Governments = Useless? Always?
- Thread starter charlie.simm
- Start date
It's "highly unlikely" the world could be owned by one person.
It's also "highly unlikely" that the earth could be hit by an asteroid that wipes out all life.
Is one worth acting to prevent and not the other?
As I mentioned in this thread or another similar one recently, there is no amount of security you can get that will protect you from everything and still leave you with any amount of personal liberty worth having.
See, the nice things about libertarian anarchists is that we're happy to let you have your state based society. We just want to be left alone. You're welcome to engage in social welfare programs, and taxes, and regulation to your heart's content.
In fact, I almost insist you guys try it, with the producers able to opt out and fend for themselves.
But no one is holding you or anyone else from setting up a kibbutz, commune or federation of states. Just let those of us who want to be responsible for ourselves, the freedom to handle our own affairs.
This is already the case. Nothing is stopping you from going out to sea and living on a boat.
governing is the most difficult and the work needs more resposibility. government is resposible for each and every living being within its jurisdictions whether its a human or an animal. It has to work for the well being of both.
Sorry for responding to this again, but I had a few more thoughts on it.
You're saying anyone who wants to set up a state can do so. But look around. They're already set up. It seems to me what you want is some new frontier, some new land that has never been claimed by any person or state... but that no longer exists on this planet. Should a state give up some of its territory to you, just because you want it? Do you feel it's owed to you, or that you have some right to it? It's not the fault of any state that there's no more unclaimed land.
Or do you claim that some land is illegitimately claimed as territory by a state? Can you prove it?
It seems to me that the same problem would happen if there were some new unclaimed land that suddenly became available, say a new planet we could access: eventually, all the land would be the property of someone, whether a state or individual. If no one is willing to give up any of their land, you're SOL. If all the land is acquired by states (which it probably would be, eventually), then you're in the same position you're unhappy with now.
Wasn't calling you retarded. Was saying the notion of calling yourself a slave is fucken retarded. There's a difference. You're obviously very intelligent, albeit eccentric, which is great. Eccentric people are generally the ones who make long lasting changes on the world.
Then go do it, instead of bitching on an internet forum. What you mentioned is easily done with the current state of affairs. If you don't believe so, then it's in your mind, with no basis in reality.
Nope, it's actually quite simple. Throw some clothes in a bag, grab your laptop, and take a taxi to the airport. Not really much else to it. At least that's how it's always worked for me, and obviously, this is assuming you don't have kids or anything. I agree, you get fucked on the taxes thing. Convince your government to quit getting such a hard-on over bombing brown people, I guess. Not much you can do there.
Why would you think there wouldn't be big business? You think if the government disappears, Walmart will go with it, and Joe Blow in bumfuck Iowa will be able to start a profitable family owned hardware store again? Not likely. If anything, it'd be the opposite. Walmart would threaten Joe not to open shop, and if Joe did, his shop would probably be fire bombed within a month. Hell, there's no government or laws, and Joe is cutting in on your action, so why not? Again, you don't seem to understand the fundamentals of human nature.
I always loved the analogy that compared the economy to Monopoly. At the beginning of the game, everyone is on a level playing field with the same resources. As time goes on, some players pickup and consolidate more wealth, while others gets kicked out of the game. This continues until there's only one player left, who has all the wealth. The only real solution is to start the game over, where everyone is on a level playing field again.
Pretty much, yep. Big business raped & pillaged that country quite good too, I might add.
Ohhh, so if guys like Walmart didn't have a piece of paper saying they were a corporation, they wouldn't be such cunts around the world? Now it makes sense!
If there weren't currently laws protecting low-end workers, I guarantee you there'd be loads of people in the US working for $2/hour right now, if not less. You have 9% unemployment, and in some places hovering around 20%. Or for example, there's not much government regulation where I live (they like it like that), and there's loads of people working for $0.40/hour, and employers don't seem to have any trouble finding employees.
Anyway, I have a chicken marsala to cook, so I'm out.
Really... he claims he's a slave yet is free to walk out the door any time. What's more, by his own admission he's felt this way for at least five years... so for all that time he's felt "enslaved" yet was free to free himself but hasn't? You'll excuse me if I can't summon any sympathy for his plight.
Except for the lack of potable water, healthy sanitation, proper food sources, etc...
Source?
