The Political Thread

[Steven Denton]

Hi Jimmy Baker's Assistant, your wall of text including random parables and implications of complicity/tacit approval of abuse will be along shortly...

Well indeed that's exactly what happened.

I know there's no point in arguing, though, and I look forward to the Labour leadership result tomorrow, at which point the topic of this thread might revert back to politics!

Without the 598 preceding pages I may have assumed irony from the verbose one.

Hey, do you think it's just a pity he relies on idiocy himself?

This made me laugh out loud.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

This is a good robust exchange, and I'm pleased to see that Sharky is bloodied but unbowed beneath the writhing dogpile (even as I'm dismayed by some of his arguments), but I again have to comment on the savage eloquence of JPMaybe's writing - "fractally wrong gobbledygook", damn that's a cool phrase. This thread brings out the best in you, JPM!

I also missed your insightful meta-commentry on other boarders TB which helps me navigate these here thread minefields.


DON'T LEAVE EVER AGAIN

[The Legendary Shark]

JPM - there are more ways to discourage and punish illegal behaviour than violence. I can't answer your point on tax because your admonition that I shouldn't go into the difference between illegal and unlawful precludes it; also, you're asking me to apply solutions to any problems that might arise with a proposed voluntary or other taxation or fee system to an existing compulsory system. At present, furthermore, most if not all taxes go towards paying off illusory debts, and I don't think you want me to go into that again here. Suffice to say, "government" and the current banking system are a symbiotic cancer that both need dealing with.
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So, if you'll forgive me, I'll give a couple of examples. Firstly, individuals or groups of criminals - let's say muggers, for argument's sake. The muggers use violence or threats of violence to steal property. This is a direct violation of the law against causing harm to others and so the victim's right of self defence, by violence if necessary, kicks in. The police, then, having been delegated the right to defend the victims, using violence if necessary, can use appropriate force against the muggers to stop them and bring them to whatever appropriate justice society deems fit. Although I am uncomfortable with the idea, which seems to stretch the meaning of self defence, this may include incarceration. The question of punishment in an idividualist anarchic society is a difficult one - but that's true of any society. No whipping, amputation or execution, though, I'm certain of that. As human beings are social animals, in a small community being 'sent to Coventry' is a good punishment for lesser crimes. Anyone who has experienced that, and I have (a few times with good reason and once or twice in error), knows how miserable a punishment that can be. It's not a fitting punishment for everything, though, and not really practicable in larger population centres.
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Runaway wealth inequality is not exactly a crime, as I see it, but a consequence of our current monetary system so I'll skip over that as well.
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Lax food safety and air pollution can be dealt with in several ways. Firstly, there is the idea of a number of arbitrated databases. In this idea, businesses pay a fee to a private company to be added to a databse, for restaurants as an example. If customers, employees or suppliers have a complaint against a restaurant on the database they pay a fee for a specialist arbitrator to consider the evidence and make a ruling. If the restaurant is found to be in the wrong and makes the reparations ordered by the arbitrator, that is kept private in the database. If the restaurant refuses to put things right, that is recorded in the publicly accessible portion of the database or even made public in the media for more serious infractions. For a small fee, or even no fee, anyone can consult the database to study the arbitrated record of the restaurant to see if it is worth dealing with, working for or patronising or not. For serial offenders, the punishment is to naturally go out of business. Of course, there would be a great many specialised arbitrated databases covering every form of business and service and higher level databases to arbitrate the databases themselves - it'll also give all those currently despised lawyers something useful to do!
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Large corporations, or even small businesses, are also things and not people. Because of this, businesses which act badly can be 'executed,' as it were. They can be confiscated and passed on to more reputable businesses in the same line or stripped apart and given away or sold off. The business owners are punished not by violence but by a form of business excommunication and the assets of the "executed" business are recycled in a way that benefits society.
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Your last point - no. Whilst I admit that a few things may have been improved over the years by the involvement of "government," most advances came about in spite of or independent of it. "Government," for example, did not invent the internet, the mobile 'phone or heart transplants.
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I'll let you do your own research on the horrid Ayn Rand and her advocacy of collectivism. I read her books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and found them to be very depressing from a humanitarian point of view. Individuals don't seem to matter in her view, as if we're all just fungible cogs in an unfeeling machine. She did, however, write one line I loved and have used myself: "I refuse to engage in an argument whose ultimate expression is the barrel of a gun."

[TordelBack]

"Government," for example, did not invent the internet

ARPANET was commissioned and funded by the US government.  Tim Berners Lee worked for CERN, funded by more than 20 governments. All that money extracted with menaces led directly to this very medium.

Not picking on you Sharky, but most of the significant advances of the past 9,000 years have in some way been enabled by a redistributive authority. Most of the bad shite too, of course, but seeing as things are getting better in aggregate we'll call that a win. I'm all for you view of personal freedom from coercion, but I feel sure it is best achieved with some form of collectively endorsed and empowered adminstration running in the background.

