Benjamin said... I never said that retaliatory force is immoral. The initiation of force is.
When you use our resources without paying for them (such as benefiting from our maintenance of peace and lawfulness and roads and clean air and water and soil and so on), you have initiated force against us. We therefore have the right to retaliate and take our stuff back. We settle for its equivalent in cash. In fact we're even nicer than that, since we only ask an amount commensurate with what you can afford, and we defend and thus provide you the right to talk about what this fair amount should be and to persuade others to agree and thus vote on what it should be, just as is the case in any joint private enterprise, like any corporation. And yet we're even nicer than that, because we don't give you the number of votes you can afford to buy (as happens in a free market, e.g. as decides the control of corporations), but give everyone, including you, the same number of votes (one man, one vote), no matter how rich others may be. And this in fact protects your rights--from the rich who could otherwise buy the right to violate them.
Benjamin said... So when I'm forced to pay for someone else's retirement, someone else's health care, or someone else's education it's preventing me from becoming a slave?
You aren't doing any of those things. Any more than when you voluntarily pay car or home insurance you are "paying for someone else's cars and homes to be replaced." Sure, per the principles of fungible currency, that's what you are in a sense doing, but it's not what you are paying for. When you send a check to an insurance company you are paying for the right to claim payment when your car or house gets wrecked. If your house or car never get wrecked, you don't get your money back, because you were paying for the right to claim reimbursement only if they got wrecked. You enter that arrangement willingly and wisely (unless you are too foolish to buy insurance, which you may well be).
If you were a shareholder in a corporation and you opposed that corporation buying insurance on its new factory but the majority shareholders outvoted you, you would be compelled to accept that some of the income owed you will instead go to paying for that insurance you didn't want. But you have no rational grounds to complain...because you have no more right to oppose that payment than the other owners had to enforce it. But they outnumbered you. That's how it works even in a free market. It's also how it works in a government, but even more fairly (since everyone can only buy one share in the corporation: and that by simply standing up to be counted).
Fact is you are only able to make an income and keep property because we pay for the institutions that protect and foster the prosperity and property rights you depend on. Therefore you are taking our shit (which shit being: the services of the institutions that protect and foster the prosperity and property rights you depend on to have an income and keep property). Therefore we have a right to demand payment for what you took. Or else to lock you up as the thief you then are.
In other words, you have to pay a toll to use our economy. Otherwise you don't get to use it. Just like you said you would have it be for roads: don't pay the toll, don't get to use the road. It's just the same: don't pay the toll, don't get to use our country. It's irrational of you to argue for the former but against the latter. Because it's the same damn deal. You must pay your fair share, or else you're a thief. You are either in our social contract, or out of it. In it, you get rights. Out of it, you get nothing from us, not even a recognition of your liberty.
Your only recourse is to leave. Which you are welcome to do, BTW. Quite frankly I'd be relieved if you got the hell out of my country. At any rate, as in free markets, so in nations. We the people own this country. If you don't like what we're doing with it, leave. Because our nation is like a corporation, in which each one of us holds one share, which we inherited from the Founding Fathers, whose last will and testament (for the property--the American Colonies--that they seized by force from the King of England) is now called the Constitution. That's the agreement, the contract, you were born into, and inherited from your parents, which they inherited from their parents, and so on. Like any inheritance, you inherited the debts of this national family as well as a share of the corporate ownership of its goods, a share of the roads we built, the police we hired, and every other thing. You inherited the contractual privileges and obligations your parents inherited, and so on all the way back.
You should be thankful that this contract guaranteed you would always have the same share of this country as the rest of us (instead of the rich owning more and thus getting more say about what rights you will even get to keep), and that it guaranteed certain things could never be sold or bought, such as your right to speak freely or vote, and made arrangements for the people to pay for an army and legal system that would protect those rights and thus ensure you get to keep them.
So when we as a corporation vote to buy everyone insurance (whether health or retirement), you are bound by the agreement you inherited from your parents (or swore to voluntarily, if you are a naturalized citizen) to honor that vote, just as you would if you were a shareholder in a private company. But that same agreement also guarantees you the right to bitch about this and to persuade other voters to change their minds and no longer buy anyone insurance. Likewise when we as a corporation voted to buy everyone an education, which you probably benefited from (I suspect you were educated in a public school; probably a lousy one, given your incompetence so far), and thus owe us for, quite directly, but even if not, by living in our community you steal the benefits of universal education (such as lower crime rates and increased economic wealth, of yourself and the community you live in), and thus you still owe us for what you took, and continue to take. And the agreement establishing our right to claim what you owe us is the same agreement you inherited from your parents (or swore to upon naturalization).
