Why libertarianism is so dangerous.

[wufwugy]

Recommended viewing. It's only thirteen minutes. If you don't have the time, put it on the shelf till you do. If you don't have the desire, get the desire.

[Renton]

I liked it but

Spoiler: Show

liberals are just going to see it as hyperbole. It's one of those videos that plays out essentially as fan service and I'm not sure its capable of convincing that many people of anything.

[wufwugy]

I guess. Hyperbole would be a weird way of looking at it. It gives the claims of statists every benefit of the doubt and uses that to show the logic of their claims.

[Renton]

It could also be seen as an admission that anarchy is self-defeating, the power vacuum argument.

[wufwugy]

It could but I think that's a step in the right direction because it means the premise that the government monopoly is the same as the feared violent gangs of an anarchistic society has been accepted. The government monopoly is just a far more sophisticated form of the violent gang.

At that point I think the libertarian argument should become that the "worst-case scenario" happening in a stateless society is unreasonable. The state is a concept and institution formed in the origins of civilizations, where poverty was immense, technology was nothing, and people were sorely unproductive. Contrasted to today, where productivity and technology are mountains higher, and we'll find that the incentive we would face in a stateless society is antipodal to the incentive our ancestors faced. Capitalism has wholly changed the paradigm and what was once our greatest weakness (the capability to defend our interests) has become our greatest strength. Individuals, communities, and corporations would have more than enough incentive and capacity to subvert the growth of violent gangs.

[a500lbgorilla]

The NA principle is pretty stupid.

The corrected NA principle is - acts of violence and aggression are invalid, but decisive.

Those editors at Charlie Hebdo that died for breaking the rules of a Religion they didn't follow, I can't think of a more invalid application of violence, but they're still dead.

You don't get to escape the world we live in by brushing away the unsavory parts.

[a500lbgorilla]

It's like trying to solve the prisoner's dilemma by restricting players from being uncooperative.

But even worse because, how do you restrict them? Oh we don't have to.

Solve the prisoner's dilemma by simply not having a prisoner's dilemma.

[rong]

It could but I think that's a step in the right direction because it means the premise that the government monopoly is the same as the feared violent gangs of an anarchistic society has been accepted. The government monopoly is just a far more sophisticated form of the violent gang.

At that point I think the libertarian argument should become that the "worst-case scenario" happening in a stateless society is unreasonable. The state is a concept and institution formed in the origins of civilizations, where poverty was immense, technology was nothing, and people were sorely unproductive. Contrasted to today, where productivity and technology are mountains higher, and we'll find that the incentive we would face in a stateless society is antipodal to the incentive our ancestors faced. Capitalism has wholly changed the paradigm and what was once our greatest weakness (the capability to defend our interests) has become our greatest strength. Individuals, communities, and corporations would have more than enough incentive and capacity to subvert the growth of violent gangs .

At the bold, it's one he'll of a bet to make. Because if you're wrong, a bunch of us may get murdered /raped /pillaged.

It's a little like the environment and global warming. Some people say it's not completely proven or agreed that we are responsible global warming or that it is necessarily a hugely dangerous thing, but if we bet against it and lose, we night just destroy the entire planet.

[a500lbgorilla]

As an aside, climate change has been a pretty consistent feature of human history. It won't destroy the world, though it may end humanity, and it very much could destroy entire civilizations.

The Romans faced an existential threat from some Northern Germans when those German's homeland was flooded and they were forced to maraude south in search of a new homeland.

Climate change is what pushed us to become human in the first place.

[Renton]

The NA principle is pretty stupid.

The corrected NA principle is - acts of violence and aggression are invalid, but decisive.

Those editors at Charlie Hebdo that died for breaking the rules of a Religion they didn't follow, I can't think of a more invalid application of violence, but they're still dead.

You don't get to escape the world we live in by brushing away the unsavory parts.

So you're just going to regard the bedrock of an entire school of academic thought as stupid because you misinterpret it as being a description of the existing world, rather than an ideal with which to live? Okay.

[Renton]

At the bold, it's one he'll of a bet to make. Because if you're wrong, a bunch of us may get murdered /raped /pillaged.

Well, we're already getting raped and pillaged by the state in a lot of ways. I think that is the most useful contribution of the video, that the state is basically a sophisticated form of organized crime.

[a500lbgorilla]

So you're just going to regard the bedrock of an entire school of academic thought as stupid because you misinterpret it as being a description of the existing world, rather than an ideal with which to live? Okay.

Yes, I regard it as a naive ideal.

[Renton]

But that isn't what you said. How is adhering to the non-aggression principle equal to disregarding the existence of violent thugs who would do you harm?

[a500lbgorilla]

In that you disregard the possibility that you could become violent.

[Renton]

How?

