Life as a Service | Hacker News Reader

Life as a Service

jacquesmattheij.com

167 pointsemwa161 comments

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me:

> It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right.

For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benefit from - I deserve what I earn."

No health problems + family and state support + faulty logic + short sightedness + sex/race advantages = libertarianism.

Contract law is no more a right than free health care is. But one definitely serves your self interests better. Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare.

The lense people should be looking through is that of the weakest in society - not having a geek hissy fit and fantasizing of going Galt because you feel others are holding you back.

If you don't like it - leave. Somalia is lovely this time of year I hear.

Well, contract law and property-title enforcement. Take away private property and Mr. Libertarian isn't going to be so happy that people copied his program-code and took over his factory.

Hence why it's properly called proprietarianism: organizing society with private property as the prime principle.

Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare.

Your moral values seems to hold that individuals have few rights, and that collectively we should operate from the principle of infinite risk aversion (i.e., the Rawlsian veil of ignorance). Great - we all agree that if these are your values, Libertarianism is not the political philosophy for you.

It's amusing that while mocking Rand, you make the exact same fallacy she makes in Atlas Shrugged: "anyone who disagrees with me must be evil and selfish, with no moral values."

If you don't like it - leave. Somalia is lovely this time of year I hear.

I'm constantly confused when those who oppose libertarianism bring up Somalia. What is the relevance?

Somalia is, or at least was, a land without a government. If libertarians or randians are correct, it should be a land flowing with milk and honey. Of course, this is not the case. At least, that is how the argument goes.

I'm a former libertarian of the anarcho-capatilist-rand flavor, and I think there are much better arguments against that stance than somalia.

Libertarianism is not anarchism, nor does it ever purport to be. In fact, libertarianism holds that a government should be in place, and that its job is to protect the rights (defined by libertarianism--most often, the Bill of Rights is pointed to) of its citizens.

Libertarians do overlap quite a bit with anarcho-capatilism and randism. You might not define libertarianism that way, but many do. The best you might say is something like, 'libertarianism, as espoused by [X], hold that a government should be in place.' As a counter example, I can easily find self-identified libertarians who are anarchists.

edit: grammar and clarification.

Somalia was a land without a government for a very brief period. It now (and has, for many years) has several governments in different regions. Some are based on Sharia (or at least purport to be), others on Guurti (traditional clan-based government). None are or claim to be based on libertarian principles.

None of it's governments are recognized by the UN, but as far as I'm aware, no one claims that the mere withdrawal of UN recognition of a government leads to prosperity.

>None are or claim to be based on libertarian principles.

I think part of the argument is that if libertarianism is so good / efficient / other desirable criteria, why don't societies naturally evolve into those societies?

Again, I don't think that this is the entire argument, or even a particular good one (in the case of somalia). I'm just pointing it out.

Individuals have no rights. Rights only exist within the context of a group. Without a group, you're not talking about rights, you're just talking about ability.

If that is true, then in a multicultural or multi-religion group no rights exist at all after time passes. Because in such a group the only possible rights would be lowest-common-denominator, which would decrease if new groups are added to the whole. The more different or antagonistic the new group, the more it has to decrease individual rights.

If that is true, then in a multicultural or multi-religion group no rights exist at all after time passes.

Well... kind of, yeah. In real life, most multicultural regions have codes of "rights and freedoms" designed as workable compromises between the moral philosophies of the various cultures living there. Once such a code exists, it will usually be amended rather than scrapped, and new arrivals made to conform somewhat (because it has become a shared culture), but that is, in fact, how it works.

Libertarians have defended Somalia after people tried to use it as a reductio; quite explicitly, too, consider Leeson's "Better Off Stateless: Somalia Before and After" (http://peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf) which is pretty much what it sounds like. Hence, bringing up Somalia is perfectly fair.

Rights don't exist for individuals period. Groups define rights not individuals. Groups do so in their own self interest which we must temper to protect the weak from the strong - to do otherwise merely leads to revolution or collapse. If you want those - have it at - somewhere else.

I was also told Somalia might be a good choice for me when I was arguing against widespread government surveillance.

It's a strawman used by the intellectually lazy to posit that anyone who disagrees with sprawling government that has its fingers in everything must necessarily prefer anarchy, a form of government of which they have a quantum of anecdotal evidence showing it is not ideal.

I didn't see the original essay as Randian, did you? I thought the argument was that these things aren't ideal and there's no way to opt out; in fact for some people there's no way to opt out of even their native country.

There's a meme among libertarians about people suggesting they go visit Somalia. Really, don't bring it up unless you're prepared to discuss it in detail.

I do not subscribe to the libertarian point of view. I considered 'armoring' the post against this exact accusation but it was long enough as it was without that but I guess I should have seen it coming.

You make a mistake in that you think that I disagree with the actual laws, I do with some of them (specifically: the obligation to buy certain products or services without the right to negotiate) but on the whole I agree with the 'package' and it is write there for you to read.

Selfishness doesn't enter my book, I gave away plenty of goods and money in my life to people that needed my things more than I did (or made the case that they did). In fact, I probably gave away more than I'm left with, I wonder if you can make the same statement.

Yes, the weak should be protected from the strong and I'm weak in plenty of ways. But I have this curiosity about why things are the way they are and if we can do better than this.

Congratulations, you have just realized that you are owned by the Tax Farmers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k67_imEHTPE

I know it's hard not to respond, but all the OP offered was sneering sarcasm; he in fact has given nothing to respond to, and for that he should be on the defensive, not you. Given all the upvotes he got for a fact-devoid sarcastic sneer post, that tells you something unfortunate about HN.

I would like to exercise my right to free healthcare. Which doctor do I enslave?

May I also add, in addition to the excellent rebuttals that other commenters have made to you, that you're making a false analogy between welfare and contract law by confusing positive and negative rights. Positive rights entitle people to something, while negative rights protect people from something. The ideals that most libertarian philosophies are based on maximize negative rights and minimize positive rights. This is based on the core insight that one person's positive rights can only ever come at the expense of another's negative rights. Also, strawman allusions to Somalia don't help this discourse.

