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Thread: Libertarianism/Anarchism - Page 39







Post#951 at 08-23-2009 01:55 AM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
Just because there is no single correct answer to ALL social problems does not mean social problems don't have answers and can't be inspired by an over-arching ideal.
Yeah. That's the either/or delusion I was talking about...
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#952 at 08-23-2009 07:32 AM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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from Justin regarding the lack of an Answer for all people to solve all problems:

Do you see how the first and the second are mutually exclusive?
Not at all. There is no one Answer for all people. So what? There are answers that can make life easier for many people and a majority of people have a right to join together in a society, enact a system of government and put those answers into action to benefit the most people possible. You do not have to reach everyone or convince everyone or even please everyone. Such a standard is silly and a false premise that intentionally sets up a goal where failure is always going to be achieved.

And therein lies the reason for the false premise.







Post#953 at 08-23-2009 11:21 AM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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As I said before in my response to him making the exact same statement:
Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
So what? There are answers that can make life easier for many people and a majority of people have a right to join together in a society, enact a system of government and put those answers into action to benefit the most people possible. You do not have to reach everyone...
his "screw you, I've got mine" philosophy is workable (at least potentially in the short-term), but hardly conducive to the health or thriving of a society.

No more than is a monoculture (which, if circumstances are held just right for it, grows really, really fast to begin with) conducive to the long-term health or thriving of a forest. As soon as anything along that model runs into the first reality-supplied wall, its fundamental weakness becomes in most cases terminal.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#954 at 08-23-2009 11:44 AM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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Justin - It is not at all about "I've got mine" as you allege. Not at all. One person be it me or you or anyone, is not the standard of success of a society.

I suspect that you are attempting to create a standard where you claim that because ALL of the people in society are not happy with the system, and force or coercion is used to force some in society to behave, thus the system itself is not a good one. It seems a very good way to go if you are an anarcho-libertarian who does not want government or any system of authority over the will of each individual. It sets up a impossibly high standard that no governmental system can possible meet. Which is why you seem to be advocating it.

And, that is why the standard is absurd and meaningless in the real world. We ... at least I and some others here .... live in a nation of over 300 million people that stretches out thousands of miles from coast to coast and border to border. No system, so government , no anything is going to make all those different folks happy and content and give them all what they want in terms of their own particular (or even peculiar) definition of freedom or liberty. Sorry, but it just is not in the cards in the real world.







Post#955 at 08-23-2009 11:47 AM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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Left Arrow Linear Planks in a Cyclical History

Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54 View Post
I just wouldn't advise ignoring the new values, ignoring the problems, and resisting the change. I might advise investing in the new infrastructure. I am not a great fan of lumbering bureaucratic government, but I am dubious about static political perspectives that don't roll with the cycles.
Quote Originally Posted by Matt1989 View Post
I don't know what this means. What kind of political perspective do you find to be static?
I see political parties as embracing planks, specific positions on specific issues, that come and go with the cycles. Thus, at one point the Democratic Party was the party of state's rights and slavery. The Republican party was at a much later time (and might still be to some extent) the party of supply side borrow and spend economics. New values are often proclaimed in the awakening, debated in the unraveling, resolved in the crisis set in stone in the high, but perhaps placed in question by new values appearing in the next awakening.

Prior to World War II, Isolationism was a key American value. One downsized the military after conflicts and strove to avoid being entangled in Europe's great power struggles. After World War II, we became the world's policeman, the keystone of a bunch of regional alliances that set themselves in opposition to communism. There were reasons for the transition. While I won't pretend the Cold War was fought without error, the policy of containment achieved its goal and was likely prudent. Then too, the earlier policy of isolationism, while not implemented perfectly either, was also broadly correct for its time.

I would propose that policy planks have and ought to come and go. Things that are right for one time might be wrong in another. The Democratic position that all great civilizations have been built on a corner stone of slavery might have been viable at one time, but clinging to existing values without looking about to see how the wind is blowing might not be prudent.
For a long time isolationism was right for the United States. For another time, playing 'the world's policeman' while containing communism had its points. For a long time, the Supreme Court held it unconstitutional for the federal government to create safe work places, limit child labor, support labor unions or blunt the boom bust cycles. Such policies created us as an industrial power, but there comes a time to reevaluate.

It is tempting, when one has gained power with the backing of a particular power group, addressing issues from a given perspective, working from a certain set of values, to maintain power according to what got one there. To me, this is linear thinking in a cyclical world. It generally is not prudent to set a straight course and try to hold it forever. I can look at the three basic elements of Reagan Republicanism -- strong defense, supply side tax breaks for the rich economics and support for Evangelical values -- and see why all of this was right for the early 80s. I can also see why it was wrong by 2008.

