Indiana's freedom to discriminate law

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Magical Realist, Mar 29, 2015.

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  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Thanks for recognizing yourself that your answer (which mentioned Lairds and town councils) was offtopic.
    Yes, anti-libertarian propoganda typically distorts libertarian concepts, so that, no wonder, you appear confused.

    So, in a libertarian society ownership is a central institution. Starting with self-ownership. And, of course, contains ownership of everything produced, as well as of land which is used. Moreover, libertaria is no utopia like communism, so there will be criminals who violate ownership rights. And libertarian citizens have the right to defend themself.

    By the way, what you have chosen to name "government" is certainly not forbidden too. A libertarian community can, and will, of course, have leaders. What these leaders do not have are more rights than the other people - and even this only except the rights they have been given volitionally. (And "volitionally" does not mean a majority decision).

    They can even have police forces and armies. With policement and soldiers paid for, or volunteers, but no with conscribed slaves. And the difference is, again, that these soldiers and policemen do not have more rights than any citizen. They have weapons - but everybody else has the right to own weapons too.
    Because of this I have taked about secession, even for a single person. It does not exist now, the closest thing which exists now is emigration. There is, of course, a difference, and an important one - a secession means that what is owned by the group has to be divided into fair parts. Emigration means you get nothing.
    Tell this to your mirror. Here is how Wiki defines government: "A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled. In the Commonwealth of Nations, the word government is also used more narrowly to refer to the collective group of people that exercises executive authority in a state. This usage is analogous to what is called an "administration" in American English. Furthermore, especially in American English, the concepts of the state and the government may be used synonymously to refer to the person or group of people exercising authority over a politically organized territory."

    So, I count here three definitions, all of them referring to state. Only one adds an "or community" which you could use as an excuse to justify your wide interpretation.
    If not, fine. Then your reference to them was irrelevant.
    Stop creating strawmen. I have no need at all to deny political complexity of tribal organization. By the way, when I have mentioned the complexity of various societies in the past, I have received in http://www.sciforums.com/threads/noam-chomsky.145757/#post-3310764 a
    And now you start praise to the skies some American Indian tribes. Whats wrong with the Afghan tribes? That they win against the American army? Just curious.
    Yes, freedom is fine, even if it can be abused. In fact, every freedom can be "abused", applied to do harmful things. First of all, with the wrong free decision people harm themself. They have to live with this, this is named responsibility. They can also harm other people. But as long as this is not an aggression, the other people have to live with it too. If I reject your proposal for sex, you have to live with this, if I bid at an auction, I harm other bidders, they have to live with this. This is what freedom of contract is.
    And, no, libertarians do not promote rights only to some parts, they always promote all the rights to all people. (With some exceptions, of course, which you cannot avoid in modern America without being named a ....)
    And the next strawman. Of course, there will be criminals in the libertarian society too. They are even more powerful than today - because they have equal rights, they are not part of the sheeple as today, where the police can do a lot of things nobody else is permitted to do. So, the organization of defense against robberers and other criminals is a difficult problem, in fact one of the most difficult ones.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    It was a dig at your magical thinking - you were talking about ownership and rules and boundaries and so forth that appear without source and are understood - even obeyed - without organized channels of communication or enforcement, as in a family or similarly communistic organization.
    Emigration is not close to secession. Boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience are all closer than emigration. And secession does not refer to single people. You are just using the word wrong.
    And this the "institution" of "ownership" is established, its limitations and rights defined so everyone knows what they are, its boundaries and scope defended, etc, by - by - something, somehow - - you know, maybe "reputation"? Magical thinking, in short.
    Are you going to try to defend the notion that towns, counties, cities, tribes, island nations, the Mongol Horde, the Iroquois, pirate havens, and so forth and so on, do not have governments? Or are you going to claim all these entities are "States"?
    Then quit doing it. You keep talking about "chiefs" and "shamans" and so forth in tribes with markets, as if tribes had markets without governments.
    Freedom is what the abused are denied, in the bigot-dominated society of "libertarian" Indiana.
    You don't. You promote the denial of freedoms and liberties to black and gay and female US citizens by self-organized bigots.
    Nobody said anything about criminals. The bigot-organized abuses if Indiana's black, gay, female, etc, citizens under this new law will be legal.
     
    Last edited: Aug 23, 2015
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    That there are no organized channels of communication is your phantasy (as if one would need government to communicate). And that in a libertarian society everybody has the right to protect his property - with any weapons, and together with other people who volitionally cooperate with him - has been explained already.
    First of all, of course, by the reputation of those who defend the owned property that they are able to defend it. Then, the limitations and rights are part of common law.
    The Mongol Horde was a quite powerful state. Then, I do not care about formal diplomatic recognition of a state, but use, as the base, the definition that it is an organization which has the monopoly of force over a given territory. Then, for towns, counties, cities inside a state the state, of course, installes some local institutions of control which one can name their government. On the other hand, there have been a lot of powerful city-states in history. And island nations exist even today, even as diplomatically recognized states. On the other hands, there may be also a lot of examples where it would be nonsensical to name the guys who lead a given community a government.

