maybe the same companies that handle defense also handle mediation.. and if you didn't want to be represented by those companies then you'd have to pay higher premiums when dealing with other people b/c you'd be a riskier client.

or maybe the different defense companies hand out bumper stickers and lawn signs to say this car/home is defended by 2+2 defense co. or pocket5's defense co. and all ur neighbors see that you don't have any signs up.. then they ask you what defense co. u have and you say "well, none, i'm just mooching off you guys".. well, ur neighbors won't be none too happy and prolly don't let you borrow their lawnmowers anymore.

Intentionally trying to leech off of others is really a stupid thing to do. How many people get ahead in life that way? How many live what you would consider a satisfying life by making a habit out of living this way?

How is the difference between intentionally helping someone, and helping someone unintentionally because you're trying to help yourself not obvious?

When talking about defense, you have no choice but to help everyone else around you by paying into whatever program (still undefined, by the way).

What about having as an axiomatic truth that someone can only steal if it is sanctioned by the majority? Do you wish the democracy-statists good luck with that?

If I choose to only defend myself/my house when my town is attacked and fire my machine gun at the bandits only when they approach my property but ignore them when they attack my neighbors down the street and slaughter them, and then the closer neighbors, and then my next door neighbors....I am not acting in my own best interests!

By intentionally helping my neighbors down the street and killing the bandits with my machine gun and sniper rifle while safely secured in my secure house and under no direct threat I am ALSO helping myself.

And yes I do have a choice. I can kill myself before paying for anything. I can live in a hammock right out in the front of the town so I will be the first to get attacked even if I am very rich and could build a fortress and hire private guards to protect me and it around the clock.

Your ignoring a fundamental phychologicical/social principle that happens between humans. It has been referred to as the reciprocity principle. One person makes an ovorture to extend an offer to help another, the person receiving the offer feels obliged to make a return offer (not 100% but salesmen get rich exploiting this aspect of human nature, it is a powerful force).

By arming myself I am intentionlly helping myself AND numerous other strangers I have yet to meet should I see some evil bastard try to take them hostange, or whatever. This is my choice up front. I dont' say to myself "well I can prevent someone from stabbing me if I carry a gun, but if some sucker wihtout a gun standing 10 feet from me gets threatened with a knife I'm gonna go walk the other way"

Helping yourself and helping others are not mutually exclusive. Sorry.

Do you think that after I save all of my neighbors they are gonna be indifferent to me and be like "tee, hee, hee that sucker gave us a free ride. I'm glad he's such a sucker. Lets go get together and make fun of his ignorance behind his back for fun!"?

I'm still waiting for you to support this statement Taso.
"It is immoral for a person to benefit from something that he/she is not contributing to."

That's your assertion. I offered a counter arguement. Someone else, aparently on your side laughted at you apologitically in response to my counter arguemnt.

Another posted questioned if ANYONE really even believes this, even you or if you were presuming that ACists believe this.

Waiting for a dialogue about this from you Taso, or of course, a retraction.

Taso, based on his aruments in this thread strikes me as the kind of person at a dinner party at a resturant who whips out a calculator after dinner when the check comes. He calculates the exact cost of every person's individual order. He also estimates calculations for people who 'tried a bite' of someone eles's meal, or tried a taste of their drink, or ate an extra piece of the bread offered premeal. He then calculates based on all that the exact % that each person puts in for a tip based on what they ordered or otherwise consumed. Only then does he calculate what he puts in as a tip. He puts in exactly what the least of all the other tippers put in as a % of what they ordered/consumed and no more.

He was thinking about this all through dinner while everyone else was enjoying each others company, talking and joking, taso was worried about being freerode the whole time. No enjoyment. His goal is to not get screwed by ANYONE at that dinner table by putting in 1 cent more as a % of his order than the least of the tippers.

I'm the kind of guy who glances at my order and throws in more than my share at the end of the meal and doesn't pay much mind to it unless I notice someone like taso being an antisocial nit. Not really the kind of guy I want to go to resturants with on a regular basis. If he happened to be the life of the party then it wouldn't matter to me if he nitted that way b/c he's adding a lot of value in other ways and we all have our faults.

Why do you want to interfere with me doing things to help myself or doing things to help myslef that I also know will help my neighbors if I choose to do so?

I think living in the land of Taso would suck ass bigtime.

If an AC zone is threatened by invasion by a superior forces, it should still not attempt a temporary manipulation of social arrangements to ensure its own survival?

FYP.

Funny how ideological rants all look the same.

All the personal attacks amongst friends in this thread indicate to me that ACland would obv be:

How would "it" accomplish this?