The problem being that libertarianism places a heavy emphasis on absolute private property, which is a positive right. It's my right to evict you by force from occupying an empty apartment in my building unless you pay me the rent I want.

Now, you can certainly argue coherently in favor of absolute private property (though I would argue back, extensively and in detail, against the absolutism), but to do so, you need to start by admitting that it's a positive right.

"Even so, I’d be a lot happier paying taxes if there had been a moment where I was given the choice: pay taxes and have these benefits or be left to your own devices."

Except that there's no (current, easy) way of excluding you from various public goods that are paid by taxes. Examples include national defense, public spaces like parks, public highways, fire protection (if you live in shared housing or simply close enough to others such that we can't take the risk of letting your house burn down), etc...

That's why these goods are called "non-excludable." See:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability

Don't forget the money service - managing supply and providing guarantees for its value. Actually if you manage to exclude yourself from using this particular service you won't have to pay any taxes.

That's not entirely true. I'll confine my response to how things work in the US since that's where I live and it's what I know the most about.

Attempting to use an alternate medium of exchange may result in legal problems. In particular, Federal law says:

Whoever, except as authorized by law, makes or utters or passes, or attempts to utter or pass, any coins of gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals, intended for use as current money, whether in the resemblance of coins of the United States or of foreign countries, or of original design, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

That doesn't seem to exclude exchanging goods or services for precious metals or other commodities so long as they're not cast in to something resembling money. It would be difficult to make small day-to-day purchases that way.

The other problem is that income tax law in the US applies to non-monetary compensation. If I pay you 2kg of gold to work for me for a year on a software project and the IRS finds out about it, they will demand that you pay taxes on its dollar value.

Indeed, going barter will probably not let you avoid taxes. I thought of avoiding the use of money by totally withdrawing from the economic exchange.

In principle, I agree with you, but most of the things you list are relatively cheap.

In the United States (I know Jacques isn't American), the majority of the Federal budget is devoted to the military, interest on the national debt, various forms of free/subsidized insurance for the old and poor, and various forms of income support for the poor. The public goods other than national defense you list are very cheap in comparison to these things. Federal fuel taxes exceeded Federal highway spending in 2010 according to http://usgovernmentspending.com.

The US spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined, so there's a good chance it's possible to have effective national defense for an order of magnitude less than we currently pay. Most of the rest of the spending falls in to the category of supporting people who for whatever reason have difficulty supporting themselves.

There's a reasonable debate to be had about how and how much we want to provide support to some people by taxing others, but let's not pretend it's primarily about things like roads and fire departments.

> The US spends more on its military than the next ten countries combined, so there's a good chance it's possible to have effective national defense for an order of magnitude less than we currently pay

But national defense (or really, defense of any kind) is about more than just the ability to successfully repeal an attack; at certain scale, it's about ensuring that nobody even tries to lift a finger against you. And then there's the 'implied offensive' angle where others fear what you might do.

The security and strength provided by that military is a significant factor in the ability of the USA to create and retain its wealth. Limiting the size of military to purely defensive levels would also limit that ability, so in many ways it's as much an investment as roads and fire departments. It's hard to measure the ROI but the stakes are clearly very high.

Hope this doesn't feel cynical.

at certain scale, it's about ensuring that nobody even tries to lift a finger against you. And then there's the 'implied offensive' angle where others fear what you might do

All true, but I think these things are true of China, with 1/5 the spending or the UK with 1/10. It is probably possible to provide an effective defense, including the ability to effectively attack an overseas enemy spending a much smaller amount than the US actually does.

>>But national defense (or really, defense of any kind) is about more than just the ability to successfully repeal an attack; at certain scale, it's about ensuring that nobody even tries to lift a finger against you. And then there's the 'implied offensive' angle where others fear what you might do.

We don't need a huge military to have that effect. We already have nukes.

No one believes that the US is going to use its nukes in all but the most dire circumstances.

Does Iran fear that the US will nuke it? No. But it does fear a traditional war.

Nukes are the most effective deterrent we have against non-nuclear states.

Of course Iran fears that it may get nuked. Why do you think they are desperately trying to develop their own nukes?

I don't think Iran's primary motivation for wanting nukes is US nukes. It might be, in part Israeli nukes, but I bet it's primarily conventional war with the US and/or Israel. Iran likely believes that having nuclear weapons of its own will discourage conventional attack.

That line of thinking isn't unreasonable. As far as I know, there has never been open conventional warfare between two nuclear-armed states - just minor skirmishes.

According to all intelligence reports by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency and the US's CIA/NSA, Iran is not trying to develop nukes and has fully abandoned their nuclear program. Anyone saying elsewise is simply saber rattling.

What the are doing is developing a civilian nuclear industry. Such an industry---like any other industry---has the potential for making military development easier in the future, but that is not its primary purpose.

Considering the current geopolitical climate, you have to be extremely naive to believe that Iran's long term goal is not developing nuclear weapons. A "peaceful" civilian nuclear industry is only the first step.

> Federal fuel taxes exceeded Federal highway spending in 2010 according to http://usgovernmentspending.com.

Wow, looking at that chart, the greatest spending is on Healthcare! ($1.1 trillion!!!) Shouldn't $1.1 trillion be able to provide world-class universal healthcare (to everyone) ?

Nope. $1.1 trillion divided by the 300 million population of the US comes to only $3666 per person. That's enough for routine care and common prescriptions and such, but not going to cover any kind of serious surgery or therapy.

(It's kind of amazing that at the scale of the United States government, a trillion dollars is not in fact a whole lot of money.)

Consider though, that most people do not need serious surgery. Most people who do do not need it yearly. My yearly medical expenses during the past five years have consisted of two fillings and some over the counter drugs. The yearly average ould cover a decent plate of sushi.

That means there's about $3620 left over for someone else's more serious issues. Well, except for the part where I paid those expenses out of pocket so they don't show up in the Federal budget.