    What is important for libertarian theory is if a society is based on volitional contracts, and equal rights for all questions where no contracts exist, or not. This is something quite different. A non-state of slaveholders is not a libertarian society, and a modern industrial society could be, at least in principle, be such a society. What is important for you to name something "state" or "government" seems to be something completely different and unrelated - more a question of the complexity of the organization than of rights.
    Because they have. A market is nothing but a lot of people who own things they want to exchange with others.
    Indiana is everything but libertarian. I would guess "fascist" would be more close to truth than "libertarian" to characterize almost all US states. But nobody has a moral right to force other people to serve them. If they have such a right, they are slaveholders.
    No. I promote freedom of contract. For everybody. Freedom from slavery, also for everybody. Even for people you name bigots, or despise because they are white, christians, heterosexual or male. Of course, this restricts the "freedom" of the slaveholders to force their slaves to serve them, a freedom which you defend here.

    You polemically wrote "and loss of freedom and liberty is only possible at the hands of the State, in libertarian world". Which compares libertarians with communist utopia inhabited by new people who are not criminal at all. Libertaria is not such a nonsensical utopia. Libertarians know that there will be people who violate the rules, and that one has to defend against them.
    Freedom of contract is not abuse. Forced service is abuse, is slavery. I will not accept your Newspeak.
     
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  7. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You've described your libertarian utopia, in which one obtains freedoms and liberties and the recognition of them by magic, clearly, many times. But having a right does not provide one with the capability, and without the capability there is no freedom or liberty. In real life.
    Not in the US. Local governments are set up and elected by local residents, not installed by the State. And everybody calls them "governments".
    Nonsense. They were pastoral nomadic tribesmen. They had nothing for government but those "chiefs" and "shamans" you find beneath your interest.
    And a house is nothing but a bunch of people who want to keep the rain off their heads.

    Look: markets exist in physical reality. A market is what people set up to actually accomplish these exchanges of things.
    According to you, any bunch of Klansmen who can get sufficient control of the community's resources has the right to use that leverage to obtain any contract terms whatsoever. By moral right.
    I agree. Your ideology doesn't look so good in real life - such as with Indiana's "freedom of contract" laws.
    You have, right here, promoted the freedom of contract of bigots to get together and contract with each other to deny black people anything - including food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, freedom of travel, self defense against assault, etc.
     
  8. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Your "by magic" rhetorics are cheap and unjustified.

    The libertarian theory does not give anybody any "positive rights" or capabilities. For a simple reason: The things you have to give people to obtain these "positive rights" have to be taken away from other people - the slaves of this "positive rights" society. (Of course, slaves have also a right to be feed by the slaveholders, also a positive right).
    You will see how independent of the state they are if they declare their secession. You may not know this, but local elections have existed even in communist states. So this is quite irrelevant.

    About Dshingis Khan:
    LOL. But I couldn't care less.
    So your point being? To build houses one does, indeed, not need any government too.
    If the way they have obtained their property rights over the community's ressources was legitimate (which is often doubtful), then, indeed, using freedom of contract to use their property would be morally ok.
    The fascist American states have, sorry, nothing to do with my ideology. Your ideology has certainly more in common with the Nazi concentration camps or Stalin's GULAG than my ideology has with real America.
    No, they have the right not to cooperate with the blacks. The blacks are, by the same freedom of contract, free to cooperate with all other willing black, white and yellow people. All what the black people create, with their own work, in cooperation with a lot of other people, they will own, and the white bigots have no right at all to take anything of this away from them.
     
  9. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    They are capitulations. I have given up trying to extract means and methods from you - markets only need people with wants, freedoms and liberties exist without control of means or resources, powerful and predatory interests are controlled by the morality of their potential victims, your world is governed by magic.
    You claimed they were installed by the State. That claim is false (a good many of them, including the one I live in, predate their State, for starters. They installed the State, not the other way around).
    You claimed the Mongol Horde was a State. The claim was false.

    This frequent response of yours, to having been corrected yet again on some false claim of fact, has become by repetition a demonstration of this: you don't care about physical reality. You are faced with a choice: pet theory vs physical reality. You choose pet theory.
    For houses: tools, materials, etc. For markets: some kind of government, location, etc. They don't appear by magic because a bunch of people want to exchange goods and services. Wishful thinking does not build and maintain infrastructure.
    The free and voluntary cooperation of the bigots with each other took away the freedoms of the blacks, in the US. This is historical fact. They did not need the State - they had to fight off the State, actually, to establish their freedom of contract. You support and promote that situation - your ideology is the US bigot's ideology, as I showed you explicitly in the case of Lester Maddox et al.
    Or anyone who did, yep. That's what the KKK said, you got it. And they owned or controlled basically everything. So nobody capable of exchanging money, land, food, shelter, medical care, tools, transportation, education, physical defense, weapons, etc, beyond a bare minimum of survival , would cooperate with a black person or anyone who did cooperate with a black person. So black people had no means of obtaining these things. See how that works, in real life?

