What would be your idea of a perfect society?

[pokerbobo]

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Why? What if I don't want to be a landowner and would rather live with a friend? Are you going to drag me off in chains?

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Of course not.

It's your choice, it's entirely up to you. I'm just saying that your right to make that choice should be guaranteed. If you change your mind, that choice will still always be there. As long as you're willing to accept the responsibilities that go with it, you will always have land that is yours.


q/q

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I am assuming there is a set amount of land given to each citizen. What happens when the population exceeds the amount of land? You have already stated that landlords are forbidden, so I cannot build an apartment bldg for excess population to reside in.

Options as I see them:

Kill old people
Kill or forbid new births
Kill by "lotto"
Take land back and divide up again (red tape nightmare)

I vote for kill old people.

[Felz]

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You have a point only if your perfect society people volunteer for their civic duty. The second you force people to work against their will you have the very definition of slavery. Now would this slavery be somewhat less disgusting because you are only forcing them to lose x% of their life instead of 100%, but that, to quote Rothbard, is a difference only in scale, not in kind.

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In a represantative democratic system it would mean people indeed volunteered for their civic duty. As long as the constitution is considered as being agreed upon by every member of the society.

It's the classic principle of Legitimization. People aren't entitled to partake in every single decision. And they are bound by these democratic decisions irrespective of them agreeing upon every single one. Cause they legitimized this process through agreeing to the constitutional contract.

Don't like it - choose the exit option and leave.

[QuadsOverQuads]

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I am assuming there is a set amount of land given to each citizen.

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Certainly open to debate, but sure, ok.

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What happens when the population exceeds the amount of land?

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What happens under every other system?

By definition, you either work with your existing resources to put them to better and more efficient use, or you acquire more resources.

Right now, the US military is in Iraq killing people for this precise purpose. Iraq isn't the first nation in the gunsights, and it won't be the last.

I would add that, when resources are limited, concentrating them into the hands of a very small elite (as we do in this country) is probably the best way to exacerbate this limited-resources problem. Hence, our small problem with military aggression.

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You have already stated that landlords are forbidden, so I cannot build an apartment bldg for excess population to reside in.

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That's not actually what I said, but whatever.

I'm curious why you think that things like an apartment building can't exist without a landlord to profiteer off of them.

Landlords don't design buildings, architects do.
Landlords don't build buildings, either. Construction workers and skilled tradesmen do that.
Landlords actually don't do much of anything except extract rent and organize other people's labor (and mostly just for maintenance purposes).

I think that, with community resources, and with a large pool of skilled labor that benefits directly and personally from the work, it is easy to see how apartment buildings and larger public works could be organized, built and maintained without some extra group of profiteers in there skimming off a fat layer for themselves.

You actually don't need anything more than the labor and resources that are being used to build and maintain these projects now. The only question, really, is to how the labor is organized and who retains the benefits.

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Options as I see them:

Kill old people
Kill or forbid new births
Kill by "lotto"
Take land back and divide up again (red tape nightmare)

I vote for kill old people.

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I really find it fascinating how right-wingers like you are obsessed with turning all of their opponents into mass-murderers, communists and devils.

I wonder which devil I get to be next.

Tune in tomorrow, kids.


q/q

[tolbiny]

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You have a point only if your perfect society people volunteer for their civic duty. The second you force people to work against their will you have the very definition of slavery. Now would this slavery be somewhat less disgusting because you are only forcing them to lose x% of their life instead of 100%, but that, to quote Rothbard, is a difference only in scale, not in kind.

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In a represantative democratic system it would mean people indeed volunteered for their civic duty. As long as the constitution is considered as being agreed upon by every member of the society.

It's the classic principle of Legitimization. People aren't entitled to partake in every single decision. And they are bound by these democratic decisions irrespective of them agreeing upon every single one. Cause they legitimized this process through agreeing to the constitutional contract.

Don't like it - choose the exit option and leave.

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Bogus, time and again debunked as crap. The laws, and rules for repealing those laws, were passed by people long since deceased. In any representative democracy one is born into a system in which a set of privileged elites lay down the rules for others to abide by. If its Q/Q telling a bunch of people they have to work in a soup kitchen to be allowed to live in the country or white people telling blacks they have to pick cotton or be whipped the principles of slavery are the same. Individuals MUST predate the state, this means that nay non unanimous decision forcing labor must be slavery.

[Felz]

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Bogus, time and again debunked as crap. The laws, and rules for repealing those laws, were passed by people long since deceased.