Dispute Resolution Organizations
Benjamin said... You should read about these things called DROs (Dispute Resolution Organizations) to get a glimpse of how a free society could work.
So when your neighbor refuses to abide by a DRO's ruling, what do you do then? Ooops. Doesn't work, does it? DRO's only function because governments exist to back them up, enforcing their contracts (ultimately, literally, with force), or enforce default protections (e.g. your rights to life, liberty, and property), when parties to DRO contracts refuse to honor them. That's why there are no DRO's in Somalia. And never will be, until Somalia gets a functioning government.
Indeed, you can't even know what you are talking about, since DRO's entail allowing the majority to outvote the minority, and thus allow the majority to use force against the minority, the very thing you were bitching about was unfair. This happens anytime a DRO arbitrates the interests of more than two people. Since every community consists of more than two people, if DRO's arbitrated how shared property like air and water and police got used, you'd be stuck in the same shit: the majority asking for their shit back, when you keep using it without paying for it. Sounds like a government, doesn't it? Indeed, expand a DRO to the point that it no longer needs a government to enforce its own contracts and guess what you'll end up with...a fucking government.
Paying for Sidewalks with Kneecaps or Taxes
Benjamin said... I never agreed to the "social contract."
Then you are a thief: someone who takes our stuff without being a party to our contract. We have the right to treat you accordingly.
Benjamin said... And in a free society, I doubt that anyone would see a person treading upon a sidewalk for instance as an act of aggression because sidewalks would be managed differently.
According to your principles (a la roads) you would not be allowed to walk on sidewalks without paying a toll. So whether it's a toll or a tax, there is no practical difference. You're still stealing if you use the sidewalk but refuse to pay for it.
Benjamin said... Communities would accept free-riders since walking on a sidewalk actually results in no loss on the part of the owner(s).
That's false. Even in the most obvious sense it causes wear and tear, which is a real and measurable economic loss. But that's not even the half of it. Surely you would not say I or anyone can just come in and sleep in your house any time we want as long as we don't damage anything. We are causing you a loss in economic terms in several ways: not only in causing wear-and-tear, but in causing you a loss through inconvenience, crowding, and usurping of your priority of access to goods like the bed, sheets, bathroom, etc. (thus we have laws regulating crowding and right of way on sidewalks, just as you would lay down rules for our use of your house).
Moreover, you spent all that money building and maintaining that house, yet we get to benefit from those expenses without paying any part of them? That's universally recognized as a form of theft: we are usurping your property rights by claiming benefits you paid for. As for your house, so for all our shit: sidewalks, roads, police, armies, sanitation, etc.
Benjamin said... A select few individuals would likely maintain them for actual trauma like earthquakes or road accidents - perhaps via contractual fees as part of a housing community or business association most affected by it.
Which would give them the right to tell you you can't walk on their sidewalks--until you join their social contract and pay your share. Exactly my point. Not only is that exactly what happens in private communities (where the sidewalks literally are owned privately and you literally are banned from walking on them without an owner's permission), but it's exactly what happens nationally: if you refuse to join our contract, we kick you out. You then don't get to walk on our sidewalks anymore.
So it's the same result whether public or private. Your bitching about it is retarded, since all you end up doing is replacing one obligation for exactly the same obligation, replacing one government (a city) for just another government (a "business association"). You can't escape the same result. So claiming you are "put upon" by a state requiring you to pay your fair share for the sidewalks you walk on is ridiculous. Without government, you'd just be "put upon" by the owner of a sidewalk to pay your fair share for walking on it.
So you really just seem to me to be a freeloading thief who only wants to complain about paying your fair share. Because your objections to government (a public sidewalk that you own one share of) would entail the exact same objections to the absence of government (a free market sidewalk you don't even own one share of). But if the outcome is the same, how can the latter be "better" than the former? It can't. And that's why your worldview is illogical.
Nations Are Joint Business Enterprises
Benjamin said... There's no agreement that comes with breathing or walking on a sidewalk because those are extremely basic things I have to do in order to survive.