    The pattern is common, almost universal, in human societies. If you don't restrict the freedom of contract of the rich and powerful, they will get together, pool their control of community resources, and take away the freedoms and liberties of the rest. The most commonly dispossessed group is women.

    It's called reality. Get to know it.
    Except for the worst aspects of them being motivated by it and designed according to it - providing opportunities for you to observe the workings of your ideology in real life situations. If you care.
    It's always doubtful, in real life. Restrict the employment of your ideology to those "legitimate" situations (science fiction novels, religious myth) and we're done with it here.

    Then we can turn back to the Indiana law you were defending, without the mythical ideological baggage. Because Indiana is certainly not a place where the property of the rich and powerful was obtained in perfect libertarian legitimacy.
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2015
  10. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    A central part of libertarian theory is ownership - self-ownership, ownership of what one produces, ownership of everything. So, everything which is not for free because it is not scarce is owned. Ownership is a quite strong form of control of means and ressources. And it can be defended by all means, in particular with weapons, which everybody is free to own. And also with greater armed formations, as long as the soldiers are not drafted but voluntary.

    The reputational system I propose also has a quite strong enforcement - those who do not accept the decisions of the accepted arbiters appear on a black list visible to everybody.

    There may be, of course, disagreement about the question if these means are sufficient. And, in particular, against such aggressive superpower states like the US this is, indeed, an open question. But the US running away in Afghanistan as well as Iraq show that a local population which owns weapons is not completely helpless even against large states.
    I have recognized that you think so. I found this funny. On the one hand, the average tribe who has nothing but a chief and a shaman has a government, and now the Mongols have not been a state. Sorry, I'm not interested in discussing this, it is simply funny.
    In this case, I simply choose common knowledge, without caring a lot if it is correct, because I couldn't care less about the Mongols. If I would believe you, this would be even in favour of anarchistic theory - some stateless nomades have been able to destroy the powerful states of that time. But this is simply too funny to be taken seriously, even if it would be in favour of anarchistic theory.
    They are created by people who want it and are ready to work for what they want. And ready to defend what they have created, once they have succeeded, with all the power they have. This is not about wishful thinking, but about hard work.
    Freedom of contract does not take away freedom of contract from others. The others may have a hard time if the starting conditions are unjust, because one group owns almost everything. But the problem in this case is the unjust distribution of property, and not the freedom of contract. And your ad Hitlerum is simply boring.

    And I see how this works, in real life you have even a black president.

    About my objection that the fascist US states have nothing to do with libertarian theory:
    So, thanks for this admission. The worst aspects of fascism in the US are, in your opinion, the few things yet compatible with libertarian ideas, like the remains of freedom of contract.

    So, according to your ideology, all claims of ownership are doubtful. Always. This suggests that in your ideal society there would be no private ownership at all.

    This nicely corresponds to your defense of draft slavery and your admission that the things which you hate most in fascism are the remains of libertarian principles - like freedom of contract.

    Yes, we can return. And think about what can be done in a society with an unjust distribution of ownership.

    We have, essentially, the following alternatives: Redistribution by a revolution. This will destroy a lot, and the resulting distribution will be as unjust as before, only in the hands of those who are actually the most ruthless criminals. Instead, today the 1% are their heirs, usually more educated and less aggressive people. Thus, redistribution by revolution usually makes things worse.
    Redistribution by the state does not work. Because the state is controlled by the same 1%. Thus, what the state is doing is to redistribute in their favour.
    The libertarians think the best solution is to accept the distribution as it is, but to fight for the freedom of the 99%. The freedom to own what they produce, their freedom of contract, and other freedoms, which allow them to manage their own life and to become richer.
    Your proposals?
     
  11. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Yeah, we know. A central part of your version of libertarian theory is that ownership is something one acquires by declaration, defends or disputes without means, establishes without government. That's right at the core of your entire "theory" - like a science fiction story that assumes faster than light travel, or a physics lesson that begins "assume no friction".
    You are ignorant about tribes and their governments. Why do you not know that you are ignorant? Why do you think you know how tribal people - such as the Mongols before conquering China and India, or the Iroquois before being conquered by the Americans, or the Zulu before being conquered by the British - governed themselves?
    Sure it does, quite often. You have an example right in front of you, a famous one - racial oppression in the US.
    Your ideology does a great deal of harm whenever the distribution of property is unjust. Think about that for a second.
    Why is it you have so much trouble with what I actually post, that you need to change it all the time?
    Fight how? You just rejected all your means of fighting. What you have left is magical thinking.
    btw: in the case of racial oppression in the US, the oppressed were less than a third of he population. Likewise with Indiana's law - the targets of the freedom of contract abuses will be minority groups.
    I propose that when reality conflicts with your theory, you change your theory. And when people correct your terminology, you pay attention (still using "redistribution", still "the state" - because your arguments don't make sense if you drop these inaccurate terms, do they).
     