Sounds good, but the 'minimal functions' always expand as the masses covet free ponies, and big business covets favors, and 'fairness activists' covet centralized 'solutions'. Politicians exploit these tenancies as a means to an end, that end being the power of the office they seek. Constitutional prohibitions on expansion are rationalized away when possible by 'progressive' judges al la Wickard v. Filburn. Meanwhile the people, like a frog in pot slowly increasing in temperature, don't realize they, over time, are losing ever greater portions of their individual liberty.

I don't know, future seems bleak if it dosnt.

Good post, but the quote looks out of context. I believe I was making the point that supporting minimal gov't and low taxes is not apologist to the nanny state whereas the quote looks like i'm saying it is-- although i see you weren't addressing that paticular point.

People will start to realize they are losing individual liberty as they are doing now, and increasingly there will be huge social change and people will fight to get it back. Just look at the Civil Rights movement. If that social pressure doesn't occur or popular movements cease to exist (which will never happen in the US) then we're doomed- but that ain't gonna happen. One thing that would help is more libertarians and individualists realizing that collective social efforts can amass, in certain instances, more change than individual pursuits and we can be effective in encouraging change within the political system even though we don;t agree with centralised solutions as the 'fairness activist' you speak of do.

I did respond to it - you even quoted my response in one of your posts

Why? Oh, right, because the statist army automatically conquers any territory that is "undefended" (by an "official" army).

This isn't risk.

Is it immoral for someone to benefit from something that they have not contributed to? Yes or No

If it is against the will of the person who IS contributing to it, I think it is.

There is a big difference between that and this:

(your words verbadim): "The concern is not that no one will pay for defense. It's that it is immoral, almost as immoral as welfare, for a person to benefit from something that he/she is not contributing to".

Thanks for the clarification.

AC land:

Insurance salesman/security company/whatever: "Sir, would you like to buy our services?" "Your purchase of these services will not guarentee that each and every human living in these parts will agree to buy them. We sell services that we think have value. If you find value in our services we would be delighted to have you as our customer. But we take pride in only offering our services on a voluntary basis, we don't stick guns in people's faces and threaten to kill them if they don't buy the way the mafia and the government used to. " Would you like to buy?"

edited in: "Oh, yeah Sir. It is possible that if a person does not buy our services and does live in this community they will likely benefit from you and others buying the services. That's how effective our services are!" So would you still like to buy, it's up to you. We are a voluntary company. We don't stick guns in people's faces to get them to sell them services the way the jackbooted thugs working for the tinpots used to." Crowd: "snicker snicker"

Taso:

Do you think that the police should require poeple to show proof of employment/paying taxes before they provide them with services?

Would it be OK, or preferable to you if we gathered up all of the developmentally disabled, hobo's, etc and put them out in an area where there is no access to police protection? I understand now that you believe that as long as people want to voluntarially build them palaces to live in and hire body guards for all of them that is fine with you. But that is not the situation today. Today they collect SSI and food stamps, housing vouchers, etc. Additionally, they are under the protection of the military and police. Wouldn't it be more consistent with your views to make them move to an area where no such protection is offered, since they are not contributing and since they don't have everyone's consent to receive these services from those who are contributing?

Fail.

My question was:

Not being risk has nothing to do with it.

The only way of not needing to address this question is to make the assumption that the AZ zone would never ever ever be threatened by invasion by superior forces. Thats a very big assumption imo.

ACists often like to cite guerrilla resistances to State invasions, (even though this overlooks that if it was politically able to kill civilians in massive numbers the State would often have prevailed)how many of these resistances were provided by the market?

The vietcong were prepared to die in massive numbers, and what motivated them to fight were statist motivations of nationalism and even socialism. I dont think they did it for the pay!

To say defense can be provided by the market is naive to the nature of warfare and the emotional and psychological inputs that are needed to get millions to sacrifice theire lives for what in the end is very little material reward. In fact I dont think you can get someone to sacrifice themselves for mere material reward, not in any general sense at least.

How can there be anything more dumb than dieing for your "country" Yet the state is massively adept at getting millions to volunteer to do just that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXXBN...eature=related

Is sitting around and contemplating/fearing being attacked part of a daily ritual for you king?

I think you watch the news too much and are brainwashed into being a fearful sheep, just like big brother wants you to be.

Probably not. This seems like it'd be very hard to actually apply, as in an emergency, doing so might mean life or death, and then with people who don't work, but live with parents, etc, it'd be hard to distinguish, probably not a good idea.

Again, very difficult to implement. I don't think its true that all developmentally disabled people get food stamps/services from the government, or that all homeless get help from the government. Really, I don't know if that's true or not, but my sneaking suspicion is that it isn't true. Charities do take care of some of these people, families take care of others. I don't know what protection the police give them - my understanding is that if an individual were to beat up a homeless person, the police/state isn't defending the homeless person, but rather prosecuting the individual that committed the crime of assaulting someone.