How Libertarianism leads to Aristocracy

[Distruzio]

But what about "jurisdiction shopping" and "institution shopping" - where competing authorities exist, parties appeal to the one most likely to favor themselves. The Western hierarchical system has problems, too, I'll grant, but competing authorities has the potential to be worse, and lead to deadlock or violence. This happened a lot in the past...

Thank you for your kind words!

Regarding the quote above, what is wrong with jurisdiction shopping? Should a jew be forced to follow muslim law? Should an atheist be forced to obey religious law? Should two willing firms be prevented from reaching an understanding through 3rd party arbitration?

What is wrong with choice?

Addressing violence, insurance will cover the cost of violence and discourage the outbreak of it. Higher insurance premiums on your property for being known as a risk for violent behavior will tend to soothe fiery souls. Moreover, it is likely that competing forms of law will make concessions for dealing with one another in their contract with their customers. It is likely that a vast network of 3rd party negotiation firms will spring up to arbitrate differences between competing firms, laws, and customers - all based upon contractual property rights.

[Lomenore]

What's wrong with choice? Well, how are you supposed to get a dispute settled if there are different courts and all have equal prominence?

[Distruzio]

What's wrong with choice? Well, how are you supposed to get a dispute settled if there are different courts and all have equal prominence?

Read the edit.

[-St George]

But what about "jurisdiction shopping" and "institution shopping" - where competing authorities exist, parties appeal to the one most likely to favor themselves. The Western hierarchical system has problems, too, I'll grant, but competing authorities has the potential to be worse, and lead to deadlock or violence. This happened a lot in the past...

Thank you for your kind words!

Regarding the quote above, what is wrong with jurisdiction shopping? Should a jew be forced to follow muslim law? Should an atheist be forced to obey religious law? Should two willing firms be prevented from reaching an understanding through 3rd party arbitration?

What is wrong with choice?

Addressing violence, insurance will cover the cost of violence and discourage the outbreak of it. Higher insurance premiums on your property for being known as a risk for violent behavior will tend to soothe fiery souls. Moreover, it is likely that competing forms of law will make concessions for dealing with one another in their contract with their customers. It is likely that a vast network of 3rd party negotiation firms will spring up to arbitrate differences between competing firms, laws, and customers - all based upon contractual property rights.

Leading to an over complicated, expensive mess of a judicial system.

[Lomenore]

What's wrong with choice? Well, how are you supposed to get a dispute settled if there are different courts and all have equal prominence?

Read the edit.

Differing negotiation firms? So, in addition to a multiplicity of codes of law, and a multiplicity of courts to judge that law, you want there to be a multiplicity of negotiators to deal with settling disputes under that law?

[Distruzio]

Thank you for your kind words!

Regarding the quote above, what is wrong with jurisdiction shopping? Should a jew be forced to follow muslim law? Should an atheist be forced to obey religious law? Should two willing firms be prevented from reaching an understanding through 3rd party arbitration?

What is wrong with choice?

Addressing violence, insurance will cover the cost of violence and discourage the outbreak of it. Higher insurance premiums on your property for being known as a risk for violent behavior will tend to soothe fiery souls. Moreover, it is likely that competing forms of law will make concessions for dealing with one another in their contract with their customers. It is likely that a vast network of 3rd party negotiation firms will spring up to arbitrate differences between competing firms, laws, and customers - all based upon contractual property rights.

Leading to an over complicated, expensive mess of a judicial system.

There would be no judicial monopolist. Remember *points at self* Anarchist.

[Distruzio]

Read the edit.

Differing negotiation firms? So, in addition to a multiplicity of codes of law, and a multiplicity of courts to judge that law, you want there to be a multiplicity of negotiators to deal with settling disputes under that law?

You are catching on.

[Alien Space Bats]

It's simple enough, really.

Your position is that any involuntary obligation placed upon you by the state is absolutely identical to a total denial of all your human rights and liberties; in your eyes, there is no middle ground whatsoever, a position that normal people understand to be utter horseshit.

The truth is that the imposition of a few obligations on you by the state still leaves you largely free to order and organize your life pretty much as you see fit; indeed, few societies have granted their citizenry the broad liberties found in the world's developed democracies today. Even a century ago you would not have been as free as you are today, either here in America or in Europe, taxes or no; yet you still see your situation as functionally identical to that of an individual held in chattel slavery.

If you read the parts I bolded in the second paragraph, you are basically admitting that you support slavery, you just say that the terms of our slavery aren't as bad as it used to be, and therefor slavery is justified, or we aren't slaves. Obviously this doesn't make sense, as "we have it better than we did before" is not an excuse to condone slavery. And like I said several times, again, I do believe there are differences between types of slavery.

No, I am not admitting that I support slavery; on the contrary, I am denying the idiotic notion that having to pay taxes and live under regulations constitutes any form of slavery at all.