[a500lbgorilla]

In the Roman Republic, they had a principle of never bringing armed troops into Rome. Until someone brought armed troops into Rome. Then people started bringing armed troops into Rome.

In Libertarian New Rome, they had a principle of never initiating aggression. Until someone initiated aggression. Then people started initiating aggression.

Principles don't take actions off the table, and so long as an action can be applied to the actors direct benefit, there's always the possibility it'll be used.

And violence has a rich history of being incredibly beneficial to the last guy standing.

So it's naive to believe a society of people would follow the NA principle, especially when the world is so full of powerful actors that initiate violence all the time.

[a500lbgorilla]

The non-aggression principle is like a pledge of celibacy. Someone's going to break it.

[Renton]

Violence is quite rare among civilized people who aren't empowered by a state, and there's nothing in the NAP that says one can't use violence in self-defense. I fail to see how it is naive to hold civilization up to this standard, since it seems to form the basis of law and order in all cases of non-state-sanctioned violence. All the NAP is saying is that initiating force is wrong. If you think this is a naive stance, it must be because you believe it is not wrong to initiate force for certain non-defensive reasons. Your argument isn't addressing these specifics, but merely stating that violence is an inevitable consequence of interpersonal interaction and therefore it is naive to take a moral stance against it.

[a500lbgorilla]

Violence is quite rare among civilized people who aren't empowered by a state, and there's nothing in the NAP that says one can't use violence in self-defense. I fail to see how it is naive to hold civilization up to this standard, since it seems to form the basis of law and order in all cases of non-state-sanctioned violence. All the NAP is saying is that initiating force is wrong. If you think this is a naive stance, it must be because you believe it is not wrong to initiate force for certain non-defensive reasons. Your argument isn't addressing these specifics, but merely stating that violence is an inevitable consequence of interpersonal interaction and therefore it is naive to take a moral stance against it.

Because of the state, not because of the people. This should be obvious.

[a500lbgorilla]

The whole point of the state is to be the violent authority. They won the aggression game, and they continue to win it by stripping that power from others and beefing up their own. They are a testament to the overwhelming incentive to be the baddest man around. They dictate laws.

But they'll disappear, because everyone agrees that things are just better without all that nonsense. We'll hold ourselves to the higher ideal.

[Renton]

If you really believe people would have such a propensity toward being violent were it not for the watchful eye of the state, I suggest you go to a 3rd world country where the law enforcement is practically negligible. You might be very surprised how peaceful the people are.

[a500lbgorilla]

Violence is quite rare among civilized people who aren't empowered by a state, and there's nothing in the NAP that says one can't use violence in self-defense. I fail to see how it is naive to hold civilization up to this standard, since it seems to form the basis of law and order in all cases of non-state-sanctioned violence.[1] All the NAP is saying is that initiating force is wrong. If you think this is a naive stance, it must be because you believe it is not wrong to initiate force for certain non-defensive reasons. Your argument isn't addressing these specifics, but merely stating that violence is an inevitable consequence of interpersonal interaction and therefore it is naive to take a moral stance against it.[2]

[1]Where does this come from? What are you looking at that says without a state, law-and-order forms around the principle of NA?

[2]Was America wrong to initiate aggression against the indigenous peoples? Sure, why not? They still accomplished Manifest Destiny.

[a500lbgorilla]

If you really believe people would have such a propensity toward being violent were it not for the watchful eye of the state, I suggest you go to a 3rd world country where the law enforcement is practically negligible. You might be very surprised how peaceful the people are.

Only a minority is required to see violence as a winning gambit for the NA principle to be naive.

[Renton]

Only a minority is required to see violence as a winning gambit for the NA principle to be naive.

No libertarian is against laws or policing. We're only against monopolies on the provision of laws and policing.

I brought up the 3rd world country example to argue against your idea that the state is necessary in order for people to act peacefully. I really don't like the argument that laws are codified culture and without them we would all be savages. Even if that argument were true, then it would be just as true that laws codify a lot of really shitty things about our culture as well. For example, female-biased child support and custody laws have codified a very sexist culture toward fathers in America that probably wouldn't exist were it not for the laws themselves.

[a500lbgorilla]

No libertarian is against laws or policing. We're only against monopolies on the provision of laws and policing.

I brought up the 3rd world country example to argue against your idea that the state is necessary in order for people to act peacefully. I really don't like the argument that laws are codified culture and without them we would all be savages. Even if that argument were true, then it would be just as true that laws codify a lot of really shitty things about our culture as well. For example, female-biased child support and custody laws have codified a very sexist culture toward fathers in America that probably wouldn't exist were it not for the laws themselves.

