Why I am Basically an Anarchist

Why I Am Basically An Anarchist:

(I know this is a tl;dr post but I was impelled to write it somewhere for feedback :) )

I constantly find my viewpoints about life and politics almost diametrically opposite to others views. Maybe it’s because I’m crazy. Maybe it’s because I’m wrong. Maybe its because I’m an idealist. Maybe, and I certainly hope this is the case, it’s because I have a better perspective and deeper understanding of the world than most other people. Basically, I’m in between libertarian and anarchist. I still contemplate the merits of any sort of government and laws.

I think it is very clear there are consequences to your actions. These consequences have some order. That is to say, it isn’t like this one time I rob someone that the consequences are that no one in the world would ever rob another soul for eternity. More concretely, if you don’t plant the seeds of corn in a field, corn won’t grow. These consequences are logical. Your actions create predictable consequences, therefore you can learn what actions are necessary to create the consequences (outcomes) you desire. Therefore, consequences create a learning experience. You learn what action you must take to achieve your desired outcomes.

Government changes this rule. Government creates an environment where peoples action and values do not create the logical outcome. The collection of societies actions do not yield the consequences natural to their actions, and they do not learn the actions to take to create the outcome. Also, peoples decisions naturally create the perfect reflections of their actions and values. Governments think they need to create the “right” reflections, but are really just stopping people from ultimately getting what they want (I’m not talking about what they “say” they want).

Let me use an example to illustrate this. The Anacostia River in Washington DC is very polluted. Its filled with bags and litter. Its filled with bags and litter ultimately because individuals want it to be polluted. They may say they do not want it polluted, but the fact that it is polluted is a testament to the fact that they do. Until people take the necessary actions, until they truly want the river to be clean, it won’t be clean. I don’t care if polluting the river is bad or not, I’m not saying the people who are littering are right or wrong, I’m just saying that the collective actions and enaction of the values of everyone in DC is creating a polluted river.

Now what the DC government does is they implement a 5 cent bag tax to stop the Anacostia River from being littered with bags. The idea is if people have to pay for bags they will not use the bags as much. There are two problems I have with this. One, the DC government is not doing what is in peoples self-decided best interests. The People of DC (collectively) have decided not to value a clean river. Yet, we are forcing them to value it. Second, you are not solving the issue you have deemed a problem in the most optimal way. You are trying to rid an unwanted consequence without changing the underlying values and actions. It’s like cutting a branch of a tree. Ultimately, that branch will grow back in some form, nearly exactly the same as the old branch. So you stop people from littering with bags, which would normally come at the knowledge and values that saving the environment and having a clean river is good for you and society. But they haven’t valued a clean river yet, they haven’t gained the knowledge to create the outcome they desire, they are not acting in accord with these values which they don’t have. So they still throw cigarette buts, paper cups, and various other things in the river. Problem not solved. Now teach people what the clear consequences of their actions are. Teach them why it is important. Try to influence their values. Make people more intelligent (if the outcome desired is an intelligent one). More specifically: Spend time around the river. Talk to people who litter in it. Pick up a bag or cup in the river. Problem solved, more optimally and without government intervention.

I think of Laws in the same way. I’m betting if you took a survey about why someone does not steal their groceries from a grocery store, they would say because they don’t want to go to jail. I think that is a terrible reason not to steal groceries. Way back when there was a law implemented not to steal because of XY and Z. People valued not stealing and therefore they didn’t do it. Now people never learn why not to steal, and that creates numerable other consequences.

I was watching a show one time where the host was making fun of a group of people who lived in trees to prevent them from being cut down. Most people who watched this show with me laughed and thought the people who lived in the trees were crazy. And maybe they were… but they were damn good at one thing that it seems like almost no one in the world is good at: Living and acting in accord to the values and outcomes they say they desire. To me, doing that is more important than living by the “right” values.

A spiritual guru once said no one is responsible for giving any difficulty or any pleasure to anyone. Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. What upsets me about people who do not share my viewpoint is they don’t seem to agree with the guru. Many complain about the salary of the CEO of Bounty while simultaneously buying a 12 pack of Bounty paper towels. Many complain about the state of the world they are essentially creating with their own actions. I think its ignorant to say that the state of the world today is any different than the world people want. I think its probably different than the world they say they want… but what’s that saying again? Actions speak louder than words. The society clearly isn’t how Marx saw it to me. Everyone has so much power to get what they want in the world, they just have to live in accord with what they want.

I think its funny that people worry about global warming when really it seems like the thing people should be worrying about is everyone becoming total drones. When we have a government that tells us to pay taxes to support x, y and z causes, to not litter bags, to not steal, and we do it, does it make a difference if we are a human or a robot? I don’t think this matters to many, but it matters a hell of a lot to me.

I would appreciate comments on this post and what the holes are in my argument, as well as what you liked or disliked about it.

1. inb4 wufwugy

2.

While I read all of the post, I'm just going to write my brief thoughts on one point, and perhaps come back later and write more, depending on if the thread has seriously degenerated or not. This is a topic that interests me greatly, and I don't have a clear view on it.

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I think of Laws in the same way. I’m betting if you took a survey about why someone does not steal their groceries from a grocery store, they would say because they don’t want to go to jail. I think that is a terrible reason not to steal groceries. Way back when there was a law implemented not to steal because of XY and Z. People valued not stealing and therefore they didn’t do it. Now people never learn why not to steal, and that creates numerable other consequences.

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With regards to people not stealing because they're afraid of going to jail, rather than they're making a value/moral judgement, I agree. I think music piracy is a great example of this, although I am sure that there are many who would argue with me.

However the claim that "way-back-when, people valued not stealing" is not something I agree with. Otherwise why would the law have been created in the first place, if everybody valued it? This is a fairly weak argument, I accept, and I'm trying to find my real point here, I think it goes something like this:

If I steal from somebody, I gain. So I will try do this.
If somebody steals from me, I lose. So I will try to stop this.
The same holds true for my neighbour, Jim.

Therefore I try to steal from Jim, and stop him stealing from me. He does the same.

Okay, now I'm going to go easy on the linebreaks and get down to it: We either have a situation where either Jim or myself is more effective than the other, and one person ends up with everything, the other with nothing. This doesn't sit well with me as how I'd like my ideal society to run. Alternatively, we're equally effective, and we all maintain our own possessions. In both these scenarios there's effort being put in - on both our parts - to steal and to thwart the other's stealing. That effort could better be used for painting pretty pictures or making babies, and so if Jim and I had an agreement not to steal from each other, then we would both benefit.

On an individual level, I can see that if I'm the only one stealing, then it's of benefit to me. However if I'm both stealing and being stolen from, it's not an equilibrium, but rather I (and everybody else) lose out because of the aforementioned effort being put in to maintain this 'equality'. So we make a mutually beneficial agreement that won't steal, we relax, and we get on with whatever you consider the greater activity of people to be.
However, once this agreement is in place, and there is no longer the threat that somebody will steal from me, it becomes appealing for me to start stealing again, as I would gain from it. And so we need a disincentive, which comes in the form of either a law with punishment, or my understanding the greater impact and long-term consequences of my stealing, rather than just looking at my short-term gain.

Reading over this, I notice two things: One, I haven't really come to any conclusions and two, it sounds like I may as well just be plagiarising Hobbes's social contract theory. I shall think on it some more and come back later.

Great reply by kiwi, I'm enjoying the direction of this thread.

First, thank you for the response kiwi.

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Originally Posted by kiwiMark

However the claim that "way-back-when, people valued not stealing" is not something I agree with. Otherwise why would the law have been created in the first place, if everybody valued it? This is a fairly weak argument, I accept, and I'm trying to find my real point here, I think it goes something like this:

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I really am not saying everyone valued it. I'm sure they didn't, and thats why the law was created. I don't agree with the law but I understand why people would value not stealing.

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If I steal from somebody, I gain. So I will try do this.
If somebody steals from me, I lose. So I will try to stop this.
The same holds true for my neighbour, Jim.

Therefore I try to steal from Jim, and stop him stealing from me. He does the same.

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This is where I think the term self interest has become incredibly misused. To say in absolute terms you gain from stealing from someone is losing scope of the desired outcome. What do you want by stealing? If you want material gain I think I could argue that you are ultimately not even getting that. Do you want a world where people don't steal? You certainly are not getting that for a number of reasons.

I think what your getting at is people acting on their own self interests will do something not good for society as a whole. Again, I think this is misusing the word self interest. Can't I be interested in what is best for me and everyone?

I would comment on the rest but your argument seems to rest on this assumption and I'm wondering if we can come to some sort of agreement or agree to disagree on it.

I really like your argument though kiwi I think it was well thought out and worded. It was very easy to comprehend.

Let me just put my point in another way. It seems like what your saying that you and Jim are creating an outcome that just wastes both of your time. Ultimately, if you decide to live by your value that not stealing is best for everyone, and you don't steal, I think your doing your job to create the reality you want. Jim, if he steals from you, isn't creating that reality. He is creating a world where time is wasted stopping other people from stealing from him.

I may come back later for a more elaborate post, but I would like to make one point right now

Anarchy as a society is an illusion. A society without government is like a human without a body; it's just simply nonsensical.

Practically, anarchy is a transition phase from one form of governance to another. An example would be the few day period after the Iraq invasion ended yet before the US took any action to govern or moderate power. In those couple days the entire nation (except for the oil fields) was looted and ransacked (think: eviscerated museums and libraries). But even this was not definitive anarchy because there was still governance (US military), they were just ordered to do absolutely nothing other than protect themselves and their equipment.

Chronic anarchistic trends do exist throughout the world, and a nation like Somalia is probably the best example of that. Pretty sure that's not a place any of us would want to be.

Besides all that, the problem with the anarchistic ideology is that it cannot work. Only in a Utopia is it possible (but not reality). Attempting to apply anarchy to our world is one of the best ways to create dictatorial regimes. This is because reality is that in an absence of hierarchal power, hierarchal power WILL arise. In an anarchy, there is nothing to stop those with the resources or with the inclination to acquire resources, to rise to the top and create their own governance.

Libertarian anarchists make the mistake of not factoring in human behavior. There will always be government. ALWAYS. The question is what kind of government. Do you want a government that benefits the people to greater degrees or a government than benefits the special individual? History and human society has emphatically shown that strong public sector does the former, while weak public sector does the latter. Anarchy is an abysmally weak public sector

I'm sorry to say, but Libertarianism is a joke. Libertarians want to weaken the public sector so much that when the guy with the biggest guns and most resources knocks on your door, there's nobody to stop him from controlling you, yet somehow they don't realize this. I understand that though because it took me quite a bit of time and research to figure my way out of the Libertarian fallacy. Libertarianism, unbeknownst to its constituency unfortunately, strives to exchange Democracy for Oligarchy/Monarchy/Totalitarianism.

