Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GreatJustice]

For any libertarian or Objectivist who agrees with the non-agression principle, yet is in favor of a minarchistic goverment, I recommend that you read Roy Childs Jr.'s "Open Letter to Ayn Rand". He presents a very lucid and concise argument which attempts (quite convincingly, I think) to show why any form of government, limited or not, is a contradiction to the NAP, and thus is immoral.

Where were all you guys earlier <3

[Leafsnail]

That is an interesting article, I was just reading the crap Rand wrote that Roy Childs is responding to, but it is tl;dr. I'll bookmark it.

So, people would hire security guards or mercenaries to replace the police and military? His language is obfuscating and paralyzing the mind with his pretentious and wordy language. That's what Rand would say.

Anyways, his brand of anarchy is even more extreme then Rand's ideas. I'm pretty sure his hired guns would turn into thugs faster then any government would.

The world may suck but at least it's ideologically pure.

[Mutagen]

For any libertarian or Objectivist who agrees with the non-agression principle, yet is in favor of a minarchistic goverment, I recommend that you read Roy Childs Jr.'s "Open Letter to Ayn Rand". He presents a very lucid and concise argument which attempts (quite convincingly, I think) to show why any form of government, limited or not, is a contradiction to the NAP, and thus is immoral.

That is an interesting article, I was just reading the crap Rand wrote that Roy Childs is responding to, but it is tl;dr. I'll bookmark it.

So, people would hire security guards or mercenaries to replace the police and military? His language is obfuscating and paralyzing the mind with his pretentious and wordy language. That's what Rand would say.

Anyways, his brand of anarchy is even more extreme then Rand's ideas. I'm pretty sure his hired guns would turn into thugs faster then any government would.

Extreme? In what sense? Presumably, you mean that you find it extremely immoral, in which case its immorality would be the problem, not the degree of it.

As for your conviction that it would not work,  I agree that it would not work right now. So long as most people on earth think that it is morally acceptable to point guns at non-aggressors to get them to do what we want, such a society would be impossible.

[Montague]

That is an interesting article, I was just reading the crap Rand wrote that Roy Childs is responding to, but it is tl;dr. I'll bookmark it.

So, people would hire security guards or mercenaries to replace the police and military? His language is obfuscating and paralyzing the mind with his pretentious and wordy language. That's what Rand would say.

Anyways, his brand of anarchy is even more extreme then Rand's ideas. I'm pretty sure his hired guns would turn into thugs faster then any government would.

The world may suck but at least it's ideologically pure.

Idk how anything can suck worse and be more ideologically/ philosophically pure then Rand's objectivism. Rand emphiszed the glories of civilization and progress and the such. But that's true, she believed in monopoly of violence to protect individual rights and property and thought government was the only entity able to secure these things. Roy Childs seems to thing security corporations and bands of mercenaries can do the job better. Randland sounds like an unforgiving society, Roy Child's society sounds like Somalia with more corporate logos on the landscape.

[GreatJustice]

That is an interesting article, I was just reading the crap Rand wrote that Roy Childs is responding to, but it is tl;dr. I'll bookmark it.

So, people would hire security guards or mercenaries to replace the police and military? His language is obfuscating and paralyzing the mind with his pretentious and wordy language. That's what Rand would say.

Anyways, his brand of anarchy is even more extreme then Rand's ideas. I'm pretty sure his hired guns would turn into thugs faster then any government would.

The world may suck but at least it's ideologically pure.

The "hired guns" wouldn't generally want to alienate potential customers that they could gain voluntarily. Looting only goes so far.

Rand's definition of a "good government" was effectively arbitrary, one of many issues with Objectivism. So my "ideal government" can't make me pay for improving the lives of the poor, but it can make me pay for it to go off and bomb foreigners with "Socialist pigsty governments"? What exactly about the government gives it the right to do things that private citizens can't?

[Shadowlord]

Or as I've said before, shit happens. A large portion, if not a majority, of how your life goes is based on random events that just happen, regardless of how hard you tried to prevent them or tried to make them happen. Most of what a person's life is like is not determined by their own actions.

People aren't poor because they woke up one day and decided "I want to be poor!" They're poor because their place on the widget assembly line was replaced by a robot, as have all similar widget assembly line jobs. They're poor because management decided they could squeeze enough extra effort out of everyone else that their position was no longer needed. They're poor because management sees the line of unemployed outside, and decided they should cut wages for employees who can't find a job elsewhere. They're poor because their wages were cut because they can't do anything without risking their pension. They're poor because they got cancer, their insurance dropped them, and they got a $100k hospital bill. They're poor because they came back from the war unable to sleep at night and unable to concentrate during the day. They're poor because they went to college in an attempt to better their situation, only to find themselves jobless and with $80k of debt. If policies are designed in such a way simply to spite the 'lazy poor people,' it's chasing ghosts which, for the most part, don't exist, and will cause even more problems for society as a whole.

