Statist Ideology is Orwellian Doublethink

I wouldn't expect a profiteer on sacrafice to oppose the measure. The taxpayer who understands that his property rights are infringed would.

 

Why bother? It's a forgone conclusion that blowing up abortion clinics is horribly wrong. You have no need to remind a debating opponent of this if he articulates opposition to anti-abortion leglislation. What's your reasoning?

 

I work for a living, I pay taxes; I don't feel as if my property rights are infringed by asking people far more wealthy than I am to contribute more in our troubled times.

 

A feeling is not a tool of cognition. A law is not a request. A tax is not a contribution. Our 'troubled times' are the result of the very policy you choose not to oppose.

 

feel   [feel] Show IPA verb, felt, feel·ing, noun
verb (used with object)
1.to perceive or examine by touch.
2. to have a sensation of (something), other than by sight, hearing, taste, or smell: to feel a toothache.
3. to find or pursue (one's way) by touching, groping, or cautious moves.
4. to be or become conscious of.
5. to be emotionally affected by: to feel one's disgrace keenly.

I've done you the favor of highlighting the relevant definition. In this context, the word 'feel' refers to a belief or opinion. "I feel as if this is wrong," is another way of saying that "I have analyzed this situation and have come to the realization that it is wrong." It's a more poetic way of expressing yourself, and more succinct.

You always have the option of going to prison or relinquishing your citizenship.

Not even slightly.

 

To sonofodin

Since I don't know how to make multiple replies at once I will have to speak this way.

1) The principle of government is not violence. Government is a centralized and organized leadership which is in charge of managing a nation. The methods in which they go about this are wide and varied.

2) Once again you assume that violence is the one and only way to govern. The reasons I pointed out Rome, Greece, and Industrial era USA are because these are nations and empires which had rather pleasant ways of governing themselves. Unfortunately the last of the three has devolved into what you assume all governments are; corrupt and inefficient monopolies of power and wealth.

3) Rome crumbled for a great many of reasons if you want to get right into it. But what you said was the same reason I stated. They were conquered, but this is a different subject altogether so I don't know why you disputed what I said about it. No doubt you will dispute this paragraph to and turn it around on me.

4) Aboriginal tribes in general. But specifically North American tribes. Their governments manifested in the truest form of democracy combined with dictatorship (to use modern terms). Basically their "state" was a chieftain who looked out for his people. If you need to know more tribes look into the Vikings. They were very similar if I recall correctly. Or perhaps the Gauls. The point I am making is that the "state" and "government" will manifest itself in many different ways.

5) I never implied this. You once again just assume that all government is inherently evil. I will again reply by pointing to the city states of Greece or the tribal peoples of North America. If you need a specific tribe try Iroquois.

6) Our current bureaus are ridiculously inefficient and corrupt. After all they belong to a system which is flooded with selfishness and greed. Bureaus aren't inherently useless and evil either.

7) Way to completely dodge that perfectly critical point of my argument. Multi-million soul nations as in nations that have millions of souls in them. You know, people. Multi-million citizen nations if that helps. Government needs to expand and become increasingly complex in design and function in order to handle the needs placed on them by having millions and millions of citizens.

This sounds more like it boils down to you being selfish and not wanting to ever have to make contributions to society. You specifically claim that you don't want anyone to be able to take your money. What you don't seem to realize is that the money being taken from you (I presume you mean taxes) goes towards funding public schools, the transportation department, etc. Without taxes the government would have no funding for it's projects. Many of which directly benefit the citizen more than we realize. But once again, we live in a world of greed and corruption so our current governments of the western world aren't the best examples of this. I will again refer you to the Roman Republic.

9) Exactly. All organizations, groups, communities, nations, etc will place a leader of some form in which to govern it. This leader, or collection of leaders, is the government of said group. The mafia is an organization of criminals. The don is the leader. The leader is their government. The mafia isn't the manifestation of Humanities need for leadership. Rather it is an example of how whenever Humans combine together to form an organized collective they will inevitably develop a leadership and social structure. The same thing could be said about the Boy Scouts or the Army.

