[QUOTE=ForumBot]
I have not. I have concluded that an individual should have the right to live his life free from the coercion of others and to be able to choose to give up some liberty for security. I would choose this, and I expect the overwhelming majority would make this same choice. I argue this choice does not exist at present date because of the way we recognize the legitimacy of governing bodies.
[/QUOTE]
Then come up with a better system. The one you’ve talked about in this thread is not only unspeakably stupid, it is completely unfeasible.
Governments exist as an organized way of controlling the sovereignty and interests of a society, societies have long decided that the best way to manage their own affairs is to have a given area that is “their sovereign territory.” Recognized as such by other states.
There’s definitely of course, nomadic groups and there have been throughout history. However even in the context of nomadic groups or earlier hunter-gatherer tribes we can assume there was this concept of “societally owned areas.” We can assume this because animals of all type exhibit this sort of behavior, wolf packs stake out a territory that is more or less theirs, and they don’t share it. They may not have a system of government or clearly defined political borders, but they have an area that is “theirs” as a society of wolves and they will defend it from intruders.
Humans are by their nature social animals, primates tend to be social creatures, gorillas, bonobos, most types of monkey I’m aware of, all are very social creatures.
As we’ve evolved and developed civilization, human social groups established what we today call “societies.” Eventually a need arose to govern these societies, it probably started with informal rules (don’t take food that isn’t yours, don’t kill someone for no reason etc) and eventually formalized into legal systems. The fact that there are many human societies meant you had areas where different societies might overlap and different rulesets would clash. The way humans naturally have dealt with this is by defining certain territory as belonging to one given society and in that territory, the “rules” of that society apply.
Other societies over time accepted and recognized the territory of other societies because societies would defend these territories (thus we have wars to determine which society gets to govern said territory.) One of the fundamental features of a territory being part of society X is that the laws/rules/regulations of said society apply there. Yes, you’re right that because of the way we define government legitimacy there’s no way for your batshit insane, unspeakably stupid ideas to be implemented. It’s also because there’s no realistic way to separate a given patch of territory from the governing society that claims it as its own simply because of the right of property ownership.
Property ownership as a right cannot exist without governments. With no government whatsoever, the only right you would have to property would be your ability to defend it from whoever wants to take it. Realistically that means you don’t have any property rights. One of the reasons governments are entrusted with authority is to defend property ownership, or the desire to be safe in your property, something people cannot do as individuals in the long term.
Why should some moron in Alabama named ForumBot be able to absent himself from being governed by the United States? Sure, the U.S. may recognize his ownership of the land but he can only own said land because the government of the U.S. systematically conquered and took it from the people who use to own it. And your existence on that land is only feasible with all the modern conveniences because of things like the interstate highway system, new technology driven by public elementary education and university education, and et cetera.
The United States has every right to claiming your personal plot of land as part of its territory it fought wars to claim and keep that territory. Within the legal system of the United States, you have a right to own that patch of land as your personal property, but it’s ludicrous and unimaginable that someone thinks that right extends to you being able to say that not only do you own the property rights to the land, you also should be able to make it no longer part of the territory of the United States.
Even you admit you wouldn’t buy into such a thing if the option were there, and the fact is, probably less than 1% of all people would. Because that would mean you have to have a passport to go to the grocery store, and shit, if you were living in an autonomous territory within the United States, what would stop me from driving across the border, killing you, and taking all your stuff? I would’ve committed no crime since I was operating in an area that wasn’t part of the United States or any other society and was not under the authority of any government (unless you established your own government–which would be unable to do anything about it since I’d just killed its only employee.)