Laws are messy. They're informed by all sorts of trends and forces. Some laws aren't even formed from a violent authority, like Judean/Christian/Muslim laws. They don't need threats of violence in this world to sway behavior, merely rewards/punishments for the infinity here-after. And you want a new law more closely aligned with Judean law than State law that says initiating aggression is a no-no. If you were masterful, you could get a lot of people to follow it, but you won't get them all. And everyone who tries to break that law and fails, will teach the next guy what mistakes to avoid.

Finding a place for laws and policing in a libertarian society a priori doesn't change the fact that monopolies are immensely beneficial to the monopoly holder, especially when that monopoly is on violence. Once the scent of a possible monopoly gets around, what's going to stop people from dreaming? You can break market monopolies with violence, but how can you break violent monopolies?

And your solution to this problem that looms over everyone is to say, "well, we just won't have violent monopolies on principle." and that's foolish.

---

3rd world countries that don't have anything worth the trouble of conquering and policing are your example of how people get along just fine if we all stopped believing in violent authorities?

Go ahead and build New Singapore and watch as a State forms with it.

[a500lbgorilla]

Rank
Country Region
GNI per capita
1 Timor-Leste () South-East Asia *400
2 Malawi Eastern Africa 596
3 Somalia Eastern Africa *600
4 Democratic Republic of the Congo Middle Africa 675
5 Tanzania Eastern Africa 720
6 Yemen Middle East 745
7 Burundi Eastern Africa 753
8 Afghanistan Central Asia *800
9 Guinea-Bissau Western Africa 856
10 Ethiopia Eastern Africa 859
11 Niger Western Africa 896
12 Liberia Western Africa *900
13 Sierra Leone Western Africa 901
14 Madagascar Eastern Africa 911
15 Zambia Eastern Africa 911
16 Eritrea Eastern Africa 917

google: war in Timor-Leste. Indonesia invades in 1975
google: war in Malawi. 2015 border dispute over lake of Malawi against Tanzania.
google: war in Somalia. Civil war ongoing since 2009.
google: war in Democratic Republic of Congo. The second Congo War '98-2003.
google: war in Tanzania: Ungandian-Tanzanian war 1979.
google: war in Yemen: LOL not even gonna

Go ahead, do it for yourself.

[Renton]

I'm not saying the 3rd world countries are doing it right, I'm saying there's not much to correlate the existence of strict law enforcement with the reduction of violent crime. The U.S. has one of the most strict justice systems in the world and ranks 108th in intentional homicide rate. Aside from warlord-wracked African nations and cartel-wracked Latin American ones, it's one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

A lot of humans have the capacity to commit violence, but usually unnatural incentives need to be put in place for violence to be truly worthwhile. Incentives like being able to sell a plant on a black market for dramatically higher than its market value. Or incentives like easily hijacked foreign aid that then be distributed for a massive profit. Without the state, there really isn't much for the cartels and gangs to offer people. Would they continue to exist, yes of course, but in a much-diminished capacity.

[a500lbgorilla]

I'm not saying the 3rd world countries are doing it right, I'm saying there's not much to correlate the existence of strict law enforcement with the reduction of violent crime. The U.S. has one of the most strict justice systems in the world and ranks 108th in intentional homicide rate. Aside from warlord-wracked African nations and cartel-wracked Latin American ones, it's one of the most dangerous countries in the world.

It's not about how the US uses its violent authority, it's about why and how the US has a violent authority. You approach this problem by brushing it aside.

A lot of humans have the capacity to commit violence, but usually unnatural incentives need to be put in place for violence to be truly worthwhile. Incentives like being able to sell a plant on a black market for dramatically higher than its market value. Or incentives like easily hijacked foreign aid that then be distributed for a massive profit. Without the state, there really isn't much for the cartels and gangs to offer people. Would they continue to exist, yes of course, but in a much-diminished capacity.

Unnatural incentives?

I'm twisting my brain to understand wtf this means.

Apes kill to eat. Apes kill each other for political reasons. We're apes. Apes that Economics would describe as an endless fount of desires, desires which can be achieved through violence... but that violence isn't of our natural incentives.

[a500lbgorilla]

Apes kill each other for political reasons.

Look at these apes violating the non-aggression principle through unnatural incentives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZAL64E0DI#t=12m0s

[a500lbgorilla]

That video gets great. He hits on the idea of the golden-rule as a solution to the prisoner's dilemma and how you can show that evolution baked it into us with examples of bats and fish. Of course, the trick is that we're more subtle with it. What happens when you teach someone that they've already been tit'd against? They'll be driven to Tat even if that isn't the strictly correct response to the truth of the situation. Makes me think about Israel-Palestine how they talk about how awful the other has been to them.

[Renton]

Unnatural was a weak word to use. What I mean are incentives that are only possible due to an exterior influence to the system. I.e. a larger gang or a state.