And they're poor because when rates are lowered for banks, etc, those banks don't pass the savings onto consumers, but keep them for themselves. The same applies to other businesses, which is why trickle-down economics has never worked.

Also, roads privatized? Maintenance on roads is expensive, and why would you pay for it when you aren't the only one using the road unless (a) you're rich, or (b) a government. That said, the local government here has been unable to find the funds to pave a dirt road in town which has a bunch of houses on it, and instead has to repeatedly go over it to repair it after storms and the like, which at some point has to end up being more expensive in the long run.

[Montague]

That is an interesting article, I was just reading the crap Rand wrote that Roy Childs is responding to, but it is tl;dr. I'll bookmark it.

So, people would hire security guards or mercenaries to replace the police and military? His language is obfuscating and paralyzing the mind with his pretentious and wordy language. That's what Rand would say.

Anyways, his brand of anarchy is even more extreme then Rand's ideas. I'm pretty sure his hired guns would turn into thugs faster then any government would.

The world may suck but at least it's ideologically pure.

The "hired guns" wouldn't generally want to alienate potential customers that they could gain voluntarily. Looting only goes so far.

Rand's definition of a "good government" was effectively arbitrary, one of many issues with Objectivism. So my "ideal government" can't make me pay for improving the lives of the poor, but it can make me pay for it to go off and bomb foreigners with "Socialist pigsty governments"? What exactly about the government gives it the right to do things that private citizens can't?

Haha, yeah, Rand did love the idea of forcibly liberating 'slave pens' overseas. She believed a monolithic government is needed for what's the word... legitimacy. In Roy Child's anarchy, any asshole anywhere could be their very own government/security company/mercenary band, free to tax and invade and assault for whatever profit he might obtain. Nobody in Royland could dispute the legality or validity of his status as a free and independent sovereign military power. They could shoot him in the head though, or hire some guys to do that. Ultimately, without a monopoly of violence you'd have violence absolutely everywhere and nothing would progress. Rand is still correct, imo that armed bands would form, nobody would hire any group to defend them, they'd do it themselves lest they be slaves to the folks they hired, or be forced to hire another armed band to kill the first armed band they hired.

It'd be like anarchy the way it is today in places like Somalia, or how it was in Afghanistan. It's not to say you could'nt have an economy and security companies, but things would be highly dysfunctional, businesses subject to extortion and unofficial taxes, people living in fear, general decay of society and violence absolutely everywhere. But you'd still have business and economy, sorta.

[kaijyuu]

Many of the problems of anarchy of the past could be solved by getting us "post scarcity" with necessary resources, like food. We're really not far off that point (and arguably long past it on the food part), and another energy revolution would push us over the hump. Once resources are common enough to not be fought over, then a lot of the concerns would vanish.

I still don't think it'd be stable, but people would fight over other things, like moral reasons, or religion, or something silly like that.


EDIT: As a side note, any "human nature" argument is silly. People are varied. It's not "human nature" that will get in the way, but just because different people want different things, conflict will arise over how to best use resources and whatnot. We don't all act the same and thus will never act in perfect harmony without some coercion.

[Reelya]

Nobody claims you can't own personal possessions, property in these discussions almost always refers to permanent ownership of land, ownership of corporations, and things like intellectual property.

Anarchism is definitely not about gangs running everything. If you're going to state "but that's how I define anarchy", then that's an invalid argument to use against others who call themselves Anarchists, yet use a different definition. You're talking apples and oranges then. Or a straw-man argument.

Here's the page on anarchy, so you can educated yourself:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy

I'm just stating the realities of how Anarchy would turn out and how it's happened historically. Can't change human nature. Some band of assholes would form an army and exploit everybody else and gangs and groups would form to defend themselves. Anarchy would need at the very minimum, a police and army to maintain monopoly of violence, then it'd be minarchy. Peaceful coexistence is impossible if people have live under the constant threat of force to be unleashed against him by any of his neighbors at any moment. anyways.

As for property, like factories or farms or whatever but you get to keep the stuff you own? Where do you draw the distiction between personal possessions and things like cars vs tractors, little garage workshops and toolboxes vs huge factories, personal vegetable gardens and massive farms? When does your personal garden become too big and become collective property?

This is exactly the kind of straw-man argument i'm talking about, you clearly didn't read the article on anarchy and all the historical examples, like Ukraine and Spain in the 1930's.

The Ukrainian anarchists and Spanish Anarchists didn't collapse due to internal chaos, but invading totalitarian armies.

The repeated analogy anarchism = chaos that you're making is you own definition, not the definition of the philosophy.

