Reactions to AC

[jogger08152]

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Are you saying that people commit more crimes when they don't fear retribution? If so, I agree.

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Yeah I think this is a constant, with no fear of consequences, people act differently then when there are consequences.

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Does this maxim apply to governments? Do governments commit more crimes because they can't be retaliated against?

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Yep, when we're equally armed, the government is obenient, as it should be. However, when we have glocks and they have Harriers and Napalm, we're f$@ked, for lack of a better term.

EDIT: Even with a scaled back government, the risk of sudden buildup and consoledation of power is present, although I would say if government were kept as small as I'd want it, it would be lessened.

Cody

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Also helpful would be an informed populace and term limits. Patriotic citizens serving a term or two and then going back to their farms (ala GW) would diminish the risk quite a bit. Career politicians almost by definition can't deflect or moderate bad ideas, and likewise are subject to undue influence by (monied) special interests; they tend to lead from the rear, since the continuation of their career is the primary goal.

[jogger08152]

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I'm not assuming it's impossible. I'm saying that it has never worked. The entire history of the state is about its expansion. It only stops expanding when it collapses. Am I incorrect here?

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I would say yes. In the 20th century both Japan (violently) and the United Kingdom (peacefully) made the transition from expansionist empirialism to... something else anyway. Both still exist as nations, both have limited government, wealthy populaces, high literacy, low crime - in short, good standards of living.

[jogger08152]

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Some easy math, your house (and it's lovely) has 800 feet of land on it's border (just play along with the numbers). Every road takes 100 feet of border space. Once the 8th road gets build from your house (you're out of space) they owners get together and say "hahahaha well now he either has to pay to park his car in a garage and walk X miles to and from it everyday, or he has to pay our huge fees, miserable piss-ant" and you're boned.

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And when the poor victim said [censored] off, you're extorting me, Im not paying you a dime, what then?

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Then as long as he doesn't walk on your roads without paying, he's fine. If he ever does though, you quite legally shoot him for trespassing, and/or sue him for his house (damages), depending on your personal predilections.

[jogger08152]

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No, beyond question it inhibits cloning. Whether some of the clones might improve the original is a question we could debate, but that the inability to profit from one's ideas does in fact diminish progress is an economic axiom. The only RESULT that is true beyond doubt, precisely as I mentioned above, is that IP protection incents progress.

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Innovations are sequential and complimentary. Humans aren't inventing wheels and clubs anymore. IP protection does not axiomatically drive progress one way or the other.

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Correct. It incents it. That why I keep saying "it incents it." Because it does. Incent it I mean. With incentives and stuff. So that it's incentivized.

Make cense?

[jogger08152]

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The myth that government has monopoly control, territorial or otherwise, in these areas.

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I dont know what myth you are referring to. Governments have a territorial monopoly on violence. Thats it.

Now of course it can use that monopoly on force to do whatever the [censored] it wants, like monopolize justice, mintage, postal services, or anything not currently under its preferred level of control. Or it can demonopolize any of those, as it has with certain things.

The only constant, defining monopoly is violent force though. Without a monopoly on violence, I and millions like me stop paying taxes, and then it all crumbles.

This isn't an AC myth. Im pretty sure its in my Intro to Econ textbook, somewhere in the back.

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You can't form a militia and violently resist? Or are you just saying that you'd lose? Because that's the same problem I have with the private armies that would spring up in AC.

[valtaherra]

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You can't form a militia and violently resist? Or are you just saying that you'd lose?

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No, Im saying the government explicitly outlaws doing this. It excludes using violent force to coerce, exploit, and extort among other things from any person not on its payroll. Government hunts down and destroys (read: slaughters with cyanide gas bombs, tanks, automatic weapon carrying stormtroopers, etc) anyone who might even be thinking about the possibility of maybe one day in the future considering forming a militia and resisting.

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Because that's the same problem I have with the private armies that would spring up in AC.

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Not following you here...

[pvn]

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Right. You're forcing me to do stuff for my own good. You're making decisions about how to achieve my own goals. Because you can read my mind and you're smarter than me. Thanks.

But no thanks.


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Read your mind? No thanks, I'd get lost in a heartbeat. I'll just stick you reading what you write. You said you like freedom, yet you never answer me when I ask how to protect it. In fact, I'm a fear hound because I talk about threats to your freedom. Nice

No, you want freedom, I want freedom, but we can't protect our right alone, so we need to band together. More over, since AC is going to cause fragmentation along idealogical lines, it will follow that many different competing services will also spring up to cater to these varying tastes. Some issues are larger then these small groups, and your only rebuttal is that you "hope" that they'll work together to protect you.

