tokenizer

I think this shows scientific institutions and advocates in a bad light.

Rupert Sheldrake had a great TED talk on the dogma's of modern science, and was even further legitimized when a private council of TED banned the talk.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKHUaNAxsTg

> A prison sentence isn't meant to be only punishment for the offender

Well it does punish them. It punishes them with what many would consider torture, and again, my point is that most of these sentences are for non-violent crimes.

> it's also (theoretically) a deterrent to other potential criminals

Yes. Because people will stop smoking pot, stop being dumb drunks, and stop making non-violent mistakes, because of mandatory minimums, 3 strike laws, and horrific legal processes that threaten defendants with maximum sentences for confessions and settlements.

> a chance to rehabilitate the prisoner

Yes, sticking non-violent prisoners in with entrenched gang societies helps rehabilitate people. Also, we rehabilitate them with punishment. Great job state.

If you believe we should lock people up for non-violent crime, my statements stand.

It's a criminal punishment system that punishes not only non-violent and trivial crimes, but also meaningful dissent/experimentation that doesn't hurt anyone, with cruel and unproductive punishment. If we want to continue to "punish" people, and yet talk about "rehabilitation", then I believe there's a little bit of cognitive dissonance happening if you agree these things can coexist.

But still a thousand times better than the traditional left right divide that most of the populace stops learning at.

Do we really need to punish people with prison for non violent crimes?

We might as well call in the Criminal Punishment System, or the Government's Justice System, as it doesn't engender my views of justice, and nor should it for you.

Just buy a computer without a webcam, or cover it up. Problem solved.

Why would the government advertise this when people can now proactively prevent this sort of intrusion now?

I do, I was just saying what you're saying. Changes like this are annoying, and a few people will reject the change.

That said, As long as theres no sound and the ad is to the side of the actual content/app, its not that big of a deal. I use adblocker for all sites except grooveshark, which uses a video ad with no audio. Dont mind it that much...

OR, people won't care, and you and I are the small minority who bother to block them or boycott said websites,

I can definitely sympathize with your perspective. But that also sounds like a lack of community cohesiveness and unwillingness to improve the area by the local populace.

Where I'm from, we have free schools (anarchist workshops where anyone can attend or present), volunteering workshops, apprenticeships, etc. If you're community has a mafia(s) abusing a local area, you don't send your kids to the biggest one for protection and call it moral. It's just more comfortable. The moral option would be to fight the coercion that your community is suffering from (which seems entrenched sadly).

Also, I don't think public schooling gives a free pass at the potentiality that these students won't join gangs. It's most likely a complex set of reasons that may include that gang being the dominant form of force in the area (a mafia/government w/o the monopoly on force).

Also, I don't believe there is such a thing a no education. Again, just because some people don't have book smarts doesn't mean they aren't smart.

Could you explain what you mean?

What I meant was that while I believe equality and guaranteed access to basic needs as the goal of humanity and necessary for future growth at some point, I also believe that it's impossible to achieve these goals through institutions and governments.

My moral change from being a left leaning anarchists to a right leaning anarchist was because I was swayed by Stefan Molyneux's Philosophical arguments for Individualist Anarchy. The only sticking point I still have is the question of wage labour, which I am opposed to. But then it's hard to imagine a society where you can't work for a wage...

I think there's a saying about how cows in the slaughterhouse can't truly argue about what's outside. They both have no experience.

Your previous point:

> If your definition of morality is "a system for decreeing who should die" rather than "a system for ensuring everyone lives", you are the problem.

Isn't correct. No individualist chooses anything for anyone else less it be voluntary and without force/coercion.

> Justify your religious faith using objective data and control groups, or go back to church, please.

Resorting to name calling isn't going to win you any awards. I'm an atheist and I just simple believe freedom comes at a cost of having to have individual responsibility in terms of sustaining your welfare and direction. I come from a multi-generational welfare home. The state pacified my family, it didn't help them. I broke the cycle through individual merit and determination. This would still allow you to do as you wish, so long as others volunteer for your collective, and you don't infringe on an individuals rights.