One thing I've never understood, is why a seemingly large number of Americans don't seem to see the similarity between public fire protection, and a public health service.

Aren't these two things pretty essential for civilisation?

> Aren't these two things pretty essential for civilisation?

Isn't that also true of food?

Not really the same IMHO.

Giving people access to healthcare and fire protection doesn't create any bad incentives. You can't 'use' healthcare for monetary gain.

Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working.

Also I would say that a national health service ensures that the public is 'healthy'. Which affects us all, as diseases are transmitted etc. Just as the fire services ensures fires don't spread and burn down all the houses.

The same isn't true of giving people food.

Well, there's no limit to how much healthcare you can use, though. Hanson[1] suggests Americans already buy too much healthcare, and in the US, healthcare still costs most people something through copays, etc. So, I think it's quite arguable that giving people free healthcare can create bad incentives, if not limited some other way.

I also am not sure it makes sense to lump together healthcare (which includes a lot of long-term preventative care like vaccines and lifestyle advice) and fire protection (which is mostly emergency damage control). A better analogy might be if the government provided free fire insurance covering everything citizens own -- actually, the US does this sort of thing with hurricanes and floods, so there's a fairly exact analogy, and it seems clear that it does create bad incentives to build and rebuild in hurricane-prone and low-lying areas.

[1] http://hanson.gmu.edu/CutMed.htm

Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working.

Well yeah, but according to this kind of economistic thinking, paying a guy $40/hour instead of $20/hour encourages him to work half as many hours. Giving people anything for any reason, including as trade/payment, can always be construed as encouraging less work-ethic.

And likewise, withholding anything or inflicting any suffering or punishment can always be construed as encouraging work-ethic.

> Giving people food, money etc, gives people incentives to not bother working.

I find this kind of attitude totally bizarre. People do not stop having output just because they have food security. The notion that giving away food is bad because of work is a very capitalistic idea that actually serves to perpetuate hunger and starvation.

Giving people food and welfare, makes them dependent on the state. Once you're dependent, you have no incentive to progress through your own hard work.

Giving handouts does far more harm than good. It keeps people down.

Once you're dependent, you have no incentive to progress through your own hard work.

You mean, except for all the good incentives like achievement, mastery, purpose, learning, and contribution to a community that actual successful professionals are motivated by, rather than the motive against starvation that you seem to believe is the only reason anyone gets up in the morning?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supplemental_Nutrition_Assistan...

In some places, fire protection is apparently up for debate. This family had their house burn down because they failed to pay the $75 tax. It's only fair after all:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/tennessee-family-home-b...

I think it's even been given the unfortunate name 'pay to spray'. Fire prevention is just as much up for debate amongst people of a certain ideological bent as healthcare. It's the next logical step. Of course, most people don't want to live in that world which is why we have compulsory payments. Those who see them as a positive thing will probably always have to tolerate those who complain about how unfair they are.

Flip it around tho', they were asking firefighters to quite literally risk their lives for them, when they weren't even community-spirited enough to contribute towards the common good. Unless you have the plague, a doctor doesn't take nearly the same personal risk as a firefighter.

Sure, that's true and I think people who don't pay the taxes that support the firemen should be ashamed of themselves and forced to pay. Similarly, I think firemen should be trained well and paid for the risk they are taking on.

That being said, humans are not very good at reasoning about risk. Fire is a life-destroying event disproportionate to the perceived risk. It can wipe a family out and has secondary impacts to the community in general. I think we should accept that. We don't have to periodically let someone's home burn to the ground to serve as a lesson to others.

firefighters have many mundane tasks as well. Doctors are exosed to viuses that could be widespread if they fail to do their job properly. Id argue that they are exposed to dangers they can bring home to the kids, which in my opinion make it just as, if not more dangerous.

It wasn't about ideology, it was a CITY fire department that for a fee (not tax) would provide fire protection service inside the county but outside the areas it has legal jurisdiction to tax. Some places in the USA do not have county-wide fire service because they are that poor, or are particularly remote.

They don't see the similarity because they are, in fact, different.

If my house catches on fire, and someone doesn't put it out, there is a reasonable chance it will spread to other houses. So it's a societal issue - at least at the local scale. As a societal issue, it makes sense for each member to be forced to pay for it.

If I break my leg, there is no increased chance that my neighbor will break his leg. So it's a personal issue. My neighbor receives no benefit from my leg being repaired, and is not harmed if isn't repaired. So why should he be forced to pay for it?

If you want to say that public health care should exist to provide vaccinations, in order to prevent the spread of disease to others in society, that would be a reasonable argument.

You forgot second order effects. Leg gets fixed - you get back to work - goods and services are rendered, taxed, consumed and saved.

Your neighbor benefits by having an individual in whom society has invested millions in to train and care for back at work instead of being dead. That's a waste of money.

Humans are worth saving simply because we invest so much in them.

But then you can easily, heck trivially, argue that people should be forced to exercise or to eat a particular diet that makes them more productive. Look, more goods and services are rendered! It's a public situation!

People should be forced to live within 5 miles of work, because they're not being productive during their commute. Also, HackerNews and reddit should be forcibly taken down because of their contribution to idleness at work.

You forget about second order effects once again - HN/reddit facilitate low latency, high scale, high signal communication between millions of people everyday - that's a net positive.

In terms of diet, we tax cigarettes, alcohol and drugs (indirectly) - food that is net negative on society should have their negative externality priced via taxes.

It's pointless banning them (e.g. enforced diets) - see prohibition - leave it legal and tax to cover costs.

> If I break my leg, there is no increased chance that my neighbor will break his leg. So it's a personal issue.

But is not a just personal issue. If you break your leg and don't have insurance, you could lose your house over medical bills. The bank will reposes and will write down losses over your mortgage. If your lot starts to look like crap the value of his house will be affected as well. If you have a wife and kids, your kids might end up having to go to school in a crappy part of town. So it might affect their education.