  12. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    How to establish ownership is specified in libertarian theory. There is, first of all, self-ownership. There is the right to take what is unowned. You can obtain ownership by gift or exchange or otherwise by contract from other owners, and you own what you create yourself. So, the ways to obtain ownership are quite well-known, and do not require a state to identify them. Contracts are a useful way, to solve conflicts over contracts it is a good idea to stipulate to use an arbiter who is trusted by all participants (which also does not require a state, having a guy who is trusted is sufficient). And, of course, one defends what one ownes with all means available. So, there is nothing which justifies an analogy with faster than light travel of scifi stories. All the things one needs already exists. For the things which do not yet exist, like the global reputational system, all what is technically necessary to implement it exists.
    Its funny, you seem to think there are only two possibilities, ignorant or not. Your tactic looks like the following: You have read a nice book about something, after this you think you know a lot about this. Then you throw in some bits about Iroquois or Mongols or about what that book was, and start namecalling everybody who disagrees with your claims as ignorant. Instead, I don't claim to know a lot about the Mongols, but what I know is sufficient to LOL about your claims. Interesting that you have shifted now to "before conquering China and India". This is, of course, not what we were talking about. Once you named in #462 "the Mongol Horde", and not a lot of small Mongol hordes which have been busy fighting each other before Dshingis Khan unified them, it seemed obvious for me that what you were talking about the Golden Horde, which was a state and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horde will provide you sufficient evidence that this was a state.
    Not much to think. Whenever the distribution of property is unjust, imprisoning a thief or robberer may be unjust too. What follows about what one has to do with robberers and thiefs? Nothing. The moral rule not to steal is also questionable. Does this mean that it is always questionable? Or, closer to your beloved example, let's consider rules of animal protection. If racist bigots, who consider blacks as animals, follow the rules of animal protection in their dealings with blacks, this will be a wrongdoing, without doubt. Does this mean the rules of animal protection are bad?

    Think about this for more than a second. I hope you may recognize that there may be a lot of different reasons for the failure of some society. If you want to create, say, a society on a far too small desert island, even the most beautiful society will not prevent starvation and death. Or, if you create the most beautiful society out of a lot of antisocial liars, the result may be a completely unjust society - simply because the judges are liars so that the whole justice becomes a farce. Such is life. BTW, this is quite typical, there are a lot of nice rights written in paper, especially constitutions, and nobody cares about. All the communist states have been, in fact, quite democratic states, with freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and so on, if one looks what was formally written in the constitution, with a difference between constitution and reality even greater than in the US.

    So, a system of organization of a society always has to presuppose something. A constitutional state has to presuppose that the people consider the constitution to be a serious document, obligatory for the whole apparatus of the state. A humanitarian society has to presuppose that blacks are accepted to be humans, else some ideas like "all people have equal rights" do not extend to blacks. And, of course, a liberal state as well as a libertarian society have to presuppose that the starting distribution of ownership (there always exists one) is more or less just. And the long list of presumptions which a communist society needs to work - completely reeducated human beings which care much more about the mankind than about themself - is also well-known.

    Moreover, every state requires that those who obtain power in the state are somehow better than the average people. This is almost unreachable - except by accident for a short time - because power is most attractive to people with anti-social, sadistic behaviour problems. Moreover, most ways to solve the problem who gets the power prefer people with negative personality traits like ruthlessness and abilities to win intriges as well as submission toward those in power in bureaucratic hierarchies, and the abilities to lie and cheat in democratic elections.
    If you think I have misread or misinterpreted what you think, give a correction. In this case, by explaining which cases of ownership are in your opinion not doubtful, and when.
    First of all, fighting the ideological beliefs which the 1% distribute via the mass media to control the sheeple. Then, what I favour as a mean to fight the state are black markets. My proposal is the development of an anarchistic global reputational system, and, then, based on this system, developments of black markets. With a reputational system working, one can develop a black market banking system. With such a banking system, the ability of the state to control the population via control of the money flow and taxation will decrease essentially: How can a state tax income on accounts he does not even know? All the financial operations can be done in such a hidden network, and are, then, out of the reach of taxation. In a next step, the working income of many people can be protected from taxation. In a world where the main working instrument becomes more and more the computer, which can be localized anywhere, all the jobs which can be, in principle, done at a computer at home will be de facto uncontrollable by the state. What cannot be controlled cannot be taxed. And, then, there is a good base for developing black markets for everything else.

    This fighting is, as you can see, completely non-violent and peaceful. All one is doing is protecting privacy, of oneself, and of the people one cooperates with. What today is possible only for the 1%, namely to avoid to pay taxes by hiding the income, will be made safely available to the 99% too. It may violate laws, but only unjust laws, once one rejects taxation as unjust.

    The state has, of course, at this stage yet an army, police and jails, and can therefore enforce taxation of what is visible wealth. But the tax income will be much lower, the ability to control the population too. How one can continue after this to get rid of the remaining state is something one can speculate - but in any way, the transformation is a long time peaceful one, the institutions of the state or under control of the state are not destroyed, but parallel structures are created, and the libertarian revolution will be successful only if these new structures work better than the old ones, so that they are able to win even against structures supported by the state.

