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When you're young, it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to authority. But go spend any significant time in a developing nation that lacks basic infrastructure, get close to the people living there, learn about their struggles and their dreams, and then come back and tell me that the solution is to abolish government.

It's offensive on your part to call my reaction knee-jerk. It's not me who is holding a gun. It's not me who educates your children and gives out licenses for radio, TV, internet service providers and satellites.

Suppose we are in a developing nation (I'm from Russia, born in 1980-s, by the way). And you want government and I don't. I fully respect your choice, morals and ethics. I disagree with you, but I will never imagine to coerce you not to act on what you think is good. Will you give me the same respect? Will you allow me to withdraw my participation from government activity, not to pay my taxes, not to use the money you want when cooperating with other people? Or will you call the cops? If you will, would you hesitate to threaten me directly, or will you cowardly make a call and try to avoid knowing all the details of what cops do to people?

What? How would you keep living in society but isolated from its government? You would continue to be using services that exist because of taxes for one thing. If you can't accept society's contract it's not really possible to live in it with no conflict.

Not saying government is perfect, and I agree with you that if you don't accept the society's government you are still coerced to live in it, but you can't really just choose to not take any part in it. You accept it, leave, or try to change it.

Let us take some normal examples of services that exist. Let us say I own the home I live in for purposes of non-ambiguity. Would you say I own the water on my property? If I don't have water, would you be okay if I never paid taxes but paid for the water? Would you be okay if I never paid taxes but paid for the roads usage each time I used it? Or on a monthly basis? A thought experiment begins with the basic fact that you and I live in a society where certain things must be done, like paying taxes. If I refuse to pay, as oleganza says, will you come to an alternate arrangement with me? Or will you put me in jail?

In short, is my personal liberty a right? Or is it subject to the privilege of my citizenship?

Note: anyone who comes with "privilege of citizenship" argument (or "property rights are only defined within a government") already uses some moral theory. So it's better to ask for explanation what this theory means in reality. E.g. if some group of people vote 51% vs 49%, they can do whatever they want? Or are there "absolute rights"? So now the person who advocates the government must prove all this stuff, or shut the fuck up.

One thing is the reality, another thing is justification for it.

Government, rape and theft exist. We cannot get rid of them, we can protect ourselves. That's reality. But we don't derive moral justification from reality. Theft does not become moral because it exists. Government does not become moral because it's inevitable. It becomes moral because of some principle that you hold. So saying "you can't really just choose to not take any part in it" does not invalidate any of my argument.

Now, society != government. Society is 95% anarchy. People voluntarily trust each other, deal with each other, live closer to people they like and further from people they dislike. They choose what to eat, whom to marry etc. Then, there is small group of self-proclaimed religious guys who self-identify with the whole society and also claim the right to use violence because of some mystical "social contract". No one was signing this contract. And even if some dudes in 1787 signed some piece of paper, it has nothing to do with you or people around you. It's just a belief in magical lines called "borders" that suddenly change the moral nature of a man. Within the "border" a man in a costume can arrest someone, but outside the "border" he cannot.

That's simply religious nonsense. If we were in 1241 when everyone believed in god, miracles and priests, it wouldn't make me stupid or extremist. It would make everyone else around stupid and arrogant. Even if there are 99% of them.

I never said society == government, then I wouldn't have said "society's government".

Government is a PART of society. Along with other norms (like what we consider acceptable in social situations).

Also, government is set up to protect from rape and theft. You're right, government often has immoral shortcomings, but most people believe it is better than anarchy. No one was signing this contract? Most people agree with the need for cops.

I'm not saying government does its job ideally. I'm not saying the majority wanting something makes it right. All I was saying in the comment was that if society wants something, and you disagree and want to be isolated from, while living with, that society, then there will be problems. If, on the other hand, you just want the society to not have a government (either at all or just not the current incarnations) then that is different.

