WAT? You do realize I am an anarchist, right? Would you like me to poast some of the history between anarchists and Commies? I have no idea what point you are trying to make here. But then again, do these LOL-idiotic one line drive-by poasts ever have a point? But if you insist, I could poast KJ2 pics everytime you do a drive-by poast, as he is a fellow lover of hierarchy just like you are...



Constructive criticism accepted in good faith. But maybe you can help me... how can I make clear to these peeps that saying X is logically impossible is a whole different statement than X is unlikely to happen? When I did the /QED thing ITT was because I was trying to separate out these two different concepts.

They are completely different questions that need to be answered in completely different ways. I feel this is a point that the other poasters were completely missing. And that is why I was trying to answer the logically impossible question first, then was using "/QED" to separate the discussion, and then was moving on to discussing how often things would happen.

I'm asking your advice, how do we separate the "logically impossible" part of the discussion from the "how often it might happen" part?

Ok moving on to tomdemaine's poasts...

I have no idea why, after this exchange, you would come to the conclusion that no political system will ever work. WAT? Are you saying that we need perv bosses, or that most wealth isn't inherited, or something farther out into left field? I can give you an example of a political system that works this way right now IRL, although it is not sustainable...



But I think your problem is EITHER/OR reasoning, which seems to be required for you dudes. Let me help...

Today under real world Capitalism, there are perv bosses and landlords who put secret cameras in their offices or apartments. This is a fact of life. They are willing to roll the dice, and take their chances that the real world Capitalist's government won't catch them and punish them. In LiberLand they will act the same.

But in mature LiberLand, such pervish actions will be legal, righteous, and stigma free. They at most might be considered rude, like farting in church. There is a non-zero amount of perv bosses and landlords who today, under real world Capitalism, would like to act out their desires, but they don't because they are scared of the legal punishments or the stigma of being caught. These pervs would be enabled under Libertarian Capitalism.

So /QED, oops sorry. So logically we can conclude that this pervish activity would be more widespread under Libertarian Capitalism than real world Capitalism. Who knows if it would be 150%, 300%, or 1000% more likely?

But I think where you, tomdemaine, are being way to pessimistic about human nature is when you assume that every single boss under Capitalism is a perv. Or as you blogged...

freaks, degenerates and psychopaths have all the money and property in the world

I simply don't agree with you here. Sure power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, I here what you are saying. But most people aren't pervs, I think that's the point you are missing. Obviously Libertarian Capitalism would enable more pervs than real world Capitalism, duh! But I really believe that only a tiny amount of the population are predisposed to being pervs regardless of their wealth and power.

I can't imagine why you would believe otherwise. Most people are good. But YMMV.

Hi missiledog,

Ok, in the future I will make fewer one-line drive-by LOLidiotic poasts, and instead make more endlessly yammering wall-of-text LOLidiotic poasts.

PS: I realize you claim to be an anarchist. That fact was actually crucial in selecting Kim Jong-Il to use in FYPs of your poasts. DUCY?

Good trolling requies more than just one liners as MD has pionted out many times.

OK agreed, JK2 is one ugly looking dude, we both don't really want to go there. I think it is LOL that you say "I claim" to be an anarchist. Maybe I don't know who I am, WAT? Would you like me to scan and poast my Wobblie Red Card dues stamps? And no, I wasn't aware of any connection between JK2 & anarchism. Wanna poast me a wall-o-text to let me CY?

I know this wasn't what you were looking for, but there is an actual Korean anarchist history. From Infoshop Openwiki [...]

Autonomous Shinmin Region (1929-1931)

The apex of Korean anarchism came in late 1929 outside the actual borders of the country, in Manchuria. Over two million Korean immigrants lived within Manchuria at the time when the Korean Anarchist Communist Federation (KACF) declared the Shinmin province autonomous and under the administration of the Korean People’s Association. The decentralized, federative structure the association adopted consisted of village councils, district councils and area councils, all of which operated in a cooperative manner to deal with agriculture, education, finance and other vital issues. KACF sections in China, Korea, Japan and elsewhere devoted all their energies towards the success of the Shinmin Rebellion, most of them actually relocating there. Dealing simultaneously with Stalinist Russia’s attempts to overthrow the Shinmin autonomous region and Japan’s imperialist attempts to claim the region for itself, the Korean anarchists had been crushed by 1931. [...]

