I cannot respect someone who does not practice what they advise others to do:
>I understand that most of this is impossible for the typical Internet user. Even I don't use all these tools for most everything I am working on. And I'm still primarily on Windows, unfortunately. Linux would be safer.
https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/09/how_to_remain...
If you can't live what you're paid to advise others on, then you aren't worth your salt.
That discussion is relevant to this Schneier thread too, in fact :P
Got a "that comment was too long" so I'm splitting it in twain.
This is the first part.
"I pointed out that taxation meets the criteria for extortion: you're giving up your property under threat of violence. It's clearly a match."
No, it's not clearly a match, because the question arises of whether it is legitimately your property, which is the entire point I was making with the laptop example.
'You asked if me demanding my laptop back would constitute extortion, which we both know it doesn't. There are two reasons why not: 1) the laptop is my property (regardless of "how"), 2) there is no threat. This is why my original reaction was: "Oh come on".'
If there is no threat, then it's not extortion for both the reasons you say. I've stated a few times now that I had meant it to include an implicit threat. Without the implicit threat, I agree the example is uninteresting - so let's actually talk about the interesting question instead of ducking it?
"But now you're saying the laptop was an example of something that meets the criteria of extortion without being extortion.. and that's just not true."
Again, I'd meant it to include a threat - I think (even rereading) this was clear from what I'd originally written and I've mentioned it a few times since. I'm growing increasingly skeptical that you're missing it by accident rather than clinging to some way to "win" on a technicality.
Trying again... If your demand for the return of your laptop includes a threat, is it extortion? I say no, because it is not legitimately mine to keep, but that admits the possibility that there may be other reasons something might not be one's to keep. That was my point.
"What you said is comparable to me declaring that I'll just shoot you in the kneecaps and take your money if I ever come across you, just because I want the money, so fuck you and fuck your well-being."
If you mean that's a logical consequence or extension of what I said, that's not the case at all.
If you mean you're disrespecting the stuff I value because I disrespected the stuff you value, then I think you can still find some degrees of difference if you try really hard - I can dig in here more if we need to.
If neither of those is what you mean, then I'm not sure what you mean.
'So that's perfectly alright if it results in a "good outcome", as defined by.. who? Me? -Obviously, you don't have a say because you're the one being robbed to achieve whatever good outcome I might have set my sights on.'
Well, I want the system that leads to the best outcome as defined by me. Obviously! It's me that's doing the wanting. However, 1) other people living well is something I value, and 2) a big practical concern (whatever I happen to value) is negotiating with others and eliciting their cooperation (or at least noninterference). I assure you that whatever your preferences, shooting me in the kneecaps is not likely to lead to your best fulfilling them in the short, medium, and long term - partly because, as a society, we've agreed to step in and deal harshly with people who act that way.
"Do you see why I talked about the end not justifying the means? Your way of thinking is like Stalin's or Mao's. They had lots of good outcomes in mind when slaughtering hundreds of millions of innocent people. In other words, your way of thinking is, in fact, fucked up."
Do you see that this here is an appeal to outcomes that I object to as well? As I've said, there are absolutely rights that I believe should be protected in large part because I think that it serves as some defense against things like that. But if I did not believe that, this wouldn't be any sort of an argument. You think I should change what I value because of the consequences of my preferences? That's not how perfect rational agents or human beings work.
And without looking at how various rights protect us, there's not really anything about those cases that motivate any particular set of rights being respected - if we simply all respected everyone's right to life there wouldn't be mass killings - your particular framing of property rights and voluntarism isn't required.
'Don't talk about good or better "outcomes", that's a misguided, mass-coercion-rationalizing attitude.'
Outcomes are the only thing that matters. Though that is not to say final outcomes are the only thing that matters - what happens in the medium term and short term are also outcomes of whatever decisions are made and are also important. The means don't justify the ends, either.
'You don't know "the correct outcome" for a society - there is no such thing, and above all, you can't arrange for it to happen through coercion.'
That's not coherent, but trying my best to respond...
I don't claim to know "the correct outcome" for society, or even that there is such a thing. I claim that for the various paths the future can take, I would prefer some of them to others. If that is a controversial claim, I'm pretty baffled.
Given this, I favor policy that I think most steers us toward the paths that I favor and away from the paths that I don't, accounting for uncertainty in my models and my knowledge. A big part of that is protection of certain rights. A part of that is, in my present best judgement, having a government - and working to improve it.