10) I refer so often to leadership because this is what this is about. Applying law to anarchism is an oxymoron. An oxymoron is when you combine/compare two ideas which are completely incompatible with each other. Taxation is not a concept which fits into this definition in any way. The entire point of anarchism is to remove the state and all centralized power and government. This is the fault in it because Humans cannot resist organizing into groups. Therefor after the transition is made to anarchism a group will eventually organize into a tribe which preys upon the unorganized masses. We currently call these the mafias. If there is no law enforcement then who will protect the masses from gangs of people who find it easier to just steal and enslave? If there are no economic regulations then why should McDonalds care if their employees work 18 hours a day for $5.00 an hour? This is why minimum wage laws exist and there are limits on how many hours you can work per week.

11) But you just spent your entire post talking about how government (and by extension leadership) is violence! I am not aware of the history of Iceland at all to be honest. But what you described is very much like the tribal societies I made countless nods to.

12) People will organize into bands and tribes (remember that the tribal way of life is what Humans are best fit for and it is our basic nature. If it was done in the stone age that is what we are built for) and many of these will become warlike and aggressive. The strong dominate the weak and this is the nature of life. Only the strongest survive and therefor sooner or later somebody will act on this. This is why we have laws and regulations. To prevent the powerful from preying upon the powerless. It is just as much our fault for not controlling our leaders as it is our leaders fault for preying upon us.

I'm starting to feel like a broken record, but all your arguments come down to opposing the authorities simply because our current ones are ridiculously corrupted. You are against government and authority without actually knowing why it all exists in the first place.

 

Oops. I forgot to point out how In the beginning of what you said you claimed

"Yes I can. The core principle of government is violence. The government is merely a vehicle for people that want to use and exploit other people. That is the nature of government, it has been and always will be."

But in the next paragraph you said "Okay, you just made a leap without connecting the dots. What does leadership have to do with violent rule by force? Their are plenty of leaders that people follow voluntarily. Heads of organizations and movements, even businesses. They are all leaders but they don't use violence to get what they want. Leaders DO NOT need to use violence to be leaders."


Which is it then? Are governments a vehicle for oppression or can people be benevolent? You should really get your beliefs in order before entering a debate.

 

What are you talking about? How did I contradict myself with those statements? I said leadership doesn't always have to be violent. What is the contradiction? Are you implying that leadership means government? LOL

 

Firstly; you contradict yourself by saying government is evil but then go ahead and say leadership doesn't have to be. They are one in the same, therefor if one is evil the other must be too.

And second...

YES! That's what I am trying to tell you!

Humans require leadership. In the stone age we divided between leaders and followers. The alphas and the omegas. So on and so forth. As our tribal ways were replaced by small settlements of a couple thousand people we began to develop government. Government is simply just a highly organized and structured leadership. It became impossible for our tribal chieftains to adequately perform their jobs so this is what the solution was. Humans will do this every single time we group together into an organized structure (which will happen every single time we group together). If you cannot understand this then you cannot have an opinion on government because you don't know entirely what government is.

Saying you dislike something you don't understand makes no sense and makes everything you say invalid. That is what seems to be going on here.

 

It's not complex at all. It's difficult to develop all the moral twistings necessary to excuse violence done to others, but it's not complex to the person to whom the violence is done.

 

The mafia does what it wants, and then leaves you alone. The government takes what it wants, then presumes to tell you how to live your life and punishes you for every transgression against those presumptions. Ask anyone who grew up in a mafia controlled neighborhood how dangerous it was. They'll tell you that they left their doors unlocked and felt perfectly safe to walk around at night. Try that in your government "protected" neighborhood. The government police, you might say, are there to protect and serve, but who are they protecting when they come to arrest you for ingesting a plant substance or violating some rule of which you were unaware but which has been criminalized by your legislature? They don't protect you, they protect the political will.

You are probably better off under the mafia so long as you don't try to compete with them and bribe them when necessary.

 

There is a difference between leaders and rulers. The former presumes to help his followers by showing the way. The latter presumes to direct his subjects by threatening violence against them for not doing what they are told. Leaders are usually not rulers; rulers are frequently not leaders.

 

that makes the assumption that things get "handled".

 

How is that related to kidnapping? The reason we arrest prostitutes is disease prevention.

