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Messages - Richard Garner

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1
General / Re: If borders don't exist...
« on: September 17, 2010, 10:12:38 AM »
So, border enforcement is OK as long as it's private property. I think the majority of the land across the border is privately owned,

Which makes building a big wall across the border a violation of the owners' property rights, of course.

And also mean that if the owner wants Mexicans to come onto or across his land, then he should be allowed to let them, regardless of what the INS think.

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or would become such in a free society. It's OK to shoot he Mexicans then, right?

Nope, firstly because trespass doesn't work like that. First you have to tell them they are not welcome on your land. Then you have to have evidence that they don't intend to leave.
Beyond that, we can ask whether shooting them is proportionate to the offense.

2
General / Re: Should minarchists and anarchists unite?
« on: September 05, 2010, 09:13:34 AM »
I am a minarchist because experience has taught me that some administrative body is necessary for the protection of property rights with minimal violence.

As far as I know, anarchists seem to want this, too? They just think that this administartive body should not be a government: Peaceful people should not be forced to maintain it, through seizure of funds or labour, and it should not have a violent monopoly on providing this service within a given geographic area.

If you agree, then you are an anarchist, too.

3
The Show / Re: Fatal Flaw of Libertarianism
« on: May 23, 2010, 09:33:43 AM »
Voluntaryism does not argue for the form that voluntary arrangements will take; only that force be abandoned.Just say five people owned five houses.If they formed a co operative group and enforced their laws on a sixth person who owned a house without the sixth persons permission or agreement and forced the sixth person to pay dues and obey their laws it is logically false to claim it is legitimate.By the same token it would be wrong for the sixth person  to say it is illegitimate for the five persons to have control over their own houses.
That's not the issue at hand.  The issue at hand is that libertarians don't think the 5 people have a right to create a neighborhood from which they can exclude people.

Yes they do.

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Why cant we decide which group to be part of?
Precisely my point; libertarians refuse to acknowledge the right to make this decision.

No they don't.

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Immigration is simply people wanting to join your exclusive group.So why cant they?Because they are the wrong color?Because they dont speak your language?Your argument comes from fear that if you let people make these choices you will no longer get to control them.
So, your libertarianism is predicated on your idea of political correctness?  If not, why bring up "wrong color" or language at all?  It doesn't matter why I don't want someone trespassing on my property, does it?

The country is not your property. Nor did everybody in the country all decide to get together and unanimously agree to restrict immigration.

chief engineer of these things?  The State.  QED
[/quote]
I'm leaving the State out of this, because this question doesn't hinge on the State.  It's about libertarians' refusal to acknowledge the right of individuals to form and act as collectives.  According to libertarians, 5 guys have the right to own and control property, but they don't have the right to form a collective substrate beneath their property, call it a nation, and own and control it.[/quote]

Of course they do. But why do you think that admitting this means that the government has a right to control immigration? That would only be the case if all the owners of the land that the government wants to restrict immigration onto had formed just such an agreement, and that the government was they agency that they had all selected to enforce restrictions on entry for them. Since this has not happened, though, your support for immigration controls doesn't seem to follow from your argument for it.

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It is fine if those 1 million are in agreement.But that is some utopian vision you have there buddy!You cant even get two fucking people to agree let alone 1 million.
Libertarians are supposed to be good with theory.  How about 1 million agreeing to abide by the popular vote?

Vote for what? Let's say that a land owner on the Arizona/Mexico border wants to let some Mexicans come and work on his farm whether or not they have been granted visas or permits from the US government. The Mexicans would be violating immigration law, but who's property would the US government be defending if it kicked them out? And why should the fact that a million other people who don't own that land agreed to abide by a popular vote made by three-hundred million other people that don't own this landthat this guy should not be able to let the Mexicans onto his land mean that the government has a right to prevent them coming in?

