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Messages - markuzick

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16
General / Re: Sortition
« on: July 26, 2009, 10:58:11 PM »
Quote from: markuzick link=topic=30082.msg556194#msg556194
Then you must hate the market and you must love bloodshed.

Democracy is not, primarily, a system of governance, but the only known vehicle to change government, for better or worse, and even, possibly, to one day, eliminate the state altogether, without resorting to violence. When democracy fails, sooner or later, violence ensues.

You're redefining words here.  "Demos" means people (i.e. a collective abstraction) and "cracy" means rule (i.e. through force), like in the "Democratic Republic of Korea" (i.e. the north one).  If you mean something else, why not use appropriate words like a grown-up?

You need to go back to school. "Etymology" is not synonymous with "synonym".

BTW: All rule, with the exception of pacifism, which limits itself to social pressure, is backed by force. If you want to live in the real world, you will be willing to defend yourself with force and coercion. Even a pacifist cannot make a reasonable argument to deny your right to self defense by force, if necessary.

Also: You're cherry picking definitions. The definition you're referring to, is the popular conception of democracy that doesn't actually exist anywhere, for the simple reason that it's stupid; so stop trying to impose your stupid ideas on people.

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Democracy and the free market are compatible only if everyone who votes is a perfectly rational individual who'd vote for personal liberty and nothing else, which has never happened before in the history of democracy and probably never will.

Democracy, as in the majority or plurality of the people choosing the kind of government/s they will have, is compatible with whatever form of government/s they choose. It is also the only possible means by which a voluntary society can be established, outside of settling some unoccupied place.

Even then, the vast majority of libertarians that exist today don't understand enough about liberty to create the kind of voluntary laws and institutions to create more than a primitive simulation of true liberty. Again, it would be democracy, in the form of the market for government that would determine whether true liberty would evolve or degenerate into something that was, to varying degrees, statist.


17
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: July 25, 2009, 09:38:53 AM »
Your argument amounts to: "Since I hate the word government, then I will use synonyms and euphemisms for the word government if it refers to any of its legitimate forms".

Well, no, actually my argument is that there are no LEGITIMATE forms of a fiction called "government"...
(and "self-government" does not count here as it is a totally different animal than the accepted idea of "government"...)

Repeating yourself is non-responsive and only serves to confirm what I wrote.

18
General / Re: Sortition
« on: July 25, 2009, 09:29:25 AM »
Democracy sucks.

And absolute democracy sucks absolutely.


Then you must hate the market and you must love bloodshed.

Democracy is not, primarily, a system of governance, but the only known vehicle to change government, for better or worse, and even, possibly, to one day, eliminate the state altogether, without resorting to violence. When democracy fails, sooner or later, violence ensues.

19
General / Re: Sortition
« on: July 25, 2009, 05:39:32 AM »
So I see the problem not one of how people are chosen to wield power, but the wielding of power itself that must be addressed, and eliminated.

Precisely! If only there were some kind of document that specifically limited the powers of the government officials and limit the effects of their influence...

Society ends up with the type of governments that the market demands. Democracy is just one of a number of ways to measure and respond to this demand. Democracy is neither inherently good nor evil in terms of the governments that it provides. Its primary virtue is that it does so by non-violent means, but it's no guarantee that the resulting governments will rule by the consent of the governed.

I approve of democracy because it does make it possible the peaceful transition to a voluntary society, should the demand for liberty ever become sufficient.

The alternative is agorism, where a minority engages in black market activity until it amasses sufficient economic and military clout to overthrow the state.

The problem here is that, first of all, the groups that tend to be more successful at this tend to be violent criminal organisations and even if only principled people engaged in this, they would need to continuously engage in defensive armed conflict.

Secondly, they would have to overthrow the state and, somehow, impose free markets on an unwilling populous. They wouldn't have popular support or the state would have already transformed itself out of existence democratically. There'd be nothing to overthrow.

Imposing liberty on a populous that's not ready for it is doomed to failure.