My system permits yours to exist. Does yours permit mine to exist? That's the real moral crossroads we sit at. Also:

> Justify your religious faith using objective data and control groups

You know Philosophy isn't science right? The fact you ask for it screams you're a utopian statist who simply wants to be god. What is your alternative to individual freedom? A complex set of fluidly changing social rules that bind/limit us all that go beyond violence? Jail or Injure a Man/Woman because they disagree to cooperate with your rules? Just don't harm or tell me what to do and we'll be friends. Sounds like that's not reciprocal with you, and that I'd be required to follow other rules, lest I be jailed/killed/banished/boycotted.

Also, it seems like any anarchist society not predicated on either individualist or consensus based policy is prone to majority rule. What do you do with opposition? Punish them? Even if they're non violent. This all screams government, which ruins the anarchy...

Nope! You need this piece of paper you see? And, you'll need to give us $25,000 to get it. /s

> And if some children don't want to get any education, and their parents are ok with it, or just too poor to care or deem it important?

I suppose YOU know what's better for them right? The argument is founded on the morals that people should be given freedom, along with the benefits and responsibilities that entails.

Most of our 5,000+ years of known history had no public schooling and constant albeit slow progress. If you're trying to say you're morally obligated the threaten to take my children away from me because I/them decide their education is acceptable, even if YOU view it as none, then ask yourself if this exact same discussion would still be defended by yourself if we were living in the DPRK under harsh and oppressive control by our government.

Thats the main difference really between individualists and collectivists thought. You think we're stupid, and we think you're evil. The government of the US or Canada ISN'T the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, but to me, it could be. All we need are less individual rights, and more dependence on a nanny state that thinks it knows what's best for me. You may choose safety, but I'd rather choose Liberty. My option permits yours. Does your mine?

> What about the kids whose parents won't ever take them to one of these spaces/libraries?

What about them? There are plenty of children growing up today that either don't go to school, get expelled, or refuse to learn anything. I don't see the difference. The percentage of children of going to these places? What about the last 5000 years of human progress? Surely they progressed without mandatory/forced state education. Would you agree with yourself if we were all in North Korea knowing what we know? That's the problem with hypotheticals, you can expound ad infinitum.

> The problem is that for a percentage of children (varies by country, but quite high in the third world), handing the responsibility of their education to their parents is even shittier.

Which doesn't matter. The question isn't what's more economically efficient or favourable to higher literacy rates. It's a matter of morality. If the state requires me to let them raise my children, and threatens me with force if I do not, then in your opinion, who's in the wrong?

Now of course, things need to be in context. But you can't simply make an assertion that the state will always be better of a parent to a child than even a poor or illiterate or even neglectful parent. The problem with the ability to exert pressure on persons to send their children to public schooling is that it violates a natural and historical bond, and replaces it with "the monopoly on violence" in the name of justice. Always in the name of justice.

Ask yourself this, if you're worried about children becoming illiterate, then surely you're worried about children joining armies to fight economic wars, children being locked in prison for nonviolent crimes, and children being used to scapegoat authoritarian measures right? What about the children -is not a defense between the DPRK threatening to take my child because I won't permit them to indoctrinate her.

Agreed. But it doesn't look like our brothers/sisters in arms would afford us the same luxuries does it?

To me it sounds like THEY want the monopoly on force to be governed by a majority or consensus, which would then impose taxes, threaten opposition with force, and centralize power.... Sounds like a government to me...

I truly don't think anarcho-capitalism is an abomination. I've come to this stance FROM being a socialist because it's the only moral way of doing things. Thoughts?

I don't think they understand that without individual freedoms reigning supreme, we'll have monopolies, lack of innovation, taxes, etc. Oh, and don't forget tracking/passport/entry visas because of taxes. Oh and don't forget mandatory "collective" (but NOT state) schooling.

Taxes = Theft, Government = the Monopoly on Violence, and Capitalism (which is separate from the free market) = Wage Slavery and too much power. Your thoughts?

I think there's an important distinction to make between governance and government. One being the actions that govern things, the other being an institution with monopoly on violence and tax revenue.

I think this kid says it all best: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8jUxg81o8Q

So to me a government isn't just one person, nor is it a small collective. Any other form of socialism or large scale governance that isn't based on confederation in the loosest sense with small collectives respecting each others differences, simply has too much power IMO.

That was my interpretation of what anoncowherd meant. To me, anarcho-capitalists are necessary for reformist action that can expand rights and fight coercion. Any arguments for the abolishment of wage slavery can and should be had, but lets not forget that we're able to discuss that issue, which seems to be the biggest sticking point between anarcho-capitalists and other anarchists.

