Questions about anarchy

[sjw]

You have a stunning lack of imagination if you think I am lying. You are too wrapped up in your wrong-headed worldview to comprehend anything else it seems. This is another sign of cultism -- anyone who dissents is a "liar." So there's your first question. And also your second.

[blackacidlizzard]

You have a stunning lack of imagination if you think I am lying.

No, he's being kind.

Nearly everything you've posted here indicates that you would be quite capable of reading anything which does not line up exactly with your current worldview and have no insight into the actual aims of the work.

He could call you a liar or a retard.

He chose the former, but my bet is on the latter - or option C: troll.

[sjw]

Nearly everything you've posted here indicates that you would be quite capable of reading anything which does not line up exactly with your current worldview ...

Well, we wouldn't want people to actually think something, now would we. Better to go along with and submit to the cult.

[blackacidlizzard]

That actually made sense, and was clever in a "drawing on the wall with your own feces" kind of way.

So troll seems the likely option.

[Hierophant]

Excuse me? It is a fact that you have lied. You have professed having read, and loved, Lysander Spooner, and yet you believe things that are fundamentally against what Spooner wrote. I'm not even talking little details or single issues: I'm talking about a clear-cut denial of Spooner's belief in natural law, for instance, which he sees as innate to the individual and thus contradicting any external construct. This is not some kind of detail: it's the basis of Spooner's thought on pretty much everything he wrote about at length.

Also, Spooner, although he did support property, was against wage labor, against usury, and thought that the concentration of wealth was undesirable. So he's no "landlordist" by any stretch of the imagination. Please don't try to associate him with your ideas.

[sjw]

So troll seems the likely option.

Well, all is well then! It's just a troll. Go back to sleep boys.

[sjw]

It is a fact that you have lied.

Scientists have it easy in this respect: they can always assume that *they* are the ones in error, not Nature. People debating ideas have it a bit more difficult in this respect.

The fact is that if you think you see a contradiction in something someone says, the fault can lie with the other person, it can also lie with yourself. You have evidently completely lost the ability to deeply question your own cultish beliefs. Thus, the other person is a "liar." This is similar to the epithets religious people might sling at a non-believer, and you sling it for precisely the same reason.

[tism]

You have evidently completely lost the ability to deeply question your own cultish beliefs.

This would be funny if you knew how many times Franc has changed his beliefs in the last few years. He apparently *does* question them from time to time.

[blackacidlizzard]

Well, all is well then! It's just a troll. Go back to sleep boys.

Yup. Wake me up if you say anything interesting.

[Hierophant]

You have evidently completely lost the ability to deeply question your own cultish beliefs.

This would be funny if you knew how many times Franc has changed his beliefs in the last few years. He apparently *does* question them from time to time.

Yes, I think the fact that I went from a Misesian capitalist to a libertarian socialist in the past few years demonstrates that I have not "lost the ability to deeply question" my beliefs.

[Bones]

I spoke too vaguely there, sorry -- for me government is the "law of the land", and only the owner of the land has the prerogative to make the laws.

What if, for example, the owner of the land makes a law that any women or children he abducts and keeps prisoner on his land belong to him? Are there no personal rights? Who is to decide what these are? Who is to enforce? Couldn't the law of one land permit the invasion of another's land?

So in this case, only the bar owner can make that law, unless he had voluntarily agreed with nearby landowners to form a common pact on that issue. Why might a bar owner do this? Perhaps he wants to subscribe to the common police force, the sidewalks, the roads, etc. If he doesn't like this, he can go beyond the edge of the town and set up his bar and do what he wants.

. . .

I think we need to keep the realm of truth and the realm of popular opinion quite separate in our minds. We have to care far more about the former than the latter.

My previous questions are in regards to your theoretical society. And while I agree that we must keep the "realm of truth" separate from the realm of popular opinion, we must also keep it separate from our suppositions. As I mentioned before, I think that it is naive to think that any theory would "clear out all the gray." Likewise, I don't think that your theory on how government ought to function even begins to address these real life issues. For example, if a person does not own land, wouldn't the "law of the land" on which he resides be forced upon him without his consent? If all the land is already owned, doesn't this simply limit the choice to which particular established government a person wants to consent as opposed to what kind of government a person agrees? Do you think in most countries it is really people who are landowners, or is it the government?