As for the bolded part, it's simple truth: A century ago, you'd have the police showing up at your shop in most American communities if your tried to do business on Sunday; you'd get arrested if you slept with someone elses spouse or engaged in oral sex (even with your own spouse); if you were a woman, you wouldn't be allowed to enter into contracts without your husband's consent; in most States, you'd be forbidden from marrying someone of a different race than you; and there are literally hundreds of other things you wouldn't be allowed to do that you can do today - the vast majority of which would have absolutely nothing to do with taxes.

Yet even then, if you went around proclaiming that you were a slave in light of all the government-imposed rules you had to live under, people would declare your position idiotic. And they'd be absolutely right.

I can only conclude that you either have absolutely no sense of proportion, or that you don't understand how utterky lacking in liberty real slaves were - and that's not just African slaves in the antebellum South, but slaves living in just about every other culture that has ever existed in the history of the world. Just to help you, I'll give you a hint: It wasn't just about compensation for labor provided; there are many, many other things in life than that (although, strangely, libertarians seem to want to pretend otherwise, suggesting as a group considerable difficulty in getting laid, among other things).

Again, like I said before, whether you are whipped or not does not define whether you are a slave. If it did, then house slaves in the South that were treated well were not actually slaves.

You're undeniably right on that single point: Whether you are whipped on not doesn't define whether or not you are a slave. You are, however, totally wrong on every other point that matters: What determines whether or not you're a slave is whether you are free to come or go as you please, whether or not you are free to live your life as you please, whether or not you are free to speak your mind without fear of reprisal, whether or not you have recourse to the courts and the law when you have a complaint towards others or when you are accused by others of wrongdoing, and a million other non-pecuniary things that have absolutely nothing in the world to do with whether or not you get to keep every last dime you earn or whether you have to pay a tax on something somewhere along the line.

And wtf is this about not getting laid or whatever? Christ, I know you are probably as nerdraged as I am right now, but good god man, have some respect.

How am I supposed to have any respect for your position at all - or for that of your ideological peers, for that matter - when you act as is the sole measure of freedom lies in how much of your earnings you get to keep?!?

To hear you and your fellow travellers carry on, the loss of even one cent of your earnings makes you an absolute slave with no freedom whatsoever; and it decrying your slavery, you compare yourself with people who could only dream of having a fraction of the liberties you enjoy.

Slaves in the antebellum South were not supposed to be taught to read; your "masters" not only let you read, they even try and teach you how to do it.

Slaves in the antebellum South needed papers to go anywhere; you can travel anywhere you want in America without asking for anyone's permission at all, and the worst you might face is a ticket for driving without a license (and that only if you're actually behind the wheel; if you're a passenger, you don't have to carry squat).

Slaves in the antebellum South couldn't marry, and had no parental rights at all; you can sleep with pretty much anyone you want and not get bothered for it, and as long as you don't neglect or abuse your kids, they're yours to keep and raise as you wish.

Slaves in the antebellum South couldn't own property or go into business for yourself; the worst you face are property taxes and a few business licenses, the most onerous of which involve spending money and/or taking a test based on skill and/or knowledge, rather than you actually having to get some bureaucrat's explicit (read "potentially discriminatory") permission to ply whatever trade you seek to pursue, granted to another because they're in favor and denied to you because you're not.

Slaves in the antebellum South couldn't own firearms; you can - indeed, in most jurisdictions you can rather easily get yourself a permit to carry a concealed weapon, make it a semi-automatic pistol, and equip it with a nice high-capacity clip that would allow you to rapidly spray everyone standing around you with fire; you can have dozens of weapons in your home, including shotguns, semi-automatic rifles, even fully automatic tripod-mounted machine guns if you want to pay the extra $500 for the Federal license.

Slaves in the antebellum South had no legal rights against intrusion into their homes, incarceration, corporal punishment, or execution; they had no right to refuse to engage in sex when ordered to do so (this applied equally to males and females, who were sometimes paired off to mate like livestock). You have a whole slew of privacy rights, as well as protection against unwarranted search, property seizure, and arrest, and are guaranteed a trial if charged with a crime, as well as ample opportunities for appeal if convicted. And even if you do get imprisoned, you still have the right to be safe from assault, sexual or otherwise (although, to be fair, your chances of suffering unlawful assault of any kind and considerably greater).

I could go on and on and on. You can essentially carry on freely as you please while slaves in the antebellum South could not, and yet you still have the nerve to say that you're some kind of slave because someone assesses a tax against your income and throws a few regulations in your way; and, amazingly enough, when the rest of us call you on it, you have the gall to pretend we're the ones being thick?