    And why should one care about this? Usually the bigots who abuse freedom of contract are minorities too. And minorities do not have to be large to solve the problem - if they are too small, no minority will care to boycott them, so, if there are too many prejudiced people who want to boycott, the minority is large enough. The exception may be hate campaigns against small minorities organized by the mainstream mass media. But in this case, the minority has no chance anyway - and anti-discrimination laws will not help them.
    In case of conflict with reality I care, of course, even without your proposal. If necessary, I modify my theory, no problem. The same for meaningful corrections of terminology. But, unfortunately, I have not accepted your proposals to change terminology. So I continue to use the terminology which I consider as appropriate.
     
  13. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No, I don't. Pointing out that you are very ignorant about something you have made many trivially false claims concerning does not limit the possibilities for other people at all - there are many - or create two possibilities for you - there is one (assuming honesty, of course).
    It is exactly what I was and am talking about. The term "Mongol Horde" in English - not "Golden Horde" or any of the other terms applied to any States of the established empire - normally refers to the conquering Mongols under Genghis Khan (traditional spelling). They were hunting and pastoral nomadic tribesmen, differing from the Northern Cheyenne or the Five Nations of North America mostly in the prosperity (and consequent military power) gained by herding domesticated herbivores. They were governed as tribes are governed. They settled in places as new State governments after conquering such States as China and India and accumulating not only much wealth but the civil resources (literacy, engineering, bureaucracy, architecture, etc) of the conquered, not before, and the governments they formed using these captured civil resources are known by the names of these new State governments. China was never governed as a State by the Mongol Horde, for example, but by the Khanate formed from the captured lands (eventually, the Yuan dynasty).

    Among the many extraordinary aspects of Genghis Khan was his recognition of the value of State level government - so different from his own traditions and upbringing - in managing the conquered realms. He never stayed a night in a city himself (or so it is said), and never learned to read or write, but he saw the value of these foreign means and capabilities. The parallels between Genghis of the Mongols and - say - Tecumseh of the Iroquois, are direct.
    You have been handed a large, pertinent (directly involving Indiana and this law), and long-standing well- documented counterexample, one among hundreds, to your hypothetical description there.

    Why should you care about reality? Because it's a good way for you to see where you've gone haywire in your ideology. Exactly what part of your supposed "libertarian" setup requires that the racial oppression in the US be other than it has been for a century and more, as you keep insisting it must be? That part should be changed.
    I can lead you to information, I can't make you think. I can, however point out that when I make observations about government, taxation, etc, and you reply with claims about "the state" and "redistribution", you are not addressing my posts - even if your claims were reality based instead of fantasy dependent, they would not be directly relevant.

    And if you rectified your terminology ("The first thing is the rectification of names" Confucious) you wouldn't post such muddles as this:
    Black markets depend on infrastructure provided by government. All of them. Your "reputational system" is magical thinking, or government. All banking systems necessarily rely on government infrastructure. And so forth.
     
    Last edited: Aug 28, 2015
  14. pjdude1219 The biscuit has risen Valued Senior Member

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    16,479
    how very libertarian of you claim people using the actual definitions of words are trying to change the meaning. i'd find the sense of entitlement and arrogance of your ideology amusing if not for its fascist undertones, hatred of real freedom, and its inherent danger to normal everyday people.
     
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    This is not the question. The question is why I should care about your irrelevant ideological reinterpretations of reality.
    It is clear that libertarian theory gives equal rights to all people. That's all what has to be said about this. Exactly no part requires more than that. If you think libertarian theory is obliged to talk some political correct nonsense about racism, gender mainstreaming and/or gay rights you are wrong.
    As if you would address my posts. Your repeated fantasies that everything depends on government are simply boring ideology. Looks like you are unable to do anything meaningful without being told to do this by some government. Else, it seems unexplainable why you believe that even trivial things which are successfully managed even by schoolchildren (organizing exchanges, making choices about the medium of exchange) require a government.
     
  16. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    No, that was not the question. You have posted claims of not caring several times, and each time it was about an aspect of reality that you found trivial, not worth caring about.

    No, it isn't. It's clear that your school of "libertarian" ideology declares their theory will give equal rights to all people, and assumes that the attempt has been successful in advance. We see that declaration from Lester Maddox, for example, agreeing with your assessment of things like Indiana's freedom of contract guarantee.

    The actual consequences of actual implementations of the ideology you and Lester Maddox explicitly share have been miserable, ugly; entire societies built on denial of basic freedoms and liberties to entire categories of people. And that is exactly what standard economic theory, standard game theory, common political sense, all predict. You don't get maximum freedom and liberty at minimum government, in theory or in fact.

    Not "everything". Just a couple of things that happen to be relevant. You would be far less confused if you responded to what people actually posted.

    My observation that markets require governments has no ideological content whatsoever, makes no presumptions about the type or structure of government, and neither does my observation that failure to curb freedom of contract in the rich and powerful leads to the significant diminution of all freedoms (including of contract) in the rest. They are observations, both of relevant theory (such as standard market capitalism economic theory) and historical or physical fact. All ideologies have to deal with these observations - mine, whatever it is (you have no idea), and yours included.