Thanks for the kind words- Feeling's mutual, or I wouldn't have replied :)
As far as the discussion is concerned, I think I agree with everything you've since posted. It's figuring out the result of that that I'm struggling with a bit. Bear with me for a moment, I'm probably going to repeat myself but slightly differently.

There needs to be a goal that each individual has. For the sake of the discussion, I'd like to assume it's painting pictures. Individuals strive to be able to paint pictures. Hopefully what this goal is in your mind shouldn't change the following, but if it does, obviously just sing out.

Now, if Jim does all the things he needs to do to put food on his table, he has what we'll say is an average amount of time to paint pictures in his day.

If Jim steals from me in a society where nobody else steals, he can put food on his table more quickly, and thus has a large amount of time in which he can paint pictures.

That, however, is unsustainable, and leads to the situation in which everybody's stealing, Jim still has to put food on his table but also has to protect against thieves, so he has a small amount of time to paint pictures.

Jim's interest is painting pictures. We can see that the way Jim is going to be able to paint the most pictures in his life is if he abides by Option A. But in the short-term, Jim is going to be very tempted by Option B, because it will give him a larger amount of time to paint pictures.

And this is surely what you meant with regards to the river and educating people of the true consequences of their actions. That if Jim truly understood that option B would deteriorate into option C, the least desirable for him, then he would see that the choice which best served his interests is not Option B, but Option A.


Okay, I think it's clear we both agree on the above. So one solution to the temptation of Option B is the law, which exists to combat this short-sightedness which would lead to the choosing of short-term-good-,-long-term-bad options. And an alternative is educating people so they understand the long-term consequences of their actions, so they know that Option B is negative for them, rather than positive.

So I guess the issues now are:

1) Can that level of comprehension actually be accomplished? I understand that my university classes are beneficial to me, but when I wake up on a cold winter's morning it's disappointingly often that the temptation to stay in bed wins.

2) What of choices where the long-term consequences don't affect the individual. In your river example, if we imagine the river to be the only source of the town's drinking water, and the level of pollution to be enough that the water would remain drinkable for longer than Jim's lifetime but shortly after that would become unusable, thus killing the future inhabitants of the town. (This example is slightly flawed because their comes a point where the continued pollution is being done by people who will be affected by it, and being long-term-thinkers they'll stop. However it's probably not too hard to imagine something this generation could do, like cutting down every forest, which would be done solely by us, wouldn't damage us in our lifetime, but would have a profound negative effect x years down the track). How long-term are the consequences we need to take into account? Only ones which could affect us? Affect our offspring? Affect the offspring of our species, life on our planet, etc. etc.

I'll leave it there for now as I don't want to ramble on for thousands of words when you might have a point regarding something in the first sentence which would send the discussion somewhere else!

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I think what your getting at is people acting on their own self interests will do something not good for society as a whole.

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While it's a small distinction, I should just point out I'm not so much worried about an individual doing something that's not "good for the society". It's rather than an individual can do something which, if every individual (the whole society) also did, would not be good for that individual (whereas otherwise would be).

I'm glad we agree that Option A is ultimately the best option. I do think that this is arguable though and am surprised you agreed with me without a fight :).

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Originally Posted by kiwiMark

1) Can that level of comprehension actually be accomplished? I understand that my university classes are beneficial to me, but when I wake up on a cold winter's morning it's disappointingly often that the temptation to stay in bed wins.

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This is why I said I think I'm an idealist. But whether its achievable or not, I do like the idea that we people would be moving towards a high level of comprehension of the world!

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2) What of choices where the long-term consequences don't affect the individual. In your river example, if we imagine the river to be the only source of the town's drinking water, and the level of pollution to be enough that the water would remain drinkable for longer than Jim's lifetime but shortly after that would become unusable, thus killing the future inhabitants of the town. (This example is slightly flawed because their comes a point where the continued pollution is being done by people who will be affected by it, and being long-term-thinkers they'll stop. However it's probably not too hard to imagine something this generation could do, like cutting down every forest, which would be done solely by us, wouldn't damage us in our lifetime, but would have a profound negative effect x years down the track). How long-term are the consequences we need to take into account? Only ones which could affect us? Affect our offspring? Affect the offspring of our species, life on our planet, etc. etc.

I'll leave it there for now as I don't want to ramble on for thousands of words when you might have a point regarding something in the first sentence which would send the discussion somewhere else!

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Again, I feel like people polluting the water are not valuing the future in this case. I think its hard to argue here because I'm not really arguing whether or not someone should be interested in the future. I'm arguing that the future should only be good if the actions and values of people today are creating that future.

I think if you believe in absolute values my argument becomes harder, but I still feel its correct. If people are capable of learning than those absolute values will be achieved without forcing them to do anything. If you believe that people are incapable of learning and doing the things necessary to create the best life for themselves and others, than I suppose you should give them laws and force them to live a certain way. But I'd really hate life if that was the case.

But what are the actions/values of people today? We do not think uniformly, there are dissenting opinions. For simplicity we have two options A and B. Some want A, others want B. Is A right and why?

Its a really hard question to answer regardless of what A and B are.

Like, consider an individual named Beveryman who enjoys stealing instead of painting, and Jim from the previous case who enjoys painting. Beveryman is hindered if he doesnt steal, and Jim is hindered if Bevery does. So who is in the right here?

Now lets take it to an extreme. Lets have millions of people who divide equally among some generic options A and B. Who is to say what is right again, why is it right?

I feel we, as a society, must have a standard in which to say 'x' is right and have a way of enforcing the standard. If we do not, then we end up with Jim retaliating against Beveryman. On a larger scale, this means Jim's police vs Beveryman's police, or another way still, gang wars with -ev fights occuring continuously until one side is wiped out. But then, another gang/police arises to replace the old one (maybe 30 years later, there are more beverymen). More fighting and mindless violence. I think it is clear that this option must be avoided at all cost...especially if multiple gangs are each involved. But maybe im stretching...

[quote="JKDS"]But what are the actions/values of people today? We do not think uniformly, there are dissenting opinions. For simplicity we have two options A and B. Some want A, others want B. Is A right and why?
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A and B both get exactly what they want. Thats what the economy essentially is. Some people value spending their time gambling and therefore people offer that service. Some people enjoy shooting guns so people offer gun ranges. I don't really care who is right. What is "right"? If your talking about mutually exclusive wants, I'm not sure those exist without someone forcing another person to do something that they don't want to do (i.e. abortion vs pro life). I believe who is "right" will ultimately be decided by nature.

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Like, consider an individual named Beveryman who enjoys stealing instead of painting, and Jim from the previous case who enjoys painting. Beveryman is hindered if he doesnt steal, and Jim is hindered if Bevery does. So who is in the right here?

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If you steal from someone, I believe you are creating a reality where stealing is okay. If stealing is truly "wrong," which I believe it is, the consequences will be a world ultimately less beneficial to Beveryman. The consequences of Jims actions are simply better art in the world.

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I feel we, as a society, must have a standard in which to say 'x' is right and have a way of enforcing the standard. If we do not, then we end up with Jim retaliating against Beveryman.

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Why would this happen? I don't really see any other answer than the people of society want to retaliate against one another. There was a man named Gandhi who took on constant brutality and never retaliated. He was "the change he wished to see in the world." Many would argue this is what yielded the amazing results of his movement.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

Why I Am Basically An Anarchist:

(I know this is a tl;dr post but I was impelled to write it somewhere for feedback :) )

I constantly find my viewpoints about life and politics almost diametrically opposite to others views. Maybe it’s because I’m crazy. Maybe it’s because I’m wrong. Maybe its because I’m an idealist. Maybe, and I certainly hope this is the case, it’s because I have a better perspective and deeper understanding of the world than most other people. Basically, I’m in between libertarian and anarchist. I still contemplate the merits of any sort of government and laws.

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It's a good thing to be continually conforming one's viewpoint to new data and logic. I would like to point out, though, that a couple highly valuable steps for you would be to set aside idealism in exchange for pragmatism. The problem with idealism is that it's untestable, and there is no way to actually know the soundness of the ideals. Pragmatism, OTOH, is the based entirely in empiricism, and empiricism is virtually the only way for us to be sure of anything. FYI, empiricism is basically science.

The other step is to learn more about logic and logical fallacies. You'll learn more about how reality works by researching basic logical fallacies than you will from any opinion piece or philosophical writing. It's actually pretty fantastic to be able to easily point out false dichotomies or red herrings or selection biases. It makes knowing what you're talking about tremendously easier

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I think it is very clear there are consequences to your actions. These consequences have some order. That is to say, it isn’t like this one time I rob someone that the consequences are that no one in the world would ever rob another soul for eternity. More concretely, if you don’t plant the seeds of corn in a field, corn won’t grow. These consequences are logical. Your actions create predictable consequences, therefore you can learn what actions are necessary to create the consequences (outcomes) you desire. Therefore, consequences create a learning experience. You learn what action you must take to achieve your desired outcomes.

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Sounds good

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Government changes this rule. Government creates an environment where peoples action and values do not create the logical outcome. The collection of societies actions do not yield the consequences natural to their actions, and they do not learn the actions to take to create the outcome.

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This is making the false assumption that consequences/logical outcomes do not change with the environment

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Also, peoples decisions naturally create the perfect reflections of their actions and values.

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This is assuming clear cut dichotomies and distinctions. There's substantially more going on in decision making than somebody's contextual expressed conscious value

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Governments think they need to create the “right” reflections, but are really just stopping people from ultimately getting what they want (I’m not talking about what they “say” they want).

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Governance is the normal outcome of complex organisms which needs societies in order to compete with other organisms. Also, if governments were about 'stopping people from getting what they want', then I'm all for it. Human biology is fucking scary. All history and societies are rife with examples of individuals getting what they want

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Let me use an example to illustrate this. The Anacostia River in Washington DC is very polluted. Its filled with bags and litter. Its filled with bags and litter ultimately because individuals want it to be polluted. They may say they do not want it polluted, but the fact that it is polluted is a testament to the fact that they do. Until people take the necessary actions, until they truly want the river to be clean, it won’t be clean. I don’t care if polluting the river is bad or not, I’m not saying the people who are littering are right or wrong, I’m just saying that the collective actions and enaction of the values of everyone in DC is creating a polluted river.