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I call this bogus. I'd be interested in where this has been "time and again debunked as crap." On this forum? Sorry while I'm laughing my arse of.
In a democracy these rules are always free to be abolished. In AC-Land there's also path dependency and network externalities that restrict youz to certain sets of institutions.

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In any representative democracy one is born into a system in which a set of privileged elites lay down the rules for others to abide by.

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Based on what, reason or "empirical observation" - if you consider yourself close to the Austrian School reason should be your only framework.

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Individuals MUST predate the state, this means that nay non unanimous decision forcing labor must be slavery.

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The state doesn't deprive you of the right to leave or to refuse to work and doesn't force you to work without compensation. You aren't property of the state.

[pvn]

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What happens when the population exceeds the amount of land?

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What happens under every other system?

By definition, you either work with your existing resources to put them to better and more efficient use, or you acquire more resources.

Right now, the US military is in Iraq killing people for this precise purpose. Iraq isn't the first nation in the gunsights, and it won't be the last.

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LOL. You're way off the mark.

The US Military isn't trying to "put existing resources to better and more efficient use". That should be obvious. And the US military isn't trying to acquire more resources. There's no "conquest" in that sense going on. If the US government wanted to get *access* to stuff in Iraq like oil, Saddam would have happily sold it at market prices. The US imposed the sanctions, not the other way around, remember? Now we're paying over $5000/barrel to "acquire resources."

Get real. War IS a racket, but you're way off on how it works.


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I'm curious why you think that things like an apartment building can't exist without a landlord to profiteer off of them.

Landlords don't design buildings, architects do.
Landlords don't build buildings, either. Construction workers and skilled tradesmen do that.
Landlords actually don't do much of anything except extract rent and organize other people's labor (and mostly just for maintenance purposes).

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Yes, leninnites though the same thing. Businesses can be run without owners. It turned out pretty good, don't you think?

Who is going to decide when and where to build apartment buildings?

Just as the Soviets ended up with silos full of rotting grain while millions starved, you're going to end up with huge empty apartment buildings while people die of exposure.


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I really find it fascinating how right-wingers like you are obsessed with turning all of their opponents into mass-murderers, communists and devils.

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Since everyone is so big on "empirical" evidence around here, all we have to do is look at the results from the last time what you're suggesting was tried. Mass-murderers and communists sounds pretty damn accurate to me.

[2OuterJitsu]

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If (use your imagination if you don't believe in an afterlife) God came to you in Heaven and told you that you were going to be born and that your birth would be random into a family living in the U.S.

You may be born to a family living in the ghetto.

You may be born to illegal aliens living in the U.S.

You may be intelligent, average, or ride the shortest bus they've got.

You may get lucky and be born with above avg intelligence into a very rich family.

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Starship Troopers (the book not the movie)

[TomCollins]

Now I know why Q/Q sticks to trolling rather than posting what he REALLY thinks.

He makes Moorobot's utopia look desirable.

[tolbiny]

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In a democracy these rules are always free to be abolished.

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Wrong, the rules can be quite difficult to change, certain methods (constitutional amendments) were intentionally setup to be difficult to change, even when 55, 60 or 70 % of the voting population want a new rule. Gerrymandering gives a huge advantage for those in power to remain in power. Supreme court judges are appointed for life. Intentional entrenchment is the word of the day for democracies, not responding to the changing will of the people.

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Based on what, reason or "empirical observation" - if you consider yourself close to the Austrian School reason should be your only framework.


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Wrong, the Austrian school uses logic to describe what we see in the real world.

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Individuals MUST predate the state, this means that nay non unanimous decision forcing labor must be slavery.



The state doesn't deprive you of the right to leave or to refuse to work and doesn't force you to work without compensation. You aren't property of the state.

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Obviously you weren't reading very closely as Q/Q specifically said that his ideal community would have people who were mandated to perform community service. And a lack of compensation isn't definitive of slavery (in fact slaves are granted compensation or else they would starve to death) it is the structure in which one group sets the rules and the other has to follow under threat of violence.

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The state doesn't deprive you of the right to leave

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Again individuals predate the state, the "claim" that the state makes over a territory is clearly illegitimate without full consent of those involved.

[QuadsOverQuads]

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Mass-murderers and communists sounds pretty damn accurate to me.

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question for iron:

Do you consider accusing someone of being a "mass-murderer" and "communist" to be a personal attack under the rules of this forum?

I have tried to respect the new civility requirements here, and I am seriously asking.


q/q