you, too, btw.

Glad I didn't drunkenly tard up this thread last night.

in terms of schools, how much pressure does the state put on private schools to conform to some standard? are curriculum's/etc. mostly forced upon them?

give me a break, i suck at typing and am too lazy to spell check.

i have. i used to see my fellow statist get owned all the time by ACists. I figured out why that was happening.

^^^
may be the stupidest thing I have ever read on 2+2





'who said anything about baseball fellas? I called us here to day to go over our long division lessons, who wants to go first ... 12340 / 4 = .... after that we can conjugate verbs!'

Incorrect.

and why is it the stupidest thing on 2 + 2? Are you saying children have no incentive to learn?

How about you lay down the ad hominems and start formulating a cogent argument for once.

I know I started learning long before school

Perhaps I should revise: someone who remains with that ideology. People in a state of ideological flux or those who have converted may say so in retrospect. I'm more referring to the many people who cannot recognise a well-argued position even if they disagree with it.

the notion is self evident, grow up

Also, FWIW I think the AC position on children is possibly the biggest barrier to acceptance. Tell people you want "government to stop interfering with commerce" and a sizeable number will agree. Tell them "adults should be allowed to do what they want with their own bodies" and a reasonable amount will agree with some reservations about those with mental problems. Tell them "young children know what's best for them, sometimes that includes going to work" and almost everyone will think you're some kind of child slavery advocate or that your political philosophy is just an elaborate satire of one.

Definitely a weak point, luckily doesn't come up too often. Who wants to talk about children? I think a cogent case can be made for (voluntary) child labour.

I think this might be a significant reason behind this argument. Drawing from your own experiences, you figure that you were motivated enough to learn on your own as a child. Your experiences are probably considerably different from people on the lower end of the ladder, however. Many of them probably aren't much fond of learning, but that doesn't necessarily mean they wouldn't be happy as an adult if they were forced to.

Or they won't take school seriously anyway

This is not my position on children, FWIW.

That doesn't mean they wouldn't get any benefit at all. Also, it doesn't indicate that the system is fatally flawed, rather perhaps it could be improved with more carrots/sticks to encourage students to actually put an effort to learn once they're in school. Roland Fryer for instance came up with a proposal, implemented in New York City public schools to pay kids for grades (cue 'zomg theft'). Fryer, incidentally, is the sort of person who may have benefited from compulsory schooling, given his traumatic childhood and indifference towards schooling until later on.

Also, even if it doesn't work so well for the most resistant students, there may still be many who, despite the fact that they would prefer not to go to school, would still put at least some minimal effort in. Anecdotally, this seemed to be the case for a number of people I knew at school, for one.

Why would I be against this? I'm for trying to educate kids in THOUSANDS of different ways, so teachers can share ideas and curriculum that work. Do you know what I'm against? Trying to jam everybody into a one-size-fits-all box, where bureaucratic rules determine what's taught and how.

I'm sure there are people who benefit from this exactly as you say.

yes, i need to grow up, because i'm the one calling people stupid and failing to substantiate my arguments.

Sure, this is probably correct. Of course if we ever do achieve the glorious AC libertopia, it will be in stages. So let's get "government to stop interfering with commerce" and let's get to the part where adults can do what they want with their own bodies and then we'll worry about the other stuff.

kool?

Ok, aside from simply asserting this, do you really have any proof of it?

That sounds like something to be determined upon on an individual basis

Everyone being alive right now demonstrates their preference, so yes, we actually can say something about the preference structure of others.

The purpose of norms is the avoidance of conflict regarding the use of scarce physical things. Conflict generating norms contradict the very purpose of norms, would you not agree?

The problem arises from the fact that you are assuming all private property currently in individual hands was at one point in time forcibly taken. In absence of argumentation (and proof), this is nothing but an assumption.

The state, on the otherhand, inherently uses violence and force to gain control of resources. This is a systematic characteristic of a state.

Yes, yes I do. And it is because I believe this that I also believe in proportionality.

I can answer "of course not" and still believe property rights as absolute. You, of course, own property in yourself. It goes back to proportionality.

Well I just believe it was a worthless comment that really added nothing to the argument at all. The link was posted because it is an argument concerning immigration from a fairly prominent libertarian thinker, and illustrated that there are pro and anti open border arguments from the libertarian camp.