It's been pointed out to you again and again that slaves - all slaves - are chattel; they have no freedom whatsoever. Whether or not someone physically abuses them is no test of whether or not they are slaves; whether or not someone takes the fruits or their labor, in whole or in part, is not the test of whether or not they are slaves, either. It's that whole "rest-of-the-picture" that you're missing that determines whether or not they are slaves; it's that whole "come-and-go-as-you-please", "carry-on-as-you-please", "do-what-you-want-with-your-life" part of the arrangement that determines whether or not you're a slave, and it's not a "partial" thing; you either are or you aren't.

And you, sir, quite demonstrably aren't (unless you're posting from prison, which I doubt - and even then...). That's why I made the crack I made about getting laid: You're so focused on money and taxes that you've failed to notice that nobody gives a good God damn what you do when you're not on the clock - or who you do it with, or how often, or in which positions.

Whereas with slaves, even that requires the master's permission.

Like I just said above, I gave an "idiotic carpentry analogy" and you basically said "eh, fuck your analogy, I am going to pretend you never even explained your position so I can later call you out for never explaining your position".

It was a stupid analogy; that it was stupid was self-evident. It depended on me accepting the absurd premise that any restriction on your freedom and any level of taxation makes you as slave, and then letting you patronize me by saying that what's wrong with me is that the idea of taxes and regulation making you a slave blows my mind. I'm supposed to wake up and realize how very similar the two tables are when, in fact, they're not at all alike. If one is made of oak, the other, far from being made of cherry, is more likely made of nothing more than thin sheets of balsa, or maybe even paper.

Or, to answer your analogy with mine, I'm supposed to see a ravening wolf in that annoying little chihuahua. Well, I don't, because unlike you, I'm not confused over what constitutes slavery and what does not.

Erm, I reject all forms of slavery, including the one you support.

<pause>

Uh, yeah.

<pause>

I don't support slavery.

<pause>

But then, you're not a slave.

[Lomenore]

Differing negotiation firms? So, in addition to a multiplicity of codes of law, and a multiplicity of courts to judge that law, you want there to be a multiplicity of negotiators to deal with settling disputes under that law?

You are catching on.

So if Person A is a good Christian and wants a priest to officiate, and Person B is an atheist and wants a secular court, they hire negotiators to reconcile differences between one sect's religious laws and one secular code of laws? Legal fees are bad enough with one unified law and one unified court system. You'd end up burying the world under a torrent of lawyers.

[Distruzio]

No, I am not admitting that I support slavery; on the contrary, I am denying the idiotic notion that having to pay taxes and live under regulations constitutes any form of slavery at all.

As for the bolded part, it's simple truth: A century ago, you'd have the police showing up at your shop in most American communities if your tried to do business on Sunday; you'd get arrested if you slept with someone elses spouse or engaged in oral sex (even with your own spouse); if you were a woman, you wouldn't be allowed to enter into contracts without your husband's consent; in most States, you'd be forbidden from marrying someone of a different race than you; and there are literally hundreds of other things you wouldn't be allowed to do that you can do today - the vast majority of which would have absolutely nothing to do with taxes.

Yet even then, if you went around proclaiming that you were a slave in light of all the government-imposed rules you had to live under, people would declare your position idiotic. And they'd be absolutely right.

Until women began agitating for more liberty under the premise that such conditions were, you know, analogous to slavery.

How am I supposed to have any respect for your position at all - or for that of your ideological peers, for that matter - when you act as is the sole measure of freedom lies in how much of your earnings you get to keep?!?

To hear you and your fellow travellers carry on, the loss of even one cent of your earnings makes you an absolute slave with no freedom whatsoever; and it decrying your slavery, you compare yourself with people who could only dream of having a fraction of the liberties you enjoy.

To hear us carry on, the coerced cession of a single cent is analogous to slavery, ASB. It isn't necessarily the services such taxes pay for, it's the fact that our "choices" related to taxation are pay it, be kidnapped and pay it, or die.

[-St George]

Leading to an over complicated, expensive mess of a judicial system.

There would be no judicial monopolist. Remember *points at self* Anarchist.

Well, anarchist isn't the word I'd use.

[Distruzio]

You are catching on.

So if Person A is a good Christian and wants a priest to officiate, and Person B is an atheist and wants a secular court, they hire negotiators to reconcile differences between one sect's religious laws and one secular code of laws? Legal fees are bad enough with one unified law and one unified court system. You'd end up burying the world under a torrent of lawyers.

Legal fees and lawyer fees are exorbitant b/c of the bar exam and other exclusionary laws that subsidize the profession. Without a monopolist regulating who gets to claim the title "lawyer," only the "lawyers" with the highest success rates would be sought.

[Lomenore]

So what, you'd pay taxes if asked nicely? If you were allowed to select how much you paid and where it was utilized? We do have to get things done, you understand. That's why we delegate government by utilizing officials. Most people don't even bother to watch C-SPAN, think they'd bother to do things like debate tax codes, or food and drug regulations, and all the routine crap that running a country entails?