    No government, no market. You continue to post examples - children in schools, prisoners in jails, international black markets in guns - that reveal a basic failure of comprehension on your part regarding the requirements of a market and the role of government in setting them up.
     
    Last edited: Aug 29, 2015
  17. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    That's nonsense - libertarian theory does not have any process of "giving rights" to somebody - the concept is that of Natural law, not that of rights assigned to somebody by some procedure like accepting a constitution or so. A society where people do not have these rights is simply not a libertarian one.
    The actual consequences of actual implementations of the ideology you and Adolf Hitler explicitly share have been even more miserable. Not? Explain why. There was no actual implementation of such a society? There was, in Germany 1933-45. This is not an actual implementation of your ideology? Of course, but of the part of the ideology you share with Adolf Hitler. There is no such part? No, there is, you reject a libertarian, stateless society.
    Given that I do not have anything against "government" in your meaning - where the chief and the shaman of a tribe define government, as well as the owner of a firm, possibly even simple self-government (instead of following all whims) - this claim is irrelevant. So, let's transform it into a claim which is relevant to me - replacing "government" by "state" is one possibility. (This is the logic why I return to the consideration of the state instead of government. If you disagree, explain why your claim is relevant.)

    About the situation in a state: Real life experience shows that if you have a state, it transforms into a more and more powerful state, which restricts freedom more and more. We have actually seen this in the last years. To name the US a fascist state could have been rejected as communist propaganda during the first Cold War, today it is simply a more accurate classification in comparison with "free market society" or even "democracy". Theoretical models which do not consider this problem are, therefore, inadequate to analyse this question. Most of them have yet another failure, the idealization of government. An ideal government, which wants to give the people maximal freedom, could, in principle, lead to more de facto freedom for them - if what is taken from them with part-time slavery named "taxes" would give them so much useful infrastructure that this would be preferable simply from point of view of the additional freedom of using that infrastructure. But this idealization used in such economic models has not much to do with reality.

    If I would respond to what you actually posted, my answer would be quite boring, of type: "This is irrelevant, because libertarian theory does not object against "government" as you use the word", and we would never come close to discussing the really interesting points. As in this case: Your "not everything" is irrelevant, given that my "everything" is obviously polemical, thus, clearly does not really include everything. For example, I would not claim that according to you the result of 1+1 depends on the government.

    Let's clarify, by the way, what is relevant in discussions about "X depends on government".

    Of course, with a wide interpretation of government, where we can go to extremes like self-government as a form of government, everything which requires some long-term aims or some cooperation requires government. Something relevant for libertarian theory begins only if we use a more restricted notion of government - the government of a state.

    One should also use a restrictive definition of "state", to exclude at least small gated communities or small firms. The point is that from a purely formal point of view, a gated community in a libertarian society may fulfill all what defines a state - namely it owns the territory, can have, in particular, a monopoly of force in this territory, can "tax" those who live there (this would be named "rent"). What restricts these mini-states is competition - if the ruler of such a mini-state becomes totalitarian, the mini-state will be empty after a short time - as well as that it is based on contracts, thus, unlike constitutions of states, the "ruler" is not free to change the conditions whenever he likes, but has to follow the contract. But, of course, above differences are not removing anything what would be necessary for, say, organizing markets.
     
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    If there would be no ideological content, you would not have made it in a discussion with a libertarian. The ideological content is obvious: Libertarian theory is inconsistent, because it is based on the assumption that a free market is possible without any "government". If there would be no such ideological content, you would have formulated your objection in a quite different way - say, "it is not very clear what you mean with "government". If you would use my understanding what means government, free markets nonetheless require some form of government. A free market without government would be possible only if you restrict the meaning of "government" to more rigorous forms of government, like a government which rules a state" . A person without any ideological aim would also not object to the fact that most words of almost every language have different meanings, with precise expressions in mathematics, formal languages like for computer programming and some exact exact sciences as exceptions, and would not start rhetorical flame wars about "you don't know even the definition of ...".

    Then, of course, a failure to curb the freedom to X leads to a diminution of the freedom of Y. A triviality. A consequence of the basic idea that there is a restriction of freedom, defined by the preservation of the freedom of other people. The failure to curb the freedom of slaves leads to a diminution of the freedom of slaveholders, and reverse. So, complete freedom for everybody is impossible - and that's why libertarian theory does not propose such complete freedom, and restricts the freedom of everybody by moral rules like the Non-Aggression Principle, or the Golden Rule. But there are particular freedoms which one can, without contradictions or conflicts, give to everybody. Freedom of contract is an example of such a freedom.
    As usual, you resort to personal attacks, instead of discussing the problem in a civilized way. What is my "failure of comprehension"? This remains hidden. I have to guess. Here are my guesses:
    1.) My notion of "government" is much more restrictive than yours. Already discussed above - with your notion, the claim is simply irrelevant for me.