[a500lbgorilla]

Makes me think of the Industrial revolution and the confluence of forces that converged to create it.

[a500lbgorilla]

PS a Sapolsky video hosted on a Libertarian website

http://reallibertarianism.com/why-hi...-human-psyche/

should be good.

[a500lbgorilla]

^Dominant males live a better life in terms of stress hormones alone. A pure natural incentive to be at the top.

Violent hierarchies form around dominant males.

Unnatural events kill off half the males, letting the females form a calmer society that follows the NA pact. All you have to do is #killmostmen.

New men are socialized to the NA pact.

They jump from natural ingrain behavior to something new in one generation. We can make the flip to.

Of course, we can flip back just the same.

[a500lbgorilla]

1) So let's say you want to accomplish the NA principle. The baboons did it by have all the problem actors die off, leaving only those who suffered to form a new social system. How does it happen with humans?

2) What happens when those baboons get into a dispute with another baboon tribe that still follows the old violent hierarchy?

---

1) Libertarian Feminism, maybe? WW2 certainly didn't teach us any lessons along this vector, as we spiraled right into Mutually Assured Destruction and the establishment of America as #1.

2) They either move somewhere else or lose. Their #niceguys won't rise up to defend them successfully and any proto-alphas they might have who could defend them run the risk of donning the mantel of alpha and returning the tribe to the old ways.

[a500lbgorilla]

In that you disregard the possibility that you could become violent.

Principles don't take actions off the table, and so long as an action can be applied to the actors direct benefit, there's always the possibility it'll be used.

The non-aggression principle is like a pledge of celibacy. Someone's going to break it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZAL64E0DI#t=1h1m45s

This lecture is legitimate gold.

The NA principle is naive because someone who fully agrees with it will violate it eventually.

[wufwugy]

Rilla, you have misinterpreted the NAP. In your frame, your points would have accuracy. But that isn't NAP. However you're not alone, many libertarians misinterpret NAP too. Even the guys who made the OP video misinterpret it on the margins. Whenever they have Thaddeus Russell on, they tend to get into heated debate that nudges towards what their misinterpretation is.

The NAP is the ideal that initiation of force is illegitimate. The operative word is "initiation". If you adhere to the NAP and you are threatened, you are fully within your rights as defined by the principle to defend yourself.

When we use this tool to evaluate our current society and a hypothetical stateless society, I think we find that the current society heavily protects the initiation of force and heavily subverts self-defense from that force. If this is true, then your concerns of the problem of violence are more relevant to the state world instead of the non-state world.

I am truly unworried about violent gangs uprising in the type of stateless society in the video. The easiest thing in the world would be for the productive people to put bullets in their brains. The key is that when that would be done so by self-defense and contract with other productive people, we would have finally eliminated the state.

[wufwugy]

At the bold, it's one he'll of a bet to make. Because if you're wrong, a bunch of us may get murdered /raped /pillaged.

It's a little like the environment and global warming. Some people say it's not completely proven or agreed that we are responsible global warming or that it is necessarily a hugely dangerous thing, but if we bet against it and lose, we night just destroy the entire planet.

That's why I propose doing it gradually. I would much rather devise a hundred year plan to go stateless than to go overnight. Even then, the only real important thing is to have a culture of liberty so that wherever issues arise, the response from the people is "the people can solve this problem, the government only makes it worse".

[wufwugy]

There is a paradigm shift that makes what was once true no longer true. Back when people were poor, unproductive, and technology was shit, the incentive to initiate violence to secure resources was higher than the incentive to defend resources (unless you were yourself a different force initiator). But today it's not like that. No violent gang on the planet is going to take over Silicon Valley or NYC. In the stateless hypothetical, the incentive for the vastly productive people to protect themselves would be far, far, far greater than the incentive to initiate violence against them to such a degree that they work for you. This is because the status of the productive people no longer has anything to do with initiation of violence and everything to do with protection of their property and environment.

This would be true even if today only the US went fully private. If taxes were zero and the military was traded on the stock exchange, we would still not see initiation of force from Russia or China because the primary incentive of the Chamber of Commerce and other non-affiliated major companies would be to contract their security from possible threats from Russia or China. I honestly think the contracted private military would get far more aggressive with bad actors than it is today. The goals of contracted defense companies would be far more clear and sophisticated than the current government and military.

It cannot be understated that capitalism flips the world on its head. For all history, things worked one way, but where capitalism has been adequately embraced, they do not. It used to be that the primary source of wealth was violence and control of others' production. It is no longer that way. Today the primary source of wealth is protection of property and commerce.

