I think that’s a reasonable position to hold, and I can see why you would prefer it. I just prefer the most ambiguous law possible, confident that order will spontaneously arise. (See prior references to Hayek’s theories.)
I imagine he is on his very best behavior, but I have no interest in what he has to say.
I’m actually thinking about writing a novel. I hope you’ve had the opportunity to read my short story, Sarah’s Gold, which you can see from the homepage in my profile. Writing it was a challenge from someone very much like Dewey, at least in certain ways.
I am not talking about a pissing contest I am talking about $10,000. Even if your 3rd arbiter dismisses it as a pissing contest all that means is that I need to appeal his decision to a 4th arbiter. I don’t see how this is a Giant Squid argument. If I am sentanced into slavery I am going to go to every arbiter I possibly can. What will be the end result of me continually going to different arbiters be?
That didn’t answer my questions. If arbiter A says yes go ahead and stab Mr. Jones and arbiter B says you can’t stab Mr. Jones is it legal or not for me to stab Mr. Jones? Or for example if arbiters A, B and C say sure go ahead and stab Mr. Jones there is no garuntee that arbiter D won’t find it in violation of the NP.
I never treaded on you. You merely are accusing me of treading on you. For one who started a debate about this concept in regards to majoritarianism you seem to ignore it with Libertarianism.
You are in effect saying the samething about Libertarianism. If I do not want to be coerced by your government I need to avoid the citizens of Libertaria. Unfortunately if the citizens of Libertaria live around me that leaves me with the only option of moving away. What ethical principle entitles the citizens of Libertaria to say to his neighbor move away from us or bend to our demands?
That simply isn’t true. From what I gather as long as you are in possesion of your body you have all the rights that go along with it. If I am in prison I am being coerced to abadon my rights to my body. Namely the prison guards are using force to contain me in a cell, wear certain clothing and eat certain food. That would be an open and shut case in front of an arbiter. The arbiter will find Britain in violation of the NP and is then obligated to enforce the ruling by going to war.
You are flabbergasted that someone doesn’t want to read an 800 page book about economics?
Again this simply is not true. You said that $40000 would be dirt poor in Libertaria. That would entail a better economic situation for nearly everyone in America.
What operating system are you running on your computer? What type of routers and servers do you think allow you to connect to the internet? Who laid all of the copper wire connecting you to the internet? Who built your computer? I will garuntee you that it all instances it was a corporation that did it. Corporations do not just benefit the stockholders they are a more efficient way of doing business that small privately owned companies. We see the benefits of them every single day.
Care to provide a cite for your assertion?
I will ask you again. Have you done any analysis of the economic consequences of Libertaria? If so would you please detail that analysis further than “government costs businesses money”.
I think you’ve lost track of the process. As I’ve said, there is no appeal in the sense you’re used to. What you are doing is charging an arbiter with coercion, specifically breach. If you fail to prove your case, nothing remains but to charge the new arbiter. Again, I’m no psychic, but it seems to me that, at some point, the government is going to consider you to be an unstable quack, incapable of giving meaningful consent. It will then likely consider its obligation to you fulfilled, assuming that all the arbiters you have charged are finished with their cases against you. You will need a new government. It behooves a free man to get along with his fellow volunteers.
Let’s get one thing clear. Your dissatisfaction with an answer does not constitute my evasion. I’m a bit sensitive about that specific charge. I’m not typing all this stuff as a WPM exercise. I am answering ALL your questions. If you do not appreciate how I answer you, stop asking.
I can’t say, and that is my answer. You have something in your head, and I can’t read your mind. Why would any of the arbiters say that it’s okay for you to stab Mr. Jones? What happens when one of your courts upsets the precedent of another? And why doesn’t it happen all the time.
Ignore? Do you mean to say that I am wasting my time responding to you, providing you links to the best possible information, parsing and answering every single one of your questions, including digging up old posts to which you hadn’t even the decency to provide a link — and your conclusion is that I’m ignoring you? I’ve already answered you on this in fact. I must have compelling evidence that you coerced me before an arbiter will consider invading your property as a non-Libertarian. It is you, sir, who is doing the ignoring.