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You're still dodging the question. First you state that people need to work together - and I agree. But you haven't told me why I should be *forced* to work with someone else, even if it is "for my own good". Why *your* method is better than whatever method *I* select for myself, and why I should be compelled to participate in your plan, why you're entitled to my help. This is the motivation vs. consequence conflict. All you want to talk about is this need for unity, and you consistently ignore any concerns about different *methods* for being united (not to mention individual autonomy).

The fact that some issues are larger than small groups is irrelevant, because we've seen that large scale cooperation is possible under voluntary agreements.

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Well duh. Using this criteria, you can just shoot down any metaphor. Because hey, it's not the same thing.

The fact remains, you want something, and you want someone else to pay for it. It's that simple.

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You're right, you can shoot down metaphors that don't apply, it's niffty. Life exists on a matter of scale, you argue from one end with no consideration. So again Xbox =/= Nat'l security.

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You haven't shown why it doesn't apply. You just say "it's different". What's different about these two things that makes the metaphor not apply?

You want something, you want someone else to pay for it. True or false?

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Regardless, you're still not entitled to my help. Maybe I like the new overlords. I'm trying to figure out what's so bad about them, they're basically just telling me what to do, which is the same thing you're doing.

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Then leave and join them, but your leaving means that our side is weaker, now if we had a unifying force this wouldn't be so bad, but our private police are about to get killed by a larger unified force.

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So I can just leave? This isn't consistent with your previous positions. Obviously, I don't *care* if your side is weaker, in fact, I'd probably prefer that, since I'm leaving.

Military centralization is a huge negative when it comes to defense, BTW. How do you think Hitler was able to conquer France so fast? Compare US operations against a centralized Iraqi army vs. the decentralized forces in place now. Any force that could "kill" your decentralized forces would be more than enough to defeat centralized forces given the same population, same level of resources, etc. Centralized command and control structures are huges points of failure, and forces that are trained to depend on them become totally useless without them.

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I know, I know, I'm just thinking of boogymen, this could never happen, and the market will take care of it anyway.

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Standard reversion to utopian smear tactics.

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And again, if it were this dire, you'd have little trouble getting help.

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Some people consider lack of medical care dire, yet you didn't feel inclined to help them, yet as soon as something is dire to YOU, everyone will help. See what I did there.

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Where did you get that I don't want to help? You assume that because I don't want to help *in the manner that you prefer* that I don't want to help others? You take my disagreement with your tactics and extrapolate to assuming that I disagree with your motivation.

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Of course, I get to choose. ANd there's always a possibility of someone else entering the market, and that possibility is increased since the waste is creating opportunity.

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Great, let's just set it up ourselves shall we. Oh wait, we can't, because barriers to entry exist. Sometimes it won't be profitable for a new company to service you, then what.

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Then how is government going to help the situation? If natural barriers exist, government can't do anything but subsidize around them - this doesn't remove barriers, it just makes someone else pay for overcoming them, adding an extra layer of bureaucracy along the way, not to mention making a slew of decisions about allocation resource that are different than market allocation would have been absent the regulation.

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You always snap at the "love it or leave it" issue, yet what's going to happen when we go AC and you're the only one around you that doesn't want a certain government. No companies are going to invest money to help one person, so you'll probably not LOVE it and have to LEAVE, won't that be ironic.

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Not really. Since I'm not entitled to interact with those others, it's certainly OK with me if they chose not to do so without certain conditions being met. And if I decide that things might be more satisfactory somewhere else, that's fine.

Do you see the difference between declining to interact and forcibly interacting? If you did, you would see there's no irony here at all.

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There's not? Let's just add this to the list of things you just make up because it suits your particular viewpoint.

* AC leads to Hermitization
* AC requires or creates (not sure which) a Perfect Market
* AC contains no liability for property rights violations

You're getting close to a basketball team of strawmen.


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This is so cool, I wish I could do this. Take a position, then change it so the other guy is just making stuff up. So AC allows people to have as few associations as they care too, yet it's not likely to assume people will split into small, almost singular, factions?

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Some people might. But you seem to prefer cooperation. Lots of other people do, to, as evidenced by the small number of people living in the mountains by themselves, and the large number of people who choose occupations where they specialize in particular work, and meet their needs through trade.

So yes, this seems like a totally baseless assumption.

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The market's not perfect, yet government can't do anything right?

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I'm not even sure how to address this question. The market is not perfect. Every ACist on this board will happily admit this. This is a totally seperate issue from government doing things "right" or not - government's problems are not *because* of market imperfections, and market imperfections are not *because* of government problems, so there's no good reason to conflate these as you've done.

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ACers have repeatedly shot down talks about IP, yet there will be protections.