[a500lbgorilla]

Rilla, you have misinterpreted the NAP. In your frame, your points would have accuracy. But that isn't NAP. However you're not alone, many libertarians misinterpret NAP too. Even the guys who made the OP video misinterpret it on the margins. Whenever they have Thaddeus Russell on, they tend to get into heated debate that nudges towards what their misinterpretation is.

The NAP is the ideal that initiation of force is illegitimate. The operative word is "initiation". If you adhere to the NAP and you are threatened, you are fully within your rights as defined by the principle to defend yourself.

Yeah, I got that. All my points still stand.

As a further point, what does it mean for an act of aggression to be illegitimate or invalid? Invalidity doesn't stop it. Illegitimacy doesn't taint it's consequences. It's like saying initiating violence is evil. Great, so what?

[wufwugy]

It should also be noted that the Articles of Confederation states were mostly stateless. They weren't entirely stateless, but compared to today they were mostly. And they worked out just fine. No violent gangs or outside invaders were taking shit over. The operative reason the Articles were scrapped for a new more powerful federal constitution was because the states were mistreating the people to the point that the people were uprising and actually winning.

So, in defense of the state, the violence initiators themselves needed to construct greater power to keep themselves in existence. The people were simply too powerful and needed to be controlled for the government to keep its initiation of violence going. This worked because enough people believed in the state. Adam Smith had only just published the Wealth of Nations, and there was no institutional way people would understand that the state is itself the enemy other than their intuition.

But today we have overwhelming evidence that the monopoly on violence is the enemy as well as virtually uncontested academic theory for why.

[a500lbgorilla]

There is a paradigm shift that makes what was once true no longer true. Back when people were poor, unproductive, and technology was shit, the incentive to initiate violence to secure resources was higher than the incentive to defend resources (unless you were yourself a different force initiator). But today it's not like that. No violent gang on the planet is going to take over Silicon Valley or NYC. In the stateless hypothetical, the incentive for the vastly productive people to protect themselves would be far, far, far greater than the incentive to initiate violence against them to such a degree that they work for you. This is because the status of the productive people no longer has anything to do with initiation of violence and everything to do with protection of their property and environment.

This would be true even if today only the US went fully private. If taxes were zero and the military was traded on the stock exchange, we would still not see initiation of force from Russia or China because the primary incentive of the Chamber of Commerce and other non-affiliated major companies would be to contract their security from possible threats from Russia or China. I honestly think the contracted private military would get far more aggressive with bad actors than it is today. The goals of contracted defense companies would be far more clear and sophisticated than the current government and military.

It cannot be understated that capitalism flips the world on its head. For all history, things worked one way, but where capitalism has been adequately embraced, they do not. It used to be that the primary source of wealth was violence and control of others' production. It is no longer that way. Today the primary source of wealth is protection of property and commerce.

This is why I say naive. You're just fully untethered from reality. It doesn't matter what happened in the past - it's the past. Things are different now. It doesn't matter how people are - they'll change to this new reality.

It's worshiping at the altar of Libertine.

[wufwugy]

Yeah, I got that. All my points still stand.

As a further point, what does it mean for an act of aggression to be illegitimate or invalid? Invalidity doesn't stop it. Illegitimacy doesn't taint it's consequences. It's like saying initiating violence is evil. Great, so what?

The points don't stand, though. They're addressing a strawman.

The use of illegitimacy in the NAP is to say that "if somebody initiates violence, this principle we espouse that we call the NAP says that the initiator is in the wrong; therefore you can defend yourself without fear of breaking the principle".

I don't personally espouse the NAP. I'm with Thad, the philosophy of self-interest is more descriptive and easier to understand. It also makes the NAP redundant. Like you, I was initially confused by the word "illegitimate". The NAP accidentally seems more abstract and inconsequential than intended.

[a500lbgorilla]

The points don't stand, though. They're addressing a strawman.

Welcome to argument. I'm not writing a book here. I'm just hitting you with the twitter-feed of my contentions. There's depth to them that I'd be glad to explore if you'd engage them. But you don't. You just brush them aside.

And I'm not confused by the word illegit or invalid. They're nonsense.

[wufwugy]

This is why I say naive. You're just fully untethered from reality. It doesn't matter what happened in the past - it's the past. Things are different now. It doesn't matter how people are - they'll change to this new reality.

It's worshiping at the altar of Libertine.

On the contrary, I'm interpreting reality as it is. You're clinging to an ideology. You're the one saying "these two entirely different realities are the same". You're extrapolating from a world irrelevant today. Just because it was virtually impossible to protect yourself from violent gangs back when everybody were farmers with no technology doesn't mean that the entirely different world today is just as susceptible to violent gangs.

Apply the current reality to your old reality, and those farms turn into commercial fortresses. The technology and sophistication is so high that the evaluation of the threat of invaders is easy and the resources required to thwart them is dirt cheap. The people with the greatest living standards are the productive, who have all the reason in the world to protect their living standards.