Indeed... this is why humans band together in groups. We've got all that stuff because society has taken care of it. If a guy wants to roll his own, he's got to figure out how to get that stuff on his own. Still, that should all be pretty manageable. You can easily trade for what you can't provide for yourself.
Society != Government
Now this is a fallible example, but an example none the less. Look at the illicit drug trade. None of it government sponsored or sanctioned...yet it still thrives. No government subsidies or government regulation. Private citizens providing for private citizens with no assistance from a government. It's a self-regulating market.
Sure. But there's no society on earth, AFAIK, that doesn't have some form of government. So practically speaking, if you want the benefits of society right now, you either have to accept some government, or you and some other people have to find a place to set up an anarchist society of your own.
Nobody is arguing that there is currently a decent example of a large scale peaceful anarchist society. And while I may currently live under the rules of a government, that's only for self-preservation. I'm constantly working on increasing my personal liberty. Is the goal of living 100% without government feasibly obtainable...probably not, but I'll keep trying. Everything I need or want could be supplied to me without a government in place. The only thing stopping that from happening is the heard mentality that we "need" government to survive and prosper, which is simply not the case.
Human trafficking, forced labor, and forced prostitution are also extremely lucrative, self-regulating industries as well. We should definitely get the government and law enforcement out of those people's way. Just look at the jobs, prosperity, and peaceful society they're helping create!
You don't need government to stop those things. Infact government often gives people a false sense of security, causing them to not protect themselves against things like kidnapping well enough. The places with the highest rates of kidnapping make it difficult for the average law abiding citizen to get guns.
Another example of the false sense of security government causes is the SEC. It just recently came out that the SEC burned all of the files on preliminary investigations that never went past the early stages from the late 80s until today. It included files on madoff and almost every top bank out there. Yet people assume these guys are protecting them and their investments. The higher levels of the SEC are rotating door. The best way to get a cushy position in a big bank is to get a job at the SEC and kill an investigation of the bank.
So you're for communism. Because that is essentially what communism is. A system without property rights, where everyone and no one owns anything, and authority is based on some sort of collective bureaucracy.Originally Posted by Pseudo Nym
I support the point of view that people have a say in the use of land in their community, regardless of ownership, and for an authority in the community to consider all sides before permitting or denying the planned use.
It's economic chaos. It cannot work as intended, and yields poor results wherever implemented. But hey, it sure sounds good!
I want to respond to this exchange from the other day: what I described already exists in communities all over the country. They have zoning laws and city councils that govern who can build what where. People generally prefer living in a community where they have some say over how it develops. According to you, at least some of them should be communes by now. Yet they aren't.
Say you live in a nice neighborhood - you let your kids play in the street until after dark, don't have to lock your doors, etc. Now say one day someone buys up a cheap lot in your neighborhood and announces they're going to build a strip club there. Of course the neighborhood freaks out and resolve to put a stop to it.
In most communities, the zoning laws or at worst a significant popular appeal to the city council would be enough to deny a permit. Problem solved. The only loser is the guy that bought the property, but hey, that's his fault for thinking it would fly.
Now, I know your response is probably going to be something along the lines of, "well, if they care that much they'll offer to pay the guy to stop him/buy him out." But people don't want to do that. Can you imagine being asked to open your wallet every time some douche wants to build something that fucks up your neighborhood? Well, maybe you can. Anyway, most people prefer to live someplace where they don't have to worry about crap like that. Consequently, they support rules that regulate their community. And somehow, they're not communists.
Don't buy land in a subdivision where the developer is not contractually obligated to require every single person who purchases land to sign a contract that would forfeit their property if it was used for certain purposes?
Sure I was. It was pretty much brushed off due to it not being "likely." Well, there's a non-zero chance some individual or some group could eventually manage to own the whole world, isn't there? The whole world (excepting the oceans) is already owned, or governed in some sense (Antarctica), and the effective owners are the nations of the world, and those nations... well, a lot of them are probably effectively owned by the IMF. So I imagine the true number of actual owners is far fewer than one might initially think. There's no reason I can see why a similar scenario would not happen, by a determined group over a span of time, under the anarchist-libertarian property rights system. Sure, there'd be some holdouts, but if one is determined, there are ways of coercing people. Trade sanctions, for example. Or even invasion, as the most powerful military in the world is almost certainly not going to belong to some anarchist enclave somewhere.