Carving out a libertarian niche like a "free state"(a contradiction in terms) may be more practical if you don't mind living in a small libertarian ghetto and if it manages to exist in peace with its statist neighbors it might set a good example for them to imitate, but it should do so democratically. An agorist approach would only result in internal struggle and invite war with its statist neighbors.

20
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: July 25, 2009, 04:42:20 AM »
If you have agreed for your involvement with this organization to be governed by the rules of this contract, assuming the contract forbids the use of aggressive force or coercion, then you are involved with voluntary civil government.


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Again, I do not "forbid" any such thing.  If I did, then I would be accepting your "values" over mine and that would be a form of arky.  I will not accept your restriction on my life and I don't expect you to accept any restriction from me. 

If you are involved in such an organization, then you are, indeed, involved in an "arky".

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I do not intend to quote all of your argument above as I can address all of it by pointing out one area where I disagree with your premise.  I disagree that there ever can be or ever has been anything called "government" and indeed, we all do live in "anarchy" at all times.  You see everyone already lives by only their own rules.  I can show this by simply asking you two questions (and presuppose your answer to the first one). 

1.  Who's rules do you live by?  Your own or someone else's?

(If you answer your own rules, then you are an anarchist and you live in anarchy - if you answer "someone else" then you need to address the following)

2.  Who made the decision for you to follow this other entity's rules?

So you see we all decide to follow our own "rules" even if the "rules" that are "ours" were stolen or adopted from another source...

You have the right to agree to abide by the rules of a voluntary (non-aggressive) organization. Your right to do so comes from your right to self government.

Even if you live as a hermit, never entering into any contracts with other people, you are still governing your own actions. "Christian anarchy" concurs with me on this issue, labeling self government as tyranny, because for them, any control by Man, even if it's non-aggressive and only over his own actions, is government/tyranny.


21
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: July 25, 2009, 04:19:12 AM »
Statism only causes an increase in anarchy, but is not identical to it.


You are just trying to pull my chain now aren't you?  You can't be serious...


Read my signature.

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As the state feeds off of the limitation and destruction of legitimate government, anarchy is its essence.

Do you think I put it there just to pull your chain?

The free market, to whatever extent it exists, is nothing more than voluntary self government. Even when large organizations of individuals are formed, if they are voluntary in nature, then, by definition, they require the voluntary consent of every client or principle that involves himself. This involvement is an act of self government for every individual who does so.


You are talking about contract now and certainly one has the right to enter into contract with others.  If you want to call your contract "government", be my guest.  Just don't expect me to accept that term for myself.  I recognize these as contracts and any obligation under these contracts are the business of the parties who have entered into the contract.  I will address any contract that I have signed onto as a party thereto.


Your argument amounts to: "Since I hate the word government, then I will use synonyms and euphemisms for the word government if it refers to any of its legitimate forms".

22
General / Re: My Charges Were Dropped
« on: July 24, 2009, 05:34:00 AM »
Do you really need meds? What evidence is there that you have schizophrenia that's independent of your drug abuse and sleep deprivation?

Perhaps they checked for those things at the doctor's office before they gave him the meds... :shock:

Could be or perhaps it's a convenient way to drum up some lucrative business, with patients whose compliance is enforced by court order.

They convince the court that his behavior can be controlled as long as he's medicated and the patient or social services keeps paying or the patient goes to jail.

It seems like his behaviors were brought on by substance abuse. Even if he has schizophrenia, what evidence is there that, absence the drug abuse, he would continue with his behavior? The diagnosis seems too convenient to not trigger my scepticism.

23
General / Re: My Charges Were Dropped
« on: July 23, 2009, 07:39:40 AM »
Do you really need meds? What evidence is there that you have schizophrenia that's independent of your drug abuse and sleep deprivation?