Your scenario is opposite to this in every respect. Farmers had shit living standards. They had shit technology and shit communication. The highest living standards were among those who chose to raid and pillage instead. This could not be more opposing to the way it is today in the modern world.


Besides, even if you're right, it means you're wrong based on your own logic. The position that super epicly powerful violent gangs are good while other weak violent gangs are not is logical hogwash.

[a500lbgorilla]

Wow. I gotta step away. You're... off.

[wufwugy]

Welcome to argument. I'm not writing a book here. I'm just hitting you with the twitter-feed of my contentions. There's depth to them that I'd be glad to explore if you'd engage them. But you don't. You just brush them aside.

How can I brush off points that I don't even disagree with? In your version of the NAP, you are RIGHT. But that isn't NAP.

And I'm not confused by the word illegit or invalid. They're nonsense.

Dude. How can you even say this when your claim about the term is not the NAP claim? Illegitimacy has nothing to do with moralizing against others, but clarifying when violence is allowed to those who espouse the NAP.

[a500lbgorilla]

How can I brush off points that I don't even disagree with? In your version of the NAP, you are RIGHT. But that isn't NAP.

What is my version of NAP? Hint: it includes the word initiate.

Dude. How can you even say this when your claim about the term is not the NAP claim? Illegitimacy has nothing to do with moralizing against others, but clarifying when violence is allowed to those who espouse the NAP.

When violence is allowed.

Allowed? What do you mean by allowed? Allowed by whom? By you? By others? If violence isn't allowed, what stops it from happening?

[a500lbgorilla]

The NA principle is rules-making. But why would anyone follow the rule? The answer had better be because it's their natural habit to do it (which Sapolsky had an interesting video exploring) or that there exists something to coerce people to follow it - refs, police, presidents, Gods, something.

But there isn't anything. People follow it because it's the best communal choice available, and people love best communal choices./s

[wufwugy]

When violence is allowed.

Allowed? What do you mean by allowed? Allowed by whom? By you? By others? If violence isn't allowed, what stops it from happening?

when violence is allowed to those who espouse the NAP.

Granted I should have said "allowed for". That is more clear.

The NAP applies only to those who espouse the NAP. Libertarians want more people to espouse the NAP, but I agree with you that it's a pipedream to think that the entire world could.

[a500lbgorilla]

Granted I should have said "allowed for". That is more clear.

The NAP applies only to those who espouse the NAP. Libertarians want more people to espouse the NAP, but I agree with you that it's a pipedream to think that the entire world could.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWZAL64E0DI#t=1h1m45s

This lecture is legitimate gold.

The NA principle is naive because someone who fully agrees with it will violate it eventually.

"What about hypocrisy?"
"Disastrously human. Not only are we capable of coming up with ideologies... but we have come up with the means to personally evade ithem over and over. ...The really scary person is the person who says "Everyone says X is criminal and I agree, and here is why I'm a special case right now... It doesn't count with me because when I did it, it means something different."
Everyone who espouses NA is still a threat to violate NA, though they'll find some way to frame it like they're not.

[wufwugy]

I think our main disagreement is as follows: you're saying human nature is a certain way therefore such n such. I say the description of human nature is but one aspect and is not the only arbiter of results.

Where you say that violent gangs will always rise up because the nature in humans to acquire resources through violence is undeniable, I say that this aspect of human nature is not the only consideration. The capacity to acquire resources through violence is diminished and the benefit/cost ratio is much different than it used to be. I think that for most of civilization, the costs of violence to acquire resources were much lower than the costs of not doing so. But in the modern world I think it's the opposite. The costs are extremely high and the benefits low, so much so that violent gangs in the face of the self-defense would be meager.

When the human nature to be violent is no longer cost-effective, it loses its power. When the world was farmers and marauders, the balance of this power laid heavily on the side of the marauders. But today it's the opposite. As to how much, nobody can say, but the evidence does show a paradigm shift.

[wufwugy]

"What about hypocrisy?"
"Disastrously human. Not only are we capable of coming up with ideologies... but we have come up with the means to personally evade ithem over and over. ...The really scary person is the person who says "Everyone says X is criminal and I agree, and here is why I'm a special case right now... It doesn't count with me because when I did it, it means something different."
Everyone who espouses NA is still a threat to violate NA, though they'll find some way to frame it like they're not.

Of course they are, but that's irrelevant. The NAP is a personal ideology that frankly I don't think is that useful.

The bottom line is that libertarianism is not pacifism. The NAP, while being confusing, does not promote pacifism. In a stateless society, I think the weak and poor would have even more capacity for self-defense and the rich and powerful would have less capacity for violent initiation compared to today. Keep in mind that the state protects the initiation of violence by the rich and powerful and punishes the use of self-defense by the poor and weak. Even if your fear of a stateless society giving rise to new huge violent gangs is true, if I'm right it would mean that the weak and poor would have a greater capacity to keep those violent gangs less destructive than the current ones.

