We’re probably just so tired of pushing back against the teabagger wing of extremist idiocy at this point that we’re kind of numb to the philosophical anarchy wing of same.
Exactly the opposite: that’s the point where the game (which we call civilization) begins.
I live in a city of a little more than half a million people. In the winter time, when it snows, I shovel the snow in front of my house. When I’ve had vacant houses on my block, or neighbors that were too ill, I shoveled the snow in front of their houses as well. However, I need the government to shovel the snow in the street. I lack the equipment and resources to remove that much snow.
Luckily, my neighbors and I have had the foresight to pool our resources through a formula based on the value of the property we own, how much money we earn, and how much money we spend. We have allocated this pool of money to people that we have appointed. We expect these people to hire others, buy equipment, make policies, etc to ensure that the snow is removed from the street. We decided to call the arrangement government. It works so well, we let them educate our kids, and put out our fires too.
When I equate government to criminal cartels, I’m just looking at the history of government. It certainly is true in some cases that governments arise from everybody in the community getting together and delegating certain tasks to certain people and paying for it out of general contributions. But often governments are the result of swordsmen from outside the community extorting goods and services from the peasants.
And often such levels of government will co-exist side by side. You’ll have village elders answerable to the community and operating by consensus, while the local aristocrat’s soldiers collect the taxes at swordpoint, and pay a portion of those taxes up to the king, mafia-style. And the aristocrats only care about the welfare of their subjects only to the extent that more prosperity for the peasants means more wealth to confiscate. A sheep can be sheared every year but only skinned once.
But both sorts of governance can work at times as parasites on the community, or protectors of the community. Soldiers collect taxes at swordpoint, but also fight off invading armies of barbarians that would cause a lot more hardship than the cost of the taxes. This is why you so rarely see peasant villages welcoming invading barbarian armies as liberators.
The point is, good governance isn’t some sort of natural state for large groups of human beings. It has to be built up over generations by trial and error, because there are always organized assholes out there who think it’s easier to steal and murder than to work for a living. That means we’ve got to have some means of dealing with those assholes, which often means tolerating our own assholes for fear of getting it even worse.
If your anarchy doesn’t have a method for dealing with gangs of men with weapons who don’t want to work for a living, then it won’t stay an anarchy. Pointing out that current governments are often just the same as those gangs of men with weapons is to state the obvious. That’s the point.
I think he means giving up the game on libertarian anarchist utopia. Or what everyone sane calls “insane Randian dystopic ravings”.
There’s quite a lot of similarity; in a real sense a sophisticated & far-sighted enough criminal cartel is a govenrment, while a sufficiently kleptocratic/corrupt government is more of a criminal organization in its mindset & behavior than those officially criminal organizations. The crime lord who provides genuine protection & services in return for a cut is acting more like a good government than a kleptocratic government that loots & kills and gives back nothing.
Fair enough… In my opinion, these are pretty much the same idea, as I think the libertarian/anarchist utopia cannot co-exist with civilization. Ending the game on the former is where the latter begins. I’m part of the “everyone” in your closing sentence. But I readily confess to having misread what the post intended.
Meh. There’s no chance of the libertarian view making any progress in the real world - we’ve talked about the reasons for that. There’s also no risk that anyone with an opinion on this is going to be convinced to change it. Finally, the Dope has discussed this topic for longer than I’ve been allowed to buy Scotch - every argument has already been made, probably more than once.
Let’s see cites, then.
Specifically, I would like at least two cites of posters who said that the “freedom to say anything negative about (a President’s) policies must end because it harms society by making us look divided to terrorists in other countries” who made the claim when Bush was President and not when Obama was elected.
Unless you meant “actually” to mean “not really” or “posters” to mean “someone who never posted” or “that very point” to mean “something else”.
Regards,
Shodan
The problem with voting for absence of government is that people would vote for it.
Men are not angels. The inclination of man’s heart is evil.
Left to a democratic vote, there are two main likely options: as much lawlessness and crime as the majority finds acceptable for themselves, and as much oppression as they find desirable for the hated “other.” Usually we get both.
I think the government facilities we are suppose to turn to for help are worse then those on the streets out to get you. I have an open cps case that they haven’t put in front of a judge but in turn leaves me in limbo allowing them to cause chaos within my life. I don’t have health care in turn allows rehabilitation facilities to treat me as they want. I refused sedatives after remaining sober and I was turned away because that program is funded by the government and those little blue pills is how they recievce their funding. To get into another facility they said that I had to state I was suicidal. Being seated will label me as depressed, saying I’m suicidal will make me look crazy. Both scenarios would in turn hurt my case to get my kids. I am at the lowest of my places and these people I sought help from have turned their backs on me. I think no government is better than what we currently operate with. I hear war war war, what about getting drugs off the street? Well here in south Texas where Isis is entering through the border, drugs are causing the war on many levels. Public corruption at its finest!
“Honey, we bring in 1 trillion a year. Let’s try to keep our spending to below that, mkay? And maybe we shouldn’t commit to monthly subscriptions that can’t be cancelled to the point that they eat up our entire budget. Let’s not use the credit cards unless it’s a genuine emergency - someone dies or we lose the house - and we should immediately start paying the credit cards back after we use them.”
Kitchen table economics is a heck of a lot better than what the government does now, where it’s essentially squabbling children who all want their cake and they don’t want to do any chores.
I disagree.
Government finances are QUALITATIVELY different, not just quantitatively.
Care to elaborate any further? I’m aware it’s complicated, but I fail to see how applying kitchen table rules wouldn’t be better than the current solution. The current solution is “we’re not raising taxes, but we’re spending more than we bring in! Wee porkbelly for my Congressional District, Wee!”
Spending more money than you have is raising taxes on the future, and that tax increase is larger than it would be if you raised taxes right now.
If it’s a matter of national survival, sure, borrow that money. But immediately pay it back.
It can be argued that if the borrowed money were being borrowed at very low interest and spent in ways that will raise the GDP of the entire nation, then this would be a worthy investment. However, almost all federal spending doesn’t have any chance of raising net GDP. All social security/medicare spending and all military spending does not raise GDP. (harsh truth, but spending money on people past their productive ages is not helpful for GDP, and buying weapons doesn’t boost net GDP either)
Weeeell, it was, sorta. Without the some of the anarchy. Sherman didn’t like anarchy, though he didn’t like SC, either.
Comparing the Federal budget to a household intoxicated by easy credit misses the point. When the budget approaches balance, Republicans push for further tax cuts because of their “Starve the Beast” agenda.
To make an analogy with “kitchen table economics” you’d have to suppose that the family’s breadwinner, irked by his dependents’ spending, chooses deliberately to earn less.