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Again, this isn't black or white. If I kidnapped you and your brother, held a gun to your head, told you that I was going to either kill you or him but I will allow you to choose, if after you chose yourself and I killed you, could I tell your brother that you wanted to die?

There's much, much more going on, and 'values' are among the least of the reasons that people do things.

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Now what the DC government does is they implement a 5 cent bag tax to stop the Anacostia River from being littered with bags. The idea is if people have to pay for bags they will not use the bags as much. There are two problems I have with this. One, the DC government is not doing what is in peoples self-decided best interests. The People of DC (collectively) have decided not to value a clean river. Yet, we are forcing them to value it.

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This is a great example of why I mentioned pragmatism and empiricism and logical fallacies earlier. From the perspective of reality, the difference you're making about why people have chosen to value the river vs being 'forced' to value it is an illusion. Reality doesn't care about 'why', just 'that'. You're making a sort of naturalistic fallacy.

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Second, you are not solving the issue you have deemed a problem in the most optimal way. You are trying to rid an unwanted consequence without changing the underlying values and actions. It’s like cutting a branch of a tree. Ultimately, that branch will grow back in some form, nearly exactly the same as the old branch. So you stop people from littering with bags, which would normally come at the knowledge and values that saving the environment and having a clean river is good for you and society. But they haven’t valued a clean river yet, they haven’t gained the knowledge to create the outcome they desire, they are not acting in accord with these values which they don’t have. So they still throw cigarette buts, paper cups, and various other things in the river. Problem not solved. Now teach people what the clear consequences of their actions are. Teach them why it is important. Try to influence their values. Make people more intelligent (if the outcome desired is an intelligent one). More specifically: Spend time around the river. Talk to people who litter in it. Pick up a bag or cup in the river. Problem solved, more optimally and without government intervention.

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But this IS government intervention. Governance is not some obscure dominating entity, it's an integral facet of society. If you want to go to the river and try to teach people, be my guest. You'll soon realize it doesn't work (this happens ALL THE TIME today). But if you want to actually make an impact, you'll need a program that can compete on the societal level i.e. education system of some form. And since society is of the people, by the people, and for the people, the best outcome for education people on the river comes from the public sector.

I would love to be able to dispel this 'government bad' myth. We have been duped into a government of the people, by the people, for the special interests; and those special interests have straw manned us into thinking that this is real public governance. Government is not some kind of unholy. Not only is government inseparable from a functioning society, but the health of that society depends on how strongly the government regulates for its people instead of leeches and luckboxes or ideologues (special interests)

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I think of Laws in the same way. I’m betting if you took a survey about why someone does not steal their groceries from a grocery store, they would say because they don’t want to go to jail. I think that is a terrible reason not to steal groceries.

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It doesn't matter if it's terrible, it matters if it's true. And our knowledge thus far of the human organism is that punishment plays an essential role in behavior.

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Way back when there was a law implemented not to steal because of XY and Z. People valued not stealing and therefore they didn’t do it. Now people never learn why not to steal, and that creates numerable other consequences.

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Not stealing is far more integral to humanity than this suggests. We see this 'morality' in animals as well. Also, your argument about losing the value in learning why not to steal is more about poor governance, not governance itself.

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I was watching a show one time where the host was making fun of a group of people who lived in trees to prevent them from being cut down. Most people who watched this show with me laughed and thought the people who lived in the trees were crazy. And maybe they were… but they were damn good at one thing that it seems like almost no one in the world is good at: Living and acting in accord to the values and outcomes they say they desire. To me, doing that is more important than living by the “right” values.

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Christian scientists do this as well. Many of their children die from lack of medicine.

Viewing the world through ideological lenses does not lend itself to a statistical significance of correctness.

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A spiritual guru once said no one is responsible for giving any difficulty or any pleasure to anyone.

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A wufwugy once said that spiritual gurus say lots of stuff simply because it makes sense to them. 'Spiritual' should be enough of a turn off.

Replying to this non-cynically, this maxim is assuming SO much. He's effectively straw manned himself by attempting to objectively analyze all of humanity yet emphatically imposing the vague notion of responsibility. Be very VERY wary of moralistic and ideological philosophies (fallacies) that ignore relativity and practicality

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Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions.

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Not sure if this was you saying it or the aforementioned sage, but this is missing the forest for the trees. Within the right context, this is a nice adage, but assuming the context is meant to be all inclusive, it's not even close to correct that our decisions are the sole proprietor of our lives.

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What upsets me about people who do not share my viewpoint is they don’t seem to agree with the guru. Many complain about the salary of the CEO of Bounty while simultaneously buying a 12 pack of Bounty paper towels. Many complain about the state of the world they are essentially creating with their own actions.

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Yeah, it sucks, but that's reality. We don't live in a universe where all things are dichotomies. Overlap and connectedness is tremendous, paradoxes abound, and ideological contradictions do not carry over into the physical universe that often. Decision making is hosted by currently innumerable factors, and it is not at all unnatural for a human to lament the multinational corp pay structure while still being in his best interest to purchase product from that corp. It is very common for things to be both bad and good, or a little bad and a lot good, or a lot bad and a little good, or bad now but good later, the list goes on virtually forever

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I think its ignorant to say that the state of the world today is any different than the world people want. I think its probably different than the world they say they want…but what’s that saying again? Actions speak louder than words. The society clearly isn’t how Marx saw it to me. Everyone has so much power to get what they want in the world, they just have to live in accord with what they want.

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It's not so much about what people want, but about what people do. Or even moreso about how reality itself works. Humans are not some kind of great superior species. We're actually pretty goddamned limited and subject to the environment just like everything else.

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I think its funny that people worry about global warming when really it seems like the thing people should be worrying about is everyone becoming total drones. When we have a government that tells us to pay taxes to support x, y and z causes, to not litter bags, to not steal, and we do it, does it make a difference if we are a human or a robot? I don’t think this matters to many, but it matters a hell of a lot to me.

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We are already drones. We're drones to our basal instincts and our primitive through processing. We do the same stuff everyday just with slight variation. This is completely normal, and is actually what we're wired for biologically.

Also, we are the government, but apparently that's not the popular idea. The quickest way to not have a government run by the public is to weaken that government enough that powerful individuals can seize control for himself. Will be quite the Utopia then I'm sure

P.S. I lost some of addons and clarifications within this post due to forum fuckup, and didn't attempt to fix it due to mental overload

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Again, this isn't black or white. If I kidnapped you and your brother, held a gun to your head, told you that I was going to either kill you or him but I will allow you to choose, if after you chose yourself and I killed you, could I tell your brother that you wanted to die?

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Of the multitude of ways you could have chosen to draw the analogy, this is the one you chose. nh sir.

Especially marvel at the choice of the word "I".

wufwugy, your making an insane amount of assumptions in your post. Also, most of the time it doesn't appear that your backing up your arguments, your just stating them.

I'd like to comment on one point though:

"Again, this isn't black or white. If I kidnapped you and your brother, held a gun to your head, told you that I was going to either kill you or him but I will allow you to choose, if after you chose yourself and I killed you, could I tell your brother that you wanted to die?"

I think this example arguably could never occur in a vacuum. What I mean is that this situation could occur randomly without any backstory seems impossible, so who knows? Your brother may have done something that lead to this situation. Now lets say he didn't: I feel its also the crux of making any sense of the world for me. I can't really argue that this situation is possible or impossible, because I really have no logical proof besides my life experience.

What it seems like your trying to say here is that some people in the world are vicious hounds, incapable of being or learning how to be good and must be governed and forced in the right direction. When put in a situation where they could "seize" power, they will do so. Thats a hell of an assumption, surely backed up by some evidence. I don't believe that there are people in the world who are incapable of doing "good" or whatever you feel are the absolute values of the world. Therefore, I can't agree with your argument, and I will agree to disagree with you.

Another thing:

"Yeah, it sucks, but that's reality. We don't live in a universe where all things are dichotomies. Overlap and connectedness is tremendous, paradoxes abound, and ideological contradictions do not carry over into the physical universe that often. Decision making is hosted by currently innumerable factors, and it is not at all unnatural for a human to lament the multinational corp pay structure while still being in his best interest to purchase product from that corp."

This is absolutely not true. In this Bounty situation, if you think that best interest means paying the least amount of money, your both limited in your scope of what money is but also wrong. Lets say people did not want to purchase paper towels from a producer who paid executives high salaries. They wanted their salaries lowered x amount. They decide to boycott paper towels from Bounty until they lower the executives salaries. Now lets say this is 30 million peoples values, and they all boycott Bounty. One of Two things (maybe others?) will happen: 1. Another paper towel company will come along with low executive salaries and take all the customers. 2. Bounty will lower their executive pay and keep their business. This is what the economy is all about. People offer you goods and services that you want. If enough people want a certain kind of good or service, it will be offered. If enough people want a paper towel company that has low executive pay, it will be offered because a profit can be made.

Gah, the forum ate my original response. Again

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

wufwugy, your making an insane amount of assumptions in your post. Also, most of the time it doesn't appear that your backing up your arguments, your just stating them.

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Not sure if I follow on the assumptions. I haven't really stated much other than general truisms. If you would like clarification on specific examples, let me know

I also haven't been 'backing it up' because I'm usually long-winded and didn't wanna make the post into a dissertation. If you would like some backing up of specifics, let me know. Some of it will be hard since it's either generalizations from subjects like biology and social sciences in which specific studies are hard to find or indirect, or refers to epistemological and logical issues which are quite difficult to just point to a link and be like here look see evidence. I could do some though so let me know

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"Again, this isn't black or white. If I kidnapped you and your brother, held a gun to your head, told you that I was going to either kill you or him but I will allow you to choose, if after you chose yourself and I killed you, could I tell your brother that you wanted to die?"

I think this example arguably could never occur in a vacuum. What I mean is that this situation could occur randomly without any backstory seems impossible, so who knows? Your brother may have done something that lead to this situation. Now lets say he didn't: I feel its also the crux of making any sense of the world for me. I can't really argue that this situation is possible or impossible, because I really have no logical proof besides my life experience.

What it seems like your trying to say here is that some people in the world are vicious hounds, incapable of being or learning how to be good and must be governed and forced in the right direction. When put in a situation where they could "seize" power, they will do so. Thats a hell of an assumption, surely backed up by some evidence. I don't believe that there are people in the world who are incapable of doing "good" or whatever you feel are the absolute values of the world. Therefore, I can't agree with your argument, and I will agree to disagree with you.

