Should government exist?

It depends on whether or not there is other land available. It does not depend on a dam he built. It does not depend on whether or not you believe that the are justified in taking his house. It does not depend on some army, that is not involved in the current dispute, that may or may not have driven people who are not involved in the current dispute off of that particular plot of land at some time in the past.

 

The right to be some place is inherent by the fact that nobody has a right to exclude you from what nature provided. If you want to be some place all by yourself, to the complete exclusion of others, then you have a moral obligation to pay them fair compensation for violating their natural rights.

For example, suppose that you are on an island paradise, plenty of natural food and fresh water, but far removed from other bodies of land. Then suppose that one day someone washes up on shore from a ship that capsized in a recent storm. That person is incapable of leaving without facing certain death. Do you consider it your right to kill him by casting him back to the sea? Most people would reject that you have that right.

It seems to me that you are trying to place property rights above human rights, or the right to life, in order to justify murder. A baby being born on this earth has no more alternatives than the man who washed upon the shore of that supposed island above. If you remove his right to exist upon land, then you remove his right to exist at all, and create for you a fictitious right to commit murder or enslavement at your discretion.

 

What the hell gave you that idea?

 

They meet the conditions defined in the social contract, i.e. the laws of the society.

 

Ya, because I didn't follow up with an explanation of why I disagree. Why am I not surprised?

 

Why all the small talk? Just deal with my response to your idiotic explanation.

 

Yep. [These characters are added so that the forum will allow me to post.]

 

Who demands the justification?

 

If a group of individuals can claim the land as their absolute property, then they have the right to murder newborn babies, under the context that there is simply not enough room for those newborns to exist. If you don’t agree they have a right to murder newborn babies, then you must deny them the right to absolute ownership of land.

A right to life is incompatible with a right to absolute landownership. This is because humans must have access to land in order to grow and live, and if that access can be blocked by those who claim absolute ownership of land, then by the act of their claim, they extinguish the right to life of those they exclude.

This is not to imply that you would actually commit murder, but it seems to me that under the system which you propose, one could easily justify such an act.

 

What?! This is psychotic.

 

Something is produced--security and arbitration. Private security agencies and arbitration agencies already exist, so to say they produce nothing is simply not accurate.

As for your second point, it is completely understandable and valid. There will be a lot of rules, as determined by various contracts. But having multiple rules is no problem when people have multiple needs. And these agencies are not necessarily creating the contracts, they are simply enforcing them. I would enter into an agreement with someone else, and in that agreement various arbitration agencies would be specified for use in the event one of us feels the agreement is broken. An agency that is racist(like our current courts) or has a reputation for bad judgement would not be made part of the agreement. This would provide agencies a huge incentive to train better judges and ensure justice is served.

I don't see where the rent-seeking comes into play.

Competing in a market and competing through government are things of a very different nature. As for what makes government violate the NAP, that is not the claim. Not all government has to violate the NAP, such as self-government, voluntaryism, or some other form not yet created. As for our current government, it violates the NAP through taxation and laws that violate natural rights.

 

Wow, you're right again. Not a single one...except for these

Post 168:

Post 173:

Then after you evaded all the interesting questions, I started to get specific, but still no insults.

Post 184:

Post 187:

Post 190:

Post 192:

[Used up all my space for a post. It's amazing how no examples take up so much space.]

 

[cont'd]

Post 196:

Post 205:

Post 208:

And after you kept evading all the interesting questions and answering questions I never asked. (You still haven't answered how one gains rights to old growth, water, and oil.) I did kind of give on the idea that you ever would.

Post 209 The first that could possibly be called an insult, though it would be a stretch.

Post 248:

Post 272.1 I assume this is the one where I called you an arrogant MF for arguing that all rational people agree with you. Not really an insult as much as a statement of fact. And apparently the only time the moderator thinks I insulted you.

Post 297:

Post 304:

I can ask you? Really? I've done nothing but ask you. You've consistently avoided answering my questions. What is that saying that they attribute to Einstein? "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results." So, yes, I have in some cases taken to answering for you. Feel free to correct me when I misrepresent your response.

You are right about one thing though. I'm not interested in isolating our points of contention. I already know them. I have from the beginning. The only thing I've ever been curious about is whether you did.