Outside of the US, and by most individuals that self-identify as anarchists, it implies a system of governance, mostly theoretical at a nation state level although there are a few successful historical examples, that goes to lengths to avoid the use of coercion, violence, force and authority, while still producing a productive and desirable society.

Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be immoral, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism (known as "anarchists") advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations.

In 1919 the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT), the Spanish confederation of anarcho-syndicalist labor unions, had grown to 1 million members, and encountered many fights with the police and the fascists in Spain. On July 18, 1936, General Franco led the army to launch their fight against the government, but instead of an easy victory they faced significant obstacles.[78] They were met with a big resistance from the people, and the rebels were supported by military and the police. With the government in shambles, the workers and peasants took over the government of Spain and joined together to create a revolutionary militia to fight the fascists. The workers and peasants were fighting to start a revolution, not to help save their government. Spain’s society was transposed by a social revolution. Every business was re-organized to have a company with no bosses; surprisingly profits increased by over half.

[Capntastic]

Well ignoring everything else

The concept of being Objective falls under the assumption that there is an objective truth out there

You're incorrect in asserting that there is 'an objective truth' instead of many.  There is no one objectively 'best' cola, for instance.  There are many 'correct' answers to certain problems within society, many policies that 'work', and some that may 'work' almost equally in an indiscernible level.  This is where further value judgments (backed themselves by evidence and thought) are required.  It's hard work sometimes!  But it's worth it, to not only get it right, but to get it right in the best way for a given situation.

denies empirical evidence,

Hey now, be fair.  if you were allowed to force your adopted orphans to work in your sweatshop I'm sure we'd have a lot more people willing to adopt.

While this is an argument from pragmatism, it rejects the child's personhood (which is something Rothbard would actually defend, ie, children be allowed to run away)

It's also completely unethical to force a child into slavery anyways.

I find it odd how a philosophy supposedly based on objective principles has to keep going back to the subjective and vaguely defined "fairness" to defend its outcomes.

Yeah it's almost as if they make shit up to defend an extreme lack of empathy and their own ability to look down on poor people.

One thing about the "wasteful" thing:

We live in a consumerist society.

This is all mostly correct.  It also ties into the fact that an economy isn't a zero-sum game.  Money that is spent doesn't just vanish.  You want to promote the velocity of money and wealth, rather than a single person's ability to hoard it all.  This is not only good for more theoretical individuals, which an Objectivist should love (were they not sticking to platonic ideals of the ur-individual who deserves all of the wealth), but it allows society to progress as a whole.  Adam Smith, the dude who invented Capitalism, had a lot to say on this subject.

Can't live without property, mang. It's too fundamental of a thing to abolish, not even the radical leftist movements and communists figured out a way to eliminate property rights. How'd you like it if somebody just walked into your house right now and snatched your computer and drove off in your car, just because he felt like it and you had no right to it? Or somebody starts paving over your farmland to store their toxic gas collection?

This is a strawman to the point of being absurd, you should be ashamed.  It's not even worth addressing, but I'll attempt to do so as a show of good faith.  First of all, in a world without property, you wouldn't have 'your house, your computer, your car', you'd have a communal pool of resources.  Let's not forget that there are still plenty of native societies who have wholly socialized property rights- and these traditions descend from thousands of years of humanity.  There is evidence to support entire communities who had no personal property, or property exchanged hands freely based on who could make better use of it.  Or people who did well in the hunt were obligated to not have any of the meat of their own kill.  So, historically, yes, it is possible to 'not have personal property'. 

As for your 'paves over your farm', again, your attempt at ratcheting up the stakes belies your intent:  You keep saying "what if someone took YOUR PROPERTY because there was NO PROPERTY and then put HIS POISON there?", to appeal to base fear response instead of actually cobbling together a coherent argument.  First off, you're conflating no-property with total anarchy where someone can just do as they please with no oversight (almost like libertarianism!!).  You're also assuming that solely because there's no permanent personal property that people are living in constant chaos of shuffling back and forth, or similar.  It's completely disingenuous, and, again, fails to be an effective argument.  The force with which you make these accusations implies there's no other way for the situation to be handled.  Someone HAS to store poison gas on someone's farmland.

It makes more sense, that if a society of no-personal-property discovered they needed to store the poison gas, they'd select a place democratically (or via representative, elected positions).  If this place, for whatever extreme, totally playing-into-your-argument-on-good-faith reason, needed to be on someone's farm, then that person would be duly compensated for their time and effort by having a different or equivalent apportionment of land allotted to them.  And if that person knew it was for the good of society, and didn't have a psychological disposition to 'needing personal property at all times', they would be more or less fine with it.  Maybe they might be upset, but such is life, right?  You can't expect me to make perfect happy endings with your loaded scenarios.