From late 1930 onwards the Japanese were attacking in waves from the South and the stalinists, supported by the USSR, from the North. In early 1931 the stalinists sent assassination and kidnapping teams into the anarchist zone to murder leading activists. They believed that if they wiped out the KAFM the KAPM would wither and die. By the summer of 1931 many leading anarchists were dead and the war on two fronts was devastating the region. It was decided to go underground. Anarchist Shimin was no more.[...]

Kinda like in Spain a few years later, all the perpetually warring hierarchical oppressors, Capitalists, Communists, Imperialists, Monarchists, Religionists, you name it, can always agree on one thing --- attacking anarchists is job #1, fighting each other comes second.

Missledog: As difficult an effort it requires to read and interpret much of your goofy language and word games, I must confess you do post some interesting content. Thanks for that link, I learned something.

Not at all. The anarchist tent is big IMO. I have no problem accepting your claim at face value.

Ok, change it to breaches of privacy are always about breaches of property. Better? Since you seem intent on nitpicking and ignoring the actual point...

There is no coherent conceptualization of privacy without a coherent conceptualization of property.

About you not being able to read properly?

"Trumanizing" someone's life (ala the film) would clearly be fraud. It also would be very unlikely (to the point of practical impossibility) for such a conspiracy to go on for very long at all.

The only way "Trumanizing" someone's life would not be a case of fraud is if all parties involved were consentual and entered into a contractual relationship.

I'm sure any other example you come up with will be as ******ed as this one.

No sorry.

A man should be left free to sell himself into servitude. There is no more competent judge than he of his reason for doing so.

No sorry. A contract that violates the freedoms of a third party against their will is not a valid contractual relationship.

Because some people are stupid.

No I feel my reasoning is 100% correct here. Would you care to explain my mistake?
[/QUOTE]

It is loaded with bare assertions and unsubstantiated charges.

Installing a bunch of secret cameras and not notifying the employees would be fraud.

How about you learn what fraud actually is before you spout off stupid **** like this again mmkay?

And once again, you seem to be looking for absolutist guarantees against this kind of thing. They don't exist. Even any pet political theory you hold doesn't guarantee against this sort of thing.

* breaches of privacy are always about breaches of property
* There is no coherent conceptualization of privacy without a coherent conceptualization of property.

Well logically, we can say this...

* If we can come up with an even one example of a breach of privacy that is not related to property rights, regardless of how likely or unlikely that breach might happen, then the first statement is false. Likewise, if we can come up any logical concept of privacy without relating to property rights, then the second statement is false. This is not an example of wanting a perfect rule, or finding a nitpick in an otherwise wonderful philosophy. This is what I was getting at when I said arguing that X logically follows from Y, is a fundamentally different question than X wouldn't often happen from Y.

Here is a math example: Premise: 3,5,7 are prime numbers, so all odd numbers are prime numbers. Disproof: 3*3=9, 9 is odd, so not all odd numbers are prime. I can come up with an unlimited number of these kind of examples. But unless you are able to follow the underlying logic, I feel you will continue to ridicule irrelevant details of the example, whine about me assuming all bosses are pervs or something (like a poster above), or changing the subject by saying... kumbaya! that just wouldn't happen in LiberLand, kumbaya!

Instead of coming up with more examples for you to miss the logical point, can we agree on the underlying logic first?

* There would have to be some positive logical argument that moves from some set of Libertarian principles (NAP, absolute property rights, violent absolute contact enforcement, and/or whatever it is you happen to believe which you identify as non-NAP, non-homesteading, and non-rule-based).