 

I think your imagination is getting the best of you. Why do you suspect I would be angry with you or libertarians in general? You guys are an insignificant political fringe element who have never had nor will ever have any affect on my life. Why would you think I could possibly care enough about what you believe to waste the energy being angry? I know you guys tend to be of the personality types who think they matter, but I can promise you, nobody but you guys believes that.

But as I said earlier, this has been just another failed psychological experiment for me. All this stuff is pretty much settled philosophy. I know you have nothing of substance to add to the conversation. The only questions that interest me are psychological. I was just testing an hypothesis. It at least needs some refinement, if it isn't outright wrong.

 

Hmm... Well you got me there. I guess I should have looked back before I wrote that.
And, no, I didn't. I still don't know them all, and you don't either. It's not something you can know.

 

Well, the fact that almost 100% of your posts so far have been about libertarians, long on color, short on substance and chalked full of your misapprehensions of what we believe, and the majority of them have been in response to me, and you attempted to portray an attitude of contemptuous indifference toward me by making statements like "keep the faith, brother" and "...little man" until you called me an arrogant mother(*)(*)(*)(*)er, after which I began a concerted effort to come off as arrogant in many of my responses to you in order to give you a reason to be angry with me. By the way. I never argued that all rational people agree with me. I argued that all rational people perceive natural law, whether they call it that or not.

 

every society has a governing class, even the Amish

 

I know. But we don't need to give them de facto legal control over whatever part of our lives they wish to meddle in.

 

I was talking about competition for customers, not competing for grants of largess from third parties. Under the system I am describing, nobody would have the legal ability to confiscate the money of others and dole it out to rent seekers.

I am describing a system in which the people are the state, and the people would be legally empowered to enforce the judgements of arbitrators.

 

That is a given, of course. The relevant question is whether those people are legally entitled to violate the person and property of others in society. Personally, I believe it is possible (and desirable) to have a legal system that forbids any individual initiating violations of person and property.

 

You cannot imply freedom where none is. The question shouldn't be "Should government exist?", rather "Can government not exist?".

 

You need to defend your assertions. You are free to assume law where none has been demonstrated to exist if you want to, but to demonstrate that a claim is true is the only way to be distinguished from the peanut gallery.

 

Or maybe the question is, "Given that it is impossible for government to not exist, how does society establish a government that does not initiate violations against person and property?"

 

Government in a general sense? I concur... we are always governed by a number of spheres or tiers of influence: social mores, morality, peer expectations, etc. The question we need to be asking is what tier exactly is capable of providing peace and protecting the property and person of one without unduly trampling those of another.

We now mainly enjoy the existence of an extremely high tier, the state, which is capable of providing peace and protection, but the absolutist method by which it operates tramples so heavily on the same that it is, in practical terms, a giant step backward into insecurity and chaos. Sure, it may be somewhat predictable, as in most people can manage to avoid punishment, but with every step "forward" towards paranoid policing, it becomes increasingly likely for all well-meaning persons to inadvertently find themselves labelled "criminal" by the system. The practice of dealing with these people by caging them by the millions and stealing their property only highlights the extreme nature of state justice---we're fishing with dynamite.

 

If you are saying that those who support the system of absolute property rights in land are psychotic, then I agree.

If on the other hand you are saying that I’m psychotic, then it is obvious that you simply haven’t thought out the full implications of your proposed system of land tenure. I will assume this is the case.

In this thread you have stated that if someone is on your land without your permission you will call security. I assume that when those security forces come they will be packing guns, right? Well, what if all the land is claimed, and there is no alternative for those who are on your land? You will have them killed, right?

I think it is very clear that you place arbitrary land claims -- which are really nothing more than seeking societies approval to exclude others from what they could otherwise accessed for free -- above the individuals natural rights to life and self sustainment.

The land tenure system I propose ensures that everyone has free access to land. That they can employ themselves and gain their own self sustainment. In this way, the system which I propose prevents dependency on government. This allows for a much smaller role of government in economic affairs.

Your preferred land tenure system, where relatively few individuals own almost all the land, leads to a welfare state where the landless are forced to beg the government for food and a place to exist. By allowing landowners to block access to land, you have created a dependency on government, a dependency which has allowed the government to grow into the monster it is today.