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Who said anything about IP? You were talking about poisoning someone else's water.

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There will also be arbiters, who have no real power outside their private armies (anyone remember Might makes Right) but everything will be ok?

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Who said anything about private armies? The BBB doesn't have an army. They don't need one. Are you incapable of thinking of anything outside of a framework of violence?


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B) This isn't true anyway.

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To be clear you were referencing "There would be no promise of full faith and credit in AC, so it's unlikely that 100 small municipalities could work together without significant friction.". What?? Hell we have two parties that can't even get along, so somehow 100 aren't going to have friction?

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So since two people might not get along, you extrapolate and assume that nobody can? If this is the case, we're doomed with or without government.

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You keep making assertions, this is different than that, we need governemtn for "some things". but no actual reasoning to back these assertions up. I guess we're just supposed to take your word for it.


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I've explained myself constantly, yet you continue to listen. I've given very specific examples, and more vague ones, and you laugh and say "pssh that's not an argument". If you won't listen, it does little good to speak.

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Assertion is not an argument. Making up crazy examples is not a (good) argument.

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Obviously, we don't. It's pretty clear that you do want to harm others. You'll say you're doing it because you're a nice guy, though.


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No, we both want freedom, I'm just willing to accept that in the real world, we have to have the means to protect it. You've continually refused to answer my examples.

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How do you get from "the means to protect it" to "an entitlement to someone else's resources and/or labor"? How does violating freedom protect it?

What examples have not been answered?


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I think that the ends CAN justify the means. This can't be results oriented though. If we have to kill 10 people to save 10,000, is it worth it. It can be, depending on the situation and the willingness of those 10 to help those 10,000. It's not a blank check however, to force people into whatever plan one might want, there's always a need for justification. In the end, Might always makes Right, not morally mind you, but practically.

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I think I've seen all I need to. Thanks. I really don't have anything else to say to you.

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You're right, I can, and then while we're all busy bickering over which roads to take (since they're all bending us over anyway, dammit there's not more land to make competing roads, curse you nature) we have no ability to enforce anything because we have no unity beyond our community. There I go, trying to think ahead again, sorry.

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There you go again, feeling entitled to make someone else do what you want, but not demonstrating why you have such an entitlement.

And note the limited amount of space is *exactly* why private ownership of roadways is superior to public ownership. If you disagree, why do you think the government allocation of scarce resources in this particular case is suddenly superior, when in every other case market allocation is superior?

When are you sending me that check for my xbox?

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"Help" - from your perspective. As long as you get what *you* want, it's great.

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Who didn't see that coming. Ok so go back, look at what I said (like I asked 19995 posts ago) and give me a solution.

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To what? Which post?

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The feeling I'm getting from reading this is that ACers can sometimes micromanage but rarely macromanage. You (PVN, not all ACers) outright refuse to answer any examples which are concerns that will face an AC community.

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Micromanage what? Your demands for solutions to example X or example Y *are* micromanagement scenarios!

You're asking people who are specifically opposed to central planning to give you a centrally planned solution to some endless series of problems, and you're wondering why there aren't any coming? Gee, I can't imagine why you're confused.

[pvn]

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That said, if you reread what we've all wrote, you will see that there is a large similarity streak between us. We may have come to different ends, but the path we took to get there was, for the most part, the same. That's what I've learned, I was largely unaware of how close we tread ideologically.

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The gulf between you and me is much, much bigger than, say, the gulf between Ron Paul and Nanci Pelosi.

[valtaherra]

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No, beyond question it inhibits cloning. Whether some of the clones might improve the original is a question we could debate, but that the inability to profit from one's ideas does in fact diminish progress is an economic axiom. The only RESULT that is true beyond doubt, precisely as I mentioned above, is that IP protection incents progress.

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Innovations are sequential and complimentary. Humans aren't inventing wheels and clubs anymore. IP protection does not axiomatically drive progress one way or the other.

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Correct. It incents it. That why I keep saying "it incents it." Because it does. Incent it I mean. With incentives and stuff. So that it's incentivized.

Make cense?

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I dont disagree with that. IP protection can incentivize an individual to bring ideas to life. And some people bring ideas to life without giving IP protection a thought. There are several other much more powerful incentives to bring ideas to life. I was just pointing out that IP protection may or may not hinder actual societal technological progress.

[pvn]

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Just an interested question to the guys who've been going at it for double digit pages:


Has either one of you guys learned anything new and/or thought about changing or at least evaluating some of their positions?

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I learned that discussion with jogger is a waste of time, since he reverts to ad hominem and intellectual dishonesty when cornered, even though he ostensibly denounces such tactics.