But even on these forums, we have folks that view recent history though partisan linear frameworks rather than from a longer term cyclical perspective. Much of the partisan squabbling that dominates this site comes from advocating linear Republican, Democratic or Libertarian values from a linear attitude. There are permanent dialectics. I expect there will always be those trying to solve new problems, and there will always be those attempting to perpetuate power structure advantageous to themselves. It is important to at least look at things from time to time in an attempt to tell the difference.







Post#956 at 08-23-2009 11:56 AM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
Justin - It is not at all about "I've got mine" as you allege. Not at all. One person be it me or you or anyone, is not the standard of success of a society.
Of course you say that. But the facts of what you advocate are perfectly summed up by my paraphrase.
We ... at least I and some others here .... live in a nation of over 300 million people that stretches out thousands of miles from coast to coast and border to border. No system, so government , no anything is going to make all those different folks happy and content and give them all what they want in terms of their own particular (or even peculiar) definition of freedom or liberty.
Exactly. The model which gives you yours also claims dominion over millions of other differing people, some of whom believe that they have theirs, too; some of whom not. Regardless, your model holds (in abject absence of anything like correspondence to the reality of society) that all those 300-million-odd should be all living under your model.

Interestingly enough -- I suppose even the cognitive dissonance cannot stretch that far -- you recognize out loud that your model is not the best (or even the right one) for those 300-million-odd. But your faith-based delusion that a System must be leads you to simply dismiss that fact and cling to your model. That is why, put to the test of reality, your delusion is a path to failure. It is in fundamental discord with things as they are.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#957 at 08-23-2009 12:09 PM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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Jason - why are you attempting in post after post to make this personal and about me? Its not about me.

Here you say

that all those 300-million-odd should be all living under your model.
It is NOT my model. I am but one grain of sand on a very large beach. The model is not mine. The system is not mine. The government is not mine. You keep trying to make this about an individual but when you judge the success of a society it is not about any individual.

Why do you persist in this and refuse to recognize the larger reality of the larger society?







Post#958 at 08-23-2009 12:51 PM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
It is NOT my model. I am but one grain of sand on a very large beach. The model is not mine. The system is not mine. The government is not mine.
Funny. Is it 'your' family? Even though there are other people in it? Of course, you don't own the model -- it owns you. Nevertheless, the ownership (regardless of direction) makes it 'yours'.

You keep trying to make this about an individual but when you judge the success of a society it is not about any individual.
Actually, I'm the one trying to push it beyond an individual or any particular number of individuals. Society is peoples' environment -- and it is the thriving of our environment and us which motivates me.

Your system is the one which is fixated on the individual -- rather, on a rather arbitrary specific number of individuals (your vaunted 'majority'). Though you are correct when you recognize that such a focus on the parts, in violent opposition to the whole, is wrongheaded.

I'm not terribly worried by you, though. Your system is unlikely to completely spoil our environment in the short time you have left to impose it on the world. And you provide good object lessons for our kids.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#959 at 08-23-2009 02:23 PM by Child of Socrates [at Cybrarian from America's Dairyland, 1961 cohort joined Sep 2001 #posts 14,092]
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Quote Originally Posted by Justin '77 View Post
Not so much the thinking that that there is only one true answer, as the belief that there can be formulated any True answer.

No answer -- no matter how broadly worded or thought out -- can be applicable for the entirety of society. And a worldview that insists on imposing one on society can only be in conflict with society.
I don't agree, and I don't think you can prove your assertion.







Post#960 at 08-23-2009 02:24 PM by Child of Socrates [at Cybrarian from America's Dairyland, 1961 cohort joined Sep 2001 #posts 14,092]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
I guess you'll just have to call me a deluded statist, then.

*Odin rolls his eyes*
Consider that there might be other alternatives to statism and anarchy.







Post#961 at 08-23-2009 02:31 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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Justin posted this:

Quote Originally Posted by Justin '77 View Post
Not so much the thinking that that there is only one true answer, as the belief that there can be formulated any True answer.

No answer -- no matter how broadly worded or thought out -- can be applicable for the entirety of society. And a worldview that insists on imposing one on society can only be in conflict with society.
...to which COS replied:

Quote Originally Posted by Child of Socrates View Post
I don't agree, and I don't think you can prove your assertion.
...ironically, Haymarket makes Justin's point:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...We... live in a nation of over 300 million people that stretches out thousands of miles from coast to coast and border to border. No system, so government , no anything is going to make all those different folks happy and content and give them all what they want in terms of their own particular (or even peculiar) definition of freedom or liberty...