[a500lbgorilla]

I would put it this way: any understanding of the human world is going to have to sample from a lot of sources. You're relying heavily on one source. I'm chipping away at it to show that it isn't the be all end all.

So I bring up violence as a means to an end because it is obviously under-represented in your Libertarian beliefs. Literally the central belief of Libertarianism is that it's just not a problem. You can respond by saying, "But look at the richness of my beliefs!" and I'll still be here, kicking dirt in the eye of your Goddess Libertine.

[wufwugy]

I would put it this way: any understanding of the human world is going to have to sample from a lot of sources. You're relying heavily on one source. I'm chipping away at it to show that it isn't the be all end all.

So I bring up violence as a means to an end because it is obviously under-represented in your Libertarian beliefs. Literally the central belief of Libertarianism is that it's just not a problem. You can respond by saying, "But look at the richness of my beliefs!" and I'll still be here, kicking dirt in the eye of your Goddess Libertine.

I agree that libertarianism does not message well. I try to use historical and economical reasoning; whereas many libertarians just say "but if there was no violence..."

[a500lbgorilla]

I agree that libertarianism does not message well. I try to use historical and economical reasoning; whereas many libertarians just say "but if there was no violence..."

Spoon made a great post about the 48 laws of Power in his AMA than got me reading it. It's an incredible book that samples from an unreal range of historical sources about Kings and courtiers and art dealers and conmen. I think it'll show you that libertarianism doesn't exactly explain the lay of the land.

[wufwugy]

Spoon made a great post about the 48 laws of Power in his AMA than got me reading it. It's an incredible book that samples from an unreal range of historical sources about Kings and courtiers and art dealers and conmen. I think it'll show you that libertarianism doesn't exactly explain the lay of the land.

It definitely doesn't in most of the world. Most of the world is a dirt poor technological backwater with little commerce. You can go pretty much anywhere in Africa with guns and take over, but if you did that in Silicon Valley, even if the US military didn't exist, you'd find contracted security forces with bigger guns sent to kill you and keep the flow of commerce intact.

I think the paradigm shifts only when commerce creates enough cooperation and technology for marauders to be weaker than security interests.

[a500lbgorilla]

It definitely doesn't in most of the world. Most of the world is a dirt poor technological backwater with little commerce. You can go pretty much anywhere in Africa with guns and take over, but if you did that in Silicon Valley, even if the US military didn't exist, you'd find contracted security forces with bigger guns sent to kill you and keep the flow of commerce intact.

I think the paradigm shifts only when commerce creates enough cooperation and technology for marauders to be weaker than security interests.

It's about what powerful people do behind closed doors. It's a very modern belief that the power is with the people. Maybe that isn't the entire story.

[Renton]

Literally the central belief of Libertarianism is that it's just not a problem.

Why do you think this? We're well aware of what a big problem violence is. There's nothing about the NAP that brushes off the constant existence of violence or the threat thereof. It just is critical of ALL initiation of violence, not just of that of the unauthorized sort. Again and again, libertarians are in favor of law and order, we just have a different view of what societal problems are so large that we need laws to solve them. Also, in case it needed to be said, most libertarians are statists and fully believe in a role for government, just a much more limited role.

[a500lbgorilla]

Why do you think this? We're well aware of what a big problem violence is. There's nothing about the NAP that brushes off the constant existence of violence or the threat thereof. It just is critical of ALL initiation of violence, not just of that of the unauthorized sort. Again and again, libertarians are in favor of law and order, we just have a different view of what societal problems are so large that we need laws to solve them. Also, in case it needed to be said, most libertarians are statists and fully believe in a role for government, just a much more limited role.

This is exactly why. It's critical of ALL initiation of violence, and finds that in its critical analysis of violence that there's no reason for it. I can find reason.

[Renton]

Maybe then, we should leave this abstract subject and discuss some ways in which you believe initiating violence is warranted.

[a500lbgorilla]

Pick a top 10 nation and I'll show you how initiating violence helped them out.

[Renton]

We're not talking about how a state can gain by initiating violence, we're talking about morality. The NAP wasn't devised with optimal nation-building in mind.

[a500lbgorilla]

We're not talking about how a state can gain by initiating violence, we're talking about morality. The NAP wasn't devised with optimal nation-building in mind.

Then it's moral rules-making and...

The NA principle is rules-making. But why would anyone follow the rule? The answer had better be because it's their natural habit to do it (which Sapolsky had an interesting video exploring) or that there exists something to coerce people to follow it - refs, police, presidents, Gods, something.