[GreatJustice]

That is an interesting article, I was just reading the crap Rand wrote that Roy Childs is responding to, but it is tl;dr. I'll bookmark it.

So, people would hire security guards or mercenaries to replace the police and military? His language is obfuscating and paralyzing the mind with his pretentious and wordy language. That's what Rand would say.

Anyways, his brand of anarchy is even more extreme then Rand's ideas. I'm pretty sure his hired guns would turn into thugs faster then any government would.

The world may suck but at least it's ideologically pure.

The "hired guns" wouldn't generally want to alienate potential customers that they could gain voluntarily. Looting only goes so far.

Rand's definition of a "good government" was effectively arbitrary, one of many issues with Objectivism. So my "ideal government" can't make me pay for improving the lives of the poor, but it can make me pay for it to go off and bomb foreigners with "Socialist pigsty governments"? What exactly about the government gives it the right to do things that private citizens can't?

Haha, yeah, Rand did love the idea of forcibly liberating 'slave pens' overseas. She believed a monolithic government is needed for what's the word... legitimacy. In Roy Child's anarchy, any asshole anywhere could be their very own government/security company/mercenary band, free to tax and invade and assault for whatever profit he might obtain. Nobody in Royland could dispute the legality or validity of his status as a free and independent sovereign military power. They could shoot him in the head though, or hire some guys to do that. Ultimately, without a monopoly of violence you'd have violence absolutely everywhere and nothing would progress. Rand is still correct, imo that armed bands would form, nobody would hire any group to defend them, they'd do it themselves lest they be slaves to the folks they hired, or be forced to hire another armed band to kill the first armed band they hired.

It'd be like anarchy the way it is today in places like Somalia, or how it was in Afghanistan. It's not to say you could'nt have an economy and security companies, but things would be highly dysfunctional, businesses subject to extortion and unofficial taxes, people living in fear, general decay of society and violence absolutely everywhere. But you'd still have business and economy, sorta.

If you want more detailed arguments against government or for anarchy from a non-socialist viewpoint, I'd invite you to read anything by Murray Rothbard.

Somalia today isn't much of an anarchy, not in the least because its been heavily affected by the ebb and flow of a strongly UN/AU government and anti-government forces supported by radical Islamists. Several successful ventures in Somalia were destroyed by ravaging Ethiopian invaders acting on behalf of the "legitimate" government.

[Capntastic]

If you want more detailed arguments against government or for anarchy from a non-socialist viewpoint, I'd invite you to read anything by Murray Rothbard.

Yeah, nothing like a dude who thinks making things up as you go along(pdf) will beat out empirical evidence and proven outcomes every time.  It's literally "Well if you let humans be free enough they will [make the best outcome for everyone], and if they've not done so in the past it's because they aren't free enough!".  He uses 'praxeology', which is basically just science fiction veneer over "I really want this to happen so I will say it will happen." 

It all hinges on this mystical view of humans all being these semi-divine rational actors which is provably false in hundreds of tiny ways.

[GreatJustice]

If you want more detailed arguments against government or for anarchy from a non-socialist viewpoint, I'd invite you to read anything by Murray Rothbard.

Yeah, nothing like a dude who thinks making things up as you go along(pdf) will beat out empirical evidence and proven outcomes every time.  It's literally "Well if you let humans be free enough they will [make the best outcome for everyone], and if they've not done so in the past it's because they aren't free enough!".  He uses 'praxeology', which is basically just science fiction veneer over "I really want this to happen so I will say it will happen." 

It all hinges on this mystical view of humans all being these semi-divine rational actors which is provably false in hundreds of tiny ways.

Empirical evidence is generally reliant on controlled experiment, of which the field of economics is somewhat lacking. To say that one can predict the actions of the economy through empirical analysis alone the way one can predict the actions of a rock shot through a cannon is laughable.

[Capntastic]

But then to go and assert that the rock will definitely hit the Moon because of rational actors...?

[Mutagen]

If you want more detailed arguments against government or for anarchy from a non-socialist viewpoint, I'd invite you to read anything by Murray Rothbard.

Yeah, nothing like a dude who thinks making things up as you go along(pdf) will beat out empirical evidence and proven outcomes every time.  It's literally "Well if you let humans be free enough they will [make the best outcome for everyone], and if they've not done so in the past it's because they aren't free enough!".  He uses 'praxeology', which is basically just science fiction veneer over "I really want this to happen so I will say it will happen." 

It all hinges on this mystical view of humans all being these semi-divine rational actors which is provably false in hundreds of tiny ways.

Provably false? By what standard? Perhaps Rothbard was merely tapping into one of these many objective truths you alluded to previously.