24
General / Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« on: July 23, 2009, 07:23:08 AM »
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This is one problem I see and it has nothing to do with one system being better than the other.  I have been a Libertarian my entire political life and after 25 years plus fighting the good fight.  I am just now flirting with the idea that an Anarchic system couldn't be any worse than the growing oppressive government we currently have.  But I am painful aware that there are many who refuse to see government as an oppressive system.  

Most people, including most libertarians such as yourself, view civil government as a necessary evil that must somehow be kept caged.

This misconception comes from the corrupting effect on our thinking that is caused by the pervasiveness of statist terminology. The statist definition of civil government is "the state".

The state may monopolise many things, but at least, so far, it has not monopolized the definition of civil government.

Once people realise that the voluntary model of civil government is not only possible, but that it exists in the real world and not just in some Utopian dream; that the achievement of a voluntary society is achievable by a peaceful evolution of our existing civilization through an increase in market demand for legitimate government by the consent of the governed over the aggression of the state; a new paradigm will arise among lovers of liberty that doesn't seek compromise with the rule of aggression.

The anarchist model is too flawed, even in its very name and in its slavish dogmatic adherence to statist misconceptions to ever achieve this. In fact as it's confusing, irrational and divisive, it will only do the opposite.

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A large entrenched majority can't see the harm in 51% of people dictating to the other 49%.   The difficulty is convincing people that forcing others to go along with any agenda is the real problem and not the agenda which happened to win the vote.  But time after time the losing side will rail against the winning agenda as though their agenda is the better solution.
 

Contrary to the popular saying that people get the government they deserve, they actually get the government/s that the market demands.

There's no way that liberty can be imposed upon a population against its market demand for aggressive government. To change market demand requires education, advertising and demonstration by setting successful examples that inspire imitation.

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I still have tinges of doubt because of the potential of a might always making right in an anarchic system.  Not that we don't already have that going on now.    What hope would a private individual have to proving damages to a DRO against a polluter?  Considering our government with its unlimited funds has a difficult problem doing it.   And how do you extract restitution from a destitute person for any crimes or damages they may inflict?   I can see how someone who has something to lose will behave but what of the people who have nothing to lose?

There will always be errors of judgment and even examples of corrupt, biased or other kinds of unethical behavior where less than perfect humans are involved, but in the competitive environment of voluntary civil government, the market acts to punish private courts with loss of market share to those courts that have less errors of judgment or dishonest behavior.

With monopoly government, the incentives are reversed to favor incompetence and corruption.

I believe that you have insufficient faith in the free market.

25
General / Re: How do you enforce Anarchy?
« on: July 23, 2009, 06:28:16 AM »
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It seems to me anarchy can't survive under a natural democratic system.  People will join together and use the power of their numbers to impose a kind of government on others.  So how do you stop that from happening? 

Political anarchy is just civil disorder. Any time you have civil order, then by definition, you have civil government of some kind. Civil government needn't violate the NAP. Examples of voluntary civil government exist today in the form of private arbitration firms, private police, security firms and neighborhood associations. These are free market civil governments and they compete with the state.

Achieving a voluntary society can only be done by gradually creating sufficient demand for voluntary alternatives to the state to put the state out of business as the agencies of the state's government are either closed or privatized as various types of voluntary governmental agencies.

Other forms of government, of the non-civil kind, include private welfare agencies, private education, private health services, private fire fighting agencies, private trash collection, private electric companies, private space exploration and don't forget the private organizations involved in production and distribution of common goods and services that in some parts of the world and, increasingly here in the States, are considered to be the responsibility of the state.

The "market anarchist" definition of anarchy is a contradiction in terms.

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3. a theory that regards the absence of all direct or coercive government as a political ideal and that proposes the cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as the principal mode of organized society.


All cooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups are examples of various types of government and they all have rules that are enforced via force or coercion if more peaceful means fail.

Even though anarchy is supposed to mean "without government" or any of its various synonyms like governance, rulers, managers, masters, control, etc...., "market anarchy" is really a system of voluntary government or, if the above definition is followed, then it's "voluntary pacifist government", which I suppose enforces its laws strictly through social pressure, eschewing forceful self defense.