[Alien Space Bats]

So if Person A is a good Christian and wants a priest to officiate, and Person B is an atheist and wants a secular court, they hire negotiators to reconcile differences between one sect's religious laws and one secular code of laws? Legal fees are bad enough with one unified law and one unified court system. You'd end up burying the world under a torrent of lawyers.

No, I think you'd end up burying the world under a torrent of bounty hunters, myself.

There's little disincentive in the system for individuals to choose to only allow themselves to be brought to "justice" in courts that are designed to favor their position. Thus, a large business will only allow you to seek settlements against them before their own hand-picked court, which will always rule in their favor and charge the plaintiff for all court costs. After a while, nobody will bother when acquittal is the foregone conclusion.

Hence, the use of bounty hunters; I'd imagine a system similar to the were-geld of early medieval Northern Europe will end up replacing any real justice system; at that point, defense from lawsuits will mostly come down to physical security, which he prosecution of lawsuits will mostly come down to covert operations.

Distruzio and I differ in this point, of course; he's much more of an optimist than I am, believing that force will prove too expensive to be relied upon for such matters. Me, I don't tend to believe in such things as a fratricidal balance of power, since balance is a rare strategic condition and the necessity of a fratricidal outcome is very much both a matter of scale and tactics, both of which vary too much from situation to situation for such a static situation to be guaranteed.

[Distruzio]

So what, you'd pay taxes if asked nicely? If you were allowed to select how much you paid and where it was utilized?

I would, indeed.

We do have to get things done, you understand.

"We" are not the gov't and "you" need to get nothing done on my behalf.

That's why we delegate government by utilizing officials. Most people don't even bother to watch C-SPAN, think they'd bother to do things like debate tax codes, or food and drug regulations, and all the routine crap that running a country entails?

They might if they had a choice in the matters discussed. But this is related to another issue that is not the subject of this topic - the nature of the decivilizing inevitability that democracy creates.

[Alien Space Bats]

To hear us carry on, the coerced cession of a single cent is analogous to slavery, ASB. It isn't necessarily the services such taxes pay for, it's the fact that our "choices" related to taxation are pay it, be kidnapped and pay it, or die.

I understand your objection perfectly. I simply think that to call the state of affairs under which you live "slavery" is daft.

More and more, as I grow older, I see a close analogy between the extremism of today's right and yesterday's left. The left decried the fact that working men made so much less than business owners, calling the arrangement "wage slavery" and "theft". Such sentiments were every bit as hyperbolic and absurd as the sorts of things I hear from the right today. Paying taxes doesn't make you any more a "slave" than working for a wage does - period.

I get that you don't like paying taxes; I get that you don't like being regulated; I get that you want everything to be done with your full consent, through voluntary compacts, rather than through law. I just happen to think that your desires are utterly impractical and, frankly speaking, petty - just as the desires of last Century's socialists were utterly impractical and, frankly speaking, in their own way petty as well.

[Straughn]

As for the bolded part, it's simple truth: A century ago, you'd have the police showing up at your shop in most American communities if your tried to do business on Sunday; you'd get arrested if you slept with someone elses spouse or engaged in oral sex (even with your own spouse); if you were a woman, you wouldn't be allowed to enter into contracts without your husband's consent; in most States, you'd be forbidden from marrying someone of a different race than you; and there are literally hundreds of other things you wouldn't be allowed to do that you can do today - the vast majority of which would have absolutely nothing to do with taxes.

That was then, and can be all yours again, just vote for Bachmann or Perry in the U.S.
*not joking*

[Sibirsky]

There is no option to not pay the fee. You get the fuck out of the country. We have friends, families, jobs, possessions, property, and whatever else that's keeping us here. Not to mention the exit tax, and no place to go. This argument is beyond absurd.

Your option is to leave. If you want to disagree with some of the things that the government uses your money to do, that's fine. I don't like the fact that the country uses my tax money to fund our wanton military and wars for the rich. But do you hear me complaining about how I've become ENSLAVED by taxes?

We've already covered extensively what slavery is, it has a very clear definition. In anycase, the only people we should worry about being enslaved by are corporations.

Wars for the rich? Do explain.

Leaving is hardly a viable option, as I have already explained. I don't know how much clearer I can be.

You do realize that all the massacres in the US have come in gun free zones? You do realize that gun crime in cities that banned handguns was higher, right? Are you capable of using any facts?

Pistol =/= BMG/RPG

Don't even try to compare the two, it makes you look horrendously stupid.

I didn't compare them. What's your point?

Your comments are a bunch of bullshit. Everything ML has said is true.

No, it was, as I said, crap. As I have actually read some articles and seen some pictures about the state of Britain and how overwhelmed the police force is. Guns aren't always the answer idiot. Especially in a chaotic environment like a riot, when nobody knows who a looter is or who a vigilante is.