[M.I.K.]

I'll let you do your own research on the horrid Ayn Rand and her advocacy of collectivism.

Um...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO3p1VHMcI0

...and...

http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library/toptt.html

Collectivism is not the ``New Order of Tomorrow.´´ It is the order of a very dark yesterday. But there is a New Order of Tomorrow. It belongs to Individual Man — the only creator of any tomorrows humanity has ever been granted.

[The Legendary Shark]

Mikey, I don't pretend these are my ideas - they most assuredly aren't. I may put my own spin on some of them but that's all I claim.
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Like many people, I became disillusioned with the current state of politics and searched for solutions in the ideas of others. I've read lots of stuff that didn't help much; from Ayn Rand to Thoreau and Plato to Socrates. (This sounds more impressive than it is because most of it either went over my head or bored me to tears.)
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Then I discovered the writings of people like Larken Rose, Lysander Spooner, Mikhail Bakunin and Etienne de la Boetie and the idea that "government" itself, or rather the blind faith in it, is the core problem started to make complete sense to me. I understand that it doesn't make sense to everyone, or even most people, but it does to me. Maybe I'm pissing in the wind talking about the idea here but, what the Hell? It's my piss.
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If anyone's interested (and you probably aren't), the latest thing I read was an excellent essay by Leonard E. Read entitled, I, Pencil.. It's a very good piece explaining how incredibly complex the world is, and how irrelevant "government" is the midst of that complexity, by concentrating on seemingly the most simple of objects: a pencil.
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[The Legendary Shark]

Ha! So I obviously read Rand's books condemning collectivism from the wrong perspective. I told you a lot of this stuff went over my head. Sometimes, it's good to be wrong. Thanks, M.I.K. :-)

[The Legendary Shark]

Sorry, Tordels, but the ends don't justify the means. If a woman is raped and a child ensues who grows up to cure cancer, the cancer cure does not legitimise the initial rape. Similarly, stealing money to fund what eventually becomes the internet does not legitimise the theft, even though the internet is brilliant.
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Luckily, we now have things like crowd-funding, which is a much more morally acceptable way to finance new inventions.

[Mikey]

My point was that you argue against others as if they are not familiar with the ideas. I'll maintain that you sometimes espouse the notion that all ideas are equally valid if someone has thought them up. They're not.

I shouldn't drink early.

[The Legendary Shark]

Well, at least you can be thankful I haven't gone off on one based on today's date.

[TordelBack]

Sorry, Tordels, but the ends don't justify the means. If a woman is raped and a child ensues who grows up to cure cancer, the cancer cure does not legitimise the initial rape. Similarly, stealing money to fund what eventually becomes the internet does not legitimise the theft, even though the internet is brilliant.
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Luckily, we now have things like crowd-funding, which is a much more morally acceptable way to finance new inventions.

I was responding to your assertion that government didn't invent the internet. My point was that governments collected, directed and distributed funding that enabled it to be invented. My lesser point was one that I've made any number of times: the overall lot of humanity has objectively improved in tandem with the rise of democratic government. A positive correlation is tempting.

Crowd funding is great, but II really doubt enough people care about my essential living expenses to kick in to cover them  - luckily when I was unemployed the state-enforced tax system didn't require me to offer enticing stretch goals.

[Steven Denton]

most advances came about in spite of or independent of it. "Government," for example, did not invent the internet, the mobile 'phone or heart transplants.

ARPANET was commissioned and funded by the US government.  Tim Berners Lee worked for CERN, funded by more than 20 governments. All that money extracted with menaces led directly to this very medium.

Sorry, Tordels, but the ends don't justify the means.

[The Legendary Shark]

I'd suggest that the overall levels of war have also increased in tandem with governments. Also levels of debt.
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If taxes were voluntary and taxpayers could specify what their money was spent on, people like me (and I assume you as well) would direct our funds to social necessities, scientific research and the like and not weaponry, war or quantative easing. So, in my view, voluntary taxation would be just as likely, if not moreso, to lead to breakthroughs like the internet and heart transplants.
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[JPMaybe]

God damn it, I just can't help myself.  I can't believe you tap this twaddle out on a blackberry.

JPM - there are more ways to discourage and punish illegal behaviour than violence. I can't answer your point on tax because your admonition that I shouldn't go into the difference between illegal and unlawful precludes it

No, it's because you can't; your conception of both those things, and your constant, cretinous equation of taxation with theft, is utterly childish and simplistic, as has been pointed out to you repeatedly in this thread, by trained solicitors amongst others. 

...also, you're asking me to apply solutions to any problems that might arise with a proposed voluntary or other taxation or fee system to an existing compulsory system. At present, furthermore, most if not all taxes go towards paying off illusory debts, and I don't think you want me to go into that again here. Suffice to say, "government" and the current banking system are a symbiotic cancer that both need dealing with.