'What people could do, is follow the golden rule - do unto others as you'd have done to yourself.'
For issues that impact everyone, contribution toward creating and sustaining important public goods falls rather naturally out of that. Just as those who would do unto others quite dramatically other than those others want must eventually be coerced to abide by the principle, it's not ludicrous that similar could apply on the other side.
'That way we'd actually reach the best possible "outcome" for everyone, which is something you'll understand if you accept Austrian economics.'
It's also something I'd understand if I accept that God will always make everything always work out for the best. The fact that I could believe false things and come to particular conclusions does not support those conclusions. (It also doesn't undermine them, first order, though it might explain why other people have reached them).
'Oh this again. Boo-hoo, it's not a "real science". Well so fucking what?'
My objection is not that it doesn't have the label "real science". My objection is that it is not actually seeking truth by any mechanism likely to arrive at it. So fucking that.
'Does people's behaviour work like mathematics, or.. is it perhaps, unpredictable?'
I'm not sure what you're getting at here.
'Austrian economics is based on observations on how people actually behave, in reality.'
This is just flat out false. Austrian economics is based on Mise's Praxeology and makes certain assumptions about how humans behave whilst ignoring the huge amounts of psychological research we have into "how humans actually behave".
"Since economies consist of millions of people making exchanges, that's the best possible basis for a school of economic thought."
Arguably, but there are thousands of places where error can creep in when you are composing things at that scale, so you still have to vet your model by comparing to reality (ideally at multiple levels).
Austrian economics is Newtonian physicists saying "We know how particles behave, and organisms are made up of particles, so we can extrapolate how biology works. These other biologists that actually look at animals aren't doing real biology." Newtonian biologists completely miss that complex interaction can produce interesting patterns that can be usefully modelled. That these patterns are in principle reducible to behavior and interaction of the individual components is no guarantee that such reduction will be computationally feasible; describing it at the higher level may be more predictive and more useful. Further, not all interaction between particles can be described by Newtonian physics in the first place and the difference may compound. Both of these provide significant room for their axiomatic conclusions to be profoundly wrong.
"It doesn't take much to understand this once you stop insisting on clinging on to your preconceived notions of what economics should be like."
The notion to blame - which I'll absolutely not stop clinging to - is that Economics (like any science) must involve actually comparing models to reality. Otherwise, it's just abstract mathematics (a great thing, but you should know that's what you're doing) or science-flavored theology (not so great a thing). Austrian economics has some of both.
"Really now? How's that working out so far? Does it work in the burgeoning police state of the US?"
Honestly, it's been working out okay. There are quite clearly things that need work - there are always things that need work, government or no.
"What about North-Korea? Did it work in Mao's China?"
I'm not aware that there was a culture of respect for rights in North Korea or Mao's China.
I don't want to bicker about what property is. Here's one idea: property is value that you want to control. For example, if you write a SaaS app, you don't want anyone else to get the source code, because then they could make money off of your work, against your will.
Another idea is that property is a "rivalrous" resource that you have exclusive control over. In this case, rivalrous means that only one person can control that resource at a time, and thus, there may be "rivalry" over the resource.
But this is all perfectly aligned with our intuitive sense of what property is. If you've got an apple in your hand, everyone else will automatically consider it your property, and so on.
What you're doing here, is muddying the definition of property in an attempt at scraping together some semblance of legitimacy for taxation. "Heyyy, if everything everywhere is the government's property, then taxation is not extortion!".. Well, next we'd need to delve into what constitutes legitimate property. Common sense suggests that anything acquired through coercion is not legitimate property.
Furthermore, if everything really were the government's property, would taxes need to be collected by force? Wouldn't people acknowledge that in fact, whenever they produce value to someone else in exchange for a payment, the money they receive is actually the government's property? But that makes no sense whatsoever, of course. It's not the government that just produced value to whoever paid you for it - it was you.
> Do you see that this here is an appeal to outcomes that I object to as well?
What you think is a good "outcome" might not be what someone else wants. If you impose your will on him anyway, you've got issues. Stalin had good outcomes in mind, and pursued them regardless of anyone else's objections. In fact, if anyone objected, Stalin just killed him. But if all you're thinking about is "outcomes", you might not even see anything wrong with what Stalin did.