Here is a math example: Premise: There are an infinite number of prime numbers: Proof: Assume there are a finite number of primes, multiply them together and add one. The resulting number cannot be divided by any of the assumed primes. So proved by contradiction, there are an infinite number of primes.

So would you like to make a logical argument that moves from whatever your personal Libertarian principles to a concept of privacy? I can't do that for you because I have no idea what your personal Libertarian principles are.

* Can we agree that the mainstream Libertarian NAP cannot move to any meaningful concept of privacy? Several posters have asked Libertarians to explicitly use the wording of the NAP to do so. I believe I have given examples that show it cannot be done (see reasoning above). And so far Libertarians (&etc) have studiously ignored the question. All we have heard is... soundofcrickets.wav.

Famous Libertarians (&etc) "thinkers" are on record as being pro-slavery, like Block and Noziak. And you yourself: "a man should be free to sell himself into servitude". After a former person is enslaved they are an chattel animal, so only one person is involved at the end of the transaction, they do not magically become two people to add to up to some "third party". WTF are you blogging about? And WTF only stupid people associate you dudes with slavery. You yourself just four lines up identified yourself as pro-slavery. Are you calling yourself stupid?

A perv executive who makes 1000x what a line worker makes opens up a hobby business. He hires ten hotties for line worker wages, two supervisors for 5x line worker wages, and spends 10x a line workers wages to rent the offices and create busy work for the hotties. This is only 3% of the pervs wages, an easily sustainable hobby budget.

We have already established ITT that in LiberLand that any privacy concerns would have to be explicitly spelled out. The perv writes a valid Libertarian employment contract that subtly leaves out an effective privacy clause. And then he secretly violates what would be considered the hotties privacy under real World Capitalism.

So no fraud, a nominal cost to the perv, and perfectly legal and righteous to Libertarians.

I feel my slightly generalized reasoning is 100% correct here. Would you care to explain my mistake?
I am asking you a second time if you would like to explain your reasoning here? Do you disagree with Nielso, that any privacy concerns would have to be explicitly contracted in LiberLand?
No I am not. Did you even read what I blogged back to tomdomaine...

Today under real world Capitalism, there are perv bosses and landlords who put secret cameras in their offices or apartments. This is a fact of life. They are willing to roll the dice, and take their chances that the real world Capitalist's government won't catch them and punish them. In LiberLand they will act the same.

But in a mature LiberLand, such pervish actions will be legal, righteous, and stigma free. They at most might be considered rude, like farting in church. There is a non-zero amount of perv bosses and landlords who today, under real world Capitalism, would like to act out their desires, but they don't because they are scared of the legal punishments or the stigma of being caught. These pervs would be enabled under Libertarian Capitalism.

So logically we can conclude that this pervish activity would be more widespread under Libertarian Capitalism than real world Capitalism. Who knows if it would be 150%, 300%, or 1000% more likely.

Does that sound like I am looking for any absolutist guarantees here? WTF? Sure the first group of pervs will perv under any system because they are willing to roll the dice and take their chances. The second non-zero group are enabled under Libertarian Capitalism, as their pervish activity would not be sanctioned or stigmatized.

Ok, so now demonstrate a breach of privacy that is not dependent on an issue of property.

Selling yourself as a servant is not slavery.

Not telling the hotties in this example is a case of fraud. This is your mistake. Do you even know what fraud is?

Yes the terms must be known to all parties. That is how valid contractual relationships work.

Or, fraud remains a tort in "LiberLand" and your whole argument falls flat on its face.

Yeah no matter how many times people explain to you how this is not the case, you keep repeating this line of ****. Herein lies your problem with posting in general, herr Missledog: You insist on repeating wrongheaded crap notions you've assumed from the start, and have already been called out and corrected on.

Well let me work on it, this could be hard... not. But before I do, there were three points which you quoted here...

1. One valid example disproves the "logically must follow" premise, and that example does not have to be likely, etc. We are on the same page here, correct?