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The state and the nation are non existent as you say.It is a collective of individuals with no more rights than one individual has.
No, libertarians don't acknowledge the right of collectives at all, if they don't acknowledge the right of nations to control immigration.  It's tantamount to rejecting the idea of nations altogether.  Maybe this sort of ideological rigidity stands in the way of libertarianism's popularity.

Maybe. The truth can sometimes be unpopular.

4
General / Re: A Question to the Athiests
« on: January 17, 2010, 12:12:44 PM »
It is tiresome that two and a half thousand years since the Euthyphro people are still asking questions like this, as though morality is somehow dependent on God's will.

Does God will us to do X because it is moral, or is it moral to do X because God wills it? If the latter, then we clearly get the answer that anything could be moral dependent on the whims of the deity. We also get the question of why God's mere willing us to do X makes X moral - what are the causal relations? If the former, then doing X would clearly still be moral whether or not God willed it, for reasons entirely independent of the fact that he willed it, and in fact he wouldn't even need to exist for doing X to still be moral.

5
The Show / Re: Mark and Ian are anarchists, even if they don't know it.
« on: December 20, 2009, 08:13:44 AM »
"In the end, on violent overthrow, though, Ian has provided no pricipled argument against it. He thinks it would not work, and quite accurately points out that people such as Carl Drega have not drawn many people into the liberty movement through their actions. But this is just an argument as to why violence is prudentially wrong, not why it is wrong in principle. States are little more than big gangs of robbers, and it is certainly not wrong, in principle, to violently resist bands of robbers. It just might be pointless or even harmful to do so sometimes."

Violence is wrong in principle because there is ALWAYS "collateral damage". For self-defense to be permissible, it needs to address an immediate threat, on an individual level-not a collective resistance, since that would include violence done not in direct self defense(it would also be the beginnings of a new state). Sorry, either you believe in non-violence, or you don't-there is no grey area, and a BMV clerk is not fair game.

Then I don't believe in non-violence. It is right to use violence in self-defense, in protection of people's rights, and to exact restitution for the violation of those rights.

6
General / Re: Excellent breasts.
« on: September 09, 2009, 10:48:38 AM »
Two shiny nickles to the person that finds a pic of Diana Rigg, first of TV show Avengers fame, later the host of the PBS show Mystery. Can't seem to shake my weak spot for her hubbahubba.



This is Diana Rigg's daughter:


7
General / Re: Excellent breasts.
« on: August 13, 2009, 09:08:34 AM »

8
I think that a "protective service" in a free market would be allowed to take part in remedying this situation. Of course, if the service was wrong, they expose themselves to risk of loss. Children are not "property", they are young humans who have rights just as any other, and the parents have a responsibility to protect them from harm. I would think that knowingly allowing a child to come to harm that could have been prevented would be signs of mental illness on the part of the parents, just as certain people are still going to hurt each other due to a similar condition. Total ostracism would not work, as the parents are likely already intentionally insulated from society, but I think it would be up to the community to express their concerns to the parents, and offer solutions that result in the child receiving proper care. Proper incentives would have to be in place to get the parents to want to care for their child, and failing that, to prevent the death of the child who cannot protect themselves.

Couching this sort of neglect in "religious belief" just ignores the fact that neglect is causing real harm to the child. It is not liberty or freedom that allows people to hurt other people, regardless of their relationship and age. It is a slippery slope that needs to be managed carefully by the market, which I'm sure would eventually happen.

The current CPS/C&Y "services" provided by the government do far more harm than good in most cases. Their only incentive is to process families through the system as fast as possible, and to protect their budget at all costs. I used to work with many C&Y people who are wonderful, caring human beings who really are trying to help, as opposed to some of the horror stories that we hear in other areas. Even with the high percentage of decent, loving people, there are still caseworkers that I don't want to be in the same room with, let alone trust any part of my child's welfare to.

This.

What would happen is that a big ass children's charity, like Bernardos, would pay for a protection agency to protect their officers whilst they came and took "baby P" off the parents. If they tried this against normal parents, those parents would hire protection against them, but why the hell would a neglectful family then spend money out bidding Bernardo's to get a court that will let them keep a baby they are neglecting?

