above to be a gross distortion and horribly one sided. In the interest of a free society and the exchange of ideas I would be happy to counter it with a full page post on monday in lieu of your own.
Alas..800 characters doesn't go far.
Hope to hear from you soon.
Although dlh asks some excellent questions, I hereby nominate this individual as the official poster child for cognitive dissonance.
. “I mean to say governments are just as flawed as the people who make governments”
Exactly! So why would you want these admittedly “flawed” people ruling you?
“To believe that somehow 6 billion individuals are going to act on their own, following your "one legitimate rule" is so far removed from reality as to scarcely be credible.”
Look around you. Do you see 6 billion people looking into a government handbook every three minutes to guide them in every life decision? Anarchy is constant and ubiquitous. You just have to open your eyes to see it.
What about the people who propose world government? They certainly believe in “one legitimate rule[r]."
“One sided?” Liberty has no sides. Its supporting concepts stand alone as indisputable truth.
DLH- While rights are not additive, evil (the act of harming those who do not deserve to be harmed right now) is cumulative. That is why government always sinks to such depths of depravity. If people in general are not trustworthy, then large groups of people who have a monopoly on force ("government") certainly can never be trusted. Yet you say MY ideas are "contradictory".
Feel free to email your counterargument to me (dullhawk@hotmail.com) and I will post it unedited (unless you use words that will get me in trouble with Examiner), only adding an introduction.
R.Young,
wow..you guys.. I mean we all live on the same planet right ?
So.. you think government is inherently bad, every aspect of it. You acknowledge that government is designed, staffed and run by people. But you think all 6 billion people of the world would do a better job of governing themselves individually ? Come on.. get real
Where did I propose that government should be involved in every aspect of your daily life ? You are like the 3rd person to lay this on me.. why ? Is everything so fully on, or fully off, so black and white in your world ?
I merely state that to propose a world without government is absurd.
Even a country as small as our own, 300 million people.. NEED some sort of uniformity, infrastructure and stability within which INDIVIDUALS can conduct their daily lives as they see fit.
Simple. Stop there.
There is no need to read subversive government involvement into the minutiae of your daily lives into that statement.
Kent,
I'm impressed, I will forward a response to you and I promise to keep it clean and suitable for Examiner.
DLH says: "Even a country as small as our own, 300 million people.. NEED some sort of uniformity, infrastructure and stability within which INDIVIDUALS can conduct their daily lives as they see fit.
Simple. Stop there."
Agreed, to a point. ("Uniformity" doesn't seem necessary to me) The problem is that government does not provide this. Society does. Society works by voluntary interaction between people in which both parties come out ahead, by their own assessment. Government interferes with this formula and makes one party come out ahead while one party loses. If this were not the case, we would not be having this debate. The fact that some of us see a net loss by having government meddle in our lives is proof enough. All I ask is a chance to be left alone UNTIL I initiate force against someone else. In that case intervention is proper. Intervention before that line is crossed is evil.
Kent,
When I say "uniformity" I mean that in a broad sense I can expect a particular reaction/consequence to specific actions. Business and even our personal interaction with others require this to an extent.
In my head society is a loose group of people defined by some common goal or need. In days gone by they were defined by culture or race, in modern society, particularly in our own society must encompass many such races and cultures. Society provides mores and values to guide human interactions but there is no structure to ensure that these social mores are followed. What's more in todays complex multicultural societies mores and values may differ geographically and over time. One role of government is to mediate this, presumably at societies urging and arrive at a compromise. This does require give and take and in practice is far from perfect. But I have yet to see any "society" which manages it better than via our own imperfect Government.
DLH, just because you can't conceive of something doesn't mean it can't happen.
Ivan Illich said, "School is the advertising agency that makes you think you need the society as it is." A world without government is "absurd" to you only because you have been trained to believe that. (And if you have an instantaneous reaction against that concept, you may want to look into how "public school" came into being before saying something embarrassing.)
Out of chaos springs order; the natural world works this way all the time. Most of us marvel at how harmonious it all winds up--when left alone. How arrogant are human beings, to think we have a better idea?
To borrow an image from an unabashed statist, how do you know that what you "know" about the legitimacy and efficacy of government, is not merely shadows on a cave wall?
Stand up and look around. If you're right, you can always sit back down again.
By the way, DLH, thank you for the dialogue. It seems clear thus far that you are here for a two-way exchange of ideas, and that puts you ahead of many.
Tip of the hat.
Hey DLH - good discussion. May I point out something?
you wrote: "...I merely state that to propose a world without government is absurd..."
I don't think a single person on this blog would disagree with you. What we object to is a 'State' - a group of individuals who control others through the use of threat and actual violence.
Government is the management of resources. As such, *I* am fully capable of governing my property. I do not need an official from the State to grant me permission. Nor does any single one of the other millions who live around me.
It is their property with which to dispense. The only reason a 'State' exists is to control what we do with property. The State believes it owns you and your property. By definition, that is slavery. Anyone who defends such a concept is defending slavery. I am clueless as to why any intelligent person would do so.
+1 on the hat tip from Kevin to DHL.
Sincere dialogue.
It is very refreshing and appreciated:-)
Well certainly it is an interesting discussion
David Taylor: Kent, owner of this particular discussion does believe that government provides absolutely no benefit to him, has stated that (all?) government is a cancer.
This IS my primary problem with this entire thread.
I will happily agree that govt. is highly flawed, should always be very carefully watched and questioned. But all government abolished ?
Kevin: I am part of nature, as are you. Anything I do or anything I think is natural. It may not be right...or good.. or desirable, but it is natural. The true arrogance of mankind is to think otherwise.
If any of you want proof that government is needed, just look at the world and history and list the places where people live with absolutely no governing body ? Make a list of those with a government. Compare them, and if you find one you like.. go there.
How bout Somalia ?
"If any of you want proof that government is needed, just look at the world and history and list the places where people live with absolutely no governing body ? Make a list of those with a government. Compare them, and if you find one you like.. go there.
How bout Somalia ?"
Somalia actually has multiple "governments" fighting for control of the others' territories and the illusion of legitimacy bestowed by the other ruling gangs of the world.
There was a fantastic article(s) about alternative routes of justice I read a few weeks ago. I don't know that I can link them here, but I'll try: (copy/paste w/http) //faculty.msb.edu/hasnasj/GTWebSite/MythWeb.htm "THE MYTH OF THE RULE OF LAW".
This is a great start to seeing the order from the "chaos".
Hi DLH -
Rereading my post, you'll find that I argue that no one here, Kent included, have a problem with GOVERNMENT. The problem is with OTHERS presuming to govern YOU.
Government is the management of resources. Kent (and we other anarchists) hold that we are capable of governing ourselves.
It is impossible to abolish the management of resources. It is entirely possible (and moral) to abolish a system of coercive force wherein certain individuals assume ownership of all property - including persons - and then act accordingly.
I'd also argue that Kent doesn't believe there are benefits to himself from a coercive form of government - it is always possible to name one or two. The question is not one of utility but one of morality. It is simply wrong to put a gun to someone's head to force them to do benefit you - unless they initiated the conflict.
It can also be more convenient to use a gun to get things done. Might, however, does not make right.
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