Just by breaking your leg could affect a lot more people than you first suspect. Of course if you had government provided insurance you would not have the risk of spreading this as much.

This idea that we are so independent and individualistic works perhaps in some kind of a romanticized world where you live in a compound in the woods that is self sufficient and you don't have to to worry or care about the outside world either bothering your or owing them anything.

This argues equally well for completely supporting the family indefinitely for any reason. The only difference between paying medical bills and paying for the whole lifestyle is a matter of cost, and medical bills can be really expensive.

Doesn't it bother you that an even-handed application of this principle leads to absurdity?

I see it as a continuum.

But actually it maybe be true that in some cases it is more beneficial overall to the society to just support the family for a while if say the breadwinner breaks a leg. That is better than a bankruptcy, loss of house, loss of job.

> Doesn't it bother you that an even-handed application of this principle leads to absurdity?

It doesn't because this has to be applied to a certain degree. Absolutely no safety net is not good, but it is not possible of feasible to just hand out money either.

Epidemic prevention certainly is, in the same way fire protection is - both a fire and an epidemic can rage out of control and kill lots of people. They are public goods because they have large positive externalities.

Both are also dirt cheap (i.e., single-digit percentages of government spending) and very few people oppose their public provision. So why bring them up?

It's hard to reconcile with the idealized version of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night-watchman_state that does nothing more than enforce the non-aggression principle. I suppose one could consider arson (not accidents) as a form of aggression they must be prepared for, but I find this an obvious public good the night-watchman state doesn't account for very well.

"left to your own devices"

That reminds me of the old status of being an outlaw - which really meant that you were outside of the protection of the law and anyone could do whatever they wanted to you. It was regarded as rather a harsh punishment:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw

The modern version would probably be "freemen on the land": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemen_on_the_land

"Freemen on the land" are people who believe that all statute law is contractual, and that such law is applicable only if an individual consents to be governed by it. They believe that they can therefore declare themselves independent of government jurisdiction, holding that the only "true" law is common law, as they define it.

My friend's girlfriend is a public defender and has dealt with many of them.

If anyone here has not heard of them or knows very little, I would suggest doing some investigating. I don't have respect for them (mainly because the overwhelming majority don't have a clue of the legal system and obligations they have as a citizen yet argue obscure laws), but it will provide some entertainment and a very strange but interesting perspective.

Check out youtube for some interesting court room footage, such as this man who apparently controls the court room because a judge left.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzjv20sC5CY

This is certainly interesting stuff. Can you recommend an article that deconstructs their motivations and/or comments on whether or not what they're doing is actually legal?

This is a decent start: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Freeman

That video's hilarious - do you know if he would actually have got away with that - or would he just have received another summons or fine in the mail?

From that list they are particularly keen on declaring themselves "independent of government jurisdiction" when charged with motoring offences - I presume they had all of the required contracts in place to allow them to drive on the roads the rest of us paid for?

Life is not a service. You did not sign a contract. Not everything is a business agreement. Individualism is not the ultimate value.

I guess that is what bugs me the most about this article: the idea that seems to underlie it that humans are all rational beings that are somehow unconnected to society. Or at least the idea that it is morally desirable for this to be the case.

I do not agree with this. It is individualism taken too far, beyond where the idea of individualism is meaningful. Human beings need social conditioning as much as they need food and drink to survive. Anarchism is a nice theory (much like pure communism or capitalism) but it disregards the nature of human beings, who need to be embedded in society with all its rules, norms and conditioning mechanisms to function.

If you want a different society, go into politics, change things for the better. Don't sit on the couch complaining that the "service" is not as good as you like.

p.s. Life is life (nanananana)

s/anarchism/libertarianism/

While there are certainly strains of individualist anarchism, the dominant tradition has been that of socialism, which stresses the importance of community and social relations. You seem to be confusing the maxim of "no rulers" with "no rules".

The essence of the (flawed) argument Jacques is making is in his passport section

  I need permission from my government if I want to leave
  the country.

Oddly, that's not true. A passport is necessary to get into a country, not leave one. The distinction is subtle but important. You can if you wish as an adult, leave the country you are in, and if they will let you in, enter another with a different set of obligations. At worst you can just bob around the Atlantic in a bath tub for a bit.

The whole set of complaints boil down to, are there other countries which have a better setup than the country I am in? Can I go now?

The answer for anyone in the West is of course, not such that you would notice. And yes, no-one is stopping you. (But I would not recommend the bathtub option)

Edit: I just realised that it could read as "well if you dont like it F off." It honestly was not meant like that - but its hard to reword the whole comment now.

You need a passport to leave Australia. Australia has immigration on exit. Though, that is the only place I've seen this.

Ive been through quite a few customs on leaving a country, typically when there is a fixed time limit you are allowed to stay on certain visas

For me, it is the other way around: US and Canada don't check your passport at exit and when that happened to me for the first time I had to ask airport employee just to make sure I did not take a wrong turn or something. All of EU, All Latin America countries I've been to, Russia and Ukraine check passports and there were and still are countries that you cannot leave without explicit permission from governement (eg North Kirea and Kuba).

Most countries that require a passport for entry also require one for exit. Otherwise there would be no control to stop people from fleeing the law.

Oddly, that's not true. A passport is necessary to get into a country, not leave one.

Not true for me, at least. I live in Poland, which means I get passport-free travel (and ID-card free, for that matter) within the EU Schengen Area, but not when visiting my home country, the UK, since it's outside the Schengen area.

To visit the UK, I have to go via the scary ladies and gentlemen in glass booths with big guns strapped to their sides and show my passport (or ID card if I had one). I've travelled a few times to other countries outside the Schengen area, and each time the only way to get to the gate is via these booths. I'm pretty certain that there's no opt-out.

Poland's not alone in this; plenty of countries check your passport on departure. Last one I remember is Turkey, pretty sure when I was in India and Tunisia similar happened.

That's because governments are widely agreed that the "sender" country is responsible if passenger has no right to enter "receiver" country. So to avoid the hassle, it's mandatory to check your passport when you leave Poland, but not whether you have right to leave Poland...

