Topic: Intellectual Property - In All Fairness! - page 64. (Read 105875 times)

So the megacorporations run things now because of the existence of the state.  But if we replace the state with private security forces, thus allowing megacorporations to own military hardware directly, wage war, create their own kangaroo courts to try people in, and basically do whatever the fuck they want, etc. they'll magically turn benevolent and everything will be happy happy joy joy?  Tell me again why I shouldn't think you're delusional.





That's not surprising.  I knew you'd have no way to counter that big dose of realistic thinking.

I think the blatantly obvious reason (though maybe not to everyone) is that the state answers to whichever political party is in charge, or worse, whichever politician happens to be corrupt and in the pocket of a megacorporation, while those security forces and large businesses in "libertardland" still have to answer to them directly if they want their money. In short, the state gives corporations with political money the right to arbitrarily make laws that benefit only those corporations, help them establish monopolies, and force you to buy their products, while without the state those corporations would have to compete, and even monopolies will have to worry about threats from new technologies or substitutes.
Just a guess here :/

What type of demonstration do you want? I'm pretty sure no words would convince you that a stateless society would be better than one with states. How can I possibly prove this to you? It would have been impossible to demonstrate to a slave owner that a society without slaves would have been better than one with slaves.

If I'm wrong, please list out the specific points I need to demonstrate in order to convince you that a stateless society would be better than the current, state run society.


No, you've hypothesized that it would be the case. That's all. I could hypothesize that in a stateless society, everyone would voluntarily agree to dismantle all nuclear weapons. Or that tomorrow all of the world leaders will decide to launch all their nukes at each other. Still just hypothesis.


Actually, you are somewhat right. I don't have a general problem with monopolies, just coercive ones. If a business becomes a monopoly through providing the best good or service, then I have no problem. If they gain or maintain their monopoly status through the use of coercion, then I have a problem. The history of states is the gaining and maintaining of geographic monopolies on the initiation of violence, through the initiation of violence.

Really?  They do?

When is the last time you heard of private nuke possession?  Are people allowed to juggle small pox vials in their front yard?  Are people even allowed to possess small pox vials?  Are there no pollution regulations?  Are their no health and sanitary regulations?  Is there a clusterfuck court system whose rulings only have to be followed if you're in the mood to follow them?  Can your neighbor fire automatic weapons in his backyard?  Do you have to employ research organizations to ensure that you don't buy contaminated food, products that support terrorists, etc.?  Do you have massive highway interchange right at the end of your driveway to allow you access to multiple privately own roads?

I didn't think so.



Because unlike you, I actually have an understanding of economics and I know that your premise that "every other good and service can be provided better by an unfettered market" is total BS.  Totally free markets have existed no where, ever.  That's because markets don't just HAPPEN.  They are established via sets of rules and regulations.  Markets are created, they don't just exist.

There's also these things called market inefficiencies that must be dealt with.  Do you know what happens when you start allowing private security forces?  They first have to be large enough to protect their clients from not just individuals, but also corrupt security forces.  Now you've got an arms race, just like with world governments!  These security forces are now very large and powerful.  They don't have to answer to anyone, because they've got all the fire power, just like with world governments!  If they don't provide the services you're paying them for, you can't a do a goddamn thing about it because they've got infinitely more firepower than you, just like world governments!  In fact, they don't even need to go to the bother of contracting for services, they can extort money from you directly because they're big and powerful, just like world governments!

Your ENTIRE system hinging on not just these, but ALL organizations and ALL people being benevolent, caring, honest people... but yet you openly admit to the corruption and dishonesty in the world today.  That's the pinnacle of delusion.

The key difference that makes the state option better than the private security force option is that states are still accountable.  We still have a vote.  We can still change things.  You have NO say and there is NO accountability with a private military force.  If you don't like what they do, your only choice is to die trynig to violently stop them.



"There isn't much point arguing about the word "libertarian." It would make about as much sense to argue with an unreconstructed Stalinist about the word "democracy" -- recall that they called what they'd constructed "peoples' democracies." The weird offshoot of ultra-right individualist anarchism that is called "libertarian" here happens to amount to advocacy of perhaps the worst kind of imaginable tyranny, namely unaccountable private tyranny. If they want to call that "libertarian," fine; after all, Stalin called his system "democratic." But why bother arguing about it?"
Noam Chomsky

OK, so why would anyone in the production chain have a reason to make sure their stuff doesn't get used for bad purposes? Nuclear and bioweapon materials are extremely dangerous to handle and extremely expensive to produce. What's the incentive for someone making tem, and do you think there can be any incentive outside of an even bigger bullky with guns to keep those who make the stuff from selling it to whomever? (Like avoid selling a nuke to anti-nuke groups who use it to blow up your own factories?)

Quote where you or any other the other libertards have demonstrated your system to be better than the current one.  So far we've seen that your system would allow anyone to own nukes and allow any and all ridiculously risky behavior by individuals, up to and including behavior that would endanger all life on the planet.

That's not a better system.  If you've got an idea for a better system and you can demonstrate how it will be better, let's hear it.





Don't kid yourself.  What you object to is the word "state" and nothing more.  You have no problem with the geographic monoploy of a "security force" or any large business, which is exactly what you'll get in libertardland.  You only object to it when "security force" is changed to "state", even though the net effect is identical.

[citation needed]

All of the problems you insist we solve exist in the current system.


I'm not claiming that democracy is in some senses better than tyranny. However, in some senses it is also worse. Either way, all I claim is that a lack of states would be better than any state at all, not that anarchy is perfect.

Why do you so strongly support a violent monopoly? Why can you not imagine that just like every other good or service you need and desire, security can be better provided through a market than a geographical monopoly?