Speeders aren't arrested (usually), they are just fined.

Are you claiming that rape isn't a violent crime?

Good can come from use of violence against violent people.

 

Utter equivocation. Leaders lead regardless of the tools they are given to do so. Rulers, which may be popularly elected legislators and other bureaucrats, may or may not lead at all. They may just follow the party line and do what they are told by leaders within their party or other organization. Being elected, or inheriting power or otherwise obtaining it does not automatically make on a leader. Being a ruler, however, does imply that one may legally use violence against those who live in one's jurisdiction or is one's subject.

I think this is generally the case. However, I don't think you can make the case that any human requires rulership.

 

Having a "good" reason (in your opinion) to hold a peaceful person against his or her will does not make it any less a violation a kidnapping.

Agreed. Now, what violence does the prostitute commit that makes it "good" to violate her rights?

 

What does he mean by "we need..." anyway. I don't need *any* federal bureaucracies.

 

Okay, I have seen this a lot and I think it's time to put an end to it.

Someone, I challenge you to a one on one debate on this subject (Is taxation robbery?)

We can decide on definitions of any words you want defined for the purpose of the discussion before the debate begins. Do you accept?

If Someone doesn't want to, this offer extends to anyone else that would like to. Obviously, this will be held in the debate forum.

 

"we need" is a conversation stopper. It's purpose is to negate reasonable questioning.

 

Mexico is currently under the control of a vast network of cartels that its government can't muster enough power to defeat. Instead of enjoying peace and prosperity, Mexicans are living in slums trying to hold off starvation with absurdly low-paying jobs and a standard of living that's almost third world. Even those Mexicans who appease their local cartels live in fear of enemy cartels trying to take over new territory. Mexico is essentially a modern anarchic nation, and things aren't working out so well for them.

See also: many regions in Africa.

 

That's because of the war on drugs. There would not be the sky high murder rates in Mexico if drugs were legalized. That wouldn't be a problem in a market anarchist society.

You say regions in Africa?

How about Somalia? Now, Somalia is not the way anarchy should be achieved. It was acheived violently and it was really an attempt to create a new state but I'll use this example anyway.

Somalia has improved since the collapse of the government. This includes great economic success and a rise in the standards of living since the state collapsed. Don't believe me? Read this: http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured/somalia-failed-state-economic-success/

 

And what policy is it of the government to the north that creates the huge black market that fuels those cartels?

What does Africa have to do with this conversation? Are there mafias everywhere? There's certainly a great deal of tribal conflict created by the arbitrary borders the colonists imposed upon them.

 

Cartels don't kill because some powerless government declared that their goods are illegal. Even Mexico's non-drug-related businesses maintain close ties with violent cartels (when they're not wholly owned by them) and are horrifically amoral.

I believe it. Some governments are worse than no government at all.

The cartels are still more powerful than the government because of the USA's demand for black market drugs. In a hypothetical scenario where the USA legalized drugs, reducing cartels' power, but the Mexican government was still too weak, then not much would change.

Parts of Africa are anarchist states in action with no major authority: just conflict after conflict between warlords trying to form one.

The old colonists' borders are incidental to most of the current conflicts, especially since those borders are rewritten so often.

 

Cartels don't buy troves of weapons and recruit hundreds if not thousands of soldiers and build their own private armies without funds. They don't get those funds from extortion of the local populace. They get them from the illicit drug trade.

There's certainly nothing moral about violently interfering with peaceful people in order to prevent them from engaging in peaceful vices and locking them in cages for it. There's nothing moral about fueling the profits, through legislation, of drug lords who then prey upon the populace.

 

The US is by no means powerless, they have lot's of DEA foot soldiers in Mexico fighting the cartels, causing much bloodshed.

Okay.

Are you kidding me? Do you know how much revenue they gain from the illegal drug trade? If drugs were legalized, that would be a gargantuan blow to the cartels and they would certainly have a much smaller impact on Mexico.

This is what Somalia was like, and even under those condition it still improved without a state. They aren't terrible places because of anarchism, they're terrible places because of dictatorship governments and the imperialism in Africa that has left most African countries with no infrastructure.