I was working in Brazil on a fixed-term visa and presenting my passport upon entry and exit was my proof that I hadn't spent more than 90 days in the country.

Curiously, the government contract I was helping with ended when the project's assets were seized as part of an investigation into government corruption. Millions of Real worth of equipment is sitting locked in an evidence locker instead of benefiting society.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure all governments are flawed to one degree or another.

I had the good fortune of being born Australian. Through sheer dumb luck I'm entitled to:

- Free healthcare - Free education - Free roads and parks - Free safety and security (i.e. a relatively well functioning police force that will protect me from violence)

These entitlements are far from perfect, and come with the caveat that if and when I start earning money, some of it will be taken from me (by threat of force, if necessary) to go into a communal fund to provide other Australians with these benefits.

That sucks a bit, but on the other hand I have a legal right to decide, along with other citizens, on the proportion of my income that is taken, as well as on the people in charge of managing these communal funds.

Perhaps more importantly, I get to live in a society where other people get these things too. I'm not saying this from a touchy-feely standpoint - there are huge benefits to the individual living in such a system.

Because virtually everyone in my country has food in their stomach, a roof over their head, and a shot at improving their situation through hard work, I rarely feel unsafe. From a purely selfish standpoint, I am extremely grateful that most of the people in my country feel they have more to gain by defending 'the system' than by attacking it.

As a business owner, I also have access to a large pool of highly educated people to work with and millions of (relatively) wealthy people to sell my products and services to.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I quite liked the article and often think about how silly and arbitrary things like nationalism and citizenship are.

And yet...

Sure it sucks that I never really had the opportunity to opt out of the system, but on the other hand - boy am I lucky that it was opt in by default.

While some of the complaints are fair, the conclusion is absurd. The rights already clearly outweigh the obligations, which the author confirms himself by stating that "given the option I probably would/should have signed it [the contract".

It seems to me the author takes many benefits of having the "Life as a Service" subscription for granted, and thus believes they are not part of the service - that they would persist even if there was no overseeing organization. Just to provide an example, the right to own property is only enforced by the service - without it, you only have the 'right' to own whatever you can defend yourself (or convince someone to defend for you).

Thus in the 'LaaS' you have to pay taxes, or your property will be confiscated. Without 'LaaS' you have to be ready to fight for whatever you own, or your property will be confiscated. Seems like a win for me.

Yeah, I think it is more about the lack of choice aspect than the result, depending on which country you find yourself in. Coming from a rich country at least you have enough mobility to eventually overcome immigration rules and move pretty much where you desire. Not true of poorer countries though, at least not for most people living in them.

But keep in mind; he doesn't seem to be a fan of property rights anyway, so he probably isn't sympathetic to a position of "defending your land".

This hits very close and I guess you only realize it if at some point of your life you live where you'd rather not but have no way to get out.

    I need permission from my government if I want to leave
    the country. Being given a passport is apparently not a
    right. Oh and they cost quite a bit of money and are 
    valid only 5 years. That works out to a certain amount of 
    money per day just to be able to exist outside the
    borders of the country I was born in. Good thing it
    doubles as an ID card, I can save a bit there. Now I’ve
    never done anything from the list of offenses that would
    stop me from receiving a passport but I really wonder who 
    gave who the right to stop anybody from going where they
    wanted to go. It makes very little sense to me, all these 
    countries each with their own set of laws, borders,
    border guards to keep people out of one place, border
    guards to keep people in another place and so on. It
    feels as though they’re all prisons, just large enough
    that you can’t see the fences on the edge. But the fences
    are definitely there. And you can only buy your way out.
    Never mind that to go somewhere else you are also going
    to have to buy your way in.

I challenge the 'quite a bit of money' part. Fees for a Dutch passport amount to about US $100 at the UK embassy e.g. (I'm Dutch, but live in the UK):

http://www.dutchembassyuk.org/page/index.php?i=158

Sure, $100 sounds low for many people, even though it's a fortune for some. However, spread across a 5 year period, it's a little more than 5 cents a day.

It's tax for living. It's bad.

It's no such thing. You're not forced to get a passport. Plenty of people live quite happily in the same country or region they were born. People should travel, and experience other cultures, but they're not being forced to pay for a passport if they don't want to.

I see $100 as an administrative fee that covers the process of applying for a document, the issuing agency reviewing the credentials of the person applying and then manufacturing it based on the current security standards. If it were free, it would still come out of tax payers money somehow (FWIW, I'm not a Dutch taxpayer, since I don't live there).

The fact is, we live in a world with different cultures, different economies, different norms, and some have chosen to place limitations on who may enter/visit/move to them. Having documentation to meet another country's requirements is basic cost of living if I want to participate in a global society.

It's simply impractical to erase all border controls and have anyone be able to enter any country without an ID. Poorer populations would seek to better their lot quicker by moving to a richer country, rather than stimulating the economy where they're from. It's not ideal, but we can't live in a world where the entire third world can just decide to move to the industrial world because they don't impose immigration standards. And in order for them to do so, passports are needed.

If you can't afford $100 every 5 years, how can you afford to travel to another country?

Which, if it were the only complaint, could easily be dismissed. But there's more to government bureaucracy than just the passport department. How many other government departments are there who are saying "but it's barely 5 cents a day!"? Hundreds? Thousands? At what stage do we say "Hang on, that's _too_ much"? $5/day? $50/day? $500/day?

The passport fee is not the problem. Until relatively recently I've had to(and still do for some countries) also provide a lot of paperwork and pay a visa fee to go to a neighboring country.

And I know 100$ sounds like not much but consider that my parents were not of means in a country of a rather low standard of living.

This may not be what the author meant with this paragraph but it's what resonated with me.

Furthermore, why must I live inside this sack of greasy skin, with all these disgusting organs?

Ah Jacques. You've posted some brilliant articles, Three Roads to the Top of the Mountain[1] is among the best articles I've read on starting a business. In fact, I will go and read it again after posting this. And seek out some other good startup/business related articles you have written.

