from glick

Look up the definition of "militia"; it's every able-bodied male 18-45; it's still on the books.

Screw you and your assertions of the militia. Like Odin has already told you, you do the damn work yourself. You look it up. You find your books. You find your citations. You find the laws that support your delusions.

Show me where there is a provision in the United States collection of valid laws where there is a mention of a MILITARY SERVICE TAX. You have created this and now are slurring and libeling me with your delusions.

STOP IT.

I thought if I gave you a few months to play with yourself in the corner you would get the message. All you have done is now added others to your harassment such as Playwrite and Odin.

STOP IT.

Have you no shred of decency about you?

Originally Posted by jamesdglick

-No, conventional paid work is a voluntary agreement between to [sic] entities

Necessity makes no voluntary agreements.

in our current set-up, raising children is voluntary

LOL -- obviously you have no children.

and required service work is a form of slavery, like the draft, the (rarely used) posse, or jury duty.

None of these are slavery. Again, you are committing the same logical fallacy.

Uh, it's pretty much the defining charachteristic

No. Being the property of another, without legal rights, is the defining characteristic. Without that, you don't have slavery.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Now, I have a question for the anarchists on this thread (not the libertarians, since libertarians unlike anarchists would not abolish taxes). Reference has been made to other means of financing common-good activities. What other means did you have in mind? Also, what would you do if someone refused to cooperate with those means?

We'd have to shoot them, obviously.

(*Edit: Why do you treat libertarians and anarchists as two mutually exclusive groups?)

(-- Use fees, mutual aid, donations, etc. Refuse to pay and have the means? Don't expect quality service.)

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Necessity makes no voluntary agreements...

-Yeah, WHOSE "neccessity"?

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Being the property of another, without legal rights, is the defining characteristic. Without that, you don't have slavery.

-If someone takes your wealth, then obviously your efforts are actually the property of another.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

I have no problem with Glick using my warning to others at the end of his posts but this invented created imaginary fraudulent MILITARY SERVICE TAX is a slur upon me and i will not stand for it.

1) There is no slur. It's pretty obvious that you lied to your draft board to get your bogus Conscientious Objector status;

2) I would have thought that getting over on the draft board by lying to them about being a Conscientious Objector would have been one of the high points of your Leftie Boomer life. I would have thought that you would have wanted your proud deed broadcast to the world, with only your modesty getting in the way...

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Have you not a shred of decency about you????

-Of course.

Where was your decency for the man (let's call him "The Forgotten Draftee") who took your place in the draft? Where was your "selflessness" for the Forgotten Draftee?

HYPOCRITE.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

He is repeatedly slurring both myself and Playwrite by asking his stupid nonsensical questions over and over in almost every post he makes...

1) Huh. Pretty strange for the guy who "threatened" give me a tag line:

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.

...I simply accepted it (tongue in cheek), and added a few lines of my own;


2) If they're slurs, sue me.

But, of course, they're true, aren't they?

Back to Playwrite:

I'd still love to know: When PW was supposedly visiting SE Asia, did he bother to check out the "Anti-War" movement's handiwork in the re-education camps, and in the killing fields? The answer seems to be NO...

Back to Haymarket':

I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1971. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...

---

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.

-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.

Originally Posted by Matt1989

We'd have to shoot them, obviously.

(*Edit: Why do you treat libertarians and anarchists as two mutually exclusive groups?)

I'm recognizing that libertarians do not wish to abolish the state. There's a similarity between the philosophies obviously but they are not identical. Another way to think of it is that they may not be mutually exclusive but at least there's a one-way exclusivity; that is, all anarchists may be libertarians, but not all libertarians are anarchists.

(-- Use fees, mutual aid, donations, etc. Refuse to pay and have the means? Don't expect quality service.)