Oldie but Goodie:

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
...Fact is I will vote to tax the precious Millenials to bail out the Boomers. Got that?

I will tax.
I will raise taxes.
I will reallocate income.
I will redistribute income...
-The Power to tax is the power to destroy.

---
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...

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
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.







Post#962 at 08-23-2009 02:43 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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From Rani:

http://liberalaw.blogspot.com/2009/0...anarchism.html

FWIW, Odin has pointed this out (somewhere):

"Or consider the effect on prices when licensing requirements limit who can be a doctor, how many doctors there can be, what kinds of procedures non-doctors can perform?"

---
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...

Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
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.







Post#963 at 08-23-2009 02:47 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Child of Socrates View Post
Consider that there might be other alternatives to statism and anarchy.
Well, my thinking is that the state is not a bad thing in and of itself, it's the natural outgrowth of a complex society. What is bad is not the state itself but an authoritarian, secretive state that in unaccountable and unrestrained.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#964 at 08-23-2009 02:50 PM by jamesdglick [at Clarksville, TN joined Mar 2007 #posts 2,007]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
Well, my thinking is that the state is not a bad thing in and of itself, it's the natural outgrowth of a complex society. What is bad is not the state itself but an authoritarian, secretive state that in unaccountable and unrestrained.
-Unless it allows you give away other people's stuff.

---
Quote Originally Posted by haymarket martyr View Post
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.



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...







Post#965 at 08-23-2009 03:15 PM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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Left Arrow Libertarianism as a meme?

Quote Originally Posted by Justin '77 View Post
Of course you say that. But the facts of what you advocate are perfectly summed up by my paraphrase.
Exactly. The model which gives you yours also claims dominion over millions of other differing people, some of whom believe that they have theirs, too; some of whom not. Regardless, your model holds (in abject absence of anything like correspondence to the reality of society) that all those 300-million-odd should be all living under your model.

Interestingly enough -- I suppose even the cognitive dissonance cannot stretch that far -- you recognize out loud that your model is not the best (or even the right one) for those 300-million-odd. But your faith-based delusion that a System must be leads you to simply dismiss that fact and cling to your model. That is why, put to the test of reality, your delusion is a path to failure. It is in fundamental discord with things as they are.
I'd like to reintroduce the concept of 'meme' here. A 'model' or culture or set of values or political platform are all elements of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, esp. imitation. Like genes, memes evolve. Groups of memes are in competition with one another.

By what mechanisms do political memes compete? At one level there is military competition. Some cultures in the past have invaded their neighbors. If there is no mechanism by which a culture discourages or prevents said invasion, said culture has a problem.

Another mechanism is through democracy. If one's memes can't collect a bunch of people willing to vote for them, said memes are apt to fade.

Economic competition is real as well. Memes are also shifted in academic, religious, media and other debate and discussion.

Libertarianism is just another set of memes. If it is to become dominant, it will have to out-compete other memes using one form of contention or another. To the extent it is or remains a non-system, where its advocates are not as structured or organized as other subcultures, it might have trouble promoting itself.

I am getting a sense that some here are attempting to set up libertarianism as something unique and special, that rules for judging libertarianism are somehow different from judging conservatism or fascism. I see it as just another set of ideas which might or might not bring about a culture more favorable to those who advocate it.

You seem to believe the 300 million odd people would be better off living under and with your memes. In this, you seem no different from most others that advocate continuation and extension of their political ideas.







Post#966 at 08-23-2009 03:34 PM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by Child of Socrates View Post
I don't agree, and I don't think you can prove your assertion.
Proof (that is, in the absolute, mathematical sense) is an impossible standard in questions of sociology. What we are left with is deductions from axioms. That, I can provide (in fact, I have in bits and pieces over the last couple days):

Identity: Society consists of, and stems from the interactions of persons.
Axiom: The scope of possible actions available to personhood is unlimited.
Axiom: The scope of varying circumstances of comingling between persons is unlimited.
Identity: "Interactions" are actions while comingling.
Deduction 1: The scope of interactions of persons is unlimited.
Deduction 2: The scope of society is unlimited.

Axiom: A system corresponds to a bounded set.
Corollary: No system can correspond to an unlimited set.

Final deduction: No social system can correspond to society.