I couldn't reply to your comment in response to my earlier comment so I am replying here.

I believe in natural rights, not designed in the human framework sense, so I totally agree with you on what democracy is actually: mob rule of the majority. Proponents of government actually must accept its truth: wealth transfer at the point of a gun. I live in India (a high-tax and high-tax evasion socialist paradise where even the roads are not good) and I wouldn't pay taxes at all, since I get nothing in return. But poor people get a lot (and of course, rich politicians steal most of the money), but there is no point in denying the truth: but for the State's implied threat of violence, I would not fork out what I earned. Period.

It's just a belief in magical lines called "borders" that suddenly change the moral nature of a man. Within the "border" a man in a costume can arrest someone, but outside the "border" he cannot.

It's not any more magical than to claim that you have exclusive rights over everything that's inside some lines called "property limits", and that you even have the right to harm people who cross those magic lines without your consent.

I'm not advocating any right to property or self defence. I and you and many other people simply choose to live peacefully around people sharing same views on what's okay and what's not. And use peaceful methods to prevent violence.

> When you're young, it's easy to have a knee-jerk reaction to authority.

When you're old, it's easy to be an obedient minion.

> But go spend any significant time in a developing nation that lacks basic infrastructure, get close to the people living there, learn about their struggles and their dreams, and then come back and tell me that the solution is to abolish government.

Just because government isn't the answer doesn't mean destroying it is.

> But go spend any significant time in a developing nation

These developing nations seems to have plenty of government and regulation to go around considering their non-existent economy. Shouldn't they be fat and filthy rich by now?

These developing nations seems to have plenty of government and regulation to go around considering their non-existent economy.

Which nations are you referring to, specifically?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country#List_of_deve...

> When you're old, it's easy to be an obedient minion.

Please explain why vote participation increases with age then?

I made this illustrative graph: http://i.imgur.com/Uhdub5G.png

edit: made the axes clearer.

The answer is simple: with age, welfare and benefits increase.

> Government is just a privileged group of people with a monopoly on violence. It is an institute of violence. All things you don't like are direct products of the first principle: these guys can use violence to get what they need, others cannot.

Someone needs to read some Hobbes, and then carefully study the history of the past 300-or-so years.

Only government has trained sadists with well-oiled guns.

Clearly not true: "Employees of private military company CACI and Titan Corp. were involved in the Iraq Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2003, and 2004."

It does not matter how you call it: "private" or "public". It's paid from the same source covered by "patriotic" propaganda. Can you show me those private Bob and Alice from Arizona and Texas who invest in these companies? Who pays them, how do you think?

You may equally say that newspapers are private, but there is a very strong pro-government bias if you MUST have a gov license to operate or trained people will come in and take your property and you. And then people blame "capitalism" for when media fails to explain how government is fucked up.

This isn't a politics discussion site and to top this off this is an extremist view which doesn't add anything to the discussion.

It's not even remotely related to the article.

Why is this not d/ved to oblivion? Are you even from France?

I'm sorry, how is that an extremist view? Nowhere is he saying that we should all assassinate the president, or kill all the arabs, or anything resembling extremist views.

What he's stating are facts. Re-read the sentences one by one. They're the underpinnings of our society and they're no fun to hear, and most people don't even realize that they're there, but it's the reality of things.

I'm not even vaguely interested in this discussion precisely because there are no facts in there, each point is an extreme interpretation of the world by someone who is clearly an anarchist.

Pick any one paragraph and approach it from a devil's advocate, try and argue against it yourself. For every one a clear counter point should immediately jump to you mind or you need to do some serious and unbiased research into history, politics and sociology.

That democratic governments are sued, that they do censure themselves, that politicians do resign in disgrace, that they are thrown out of power peacefully, that police officers are prosecuted for excessive force, that enquiries are done into police shootings, that many police forces fire less bullets in a year than a single gun enthusiast might in a week at the shooting range.