My government would never coerce you. Where do you get that from? No one is demanding anything from you. My government doesn’t exist to coerce on my behalf. It won’t even protect me if I am the one coercing you.
No, you have been forced to abandon the rights that you usurped. You. Must. Restore. Them. That is when you obligation will be complete. The force the guards are using is responsive. That’s. Why. You’re. There. You. Initiated. Force.
Yes indeed I am. It is like telling me you’re hungry, and then when I show you the kitchen, it’s “What, you want me to cook?”
No, you misunderstood. Again. That was not to say (and did not say) that no one would be poorer than that, but that a man with the freedom to succeed who could do no more than that would be considered dirt poor. It stands to reason that men who can succeed will.
So what? A man stuck in a tent all his life sees the benefits of the tent. It keeps him dry. It let’s fresh air in and stale air out. He cannot imagine what a house would be like because he’s never seen one.
What assertion? That most of the nation’s wealth is concentrated with government? Are you joking? The federal government alone has more than $112 billion dollars in capitalized fixed assets, and that doesn’t even include revenues or other significant assets. It also doesn’t include state, provincial, or local governments. Check the GAO for yourself. You’ll find that it also says there, “Assets included on the balance sheets are resources of the Government that remain available to meet future needs. The most significant assets that are reported on the balance sheets are property, plant, and equipment, inventories, and loans receivable. There are, however, other significant resources available to the Government that extend beyond the assets presented in these financial statements. Those resources include stewardship assets, including natural resources (see Stewardship Information section), and the Government’s sovereign powers to tax, regulate commerce, and set monetary policy.” But I’m not giving you any more links. You don’t bother reading them.
Oh, that’s rich! You haven’t asked me that, and I’m not even capable of doing such a thing. I linked you to the most detailed analysis possible by one of history’s most notable economists, and you wouldn’t even read it!
You charge the first arbiter with breach for wrongful conviction or what have you. Then you charge the second arbiter with breach for not overturning the first arbiters ruling. etc. etc.
You are assuming that they give the same ruling. Lets take abortion for example. Roughly half the people in this country think it should be legal while the other half think it should be illegal. Its reasonable to assume that the arbiters would have a similiar breakdown. Half saying that abortion is a coercion of the unborn child while the other saying that the mother may do whatever she likes with her body. If I am brought before arbiter A who says you coerced your unborn I can charge him with breach by going to arbiter B. Arbiter B may be of the opinion that Arbiter A is in breach becuase the unborn child does not have rights. Arbiter C might find Arbiter B in breach becuase he agrees with arbiter As ruling. Repeat this process throughout your arbiters and you get half saying abortion is a coercion and the other half saying it isn’t. The question then is is abortion a coercion?
The stabbing example is a bad example for the point I am trying to illustrate I merely used it becuase you did. Lets take a better example of pollution. Lets say I want to build a factory that will put 1 ton of pollution into a river. I want to know if that is a legal action or may I be found guilty of coercion (damage to my neighbors property). I look at see that Arbiters A and B found it to be a coercion while Arbiters C and D found it not to be a coercion. Is dumping 1 ton of pollution into a river a coercion in Libertaria or not? If I am the plantiff that went to arbiter C may I go to arbiter A and sue him for breach of contract? If I am the defendant in front of Arbiter A may I go to arbiter C and sue him for a breach of contract?
If it violates a precedent it is bound to follow then the ruling is appealed and overturned.
Courts are obligated to follow the precedent of the higher courts. Continually not following precedent is an excellent way to lose your job as a judge.
Disagreeing does not mean ignoring. Your definition of compelling may not be stringent enough for my liking but that isn’t stopping you from forcing me to comply. You are forcing me to defend myself under a legal system that I did not choose nor do I like. Busting down my door to search my house against my will does not constitute retaliatory force.