Parenthetical: The state of non-correspondence is 'discord'.
Corollary (parenthetical): All social systems are discordant with society.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#967 at 08-23-2009 03:50 PM by Justin '77 [at Meh. joined Sep 2001 #posts 12,182]
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Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54 View Post
You seem to believe the 300 million odd people would be better off living under and with your memes. In this, you seem no different from most others that advocate continuation and extension of their political ideas.
No, that's exactly what I am not doing. In fact, that's what anarchists are alone in not doing. We deny the contention that anyone's memes are Right for any arbitrary number of people (300 million, 6 billion, even just 30). The parallel I drew between a-gnosticism and an-archism seems increasingly more appropriate to this discussion.

It strikes me, reading your posts, that you, too, are stuck in the medieval power-struggle model -- though you group the sides in a bit more of an unconventional way, you still are fundamentally talking about the development and imposition of Systems on society.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que cela, la loi ? On peut donc être dehors. Je ne comprends pas. Quant à moi, suis-je dans la loi ? suis-je hors la loi ? Je n'en sais rien. Mourir de faim, est-ce être dans la loi ?" -- Tellmarch

"Человек не может снять с себя ответственности за свои поступки." - L. Tolstoy

"[it]
is no doubt obvious, the cult of the experts is both self-serving, for those who propound it, and fraudulent." - Noam Chomsky







Post#968 at 08-23-2009 04:10 PM by Odin [at Moorhead, MN, USA joined Sep 2006 #posts 14,442]
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Quote Originally Posted by Justin '77 View Post
No, that's exactly what I am not doing. In fact, that's what anarchists are alone in not doing. We deny the contention that anyone's memes are Right for any arbitrary number of people (300 million, 6 billion, even just 30). The parallel I drew between a-gnosticism and an-archism seems increasingly more appropriate to this discussion.

It strikes me, reading your posts, that you, too, are stuck in the medieval power-struggle model -- though you group the sides in a bit more of an unconventional way, you still are fundamentally talking about the development and imposition of Systems on society.
I'm not a relativist. If something is right it's right, if it's wrong it's wrong, in all times and in all cultures. Slavery is wrong, Misogyny is wrong. Racism is wrong. Period. At all times and all places.
To recommend thrift to the poor is both grotesque and insulting. It is like advising a man who is starving to eat less.

-Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism







Post#969 at 08-23-2009 05:16 PM by haymarket martyr [at joined Sep 2008 #posts 2,547]
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Justin - you just don't get it. We are all - those of us who live in the USA - in the society together. It belongs to nobody and to everyone as a whole. It is not mine or yours or anyone individually. To judge things then according to an individual is setting up a false premise. Of course, you do this knowingly and on purpose because that is the only premise that goes with your ideology.

There is no one answer - there are many answers for many people and many situations. And for some - there are no answers at all and so be it for those few. I accept that because I accept reality. I live in the real world with real people and a real government and it works for the vast majority of people.

If it does not work for you or for anarchists or other types of political extremists, that is acceptable ... not just to me but to the majority of society.

You hate the term majority but that is what we live with each day......
the rule of the majority with minority rights. You also seem to resent the very idea that there is a society and that people seem okay with that and support the governmental system. I guess that is your right. But it is the right of the majority to adopt that system. Like it or lump it ... it makes no difference.







Post#970 at 08-23-2009 07:07 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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Quote Originally Posted by The Rani View Post
A great entry. I'm looking forward to his forthcoming book, The Conscience of an Anarchist. How did you find his blog, btw?







Post#971 at 08-23-2009 07:18 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
Well, my thinking is that the state is not a bad thing in and of itself, it's the natural outgrowth of a complex society. What is bad is not the state itself but an authoritarian, secretive state that in unaccountable and unrestrained.
Well, in the sense you seem to be suggesting, anything in existence is a natural outgrowth of complex society, including the rare outbreaks of statelessness. Unfortunately, the State itself is naturally (read: inherently) authoritarian, proposing a master for individuals who do not need (and for some, do not want) to be ruled, while stripping us of any possibility of consenting to its authority.







Post#972 at 08-23-2009 07:33 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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08-23-2009, 07:33 PM #972
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Quote Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54 View Post
I'd like to reintroduce the concept of 'meme' here. A 'model' or culture or set of values or political platform are all elements of a culture or system of behavior that may be considered to be passed from one individual to another by non-genetic means, esp. imitation. Like genes, memes evolve. Groups of memes are in competition with one another.