But this Life as a Service article is just incomprehensible to me coming from you. How selfish! How can the same person who posted the Top of the Mountain post write this? Not sure how life in the Netherlands is so much different from here in Canada, but the article is full of things that are either not true, or overblown. It's depressing to read, and a sad attempt to tear up the social contract we all must be a part of.

"I have no problem paying taxes, but I wish I had a choice about it."

You can't give people a choice about it. You can't have a society supported by some people with loads of people refusing to support it. (Too poor to support it is different.) And how can you complain about that AND complain that the rich and royalty are above the law? You're arguing both sides!

Maybe you want to go find a remote outpost in the Northern tip of your country that you truly get no government services provided to you - no roads, no police, no hospitals, no ID required, no electricity, no internet, or phone service... go do that. But if you are part of society, you must be part of the social contract. Better to accept that and go on to do (or write) something productive that adds value..

[1]http://jacquesmattheij.com/three+roads+to+the+top+of+the+mou...

Given how often libertarianism comes up around and here and some of the attitudes that are repeated demonstrated, it's pretty clear that a large segment of HN's population has never been in a disadvantaged situation in life, either in economics, geography, or race.

I'm not sure that this article is advocating libertarianism per-se, more that it is pointing out oddities in our current system. It doesn't make the claim that life would be better off with less support or regulation.

They're only oddities to well-off straight white able-bodied males with no perspective. These "oddities" exist for good practical reasons and the government is there for all people not just the nerd faction who decide they only want the government functions that benefit them personally.

A few of these points are interesting, because things don't have to be that way (e.g. various government-granted monopolies).

But most of these points are uninteresting, in the sense that I cannot easily imagine alternatives. Public goods are a simple example - there's an economic reason it is not possible to let people opt-out of public goods: you can't not protect some people, so it is in their interest to opt-out and receive protection anyway. So everyone will opt-out.

I have a lot of respect for jacquesmattheij, and I love posts that make us reconsider basic assumptions of our society and decide whether they're good or not. Even as a philsophical exercise and without a practical angle, it's interesting. But most of the complaints here don't come with an alternative, so what are we supposed to do with them?

May I refer you to David D. Friedman and Murray Rothbard for explanations of how public property would be so much better off as private property and how protection can be both private and optional? I mean you can disagree after reading it, but at least you wouldn't say there's no alternative.

Sure, and thanks. I'm not very well-read in economy but am working on it.

Do you have anything specific of theirs in mind?

"For a New Liberty" by Murray Rothbard and "The Machinery Of Freedom" by David D. Friedman.

Some thoughts on this:

You have no obligation to conform to these laws at all. You are not born into a contract. A contract is a piece of paper which you can use to wipe your bum with if you wish.

You can in theory do what the hell you like. People regularly do. You can kill people, not pay tax, walk over the border of any country and urinate anywhere you like.

The only downside is that someone who does subscribe to the rules will probably throw you in jail or kill you without respecting your choice.

Fear of the above is the only reason that the law works at all.

When the law becomes bad for the population, which it really is under many common ethical principles these days and it is getting worse, we need to have a revolution to reset the badness.

There is no happy solution to adding legislation other than resetting it completely occasionally.

Dying and emigrating just bring their own legal problems.

Absolutely right - there is no formal contract.

What is being reflected on here is really a 'social contract' - see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract

There is no social contract either. It evaporates in a moment's notice when you break the speed limit or download an mp3.

what do you mean by there being no social contract?

When you break the law the state punishes you because you have broken 'social contract'.

It's all about trading the social contract against risk of punishment. It's so absolutely unenforceable that more people break the social contract than adhere to it.

But if you think about it, doesn't this seem crazy? I mean, obviously I shouldn't kill people, but if I don't do the things the implicit contract expects me to, some crazy person will come up and put me in a cage.

For example, if I happen to grow a plant that will grow on its own without my help, and happen to store a lot of these plants for the winter, I could get locked up by someone for being a drug dealer.

It's all crazy. Absolutely batshit crazy. People hide behind it all the time and defend it as well.

In your example, it is why people buy the plants from someone else. It is purely risk mitigation. It allows them to break the implicit contract without risking severe punishment. The drug dealers are willing to take a larger risk as there is a high probability of financial gain or a higher risk of getting killed by their importer/pusher.

All crazy people think they're sane and everyone else are the crazy ones.

If you can convince other people that you don't deserve to be locked up for growing these plants, then you won't be. All this talk of "implicit contracts" doesn't change that, it only overcomplicates everything.

The only thing keeping you from killing people is fear?

I think moral values (no matter where they are derived from) keep people from committing more crimes.

Considering morality is founded on a fear of someone doing to you what you did to them, then yes.

This is a fairly basic interpretation of the golden rule but it stands up to the majority of counterpoints.

> Considering morality is founded on a fear of someone doing to you what you did to them, then yes.

Well, at least we know you're at stage #1 of Kohlberg's stages of moral development.

Ah that broken model which assumes that moral reasoning has a relation to moral action, which it clearly doesn't for the majority of the population of this rock...

Citing the broken assumption upon which the model is (partly) based isn't enough to claim the model has no value, as you're clearly implying.

An example: A model of the universe is useful, even if it was developed under the assumption that it was created by supernatural forces.

Please don't use such weak argument tactics in the future, as they're just childish.

There's a serious discussion here which seems ignored. It is: "what are the pros and cons of government forced 'terms of life'". Without that discussion, it seems to me that most of the complaints in the article remain a curiosity.

The underlying idea is that you have silently agreed to a social contract by participating in the society. Of course, children are not likely to understand the reasons why this is a good idea for most people. One can freely choose to live like an outlaw or outside of society, with all the pros and cons that come with it.

This kind of nostalgia is similar to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz

This is a rather poor attempt at philosophy that basically rides on yesterday's blog (the pendulum one) remark about Life-as-a-Service.