That's fine as long as it's a service that's provided on an individual basis, but what if it's something that's provided collectively instead? Common defense is a classic example. It's not possible to deny someone the benefit of military protection unless it's denied to everyone equally. Say you have a voluntary collective of some sort with a militia for defense; everyone is expected to pony up a share of the costs, but it's a natural human tendency (at least for some humans) to shirk duties and let the rest of the population carry them along. What do you do with people who don't want to do their fair share?

Originally Posted by jamesdglick

I'd still love to know: When PW was supposedly visiting SE Asia, did he bother to check out the "Anti-War" movement's handiwork in the re-education camps, and in the killing fields?

To ascribe these things to the anti-war movement requires assuming:

1) continuing the war in Vietnam would have prevented these things from occurring;
2) nothing morally equivalent or worse was being done by the government of SVN and/or U.S. occupation forces; and
3) the government of Vietnam would have been as harsh had there never been a war against the U.S.

2 and 3 are certainly wrong, and 1 is dubious. I should add that the "killing fields" did not take place in Vietnam but in Cambodia, where the U.S. had no official or legal presence, and it was the government of Vietnam that stopped the killing.

That someone else was drafted to replace HM may be true (but probably isn't) -- but even if it is true, it means only that someone else rendered the useless service as a victim of an utterly pointless war which would otherwise have been rendered by him. While that's unfortunate (in the sense it's unfortunate ANYONE had to do that), it is no shame to HM himself. He had no moral obligation to put his life on the line in service to folly and wickedness.

from Glick

1) There is no slur. It's pretty obvious that you lied to your draft board to get your bogus Conscientious Objector status;

you know nothing of what occurred at the hearing for my CO status. Nothing. Again, you attempt to substitute your abject and complete ingorance of these events for the judgement of professionals who handled and made these decisions. Simply amazing.

As far as suing you for libel or slurs, fine. I have legal insurance and it will cost me nothing. I am serious if you are. Simply provide me with your real name, address and other particulars so I can begin action. Are you man enough for that after throwing down the gauntlet Glick? Or will you know cower and hide and not provide the information after daring me to do something that you know darn well requires you to provide me with that information?

You want to run my admonition and warning to others about your tactics in all of your posts - fine - go for it. But to attack me repeatedly over and over again about my CO service to my country is harassment pure and simple. that does not change because you changed the phrasing of your slur. Grow a pair and stop this harassment.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

That's fine as long as it's a service that's provided on an individual basis, but what if it's something that's provided collectively instead?

Free-riders as a true problem are no more than a theoretically-feasible, but in practice truly counter-factual occurrence. Matt's example holds for most situations (there are levels of quality which are available to varying levels of supporters, even if everyone who wants to can grab a baseline benefit for free).

But in the more extreme, truly public cases, the free-rider myth is even weaker. That is because the free-riders, in cases like defense or transit easements or other like situations impose no significant cost. The example of a lighthouse is a good one. An entity operating even a tiny number of valuable ships in a coastal area will realize benefits (their ships not sinking) on building a lighthouse themselves, regardless who else sees the light and navigates by it. The provider is made no worse off by those other eyeballs -- and, most important, the lighthouse gets built.

A personal example -- I paid with my own money to have a section of public road paved, and to have a section of water line extended. This, even though other people were going to be benefiting from them without paying me. The value to me of getting water and a decent road to my house (granted, this was before the economy turned, back when we were planning to stay a while) was worth the cost of paying for the work. A similar situation arose with regards to gas lines. In that case, the village started out putting up a collection from each house for an even share of the cost of running the gas mains. Only about half of the people paid in, but in fairly short order a good remaining ten-twelve people had kicked in extra above their share, and it wrapped up when another four split the remaining cost among themselves. Yes, half the village free-rode off getting the mains lain, but -- as always occurs in real-life situations -- there were other people who so valued the goods they were getting for themselves, that they were willing to voluntarily subsidize the free-riders.

sure ... right .... whatever ....

and a person who sneaks into a movie theater and watches the film may not take money out of the pocket of the owner but he sure pisses me off when I paid my nine bucks to see the damn thing.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

I thought if I gave you a few months to play with yourself in the corner you would get the message. All you have done is now added others to your harassment such as Playwrite and Odin...