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I wasn't making a moral statement. I was pointing out the flawed logic (a sort of faulty generalization) in your assertion that consequences of actions that are acted out = desired. There are loads of consequences to loads of things, many of which are dynamic and dillemmatic in nature, and the human genome has evolved to only be cognizant of and reactionary to a handful of them in any given circumstance. Even then, our decision making processes are quite flawed and often result in normally erratic behavior

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"Yeah, it sucks, but that's reality. We don't live in a universe where all things are dichotomies. Overlap and connectedness is tremendous, paradoxes abound, and ideological contradictions do not carry over into the physical universe that often. Decision making is hosted by currently innumerable factors, and it is not at all unnatural for a human to lament the multinational corp pay structure while still being in his best interest to purchase product from that corp."

This is absolutely not true. In this Bounty situation, if you think that best interest means paying the least amount of money, your both limited in your scope of what money is but also wrong. Lets say people did not want to purchase paper towels from a producer who paid executives high salaries. They wanted their salaries lowered x amount. They decide to boycott paper towels from Bounty until they lower the executives salaries. Now lets say this is 30 million peoples values, and they all boycott Bounty. One of Two things (maybe others?) will happen: 1. Another paper towel company will come along with low executive salaries and take all the customers. 2. Bounty will lower their executive pay and keep their business. This is what the economy is all about. People offer you goods and services that you want. If enough people want a certain kind of good or service, it will be offered. If enough people want a paper towel company that has low executive pay, it will be offered because a profit can be made.

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You seem to be equating scales. While you're right about the consequences of individual actions on a large and collusive scale, what I was referring to is the standard that without that en masse revolt, the game changes. Also, to call individuals acting in harmony for the ultimate good a rarity is overstating its frequency IMO. This type of thing is represented in Tragedy of the Commons

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

It is important to keep scale in mind and to be sure to not accidentally equate different situations. A well known example of this can be found in physics i.e. big scale = relativity model and small scale = quantum model, and attempts to explain one via analogizing the other yields no fruit even though it's all about the 'same' stuff.

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Originally Posted by Penneywize

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Again, this isn't black or white. If I kidnapped you and your brother, held a gun to your head, told you that I was going to either kill you or him but I will allow you to choose, if after you chose yourself and I killed you, could I tell your brother that you wanted to die?

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Of the multitude of ways you could have chosen to draw the analogy, this is the one you chose. nh sir.

Especially marvel at the choice of the word "I".

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At least I didn't make a Freudian tit

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

This is absolutely not true. In this Bounty situation, if you think that best interest means paying the least amount of money, your both limited in your scope of what money is but also wrong. Lets say people did not want to purchase paper towels from a producer who paid executives high salaries. They wanted their salaries lowered x amount. They decide to boycott paper towels from Bounty until they lower the executives salaries. Now lets say this is 30 million peoples values, and they all boycott Bounty. One of Two things (maybe others?) will happen: 1. Another paper towel company will come along with low executive salaries and take all the customers. 2. Bounty will lower their executive pay and keep their business. This is what the economy is all about. People offer you goods and services that you want. If enough people want a certain kind of good or service, it will be offered. If enough people want a paper towel company that has low executive pay, it will be offered because a profit can be made.

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I'ma stay out of this in general ‘cause I’m long-winded as f-k…

But there’s a couple of interesting nuggets bought up in this excerpt alone that are fun to noodle, so I will noodle.

1. The “market gets what it demands” concept is at the root of a pure free market. It’s also used to let people or entities abdicate any responsibility for what they produce and how they do it. Of course, pure free markets do not exist, nor have they ever. So the interesting piece here is whether this truly works in an adulterated state? Do people truly get the government they deserve? Should we as a culture produce whatever crap we can possible think of, and see if there are enough people who want to vote with their wallets? Should Walmart or any other organization be allowed to pursue price reduction at all costs ‘cause, well, we sure likes us some cheap sh!t? Should we mainstream porn or violence in entertainment ‘cause there are enough people willing to pay for it? Who the hell knows, and it’s a moving target. All I know is that here was a time when we sure loved us some gladiators and Christian-eating lions…

2. Which leads to the next curiosity… how does limited information and bias affect our personal implementation of “good”? Maybe Bounty payers higher executive salaries overall, and demands more of their employees accordingly? Maybe Bounties executives take on more exposure to operational risk than other organizations do? The list of unknown, bias-free variables is long. I personally think it’s insane that we pay Union Longshoremen $100K+ to move boxes around a dock. Or $60K+ with guaranteed pensions to minimally educated autoworkers assembling cars in Detroit. I’m sure they all disagree with me. And so I can choose to buy a foreign car manufactured ex-US, exposing myself to a whole other laundry list of hidden material facts.

3. Then finally… who says my definition of “good” is better than yours? I can guarantee you it’s different, and values I hold are guaranteed to compete in a zero sum game on a whole host of levels. Overly simplistic examples… I think we should tax the sh!t out of gas and that money should only be used to offset the true cost of long-term environmental consequences, not leaked away to subsidize preschools, healthcare, grandma’s retirement or Uncle Joe’s family farm. You may think that represents a horrendous burden on the economy, and the pain of job loss and reduced buying power is far worse than some yet distant environmental hokum pokum. I think abortion is a complex issue with ethics and science that are still opaque so opt for leaving the decision to the individual. Dude on the corner believes that our understanding of when life begins (or ends) will continue to evolve, and sometime in the not too distant future we’ll realize that abortion is equivalent to infanticide and should therefore treat them the same today (by not permitting either). And there’s a million other examples.

I guess my two main points are a) I’m not a really all that convinced that the madness of crowds is going to lead us to the second coming of good and b) we’re most likely going to demand centralized organizing structures (family, tribal, religious, political, community, whatever) as the power model to project our preferred balance of self gain and that of the broader system. The fact that these things are always in conflict (and will always be…) is why we have yet to find a utopian system that keeps everyone happy on a global scale.

And why we frequently devolve into not much more than a bunch of monkeys indiscriminately tossing our poo…

wufwugy thank you for the cordial reply I'll have to get back to it later after my sesh.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

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Originally Posted by Penneywize

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Again, this isn't black or white. If I kidnapped you and your brother, held a gun to your head, told you that I was going to either kill you or him but I will allow you to choose, if after you chose yourself and I killed you, could I tell your brother that you wanted to die?

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Of the multitude of ways you could have chosen to draw the analogy, this is the one you chose. nh sir.

Especially marvel at the choice of the word "I".

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At least I didn't make a Freudian tit

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Worse things have happened ;)

Anyhow, I've been reading along this discussion from the start and I've found a few things rather striking / interesting that should provide some perspective on this whole mess. I'll let ISF get his reply in, though, so as not to derail the conversation. Good discussion though guys.

Only read your first post, so sorry if any of this has already been said and responded to.

The problem with anarchy is essentially the game theory issue of collusion. Collusion only works when all sides keep their share of the bargain. If 4 companies control a market and agree to keep their prices high, then that is the best long term solution for them [disregarding a ton of intricacies about which is a better company, etc.]. If one company gets greedy and says "I will lower the price on my products so that everybody buys from me" then the other companies will have to react by lowering theirs even more which will keep driving the cost down.

In a society it is a similar concept. If you start with anarchy, a state of nature with no rules or organizations, it simply cannot be sustained and would collapse much faster than collusion in a business environment. This is because this state of nature is NOT the best solution for most people, so what would happen is the weak would get together in numbers and form groups that would create and enforce rules to protect them from being exploited by the strong. This is basically how we got into our current situation, we started in a state of nature with no rules, but then when the weak realized it sucked for them, they got together and broke away from the system which in turn brought the entire system [or lack thereof] down.


On a further point, I also think you are giving way too much credit to the rationality of most people's decision making process. People do not constantly evaluate their decisions in light of their consequences. How many people do you know with horrible attitudes that just constantly bitch about how things cannot go right, but yet never change what they do. Most people are like this to some extent. People do not litter because they do not want the river to be clean, they litter because they are lazy or just dont care. Motives cannot be deduced by just looking at results, because most people do not evaluate their actions by their results and the results that do come about are often unintended.

^^^ +1

It is important to note that lack of government does not equal lack of authority or order. If you remove government (i.e. Haiti, Afganistan) there will still be order, but it will be by organized crime, warlords and drug dealers. Also, the economy is not two mom and pop stores on a corner with the local folk being able to compare two similar services side by side and make their best economic decision. It is on a mega scale with imperfect information. For example, I want to make sure the beef I buy won't kill me and I can't be at the meat processing plant to make sure the meat company is not cutting corners in a way that endangers my life. So I pay taxes to the government to regulate the business and watch what is happening to make sure the products are save. Since it is a human institution, there are obviously flaws, kickbacks, etc., but it is better than the alternative, which is the lack of the institution.

Great thread.

For anyone else liking this thread, you could do a lot worse than read "The Empty Raincoat" by Charles Handy.

It's 18 years old but still incredibly relevant and almost prophetic. The chapter on Federalism and Twin Citizenship has particularly relevance to this thread for anyone wanting to dip in and not reas the whole thing (even though it's not that long).

Handy also notes that, if all we get to do is vote but get no further say and are not listened to then it's democracy in name only. It's actually an empty promise.

akb and Ltrain said what I tried to say, but much more clearly and succinctly. GJ guys

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Originally Posted by andy-akb

Only read your first post, so sorry if any of this has already been said and responded to.

The problem with anarchy is essentially the game theory issue of collusion. Collusion only works when all sides keep their share of the bargain. If 4 companies control a market and agree to keep their prices high, then that is the best long term solution for them [disregarding a ton of intricacies about which is a better company, etc.]. If one company gets greedy and says "I will lower the price on my products so that everybody buys from me" then the other companies will have to react by lowering theirs even more which will keep driving the cost down.

In a society it is a similar concept. If you start with anarchy, a state of nature with no rules or organizations, it simply cannot be sustained and would collapse much faster than collusion in a business environment. This is because this state of nature is NOT the best solution for most people, so what would happen is the weak would get together in numbers and form groups that would create and enforce rules to protect them from being exploited by the strong. This is basically how we got into our current situation, we started in a state of nature with no rules, but then when the weak realized it sucked for them, they got together and broke away from the system which in turn brought the entire system [or lack thereof] down.