If anything it should teach people about how to keep the blog audience interested.

I was pretty sure I could down-vote by now but apparently I can't downvote articles. I guess I should just upvote everything else on the page...

It's not possibly to downvote articles, only upvote or flag.

Agreed about riding on the back of other articles.

Care to explain further? Why is it a poor attempt at philosophy?

Riding? Yes.

Poor attempt at philosophy? No. This merely describes the daily situation here, and I find myself agreeing with most all of what he says. He is very well-spoken, and I believe it resonates with many people from the Netherlands.

This article leaves me uneasy. We need to separate the process that societies use to determine laws and customs from the outcomes themselves. I'm also against many of the outcomes described in the article but the process used to get there in the countries where Jacques and I live in it's the best process we know of. OK, maybe the least worst is more appropriate but I can't really think anything else I would like to replace Democracy with.

The unordered list is an overused and inadequate replacement for properly structured prose.

Well, it sounds like a really consumerist way to interpret things.

While it is true that some countries will not let you leave your country and will impose obligations even if you don't live in the country, in most western democracies (and in particular the author's country): * You can leave freely * As soon as you're not resident, you pretty much have no obligation toward your origin country - hell, you can even get a citizenship from a different country and be done with it.

I think among western democracies, only US imposes taxes on non-residents citizens.

Most of the complains are irrelevant - of course they are rules you have to follow, and you didn't decide at some point to "agree" with them. The rules are usually for the benefit of the group, i.e. not being able to use a land you buy for anything you want prevent you to build a chemistry factory in the middle of a residential area.

This article is brilliant. Each and every point Jacques makes is spot-on. I'm sure many will disagree with his stance, but he makes an excellent point. Irrespective of our personal preference, we are effectively locked in to and subordinate of our government and its policies. Any self-respecting human who has contemplated this should be sick to their stomach.

Realize this: we're floating in space. Not one soul on this planet knows why we're here, where we're going, or how we should conduct ourselves. In essence we've been handed our own "Gary's Mod" and yet we've resolved to have infinite and mostly useless structure. I'm not praising anarchy, but like what was mentioned in this piece, I should have a choice.

Why should you have a choice? Taking this article to it's logical conclusion, no obligations nor rights should be granted to you. As another commenter above mentioned so brilliantly, individuals don't have rights. Rights only arise in groups of individuals.

I fail to see the reason in that statement, why is it so brilliant?

We should all have a choice because we're all exactly the same. We're made of the exact same stuff that's floating out in the universe. There is no universal code that says one group of humans (or individual) should control/rule another. It's all made up by humans and it's going to kill us in the long run.

"I spent some time researching the emigration options. A lot of time actually. And I’ve found out that the place where I live is in spite of all of the above probably one of the best places on earth to be living at the moment. It’s shocking! Half the world or more of it would be more than happy just to trade with me, and they’d be absolutely right."

If you can earn a first-world nation without having to live there, something quite possible in tech, there are a number of countries where many folks can be quite happy and more free. And remember you don't have to just stay in one country, you can travel around a bit and sample countries also.

I made the move and it was the right decision to me, imho.

Curious as to which countries you were considering, and which one you eventually decided on?

> But it could be so much better if we really tried.

For anyone interested in alternative ways to improve government, check out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city

"A charter city is a city in which the governing system is defined by the city's own charter document rather than by state, provincial, regional or national laws."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading

"Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by the government of any standing nation."

Great analogy, it seems like you live right next door :)

I think the OP's point that we are surrounded by established monopolies is very noticeable nowadays. Copyright agency, Lawyers, Medical practitioners, etc.

s/monopolies/professionals/

You picked a strange list of examples. None of them are monopolies, they're usually individual professionals or small practices.

People are artificially prevented from entering these professions in the United States. A person who spends several years in a library learning about the interpretation and application of the law, and who would be capable of passing a bar exam, is not allowed to take the exam. In all but 2 states, to gain the privilege of taking the exam, he or she must first pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to a law school. In the remaining 2 states, if he or she is old enough (23 or 25, if I recall correctly), it would suffice to instead work for a judge for a couple years.

This keeps the supply of professionals low and allows the organizations that sell proffesion-practicing certifications to collect a rent. It's a good scam, and I would prefer to be on the other side of it. As I probably won't be able to achieve this, my close second preference would be for the scam to not exist.

My gist of that: society and economy are weird. (Although a few points are, well, a bit silly)

Welcome to the human condition, geworfenheit etc.

Shop around for a country to live in. I wish countries were more accommodating about this.

In my dream world like minded people live in the same country. Just think of how great it would be if you didn't have to compromise because everyone in the country were on the same side of (for example) the liberal/conservative divide.

Interesting idea. But I believe, that countries as a whole a too big to be really manageable. I imagine a society living in smaller regions (but big enough for natural resources, et al.) and these regions are part of a bigger structure. Like cells in a body. OK, Germany or the US do have a similar way of organizing, but I would love for these "cells" to be more autonomous, so that like-minded people could "just" switch cells, so that ideologies or political principles would be voted for by feet.

Something along these lines. sitting @work, this rough sketch is everything I can offer. And I know, a lot of detail is missing.

I think a 2 million city would be big enough. We can call it an special economic area. I do believe this is already happening.

We all know that this is the inevitable cyberpunk future - just substitute governments with corporations.

I have come to the same conclusion. I don't understand why we keep voting with ballots and not feet.

Does anyone here remember those vertical cities (they were effectively cities) in SimCity 2000 (3000?)? I can't find a picture (EDIT: found it: http://imgur.com/MBAzs) but ever since I first played that game, that tiny pixelated picture has given me many ideas.

Think of a large building with everything you need inside - all big box stores, small businesses, and residences. But in order to live there you need to share a lot in common with the philosophy that building was made for. So there would be one for liberals who are for abortion and for legalizing pot and so on and so forth; there would also be a separate building for all of the tiny variations, and those buildings would literally undergo a kind of natural selection (people would choose where to live) and the least popular ones would keep fine tuning their philosophy to try and attract more people.