    2.) My notion of "market" is much less restrictive than yours. In this case, explain. If the participants have some notion of ownership - that means, if taking something against the will of the owner leads to a conflict - and if volitional exchange of ownership happens on a regular basis, we already have some market. If there appears some particular item which people obtain on such a market not for the purpose of using it, but with the aim to exchange it for something else they like, we have a medium of exchange. So, we do not need a complex trading platform like ebay or so to have a market. So, explain if this is your point.

    3.) The role of various things in the environment - the "they use roads" argument. Here, first of all, the examples I have provided do not depend on particular things in the environment. Say, illegal drug markets work in very different environments - very different states, states in war, civil war and peace, democracies as well as authoritarian regimes, with high and low penalties, even inside jails, with marihuana raised at home, somewhere far away at hidden fields unreachable by transport, or in other states, synthetic drugs made in small factories at home or whereever, with raw material obtained in very different ways, but usually not the usual ways because those are controlled by government, with, often without using the infrastructure supported by the government. Thus, most of what is used is simply used because using it is the cheapest and simplest way to reach the aim, but not out of a necessity. So, "they use roads" does not mean "they have to use roads, necessarily", or that "without roads there would be no such market".

    Second, all what is under control of government monopoly today, would not disappear in a libertarian society, but provided by capitalist firms. In particular, most of what you name "government" is in no way different from the way standard capitalist firms are organized, thus, they can provide all what somehow "requires government" in this sense.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    There isn't, and I did. So deal.
    You don't care, it's trivial, it's not worth your time, etc etc etc. Cornered by the inconvenient facts again, apparently.
    No, it's just convenient, inconsistent, and wrong. It disagrees with pretty much everyone's notion of government, and you vary it depending on whether you need a government handy to account for some awkward feature of market economics. Remember when you said small town governments were installed by the State? The Mongols were a State?
    No, it isn't. It's just not specific - you use vague and abstract references only, to avoid acknowledging the presence of government in any actual established markets; or you simply deny the role of government in establishing the necessary infrastructure, as in black markets of one kind and another (most ludicrously, prison markets - remember that one?).
    They do depend on particular kinds of things. Markets need structure that only government can provide - for transportation , location, security, medium of exchange, accountability, dispute mediation, establishment of ownership - - you know, all that trivial stuff that in real life refuses to appear by magic.

    And this is where Indiana's freedom of contract law has some mean effects - because the markets the bigots will prevent the despised from entering use government provided infrastructure the despised cannot avoid, and even pay for via taxation and citizenship.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2015
  20. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Ok, I will deal. My error was assuming you make meaningful contributions while you were, in fact, only making off-topic remarks for trolling. Better?
    If you have appearances, cross yourself. (Bad translation of the russian original если кажется, крестись).
    To repeat what already has been quoted: "A government is the system by which a state or community is controlled. In the Commonwealth of Nations, the wordgovernment is also used more narrowly to refer to the collective group of people that exercises executive authority in a state. This usage is analogous to what is called an "administration" inAmerican English. Furthermore, especially in American English, the concepts of the state and the government may be used synonymously to refer to the person or group of people exercising authority over a politically organized territory."
    What your problem is with the Mongol imperium being a state, given that it was one of the greatest states ever, is beyond me, as well that ruling over towns is part of the state, so that they usually install such local town governments. These are simply trivial facts, I do not even see how they influence markets.
    Because there is no such animal than a necessary infrastructure. The infrastructure which is available is used, if it is not available, other methods will be used. Like in the case of the state-provided infrastructure for transporting illegal drugs into a state prison.
    And there is no reason for me to deny the presense of a state in a state.
    There is no infrastructure which only the state can provide. There is some infrastructure, which, in states, is usually provided by the states, that's all. And nobody claims that it appears by magic - things appear in a free society because there are people who see that creating them solves some of their problems, and then create them.
    A, that's the real ideological background of this funny thesis. But this claim is completely nonsensical - what we are talking here about is not forbidding blacks to use any government-provided infrastructure, but only a particular service provided by the particular firm owned by the particular bigot. And, anyway, anything which prevents other citizens from using tax-paid infrastructure I clearly oppose. So, such an element is not even present in this case.

    But here one can see the totalitarian nature of this concept. One argues in favour of a particular (even if only very restricted) form of slavery, involuntary servitude, based on a general claim that almost everything is somehow provided by the government. I have been raised in a more extreme form of government, where all production, with only a few exceptions for personal use in a garden, was done by firms owned by the government. Following the same scheme, this government has demanded total submission.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Yes. I direct your attention to the word "community".
    Quit changing my terms, and you will be less confused. I never denied that the Mongol Empire, or "imperium", comprised States. I said the Mongol Horde - the initial confederation of tribes launched into war under Genghis Khan - was not a State. Tribes are not States. Confederations of tribes are not States. The Mongol Horde was a confederation of tribes.
    And the Mongol Horde was merely one of a long list of human communities that I pointed out had governments but were not States. Just one example. Even if it were somehow a State, rather than the tribal confederation we know it to have been, the rest would remain as thorough demonstration of the problems you are creating for yourself with your inaccurate vocabulary.
    There are necessary kinds of infrastructure. I listed some. Without them, there are no "methods" available. There are a lot of different ways to establish transport routes and means, for example: roads, ports, canals, airports, ferries, bridges, tracks, tunnels, mountain passes, etc etc etc. But you need at least one, for a market. And that requires a government.
    There is infrastructure which cannot be provided or maintained without government. Roads, for example. Sewers.
    No, we were specifically and explicitly talking about all the services and resources controlled by all the bigots, who are freely contracting with each other to deny them to blacks.
    No, you don't. You clearly do not oppose unlimited freedom of contract for those who control an entire community's resources, and this often prevents other citizens from using tax paid infrastructure.
    You continue to believe in the magical power of your disapproval, your desired moral rules, etc, to control other people's behavior.
    Nobody has come close to making any such "general claim". The only things I have insisted are provided only by a government are a few of the basic requirements for establishing a market.