I can already imagine how high the death toll would've been if you had groups of people with guns going around shooting at each other or the police. And if they had machine guns? God, the streets would be a blood bath.

No. Vigilantes would not be going around shooting people. We're talking about people defending their property when the state is unable or unwilling to do so. You want to deny them those rights. This was done in Korea town during the 1992 LA riots. The fact that you want to deny property owners this rights, seems like you side with the looters.

Bullshit. Indiana for example, now has no knock warrants. 4th amendment? What?

A warrant is a warrant is a warrant.

If you want to contest the legality of a warrant in a grand jury, that's perfectly viable option.

After you get killed by cops?

[Sibirsky]

If government took 16% of a person's labor that could be called slavery (still loosely though, since the person could more easily avoid that compelled labor -- by illegally working for undeclared income -- than a slave could resist orders or escape).

Say for instance, that for each five days a person worked for a private employer, the government would require them to do one day of the same work for government.

But it's not like that is it? Income tax is a tax on income, and the person is free to take or leave the job. When they took the job, they took it knowing that their take-home pay would be less than their nominal pay, and if the work is not acceptable to them on those terms they could simply not take the job. They may be practically compelled to take the job by needing money ... but if we would call that slavery then we should call all paid work slavery too.

It's fair to say that income tax is a tax on jobs. The exchange of labor for wages is made less viable (for the employer and employee) by income tax. And while that's bad, to call it slavery is stretching the definition of slavery mendaciously.

It's exactly like that. The person works for their employer but does not get paid for it. The product of their labor goes to the government.

[Lomenore]

So what, you'd pay taxes if asked nicely? If you were allowed to select how much you paid and where it was utilized?

I would, indeed.

If everyone were allowed that freedom, why would anyone pay taxes at all? Why would the populace fund anything in sufficient numbers for that public service to be viable? Hell, some people don't even remember how to record the checks they write, do you think they'd stop to inform themselves about how and where their tax money is best spent? And even if they did, it would take so long to get everyone's individual consent that by the time they finished raising funds for whatever they wanted to do, the situation would have changed. What if a white supremacist would only fund schools if black kids were left out? What if a Catholic refused to pay for hospitals that treated atheists? Taxation doesn't work like a whip around to buy someone a gift, there are too many people and too many problems to allow people that much leeway. Humanity can be a depressingly nasty bundle of hatred and jealousy, and it's for the best we have laws that more or less force people to get along.

"We" are not the gov't and "you" need to get nothing done on my behalf.

By "We" I mean society as a whole. It would be lovely if everyone could get their own way all the time, like ordering separate menu items at a restaurant, but outside of tiny clans or tribes, humans can't get much of anything done when each person goes his own way. There's a reason the rise of agriculture and urban life and the rise of nation states that use coercion to enforce their decrees appeared about the same time. When humans work together, they can do more, but they won't work together to the extent needed to solve problems on a purely voluntary basis. Your ideas seem wonderful if your top priority is a world where no one makes you do anything you don't want to do, but if your priority is to build a wall to keep out invaders or to get the harvest in on time or to build an aqueduct so everyone has drinking water, then they sadly fall short.

The kind of society you're imagining (at least, if I'm understanding you correctly) seems to be like the Geth from Mass Effect. With the Geth, everything is voluntary. When there's something that needs to be done, they debate it over and over and over until they reach a consensus, and if they can't, then the dissenting group goes their own way, no hard feelings. Maybe humanity worked that way once, but Earth is getting a bit crowded in case you haven't noticed. Until we can make space stations or settle new worlds on our own (a branch of science that needed the finance and organization of a state to get off the ground) we have to subordinate our own needs to the needs of society. The good thing is, society has advanced to the point where individuals are allowed a significant amount of leeway AND we can solve society's problems. I don't think we should throw that away for some nebulous dream of individual sovereignty for billions of people.

That's why we delegate government by utilizing officials. Most people don't even bother to watch C-SPAN, think they'd bother to do things like debate tax codes, or food and drug regulations, and all the routine crap that running a country entails?

They might if they had a choice in the matters discussed. But this is related to another issue that is not the subject of this topic - the nature of the decivilizing inevitability that democracy creates.

The topic was actually about Libertarianism leading to the rise of a new aristocracy, but I think it's absurd to pretend we're trying to stick to any sort of topic. I have seen nothing to indicate that people would abandon their habitual apathy over routine matters of government procedure if they were allowed a greater voice in each individual piece of legislation. Most people just don't care about laws regulating what extensions you can build on your home, or what the legally permitted parts per million should be for one given substance in another given substance.

So if Person A is a good Christian and wants a priest to officiate, and Person B is an atheist and wants a secular court, they hire negotiators to reconcile differences between one sect's religious laws and one secular code of laws? Legal fees are bad enough with one unified law and one unified court system. You'd end up burying the world under a torrent of lawyers.