1) Haymarket lied to his draft board to gain Conscientious Objector status;

2) Playwrite lies about being a "grunt" who served in VietNam;

(I'm still debating which of the two is more despicable)

3) Odin screamed that I was a liar, when I was clearly correct about Father Coughlin initially supporting FDR, and only turning against him because FDR wasn't anti-capitalist enough. Odin merely needs humbling. well, a lot more humbling.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

...you know nothing of what occurred at the hearing for my CO status...

-It's not a huge secret. You were supposed to convince the draft board that you were a sincerly opposed to taking human lives. This:

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

Well the Captain is free and with the American ship. Three of the four pirates are dead and the fourth is captured.

Fantastic news. Somebody really did this right for once.

...and this:

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

To put the period at the end of todays sentence, I would call an air strike tonight on the ten or twenty biggest pirate mansions in Somalia.

Make sure they get the message.

...really aren't compatible with a sincere CO, are they?

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

...you know nothing of what occurred at the hearing for my CO status. Again, you attempt to substitute your abject and complete ingorance of these events for the judgement of professionals who handled and made these decisions...

-"Professionals". Yes, in the sense that they did it a lot, but come on... It's true that I don't know the exact details, but you must have either:

1) Pulled the wool over their eyes;

2) Bribed them;

3) Had a relative on the board.

Or maybe you'll claim that your attitudes changed; roughly when the draft ended. Ha! Ha! Ha!

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

...As far as suing you for libel or slurs, fine. I have legal insurance and it will cost me nothing. I am serious if you are. Simply provide me with your real name, address and other particulars so I can begin action...

1) My "particulars" are no secret, I'm sure I've posted them one time or another:

James Dean Glick
PO1 USNR (ret.)
2871 N. Charles Ave #13
Clarksville, TN 37042

2) I know that President Carter pardoned the draft dodgers (on Mr. Strauss' recommendation, sad to say), but I don't think that covers FRAUD, although there may be a statute of limitations...

3) Filling a frivilous lawsuit is itself reason for counter-litigation. Your conduct on the 4TF would be exhibit #1, proving that your litigation is merely a case of the bully not liking his own medicine. You do know that nothing you post on the internet ever really goes away, don't you?

I can hardly wait to check my mailbox!

Back to Playwrite:

I'd still love to know: When PW was supposedly visiting SE Asia, did he bother to check out the "Anti-War" movement's handiwork in the re-education camps, and in the killing fields? The answer seems to be NO...

Back to Haymarket':

I'd still love to know: Who paid Haymarket's Military Service Tax? Come on, I know you're retired, Haymarket. I'd think it'd be easy to go check out the old county draft records from 1971. You can look the guy up, and thank him for his inconvenience...

---

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

WARNING: The poster known as jamesdglick has a history of engaging in fraud. He makes things up out of his own head and attempts to use these blatant lies to score points in his arguments. When you call him on it, he will only lie further. He has such a reputation for doing this that many people here are cowed into silence and will not acknowledge it or confront him on it.

Anyone who attempts to engage with glick will discover this and find out you have wasted your time and energy on an intellectual fraud of the worst sort.

-So cry many Boomers (self-professed Lefties, mostly) whenever they fail to explain their hypocritical self-justifications, their double-standards, and their double-think forays into evil. Perhaps their consciences bother them, perhaps not. Who knows.

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

sure ... right .... whatever ....

and a person who sneaks into a movie theater and watches the film may not take money out of the pocket of the owner but he sure pisses me off when I paid my nine bucks to see the damn thing.

No surprise. I don't think anyone here had you confused with a good-natured benefitter of your fellow man. Of course you would see the theater burned down rather than let one person get away with not paying what you consider to be his fair share.

