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Profile of Level 20 Anklebiter
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121
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 07:46:45 PM »Umm...yes, yes, yes, because there's no force or coercion involved, lack of force and coercion.How do you prove that claim? What is the standard?
What was it I didn't grasp?
Quote
If I recall correctly, our first-ever dust-up was about how happy you were that the state (I.E., people who'd been robbed) was paying for someone's sex change. If your view has not changed, how was that moral?
The last time I checked, I never supported such a thing.
122
General / Re: Video: Ian Arrested
« on: July 21, 2010, 07:34:16 PM »
This is why Ian is a douche.
123
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 07:32:54 PM »Well, its about fuckin' time you've arrived at The Conclusion.
I'm a slow learner.
124
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 07:32:26 PM »So by redefining "voluntary" to an absurdity, one becomes something other than a voluntaryist. I get it.
The important part is the part about not initiating force. So I presume, you're still a "non-initiation-of-forcist."
You seem to not grasp the point. Let me pin it down to this particular issue. Is cannibalism ethically acceptable if it is not coerced? How about sexual relations between someone of an extremely young age (pre-teen and younger) and someone much older (teens and up)? Basically, the question is this: does something being merely voluntary make it moral? If so, why? If not, why not? What is the standard of normativity?
125
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 05:04:15 PM »Teach the children about liberty, and from each successive generation more liberty will come.
Exactly.
126
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 04:56:18 PM »I missed the part where the family structure, which varies exponentially more wildly the more technologically advanced and prosperous a country is, somehow dictates the appropriate structure of government.
It doesn't, but it does predicate how one views what is necessary and sufficient for a society.
127
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 04:54:11 PM »
I don't think it's a matter of getting voluntaryism to work. In the vast majority of situations it is the default state which human beings enjoy. But the family unit offers to unique features: origin of the next generation, and a chance for a person to learn and grow (and flourish). And it's these two features that no tool or device can capture or mimic. A robot that has no mind is not a parent. A computer terminal with no network access is not an outlet for social curiosity. No matter how one slices the problem, the family is a permanent feature of human beings regardless of historical accidents. And it is from the family that liberty will come, and not from some campy libertine activities dressed up as civil disobedience (In reference to the crap that recently happened in Keene...), as it is where everyone starts and learns.
128
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 04:41:08 PM »Never ever trust anything from the East, especially their philosophy.
"Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet." - Kipling
That's fine, but you'll be surprised how much in terms of mathematics and navigation Western scholars 'borrowed' when we were lagging behind (and they were lagging behind in the development of the scientific method, which Western Scholars offered to teach).
129
General / Re: Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 04:37:41 PM »Ok, so who has the gun?
Which institution, what social function in your estimation, gets away with the initiation of coercion?
This is a false question because that which not voluntary is not necessarily coercive. For example, one must retain some means of income to survive in a modern society. Be it a job, inheritance, business, and so on. You could argue it's a choice, but that which is chosen is not voluntary (a choice can be coerced) it's simply chosen.
131
General / Why I am not a Voluntaryist.
« on: July 21, 2010, 12:54:02 PM »
I thought I finally out my true thoughts on the matter of human order rather than sitting on the sidelines anymore. As many here remember me as ladyattis, that early on I was a minarchist up until 2006ish where I began to study the work of Rothbard (and later on Mises, Bohm-Bawerk, Hayek, and etc). But as I started to explore other ideas, especially those from Asian thinkers (Confucius in particular) or Asian influenced thinkers (Schopenhauer) I've made a made a decidedly unusual conclusion: that voluntary social order itself is a contradiction.
I won't go in-depth in this post about why I made this conclusion, but I'll summarize. The base component of human societies is the family as the human species procreates sexually instead of asexually, thus males and females take on different biological roles that are essential to the continuation of the species. This biological version of the division of labor even extends to the couple's division of responsibilities. Men care for the physically challenging work, women focus on other tasks like child rearing. Sometimes the division of labor varies as I've seen in anthropological studies of certain ethnic minorities throughout the world, but the division regardless of how it is setup is always there. This is key because often such division plays to the biological strengths of each sex while shielding their given weaknesses. The more one examines this trait of playing to strengths and covering weaknesses in the human family, it becomes clear that none of this is ever chosen freely as much as a person is not free to fly to the moon on a whim. It takes some thought (although, some of this is quite spontaneous in its genesis) to organize even the smallest of families, thus it's common that decisions in a family are done by its elders (the parents themselves, or their parents). This is not done out of malice or wish to dominate, but that it is done out of the fact that those who have lived the longest have the best knowledge of what to do in most situations. If the family elders don't know, they oftener will seek out answers, and puzzle out the right questions to ask to clear up their own ignorance of a matter.
Anyways, all of this means that societies being built on top of the family unit then follow a similar division of labor where each institution stands out of either history (as accident) or necessity (as heuristic or principle). This includes the State. Now, this doesn't mean the State is in the latter category of necessity, but it does mean that those organs within the State may be necessary and wanted. And it may be to the best interests of all human beings to see those organs of necessity liberated from the State as to better their function, rather than demanding their demise at the whims of zealots (like Ian). It is this particular point of view that I take which I see as both qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from Voluntaryism as the very idea of a purely voluntary society stands in conflict with my view that some social institutions and orders are not only a matter of fact, but of a matter of fulfilling the very definition of a society. And more importantly, that these institutions and orders do not necessarily derive their power from authority, but rather from function, as it is authority (or what I like to call the dominance complex) is the seed of tyranny and not functionality.