Legal fees and lawyer fees are exorbitant b/c of the bar exam and other exclusionary laws that subsidize the profession. Without a monopolist regulating who gets to claim the title "lawyer," only the "lawyers" with the highest success rates would be sought.

They'd also have the highest prices. The most successful lawyers would be the ones hardest to afford. Unless you can win them over to do Pro Bono Publico work, they'd be on retainer for the richest people, and lawyers are not known for their loving and giving nature. With public defenders, everyone can get SOME legal representation. The Bar exam is a way of evaluating who's competent to serve as a legal representative. Under your system, any schmuck who thinks watching CSI reruns makes him a legal expert can serve as a lawyer. A law school diploma isn't just a piece of paper. It's a symbol that you've dedicated time and effort into studying the law. Sure a person can be a capable lawyer without a diploma, but they'd be the same kind of person who could pass the Bar anyway.

To be blunt, you're so hung up on the notion of freedom that you completely abandon all other considerations. That's impractical, and more then a little self centered.

[AiliailiA]

But what about "jurisdiction shopping" and "institution shopping" - where competing authorities exist, parties appeal to the one most likely to favor themselves. The Western hierarchical system has problems, too, I'll grant, but competing authorities has the potential to be worse, and lead to deadlock or violence. This happened a lot in the past...

Thank you for your kind words!

Regarding the quote above, what is wrong with jurisdiction shopping? Should a jew be forced to follow muslim law? Should an atheist be forced to obey religious law? Should two willing firms be prevented from reaching an understanding through 3rd party arbitration?

What is wrong with choice?

Nothing if it preceeds the act. If smoking pot is really important to you, move to some state or country where it is legal. It's a good argument for State's rights, though I'm concerned that if the states vary too widely in what they permit that travel between States will become more difficult.

However, jurisdiction shopping after the act looks like what Roman Polanski did: flee to some other 'state' without an extradition treaty with the one you broke the law in. I don't think the legal diversity of states should ever go that far.

Addressing violence, insurance will cover the cost of violence and discourage the outbreak of it.

Insurance does neither of those. Money is imperfect compensation for loss of physical function or mental scarring, and it is worthless compensation for loss of life. And the convoluted method of "discouragement" you lay out below utterly fails to provide an individual disincentive to commit violence.

"I will probably go to jail" as a disincentive doesn't prevent violence entirely, though I think it helps. "My insurance premiums will go up!" is a piss-weak disincentive, particularly if the target of violence (a family member or a neighbor) will suffer the exact same consequence.

Higher insurance premiums on your property for being known as a risk for violent behavior will tend to soothe fiery souls. Moreover, it is likely that competing forms of law will make concessions for dealing with one another in their contract with their customers. It is likely that a vast network of 3rd party negotiation firms will spring up to arbitrate differences between competing firms, laws, and customers - all based upon contractual property rights.

And all, without exception, providing better "rights" to those with the most money. Who pays the piper calls the tune.

And that's your idea of justice in a nutshell. Freedom is something you buy.

[Distruzio]

If everyone were allowed that freedom, why would anyone pay taxes at all?

Not everyone cares about efficiency at the cost of altruism. Therefore, those individuals would happily finance a social safety net.

Why would the populace fund anything in sufficient numbers for that public service to be viable?

Now you're getting it.

Hell, some people don't even remember how to record the checks they write, do you think they'd stop to inform themselves about how and where their tax money is best spent? And even if they did, it would take so long to get everyone's individual consent that by the time they finished raising funds for whatever they wanted to do, the situation would have changed.

Local gov't, is best gov't.

What if a white supremacist would only fund schools if black kids were left out? What if a Catholic refused to pay for hospitals that treated atheists? Taxation doesn't work like a whip around to buy someone a gift, there are too many people and too many problems to allow people that much leeway. Humanity can be a depressingly nasty bundle of hatred and jealousy, and it's for the best we have laws that more or less force people to get along.

Voluntary segregation trumps coerced integration anyday, Lom.

There's a reason the rise of agriculture and urban life and the rise of nation states that use coercion to enforce their decrees appeared about the same time.

Orly? What reason might that be? At least you aren't, unlike others on this forum, claiming that agriculture and all the glories of human civilization have come about because of the nation-state.

The kind of society you're imagining (at least, if I'm understanding you correctly) seems to be like the Geth from Mass Effect. With the Geth, everything is voluntary. When there's something that needs to be done, they debate it over and over and over until they reach a consensus, and if they can't, then the dissenting group goes their own way, no hard feelings.

I have no idea what Mass Effect is, but no. That is NOT what I am describing. I may be an anarchist, but I am NOT a democratist.