9
General / Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« on: July 23, 2009, 08:57:42 AM »

how many people would have absolutely nothing to lose?

Isn't it a truism the poor will always be with you?

God, yes. They just follow me around, in a big group, swarming and swarming, always with me!

10
I believe this is a danger to the state so therefore the reason it is not allowed.



The welfare state would collapse and everybody would get richer?

11
General / Rude Hedgehogs
« on: July 14, 2009, 09:13:47 AM »

12
General / Re: Principled Minarchy
« on: July 09, 2009, 08:12:43 PM »
Sure it can. But unless it stops other people from setting up similar organisations within the same geographic area, or similar organisations from different geographic areas from doing the same thing in its geographic area, then it isn't really a state, no matter what it calls itself.

Its just a name so why argue that? If it's voluntary it doesnt matter anyway.

I just don't think there is much point calling something that is not a state, a state. I also think that calling an organisation like this, which is not a state, a state obscures the inherently unjust nature of states.

13
General / Re: Principled Minarchy
« on: July 09, 2009, 08:08:33 PM »
The idea is for the government to have monopoly on the use of force, but only in retaliation against an original agressor, not initiation of force.

I understand that's the idea. But to remain a monopoly supplier of retaliatory force they would HAVE to initiate force against any threats to that monopoly status. You can't have it both ways!

I don't agree. They maintain their monopoly by their size.

Assuming that there are the relevant economies of scale and no counter-balancing diseconomies of scale... which there aren't.

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The idea of a principled government, is that it would be there to prevent gang warfare and injustice which is thought might occur without it. It's not there to impose itself when no injustice occurs. I don't object to a defensive organization, or a private court, from growing in strength, influence, and popularity. However, I would use this principled government to review any cases where the defendant felt he was treated unjustly.

And who reviews cases when a defendant thought they were dealt with unjustly by the government? Wouldyour government use violence to prevent anybody else from reviewing cases where somebody thought they had been deal with unjustly? If not, then your "government" is no more the government than any other organisation doing the same job, and there is a state. If, on the other hand, it does, then it would necessarily be preventing people from performing activities it itself things are legitimate (since it does them), and, moreover, there would be no institution to protect people from the government - making the government, essentially, lawless.

14
General / Re: Principled Minarchy
« on: July 09, 2009, 07:58:36 PM »
Objectivism doesn't make sense to me... or at least, objectivism based on Rand's original ideals.

Objectivists seem to propose a minarchist viewpoint... that a single government will make the laws but that it will be funded voluntarily. But they refuse to accept the concept of a separate "government" forming as a free market institution, offering defence and justice at a lower cost/more efficiently than the current government. They agree with the non-aggression principle and yet they think their government has to have monopoly on force, which is a huge contradiction, the government cannot maintain a monopoly on force without violating the non-aggression principle.

Unless I have something wrong, please educate me if so :)

A government, as I've outlined above, would have a monopoly on force, simply because it would be the largest institution in the country. Yet, it doesn't violate the non-aggression principle.



This isn't sufficient to make it a monopoly, since it would still face indirect or potential competition. I mean, it would be perfectly possible that if, in the UK, such an organisation existed, calling itself "The State of the UNited Kingdom", then, if I wanted the French government to protect my rights and was willing to pay it enough to send agents over the channel to do so, I could.

15
General / Re: Principled Minarchy
« on: July 09, 2009, 07:55:07 PM »
I think that in a free society, a large group of people can form an organization, calling themselves 'The State of X', and using voluntary funding, establish themselves as a force to prevent smaller gangs from exerting tyranny over society.

Thoughts?



Sure it can. But unless it stops other people from setting up similar organisations within the same geographic area, or similar organisations from different geographic areas from doing the same thing in its geographic area, then it isn't really a state, no matter what it calls itself.

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