Why is it that you find one reason or another to always refuse to engage?

"Again, the very notion that I must choose to abandon all the people I know and love and go live in a hut in the middle of nowhere just because your beloved goons with more guns and resources than me say I must is undeniably coercive."

How is it anymore coercive that a worker having to sign onto an employment contract in which the employer compels the worker to work 60 hour weeks with no extra pay, no paid holidays, no sick leave, and can be compelled to relocate at any moment? And the choice is either do this or have no job whatsoever. Answer: absolutely nothing. The difference is actually most private contracts are more in line with this - the work under my terms or starve - variety, then are most government services provided by the government in exchange for taxation or compliance to the law.

But you make an exception for one but constantly complain about the other. Just because you don't like the choices involved with government taxation doesn't mean you don't have a choice, as I am constantly reminded when it comes to shitty work contracts.

"What are you even talking about by "private acts of violence?"

I'm talking about theft and murder, which was the very subject the OP presented - the difference between private and public acts of violence. How about you try reading the actual subject matter of the thread before you run off whining about how you can't make sense of what I'm saying.

"You're peddling some kind of dichotomy that doesn't exist."

Really, that's funny because I didn't present his 'dichotomy', Sicarius did. My posts were actually made to point out that the "moral transmutation" argument he is making is bunk.

"Democracy/republicanism and contracts are pretty obviously not analogous. I didn't voluntarily sign on to the drug war, the Patriot Act, one could go on. "

You were automatically granted citizenship. This is the only way you can make this claim. Because you were given all of these rights "automatically", you can sit here and say you did not sign anything so therefore all of these laws which you disapprove of are 'coercion without consent'. Perhaps we should re institute earned citizenship for libertarians and anarchists, then they will feel better because they will have signed something. What have you done lately to earn your citizenship status, President Eden?

"If the Patriot Act were actually analogous to a contract then every single American citizen would have been given the chance to sign onto it."

Contracts don't have to spell out every single exchange in order to be contracts. When I signed an employment contract, there are plenty of things that weren't explicitly laid out in my job description that I'm none the less expected to do. Virtually all employment contracts now simply have workers sign away their time to do anything their employers please under a very general heading or job title.. They don't sign an individual contract saying they will do X, Y, or Z job. A dishwasher doesn't sign separate contracts saying they will wash dishes today, sweep the floor tomorrow, clean out the freezer the next day.

I've read plenty of anarchism, thanks. I had to work side by side with them in SDS meetings for several years.. I was als an anarchist briefly before I turned to Marxism-Leninism and even took a sociology course on it taught by an avowedly anarchist professor (talk about indoctrination - quelle horreur!). I've read pretty much everything Chomsky ever wrote, and also significant chunks of Emma Goldman, Crimethinc, and the latest crap the Black Bloc types are turning out. Next attempt to dodge, please. I'm familiar with not only what they say but how their ideas are supposed to be implemented in practice.

Next dodge, please.

Maybe somebody else can take up the mantle for PE because he seems to have a hard time reading this time around. I cannot respond to nothing but refrains of "I don't like/follow your argument" with no substance.

"And... again, unlike the other things suggested to this point, government services and taxation are both compulsory. That's coercive. Your point is lost on me."

1 - Private contracts are just as compulsory as taxation in exchange for services. If one is compulsory, so is the other.

2 - Private contracts involve the same limited "choice" that taxation involves in order to qualify as a "voluntarily agreement". You can always choose to look for work elsewhere. You can always choose to disassociate yourself from society.

3 - The fact that you don't like the choices involved with disassociation doesn't make them any less "choices". If this social contract is compulsory then so is every private contract.

Which brings us back to the point about private vs public acts of coercion. You and Siccy here go out of your way to act as though private contacts aren't acts aren't actually coercive, this is the only way you can make a stand against government coercion that doesn't sound like the total hypocrisy that it is.

"Even if you're a sustenance agriculture farmer contracting with no one, you're still working."

You somehow had to have a contract to get that land, did you not? Few people in a "work or starve" situation have plots of land to feed themselves with if everything else goes bad, ever since the Enclosure movement turned serfs into wage laborers across Europe.

"Why is it that you find one reason or another to always refuse to engage?"