That way we would all live with like minded people, there would be a lot less of the problems there are in today's society (basically all the proselytizing and wanting others to do as you think is right for them).

I'll stop here because I'm saving this stuff for a book or a long article, but Jacques article and your comments here have just alerted me to the fact that there might be other people who think the same as I do. To be frank, I'd much rather have a beer with you all than waste my time typing this crap. We could all do that if we lived in one of those vertical charter cities. :)

Just for the sake of completeness, after much googling I came to learn that what I was trying to describe already has a name, and it's Arcology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcology

So I mean that we should use arcologies (am I using this word correctly?) to experiment with finding the best political systems for each person, by allowing each person to choose where to live, and fine tuning the laws of the least popular arcologies to try and attract more people.

I think plenty countries are very accomodating - at least if you have enough money.

Wouldn't that significantly increase "the variance" and segregation of different political ideologies across the world, thus promoting more international tension?

The author has not really gone beyond stating that we are subject to the social contract (no shit sherlock) and that we should try harder to make this contract much better (ditto.) Go read the Wikipedia article on social contract, it has a much better value per seconds of your attention.

Yeah, well, this is what you get when you cut out all the political philosophy and liberal arts from the education system: a bunch of libertarian programmers who think they've discovered something really new.

> And if a substantial number of them would opt-out that would be a much clearer sign than any elections ever could give that that society was on the wrong track.

I think this is a pretty interesting comment. It sparked the idea of a 'tax-free' zone in each country in my head. Like a area of each country with no government infrastructure or intervention. The proportion of population living in these zones would really give a good indicator of how the countries are treating it's citizens. People would be free to cross this fence whenever they wanted.

But in reality I don't think any country would want to give up land for such means.

The US has run this experiment with the frontier. What happened? The communities beyond the frontier organised themselves and asked to be accepted as States of the Union.

You can freely move to Liberia now and do this. Buy magically nobody does.

The worst part is: if you're a US citizen you're still "opted in" to paying taxes even after you don't live there and no longer use any of the services. In some cases, even if you've never lived there at all or even speak the language (hint: you can get american citizenship from being born on the soil or having a single biological parent who was).

There's an easy solution to that - renounce your citizenship. What's that? You want to keep your American citizenship? Then you must abide by the social contract underlying that grant of citizenship, which comes with certain benefits/obligations no matter where you are in the world.

Nonsense. First of all, I am giving up my citizenship. But the US and North Korea are the only countries on this planet stupid enough to think people who don't live there anymore owe them money.

I'm not seeing anyone complain about the lack of competition for The State. If nothing else why would anyone defend the monopoly of the state? I don't see anyone defending any other monopoly.

Why should I be forced to move elsewhere for better service?

I understand that for now we don't have a better solution but stop defending the fucking monopoly.

I'll defend anything that I see people criticise without offering a better solution.

According to Henry Sumner Maine, the development of law in the west was one of movement from status to contract. According to Mr. Mattheij, it hasn't gone far enough, I gather.

Can't you simply renounce your citizenship at 18?

One would think that if one was to renounce its citizenship, waiting for a predefined age set by whom you will be renouncing would be rather odd.

Defacto your legal guardians have signed you up to this until the age of majority. That seems pretty reasonable, under any jurisdiction.

'legal guardians' AND 'jurisdiction'. These are concepts that weren't negotiated when signing up for the L-a-a-S.

(just continuing OPs direction of thought)

This reduces to absurdity pretty quickly, when you start complaining that babies don't sign up for any of the decisions their parents make on their behalf. No shit. Almost everything your parents sign you up for can be undone at an age that's almost universally close to 18 from the perspective of the state.

Compare and contrast that with Islamic or Scientological interpretation of apostacy if you're really looking for a service your parents signed you up for and you can't easily get out of...

Holland right? Is that the place he is talking about? I wonder how he feels about Switzerland, or say Canada?

If this guy isn't Dutch, I'm the pope.

These are quite literally exactly the reasons why I'm emigrating.

I think "Life as a Slave" would have been more suitable.

Have you read anything at all about slavery? Compared to that, being a citizen with rights as well as obligations is a huge blessing.

Well, it depends on which slaves you're talking about. Not being a slave is always better than being one, but sometimes "slave" basically meant being in a lot of debt...

That's exactly what I meant. Unfortunately, slavery is much more than chains and forced labour.

I have read about slavery of course, and I'm aware of what the word means. I obviously didn't meant "slave" in the traditional, historical sense.

Actually, the OED defines "slave" as "One who is the property of, and entirely subject to, another person, whether by capture, purchase, or birth". That's quite a broad definition, isn't it?

Yes, I know I am really fortunate by comparison with most of the world's population, but that's not enough for me, I am sorry. I tend not to look to whatever I have as "blessings", I guess I'm one of the "half-empty" guys.

Yeah, I understand that. I actually think is important to find what bothers us despite our "blessings" and try to make it better, we'd be stuck in the past if we didn't.

I just found "slavery" a strong word, and that a little perspective on these matters is also very important.

I've thought about this some times, it's a hard thing to wrap logic around, definitely...

but here's two things that are a bit unsettling to me on this topic:

- life is paid, you can't just go to some abandoned place, raise chicken and plants and live off of it and if you can't pay for your life you either turn yourself into a slave(living to pay to be alive) or you're made into the worst thing possible, with all your dignity taken from you(be a bum and face everything that's left when you can't pay for a life, even the ones created by the system itself)

- why can't there be competition? it made me remember this article: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678720/former-seasteaders-come-a... what would happen if different state models were allowed to exist and they proved to be less corrupt, safer, fairer, happier and people just started migrating to this better states(from what I took they'd still live in capitalism)? I'm almost sure other governments wouldn't let it happen, and this takes me to another unsettling thought that is how, as much as people wan't freedom and dignity, governments want the power, they're barely ever accountable and they don't have competition, they own the game.

Well, just thoughts..

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