Not true, really. If I have a sign on my property that says "All Irish will be shot for trespassing" the warning is clear, and for an Irishman to set foot on my property after said full disclosure is a clear act of initiating aggression (and one I am likely to take as threatening my safety, as evidence of the posted warning). Full knowlege of the consequences are imparted to that individual, so no one is being defrauded.

Why do you think it is wrong for one to shoot another person for trespassing on one's property if there is full disclosure? Or more specifically, what are those "number of factors" you referred to?

It was used to point out your flaw in thinking of land ownership as the be all and end all of property ownership.

What controls your body? What is that entity that is utilizing the scarce resource that is your body (and yes, it is a scarce resource)? It is clear that "you" (whether that is the sum of your body + mind/soul/ego/etc or "just your body") are autonomous. "You" are controlling your body, "you" are typing your argument, so you are exclusively exercising control over your body. How you can call this anything other than self-ownership, I do not know.

In fact, the very fact that you are engaged in argumentation right now presupposes that you at least implicitly recognize that you have exclusive control over the scarce resource of your body. To argue otherwise is to engage in a performative contradiction. Afterall, you cannot logically be both exercising exclusive use and control of your body and at the same time NOT be exercising exclusive use and control over it, can you?

Hogwash.

Even his Highness Grand Imperial Poobah Lord Obama doesn't have exclusive control over your body or actions. The only entity that can be said to possess that is "you."

Because there are only two logical alternatives if people do not possess self-ownership:

(1) Either everyone owns an equal amount of everyone else or "Universal Other-ownership"

(2) Partial Ownership of One Group by Another - a system of rule by one class over another. This isn't, by definition, a universal ethic because it states that one class of people do not have the right of self-ownership but another class does.

(1) is a universal ethic, but it would require everyone to get permission from everyone else on earth in order to do anything. Surely you can see the problems with this, no?

Also, as I've said before, arguing against self-ownership leads to a performative contradiction.

To put it a different way: I've yet to see anyone make a valid argument for the existence of the state.

The problem with this is it implicitly assumes that said tactics are not, in fact, legitimate actions of the legitimate owner/sovereign. This is assuming your conclusion, since you're trying to show that state is illegitimate.

Consider that I could make the same argument against rent. I could claim that rent = theft. I might concede that rent would be legitimate if the owner of the land was. But I contend that the owner is not legitimate because he had acquired this land through theft... that is, through the proceeds of past rents collected. See the problem? Now, if we found that he had stolen the very first rental property he acquired, then we'd have a case.




FWIW, I don't believe that self-ownership merits anarcho-capitalism. Even if you are the owner of your body, you can't do anything solely with your body. You have to reside somewhere, you need to use tools to produce things, and so on. You need to show that you are the absolute owner of the land and those tools to be internally consistent. Self-ownership alone proves little.


What I was saying is that since most people believe this for political ideologies other than their own, it's hardly surprising and says little more than "I'm an anarchist".

I don't think this is widely accepted unless you are talking about a specific group of people or strain of anarchism. It might be though. But, yeah, nobody can take a philosophy seriously that holds these positions on children.

Except the onus is on the state/statist to justify said actions (that is, the limiting of a liberty/freedom) as legitimate, DUCY?

I don't believe anyone ever argued that charging rent is just if they did not infact own the land.

Legitimate land ownership comes through homesteading, or the voluntary exchange of property titles. If the landlord originally stole (ie didn't acquire it legitimately) the land then rent would indeed be theft. Then only individual arbitration could properly handle such property disputes between parties.

Your example, however, does not mean that all rent is theft, or that all "first properties" were stolen, so your claim that rent = theft is incorrect.

The very fact that we have to utilize scarce resources is the very reason for the idea of private property and why we are concerned with economic efficiency.

What self-ownership does, is provide a logical starting point in recognizing scarcity and the right to utilize scarce goods. This is the basic Lockean idea.

It also challenges anyone to justify the existence of the state.

I certainly don't. Explain.

Obviously it doesn't - it was designed as a reductio ad absurdum. Replace "rent" with tax and "landowner" with "state". You cannot say that the state's threat of force to collect taxes is evidence of its illegitimacy any more than you claim that the landowner's threat of force (e.g. physically evicting a non-paying tenant) is evidence of the illegitimacy of his property claim. Nor can you use the existence of force in the past to prove illegitimacy when it is possible that that force was part of a legitimate action.