You also have to have medical care to survive. You have to have insurance against the inability to procure food and shelter to survive. You also need to be protected against fire. And criminals. And poisoning (via pollution of air or water--you need the air you breathe, and water you drink, not to be toxic). And so on. So how are you going to get those things? By stealing them? Or working your fair share for them? If the former, you are a thief. If the latter, you are a party to our social contract. In or out. Your call. That's how it is.
Instead of recognizing this reality, you make contradictory claims, such as that you should pay tolls to use someone else's roads, but you should be allowed to use someone else's sidewalk for free. How's that? You can force someone to lay and maintain a sidewalk for you, making them your slave, and somehow still claim this isn't an initiation of force against them? You can force us to clean the air you need to breathe, making us your slaves, and somehow still claim this isn't an initiation of force against us? That's bullshit. Plain and simple. We're not your slaves. You have to pay us for these things. Or else you don't get to live in our country.
In addition to the stupidity of all that, you ignore the reality of inherited contracts: if there were no governments, there would still be joint private enterprises, like businesses, which would incur privileges and obligations by contract, which the sons or daughters of the founders of those businesses would have inherited without ever having signed any of those contracts, and thus without having "agreed" to them, as you would say. Yet nevertheless they are bound by them, simply because they have no right to inherit that business unless they agree to abide by all its prior contracts. They can choose to disavow the business, and thus leave. But otherwise they must agree. They have no right to accept the inheritance and reject all the obligations that come with it.
Your nation is a business, with all its properties and rules and signed agreements, owned by all citizens. By accepting our recognition of your citizenship, in other words by accepting our recognition of your participation in joint ownership of this community (and all the rights and privileges that entails), you are accepting your inheritance of that business and all prior contracts attached thereto.
And just as in a private business to which you are a minority partner, you must agree to abide by the majority vote, or else leave the company. In other words, leave the country. Or make war upon it, thus becoming an outlaw. Which can at times be the moral thing to do (hence the Revolutionary War). But you don't really have such legitimate complaints here. Compared to the grievances listed in the Declaration of Independence, you're just a selfish wuss who doesn't have the balls to pay for what he takes but wants to enjoy all our benefits without paying for them.
Who Owns the Air?
Benjamin said... My very act of breathing doesn't constitute theft because nobody owns the air.
That's not true. We the People own the air (literally: it's common property, i.e owned by all people in common). That's why we have the right to prevent you poisoning it (or in any other way taking it away from us--a problem more obvious in the case of water, where public water literally can be taken away so no one gets it but the one guy who took it all, thus threatening everyone's life; poisoning, i.e. polluting, the air does the same thing in effect, just as poisoning the water supply also does).
So It All Comes Down to One Question:
Kneecaps or Taxes?
Benjamin said... Whatever free market solutions arose, the nature of "aggression" would not be so clunky, and no one's money would be taken without the direct consent of the individual.
Until you refused to pay the sidewalk toll and started walking on someone else's sidewalk. Then they would use "aggression" against you, to force you to pay (or restrict your liberty by force so you can't walk on the sidewalk until you do pay). Funny how that sounds exactly like what the government already does. The difference is that in a totally free market, force is unregulated, so they can break your kneecaps if they wanted, or take all your property and claim it's the "fee" for using their sidewalk. Only government can maintain a civilized system that regulates force, so you don't get kneecapped for using a sidewalk without permission, and you are only ever forced to pay what's really a fair fee for using a sidewalk.
7. Conclusion
I gave you two exams in our discussion (Exam One and Exam Two). You failed them both. In neither case did you even answer the question posed, nor present any solution to the actual problems addressed, nor point out how the government solutions I identified didn't work, or what possible alternative there could have been (or any evidence that one would work). In many cases you even declared as true what is exactly opposite the demonstrated facts in the matter.
Someone who refuses to accept reality or even try to find out what it is shall never make competent decisions in political theory or political reality. And such a person is a complete waste of time to converse with. Nevertheless, I expect you will fill my comments box with hundreds of thousands of words continuing your illogical, factually inaccurate ranting. You are clearly hopelessly delusional, and thus prevented by your insanity from grasping anything I have said. But I hope at least I've inoculated others from your madness. You I'm done with.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2011/01/factual-politics-4.html