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I'm having trouble understanding this argument. First, I'm not sure what your saying with the collusion point in regards to businesses. If your saying that companies have the ability to take advantage of consumers through collusion, I honestly disagree. I understand that monopolies are a very well defined concept of economics and that I'm really going against the grain here. But lets say we have a company that is a total monopoly, like phone service and AT&T in the 80's (right?). Lets say instead of the government getting involved, people said fuck this, I'm not going to use my phone you tyrannical piece of shit. And lets say everyone in the country did this. AT&T would go out of business right? I'm not talking about the power of collusion here, I'm talking about collective consciousness, collective values. Why in God's name are you supporting a phone service that is not serving you well? Now if people go "wait wait, fuck this their taking advantage of me. The government should stop them." I think your being a pussy about your values and your will. Today I was in the computer lab and some asshole was chit chatting about bull shit. I went up to him and said "shut up" politely. He obliged. I used my own knowledge and actions to rectify the situation. Now if I go up to the computer lab supervisor and go "enforce your authority, tell him to quiet down." I'm simply someone who can't take care of himself. I think its important that I learn how to deal with this situation than have someone else do it for me.

About the 2nd part, what do you mean by weak? Weak in what way?

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On a further point, I also think you are giving way too much credit to the rationality of most people's decision making process. People do not constantly evaluate their decisions in light of their consequences. How many people do you know with horrible attitudes that just constantly bitch about how things cannot go right, but yet never change what they do. Most people are like this to some extent. People do not litter because they do not want the river to be clean, they litter because they are lazy or just dont care. Motives cannot be deduced by just looking at results, because most people do not evaluate their actions by their results and the results that do come about are often unintended.

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Yes, I do agree with you. Some people are stupid and lazy and are bad at learning. I know tons of people with horrible attitudes who never change. But if the solution is these people need to be taken care of and told what to do, kill me now. I'd at least like to be heading in the right direction of learning and evolving as human beings rather than stagnating and becoming drones.

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Originally Posted by Ltrain

^^^ +1

It is important to note that lack of government does not equal lack of authority or order. If you remove government (i.e. Haiti, Afganistan) there will still be order, but it will be by organized crime, warlords and drug dealers. Also, the economy is not two mom and pop stores on a corner with the local folk being able to compare two similar services side by side and make their best economic decision. It is on a mega scale with imperfect information. For example, So I pay taxes to the government to regulate the business and watch what is happening to make sure the products are save. Since it is a human institution, there are obviously flaws, kickbacks, etc., but it is better than the alternative, which is the lack of the institution.

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I don't believe in absolutely no government. I understand that this thread is called "Why I am basically an Anarchist" but I really don't believe in no government at all. I am very much a pacifist. But I find a hard time arguing against having police and laws against certain crimes that are excessively terrible.

" I want to make sure the beef I buy won't kill me and I can't be at the meat processing plant to make sure the meat company is not cutting corners in a way that endangers my life."

Remember when TWA had a crash in the late 90's? What happened to the airline? It went out of business. You shouldn't buy meat from a factory that is poisoning you. Why does the government have to make sure the products are safe? Why can't this be done by a private institution of people value it so much to pay for it?

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

I wasn't making a moral statement. I was pointing out the flawed logic (a sort of faulty generalization) in your assertion that consequences of actions that are acted out = desired. There are loads of consequences to loads of things, many of which are dynamic and dillemmatic in nature, and the human genome has evolved to only be cognizant of and reactionary to a handful of them in any given circumstance. Even then, our decision making processes are quite flawed and often result in normally erratic behavior

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I'm interested in an example of this.

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You seem to be equating scales. While you're right about the consequences of individual actions on a large and collusive scale, what I was referring to is the standard that without that en masse revolt, the game changes. Also, to call individuals acting in harmony for the ultimate good a rarity is overstating its frequency IMO. This type of thing is represented in Tragedy of the Commons

Tragedy of the commons - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It is important to keep scale in mind and to be sure to not accidentally equate different situations. A well known example of this can be found in physics i.e. big scale = relativity model and small scale = quantum model, and attempts to explain one via analogizing the other yields no fruit even though it's all about the 'same' stuff.

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I enjoyed reading about the tragedy of commons. But my question is why is it impossible for the herders to have the perception that William Lloyd has? All that seems to be outlined here isn't a situation where peoples interests always creates an outcome worse off for both, but instead a very tricky situation in which it is hard to perceive what really is the right course of action. So what is government doing in this situation? Protecting the intelligent ones from the stupid ones?

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

I'm interested in an example of this.

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This really can be seen in everything. Take having a child for example. Would you say that the consequences of that decision are numerous, dynamic, and largely unknown? Sure. But would you also say that a person desired whatever consequences developed out of their decision to bear children because they chose that course of action? Probably not

How many parents do you think are cognizant of the probability of their kid being born with one of many unknown disorders, or dying prematurely in an accident, or not being that skilled at life, or that their own parenting isn't as good as they figure it will be? I see tremendous consequences to the decision to bear children that are neither predictable nor desired, and this is how it is for just about everything.

If you're caught up on my usage of the word 'evolution', what I should say is that the theory of evolution doesn't suggest that organisms develop rationality or any form of categorical skill or perception, but that organisms develop tools which allow them to utilize their environment better than the competition. This theory predicts that organisms would therefore have flawed perceptions and tools in literally every area imaginable. Nature doesn't 'care' about doing things right, it 'cares' about simply being better than the competition, and that's all

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I enjoyed reading about the tragedy of commons. But my question is why is it impossible for the herders to have the perception that William Lloyd has? All that seems to be outlined here isn't a situation where peoples interests always creates an outcome worse off for both, but instead a very tricky situation in which it is hard to perceive what really is the right course of action.

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It's not that it's impossible, but that it's a social paradigm which seems unavoidable for our species. It doesn't HAVE to be this way, it just IS this way. We're kinda stuck within our limitations, and have to work with what we got. While it is hypothetically possible for the entire community to be on some order of enlightenment, that's just not how our society works at this point, and the data has shown that the better results in mitigating our limitations comes out of 'artificial' regulation

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So what is government doing in this situation? Protecting the intelligent ones from the stupid ones?

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Well, the purpose of governance here would be to mitigate the effects to the best benefit of the society. This would take a very very good governing system made up of the people and for the people (not what the system in the US is evolving into). The point isn't about what should be done or what is right, but with how things work. And the way things work in human civilization is that there are numerous built in exploits based on actions that humans naturally gravitate towards which could be partially mitigated by a good regulatory structure.

Take a very powerful virus for example. We've all heard about how a virus can be so powerful that it kills itself off by killing its hosts at a quicker rate than its ability to transmit to another host. Now imagine if this virus was individually conscious and were able to artificially alter their consumption and transmission rates in a way that their entire civilization doesn't annihilate itself. They would have to do this via some form of regulatory system that made the virus act in a collective manner because without that regulation they will naturally gravitate towards consuming beyond capacity.

It's the same for humans. The purpose of governance is to counteract our indigenous flaws and enhance our indigenous strengths. This can, and is often, misused, and government is on the order of totalitarian. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. It's no coincidence that the happiest societies on the planet are also the most socialist i.e. have the government made up of mostly its people and regulates to value the community as a whole

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

I don't believe in absolutely no government. I understand that this thread is called "Why I am basically an Anarchist" but I really don't believe in no government at all. I am very much a pacifist. But I find a hard time arguing against having police and laws against certain crimes that are excessively terrible.

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Which ones are excessively terrible? What country's moralities are we using to decide these? After we've decided on them (for the sake of the argument, let's say we can), doesn't that signal that everything else is fair game? I don't know what the process was from the first oral or written laws to the ones we have today, but looking at magna carta it seems quite a bit more lightweight than current legislation. I bet that happened because they had to be amended and amended since people figured out new ways to circumvent them and commit new kinds of crimes. The times before laws and regulations were called the dark ages. Maybe I'm wrong but I think our modern society enjoys some benefits over those times.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

But would you also say that a person desired whatever consequences developed out of their decision to bear children because they chose that course of action? Probably not

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Actually, I would say yes. Maybe I wouldn't use the word desire, but to say they did not "want" those consequences I feel would be wrong. If by desire we mean consciously verbalized to themselves they they did not want "X" consequence of having a child, then of course they probably did not desire it. But to me, most people do not have the perspective to understand what they need, want, and feel, and I'd like to push them in a direction of better understanding that.

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Nature doesn't 'care' about doing things right, it 'cares' about simply being better than the competition, and that's all

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I think this is very hard to factually argue either way, but I'll agree to disagree on this point.

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It's not that it's impossible, but that it's a social paradigm which seems unavoidable for our species. It doesn't HAVE to be this way, it just IS this way. We're kinda stuck within our limitations, and have to work with what we got. While it is hypothetically possible for the entire community to be on some order of enlightenment, that's just not how our society works at this point, and the data has shown that the better results in mitigating our limitations comes out of 'artificial' regulation

Well, the purpose of governance here would be to mitigate the effects to the best benefit of the society. This would take a very very good governing system made up of the people and for the people (not what the system in the US is evolving into). The point isn't about what should be done or what is right, but with how things work. And the way things work in human civilization is that there are numerous built in exploits based on actions that humans naturally gravitate towards which could be partially mitigated by a good regulatory structure.

Take a very powerful virus for example. We've all heard about how a virus can be so powerful that it kills itself off by killing its hosts at a quicker rate than its ability to transmit to another host. Now imagine if this virus was individually conscious and were able to artificially alter their consumption and transmission rates in a way that their entire civilization doesn't annihilate itself. They would have to do this via some form of regulatory system that made the virus act in a collective manner because without that regulation they will naturally gravitate towards consuming beyond capacity.

It's the same for humans. The purpose of governance is to counteract our indigenous flaws and enhance our indigenous strengths. This can, and is often, misused, and government is on the order of totalitarian. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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I think this was a very well structured argument and I can't really say I disagree with it. My question would be is it the government that truly needs to do this? Can a private organization do many of the things that you believe the government should be doing?

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It's no coincidence that the happiest societies on the planet are also the most socialist i.e. have the government made up of mostly its people and regulates to value the community as a whole

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I think this is where I radically differ from a lot of people: I don't think the fact that people are happy is necessarily a good thing. If a child throws a tantrum every time he doesn't get fed chocolate, so his mother gives him chocolate any time he wants, the kid will probably be happy given most scales. To me, happiness is something that is earned, not given. I would'nt want someone to be happy if they were not the ones creating it through a high level of understanding. Fuck, I'm sure a homeless man would be happy if he won 7 million dollars, but I don't think anyone is arguing this is something that is fantastic and should be praised. If you do think this, again, I'll agree to disagree.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

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Nature doesn't 'care' about doing things right, it 'cares' about simply being better than the competition, and that's all

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I think this is very hard to factually argue either way, but I'll agree to disagree on this point.