My concern is that the more effort you put into elaborating your vague theory (and it is very vague) the more and more issues are going to be presented. I'm just responding to this expansion as an example. Since it is my assumption that such issues would continue to arise as you further your theory, I am not going to continue on the path of pointing out issues. Of course you could try to show that your theory would solve these issues without further elaborating it--maybe I missed something obvious. However, the fact that there are real issues in the real world that are very unclear even when we have very specific rules, fair or not, to deal with them make me doubt that you or anyone else has a magical equation. Your opinions on these real problems are different.

[sjw]

Bones, you have good questions, but don't confuse your being vague about what I mean with what I mean actually being vague. I can't shove everything I think into a forum posts, sorry.

But to answer a few of your questions:

- No, the owner can't make a law that lets him violate natural rights. The basis of law is natural rights (consent), it can't be used to subvert them. If he does, then anyone can legitimately come after him.

- So the only thing that is not gray is your philosophy that everything absolutely must be? That is untenable logic. Things are confused and gray when people don't see the truth. Which is not to say that all problems are trivial. Far from it. It's fantastically difficult to land a rocket on the moon. Yet with effort and precision, the path becomes clear.

- The issue of running out of land is a complex and important one, but it is far enough in the future that there's no reason to worry about it now. The fact is that much land is owned/controlled without having been justly acquired/held in the first place. First and foremost on this list is wild land we are prevented from using by the government. I read once that all of mankind's current food/living requirements could in principle be met by Australia, if the land were productively converted and used (obviously that would require new technology). Further, just because you own land doesn't give you dictatorial use of it, e.g., you must provide natural egress if necessary to surrounding inhabitants. I can't list all the qualifications here, but the principle is that you can't violate someone's natural rights (such as their right to travel from point A to point B).

- The purpose of principles is to answer questions. If you grasp the principles, you can answer the questions yourself. Until you do you must ask questions until you either grasp or reject them. So yes, you might have more and more questions, to a point, to the point where you either understand or reject what I'm saying.

[Bones]

Bones, you have good questions, but don't confuse your being vague about what I mean with what I mean actually being vague. I can't shove everything I think into a forum posts, sorry.

Thanks, I know you can't shove everything into forum posts. That was kind of what I was getting at. I am under the impression that if I am to continue to propose problems that your philosophy does not cover, you will be forced to continue to expand it as you have. If you truly see the "truth" and have a certain set of principles that could be applied to any set of given facts to create a clear and fair (by whatever your definition may be) outcome, then perhaps you can write a treatise on that matter. This way I could see your entire philosophy before making comments, and I think that would be more efficient than this bit by bit, q&a method that we have going on. What I mean is that you can write out all your principles, and then when an issue comes up, you can simply point to one of your principles and explain how this would be resolved under that principle. Like I said before, I think that this is a very naive way to address problems. It assumes that everything is going to fit into one of your preconceived principles of government.

But to answer a few of your questions:

- No, the owner can't make a law that lets him violate natural rights. The basis of law is natural rights (consent), it can't be used to subvert them. If he does, then anyone can legitimately come after him.

This is an expansion. I think it is still vague, and there are quite a few issues that I could bring up in regards to this. I'm sure you can see them for yourself, so perhaps you would like to address them if you do want to write more about this.

- So the only thing that is not gray is your philosophy that everything absolutely must be? That is untenable logic. Things are confused and gray when people don't see the truth. Which is not to say that all problems are trivial. Far from it. It's fantastically difficult to land a rocket on the moon. Yet with effort and precision, the path becomes clear.

I know I didn't say that my philosophy is that everything absolutely must be, and I don't know where I implied that. I don't really know what you are even trying to say by that. Everything that is, is. Are you implying that I think the way things are is the best way or was somehow unavoidable? I don't. Is that what you think I was saying? Things may very well be clear to you, but that does not mean that they are clear to everyone else, and you may be clearly incorrect according to what someone else thinks. That is the gray area I am referring to. In certain matters there is no "truth" only opinion.