Fortunately, real life shows that your kind is not the only kind. In fact, not even remotely the majority kind.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I'm recognizing that libertarians do not wish to abolish the state. There's a similarity between the philosophies obviously but they are not identical. Another way to think of it is that they may not be mutually exclusive but at least there's a one-way exclusivity; that is, all anarchists may be libertarians, but not all libertarians are anarchists.

Well there are multiple ways to interpret the words libertarian and anarchist (in the political sense). Some anarchists, especially communist ones, like to view anarchism as being more than just abolishing the State, and must also include the abolition of racism, sexism, wage labor, or hierarchy -- but I think this asks a little too much. Libertarians can be considered those who wish to dramatically reduce the scale of the State and/or those who assert individual rights (usually through the NAP), and possibly all that is suggested by a full understanding by a commitment to liberty.

FWIW, I'd consider those creepy national anarchist dudes (and I do mean dudes) more anarchist than libertarian, because I think their commitment to liberty and individuality doesn't nearly match their commitment to anti-statism.

That's fine as long as it's a service that's provided on an individual basis, but what if it's something that's provided collectively instead? Common defense is a classic example. It's not possible to deny someone the benefit of military protection unless it's denied to everyone equally. Say you have a voluntary collective of some sort with a militia for defense; everyone is expected to pony up a share of the costs, but it's a natural human tendency (at least for some humans) to shirk duties and let the rest of the population carry them along. What do you do with people who don't want to do their fair share?

I haven't worked that out in my head just yet. (Maybe others can chime in?) Can you give more examples? I can't say I'm too hot on the idea of "military protection," (that could be due to the fact that I'm so used to statist "interpretations"), but if the need arose, I would imagine the costs would rise for those who wished to contribute. And if people aren't contributing to something that is so obviously needed (and let me iterate that this type of activity would be lessened in anarchy), those who are aren't shirking their duties would be pretty steamed, as would the various organizations (both fee-based and non-fee-based) who provide those non-contributors with useful services. In short, it might even be wiser from a short-term financial standpoint alone to pay up.

But I can't say I'm so comfortable with the idea of people turning the screws on others. Then again, naming and shaming might be more likely, or more likely still, just the weight of conscience. Either way, I think the question of freeloading is pretty small stuff when compared to something like state violence. But I'm interested in what others might have to say about this.

I wrote that ^^ in between dinner so I did not see Justin's reply until after I finished.

Dishonesty and appropriating what does not rightfully belong to you are not virtues to be celebrated or excused.

from Justin

Of course you would see the theater burned down rather than let one person get away with not paying what you consider to be his fair share.

Such absurd over the top hyperbole serves you and the discussion exactly in what way? It is NOT what I consider anyones fair share. It is the price determined by the rightful owner of the theater who pays the bills. I am finding that the words LIBERTARIAN and THIEF share a lot more in common that just a few letters of the alphabet.

Any now its your turn to explain in the best weasel words you can summon up why stealing the experience of a movie paid for by someone else is not really wrong.

from Glick

I can hardly wait to check my mailbox!

Yes... keep your eyes open and stay alert. That would be very good advice. And legal insurance of your own - although it would not cover what you did before you got the policy. So I guess you are flying by the seat of your stained pants on that one.

You accuse me of lying... of fraud ... of not paying your invented tax .... and you have never met me and know nothing about me other than the delusions you have invented in your own head from small bits and fragments of posts which are highly edited by yourself.

You demonstrate behaviors that are pathetic and sad.

I do not see what this conversation about people's draft status, etc., adds to the conversation.

This board is not a place to adjudicate such items or to make such charges.

I am going to ask you all to stop. Now. If you don't, I will take stronger action.

-- Craig

(In the interest of keeping the cool here, I've snipped the ranting portion.)

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

...you can summon up why stealing the experience of a movie paid for by someone else is not really wrong.