Maybe humanity worked that way once, but Earth is getting a bit crowded in case you haven't noticed.

I hadn't b/c it isn't. Not even close.

Until we can make space stations or settle new worlds on our own (a branch of science that needed the finance and organization of a state to get off the ground) we have to subordinate our own needs to the needs of society. The good thing is, society has advanced to the point where individuals are allowed a significant amount of leeway AND we can solve society's problems. I don't think we should throw that away for some nebulous dream of individual sovereignty for billions of people.

The topic was actually about Libertarianism leading to the rise of a new aristocracy, but I think it's absurd to pretend we're trying to stick to any sort of topic. I have seen nothing to indicate that people would abandon their habitual apathy over routine matters of government procedure if they were allowed a greater voice in each individual piece of legislation. Most people just don't care about laws regulating what extensions you can build on your home, or what the legally permitted parts per million should be for one given substance in another given substance.

The irony of this comment is strong given the context of the conversation, Lom.

They'd also have the highest prices. The most successful lawyers would be the ones hardest to afford.

Not for the insurance firms hiring them. Individuals would hire arbitrators specializing in individual law of one form or another. The most expensive lawyers would work exclusively for larger firms.

The Bar exam is a way of evaluating who's competent to serve as a legal representative. Under your system, any schmuck who thinks watching CSI reruns makes him a legal expert can serve as a lawyer. A law school diploma isn't just a piece of paper. It's a symbol that you've dedicated time and effort into studying the law. Sure a person can be a capable lawyer without a diploma, but they'd be the same kind of person who could pass the Bar anyway.

Once more, irony.

To be blunt, you're so hung up on the notion of freedom that you completely abandon all other considerations. That's impractical, and more then a little self centered.

I don't consider Statism or democracy a preferred alternative to actual civilization. I'm sorry. But robbery and tyranny are not my schtick and I don't consider them to be, in the nature of things, best for my prosperity.

[Distruzio]

Nothing if it preceeds the act. If smoking pot is really important to you, move to some state or country where it is legal. It's a good argument for State's rights, though I'm concerned that if the states vary too widely in what they permit that travel between States will become more difficult.

We're discussing law, my friend. Not justice.

Insurance does neither of those. Money is imperfect compensation for loss of physical function or mental scarring, and it is worthless compensation for loss of life. And the convoluted method of "discouragement" you lay out below utterly fails to provide an individual disincentive to commit violence.

This is not true in the slightest bit. An uncle of mine was sent to jail for accessory to murder. He ran with a gang who robbed and murdered and old man while my uncle stood look out. It wasn't time in the pen that upset him, it wasn't God that set him right (he murdered an inmate while in prison), it was when his mother visited him and explained that everything he had while in the prison was financed by her. They were not well off and seeing that she had to foot the bill for his stupidity corrected his thought processes. It may not work for everyone, but it did for him. He's been out for nearly a decade and hasn't touched drugs or contacted his former "friends" yet.

"I will probably go to jail" as a disincentive doesn't prevent violence entirely, though I think it helps. "My insurance premiums will go up!" is a piss-weak disincentive, particularly if the target of violence (a family member or a neighbor) will suffer the exact same consequence.

If you wish to discuss the nature of libertarian justice, then I'd be happy to oblige. But that was not the subject of my response above.

And all, without exception, providing better "rights" to those with the most money. Who pays the piper calls the tune.

And that's your idea of justice in a nutshell. Freedom is something you buy.

I like that your comment implies that under the statist quo we currently "enjoy," freedom is not something available for purchase. Very funny. As though taxation wasn't presented as the "price we pay for civilization."

[Distruzio]

To hear us carry on, the coerced cession of a single cent is analogous to slavery, ASB. It isn't necessarily the services such taxes pay for, it's the fact that our "choices" related to taxation are pay it, be kidnapped and pay it, or die.

I understand your objection perfectly. I simply think that to call the state of affairs under which you live "slavery" is daft.

More and more, as I grow older, I see a close analogy between the extremism of today's right and yesterday's left. The left decried the fact that working men made so much less than business owners, calling the arrangement "wage slavery" and "theft". Such sentiments were every bit as hyperbolic and absurd as the sorts of things I hear from the right today. Paying taxes doesn't make you any more a "slave" than working for a wage does - period.

I get that you don't like paying taxes; I get that you don't like being regulated; I get that you want everything to be done with your full consent, through voluntary compacts, rather than through law. I just happen to think that your desires are utterly impractical and, frankly speaking, petty - just as the desires of last Century's socialists were utterly impractical and, frankly speaking, in their own way petty as well.

That is the very parallel that those of us at the LvMI find quite curious. My only qualm with your words are that working for a wage involves a contract and consent. Taxation involves neither. Therefore, taxation, by manner of degree, is slavery in comparison to lack of it. You speak in absolute terms, same as we. ZR merely failed to properly articulate that slavery (although it was proper enough for me and stand by idly... I suppose that is b/c I actually understand his position and try to resist my bias to color my responses), much like statism, is not the absolute fact but merely the absolute term for a degree of fact.