No such pacifist governments can exist for long and there is no practical means or rational moral suasion by which they can prevent the creation of governments that rely on more forceful means of self defense.

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Do you only let in members to a territory who swear an oath to maintain it as an anarchist territory?  What if they won't swear to the anarchist oath, are you going to bar their entry?   How can you bar their entry and still have open borders?
   

Any organization that monopolizes land in this way is a state.

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If people attempt to form a gang do you deport them?  Who deports them if you have no government?


Of course, in any civilization there is always some form/s of civil government.

Without borders, deportation is impossible. Criminal gangs must be fought by individuals and organizations dedicated to protection and restitution.






26
General / Re: Called 911 for the 1st time
« on: July 23, 2009, 05:05:35 AM »
So, I broke my rule and called the police today. In fact, this was the first time I ever dialed 911. While driving to work I came to an intersection where the far left lane was not moving. Not all that strange as Vegas is only five miles from the sun in the summer and that tends to be hard on cars. As I passed the immobile car I glanced over and noticed the driver was slumped over. I called. It was just a quick glance and I was unable to stop and investigate further. He could have been passed out from booze or dead. I have no idea.

Helping people in distress is supposed to be their job. Maybe you saved someone else from being charged with a victimless crime by diverting the highway patrol's attention away from its favorite pastime toward someone that actually needed help.

27
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: July 22, 2009, 06:25:47 AM »
A good link to reading material on Christian Anarchy... (although I don't agree with all of it)

http://www.hccentral.com/eller12/

I took a peek at the begining where I presumed Vernard Eller would define his terms. I was pleasantly surprised to see this:

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For us, then, "arky" identifies any principle of governance claiming to be of primal value for society. "Government" (that which is determined to govern  human action and events) is a good synonym--as long as we are clear, that political arkys are far from being the only "governments" around. Not at all; churches, schools, philosophies, social standards, peer pressures, fads and fashions, advertising, planning techniques, psychological and sociological theories--all are arkys out to govern us.

But then he makes the fatal mistake of swallowing whole, a variation of the statist premise that poisons our language to favor statism and discredit the free market. This premise is that the only possible form of government is the state.

Since it's clear from the quote above that he understands this to be false, a reasonable person would think that he would then reject the state in favor these other forms of government, with the proviso that they govern strictly in accordance with voluntary consent. But no! Instead he insists that voluntary consent is impossible; that all businesses and organizations in the market, even philosophies and theories, gain their influence through imposition. This sounds all too much like the communists and socialists claim that people are slaves to the free market, or that freedom is slavery.

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Obviously, the idea of "power" goes hand in hand with "arky"; the two are inseparable. Indeed, every time Paul uses "arky" in the sense of "principalities," he couples it with one of the Greek "power" words. Yet regarding both "power" and "arky" we must make a crucial specification: we are always supposing a power or a government that is imposed upon its constituency. It is, of course, proper to speak of, say, "the power of love." Yet this is power in an entirely different sense of the word in that it carries no hint of imposition at all. Looking only at the phrase itself; "the kingdom of God" would appear to be an "arky" no different from the others. Yet we will come to see that this is not so. When Jesus said "My kingdom is not of this world," he was saying that, although all worldly arkys have to be impositional, his is radically different in that it does not have to be--and in fact is not.

And the following is the most damning of all:

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Consequently, for secular anarchists the solution is "autonomy"--the self being a law unto itself (which is what we customarily have understood "anarchy" to be). However, Christianity contends that autonomy is simply another form of heteronomy, that to use my own self-image as the arky governing myself is actually to impose a heteronomous arky upon me. The assumption that I am the one who best knows myself and knows what is best for myself is to forget that I am a creature (a sinful creature, even) and that there is a Creator who, being my Creator (and also being somewhat smarter than I am), knows me much better than I ever can know myself.