Heynow. No one here said or tried to imply that a guy sneaking into a movie theater without paying (or that a guy using a road or water main I paid for without paying, or using a lighthouse without kicking in for it, or so on) was in the right. Of course, mooching off the efforts of others -- in this case, however, the theater owner... not you, the ticket-buyer -- is wrong.

However, the point I was making was that in the real world such moochers exist. And nevertheless, good things can get done without holding a gun (even figuratively) to everyone's heads. That is, the "Free-Rider" supposed weakness of anarchist reasoning is as purely a useless-to-the-real-world concept as was Economic Man or Zero Unemployment or Perfect Knowledge.

Simply put, that with the exception of a very few who have emotional problems preventing them from getting over it, the fact of free-riding does not in any way actually hinder the provision of public-accessible goods by private parties. That is, at least in the real world.

------

A point tangential to the discussion -- but nonetheless significant -- is your misuse of the term 'steal' in the context of movie-watching. Stealing requires that the stolen value can is not available to the rightful owner. One can thus steal the rent-use of a seat in a theater (the space under your ass cannot be occupied simultaneuosly by a paying customer); but one cannot steal the experience of watching, since that is not a physically- or spatially- scarce good. Potentially an infinite-minus-one number of people can experience watching something, and just as much of it will still be available for that very last person to enjoy.

yes. we have heard all that before regarding the appropriating of something that does not belong to you or to which you have not paid the rightful owner the price set for others. It carried no weight then and it does not now.

The person sneaking into the theater has stolen an experience that others are paying for and subsidizing their theft. They are depriving the theater owner of revenue just as if they reached into his pocket and took the nine dollars from it. In the end, regardless if they never give the theater owner the nine dollars or if they pick his pocket of the nine dollars, the theater owner has nine dollars less than they were entitled to.

But Justin, I am not going to convince you are you are not going to convince me. We have had this exchange before. As I said then, all of this word parsing and creative definition making to deny the wrongness of taking or appropriating what is not yours is merely intellectual justification for doing what you want to do regardless of it is right or not. And now the debate has been added to with the additional layer of if an anarcho-libertarian can enjoy the public benefits of society while railing against them and the very system which provides them to the anarcho-libertarian. It looks more and more like this is all about the anarcho-libertarian being able to justify - the themselves at any rate - their own hypocrisy.

Originally Posted by Matt1989

Then again, naming and shaming might be more likely, or more likely still, just the weight of conscience.

But how is that not coercion?

Originally Posted by haymarket martyr

But Justin, I am not going to convince you are you are not going to convince me. We have had this exchange before. As I said then, all of this word parsing and creative definition making to deny the wrongness of taking or appropriating what is not yours is merely intellectual justification for doing what you want to do regardless of it is right or not. And now the debate has been added to with the additional layer of if an anarcho-libertarian can enjoy the public benefits of society while railing against them and the very system which provides them to the anarcho-libertarian. It looks more and more like this is all about the anarcho-libertarian being able to justify - the themselves at any rate - their own hypocrisy.

And to think I believed you were nearing the Earth's surface! Justin said nothing in defense of those who sneak, but I'm willing to defend them in plenty of circumstances. The only times I can recall not paying for a movie was when I was under 17 and wanted to see an R-rated picture, or when I saw two movies in the same theater ($20 is so ridiculously overpriced for two movies!).

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

But how is that not coercion?

What makes you think they are coercion? I'm confused.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

Free-riders as a true problem are no more than a theoretically-feasible, but in practice truly counter-factual occurrence.

Anarchy in a civilized setting is itself no more than a theoretical exercise, and there are no in-practice examples from which to draw evidence. Thus, your statement is itself counter-factual, or at least asserts facts not in evidence. My own assertion is admittedly drawn from a cynical assessment of human nature, but I believe it to be accurate nonetheless.