2. Why don't you give a shot as at a positive explanation of how you get from whatever your Libertarians principles to some useful considerations of privacy. You do realize that even if I or anyone else can't come up with an example of an "odd non-prime", that that does not logically prove that none exists, correct?

3. Do we both in fact agree that the mainstream Libertarian NAP does not logically imply any considerations of privacy?

An indentured servant is the equivalent of a "timed slave". And of course, this form of "timed slavery" is still practiced, most notably in the EAU. These "timed slaves" are in the complete control of their masters, down where they are allowed to travel and live, what work they are violently commanded to do, what food they are allowed to eat, what sexual and family relations the are allowed to have, what living conditions they must endure, etc, etc. They are legally subject to physical violence by the master to enforce this contract or at any whim, as they have no civil rights, and they have no legal cause to complain. In fact, they are "down by law" and the authorities will violently interfere on the masters side to ensure his property "rights" in another human being. According to the UN Human Rights declaration of 1948, it is considered the equivalent of slavery and is human rights crime.

If a 20 year old indentures himself for 80 years, is that not slavery? Or how about a 60 year old for 30 years? In the historical examples and today in the EAU at least the "timed slaves" count only be exploited to a maximum number of years. But since in LiberLand anything that can be written on paper can be "voluntarily" agreed to, and their is no "social contract" or government interference in contract length, like under real world Capitalism, there is nothing to stop these "timed forever slaves" from being created.

Just being pro-indentured servitude itself shows what a morally bankrupt and evil pseudo-philosophy you are championing. And the traded off is... what is going to be so wonderful in LiberLand that this egregious human rights violation would be necessary and obviously wide spread... well let's see soybeans would be free, free to live in a free market without government price interference, that's pretty much it... oh yeah and rich people wouldn't have to pay taxes anymore... sad, sad, sad.

According to Nielsio in LiberLand the hotties would have to explicitly ask for privacy protections be written into the contract. Otherwise the boss is just legally, righteously, and without any stigma, enjoying his property rights, amirite?

* Do you believe that your version of LiberLand would have the same feature?
* Do you believe that every contract that did not have privacy clauses explicitly mentioned is, on the face of it, is fraudulent? If so, doesn't this contradict the concept of absolute contracts?
* Do you believe that simply and passively offering employment contracts without privacy clauses is, on the face of it, fraudulent? Nobody has a gun at the employees head, correct?
* Today under real world Capitalism employment contracts do not typically include specific privacy clauses, as these are handled by statute. If a boss offered one of these real world Capitalistic employment contracts to someone in LiberLand would they be committing fraud?

Walloftext.doc

1.. I prefer the reverse ad hominem "Ancapistania" to "LiberLand", but to each his/her own.
2. This conversation on privacy is quite dull. If it's not common law, then there's no reason not to have contract law pull up the slack. If the boss isn't a perv then the boss should have no qualms about signing a contract.
3. Even if it isn't spelled out, the final ruling will be the subjective ruling of a court of some type.
4. You won't like my answer because you assume that bosses will have all the capitalz, and all the powerz, and people won't get to pick where they work etc.

The problem is incentives. I pick agents to protect what I say is mine, and you pick your agents to protect what you say is yours. If I say I want some privacy, and you say I can't have it, our agencies can either:

1) work out an agreement voluntarily
2) go to war
3) or pick a court.

Governments face the same dilemmas. What I object to is that the agents get to pick you, rather than you get to pick the agents. Minarchists and Constitutionalists try to solve this problem with elections, which assume the collective wisdom of the majority of a voting population. I try to solve it with the market which assumes that these agencies could co-exist without going to war too frequently. You try to solve it, correct me if I'm wrong MissleDog, by trying to abolish property.

So, being that we're on the internetz, can't we just discuss it without the ritualistic knee-jerk nastiness that we're all to use to encountering? That would be a refreshing way to start 2011.

Exclusion is inherent in ownership. Privacy is simply a form of exclusion.