Because I'm a busy person that usually has things to do, like prepare for the trio of economics exams I have tomorrow. I'm willing to take time out of that to engage people who are open to what I'm saying and willing to discuss it fairly and respectfully. If you can't see why I would interpret your entry into this thread as not meeting any of these criteria, I'd advise you to reread that entry.

re: reading - mea culpa, I should have specified right-wing anarchism to get an idea of what I'm discussing. I'd figured you were pretty well-versed in left-wing anarchism, and having that reference point would be fine for discussing with Sicarius, who I understand to be a left-anarchist - but it's not going to provide the basis for discussing where I'm coming from. Murray Rothbard is probably the best-known author on the subject and would make a fine start if you're interested in it. If not, that's fine too, but absent that background the discussion would be rather difficult and, frankly, probably not worth anyone's time. At the least, based on how it's gone to date, I'm going to step out on a ledge and assume it won't be.

(And more generally, I was actually going to leave this thread alone, but then I saw Draugnar making terrible arguments and decided to step in for a post or two. Then Puddle said some things, and we've had interesting discussions in the past, so I stayed. Then you showed up, and, well, I've already covered how I felt about that.)

Yes, Murray Rothbard. Well in your rush to condescend to me you neglected to notice that of all the people here, I probably bring up Murray Rothbard's work the most and have probably posted six or seven of his links.

"Because I'm a busy person that usually has things to do"

Yes, very busy.

I'm not condescending to you, or at least not attempting to do so. Sorry if it comes off that way - I mean no disrespect, I'm just getting the sense from your posts that you didn't have a background in the subject matter, and having burned an inordinate amount of time on others (who to be fair are far less informed than you) trying to explain it without having that background, and with aforesaid tests looming, I just wouldn't have time to have a big discussion. Like I said earlier, I didn't intend to get seriously involved in this thread at all. Bad self-control.

I missed your posts citing Rothbard, that's honestly kind of surprising to me and I'm interested to see what you had to say about him. What discussions, if you don't mind? I feel like I missed something fun

Mostly about his alliance with social conservatives and Paleo-libertarianism in general.

http://webdiplomacy.net/forum.php?threadID=670679&page-thread=10

PE, you didn't miss much. Putin just has lists of political incorrect things MR wrote. I doubt very much he has actually *read* any Rothbard.

Putin I'm not trying to suggest at all that only the government steals or murders. I'm just saying in a moral sense they are not valued the same. If a private citizen commits murder, in all liklihood they spend the rest of their life in a cage. If the government commits murder its treated with ambivilance or jubilation.

"Which brings us back to the point about private vs public acts of coercion. You and Siccy here go out of your way to act as though private contacts aren't acts aren't actually coercive, this is the only way you can make a stand against government coercion that doesn't sound like the total hypocrisy that it is. "

I never said nor suggested private contracts could not be coercive, I'm merely focusing on the double standard here. Anyway could you please explain to me how having a stance against government coercion is a hypocrisy? I mean I know you have a total hard on for totalitarian centralization, but I would love to hear you explain how any opposition to government violence is hypocritical. Please.

I'm still waiting for the guy who thinks north korea is a workers paradise to tell me all about how being opposed to government coercion is hypocritical.
I hope its a good one because as of now I'll prolly take it about as seriously as Vputin takes an amnesty international conference

Social contract philosophy has always tried to add in clauses that allow for non-signatories or just relies on implied consent, but the idea of how to react to a truly concious rejection of the contract has never (to my knowldge) been really been formulated. That being said, yes, the government is coercive. Its just not automatically a bad thing. Barring the fact that the analogy put forward in the original post is horribly hyperbolic and one-sided, these things are done generally for the collective greater good.

In response to Sicarius's original point of how government transforms crimes into benefits, I would begin by arguing that taxation is not theft, conscription is not slavery, and war is not murder. The entire point of government (at least in most political philosophies, including the one underpinning western liberal democracies) is to provide for the people that which the private sector would or could not in order to benefit all citizens. Addressing for now taxation, let us look at the classic example of roads. Roads are good. If anyone disagrees with this, then I believe we have much bigger problems on our hands. Because roads provide such a huge benefit to all aspects of society, they should exist. However, modern roads are not simple trails, but require huge amounts of money and labor in order to function. If the duty of road construction were left to the private sector, one could expect roads to exist only where a profit could be made by charging for their use, and even then it would be the right of the private road company to charge what they wish, which, depending on the efficiency of any particular company, could be far more than what the poorest level of society could afford. Costs would also increase due to the requirement of policing these roads to ensure that only those who have paid to use them are doing so. There could also be redundency in infrastructure, as two competing road companies attempt to take over an unclaimed territory (the benefits of a government monopoly in order to avoid redundent infrastructure can be seen more clearly in public ulities). This does not paint an appealing picture of private control over road construction and maintenance. Given that the private sector would be unwilling or unable to adequately provide this necessary service to all people of a nation, it is the duty of the government to do so. But this still requires money that has to come from somewhere. Returning to our previous assumption that roads are good and benefit all aspects of a society, it is not unreasonable to conclude that all of society should help pay for roads. Taxation, then, is one way of charging for a service that is being provided, because it is assumed that everyone in a nation is either using this service or is benefiting from it, and it is easier to charge a blanket tax than to attempt to charge people for public services as they are used.