Amazingly, he is truly an anarchist, even by my understanding of the word "anarchy", with which he clearly agrees. To do so, though, he rejects self ownership as the tyranny of the self over the "virtue" of unthinking, abject submission to God's rules, as set forth, I presume, in a book.

 
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Sure, I can "govern" myself.  Together I can associate with a like-minded group to accomplish a stated task (contract).  If this is what you are calling "government" then certainly one can freely make contract with others to the benefit of all involved.  This is not what I am referring to as the fiction and I think you know that.
 

Actually; my understanding of "government" is identical to that of Vernard Eller. There are all kinds of government. What may have you confused is the idea of civil government, as opposed to the government of a manufacturing company or the government of a sports league. What you fail to grasp is that there is no reason that an agency of civil government cannot be operated as any other enterprise that competes for clients and employees with other similar enterprises in a free market.

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The "fiction" is this pie-in-the-sky idea that some "thing" called the "USA" (or insert your favorite fiction here) has a LEGITIMATE authority to force me into anything.  I did not contract for any benefit nor obligation to this fiction and neither did you.  There are certainly a bunch of men with guns who BELIEVE that there is some obligation for me to perform some function (like pay taxes) and they are willing to hurt me if I don't, but that does not make them legitimate, it only makes them thugs...

Yes. One fiction is that the state is legitimate, by any standard other than the state's own arbitrary decree.

The bigger fiction is that the state is the only possible model for government and, hence, a necessary evil. There is no such thing as a necessary evil.

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In a voluntaryist society you are not required to consent to any kind of contract or organization. You can live as a hermit if you wish, but you will have to defend your rights against people or organizations that can easily overwhelm you in a dispute.

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Which is why I can contract with like minded individuals to provide a means of protection.

If you have agreed for your involvement with this organization to be governed by the rules of this contract, assuming the contract forbids the use of aggressive force or coercion, then you are involved with voluntary civil government.


28
General / Re: Christian Anarchy is the only sensible answer...
« on: July 22, 2009, 12:22:42 AM »
Statism only causes an increase in anarchy, but is not identical to it.


You are just trying to pull my chain now aren't you?  You can't be serious...


Read my signature.

Quote
As the state feeds off of the limitation and destruction of legitimate government, anarchy is its essence.

Do you think I put it there just to pull your chain?

The free market, to whatever extent it exists, is nothing more than voluntary self government. Even when large organizations of individuals are formed, if they are voluntary in nature, then, by definition, they require the voluntary consent of every client or principle that involves himself. This involvement is an act of self government for every individual who does so.

It is the free market or voluntary governmental organizations that the state limits or destroys and, in so doing, the state destroys the peaceful order of civilized life, bringing uncertainty, fear and the destruction of good will engendered by the opportunity for mutual profit though voluntary cooperation in the marketplace.

The arbitrary decrees of the state amount to the rule of disorder. One time friends, neighbors and associates become envious rivals that fight over the scraps leftover from what the state has plundered and rivals over monopoly privileges granted by a divisive state as patronage to its supporters.

The fiat laws of fiat government act as the catalyst for the destruction of legitimate government and , eventually, as the state increases the level of anarchy though destruction of the civilized order upon which it parasitically feeds, the failure of the state itself as it implodes into chaos or what is commonly known as a state of anarchy.

29
General / Re: Ron Paul on 2012 - "I don't think that's likely"
« on: July 21, 2009, 08:34:15 AM »
How bout his son Rand Paul?  Whats up with him trying to get elected Senator of Kentucky?  Think can pull an Obama, be Senator a couple years then go for Pres?

He doesn't have his dad's track record, only his promises to campaign on.

Can he be his dad's VP running mate? Imagine...dynastic succession.

30
General / Re: Ron Paul on 2012 - "I don't think that's likely"
« on: July 21, 2009, 07:33:59 AM »
Things may be so awful in 2012 that people may finally be ready for a radical change.

I'd contribute to and vote for him.

I hope he'll be in good heath.

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