Basically you want Good Things for everyone, right? But then you declare that if achieving Good Things requires doing Bad Things to other people, that's alright because the end justifies the means. Do you really not see the problem here?
But you know, throughout history, where ever there's been a freeish market, it's produced widespread prosperity. Take the early United States, for example. A minimal government, and massive wealth. That's your "good outcome" right there. When you get out of the way and let people produce wealth, they'll just go ahead and do it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL05A07B2585EC9019&feature...
> [Austrian economics] My objection is that it is not actually seeking truth by any mechanism likely to arrive at it.
And you know this by.. never even looking into Austrian economics? Watch this and you'll see how delightfully practical Austrian economics is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL0C620AECA6617E2E&feature... - you'll have a hard time disagreeing with what they say.
> Austrian economics is based on Mise's Praxeology and makes certain assumptions about how humans behave whilst ignoring the huge amounts of psychological research we have into "how humans actually behave".
See the above video for some of the fundamentals behind Austrian economics. But feel free to tell me about those assumptions you bemoan, and tell me why they're wrong.
(Or feel free to accept the obvious, practical reality of the fundamentals of economics when Mr. Herbener explains it to you)
The point here is that it's important to understand that maximal freedom produces maximal prosperity for everyone, ie. the best "economic outcome". Voluntary exchanges benefit both parties, and so, the more of those happen, the more instances of people being better off will occur. Voluntary exchanges are maximized by maximizing freedom. In other words, getting out of the way and letting people trade and markets work.
> [Keeping the US government in check] Honestly, it's been working out okay.
You're either not paying attention to anything around you, or you know that's not true.
This is eating up enough of my time, and I think we're making little enough progress, that I'm going to turn my attention to other responsibilities. I may or may not get back to this discussion.
"I don't want to bicker about what property is. Here's one idea: property is value that you want to control. For example, if you write a SaaS app, you don't want anyone else to get the source code, because then they could make money off of your work, against your will."
I definitely reject that definition of property. For one thing, I might want to control the laptop you paid for, so it's clearly leaving something important out. I also don't like the collapse of value caused by pretending non-rival goods are rivalrous.
'Another idea is that property is a "rivalrous" resource that you have exclusive control over. In this case, rivalrous means that only one person can control that resource at a time, and thus, there may be "rivalry" over the resource.'
That's better - and certainly rivalousness is an important motivator for why we need some system to mediate access ("property"), but it doesn't speak to why it's your property instead of my property or Jim's property.
"But this is all perfectly aligned with our intuitive sense of what property is. If you've got an apple in your hand, everyone else will automatically consider it your property, and so on."
Not really. Even that example depends very much on social context. If I am in a grocery store, standing in front of a pile of apples, with a shopping basket in one hand and an apple in the other people won't assume the apple in my hand is mine to do with as I please. It would still be rude for them to snatch it from my hand (or basket) though - there is a distinction between possession and property that is occasionally important.
"What you're doing here, is muddying the definition of property in an attempt at scraping together some semblance of legitimacy for taxation."
Absent the normative content, yes, that's more or less what I'm trying to do. I am trying to make sure every part of what we label "the right to property" is in fact useful to our aims in having rights, because otherwise we will be restricting people in ways that are not well motivated and permitting retaliation in situations where it is not justified.
I think that some parts of what we lump together as "the right to property" are more important than others. I think most important (in no particular order) 1) valued work being rewarded, 2) everyone playing by the same rules, and 3) no arbitrariness in deprivation of property. Reasonable levels of taxation, determined democratically and enforced fairly, don't violate any of these. I'm open to the idea that other aspects are important to, but I don't see it as being clearly the case so you'll have to explain why.
'"Heyyy, if everything everywhere is the government's property, then taxation is not extortion!"'
That is not where I was going, and it's unnecessary to my argument here. It just requires that portion that is taxed to be considered "the government's property", or even "temporarily my property but legitimately owed to the government". You can continue to hold to the illigitimacy of the social contract, but with normal contracts this is certainly an ordinary thing - if I make a deal to sell sweaters you've made on contingency, people pay me for the sweaters but only some of that money is legitimately mine - some is owed back to you.
"Well, next we'd need to delve into what constitutes legitimate property."
Yes, precisely. And I would argue that we socially determine that, and particular systems can be objectively better or worse when measured against various metrics. We should individually push toward the system we expect to give the best outcome, and we should abide by the system that is in place for the most part.