You'll rapidly see how preposterous the whole rant is. He claims that he cannot renegotiate the power they grant to their government. But anyone in a democracy can become a politician and gain that power or a political activist and energise a base until the government starts negotiating. But it cannot be a person on their own. They must be able to convince many others.

He just can't be bothered.

So no facts or reality, just an extreme political opinion not discussing the article at all, which is precisely why these discussions aren't a good fit for a programming, tech and startup board.

The post is very relevant, this thread, not.

You're not even trying. Maybe if you're "not even vaguely interested in [the] discussion", you shouldn't take part in it.

Sure you can argue for or against the double edged sword that is government– and I'm sure most "reasonable people" would argue for it. But saying that the basic tenets that oleganza wrote about are wrong is patently lying to yourself.

If you don't pay your taxes, don't agree with a court's verdict, don't pay a fine that you got– guess what, ultimately things will be resolved by holding you against your will in a little concrete cell, and if you try to get out of it, violence will be used against you.

> But anyone in a democracy can become a politician and gain that power or a political activist

Have you been following the news recently? Do you see what happens to activists? As for the argument "anyone can become politician and have power", I find staring at the pictures on this page to be pretty self-explanatory wrt that argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_...

You can dismiss it all if you want, but you're only fooling yourself.

I live in Paris. My comment is extra-relevant because in every discussion of something that government does "wrong" people miss the big picture. The problem is not in some particular "bad action", but in concentration of violence.

Now, it's offensive that you call my view "extremist". It's not me who teaches you how to leave, makes apologies for taxation, inflation, controls, restrictions, violent intervention and threats. It is people with guns who are "extremists" because instead of seeking peaceful solutions, they "solve" everything by decree and a gun.

I will never ever pose a threat to you or your lifestyle. If you like your government, party or president - that's fine. I will never threaten you based on your beliefs. Now will you threaten me based on my beliefs? I don't want to participate in your club, receive "services" from it or support your laws or president. Will you respect me like I respect you?

>It is people with guns who are "extremists" because instead of seeking peaceful solutions, they "solve" everything by decree and a gun.

Democracy is a pretty fucking peaceful solution in most developped nations to solve things. The guns are there to protect the democratic system, because if there's nothing like that, people have been shown to not follow the rules decided by the democratic system.

Empirical evidence is a lot more convincing than your personal theory on how things "should" work.

"The guns are there to protect the democratic system"

You have just presented a justification for guy A killing guy B for now forking over his part of income to guy C.

Now you need to decipher "democratic system" and what does it mean in reality.

I my view, it's a label for a system where opinions of some people must be forced onto others using force based on some sophisticated paperwork called "voting".

1. Collective action makes progress a lot easier 2. Democracy is the least worst way to do it 3. I'm fine with violence not being a free market value

I think you'll find that the large majority of people agree with the third point, and even without democracy, the will of the large majority will impose itself onto everyone except in very few cases.

As I said in other threads, existence of things does not justify itself.

The fact that majority of people can force anyone in minority to comply does not say anything about morality.

I point out that people tell themselves that it is okay if majority seemingly "decide" to to allow someone to kill some people. I question that belief which oddly looks very similar to any religious dogma.

You advocate for "progress" and "democracy is the lest worst". I'm fine with it, live your life and participate in democracy. But let me politely disagree with you. Will you not participate in "majority" that tries to kill me if I don't give them my stuff?

   You have just presented a justification for guy A killing guy B for now forking over his part of income to guy C.

Without the government, activities like that will take place without any justification.

First, it's an assertion without a proof.

Second, in other words you say "I don't know how to protect myself against random violence without centralized violence, I will advocate imposing that violence on everyone around."

Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate "guns are bad" or "guns are good" here. If you want to set up your protection club with helicopters and ninjas, I have nothing against. But do you say it must be imposed on me? Only because I somehow benefit under umbrella of your enterprise? In other words, you want to force me to pay for your business model when it's you who bothers about security and cannot figure out how to pay for it voluntarily.