Naked assertion, no evidence, magical let's print money fantasising- yeah, please don't go into that one.

So, if you'll forgive me, I'll give a couple of examples. Firstly, individuals or groups of criminals - let's say muggers, for argument's sake. The muggers use violence or threats of violence to steal property. This is a direct violation of the law against causing harm to others and so the victim's right of self defence, by violence if necessary, kicks in. The police, then, having been delegated the right to defend the victims, using violence if necessary, can use appropriate force against the muggers to stop them and bring them to whatever appropriate justice society deems fit. Although I am uncomfortable with the idea, which seems to stretch the meaning of self defence, this may include incarceration. The question of punishment in an idividualist anarchic society is a difficult one - but that's true of any society. No whipping, amputation or execution, though, I'm certain of that. As human beings are social animals, in a small community being 'sent to Coventry' is a good punishment for lesser crimes. Anyone who has experienced that, and I have (a few times with good reason and once or twice in error), knows how miserable a punishment that can be. It's not a fitting punishment for everything, though, and not really practicable in larger population centres.

Yet again, you're completely ignoring the very basic concept of individual actions that appear harmless aggregating to cause harm to society as a whole.  Your society of lolbert Übermenschen has absolutely no way of dealing with it.

Runaway wealth inequality is not exactly a crime, as I see it, but a consequence of our current monetary system so I'll skip over that as well.

No, it's not a crime.  That's the entire point that you keep ignoring- a given behaviour might not be criminal but society still might need to curtail it.  And it would be an even greater property of your anarcho-capitalist system.  No wealth redistribution at all. 

...and please save yourself the trouble of typing the inevitable, evidence free, economically illiterate "but social money with no state to back it up that people will all magically agree to cos they're all so nice and only GUVAMENT is capable of avarice!" reply.

Lax food safety and air pollution can be dealt with in several ways. Firstly, there is the idea of a number of arbitrated databases. In this idea, businesses pay a fee to a private company to be added to a databse, for restaurants as an example. If customers, employees or suppliers have a complaint against a restaurant on the database they pay a fee for a specialist arbitrator to consider the evidence and make a ruling. If the restaurant is found to be in the wrong and makes the reparations ordered by the arbitrator, that is kept private in the database. If the restaurant refuses to put things right, that is recorded in the publicly accessible portion of the database or even made public in the media for more serious infractions. For a small fee, or even no fee, anyone can consult the database to study the arbitrated record of the restaurant to see if it is worth dealing with, working for or patronising or not. For serial offenders, the punishment is to naturally go out of business. Of course, there would be a great many specialised arbitrated databases covering every form of business and service and higher level databases to arbitrate the databases themselves - it'll also give all those currently despised lawyers something useful to do!

Drivel.  Capitalist wank-fantasy.  Fuck you if you die of botulism cos this system is completely reactive, hey at least somebody who just gets really sick might sue on your behalf.  And you're a bureaucracy hater who's making me consult a database if I don't want salmonella from my lunchtime burger.

Large corporations, or even small businesses, are also things and not people. Because of this, businesses which act badly can be 'executed,' as it were. They can be confiscated and passed on to more reputable businesses in the same line or stripped apart and given away or sold off. The business owners are punished not by violence but by a form of business excommunication and the assets of the "executed" business are recycled in a way that benefits society.

Confiscated by whom?

Your last point - no. Whilst I admit that a few things may have been improved over the years by the involvement of "government," most advances came about in spite of or independent of it. "Government," for example, did not invent the internet, the mobile 'phone or heart transplants.

Drivel.  Every single one of those used government funding.  You've also just gutted every single avenue of research or culture that doesn't have an immediate profit incentive, cos your non-nation of dickhead hagglers isn't going to kick in for, say, the particle physics research they don't understand or care about.

I'll let you do your own research on the horrid Ayn Rand and her advocacy of collectivism. I read her books The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and found them to be very depressing from a humanitarian point of view. Individuals don't seem to matter in her view, as if we're all just fungible cogs in an unfeeling machine. She did, however, write one line I loved and have used myself: "I refuse to engage in an argument whose ultimate expression is the barrel of a gun."

Bwahahahaha, yeah you've already eaten your humble pie on this one, but still.  For somebody else this might be an egregiously dumb thing to say, but for you I doubt it'd crack the top twenty.

[Steven Denton]

JPMaybe I always enjoy your responses so TLS's claptrap. I particularly enjoyed his plan to replace heath and food safety with checkatrade.com

you can't argue with some one who thinks this is an argument or contains any logic

TLS; 'governments haven't had anything to do with scientific progress [gives examples]'

person with adult reasoning skills; 'Yes they have in fact your examples were government funded (gives verifiable information)'

TLS; 'well tax funded research is just Like rape babies!'