"Common sense suggests that anything acquired through coercion is not legitimate property."
I think I agree that common sense suggests that, but I'm not sure that's not the result of poor reasoning. It is absolutely the case that there are examples of transfer by coercion that are completely illegitimate, and these spring readily to mind. I am not confident it is correct to generalize it to "all transfers through coercion are illegitimate". Restorative transfers (giving you your laptop back) seem clearly legitimate, there may be other examples where it is also obvious.
"Furthermore, if everything really were the government's property, would taxes need to be collected by force?"
I'll note again that "everything is the government's property" is not the framework I'm suggesting, but your question is still interesting in mine.
The answer is quite emphatically "Yes" - even if taxes are legitimately (and popularly seen to be) the property of the government before collection, we would expect force to occasionally be necessary (and thus it to be "ultimately backed up with force" in the general case). It is quite clearly the case that not everyone respects the property rights of others, even in the most clear cut cases. We ultimately enforce your right to your laptop with force, as well.
"Wouldn't people acknowledge that in fact, whenever they produce value to someone else in exchange for a payment, the money they receive is actually the government's property?"
Noting again - some of the money they receive.
I think that it's not terribly uncommon for them to acknowledge this. Most people feel that some amount of taxation is legitimate - you earlier bemoaned the poor, deluded people accepting their own extortion; my position is that they are not deluded. You'll certainly get complaints about the money being spent poorly - and some of it certainly is, and that should be fixed - but the basic notion that some taxation is legitimate is commonly held.
"But that makes no sense whatsoever, of course. It's not the government that just produced value to whoever paid you for it - it was you."
The government did many things that helped enable you to produce that value. They paved roads, they enforce contracts, they protect your property... While there are potential private ways to get some of that done, they would themselves involve paying out more money (eg. use fees for the turnpike). It's not crazy that you owe some money in proportion to the amount you're benefiting from the shared infrastructure, which is partly expressed by how much you're being paid for what you're doing.
For the record, I agree that "all property is actually owned by the government" is not a very good model.
> For one thing, I might want to control the laptop you paid for, so it's clearly leaving something important out.
Blindingly obviously, "value you want to control" only applies when you've produced or legitimately acquired that value, through a voluntary exchange for example. But I think this idea covers all property, regardless of whether it's a house or a book you wrote. There's no point in bickering about "what if you don't want to control the value you've produced? -is it property then?" .. etc, what you want to do with value under your control is up to you.
As for an apple in your hand, yes, of course it depends on the context, but it's pointless to confound the issue like that. The point was that in general, anything that's already in your possession is automatically considered your property, and there's no need for a central state to "enforce" that - it's just our intuitive understanding of property.
> Reasonable levels of taxation, determined democratically and enforced fairly, don't violate any of these.
There is no reasonable level of extortion, and it's not like we get to determine it democratically anyway.
But how exactly do you think a portion of our property could, in fact, be the government's property instead? -Because "we" (hah!) have "democratically determined" a certain level of taxation? Does taxation mean some of your property magically turning into the government's property? -How does that work? :p
Or perhaps more pertinently, does a piece of paper grant some people rights that others don't have? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ngp... .. or the flipside, does a piece of paper magically prevent the government from shipping people off to Guantanamo and torturing them for months?
Here are the correct answers, for your convenience: "No" and "No".
Oh, but silly me! I've overlooked the democratic process again, which gives the government ownership of a portion of our bodies, and they're certainly free to use their property as they please! In Guantanamo's case, they're using portions of some people's bodies to inflict pain on the other parts! But it's obviously a perfectly legitimate use of one's property!
> I am not confident it is correct to generalize it to "all transfers through coercion are illegitimate". Restorative transfers (giving you your laptop back) seem clearly legitimate
Your stolen laptop never ceased to be your legitimate property.
> Most people feel that some amount of taxation is legitimate
Yes, you could say that. But why is that, and have they thought things through?
Imagine you're a murderous, psychopath warlord, and you're looting a population of say, 100 000 people through active violence. You want to keep looting other people, because you just want money and power and you're a psychopath, right? But would you also like to minimize the risks and effort involved?
For example, the longer you continue your violent oppression, the higher the likelihood that one of your victims decides to risk his life in an attempt at killing you. Clearly, that's something you don't want to happen, because they might actually succeed, and then you'd be dead and unable to continue looting everyone!