Taking your two answers together, it seems that hiring a security company to provide armed guards to protect me would be perfectly acceptable to you.

What's to stop consolidation amongst the security companies? What would prevent them from using their monopoly of force to set up whatever government they liked?

That's essentially how central government formed in the first place. Why wouldn't it just happen again?

Even if it could, is it a justification for it?

I think government is only possible when many believe it's good. It's not only raw violence. If people see violence they don't like it. That's why government tries hard hiding it under abstract concepts.

What has justification got to do with anything?

People aren't arguing with you because they like the fact that the government uses force. The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.

Certainly people are susceptible to a kind of strange loyalty to governments, but if you remove the government that won't just disappear. People will just become loyal to the most powerful mob for protection. That's what happened before. It's up to you to explain why it would be any different now.

I think we already have "private" dictatorships in most of the world. 2/3 of states are fucked up, just look at failed state index or press freedom index.

> The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.

If you are right and private defense organization would collapse into one, then why there is no single government? (Moreover, some of states(like USSR) get decomposed into few more, so the number of states even grows). Why do you assume there is no reason to prevent a number of PDO turning into violent one?

There are great books: Murray Rothbard's "For a new liberty: libertarian manifesto": http://mises.org/document/1010/

David Friedman's "The machinery of freedom": http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

Actually we do have a overall decrease in the number of states over the past few centuries. The USSR is a special case because it was actually based on ideology and not just strength.

We can equally ask why, if your libertarian philosophy is so naturally stable, it has not emerged into the world yet?

> Actually we do have a overall decrease in the number of states over the past few centuries.

It doesn't really affect my argument(if all states didn't collapse into one over past couple of centuries, then multi-government system is quite stable), but I am quite interested in the source(out of pure curiousity).

> The USSR is a special case because it was actually based on ideology and not just strength

Almost all states utilize some sort of ideology. In fact, I agree that ideological component was really strong in the USSR, but the USSR did use raw power - it annexed baltic states for example.

Also, there are other examples: Czechoslovakia, South & North Sudan.

> We can equally ask why, if your libertarian philosophy is so naturally stable, it has not emerged into the world yet?

I would define stable as "won't collapse once established". The problem of stability is orthogonal to the problem of establishing. It is not easy to organize a market anarchy when all territory is occupied by the state(note: you cannot easily organize another state either, though existing states are relatively stable). In past there were more or less "anarcho-capitalist" societies which lasted for thousands of years: medieval iceland, medieval ireland.

Iceland: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Iceland#Medieval_Iceland_and_Anar...

Ireland: http://pucksmith.blogspot.ru/2013/02/libertarian-ancient-ire...

Please stop calling it "offensive" when people have a strong reaction your views.

Fair enough.

Would you prefer distribution of violence?

> Only government has trained sadists with well-oiled guns.

They don't need sadist these days. Upstanding normal people do just fine.

these days

I'm pretty sure soldiers were never largely composed of particularly sadist people.

It's unfortunate the general population is ignorant as to what a government actually is. A government is violence. Their only tool is violence. Their only service is violence. If you don't understand what that means, you don't understand what a government is.

People will reply to you: "But look, government also does nice things: educates, provides care etc".

My point: it all does not matter in the slightest. If you enjoy something government does, that's great. Good for you. I will never think taking it away from you. But please also allow me not to participate, not to pay and not to be threatened as a consequence of YOUR preference.

It's not possible. You can't live in a place and not participate in its political regime, even if it lacked a government. For example, you claim to not want to pay, but that is meaningless in a regime without the concept of property.

Existence of things is not a justification for them.

There is always theft and rape and lies around us. But we don't justify them just because we see them. Only some moral justification gives government huge size and power. People believe that while theft and murder are bad, when government does it according to some scripture, they can be good. It's just like any double standard in any ancient religion.