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Old 10-05-2006, 04:52 PM
Borodog Borodog is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2004
Location: Performing miracles.
Posts: 11,182
Default Re: Love it or Leave it

You are still missing the crucial difference between state-level "love it or leave" it arguments and say, a sports league. Multiple sports leagues, or private business, or what whatever else you'd like to use as an example, can coexist in the same territory, and one is not coerced into participating. While according to some bizarre definition of "coercion" I might be "forced" into playing professional baseball with 3 strikes to an out and 4 balls to a walk because all the local leagues play that way, and no one would want to join my crazy league with 4 strikes and 7 balls, no one puts a gun to my head and forces me to play or pay for others to play. I can play in one league, or another, or a third, or start my own if I can convince or find enough people to play by my different rules, or I can not play or pay at all. I can go bowling instead.

The state is not analogous. It forces you to play and pay, with escalating ferocity until you either give in, or are either imprisoned or dead.

The difference between these two concepts should be obvious, but it becomes most obvious when one realizes that eventually all states take increasingly harsh measures to prevent you from "leaving it", meaning you must "love it" or be imprisoned or killed. It eventually becomes a crime to leave the territorial monopoly of the state, as is evidenced by places like Cuba and the former Soviet Union. Even in the United States the government has creepingly installed a system where you must effectively ask permission of the state to leave. And if the state says no, you can't leave.

This is not in any way, shape, or form analogous to leaving a sports league because I don't like the rules, or not being able to start my own because I don't have the accumulated capital or can't find anyone else who wants to play by my rules. That last is an argument against anarchocapitalism, and a good one, the best one, the only one, the practical argument that "Nobody wants to play by your (lack of) rules." 100% true. You will never get rid of the state as long as the majority of the public believes that the state is necessary (as someone else said, you'll never get rid of churches as long as people believe in God). But that's exactly why I waste my time arguing these things on the internet.

It's also exactly why all states eventually monopolize the public education system.
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