This distinction between my view on society and that of Voluntaryism means more or less that I am not a Voluntaryist in any degree. And moreover, that I have views which are more aligned with that of left-libertarians and other anti-authoritarian philosophies. I'm not sure that Voluntaryists are a problem, but I do see their philosophy as fundamentally weak as it cannot integrate both the essential nature of the human family as the genesis of social order nor explain why something being purely voluntary is in itself sufficiently good.
TLDR-Version: Society has some properties of being not voluntary, therefore Voluntaryism is contradictory in the assumption of achieving a purely voluntary society.
I won't go in-depth in this post about why I made this conclusion, but I'll summarize. The base component of human societies is the family as the human species procreates sexually instead of asexually, thus males and females take on different biological roles that are essential to the continuation of the species. This biological version of the division of labor even extends to the couple's division of responsibilities. Men care for the physically challenging work, women focus on other tasks like child rearing. Sometimes the division of labor varies as I've seen in anthropological studies of certain ethnic minorities throughout the world, but the division regardless of how it is setup is always there. This is key because often such division plays to the biological strengths of each sex while shielding their given weaknesses. The more one examines this trait of playing to strengths and covering weaknesses in the human family, it becomes clear that none of this is ever chosen freely as much as a person is not free to fly to the moon on a whim. It takes some thought (although, some of this is quite spontaneous in its genesis) to organize even the smallest of families, thus it's common that decisions in a family are done by its elders (the parents themselves, or their parents). This is not done out of malice or wish to dominate, but that it is done out of the fact that those who have lived the longest have the best knowledge of what to do in most situations. If the family elders don't know, they oftener will seek out answers, and puzzle out the right questions to ask to clear up their own ignorance of a matter.
Anyways, all of this means that societies being built on top of the family unit then follow a similar division of labor where each institution stands out of either history (as accident) or necessity (as heuristic or principle). This includes the State. Now, this doesn't mean the State is in the latter category of necessity, but it does mean that those organs within the State may be necessary and wanted. And it may be to the best interests of all human beings to see those organs of necessity liberated from the State as to better their function, rather than demanding their demise at the whims of zealots (like Ian). It is this particular point of view that I take which I see as both qualitatively and quantitatively distinct from Voluntaryism as the very idea of a purely voluntary society stands in conflict with my view that some social institutions and orders are not only a matter of fact, but of a matter of fulfilling the very definition of a society. And more importantly, that these institutions and orders do not necessarily derive their power from authority, but rather from function, as it is authority (or what I like to call the dominance complex) is the seed of tyranny and not functionality.
This distinction between my view on society and that of Voluntaryism means more or less that I am not a Voluntaryist in any degree. And moreover, that I have views which are more aligned with that of left-libertarians and other anti-authoritarian philosophies. I'm not sure that Voluntaryists are a problem, but I do see their philosophy as fundamentally weak as it cannot integrate both the essential nature of the human family as the genesis of social order nor explain why something being purely voluntary is in itself sufficiently good.
TLDR-Version: Society has some properties of being not voluntary, therefore Voluntaryism is contradictory in the assumption of achieving a purely voluntary society.
132
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: July 21, 2010, 12:28:47 PM »
Inception is this summer's best film, bar none. Now the question remains will Tron Legacy take the crown for best scifi film of the year? I doubt it, I think Nolan and company earned their spot this year. And Di Caprio has really grown up (I haven't seen his other recent films like Shutter Island or the Aviator) and seems to have some damn good emotion rendering skills there. 
133
General / Re: Toxic Personalities
« on: July 21, 2010, 11:39:01 AM »
That's why I don't bother with famous people unless I'm talking to a scholar in the field (which then I take my time to be specific in my questions for them).
134
General / Re: Are Self Proclaimed Libertarians Overwhelmingly Passive-Aggressive?
« on: May 15, 2010, 04:38:25 PM »
I think there needs to be a distinction here between being obstructive and being passive aggressive. When you obstruct a process or behavior you dislike it's not passive nor aggressive by virtue of the fact that the person obstructing is being active in their obstruction in the first place.
Someone who is passive aggressive acts helpless, attempting to get others to do the given action that s/he doesn't want to do. A classic example of this is a child that won't clean up his/her own messy room, where they claim they "don't know how" or some such nonsense. Thus, forcing the parent to clean up the mess for the child.
So, please, don't fling a word around that has a specific definition and contexts. Ian may border on passive aggressive, but I would rather say he's obtuse or actively obstructing things rather than being passive aggressive. Save for only one instance: his bullshit claim of homelessness when registering to vote year before last. That is a classic passive aggressive ploy if there is one.
Someone who is passive aggressive acts helpless, attempting to get others to do the given action that s/he doesn't want to do. A classic example of this is a child that won't clean up his/her own messy room, where they claim they "don't know how" or some such nonsense. Thus, forcing the parent to clean up the mess for the child.
So, please, don't fling a word around that has a specific definition and contexts. Ian may border on passive aggressive, but I would rather say he's obtuse or actively obstructing things rather than being passive aggressive. Save for only one instance: his bullshit claim of homelessness when registering to vote year before last. That is a classic passive aggressive ploy if there is one.
135
General / Re: The Free Jarvis Island Project
« on: May 06, 2010, 01:10:02 PM »
Also this constant idealization of persistent free zones makes little sense in the face of reality of how modern markets work (that is you get land where ever and use scales of economy to make the most of it).