Why do you want to deny a person the freedom to sell their services as a servant? Why do you think you are a better judge of his reason for wanting to do so?

Clearly a person wishing to sell themselves into servitude is far different than one party selling another party an unwilling third party into servitude, so it'd probably be smart to not try and equivocate the two here, bud. I mean, I know it puts a bit of a dampening on rhetorical emotional appeal and all, but let's try and stay honest here.

nournotrite.

Clearly the boss withholding this information from the hotties is committing fraud. It cannot be said to be a consensual exchange if all the terms of agreement are not known to all parties. It is called disclosure and it is a pretty important part of contract law. You should look into it sometime.

Clearly I don't.

I don't believe a party can consent if all the terms are not disclosed to them. And no, it doesn't contradict the concept of "absolute contracts."

I believe not disclosing additional terms or obligations to their employment is fraudulent.

If they decided to implement additional terms (i.e. videotaping you, etc) without notifying them and thus without their consent, yes it would be fraud.

Even your walls of texts are one liners

Well, you could always "choose" to starve. Or hunt feral cats?


So the only way I can coerce someone to do something is to use violence?

See what I mean about defining your terms to suit?

The state coerces me to do all sorts of things without ever resorting to violence. Arguably, it can do so because it monopolises the means of violence, but that is not the mechanism it in fact uses.


Let's say I run a hospital and you have been brought to it as my patient. You were unconscious so you could not refuse to be brought to it. You have been severely injured in a car crash and cannot feed yourself. I decide not to feed you by drip. No one you know has the means to remove you from the hospital to another facility where you can be fed.

You are going to die but I am entirely blameless, right? Because I have not committed any violence whatsoever against you. I can just watch you die because you won't choose to get up and have a chicken dinner?

Yes, there is the work/starve paradox. This only happens though because there is scarcity in the universe.

Coercion works because of the threat of violence, so yes.

Again, yes. Man has no duty to fellow man. If the dying person has absolutely no friends in the world, then perhaps s/he is not worth saving?

No, of course it doesn't. It happens because the means of production are not held in common. Your statement doesn't even make sense unless you're suggesting we could all have farms if we had a bigger planet.

But why should we all want to be farmers?

I can see a decent argument that humankind would be more content if we lived in relatively structureless seminomadic groups, ruled only by custom and fellowship.

But we don't and can't, and the belief that if we adopted the structures that pertain in those groups will somehow bring that contentment to us is pretty much crazy.



Again I note that you simply define a word to mean what you need it to mean to make your ideology work. As I noted, the state does not threaten me with violence to coerce me. It doesn't need to.

In your favoured legal system, xeer, participants do not have the choice not to comply. They won't be physically hurt if they don't, but they are still coerced to accept xeer. I mean, you can define away the element of coercion in that if you like, but simply splitting hairs over terminology doesn't change the reality of the element of compulsion.

I didn't say he had no friends. I said he knew no one with the means to help him.

I disagree that man has no duty to fellow man btw. I am not going to indulge you in a long debate about it, but I'd consider that belief pathological in the face of the evidence against it.

How do you get people to adopt a concept of common property?


What are you talking about?


Okay, but I'm not arguing that either, so okayyyy?

Okay, well people don't pay taxes because they are giddy for April 15th in the US. Maybe it's different where you're from. You can call it coercion, or whatever you like, but one day you have your money, and the next day, you don't have your money. It's not as though it is optional. It really doesn't matter much whether you choose to call it "coercion" or not.


Here we go again. I never said my favored legal system was 'xeer'. This seems to be a one-way conversation you're having with yourself, or a two-way with yourself and a strawman.

One could choose to be an outlaw, and get a few more like minded outlaws, and start their own protection unit if they don't wish to adopt the current legal system decided upon by the market.

Well, where the hell are they? This man/woman is dying for crying out loud! Not very good friends imo if man/woman dies because they aren't there to help.

Lol, you're post regarding the dying man was clearly starting that debate, but OK. Even if they have duty to fellow man, and its psychological, then why worry about such situations?