But there isn't anything. People follow it because it's the best communal choice available, and people love best communal choices./s

[Renton]

Are you implying that it's naive to be critical of things like Manifest Destiny?

[a500lbgorilla]

Come again?

[Renton]

The NA principle is rules-making. But why would anyone follow the rule? The answer had better be because it's their natural habit to do it (which Sapolsky had an interesting video exploring) or that there exists something to coerce people to follow it - refs, police, presidents, Gods, something.

But there isn't anything. People follow it because it's the best communal choice available, and people love best communal choices./s

There are plenty of ways outside of the state to provide incentives against aggressive behavior. In a free society it would be on property owners to defend their property, either on their own or more likely by proxy. Literally every square meter of land would be someone's property and you would be subject to the owner's rules. A big problem with crime in today's world is that most of it occurs on public property and there is much less urgency to deal with that crime since no one is directly responsible for combating it [edit: AND has a vested interest in combating it].

There are also plenty of ways for a state to exist with minimal infringement of the NAP. Taxes can be reduced. Freedoms can be granted. Private property rights can be increased. All of this can be informed by the NAP without being "untethered from reality."

[a500lbgorilla]

There are plenty of ways outside of the state to provide incentives against aggressive behavior. In a free society it would be on property owners to defend their property, either on their own or more likely by proxy. Literally every square meter of land would be someone's property and you would be subject to the owner's rules. A big problem with crime in today's world is that most of it occurs on public property and there is much less urgency to deal with that crime since no one is directly responsible for combating it.

There are also plenty of ways for a state to exist with minimal infringement of the NAP. Taxes can be reduced. Freedoms can be granted. Private property rights can be increased. All of this can be informed by the NAP without being "untethered from reality."

This is why I make my points. You are drinking the gatorade. It's either Libertarian understanding or wrong.

Any understanding of the human world is going to have to sample from a lot of world-views. You're too deep into just the one.

[Renton]

What exactly about my post elicited that response? I'm defending a point of view. Because I didn't go through all of the other possible systems of government in the limited scope of that post, I'm drinking the gatorade?

[a500lbgorilla]

What exactly about my post elicited that response? I'm defending a point of view. Because I didn't go through all of the other possible systems of government in the limited scope of that post, I'm drinking the gatorade?

"untethered from reality" was a point I made at wuf, that you found I made at you and so I made it at you.

You don't have to go through all the other possible systems of gov't, you do have to be open to the fact (fact) that Libertarianism isn't the be all end all.

And you don't seem it.

[a500lbgorilla]

And I'm not talking about be all end all as in governing people but rather as in a lens to see the world. There are entire lenses that aren't political at all; aren't economical at all.

[Renton]

You directed the "untethered" bit at wuf but you've constantly been making the argument in this thread and others that libertarian (nay, economic) views are utopian and not informed by reality/history/whatever. It's insulting. It's fine to appeal to established norms, but calling your debate opponent delusional cheapens the conversation. It's the kind of thing I would expect from 2p2 politics, not from here.

[a500lbgorilla]

My points about Economics were their own. I almost made the point earlier that your contention that 3rd world countries seem fine while following the NA principle was akin to my point about NJ/PA w.r.t the minimum wage - sniffing around the edges but missing the central push. But when I argue against Economics and argue against the understanding of the consequences of raising the minimum wage, I know how, where, and why I'm full of shit. Economic theory gets the main thrust, but it misses the details. But you don't have this same appreciation. The world won't follow first principles and the NA principle is a first principle.

edit: The world won't follow first principles... or maybe it will. But I'll bet against anyone's guess at them every time.

[a500lbgorilla]

The only thing I'm truly contrarian about is the dogmatic belief that Economic reasoning dictates Economic reality.

If I had to make choices for the country as a whole and I wasn't beholden to politics, I would use a rich mix of examples and Economic thinkers.

Outside of that, I don't know what to say. You basically didn't understand my post at all.

I know I made this point over there. If I was put on the spot, I'd have an imaginary parrot named Rentwugy on my shoulder chirping up on everything. But I'd also be listening to others that don't concern themselves with Economics.

[Renton]

My points about Economics were their own. I almost made the point earlier that your contention that 3rd world countries seem fine while following the NA principle was akin to my point about NJ/PA w.r.t the minimum wage - sniffing around the edges but missing the central push.

I think my point about 3rd world countries can seem cherrypicky but I wasn't intending to definitively state that those countries were better off. Only that the crime has a lot more to do with the incentives for committing crime than for the justice system that punishes the crime. For example, the third world countries that make all the heroin (afghanistan, burma, etc) are pretty fucked up. The fact that Afghanistan and Burma are not developed countries has less to do with this than the fact that they are vital to black markets.