Not only that, but your henchmen would prefer not having to keep risking their own well-being by actively subjugating the general population. Someone might hurt them too!
But what if the population you're looting stopped resisting? What if you could loot them all their lives, without any risk to your personal well-being, and without the need for such a large number of henchmen eating into your loot?
Wouldn't it be awesome if you could get the population to believe that your looting is actually necessary and beneficial to them? You know, if you set up an "education" system, you might be able to shape their thinking into something conducive to effortless looting! Perhaps something like the Prussian system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system - As the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, a key influence on the system, said, "If you want to influence [the student] at all, you must do more than merely talk to him; you must fashion him, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will."
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLmmQ8peduhsoaTpJELl6a9P-t... )
That would certainly get you quite far, but would it be enough? Perhaps you could offer them some services too? If you could convince your victims that without your security services, there would be chaos and mayh- nay, anarchy on the streets, you could make it much more difficult to dismantle your looting system.
If you could, then, add helping other people into the mix, that would be a delightfully convoluted mess for anyone to pick apart! I mean, if someone woke up and realized you're looting everyone, he'd face massive resistance from everyone around him! Others would be angry at him for wanting poor people to suffer and die of starvation, and what kind of a monster would want innocent children deprived of education?! -They'd get nowhere in life without proper education!
.. OK, you get the idea. But I think I'll just give up here. It's not like this will get through to you either.
'> Do you see that this here is an appeal to outcomes that I object to as well?
'What you think is a good "outcome" might not be what someone else wants.'
I'm not sure why you quoted what you did. If your sentence above is a response to the quoted bit, you seem to be missing my point.
I said that, at base, I care about outcomes - and my respect for certain rights derives from that. You said, "If at base you care about outcomes instead of rights, there will be bad outcomes." Do you not see that this is restating my reason for respecting rights? The only difference is that I have some justification for which rights need to be respected in ways that aren't simply appeals to what sounds good.
'If you impose your will on him anyway, you've got issues. Stalin had good outcomes in mind, and pursued them regardless of anyone else's objections. In fact, if anyone objected, Stalin just killed him. But if all you're thinking about is "outcomes", you might not even see anything wrong with what Stalin did.'
Killing people is an outcome I object to, whatever the longer term plans. Partly first-order, and partly because it violates rights that themselves help steer us to better outcomes.
"Basically you want Good Things for everyone, right? But then you declare that if achieving Good Things requires doing Bad Things to other people, that's alright because the end justifies the means. Do you really not see the problem here?"
I really don't see the problem with what I said. "The end justifies the means" is not a statement I would typically make, because of associations. There is a sense in which rejection of it is good guidance, and a sense in which it quite clearly holds. Ends obviously justify means in that everything is necessarily on a single ledger - we have to make decisions and forcing lexicographic preferences (rights before any amount of anything else) leads to weird outcomes (doubly so if our genuine preferences aren't actually lexicographic). If there is a terrible thing, and the only way to prevent it is to do a bad thing, then that bad thing probably should be done.
There are several issues with that, when moving from theory to practice, however.
First, you should be damned sure the bad thing is better enough at preventing the terrible thing, compared to other options, to balance out the badness.
Second, there are some known failure modes of human cognition that can lead to systematically underweighting certain kinds of badness and overweighting certain kinds of goodness. "I need to do violence to others to get (or retain) power in order to accomplish good things" is a particularly strong example of such.
Third, it is important to recognize all the kinds of harm being done - including indirect harms casued by the violation of certain kinds of norms. Maybe I believe the world would be better if Josh died, but if I kill him then everyone else needs to worry a bit more that someone might decide that the world would be better if they died, and that is itself quite a bit of harm.
Respecting these caveats, the ends justify the means.
"But you know, throughout history, where ever there's been a freeish market, it's produced widespread prosperity. Take the early United States, for example. A minimal government, and massive wealth."
From what I've read, that's not very accurate at all. There certainly were some periods with phenomenal growth, and some of these where when we had a relatively minimal government, but most of our early history - when our government was most minimal - we weren't a terribly wealthy country even despite the tremendous natural resources available to our comparatively small population. The periods where we saw the biggest growth, following the industrial revolution, also saw tremendous consolidation of power in the hands of a few individuals. It's true that economies can be overregulated in ways that stifle growth and innovation and that can be a big problem, but "too much is bad, ergo none is best" is not a reliable principle.