- The issue of running out of land is a complex and important one, but it is far enough in the future that there's no reason to worry about it now. The fact is that much land is owned/controlled without having been justly acquired/held in the first place. First and foremost on this list is wild land we are prevented from using by the government. I read once that all of mankind's current food/living requirements could in principle be met by Australia, if the land were productively converted and used (obviously that would require new technology). Further, just because you own land doesn't give you dictatorial use of it, e.g., you must provide natural egress if necessary to surrounding inhabitants. I can't list all the qualifications here, but the principle is that you can't violate someone's natural rights (such as their right to travel from point A to point B).

Lots of issues here again as you mention yourself. At least this kind of addresses real world issues though. Are you saying that we should produce all our living requirements in Australia?

- The purpose of principles is to answer questions. If you grasp the principles, you can answer the questions yourself. Until you do you must ask questions until you either grasp or reject them. So yes, you might have more and more questions, to a point, to the point where you either understand or reject what I'm saying.

I can answer questions on my own. I think that the purpose of principles is to attempt to be consistent with answers to similar but different questions and limit judgment to what has been previously decided. Things change and principles become outdated. I prefer not to limit myself. You can follow your principles if you want--just look around at the real world every once in a while to see where they are leading you.

[sjw]

Thanks, I know you can't shove everything into forum posts. That was kind of what I was getting at. I am under the impression that if I am to continue to propose problems that your philosophy does not cover, you will be forced to continue to expand it as you have. If you truly see the "truth" and have a certain set of principles that could be applied to any set of given facts to create a clear and fair (by whatever your definition may be) outcome, then perhaps you can write a treatise on that matter. This way I could see your entire philosophy before making comments, and I think that would be more efficient than this bit by bit, q&a method that we have going on. What I mean is that you can write out all your principles, and then when an issue comes up, you can simply point to one of your principles and explain how this would be resolved under that principle.

Treatise, hahaha. Why spend all that effort?

Like I said before, I think that this is a very naive way to address problems. It assumes that everything is going to fit into one of your preconceived principles of government.

It's not inherently naive, but proper ideas of how society should be organized may not be for this era of mankind, so it may be naive in that respect. It's not logically naive any more than mathematics or physics is naive. Both of these subjects fail to comprehensively answer every possible problem, but they certainly do a lot of practical good.

I think that the purpose of principles is to attempt to be consistent with answers to similar but different questions and limit judgment to what has been previously decided. Things change and principles become outdated. I prefer not to limit myself. You can follow your principles if you want--just look around at the real world every once in a while to see where they are leading you.

In my opinion you are confusing rules and principles. Everything you say is accurate concerning rules. Most human beings only comprehend principles as rules. Like I said, principles may not be appropriate to this era of mankind.

[Bones]

Treatise, hahaha. Why spend all that effort?

I know your question is rhetorical, but many people have found writing treatises a useful way to spend their time. It depends on the person. John Locke apparently thought it was worth his effort. I suppose the motivation comes from believing you have something valuable to contribute society.

It's not inherently naive, but proper ideas of how society should be organized may not be for this era of mankind, so it may be naive in that respect. It's not logically naive any more than mathematics or physics is naive. Both of these subjects fail to comprehensively answer every possible problem, but they certainly do a lot of practical good.

What era of mankind are you talking about? There are certain assumptions followed in physics and mathematics that distinguish it from reality. The applicability comes to play when the assumptions closely mimic reality. I am assuming that the era of mankind you are talking about does not closely mimic reality and therefore doesn’t provide any real useful rules for governing our society (I don’t want to use “principle” until I know what you mean by it). Also, given the fact that it is so difficult to create assumptions that mimic our current era, I doubt that we can predict with any accuracy how they will apply to a future era.

In my opinion you are confusing rules and principles. Everything you say is accurate concerning rules. Most human beings only comprehend principles as rules. Like I said, principles may not be appropriate to this era of mankind.

Black’s Law Dictionary (8th ed. 2004):

principle, n. A basic rule, law, or doctrine.

rule, n. 1. Generally, an established and authoritative standard or principle; a general norm mandating or guiding conduct or action in a given type of situation.


I’m not going to argue semantics. I know these definitions are not the only definitions. What do you mean by principle and rule? What is the difference in your opinion?