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I think, judging by the quotes, wuf meant that as an analogy. Nature doesn't "want" anything, it just is. To describe the processes of evolution using deliberate purposefulness as an analogy can be an easier way to discuss them. This is simply "survival of the fittest", the ones with beneficial traits tend to survive and prosper over ones without them, making it seem like nature wanted that to happen. This has very vividly been explained by evolution theory, and I don't think there's much disagreement about it in the scientific community.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

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It's no coincidence that the happiest societies on the planet are also the most socialist i.e. have the government made up of mostly its people and regulates to value the community as a whole

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I think this is where I radically differ from a lot of people: I don't think the fact that people are happy is necessarily a good thing. If a child throws a tantrum every time he doesn't get fed chocolate, so his mother gives him chocolate any time he wants, the kid will probably be happy given most scales. To me, happiness is something that is earned, not given. I would'nt want someone to be happy if they were not the ones creating it through a high level of understanding. Fuck, I'm sure a homeless man would be happy if he won 7 million dollars, but I don't think anyone is arguing this is something that is fantastic and should be praised. If you do think this, again, I'll agree to disagree.

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You seem to equate happiness with material possessions and wealth, personally I disagree with this notion strongly. If you go to some of the poorest areas on the planet, for example Africa, India or the slums of Manila, you'll notice a striking thing; people who live with $2 a day are generally happy and able to enjoy their lives, they're helpful and willing to share from the very little they have. Compare this to upper class westerners with 10 times more material wealth than they'll ever need and going to therapy twice a week because of stress and depression. Anecdotal and corny, yes, but maybe something to consider.

Personally I think everyone should be able to be happy, to have basic security, education, healthcare and a fair standard of living, in fact these should be the first and foremost priority of any society.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

Actually, I would say yes. Maybe I wouldn't use the word desire, but to say they did not "want" those consequences I feel would be wrong. If by desire we mean consciously verbalized to themselves they they did not want "X" consequence of having a child, then of course they probably did not desire it. But to me, most people do not have the perspective to understand what they need, want, and feel, and I'd like to push them in a direction of better understanding that.

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Okay, it appears that there is a disconnect of semantics. Even if there isn't, I can't really go much further without a clear definition of what we're discussing.

What I would like to say though is this: I want to have a wife, but I also don't want to have a wife. I want to have a family, but I also don't want a family. There are many things that I want, but many of them do not support each other, and I could go to great length explaining the reasons and pros/cons for my desires, yet I still have little clue as to what I 'really want' with regards to these decisions.

Now, since I clearly have conflicting desires, the decisions I make in these areas will provide me with conflicting feelings, but does that mean that I wanted those feelings and consequences? It doesn't, it means that I compromised for what I considered the greater good. Or it could mean that I just picked a decision and ran with it. It could mean a lot of things

On top of that, the argument that I originally thought you're making (now I'm beginning to think it's a little different) assumed complete information about the consequences of our actions. It's one thing to work with the information you have, but it's an entirely different thing to think that the information you have = all information; and really that was what I was originally arguing, even though I may have misinterpreted and accidentally straw manned your position

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I think this is very hard to factually argue either way, but I'll agree to disagree on this point.

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Within the context of biology, what I said is correct, especially from an evolutionary perspective. You cannot find a single complex biological organism on the planet that is made 'right' or 'designed optimally' or what have you. The phylogenic tree is made up entirely of genes that evolved only enough to survive. For example: as great as the human eye is, it's actually a shoddy piece of equipment with egregious flaws that cause assloads of problems, and its evolutionary path is nonsensical from an engineer's perspective.

Within the context of biology, which is absolutely relevant to anything about human behavior (which is basically a subset of biology, including other sciences), what we are is merely just how adapted our genes have been to our environments. Our entirely genome is a sort of vestigial organism. Now, I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'right', but if you mean it in an abstract sense of how to optimally engage in something, biology doesn't operate under that paradigm

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I think this was a very well structured argument and I can't really say I disagree with it. My question would be is it the government that truly needs to do this? Can a private organization do many of the things that you believe the government should be doing?

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I'm glad you said this because it ties into a very important misunderstanding of government/regulation/public sector/etc.

Yes, the private organization can regulate, and it does, a lot. The problem with governance exclusively coming from a private organization (special interest) is that it governs in its own best interest, not the populous' best interests. Monarchies and corporatocracies and dictatorships and many others are all governments from the private sector. They are not made up of the people and are not for the benefit of the people, but instead the society is ran by the special individual for their special interests. In these kinds of governments the public sector is very weak. The populous has little power; they can revolt all they want but Supreme Leader Khamenei and the Guardian Council are the ruling private interest, and they naturally will do what they want most, and thus you have a totalitarian theocracy waterlogged in oppression and inhumanities called Iran

Or you could have places like Norway and Sweden which have governments with very strong public sector and public interests which means that the population as a whole benefits, and this directly benefits the individual within the public. Things like higher education, health care, basic shelter and food for all massively benefit the public but don't do much for the private/wealthy. This is seen simply by low crime rates, high literacy rates, etc.

However, private interests are very important for society as a whole. An example is the Federal Reserve, it's privatized and that's a damn good thing too because if monetary policy became whim to Congress then we're fucking fucked. But the Fed does not go without oversight and regulation from the public sector. It is currently quite weak oversight and regulation and we've actually seen this great void of public interests in the Fed and subsequently Wall Street jackknife the US public and global economy

Look at it this way. Modern society has a pretty great consumer kitchen appliance setup. We get workable and relatively affordable product from the private industry, the private industry makes nice profit, and the government regulates consumer protections to a pretty great degree. Our skillets aren't catching on fire, our toasters aren't electrocuting us, and our knives are not chipping off into our food. Now, while private industry does have some degree of self-correction due to competition, it's not nearly as much as they tell us, and history is littered with examples of private industry making a cash grab with a faulty product or not testing product well then lo n behold its consumers get cancer in 15 years.

Private industry is good at making a product and a profit, but they're not good at regulating themselves to make sure that product is safe because if they did they would make lower or negative profit. Definitively, private industry is not self-regulatory; that's why we need public sector governance.

When was the last time you heard of somebody in the US who died because of a contaminated product he purchased at the store? It happens, but do you also remember the ginormous backlash? Well, the extremely low numbers of problems with our food and drug products and the ginormous backlash with most serious problems is entirely because of government agencies like the FDA which are meant to be ran by the public, for the public. I mean we have shitload of agencies working for the public. The FBI, for one. Take a look at the history of serial killers or organized crime. Before the FBI and other agencies were well-established, those two things were pretty much mainstays. FBI beat the shit out of the Mob, which was its own authoritarian pseudo-regime, and it's now virtually impossible to be a successful serial killer due to public agencies like the FBI. These public agencies can be corrupted just like anything, but that's a different issue

Imagine a US without the FDA. A US where somebody could make a killing (literally) by putting Fen-Phen back on the market then running off with their moneybags when everybody realizes they got fucked. A US where a farmer can re-brand DDT and start using that because he needs to make ends meet.

They say in Thailand, if you go to McDonalds, don't eat the lettuce because their agricultural industry has such little oversight that it's not uncommon to get food poisoning from a simple vegetable. I'm very glad I live in a society with some public sector governance

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I think this is where I radically differ from a lot of people: I don't think the fact that people are happy is necessarily a good thing. If a child throws a tantrum every time he doesn't get fed chocolate, so his mother gives him chocolate any time he wants, the kid will probably be happy given most scales. To me, happiness is something that is earned, not given. I would'nt want someone to be happy if they were not the ones creating it through a high level of understanding. Fuck, I'm sure a homeless man would be happy if he won 7 million dollars, but I don't think anyone is arguing this is something that is fantastic and should be praised. If you do think this, again, I'll agree to disagree.

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I don't disagree with most of this, but you also can't compare happiness on the individual level with happiness of a society. The latter is a fantastic way to evaluate how well a society is running, and the former doesn't represent that at all

It's also not about benefiting individuals directly, but benefiting the populous which itself indirectly benefits the individuals who collectively make up the populous.

While I agree that happiness how you have described it isn't really something that anybody 'deserves', I do wholeheartedly believe that happiness on the collective level is a basic human right. Or at least the absence of unhappiness. I'm not interested in making the individual happy by giving him what he wants, I'm interested in making the collective happy by providing them with equal opportunity to make their lives what they want. Also, even though we've been told that a society ran by the special interests is what benefits equality the most, that notion becomes ridiculous if you simply just look up the definitions of 'special' and 'equal'

wuf your post was very long and ill just respond to things that I feel like i strongly disagreed.

"Yes, the private organization can regulate, and it does, a lot. The problem with governance exclusively coming from a private organization (special interest) is that it governs in its own best interest, not the populous' best interests."

Its own best interests better damn be the populous' best interest or they aren't getting any of populous' money. Why pay an organization to do something that you don't support? Oh right, because its the law to pay the government tax money to do x,y, and z, much of which I don't support. It seems to me the simply doing whatever it is is going to make the organization money should be what the people who are giving that money to the organization value.

"What I would like to say though is this: I want to have a wife, but I also don't want to have a wife. I want to have a family, but I also don't want a family. There are many things that I want, but many of them do not support each other, and I could go to great length explaining the reasons and pros/cons for my desires, yet I still have little clue as to what I 'really want' with regards to these decisions."

I think I went too far from my original argument with the post that this was commenting on. All I'm saying is I don't think something should happen for the benefit or non-benefit of an individual unless that individual performed the actions that created those consequences. If you don't have a family, maybe your performing the correct actions and its a matter of time. Maybe your too much of an asshole to ever get a wife who wants a family. I don't think you should get a family just because you want one.

"While I agree that happiness how you have described it isn't really something that anybody 'deserves', I do wholeheartedly believe that happiness on the collective level is a basic human right"

So we will just agree to disagree here. I don't believe that.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

wuf your post was very long and ill just respond to things that I feel like i strongly disagreed.

"Yes, the private organization can regulate, and it does, a lot. The problem with governance exclusively coming from a private organization (special interest) is that it governs in its own best interest, not the populous' best interests."

Its own best interests better damn be the populous' best interest or they aren't getting any of populous' money.