That said, I'd love your opinion on taxes, volunteerism, and force. I think many anarchists are utopian statists who don't realise how important it is for an anarchist society to oppose the creation of central authorities and the formation of "too big to fail institutions". Love your thoughts on that.

Agreed. I've always been a proponent of dual power reformation. We need to definitely move towards having more "commons" and less "Owned by PLC INC".

That said, we still can't really agree on cooperating unless you believe in private personal residences. You mentioned revolutionary socialists and we're talking about anarchy, and I think we have much common ground in taking back the means of production for the local communities through the institution alternatives you've mentioned.

But again my concern is my privacy of living. I am currently in an apartment alone. How I engage my society in regards to living doesn't really matter (currency exchange, work exchange, basic right) as long as I have some rights to lock my apartment door, protect myself from invaders (which you could argue might not exist with a different economic system), and have peace of mind regarding my property, which again, while I lean heavily to the left, do not agree with the idea that ownership of anything be not permitted. Works of art, Furniture, Important tools related to my craft, etc -are all something I believe shouldn't be so easily commonized, lest we all fight to the death for individual rights.

Well considering the cost of the Dept. of Education is 71.9 a year (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_United_States_federal_budg...), that would work out to 20$ a year for a population of 360 Million. Adjusted for Youth, which is around 73.9 Million (http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012...), we're looking at about 972$ per youth per year.

Thats what the governments pays now for the entire system. The teachers, the building costs, the supplies, etc. If we really wanted to have an alternative to public schooling, IMO (I'm an anarchist) it couldn't be done with a voucher system.

The best solution is to question school as an institution. It was primarily for very young children and for reading. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Education_in_the_Uni...

We need to rethink these institutions and consider the technological advantages. My solution would be to put half of that 70 billion into Libraries, and make the accomodable for children during the day. Make it completely optional.

This is the main issue between left and right minded anarchists IMO. I've felt like both sides have been right at different times in my life.

That said, you are right. Taxes of any kind, if forced, is theft. If liberal minded individuals can't offer me a voluntary way to function from within society, than they'll be considered authoritarians to me. The only solution I can think of is a type of confederacy of anarchist collectives, where all collectives agree on basic freedoms (freedom to travel, freedom to leave, completely fair representation, etc) where some are bastions of socialism, and the other bastions of individualism.

The only problem I have as a right leaning anarchist with anarcho-capitalism, is wage labour. While I agree that the contract may be voluntary, the conditions leading to it may not have been, and we see exploitation in our current system regarding this, with some people becoming indentured servants.

But can't we simply compromise and have public means of production with private residential property? As a libertarian socialist this seems like the best way to move past this debate until we implement such a system. I agree with your point, but I'd rather not expound the hypotheticals containing a married couple and child, being visited in the night by some unrelated teens who feel it is their right to sleep in the same room and said couple's child. Your thoughts?

Again, this is about the political theory of anarchism not the mainstream definition connoting chaos. Thanks for championing debate against your parent post, but to say they make an accurate description of a philosophy that challenged Franco in Catalonia, is one of the most anti-war philosophies out there, AND one of the only political philosophies that don't agree with our current structural narratives and attempts to offer solutions, is also doing it an injustice.

Thanks. Anarchists need to come together to champion the real political spectrum we all care about; authoritarianism versus libertarianism. I think many anarchists get caught up in high level theory when really, the best thing we could do would be to organize and communicate towards common goals.

Well it's not that they are binded by the left-right paradigm, it's just that they've already agreed that authoritarianism (up?) is worse than libertarianism (down?), and then proceed to debate the finer points of collectivism versus individualism (right and left).

Much better than ignoring the up and down completely like neo-liberal and neo-conservative politics. From the mainstream, we see plenty of disheartening policies that both left and right anarchists would agree on.

That said, the problem I think about it what you've mentioned. How do we convince collectivist thinkers that taxes are the use of force? How do we convince individualists that some services need to be established by the collective itself and not an offshoot (syndicate/business)? Our problems are what you've mentioned. Too much left-right and not enough up and down talk. This opens us all up to authoritarian centrists who believe that title to be impossible because of the golden mean...