'That's your "good outcome" right there. When you get out of the way and let people produce wealth, they'll just go ahead and do it.'
And to the degree that I believe that to be the case, I agree that somewhat more laissez-faire governance is appropriate.
'http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL05A07B2585EC9019&feature...
Lots of cherry-picked examples from an Austrian economist justifying his positions. Not the work of a serious historian actually exploring the issues. Not terribly convincing, and not much mentioned that I wasn't aware of (though I disagree with the framing applied to more than a few of them).
"> [Austrian economics] My objection is that it is not actually seeking truth by any mechanism likely to arrive at it.
"And you know this by.. never even looking into Austrian economics?"*
Yes, of course, that's exactly right. I was born with an innate... no, wait, government bureaucrats came by and informed me that Austrian Economics is silly, and of course I believe them because they're the government!
No. I know this because I did a fair amount of more credulous reading of primary sources in Austrian Economics some years ago and came away with mixed feelings; more recently someone whose reasoning and judgement I've come to trust on other topics pointed out the fundamental rejection of evidence going on, and that seems correct from what I had read and what others have said in support of Austrian Economics.
"Watch this and you'll see how delightfully practical Austrian economics is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL0C620AECA6617E2E&feature... - you'll have a hard time disagreeing with what they say."
I disagree with little of that, but that's unsurprising - mainstream economists would also disagree with little of that. The repeated attribution of strawman positions to mainstream economists is something I disagree with - it's almost entirely basic microeconomics.
I do disagree with some pieces.
He presents the fact that you cannot compare valuations between people as a devastating blow to centralized decision-making, but then ignores the fact that it applies equally well in decentralized decision-making. If person A has greater need for something than person B, asking what they'll spend is one way of measuring that utility as compared to their other options but their other options may be entirely unrelated. If I'm stinkin' rich, and you're barely getting by, my preferences may be satisfied to the point where my whims are valued more highly than your survival. The market economy doesn't solve the problem, it ignores the problem; I don't think it's clear that - in principle - assigning each person's preferences equal weight regardless of the magnitude of preference/dispreference is horribly worse than assigning each person's preferences weight according to the resources they already have at their disposal. I think that markets work better than central planning mostly for other reasons (especially proximity of information and experience to decisions).
The assumption that there are deliberate human actions in pursuit of goals is entirely valid, of course. The assumption that all human actions are deliberate is not established - and the notion that individual humans have an individual agency is shakey.
I think there were one or two other points I wanted to raise, but I'm not recalling them. Incidentally, if you can favor text to youtube videos, that would be appreciated. With video it's hard to quickly review or to quote.
"See the above video for some of the fundamentals behind Austrian economics. But feel free to tell me about those assumptions you bemoan, and tell me why they're wrong.
"(Or feel free to accept the obvious, practical reality of the fundamentals of economics when Mr. Herbener explains it to you)"
I raised some points above, but let's flip it around - what points in the video would mainstream economists reject? The above isn't really "Austrian Economics", it's mostly economics that overlaps several schools (except Marxist, but LTV is nuttier than anything the Austrians come up with), and of course I mostly accept it.
'The point here is that it's important to understand that maximal freedom produces maximal prosperity for everyone, ie. the best "economic outcome". Voluntary exchanges benefit both parties, and so, the more of those happen, the more instances of people being better off will occur. Voluntary exchanges are maximized by maximizing freedom. In other words, getting out of the way and letting people trade and markets work.'
Voluntary exchanges benefit both parties to the exchange, but "both parties" aren't always all parties involved. You're ignoring externalities, which can often be a significant issue.
"> [Keeping the US government in check] Honestly, it's been working out okay.
You're either not paying attention to anything around you, or you know that's not true."
Overwhelmingly, people are able to live reasonably happy, reasonably productive lives and get on with things. There are absolutely abuses and things that need addressing, but I've been paying a lot of attention and I stand by my statement. There are a lot of examples of problems because we're huge, but per capita very few people die from violence compared to places and times with minimal government, and that's a good thing.
"Please wake up."
You seriously need to lose the habit of using that phrase. It's annoying, and it makes me struggle not to devalue the rest of what you say.
"There is no way to keep a government in check - it wields absolute power over a geographical area, until the masses stop believing that someone else has the right to rule them, that is."