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This is refuted by the myriads of oppressed peoples governed by special interests. Also, just take the whole housing crisis as an example. This entire thing is a fantastic example of special interests exploiting the system and screwing the populous. Part of how the banks did this was by pretending to give the public something they valued. As it turns out, it was a lie, and in fact it was such a lie that we got double fucked by having to support those very same special interests in order to keep the entire system from collapsing. They basically ran off with our money then came back with big ass guns they bought with our money telling us that they need more money and on top of that that which we bought from them systematically lost so much value as to put us into more negative territory than if we'd never bought it in the first place

The Crisis of 08 and the Great Recession are extremely great examples of how private interests exploit the system when allowed unregulated reign.

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Why pay an organization to do something that you don't support? Oh right, because its the law to pay the government tax money to do x,y, and z, much of which I don't support

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There's a lot the government does that I disagree with a ton, but you're conflating issues and throwing the baby out with the bathwater by claiming that government doing something wrong = government wrong

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It seems to me the simply doing whatever it is is going to make the organization money should be what the people who are giving that money to the organization value.

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And this is how private industry operates, and it fucks a whole lot of people over due to exacerbating inequalities. We live in a world with a billion people starving everyday, yet there is more than ample supply to feed them. Following the money and private interests will reveal why these people live on less than 1$ a day.

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"What I would like to say though is this: I want to have a wife, but I also don't want to have a wife. I want to have a family, but I also don't want a family. There are many things that I want, but many of them do not support each other, and I could go to great length explaining the reasons and pros/cons for my desires, yet I still have little clue as to what I 'really want' with regards to these decisions."

I think I went too far from my original argument with the post that this was commenting on. All I'm saying is I don't think something should happen for the benefit or non-benefit of an individual unless that individual performed the actions that created those consequences.

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I completely agree, yet the fucked up thing is that reality itself is geared towards inequality, and not regulating this creates a social paradigm where some humans are born into rich upper class and others are born in Liberia. It is disingenuous to suggest that people should not get things they don't deserve yet support a perpetuation of a society that distributes resources unequally thus giving people things they don't deserve.

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So we will just agree to disagree here. I don't believe that.

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What, then, is your starting point, your most basic of assumptions with regards to humanity and civilization.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

Its own best interests better damn be the populous' best interest or they aren't getting any of populous' money. Why pay an organization to do something that you don't support? Oh right, because its the law to pay the government tax money to do x,y, and z, much of which I don't support. It seems to me the simply doing whatever it is is going to make the organization money should be what the people who are giving that money to the organization value.

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Something not being in direct conflict with populous' interests is not synonymous to it being in their best interests. By definition, a company's raison d'etre is to create value for shareholders, not to make the population happy. I don't care how many times the fantasies of trickle-down effects are mentioned in the media. If a CEO does not use any and all means necessary and allowed by law to improve the company's performance, he gets sacked. If there's less regulation, who wouldn't use the extra tools available? Moral and public interest values only play into the picture on the level that is absolutely necessary (to not lose ALL customers, or to break any laws where sanctions might jeopardize their business). Just because someone sells a product or a service that has demand, doesn't mean their behavior is in the best interests of the population.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

So we will just agree to disagree here. I don't believe that.

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Maybe I'm completely off-base here and I don't mean this as offensive, but it sounds to me like what you're advocating is a form of social darwinism where only the strong survive and the weak are weeded out. A society that doesn't aim for common interests, but encourages self interests and inequality. If this is the case, yes, we disagree fundamentally, and I would argue that "you" are the reason we need regulation.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

This is refuted by the myriads of oppressed peoples governed by special interests. Also, just take the whole housing crisis as an example. This entire thing is a fantastic example of special interests exploiting the system and screwing the populous. Part of how the banks did this was by pretending to give the public something they valued. As it turns out, it was a lie, and in fact it was such a lie that we got double fucked by having to support those very same special interests in order to keep the entire system from collapsing. They basically ran off with our money then came back with big ass guns they bought with our money telling us that they need more money and on top of that that which we bought from them systematically lost so much value as to put us into more negative territory than if we'd never bought it in the first place

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I think this is a fantastic victimization of the American people. Banks pretended to give the public something of value? Thats the problem? The problem is that people got loans they could not pay. How they ended up getting those loans or why they decided to is their responsibility. If you feel like the populous can be that easily manipulated and shouldn't be responsible for making decisions like whether or not they can afford "x" house, than I totally understand why you would think the government is a total necessity.

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And this is how private industry operates, and it fucks a whole lot of people over due to exacerbating inequalities. We live in a world with a billion people starving everyday, yet there is more than ample supply to feed them. Following the money and private interests will reveal why these people live on less than 1$ a day.

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I'm really glad you brought this point up because I think its a great example of the collective results of peoples values. I think the reason people are starving everyday is because other people don't value everyone in the world having enough food to eat. Let me ask you this: Do you donate money to a fund or organization that in some way helps create a world where everyone has enough to eat? Maybe you do, and thats great. Do you work for an organization that does that? I assume no but then again I wouldn't expect a lot of people to.

What are these "exacerbating inequalities" you speak of? If your referring to money: How do you think the CEO of Big Screen TV's got rich? It's because people not only value Big Screen TV's, they valued the producers of those big screen TV, they valued the CEO. If they were totally ignorant about it, I just don't see why we should reward their idiocy. Money means a shitload more than people think it does. Its not some evil symbol. Money is a direct representation of your values. i.e. I chose to spend a lot of money on clothes, because I value clothes. A man decides to devout his time and give his money to a church because he values the church. Now to say that a man does not give his time and effort to putting food on a starving mans plate, but he does value it? That doesn't make any sense to me. The solution to world hunger is in the hands of the people. Now lets say some rich people do not care that others that are starving are fed: Do we force them to support this cause?

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I completely agree, yet the fucked up thing is that reality itself is geared towards inequality, and not regulating this creates a social paradigm where some humans are born into rich upper class and others are born in Liberia. It is disingenuous to suggest that people should not get things they don't deserve yet support a perpetuation of a society that distributes resources unequally thus giving people things they don't deserve.

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Yes I agree. Why should Wal-Mart pay massive taxes to support people who have not earned as much money by giving them tax refunds? Please explain where resources are being unequally distributed, and I'll tell you my likely answer to your response before hand so we aren't wasting any time. I am betting that this "inequal distribution," the people being "exploited," are responsible for their exploitation. Tell me that they did not make the decisions that created this "inequality."

If you value a society that doesn't have a rich upper class because some people are born into it to inherit riches, I can think of many ways without a government you can help make this happen. One would be to shop at all Mom and Pop stores. And don't just choose one, choose a multitude of them. If you buy one brand of paper towels one day, by a different one the other day. Distribute the wealth.

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How they ended up getting those loans or why they decided to is their responsibility.

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no, no, no. It is a shared responsibility. A woman gets pregnant and cant support the baby on her own, and you are laying 100% of the blame on her for being an irresponsible whore.

People having loans that they cant pay back is not only bad for the borrowers, but for the lenders as well. And then it becomes bad for everyone because the lenders are "too big to fail." So now a select few get no punishment, get to keep their jobs, their private jets, their mansions, while the borrower has his house foreclosed and the rest of the population gets ass fucked and has to pony up the tax dollars to fix the catastrophe. Now can you see how the public gets fucked, while the special interests get a pass, yet both are responsible?

I think our main disagreement comes from level of cause you put on the individual's shoulders vs the level of cause I put on the system's shoulders

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

I think this is a fantastic victimization of the American people. Banks pretended to give the public something of value? Thats the problem? The problem is that people got loans they could not pay. How they ended up getting those loans or why they decided to is their responsibility. If you feel like the populous can be that easily manipulated and shouldn't be responsible for making decisions like whether or not they can afford "x" house, than I totally understand why you would think the government is a total necessity.

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That isn't quite how it went down. The system itself worked against the populous, and this system was devised by the banks. There was legit worth in those products for the time, and the people buying them couldn't not pay them because the system told them that the value of their purchase was high enough. Some of this was directly predatory lies from the banks, others was cascading effects based on how economics works.

Later, you say that money has value, but do you realize that money is the exact same thing as the products of the housing bubble? If someday the USD were to enter into hyperinflation and all your money becomes as valuable as the paper its written on, am I allowed to come over and tell you that it was your mistake to not have expert level understanding of finances, economics, political science, and the inter-workings of the current political governing bodies in order to see this coming so you could have exchanged your USD for some other currency or commodity?

Maybe you would say 'yes', but do you think it is reasonable to think that the population as a whole could actually operate on that level? One of the reasons that we actually even have a working civilization is hierarchy. Humans are not different than any other animals, you can't expect those lower on the hierarchy to be as skilled or knowledgeable or well-off as those higher up. It appears that you want the entire hive of worker bees to be responsible for being queen bees, but if that actually happened then the hive would cease to exist because the civilization would not function.

The housing bubble was a systematic exploitation of the populous. Just like we're told that in several years time the USD will have such and such value, we were told by the same people that housing prices were skyrocketing so much and were going to do for so long that they would pay for themselves, would pay for retirement.

The working class of the US did not buy all these homes because they're stupid, they bought them because they heard the investment was TREMENDOUS, they went to the banking authorities (the people who actually know about this shit, right) and were told that the investment was TREMENDOUS and the banks were happy to lend the money because the return was going to be more than ample to pay it off, and would be just that excellent. These are average working class folk who do not understand the intricacies of economics and really shouldn't be expected to on some level given that their role in society is different. Just like how you don't expect a banker to know how to install a plumbing system or write code for software, you can't expect the working class to know the ins and outs of the economic system.

On top of that, just looking at what the banks did with the loans shows that they had no intention for them to retain value, yet this was all in secret. They were all essentially shoved into a vault, no oversight to stop this, and when the system came crashing down it was structured in such a way that the populous had to pay for it again. I mean dude, none of these loans didn't have tremendous value at the time. It was only when the bubble that the banks purposely created could no longer be supported by the vault that it burst and everything began losing its manufactured value. Also, finances and economics is largely about manufactured value. The entire system itself does not operate so much on real value like many would like to think, but on inflating or deflating particular numbers in order to create a desired effect. Finances is largely a numbers manipulation game, and it goes wrong when the numbers are manipulated to screw some people like they were since the passage of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 which allowed for the system to support a housing bubble

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I'm really glad you brought this point up because I think its a great example of the collective results of peoples values. I think the reason people are starving everyday is because other people don't value everyone in the world having enough food to eat. Let me ask you this: Do you donate money to a fund or organization that in some way helps create a world where everyone has enough to eat? Maybe you do, and thats great. Do you work for an organization that does that? I assume no but then again I wouldn't expect a lot of people to.