Oh yes it will. It will search my house using force if necessary despite my most strenous objections, kidnap me from my house and try me under its judicial system. After this whole ordeal when I am found innocent I am forced to accept whatever it is Libertaria deems compensation for it.
None of Britain’s prisoners were found guilty by an arbiter of violating the NP principle. Doesn’t Libertaria have a contractual obligation to ensure that my rights are not being violated? Does it not have to conduct its own investigation and does an arbiter not have to rule I have violated the NP principle before I may be punished?
Not at all its like me asking where the salt is and you pointing towards a 100,000 square foot warehouse.
I am finding it hard to believe that there is a way to misunderstand a clear statement like that.
But we can stick our head outside our tent and see what else is out there. Let me try another example. I don’t know if you are familiar with mathematica but it is an extremely powerful piece of software with an extremely steep price tag of $895. The reason they have to sell it for that much is becuase it cost a bunch of money to develop. Now they can sell it for $895 becuase it is illegal for someone to copy their work and sell it for 10 bucks on the street corner. If they were unable to sell it for $895 they wouldn’t be able to afford to develop the software and it would not have been made. All those software engineers and mathematicians they employ are now unemployed. The businesses that use their software to make money are now less profitable and might have to cut jobs too.
So then its a no you don’t want to provide a cite for your assertion.
Yeah, I get it. And like I said already, they’ll get it too.
Why shouldn’t there be different results for different circumstances? That’s the whole advantage to ethical government. When you apply the same welfare regulation, for example, to someone in rural Wyoming that you apply to someone in South Central Los Angeles, you’re pissing in the wind. Sometimes, abortion might be coercive, and sometimes it might not. Then again, it might always be or never. Why not open the process so people can make the best arguments? Maybe it will turn out like birth, and always be coercive.
Changing the example doesn’t really change anything because the principle is the same. Why isn’t vandalizing someone’s property coercive? Maybe in some oddball special cases, it might not be. But in general, poisoning someone is an assault.
Then it’s too tight-assed a system. Aren’t you giving far more authority to judges than you feared giving to arbiters?
Then who can make an injustice go away? Suppose it is against the law to drive without a seat belt, but Ms. Jones drove without one on account of her rib was broken and she was on the way to the doctor. One of the monster critters from Libertaria hypotheticals is the cop, and he charges her. Where’s the justice if a judge can’t say, “Get the hell outta here.”
Also, if courts can’t go against precedence, how does precedence start anyway? Is it first come first serve? Judge A was the first to opine, so now every judge from B to Z must follow along?
Sure it does. Even if it weren’t, then you’d have a case against the Libertarian arbiter or charger. Sign up and get your due.
That doesn’t seem to be a problem for you with eminent domain in your majoritarian system. You have no compunction about throwing a man out of his home after thirty years and paying him whatever you think its worth. You seem to apply an ethics of convenience. To yourself.
I’m not sure. I’ve lost track of your story. I thought you were always assuming the role of anti-Lib. Refresh me on this one. (And please, no post numbers. Just say it or provide a link.)
No, that’s no right. Austrian economic theory is deductively derived. If you asked for Godel’s proof, which would you prefer — one of the papers about his paper, or his paper?
You routinely misunderstand, misattribute, and misrepresent. What’s hard to believe.
Apparently not if it requires reading a big book. You know, in all this time you’ve spent with me gaining pretty much nothing, you could have finished one of the most imporant economic treatises in the world. Think about that.
And yet bootleg copies, open source knock-offs, and reverse engineered competitive products proliferate anyway. Personally, I’d rather have the very real advantage of no special government deals favoring my competition than the merely perceived advantage of a coercive monopoly.
Again, I gave you a cite, and you won’t read it. And everytime you repeat that meme, I’m going to remind everyone of it. Also, you left a lot of my questions on the table. Answer them.
I never said you should. My point is that you need to apply the same regulations to everyone in rural Wyoming. Assuming similair situations a standard regulation should be applied equally to everyone.