Now, there have certainly been precivilized examples of stateless societies. The problem of shirkers certainly existed in such cultures, and was dealt with; small groups of humans who all know one another are capable of imposing penalties and rewards without the mechanism of the state, and did so. The state is only a necessity in a complex society where not everyone knows everyone else, where peace and order must be kept among strangers; it is an adaptation to civilized circumstances and not an original artifact of human society. But if we are to abolish it, then something else to fulfill its functions of order-keeping, conflict-resolution, and the making and implementation of collective decisions must be substituted. We cannot rely on precivilized mechanisms for doing this (which still exist in a civilized context, and continue to govern tribal-esque subcultures within society), because those depend on everyone knowing everyone else.

Contrary to anarchist belief, the state fulfills necessary functions, as well as serving undesirable ones which anarchists are quick to point out. I'll stipulate, though, that it's not axiomatically the only thing that could fulfill those functions. Still, I feel it should be pointed out that even precivilized governing mechanisms, although not states per se, did rely upon coercive methods at need.

But in the more extreme, truly public cases, the free-rider myth is even weaker. That is because the free-riders, in cases like defense or transit easements or other like situations impose no significant cost. The example of a lighthouse is a good one. An entity operating even a tiny number of valuable ships in a coastal area will realize benefits (their ships not sinking) on building a lighthouse themselves, regardless who else sees the light and navigates by it. The provider is made no worse off by those other eyeballs -- and, most important, the lighthouse gets built.

A lighthouse, however, has never been built in the absence of a state. It's true that (for example) the Pharos of Alexandria benefited ships from lands other than Egypt, but it's also true that they paid indirectly for its construction and maintenance through duties on their cargoes. (Assuming they docked in Alexandria, and if they didn't then they gained no benefit from the Pharos.) More to the point, suppose that Egypt had been stateless at the time, and that the residents of Alexandria had to come up with the funds and labor and materials to build the Pharos as individuals. Remember, lack of a state means not only lack of direct taxation for that purpose, but for all other purposes as well -- no coinage, no army, no public roads or buildings, no enforceable contract law. Order in the absence of a state can only be kept within small groups of people who all know each other (again, unless you can suggest a non-state alternative that would work on a large scale), so the society of Alexandria would consist of tribal groupings which are at relative peace internally but relate to one another as nations do today. So what we are really talking about is one small tribal grouping of Alexandrians deciding to build the lighthouse, perhaps one that controls the territory near the harbor. But this small body of people would lack the means to do so. They could appeal to other groups to join them in the effort, but the natural response would be, "What's in it for us?" Another natural response would be for an inland group that is farming the Nile upriver to distrust any measure that would increase the wealth and power of their coastal neighbors, who might use that wealth and power to impose duties and unfavorable conditions on the sale of produce in town. Meanwhile, other coastal tribes might say, "Why should this thing be built on YOUR territory using OUR resources?"

The historical reality of stateless societies, which as I noted did exist in precivilized communities, was just this sort of tribal conflict and dispute, punctuated by tribal warfare.

A personal example -- I paid with my own money to have a section of public road paved, and to have a section of water line extended.

Good for you, but the existence of enlightened individuals capable of behaving in a civilized fashion without being coerced is not in question. The problem lies in that not everyone fits that description. What do you do about those who don't?

Originally Posted by Matt1989

What makes you think they are coercion? I'm confused.

Persuasion, coaxing, coercion -- somehow it all has to do with trying to get people to act less selfishly. At least that's how I see it.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Persuasion, coaxing, coercion -- somehow it all has to do with trying to get people to act less selfishly. At least that's how I see it.

But surely you see the difference between rational persuasion and compulsion?

Originally Posted by Matt1989

What makes you think they are coercion? I'm confused.

Coercion is the shaping of behavior through the imposition of penalties for disobedience. In the absence of a state, groups that all know each other impose penalties for socially unacceptable behavior ranging from expressions of disapproval to ostracism to banishment to flogging to death. (The last two are generally not permitted in the presence of a state.)

Coercion is a necessary part of human societies. It has not always been imposed by a state (because precivilized societies didn't have states), but it has always been imposed by something.