What are these "exacerbating inequalities" you speak of? If your referring to money: How do you think the CEO of Big Screen TV's got rich? It's because people not only value Big Screen TV's, they valued the producers of those big screen TV, they valued the CEO. If they were totally ignorant about it, I just don't see why we should reward their idiocy. Money means a shitload more than people think it does. Its not some evil symbol. Money is a direct representation of your values. i.e. I chose to spend a lot of money on clothes, because I value clothes. A man decides to devout his time and give his money to a church because he values the church. Now to say that a man does not give his time and effort to putting food on a starving mans plate, but he does value it? That doesn't make any sense to me. The solution to world hunger is in the hands of the people. Now lets say some rich people do not care that others that are starving are fed: Do we force them to support this cause?

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I'd rather not get into much of this other than say: you're assuming it's reasonable to expect populations to work in reasoned harmony based in arbitrary values (which itself is a contradiction). While that's a nice assumption, it's just not how reality works. If you want a society that reflects people's ability to make value judgments you'll find a pretty poorly functioning society

I don't really disagree with you under a certain kind of hypothetical, but my contention is purely from the pragmatic perspective of what happens in real society.

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Yes I agree. Why should Wal-Mart pay massive taxes to support people who have not earned as much money by giving them tax refunds? Please explain where resources are being unequally distributed, and I'll tell you my likely answer to your response before hand so we aren't wasting any time. I am betting that this "inequal distribution," the people being "exploited," are responsible for their exploitation. Tell me that they did not make the decisions that created this "inequality."

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Are you arguing that resources are not distributed unequally? Maybe look at what historians believe to be the primary cause of war.....

Is there no unequal distribution of resources between a child born to Warren Buffet vs a child born to a Zimbabwean? How about between a child born mentally gifted vs a child born with downs? How about the difference between an ISF who came across the path of online poker and now makes tons of money vs a random person who, per chance, never really came across online poker and statistically ended up in a 9-5er the majority of the time?

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If you value a society that doesn't have a rich upper class because some people are born into it to inherit riches, I can think of many ways without a government you can help make this happen. One would be to shop at all Mom and Pop stores. And don't just choose one, choose a multitude of them. If you buy one brand of paper towels one day, by a different one the other day. Distribute the wealth.

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This type of thing does not happen on the large scale of populations. On the individual level it's nice, but individual != population. And it's not that a collective of individuals cannot act in harmony this way, but that that's just not how the entirely different paradigm of society on the level of populations works. Just like how I initially explained why anarchy does not work; it's not that it's hypothetically impossible, but that it doesn't work on a systematic level for humankind

And I didn't say I didn't value a society without a rich upper class. Any well-functioning society has hierarchy which involves the wealthy.

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Originally Posted by IowaSkinsFan

I'm having trouble understanding this argument. First, I'm not sure what your saying with the collusion point in regards to businesses. If your saying that companies have the ability to take advantage of consumers through collusion, I honestly disagree. I understand that monopolies are a very well defined concept of economics and that I'm really going against the grain here. But lets say we have a company that is a total monopoly, like phone service and AT&T in the 80's (right?). Lets say instead of the government getting involved, people said fuck this, I'm not going to use my phone you tyrannical piece of shit. And lets say everyone in the country did this. AT&T would go out of business right? I'm not talking about the power of collusion here, I'm talking about collective consciousness, collective values. Why in God's name are you supporting a phone service that is not serving you well? Now if people go "wait wait, fuck this their taking advantage of me.

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Not to come across like a complete asshole, but the reason monopolies are frowned upon is not because they violate perceived "desired values" but because of the massive inefficiency and waste they create by eliminating competition. Its along the same lines as your stealing dialogue earlier; if I have to worry about protecting myself from stealing, Im wasting resources i could use to develop more resources. If a monopoly exists and controls all pricing, then not only are you paying more for a good but the good usually is inferior to what it would have been had there not been a monopoly in the first place. There's a legitimate reason why anti-trust laws exist. Also, if im not mistaken, I believe the only reason Apple is still in business is because Microsoft was forced to "invest" in the company to sustain their "competition" with Apple.

Sorry for the random tangent,

Looking forward to further discussion

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Originally Posted by CoccoBill

Maybe I'm completely off-base here and I don't mean this as offensive, but it sounds to me like what you're advocating is a form of social darwinism where only the strong survive and the weak are weeded out. A society that doesn't aim for common interests, but encourages self interests and inequality. If this is the case, yes, we disagree fundamentally, and I would argue that "you" are the reason we need regulation.

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I would like to point out what I think is a disconnect which emanates from the flaw in approaching reality ideologically. It's kinda like I would say that Libertarianism and Liberalism want the exact same things fundamentally, but the former approaches it in a way that only works in a magical Utopia, while the latter tends to use an approach that has some basis in how reality works.

I think what ISF is saying is that the optimal way to achieve the optimal society is for the individuals within that society to have the right values. My problem with this is not that it doesn't make sense on some level, but that it just doesn't work given social and biological realities. On top of that, and I think this is how you've read it, this type of ideal would most likely effect into social Darwinism down the road. Likewise, it's not that Libertarians have bad ideals (they have great ideals), they just don't know how to implement them in such a way that the eventual effects are not some form of Oligarchy.

I think another disconnect in this argument comes from not understanding evolution. It appears to be a common trend among humans for us to think that we're some kind of exceptional organism with distinguished qualities. This couldn't be further from the truth. As I'm sure you know, everything we are exists because it was on some order a more efficient surviver than the competition. This doesn't create optimization, it creates adaptability, and that idea alone sets off all kinds of dillemmatic alarms (has to do with how specialization and generalization detract from each other beyond a certain point). Biology itself is not well suited (if at all) for idealistic optimization, but with moderating the environment in such a way that works best with the adaptations of each particular organism.

When I first started becoming interested in philosophy about a decade ago, I found that I hated it and ended up shoving it aside, but years later I realized that the reason for this hatred was because so many 'philosophers' make the egregious mistake of pretending that we live in a world where idealism provides explanation. It does not, and once I realized that, philosophy became a much more enjoyable subject for me.

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Originally Posted by wufwugy

Later, you say that money has value, but do you realize that money is the exact same thing as the products of the housing bubble? If someday the USD were to enter into hyperinflation and all your money becomes as valuable as the paper its written on, am I allowed to come over and tell you that it was your mistake to not have expert level understanding of finances, economics, political science, and the inter-workings of the current political governing bodies in order to see this coming so you could have exchanged your USD for some other currency or commodity?

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But the level of complexity is nowhere near the same. Expecting someone to predict long-term currency volatility is not in same neighborhood as expecting somebody to think through some very basic, financial decisions before they commit to a massive, discretionary obligation. Whether someone thought leveraging something they couldn't qualify for if they had to prove their income, could only afford to contribute 2-3% of their own money to, and could only justify the decision on the bet that the value will increase ahead of their need to take out another loan are not issues that go over the heads of the populous. They chose to do it anyway because of our fundamental cultural character trait of material greed.

I believe you'll argue (because you have previously) that you cannot fault the middle class for purusing a standard of living beyond their means, and that that absolves (or at least, justifies) their self-destructive behaviors associated with debt, lack of savings and gross over-leverage. We can argue that point separately, but if you are correct, then I would argue that that represents a fatal flaw in our manifestation of a middle class, and one that contributes as much as anything to the inability of that middle class to self sustain. It also is frequently the key factor that determines who progresses to the next economic level -- and barring lottery winnings, inheritance and other outliers, it's frequently those who shun non-productive leverage, living and investing within their means, and purusing productive risk who make it.

I think I'm done making incredibly long posts in this thread, but thank you wufwugy, you really shed some light on a viewpoint I didn't understand that much.

Totally agree with your post sarbox.

Article that pisses me off that could stir some discussion. Mixed blessing: credit card reform may shock some - Yahoo! Finance

Outside of its use as a source of finance for small business, consumer credit represents one of the most non-productive leveraging factors in our economy. IMHO, one of the best possible outcomes from this trip to the economic brink will be the significant tightening of individual credit -- especially unsecured lines such as credit cards -- and subordinated secured lines such as 2nd and 3rd mortgages. Although I'm skeptical b/c we have such a short collective memory (i.e. people on the west coast conveniently forgot the housing crash of the early 90s that took the best part of a decade to recover from), I'm encouraged when I read stories about how people are electing 15 yr mortgages instead of 30, forgoing elective vacations and new car leases to pay down credit card debt and banks are declining to extend new lines of consumer credit at record levels.

The past two decades were one hell of an over-consumption party folks, and the hangover's gonna suck ass. It will force structural changes w/in the broader economy, but if we actually remember some sh!t this time, we could come away from all this with some improved habits.

I lost track of this thread in the changeover:

ISF: Looking at the different posts I think what you are struggling with is the application of the ideal to the reality of the situation. Values such as individualism, choice, personal responsibility, personal freedom etc. are good values for an individual and for a society to strive to achieve. However, the reality of applying these values to scale is where you start to have problems. These values can be applied very easily to say, rural Kansas, because in a town of 6,000 people, with vast stretches of land between each house and the need for families to work together and carry multiple hats (businessman, firefighter, caretaker), you need the value of individualism and personal responsibility to thrive in daily life more than you need governmental organization. However, if you scale up to any major metropolitan area, these values change. Populations are more dense, the cost of living is higher and you have to earn more money and specialize in order to maintain or increase your standard of living. The scale of required actions by the populace is on a greater scale, so collective actions must be taken (i.e., republics or representative bodies). Also, you do not know the people you interract with everyday so group identification becomes more important (ethnic, socioeconomic). It is not that invidualism or personal responsibility are not applicable, but they are not as important as a collectively structured society or learning how to adapt and navigate through people and collective groups. To use a business analogy, with less people in a business, the business can make decisions faster with more individual input. But with more people, the agency cost is greater and individual input is diminished to the benefit of the collective goal.

I have not read this whole thread. My only comment is a support of wufwugys objection to the idea that there is a correlation between what humans want and what humans get.

The idea is objectionable because humans want several things at the same time, and this creates dilemmas. Humans are contradictory by nature, at least some of us. The statement "we get what we want" is false given the above. If a person wants to contribute to a healthier natural environment and also wants to be able to drive a car - he simply cant get both of his wants. At least not until energy is created 100 % clean.

P.S

Would laws and government be forcefully banned in an anarchial society? Who would uphold the unlawfulness.