Topic: Myrkul Sells AnCap... - page 3. (Read 8698 times)

Your delusional to think you had no societal obligations when you were born.  Again more of the selfish attitude and line of reasoning.

Myrkul - You keep using the term "slave" to get emotional sympathy to your point of view.  It shows how weak your argument is.   Settling an obligation is just that, nothing more.  You just want to call it slavery because your case is so weak that to use other relevant terms would show the selfishness of the position that you came into the world with no obligation to it.

Authority is gained and negotiated over time.  Also it is not just "the will of some people", most people agree with having some form of central government.  They would choose it given a choice because they distrust most people they are not in direct contact with.  This is the point this fringe AnCap movement is missing, people are social and are naturally inclined to form methods of hierarchy. 

I'm actually kind of agreeing with the "you are born owning a debt" thing, especially if you were born in  a public hospital, went to public school, and used public services your parents never fully paid for. The fallacy I'm trying to point out is that a debt can be paid back, because it has a specific value, but this debt is like the debt they recently highlighted as a problem in India, where a father borrowed some money, is having to work at  a clay brick making place to pay it off, dies (from old age or exhaustion) leaving his family with the debt, and the children are having to work, stuffing clay into molds morning till dawn, to pay off the debt they inherited. The main problem with that debt is that the kids and their mothers are illiterate and can't count, so they don't actually know how much they still owe. They could be told $300, or $50, and it won't make a difference, because they don't understand how much that is, and the company doing this isn't going to let them off. I don't know what to call that situation. Slavery? Deceptive and fraudulent loan practices? Taxes? Either way, that's kind of the situation we find ourselves in, all the unfair horribleness and all. Though I'm actively avoiding using inflammatory words like "slavery" because I am trying to keep the discussion cool and logical, instead of being dismissed for using absolutes.

Oh, it surely would be. But, as you say, even many slaves got to purchase their freedom. I think this just highlights the fallacy of the "You are born owing a debt" bullshit.

One question, though: How would this not be a slave purchasing their own freedom?

I like this line of thought.

Neither of these happen to be the case but that's not really relevant to a general discussion. You still have not specified a source for the authority other than the will of some people.

1. The only difference between me and the government is the ID badge someone else gives me. Here's the kicker- I actually am government, and own such an ID. I can't take your money, but I do have some discretion in how it's used after someone else takes it from you. You consent to paying taxes, but what about those that do not? What if someone lives in an area of US where they are not using any government services? What if someone consents to only some taxes on things they wish to pay for, but not for others, because they are extremely against those other things?

2. What if the selfish person who wants to be selective about where their taxes go wants to pay taxes for things like social security and medicare (which I still support), and doesn't want to pay for things like the drug war and private prisons? Why should that person still consent to having his things taken if his desires are obviously not selfish?

3. "My position is that AnCap is not a form of progression of government but a regression of it." No, it's not a regression, it's a total abolition of it. I don't know why you are afraid of things being 100% voluntary, and almost everything outside of government is 100% voluntary already. Where you shop, what you buy, what products are available, how you interact with others, where you work, how you use technology, whom you buy your tech services, etc. All 100% voluntary, and working just fine. No government is just that one extra small step, really. Unless, of course, you are relying heavily on the government forces to do something in your favor. I can't even say "unless you are relying on unemployment checks or some government handout," since most of those services are easily privatized as well.

I never said I wouldn't pay for services I use. Wanting free shit is indeed greedy.

Wanted to use and have access to your government services and not agree that not 100% of your output is yours is greedy.

1.  I consent to some taxes to pay my share of the collective cost of all the public services I take advantage of or have access too.  You are not the Government, it is different than a single person coming to take taxes, I do not consent to that.

2.  I do not require that my taxes only go to things I only use.  That is very selfish to think that is how it should be used.  Yes, as long as someone resides in the United States, they should have to pay some taxes.  When I use United States, you can insert any other nation as well, I don't want people to think I only apply it here.  

3.  Do we, should we, can we, are we, why we?  Now we are getting into even more abstract discussions.  I am here to talk about AnCap vs. Nation-States right now.  My position is that AnCap is not a form of progression of government but a regression of it where it will become even more survival of the fittest with less responsibility taken on a whole of society because AnCap can't handle the idea of ANYTHING not being 100% voluntary.  It is an idea that tries to has legitimacy but rejects history except to use to say that all forms of government that are not 100% voluntary are evil.   I say to you, you are wrong and people here before you have more say on how things should be run before you do.  Society is an evolution and governments are a evolution.

It's funny how wanting to keep your money is greedy, and taking someone else's isn't.

Statist logic.

Here's another one from Rothbard:
"The greatest non sequitur committed by defenders of the State is to leap from the necessity of society to the necessity of the State."

I find that some elected politicians being able to just come by, take away my stuff, and use it for their own personal reasons, like wars of choice, earmarks, or payoffs to their business buddies, to be very selfish, anti-social, and greedy too.