It is not the case that a government wields absolute power. I don't believe it's the case that there is no way to keep a government in check. Also, I don't think "someone else [having] the right to rule [us]" is a correct characterization of functioning democratic governance (even in a representative democracy).
'No, the only version of the idea of rights that works and is tenable, is one that is based on sound reasoning. If 100 people "collectively decide" that you don't have the right to own a spleen, I'm sure you'd agree that's not a particularly good way of defining rights. Sure, a spleen is an extreme example, but it could be anything really.'
You have shown neither that the above is sound reasoning, nor that other frameworks are not.
And if 100 people decide I don't have a right to a spleen in a context without government, how does that go any better?
"Any collective decision where you're harmed without you harming anyone is obviously wrong."
The more narrowly you define "harm" the more true that becomes, but even at the limit you have trolly-problem-like hypotheticals. If it's the case that 1) Jon dies, or 2) everyone dies, then after we work really hard to figure out some other solution, even if Jon doesn't do the noble thing and volunteer it's unfortunate but not "obviously wrong" for the group to decide he needs to go even if he's not guilty of anything - though they should be damned sure that's really the situation.
"Taxation is not a collective decision, especially when neither of us was ever asked, nor were our parents. In fact, ordinary people have never been asked if they'd like to be extorted. That's kind of like, not how extortion works, after all."
Tax measures have many times been on the ballot in California. Many have passed. I would presume this to be true of at least some other states.
'Here's a conspiracy theory for you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=yuC... .. it's just that it's "the official conspiracy theory". That's exactly what governments would have us believe. Does it sound believable?'
Even repeated derisively like that, little there seems terribly absurd (if a little absurdist). Remembering that this is a rare event picked apart for more than a decade for all the smelly bits, it seems more or less SNAFU.
'Being able to switch from Prison A to Prison B doesn't mean you're free though.'
So, now we're prisoners? I agree with the premise you state here (though having many prisons to choose from would surely constitute being somewhat more free), but there are countless other ways in which it's unreasonable to call us prisoners - we plan our own days, we can travel, we choose what we eat, we choose when we exercise, we're not segregated by gender...
At least for most of us. Disappointingly many are prisoners - which is one of those things that needs fixing; I don't deny that there are a lot of them, I just disagree that abolishing government is the best way to fix them.
'Here's more on that: http://board.freedomainradio.com/page/books/the_handbook_of_...
Yeah, nothing is more illuminating then a failed attempt at satire, particularly when it's verbose and ridiculous. Thank you for passing that along - my eyes are opened.
'Government doesn't change that you know. If someone decides to rob you, a police officer won't materialize between you and him to prevent it. If someone wants to hurt you, he'll evaluate the risks vs the "reward", and make a decision based on that.'*
Credible threat of enforcement changes the risks, and so may change the decision. This should be obvious.
"Luckily, the vast majority of people won't hurt you with or without a government."
Agreed, but largely because we live in a society with sufficiently little violence. This is the case because we are able to sufficiently trust one another, which is enabled at this scale by government. I highly recommend "Liars And Outliers", by Bruce Schneier, on the topic of trust in society.
"Prohibition is something the government did. You're just helping my case by bringing it up."
I thought we were trying to explore our various positions and learn something. If we're just trying to score points in a game, my bad - can I have a mulligan?
My point wasn't "Government does great things, like prohibition!" It was nearly as much a mistake as the drug war, obviously. And yes, as an example of a mistake government can make, it certainly helps the case that government is bad.
But my point was deeper. One of the consequences of prohibition (of alcohol or drugs) was to remove government as a means of settling disputes for a group of people handling relatively large sums of money. The result, as Hobbes would've predicted, was violence. There are confounding factors you can cling to, but it was true in the 1920s with prohibition of alcohol and it's true today with prohibition of other substances, and it clearly provides some evidence for the model.
'So now government is a "technology", as if it's something we, the people, "use" to our benefit? :P Nice going there.'
Yes, precisely. And much like any technology it can be misused, poorly designed, poorly configured; and this can lead to frustration or harm. That doesn't mean it has no good uses that can outweigh the harm, or that the harm can't be minimized, or that waving a magic wand will make it go away and things will be better (cf. gun control).
'Well, now you're saying we need "better government", but that's like asking for "better enslavement".'