By what mechanisms do political memes compete? At one level there is military competition. Some cultures in the past have invaded their neighbors. If there is no mechanism by which a culture discourages or prevents said invasion, said culture has a problem.

Another mechanism is through democracy. If one's memes can't collect a bunch of people willing to vote for them, said memes are apt to fade.

Economic competition is real as well. Memes are also shifted in academic, religious, media and other debate and discussion.

Libertarianism is just another set of memes. If it is to become dominant, it will have to out-compete other memes using one form of contention or another. To the extent it is or remains a non-system, where its advocates are not as structured or organized as other subcultures, it might have trouble promoting itself.

I am getting a sense that some here are attempting to set up libertarianism as something unique and special, that rules for judging libertarianism are somehow different from judging conservatism or fascism. I see it as just another set of ideas which might or might not bring about a culture more favorable to those who advocate it.

You seem to believe the 300 million odd people would be better off living under and with your memes. In this, you seem no different from most others that advocate continuation and extension of their political ideas.
The concept of a meme is silly.







Post#973 at 08-23-2009 07:42 PM by Matt1989 [at joined Sep 2005 #posts 3,018]
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08-23-2009, 07:42 PM #973
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Quote Originally Posted by Odin View Post
I'm not a relativist. If something is right it's right, if it's wrong it's wrong, in all times and in all cultures. Slavery is wrong, Misogyny is wrong. Racism is wrong. Period. At all times and all places.
Ignoring the conceptual tension between your stated non-cognitivism and proclaiming the truth of definitive moral statements, I don't think Justin was implying relativism so much as suggesting pluralism. It's much easier to say what is definitively wrong than what is definitively right for a person, or a group of people. In my experience, there is never only one way to correctly confront a problem, simple as it may be.







Post#974 at 08-23-2009 09:14 PM by Bob Butler 54 [at Cove Hold, Carver, MA joined Jul 2001 #posts 6,431]
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08-23-2009, 09:14 PM #974
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Left Arrow Societies are systems

Quote Originally Posted by Justin '77 View Post
No, that's exactly what I am not doing. In fact, that's what anarchists are alone in not doing. We deny the contention that anyone's memes are Right for any arbitrary number of people (300 million, 6 billion, even just 30). The parallel I drew between a-gnosticism and an-archism seems increasingly more appropriate to this discussion.

It strikes me, reading your posts, that you, too, are stuck in the medieval power-struggle model -- though you group the sides in a bit more of an unconventional way, you still are fundamentally talking about the development and imposition of Systems on society.
I'll start by objecting to the 'medieval' label. From a broad long term perspective, I see human values evolving from hunter gatherer to agricultural age to industrial age to perhaps information age phases. My various perspectives are many things, but medieval is not one of them.

I will propose that societies are systems. Humans forms groups, select leaders, and make up rules. There is both competition and cooperation within a group, and with other similar groups. Groups exist of many kinds at many levels. These include nations, counties and parishes, religions, army divisions, companies, ship's crews, history departments and marching bands. The competition and cooperation between and among groups and values might be military, economic, artistic, academic or other.

I do not anticipate that this multi layered diversity of groups will go away. I do anticipate that some groups will thrive while others will fade. I do anticipate that each of these groups will have leaders, structures and a culture of how they do things. Each group will have its own memes. In some abstract darwinistic sense, the memes that survive and thrive in some way competed better than the others.

Libertarianism and anarchism are sets of memes like any other. Anarchists are trying to expound their ideas and attract followers like any other political group. Anarchists are human beings that form groups which share memes, compete and cooperate just like other groups. They have no special place in at the center of the universe. They would hardly be unique, however, if they convinced themselves that they have a special place at the center of the universe.

I do tend to believe that anarchism will have difficulty competing and cooperating. The system of thought doesn't recognize that man is a social animal. Some anarchists at least seem to deny that acting as part of a group is human. To the extent that anarchists believe this, their theory does not match the reality of what humans are and how they behave. Thus, its followers tend to be stuck on the outside looking in.







Post#975 at 08-24-2009 04:11 AM by fruitcake [at joined Aug 2009 #posts 876]
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08-24-2009, 04:11 AM #975
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Quote Originally Posted by jamesdglick View Post
-Unless it allows you give away other people's stuff.

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What do Liberals and Wall Street Banksters BOTH have in common:
1) they like to use government as a tool to take other people's money
2) they believe their actions are for the good of society
3) they believe only they should have the authority to decide this

Here's my question.
Why did Liberals get so upset at Wall Street Banksters?
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