It is this principle which can be used to explain the other two crimes that have been thrust onto government in this thread, conscription and war. It is assumed that, by virtue of being a citizen of a country, one has a desire to live in that country. If not, they would be living somewhere else. This country must be defended from those who would harm it or its vital interests. This requires soldiers (as well as money) who, in dire times, may be drafted to fight a war for the nation's survival. Drafting is, of course, coercive, with huge penalties for avoiding when it is asked, but to live in a country that has the potential for emergency conscription (and while living there enjoying all of the legal and civil protections provided as well as the public utility services) and then to dodge a draft is to run out of a restaurant without paying. In order to get out of civil obligations like paying taxes and signing up for selective service, one would have to completely abandon civil benefits, which include, among other things, infrastructure, a police and judicial system, and currency. Like it or not, every second of every day the government is providing a multitude of services to every citizen (and here I would like to remind everyone that I am speaking of western liberal democracies; the merits or totalitarian regimes are a different subject). These services are generally assumed to be in the greatest good of the most people, and since choosing not to receive them is not an option due to the inefficiencies and legal complexities it would involve, it is therefore not possible to choose not to pay for them.

This is most certainly coercive under at least some definitions of the word, but not totally due to the nature of a western liberal democracy. What constitutes the greatest good of the most people is determined through elections. One could make a valid argument that a country like the United States is too large to be governed effectively and that more power should therefore be delegated to the states in order to determine what the people want, but the simple fact is that under any democracy a majority (or plurality) of people is capable of suppressing the minority in order to get its way. Opinions obviously change over time and the majority one year could be the minority the next, but it is the duty of the minority to argue their points and to drive for compromise, confident that if they are truly correct then their desires will be fulfilled in time, but knowledgeable of the fact that they may not be supporting that which the people truly want. If members of the minority do not feel that they are capable of living under the dictatorship of the majority, then their only option is to flee the country. Safeguards are installed in constitutions in order to avoid the dictatorship of the majority becoming a dictatorship of one, but the only way to rationalize a system that does not favor the opinion of the majority is to value the opinions of some people more than others, which is not a principle held by modern liberal democracies.

I don't normally post on these threads, but this particular topic is very close to my specialty and I simply couldn't resist myself. I hope I have at least made the case for the other side worth thinking about.

I actually liked Putin's contrast between the coercion of the individual by the free market and the coercion of the individual by his government. It's not as obvious, but the parallels are there.

Well argued knight.

"... then to dodge a draft is to run out of a restaurant without paying."

I don't like this at all. The implication that government may use a social contract to command me to commit murder (while it, apparently, does not) is fairly medieval.

The free market is indeed coercive, I agree with putin on that. I am just after his explanation of why opposing coercive government is hypocritical.

Knight General first let me thank you for a constructive and well thought out post. Though Im afraid we differ too much on some key point to make a direct rebuttal of your post impossible. Firstly, I believe all coercion is deleterious to the human condition, for whatever purpose to whatever end ( I here am specifically referring to coercion backed by violent force, such as that of a government, rapist, or car-jacker)
If a robber gives her proceeds to charity does this forgive the violence of the mugging? If taxes go to help schools does this forgive that taxes are collected at the barrel of a gun? Now I dont mean IRS agents are packing heat, just that ANY government coercion is ultimately backed by force.
Secondly I dont necessarily agree that roads are "good". They just allow most things to happen quicker and more efficiently, so thats great for the lady in the ambulance having a stoke, but not so great for the kidnapping victim. Roads are a tool and can be used for "good" or otherwise. I see modern road infrastructures main purpose as continuing industrialized society, which I think is basically indefensible. Anyway for every dollar an american pays in taxes to help with schools and hospitals and roads and food stamps, over 50 cents goes to the military. So for each penny meant to help someone, there is another penny meant to kill someone.
Also I cant really agree with your view of conscription because (I dont believe in nations or borders but thats whole other discussion ) It would be difficult indeed to argue that any of americas wars waged in the lifetime of the average diplomacy player were 'for its survival' or even remotely defensive in nature.
Anyway if the taxes are being put to good use or not is immaterial, the point is that you must pay them. Ever heard 'a benevolent dictator is still a dictator'?