Taxation is to slavery as a Ford Focus is to a BMW 6-series. True, the Focus is not a 6, but it does, for all intents and purposes, provide the same services that the 6 series does b/c for all intents and purposes, the two are the same thing - a car.

[Dread Lady Nathicana]

There is no option to not pay the fee. You get the fuck out of the country. We have friends, families, jobs, possessions, property, and whatever else that's keeping us here. Not to mention the exit tax, and no place to go. This argument is beyond absurd.

Your option is to leave. If you want to disagree with some of the things that the government uses your money to do, that's fine. I don't like the fact that the country uses my tax money to fund our wanton military and wars for the rich. But do you hear me complaining about how I've become ENSLAVED by taxes?

We've already covered extensively what slavery is, it has a very clear definition. In anycase, the only people we should worry about being enslaved by are corporations.

You do realize that all the massacres in the US have come in gun free zones? You do realize that gun crime in cities that banned handguns was higher, right? Are you capable of using any facts?

Pistol =/= BMG/RPG

Don't even try to compare the two, it makes you look horrendously stupid.

Your comments are a bunch of bullshit. Everything ML has said is true.

No, it was, as I said, crap. As I have actually read some articles and seen some pictures about the state of Britain and how overwhelmed the police force is. Guns aren't always the answer idiot. Especially in a chaotic environment like a riot, when nobody knows who a looter is or who a vigilante is.

I can already imagine how high the death toll would've been if you had groups of people with guns going around shooting at each other or the police. And if they had machine guns? God, the streets would be a blood bath.

Bullshit. Indiana for example, now has no knock warrants. 4th amendment? What?

A warrant is a warrant is a warrant.

If you want to contest the legality of a warrant in a grand jury, that's perfectly viable option.

I don't need the state to do any of these things for me. They are not "public goods", they can be provided at a profit.

Bullshit they can't. Even if you used private companies to do the things the government does, the government would STILL need to collect taxes, because the profit for those companies comes directly from the government.

nothing they do can excuse the initial act of theft. I am not allowed to use my income in the ways I see fit; a group of men with guns takes some it away from me.

A fee is not a theft. You use OUR services. And then have the GALL to call it theft when society says you have to fork over some cash to cover those services it provides.

Get the fuck out of this country then. We don't want people who can't cooperate with society in it. Nobody is stopping you from leaving.

If you're concerned that I'll use my weapons to attack you, then buy your own.

Oh yes, I'm absolutely SURE that the race riots of the 20th century or the 90s would have turned out THAT much better if every had all the automatics and ammunition they needed to turn our major cities into blood baths.

That's the stupidest shit I've ever heard.

But consider the recent riots in England. Looters and vandals smashed up shops and violated the property of others. The police supposedly have a 'duty' to protect the public, and yet what did they do? They hung back, acting half-heartedly. This only emboldened the rioters. In desperation, citizens formed vigilante groups to defend their neighbourhoods and do what the police could not. Sales of baseball bats apparently rocketed thousands of percent as they tried to get their hands on weapons of any kind.

If they had been allowed to own firearms, then the looters would have been repulsed quickly from the afflicted neighbourhoods.

Which is basically a bunch of bullshit. If I know one thing, it's that the police aren't doing anything of the sort. When riots happen, on a large scale, police get overwhelmed, you can't control it.

I don't know about you, but I don't want people plundering over my property at the whim of some bureaucrat. It's only legal because the state says it is.

They're inside your house because you're obviously a suspect in a crime. They're "plundering" your property because they're searching for evidence.

It's not some "whim" it's a fucking crime investigation. Someone's been killed, or raped, and someone needs to be brought to justice.

What if I was engaging in a 'victimless crime' i.e. taking drugs? If I want to destroy my own body, that's my choice.
A step further: what if the state declared the publication and distribution of certain books illegal?
Or if criticising government policy suddenly became treason?

Stop strawmanning the government. It's not some fascist structure designed to oppress people.

It's my personal belief that participating in the political system with such an aim is hypocritical and ultimately futile. The political elite will not tolerate any change which could undermine their power

Then don't even bother. Give up on your pathetic life you sorry nihilistic sack of crap.

God, fuck lolbertarians.

Jinos: Take a day off and rethink how you're going to post on these forums when you return. Because this here is unacceptable. If you have any questions as to why, kindly direct your attention to the stickies, and the FAQ and other such helpful threads, handily linked in my signature. 1-day Ban for the flaming and baiting and general unpleasantness.

Anyone else who thinks they can't handle themselves in this discussion, or is getting a bit too heated in their responses, kindly cut it out.