I've always been saying we need "better government". We always need better government. It's only anything like asking for "better enslavement" if we accept the premise that government is slavery, which I've rejected.
'Once again, governments are. not. responsible. to. anyone. for. their. actions.'
Once again, that's not true. In a functioning democracy, governments are responsible to the people lest the groups with power lose it. In any system, the possibility of revolution serves as a partial check. Governments are also responsible to other governments, in some extreme situations.
'Do you get that because there is no higher power than government, there is nothing to keep them in check? Do you get that because of that, there's nothing governments can't do to us individuals?'
I'm not sure where you derive this ranking in which government is highest, or why only lower powers can be kept in check.
"It takes a massive uprising to topple a government, and then it's always just replaced with another."
Not always; when it's not, things suck even more; see, for instance, many parts of Somalia.
"Oh, and along the way, lots of innocent people are beaten, tased, killed, and tortured by the government, just like in the Ukraine or Venezuela these days."
Revolution is horrible, yes.
"Wake up?"
Again, stuff like this just sounds silly. It makes it harder to actually consider what you have to say.
"The solution to a group of sociopaths in power hurting everyone is not to replace it with another."
I don't think "group of sociopaths in power hurting everyone" is a legitimate description of all government.
Tell that to the people of every tyrannical regime in the history of mankind. Perhaps they were just doing it wrong?
> Also, I don't think "someone else [having] the right to rule [us]" is a correct characterization of functioning democratic governance (even in a representative democracy).
How would you characterize it then?
> You have shown neither that the above is sound reasoning, nor that other frameworks are not.
What reasoning and "other frameworks" might you be referring to?
> And if 100 people decide I don't have a right to a spleen in a context without government, how does that go any better?
How is that relevant to what I said?
> But my point was deeper. One of the consequences of prohibition (of alcohol or drugs) was to remove government as a means of settling disputes for a group of people handling relatively large sums of money.
Why not say something like that then? :p Disregarding whether you've described a real problem, you seem to be suggesting that a government's decision caused a big problem, and therefore, government is.. good?
> Yes, precisely. And much like any technology it can be misused, poorly designed, poorly configured; and this can lead to frustration or harm.
This is just way out there.. :p But tell me, how exactly is government a "technology", how should it be "used", and why didn't we do so? :P
> Once again, that's not true. In a functioning democracy, governments are responsible to the people lest the groups with power lose it.
Well, "luckily" the real power is not with rank-and-file politicians that indeed do come and go: http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.fi/2014/02/the-dollar-and-d...
> In any system, the possibility of revolution serves as a partial check.
Again, I'd point to every single tyrannical regime ever. That "partial check" doesn't seem to be working too well.
Look, ultimately it's about how much abuse the general populace is willing to take.. before it's too late to do anything (see: North-Korea, USSR, etc).
Once there's a small group of "people" wielding power over everyone else, the people are guaranteed to end up suffering sooner or later. The ruling class keeps expanding and looting everyone else harder and harder, until you're.. say, in the US in 2014.
The US provides a prime example of what follows from a minimal, "Constitutional" government.
> Governments are also responsible to other governments, in some extreme situations.
Sooo.. War, or something? Well, maybe ordinary Canadians will rescue ordinary Americans from their government? :p "We must give America the blessing of Democracy! Now go forth and kill or be killed!" --> "Sir! Yes! Sir!"
> I'm not sure where you derive this ranking in which government is highest, or why only lower powers can be kept in check.
"Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." - Mao.
I'm sure you know how it works.
> Not always; when it's not, things suck even more; see, for instance, many parts of Somalia.
Again, it's all about the attitude of the general populace. If people accept that there's a ruling class bossing them around - even if it's a small one - it will grow and gain more and more power. The only limit to a government's growth is the attitude of its subjects.
The government fosters dependence on itself, through various social programs, health care, pensions and so on. Through the education system, the government conditions people into thinking it's absolutely necessary and beneficial, and through controlling the money supply, the government loosens the limits on how much money it can spend.
And here we are. Look at what the US has become. Note how the whole Western world's economies are going down the toilet too, and note how mass surveillance is spreading everywhere.
> Revolution is horrible, yes.
Yeah, and the thing is, without governments, there would be no revolutions! It's like, countless deaths could be avoided!
> I don't think "group of sociopaths in power hurting everyone" is a legitimate description of all government.
Would you settle for "looting everyone" then? That much is accurate at least.