Topic: what is government? why its your family of course. (Read 2854 times)

I read it differently, as suggesting that the government has Münchhausen, and so is gaining power by amplifying the problems so that it can have the authority to take charge of those problems based on the rewards it gains from that...  But I can't say if its the author's intent, or what is meant by "real" in the passage that follows it.

The government is not in my care so i cant be "munchhauesening" it.

/personal attacks
It takes a village, amirite? Why would one read what I said as an attack on your relationship with your kid? There's no reason you can't be the most active part of that village. When I define family I'm using a Waspish, closedminded neoconservaliberal mainstream shopaholic definition- a definition that's intentionally rough on the eyes to point out the villiagelessness of contemporary childrearing, which causes innumerable societal ills ranging from ADHD to school shootings.

I wasn't claiming that the government was suffering from Stockholm syndrome. i was claiming that b!z was and really i was just poking fun. he may or may not be suffering from it i really dont know.

Münchhausen deals with situations where a caregiver deliberately exaggerates, fabricates, and/or induces physical, psychological, behavioral, and/or mental health problems in those who are in their care. The government is not in my care so i cant be "munchhauesening" it.

also government is real in the same sense that the number 4 is real. i mean the number 4 isnt a thing that exists in some physical form somewhere in the the universe. its an abstract concept that exists in our minds just like government but i dont think it makes any sense to say that either one of those things arnt real things just because they are non physical. i guess in some sense neither one of those things are real, but if you are meaning to use the word real in that sense than i think you have the burden of specifying that, because i think most people are going to interpret your meaning when you use the word real to include things like the number 4 unless you specify otherwise.

I see your Stockholm Syndrome card and raise you with Münchhausen by proxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%BCnchausen_syndrome_by_proxy

Since government isn't "real" -- it's just an abstraction so people don't waste breath describing this huge mass of accountants, managers and other public servants -- then how can "it" be sick? The problem lies within your people.

i do pretty much all of it myself and its not that difficult.

plus the kinds of people i live near are closed minded, bigoted, irrational, religious/statist types. i highly doubt they would be a good influence on a developing mind.

Well first its important to recognize where civilization comes from. it doesnt come from government, it comes from people working to gather for mutual benefit, it comes from voluntary exchange. government is just an entity in a society that is widely believed to have the right to break the law. for example everyone knows that extortion is illegal, unless the government does it then its called taxation, even though its fundamentally the same set of physical actions. So anarchy is not lawlessness, lawlessness is what we have now, laws dont apply to government. ironically anarchy is the proposition that we should end lawlessness.

ok so if we have a society where the majority of the population are violent barbarians, than anarchy cant be expected to work well. but then of course neither can a statist society. a bunch of violent barbarians are not going to elect wise reasonable rulers and then obey them and solve the problem of having a violent barbaric society. so any hopes for either a statist or an anarchist society that would look even remotely desirable to you or i are going to rely on the assumption that most people are reasonably honest, cooperative, orderly and respectful.

If you go knocking door to door where i live these are generally the sorts of people you meet. i know in the cities its not like that and thats mostly because of the incentives crafted by welfare dependency and single parent households which are also largely a product of state involvement in courts and and the enabling effect of welfare. so unfortunately this generally civilized nature of people in general is being changed by the state but it isnt too late yet.

ok so if we have 10-20% of the population that is dishonest and uncivilized and 80-90% who are civilized than the solution is simple. If an individual is honest than it is very cheap for him to buy assurance. Since assurance is very cheap for honest decent people we can resasonably expect most decent honest people to have assurance. This means that if you encounter someone who does not have assurance, you can reasonably expect him to be some sort of scoundrel. This means that if you encounter someone who does not have assurance than you will tend to refrain from contracting with him since there is likely someone else near by offering the same service who does have assurance. In affect this means that people who are unassurable are cut out of the economy. This reverses the incentives for people who would be willing to engage in fraud, and makes it so that even though they would be willing to engage in fraud, it is no longer in their interest to do so.

this solves the problem with 99% of criminals. all criminals who are interested in crime for the sake of improving their status or increasing their material influence. it does not however deal with the problem of the proverbial "axe wielding maniac". A person who is not interested in status or material gain, but rather sees causing harm to others as the end rather than a means, can not be controlled by assurance. For this sort of person you buy insurance. Say you have a policy that will pay out 10 million dollars if you happen to be the victim of an axe attack. This puts incentives in the right place for the insurance company to find the most cost effective way of addressing the axe murdering problem. It may be the case that police patrols are the right answer, and if they were than we would have police patrols, but i doubt it.

the last and hardest crime problem we have to deal with is war, that is the aggressive neighboring nation. again this problem roughly falls into the same catigories as the former only on a larger scale. assurance may be effective to some extent but mostly we would rely on insurance. if you dont want something to happen to you, then buy insurance against it. the insurance companies, not waning to pay out on claims will find the most cost effective way of preventing aggression by other nations. this would probably boil down to border control and lobbying. the anarchist society would most likely have the best funded lobbying presence in the world in statist societies. it would most likely dwarf even the pharmaceutical lobby. if there is one thing we can learn from statist societies its that lobbies can control governments. Of course i could be wrong maybe it would find a standing army to be more cost effective deterrent, but i highly doubt it.

in the event that you are about to scream pubic goods problem!, public goods problem! then here is a youtube video about how to fund public goods on a free market. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQvjZ12Vpko

im sorry but how is it obvious that family is a "worthless structure". i get a lot of benefits from living with and taking care of my daughter, and she, i believe, gets a lot of benefits from living with and being taken care of by me. we both are made better off by the arrangement that is characterized by the word family.

i think you probably just had bad relationships with your family and are sub-consciously projecting as some sort of psychological defense mechanism. for that i am sorry. perhaps if you found a husband and made a child and developed a relationship with them you may come to understand the value of family.

im sorry but how is it obvious that family is a "worthless structure".