    And this law in Indiana illustrates all of that.
     
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    One word, combined with "state or", among three different definitions. I can direct your attention to three appearances of "state" there, with one of them referring to state as used synonymously. So, while I'm comfortable with all these definitions (I have no problem to accept your interpretation as one meaning of the word) all the other ones contradict your interpretation. So, it is your definition which "disagrees with pretty much everyone's notion of government", in this case with 3 of 4 mentioned meanings.
    Horde was simply another name for the Mongol Empire, and to claim that the Empire created by Genghis Khan was not a state remains funny. Note also that I use the standard definition of a state as an organization which has the monopoly of force over a territory.

    And I have no problem at all with inaccurate vocabulary, except that I have a discussion with somebody who likes to argue about irrelevant differences in the meaning of words. I have yet to develop a nice technique to handle this particular form of destruction of a discussion.
    All what you have listed was or not necessary, or available even without any state, and even without government in your wide sense.
    You can transport a lot of things using a backpack and pure nature. Even more with horses or camels. Caravans in the desert have to know where to go, but they need no government roads for this.
    Yea, without sewers no markets, LOL.
    This does not change much. For boycotts to become really harmful, an overwhelming majority has to support them. The bigots are not even a simple majority. If they would be, they could easily reintroduce Jim Cow laws, if the US are a democracy yet (of course, they are not, they are an oligarchy, but the bigots are also not a majority among the 1%, else there would be a persistent media campaign against the criminal blacks, and blacks would be hated in short time by all the sheeple).
    I'm for unlimited freedom of contract for private citizens and firms, but equal rights to use all tax-paid infrastructure.

    Of course, it is quite typical for oligarchies and democracies that taxes are not used to pay for infrastructure accessible to everybody, but is used in the interests of the 1%. But if this happens, this clearly violates libertarian ideas (not all libertarians are anarchists, some are minarchists, thus, accept some form of minimal state - but such a minimal state is not allowed to do things which favour the 1%).
    Not at all. I know that the politicians and other criminals do not care at all about my moral rules. In fact, I believe that libertarians have no chance in a democracy, because mass media are sufficient to control the sheeple and to allow puppets of the 1% to win elections.
    It is certainly not required for establishing a market that everybody is ready to make a contract with everybody else. To claim that restricting the freedom of contract is necessary for establishing a market is complete Orwellian thinking, freedom is slavery.

    By the way, your
    has nothing to do with the reality of the restrictions of freedom of contract by all those anti-discrimination laws. Because these laws are not at all about the use of some government-provided infrastructure.
     
  23. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    Uh, dude: In a dictionary, multiple meanings for a word are not mutually exclusive. They are all meanings. Usually, the first one listed is the most important or primary in some sense - that's the one that said "or community", if you recall.

    It's quite common for people to refer to their local government as a government - my local Red tribes, counties, townships, towns, and cities, all have governments. So do all the kinds of communities I listed for you above - from pirate covens to the Cherokee - whether of not a State is involved. You are the only person I have ever encountered who has tried to insist that "government" only applied to State level governing organization. You are being very silly here - accept correction, and move on.

    No, you can't. And what little you can transport will have to have a reliable market destination established in advance, to be worth the very great risk and extended period of effort required.

    In North America we have recent experience of what is involved in establishing trade routes and markets in "pure nature". It happened in recorded history. Check it out some time - with the nearest State a thousand miles away, and a large population of people very interested in trade right at hand, the first and most critical structures for market trade were provided by governments, and there were no markets until that happened.
    Now it's the Bedouins and other desert tribes who are declared to have had no government (or were they a State?) and the oases to have sprung up and been maintained without government, and the market towns to have had no government, and the wells dug and the bridges built and the roadways maintained and the pastures managed and so forth without government.

    You can make these silly claims because you don't know anything about the desert caravans, or the horseback steppe crossings, or how people actually got large piles of merchandise across mountains and rivers to established markets whose circumstances they could depend on years in advance.

    And so you have a problem reconciling your utopian preferences with reality - I have done you the favor of providing a concrete example, directly relevant to this very thread: racial oppression in the US. You can use sex discrimination if you want to. Or any other such entrenched societal bigotry.
     
    Last edited: Sep 1, 2015
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