If nobody worked, then we'd all starve. So if by standards of force you're saying that people are forced to work to live, and that's involuntary, then I see no way to solve that just by asserting "common property". It doesn't solve the work/starve paradox anyway. Obviously there is force involved by these standards, because nobody lives forever. So, this idea of force being "forced to work" in a society, doesn't make much sense.

I don't know how it was done back in the day but in societies where it's still the norm, which are very few now, it's simply customary. I expect we'd have to use guns now.

This is the only way scarce resources has a bearing on this particular issue.

What else is an anarchy to you?

First of all, I think you need to revise the concept of "your money". Money is just a representation of the share of our common resources you are permitted to have. Yes, "permitted". Theories of government in economics are at base theories about how we jointly apportion resources.

Second, money in the US has value at base because of its use to pay tax liabilities. You can certainly argue that this is a bad basis for money but this is the basis that we currently use.

Third, taxation has a vital role in the regulation of the economy we all take part in. Your "money" wouldn't be worth more if you paid no taxes. This is a misconception. You wouldn't be "worth" more. I'm not going to explain why because getting bogged down in a discussion of economics with a Libertarian is like playing chess with a gorilla.


You seem to feel it exemplifies the kind of legal system you do favour. If you don't feel that, I don't know why you even bothered mentioning it.


So ultimately you believe that it's legitimate to impose a legal system through violence?

Because it is going to be the case that disputes over which legal system to use will arise and your prescription is for everyone to arm up and let the gun decide.

Well, that has by and large been how it has been done over the centuries, with varying success. Of course the legal system is not decided by the "market". It's decided by whoever holds power. That power is not always a function of the ability to do violence but it is always the case that that is one means of acquiring it.


Can't help. Aren't permitted to enter the hospital. Nothing to do with me. I don't make the rules. I think they should be free to come and go, but I'm not in charge of that. There's a bunch of vigilantes on the door who do not allow outside medical teams to enter because they're protecting our property rights. Sorry about that.


Your duty to your fellow man is far from psychological, although it's a sign of a problem in your psychology that you deny it.


It's just elementary that if you do not own the means of production, you are compelled to work for someone else. If your answer is not that we should hold the means of production in common, then you accept that we must be coerced to work or starve.

Yes, you do have to work/starve. Similarily, you have to breath or die of no oxygen. It's called the dis-utility of labor. That should be obvious to an obv. ace such as yourself.

Even though the oxygen is largely held in common, you still have to work to go get it as an individual to avoid brain-death. So, I guess you're forced to breath too under your definitions. Oh nooz!

You're way, way off topic, but if you want to start a thread on how man has a duty to fellow man, or that man has a right to help from fellow men, then do so. You haven't come close to showing that here.

I mentioned 'xeer' in a different thread, btw... you're just all over the place.

Somebody is actively preventing people from helping the person. They are actively choosing to let the person die, so it's no longer a passive choice to do nothing, is it?

At least this is honest. All property is owned by government, and you only have the property government permits you to have.

Problem though, the elite isn't exactly very good at resource management games. Perhaps part of this is because every time it starts to run low it shakes down the population as though they were a money tree. Sure, it takes from some parts to give to other parts after giving first to its friends. Overall though all property is government, and permission is granted by government.

The elites are by far the weakest members of society. Put it this way, if three people, a lawyer, a politician, and a doctor, were drowning in a pond and you could only save one of them, which one would you pick?

Yeah so in other words when people say they are "forced" to do something, what they really mean is that none of their existing options are as good or as preferable to the one being offered.

No, see that is what coercion means.

Offering a starving man a meal for exchange of a day of his labor isn't coercing him to work. It isn't making any of his other options worse.

The threat of violence suffices to coerce people too.

That would depend entirely on whether you as a doctor are under some sort of contractual obligation to provide care to me. In absence of any such contract, the onus is on you to demonstrate where exactly such an obligation to provide some service to a person arises from.

Montius probably advising 45 right now