And, just FYI, I'm very much an AnCap supporter, but I still donate to charities in times of need, don't hesitate to give cash to someone stranded asking for bus fare home, and help run Bitcoin100, to which I have donated as well. If you think AnCaps are greedy, you are likely misplacing your opinion of the population as a whole on the AnCap group specifically:
AnCaps simply believe that people should be left alone, and be allowed to do what they choose with their wealth. You believe that people in general are evil greedy bastards, and reject that idea as terrible. AnCaps believe people are generally decent and considerate, and believe their system will work. Maybe the biggest difference between us is just that we are more optimistic than you?

And you would be correct, as you could voluntarily enter into an agreement that a part of your labour will be owned by someone else in exchange for goods/services or repayment of debt. The issue here is when someone lays claim to a part of your labour without your consent, and enforces it against your will. What makes it OK for a government employee to come by and take something of yours, but not OK for me to do it?



Is it  a portion of a determinable size?  A portion that you pay in exchange for the services you wanted to buy and use? Or some indeterminate amount equal to a portion of the rest of your life? Do we own land and the things we make and buy, or do we just rent property and equipment from the government that technically owns everything?

If the slave can pick another plantation, then, he is not a slave?

Tariffs were a form of taxation of all goods imported into the United States since atleast 1790 and it was reflected in all goods in increased prices.  You can either see yourself as a nation made-up and part of you or not.  Calling it "slavery" is just a use of shock value tactics to try and trigger emotional responses.  I further reject the notion I need to own all my labor to not be a slave. 

I find AnCap's position on this very selfish, anti-social and greedy. 

You were born into the world, you did not come into it like magic or teleportation.  Yes, I believe a portion (that is debatable) is owed to my nation of allegiance and no I am not a slave because I can freely at anytime expatriate if I so choose.   

I'm really surprised that no one else has challenged this statement, because it's false.  The United States made it from 1776 to 1913 before any form of "required" tax was imposed.  I say this, because an excise fee isn't an involuntary tax; nor is an import license.  When libs & ancaps talk about taxes, we are talking about taxes upon income.  Tax upon wages.  If you don't own all of the fruits of your labor, then you don't own yourself.  Thus, you are a slave to the state.  Taxes upon the production & distribution of alcohol, although bad in their own way, can be avoided by simply not byuying alcohol, or making it yourself.  Property taxes are pretty bad, also, for similar reasons.  If you own your home, then the city has no claim upon it whether or not you pay your property taxes.

The following article about mining rights during the California Gold Rush is topical.

http://www.stanford.edu/~write/papers/Order%20Without%20Law.pdf

Interesting facts:
1) Rights were developed through community consensus in the absence of state authority.
2) The community elected to legitimate the seizure of claims (claim-jumping). (i.e. if you leave you are not continuously working your claim, then it is up for grabs)
3) The community defined different classes of rights for different social groups (i.e. better to be English than French, better to be French than Mexican, and god help the Chinese miner).
4) The community chose a rights sytsem that was relatively egalitarian and wasteful of resources (encouraging frenetic, labor-intensive, small-scale mining; rather than large-scale mining of private land that would almost surely have been more efficient).

I think this is a reasonable depiction of AnCap in practice. The interesting thing is that there is no convergence to strong private property rights as Myrkul would suggest (based on crazed fanaticism I think). The community picks a system that everybody can agree on. This consensus system will likely be relatively egalitarian and consequently inefficient with respect to resource use. It will also likely disenfranchise minority groups present in the community.

I think you have greatly misunderstood AnCap. Property and community are the most fundamental parts of nature. When a wolf catches a rabbit, that rabbit is now the wolf's property. When that wolf chooses to take that rabbit back to his pack, he is sharing it with his community. AnCap can't deny property or community any more than nature can.


Why is this an issue with AnCap? An AnCap society will likely have very many communities. They'll just be voluntary.

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As I said, I'm agreeing with you that we come into this world with some claims on us. We have a debt to society by the virtue of us being safely born in that society which provided for us. But how much is that debt actually worth? $100,000? $1,000,000? If it is a debt, there should be some determined amount that we can pay off. If it is just some nebulous, infinite debt, then that's no longer a debt or a claim. It's indentured servitude for the entirety of one's life. Even indentured servants had a specific amount they owed which they could pay off and be free. And regarding taxes, why should they be required? What is it that we MUST be forced to buy and pay for? Why can't someone simply choose not to use any government services or protections, and not have to pay for anything? (Of if they have a debt to society, why can't they pay it off?)


Not all land has been claimed. Not all seas have been claimed (look up seasteading). And weak governments fall apart all the time, opening up access to previously public or contested lands. The most realistic path, though, is also the most probable and inevitable: technology is making governments get weaker and slowly lose power to collect taxes and enforce regulations (Bitcoin is an obvious example), and globalization is eroding arbitrarily established national borders, with their own dispersed and wildly irregular legal structures, and is replacing them with economic zones and privately agreed-on global laws. This has been happening for over a decade already, so the discussion about AnCap is really more about how to speed it up and be ready for it - i.e. what will the world be like, hypothetically - rather than just wishing about fantasies.

So you do not own your body?