One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it. Almost every country in the world adheres to it more or less. We have set store hours at either 8 or 16 or 24 hours, again based on shifts of workers, and we have a complex economy that I'm sure our leaders would argue depends on it.

Not saying I agree with that argument, or that something better isn't possible, just stating a potential defense to the "tradition" of our 40 hour work week.

Any solution would take a ton of logistics and considerations in terms of wage parity during any transition period, less you want people starving because of bad policy. OR it would take one class of people, those who own the means of production, to create this policy on their own. I see no reason why they would.

As a web developer who isn't familiar with assembly or any web server more barebones than nginx, what benefits does something like this provide? Speed? Could this be a solution for an extremely simple directory/static file web server?

Thank you dearly for this. What's your opinion on SSI?

Funny, but not necessarily true. With PHP, I do as you say and spend, if I know the language, 1 hour max setting up a CRUD list/view/admin.

With Ruby, I have to spend, at least 3 months learning the concepts behind the Rails framework and what the article OP mentions just to get to that 20 to 30 minute mark.

If anything it's all meaningless, and what everyone should understand is that while the closer you are to the web server itself (CGI+PHP, Node.js, Classic ASP), you can quickly create any type of code, at the loss of organization and order.

In frameworks (criticism of Rails can also be attributed to Wordpress IMO) you have a much larger ramp up time learning the concepts and conventions, and once familiar, are able to LEVERAGE those patterns.

But don't bother me with PHP vs Ruby. I run SSI on nginx. It's not even in the same league as those two. BUT it's even easier to spin a basic 5 page website. All tools have their specialties.

All governments are a persistent threat. For whatever good they do, they have raised the largest armies, killed the most peoples, and have implemented the most coercive/forceful terms when dealing with other parties (taxes, prison, subsidies, bailouts, etc)

People need to start understanding that where I'm from, Income Tax was only started as a wartime measure. Now it will never disappear, even though we have less need for it now than before that wartime measure was implemented. http://www.duhaime.org/LawMuseum/CanadianLegalHistory/LawArt...

My question for advocates of government is: Explain how are current modern issues (Economic Crises, State Spying, Bank Bailouts, Private Prisons, Oil Subsidies, etc) are the product of anything else? Also, if our problems are cause non government entities, then why create institutions that can concentrate even more? Surely society isn't so naive to know that these same institutions wouldn't be compromised by these agents (regulators, lawmakers, judges, officers)?

> I would love to see the numbers that show a no-questions-asked basic income would be cheaper than the present social assistance monies.

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

From the article: "She found that only new mothers and teenagers worked substantially less. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies, and teenagers worked less because they weren't under as much pressure to support their families".

To me that sounds like more adults would work, while those who have other obligations (childbearing) or goals (study, creative, startups) can focus on that.

I'm not saying it would be cheaper, but providing a guaranteed minimum to all adults, would remove the need for the other programs, saving THAT money. It would not pay for it completely. Removing the government jobs that oversee most of the selection and verification (fact checking if the person is pursuing offers) could be eliminated. This could also save money. Again not enough, but enough to help sigificantly.

> There are a lot of logistics here.

Absolutely. We need to take risks for rewards though, and there must be a way to test this without hurting the whole economy, but we need to all agree to take that risk before we work on the next step.

> How do we prove you did not already get your check?

Great question. My guess would be you only provide one per person per period. Any duplications would be search for via software, then again by a human. Any proven duplication will be deducted. Rinse and repeat, minimal bureaucracy. The government always pays me/requires me to pay them every year, but even though its not perfect, it works for the most part.

> Is the basic income adjusted for families of 1 vs 7?

In my mind it would be a set amount per adult. The argument that we need to provide more for larger families creates odd and sad circumstances of child farms and generational welfare homes. People need to start becoming responsible for their families. We'd still have child services. Besides, this shouldn't be comfortable for a single mother living alone who isn't working. These people can get family or charity to help them, not taxes. It SHOULD be comfortable for a single mother working 15 hours a week though, which would help a lot of people out there.

> This idea of a minimalist ruleset for financial assistance seems like it is great at first, but will inevitably just get more and more bloated (and costly) as you actually implement it.

Well, you could argue are current system will only get more bloated and costly as well (which is has). A major reform is necessary eventually, and this is an innovative and modern potential solution we should SERIOUSLY investigate past talking and move towards researching through small implementations.