His critique was not of anarchy, but of anarchy between nation states. How can you support his claim that the current system leads to all that violence, and support the notion that the current system is better then any possible alternative simultaneously. Is that cognitive dissonance I hear?


It's not an identical system, and you know it, because you support the current system, but not one without states. I know I shouldn't bother responding to your trololols, but this isn't so much for you, but for others who would eat the bullshit you put on their plates.

What we object to is not law or law enforcement, but a geographical monopoly on the provision of law and law enforcement.

Just as you support the provision of food, but not a geographic monopoly on the provision of food. If you want to critique this idea, show that law and law enforcement, unlike any other good or service, are better provided by a monopoly than by a market.

By the fact that current reality says it works better than the alternative.

No system will ever be perfect, because human nature is imperfect, but after thousands of years of struggle, mass death, disease, war, enslavement, etc. we've managed to light on something that works reasonably well.  It's far from perfect, but you've done absolutely nothing to prove your system would be better, in fact you've all consistantly shown it would be worse.  Which, ironically, is why it never has and never will be voluntarily implimented by any society.

LOLOL  Proof positive they have no brains, because this didn't seem to make their brains explode.





LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!  So even though it's an identical system, it's evil simply because of the word STATE.  Substitute "security force" for "state" and suddenly they're in love with the system.


"Libertarians don't denounce what the state does, they just object to who's doing it. This is why the people most victimized by the state display the least interest in libertarianism. Those on the receiving end of coercion don't quibble over their coercers' credentials. If you can't pay or don't want to, you don't much care if your deprivation is called larceny or taxation or restitution or rent. If you like to control your own time, you distinguish employment from enslavement only in degree and duration."
Bob Black

If you believe humans do not act humanely, by what logic do you allow the majority to elect a minority to have even greater power over all than a normal individual!?

Same question I'm asking you here, which you still have not answered...

It doesn't, at least according to b2c & fb.  All a libertarian society could hope for, it seems to me, is that all along the chain from uranium ore mine, to extraction plant, to purifying plant, to weapons assembly, to transport and eventual sale, and re-sale, and re-sale, and resale^N, that EVERYBODY follows a strict voluntary code of conduct consistent with social safety.  And that's everybody - including the malnourished children picking away at the ore, the underpaid worker who needs money to get treatment for his sick child, everybody follows it.  In EVERY mine, EVERY extraction plant, EVERY EVERYTHING.  Is that the answer you're looking for?

edit: and even then, it's enough for a crazy person to *seem* sane, just for long enough to convince the seller that he, for some reason, really needs a nuclear weapon.

And you're STILL ignoring the crux of the issue - what about where being armed is neither explicitly permitted nor prohibited.  Like on unclaimed territory, or on claimed territory where the owner is a true libertarian and allows people to decide for themselves.  That's what you want, isn't it?  For people to decide for themselves?  How can you justify infringing my right not to be threatened when you declare that "nothing should diminish [a person's rights]"?  Can you answer that without sidestepping the issue?


No, no no no no.  You're wrong.  It's not with government in place, it's with humans in place.  If boycotts really worked in a libertarian society, then they would work in a statist society regardless of government.  You're suggesting that without government, boycotts would work; but we already know they don't BECAUSE when governments don't intervene it doesn't work.  For years people in my country saw plastic bags everywhere, on the street, the sidewalk, the rivers, EVERYWHERE.  Everyone was disgusted and called for everyone else to stop using plastic bags.  Nothing changed.  Nobody stopped.  FOR YEARS.  Then, the government TAXED plastic bags.  The problem disappeared IMMEDIATELY.


Ohhhh, how right you are.  How truly truly right you are.  Perhaps you have finally understood the core problem.

This is so far beyond absurd that I almost pissed my pants laughing at it.  In liberty land, everyone is intrinsically allowed to juggle smallpox on their lawn, or live grenades on the street, or knives on a life raft.  BUT, because people are not stupid, and because they don't do ridiculous things, well, the pro-libertarianists argue that this is not something we need to worry about.

BUT, suddenly, in democracy-land, where these kind of things are explicitly forbidden, we have to worry that, suddenly, *ALL OF SOCIETY* will want to be allowed to do that AND to expose themselves to the unknown and unknowable dangers.  Not just one crackpot or extremist, but EVERYBODY is a crackpot.

I'll grant that bittertea is probably using sarcasm as a tool to avoid resolving the problem, but, bitcoin2cash, your post has nothing, NOTHING, to suggest anything other than naive sincerity.

States are only inevitable as long as people allow themselves to be ruled. If everyone (or even just a significant portion) refused to pay taxes, states could not exist.

There are also ways to provide for defense of a group without standing armies. Namely, militias or private defense organizations. Or ownership of nukes

Chew on this... when slavery was considered acceptable, arguing for the abolishment of slavery would have garnered questions like "but how would the cotton be picked?". While a relevant question in some sense, it would not have changed the fact that slavery is immoral.

I cannot tell you how problems (that exist in a society with states, I would argue because of states) would be solved in a stateless society. This is because I am one man, and problems are solved by many. That doesn't change the fact that states are inherently immoral.

Yes. Some are violent - let's say they're aggressive, even coercive. Shall we conclude that the voluntary groups must somehow muster a pretty formidable defense against the aggressive and violent groups? I think it's likely it will be necessary for the various voluntary groups to merge together to mount a solid defense. Naturally there will be minor disagreements. But some type of army will no doubt be necessary. Can you see where this is going?

States are inevitable. And you yourself said:

Yes, as well as organized crime families, but I don't see anyone arguing they are beneficial to society. They also organize into groups which are not inherently violent because they rely upon voluntary funding rather than coercive funding. I support the latter (voluntary), but neither of the former (coercive).

Do you see the difference?

They self organize into states?