i didn't read the entire treat, but i do want to ad something. Sorry if some else said it before.

First of all, you are comparing 2 unequal things, namely people and institutions.

Second, you are talking about stealing, enslaving and murdering, people cant do while government can. But the basic philosophy giving these rights to Government also formulates the principles of freedom, possession and personal rights. Stuff isnt just yours, we all agreed on the principle of possession as part of our culture. The same kind of agreement underlies the characteristics of government

third, the idea of the social contract is that of silent approval. So the moment enough people does not agrees with some rights of Goverment, it can be adjusted. It shall cost a lot of trouble and maybe chaos, but its possible.

Is an institution not just a group of people? If one person cannot murder why should a group? Isnt that just a lynching? mob rule?

I'm not sure I understand your second point. Are you saying tht the ability of the government to murder etc. is somehow intrinsically linked with "freedom"?

Sicarius, I recognize that we differ on many points, but I'm glad that there is at least some civil discourse left on these forums. I did not intend to defend the actions of the government (there are many, many things the American government does that displeases me, military expenses included), merely their right to do these actions due to the necessary functionings of government; I must insist, however, that we approach the failings of government with the mindset that the people must be educated in order to make the majority ruling more correct, rather than to blame the mere existence of government.
Most of our differences stem, I believe, from the fact that I take a relatively legalistic and consequentialist viewpoint to things. Do note that I agree that none of the recent American wars were fought for immediate survival, but some (emphasis, some) were fought for the defense of interests, such as security of trade, ideological allies, and the prevention of potential future hostility. On a side note, being the consequentialist that I am, I am not inclined to disapprove of a benevolent dictatorship, or, to use a more flattering term, philosopher king, so long as it remains benevolent (which may or may not be realistic).

Also I never said the words social contract. What I'm pointing out is the double standard, that when a group of people are labeled a government they grant themselves rights that no one has the power to grant them, and no one else has.

That's a very interesting point OP. Now tell me, what's your alternative?

Quick Aside
Seen some folks on facebook arguing about the same thing as us

"look i'm all for reforming our police departments but you utter idiots on this page are taking it way too far with the no taxes issue.. we DO need some taxes to go to police or else they wouldn't exist.. get it thru your heads!! how do you think you could survive?? no taxes = no police = no society.. go move to iraq if you don't like it idiots.."

Taxation is theft. If you want to support wars and the police state, do so with your own wealth. But do not use the force of government to steal from the rest of us.

@ lennon
I'm not really sure, I'm sure together we can come up with something better than we have now. I see little nuggets of the way forward everywhere I look, every society in history has at least one thing to teach us.

Haha sic sounds like libertarian-gone-overboard garbage to me. I actually have a fb friend who flew off the handle because I didn't like his notion to privatize roads.

Actually it sounds like the converse - a libertarian statist that thinks anarchists are going too far. But yeah, the principal point is "garbage." lol

Also I fucking love the "no police = no society." Any society that is strictly dependent on the existence of police to survive is a society not worth having. Having someone to handle immoral acts of aggression is another matter, but a society should not depend on them for survival, it should merely make use of them when they're needed (and their need should be an exception and not a rule).

Holy Shit PE you're spot on. I have had this discussion a million times. Apparantly with people whose murderous, theiverous, rapist rage is only kept in check by flashing blue lights.

More like we'd rather have police and courts settle issues than blood feuds and even more bias and prejudicial posses put together by the richest guy in town. By glorifying a society without police you glorify the lynch mob, the blood feud and the duel. If you don't believe me look to colonial and early American society and shriek with horror while extrapolating that example onto a modern society with several dozen times the population. PE says we need to read anarchic literature for him to deign to speak with us. Perhaps he should pick up a history book.

Dont conflate anarchism with chaos, thats a little too FOX for me