A pregnant woman comes up to you and asks if an abortion is a coercion and you answer well sometimes it is then again sometimes its not heck maybe it will turn out that it always is. Don’t worry though you will find out if your specific arbiter thinks so about 5 seconds before he sentances you into slavery or sets you free. You honestly don’t see a problem with that situation?
You are missing the point of my question. I am asking when there are conflicting rulings on what constitutes a coercion what happens? Half the arbiters think an act is coercion and the other half don’t . If I am convicted by an arbiter and I sue that arbiter for breach of contract half of the arbiters will agree with me and half won’t. Is that arbiter in breach of his contract or not?
I don’t see how. Judges don’t decide what the law is, convict someone of the crime and sentance them.
Who says the judge can’t? In this case he is responsible for sentencing the guilty party and he may sentence them as he wishes unless there is a specific legislative mandate otherwise.
Well the first precedent is from common law and that is just becuase its how the first judge did it. The other precedents come from interpeting the legislatures laws. If Judges B to Z are on a lower bench then Judge A was then yes they have to follow his precedent. Judge A’s replacement or a superior judge is allowed to over rule the precedent if they wish.
See that is exactly my point. I have to submit to your judicial system if I want restitution.
I certainly have a compuncation about throwing a man out of his home becuase I have just coerced him into doing so. I freely admit that our current system is coercive. You on the other hand are claiming that Libertaria does not instigate coercion which is not the case. Libertaria will coerce anyone they please into allowing a search of their home even those that do not voluntarily consent to its governance.
A citizen signs a contract with Libertaria that says Libertaria will protect his rights from coercion. The only way for Libertaria to waive this responsibility is by an arbiter finding the accused guilty of violating the NP. The prisoners in Britain have not been convicted by an arbiter of violating the NP therefore Libertaria still has an obligation to protect his rights. Certainly imprisoning someone and stripping them of property is a coercion. Until such time that the accused is found guilty of violating the NP Libertaria has an obligation to protect his rights up to and including going to war. Ergo the 168 governments of those prisoners are obligated to go to war with Britain unless Britain allows an arbiter to conduct his own investigation and conviction.
At this point all I want is a summary of his arguments from an unbiased source.
Even if you think that there is in no way a misunderstanding, misattribution or misrepresentation here. Its plain as day what you said and what you said is that 40,000 would be bottom of the barrel dirt poor in Libertaria.
I would not say they proliferate at least not at any reputable institution. Regardless there is certainly no way any business would develop a software like mathematica becuase they would lose an enormous sum of money. That means that jobs are lost, other businesses are less efficient and the economy suffers overall.
You didn’t even give me a number for the total government assets nor did you give me a number for the total private assets. If that is what you consider a cite feel free to remind everyone anytime you like.
I’ll comment further on Lib’s post in more detail later, but this part just begs for rebuttal:
The “nation’s wealth” is in its economic activity, not in a static number like fixed assets. The US had a GDP of 11 trillion dollars in 2003, the last full year for which figures are available. That’s ‘trillion’ with a ‘T’. Consolidated federal, state and local governments consumption expenditures and gross investment for the same period totaled 2.075 trillion dollars. That’s a big number, but hardly “most of” the nation’s wealth.
Even taking asset values as a relevant number, private sector assets are far larger in the aggregate than assets held by the federal government. The total market capitalization of all domestic publicly listed firms is a whopping $37.3 trillion. Again, that’s trillion with a ‘t’. Double or, hell, quadruple your $112 billion figure and it’s still just a drop in the bucket.
The government is a heavy hitter in the economy, but it’s small potatoes compared to the whole of private economic activity.
(Also – you do understand the difference between revenue and assets, right?)
Again, briefly, this is the worst possible argument against copyrights and patents. It’s tantamount to saying we shouldn’t have laws against murder because people kill other people every day.
I have a lot of beefs with the US IP system, but I recognize that at some basic level it is necessary. And frankly, the things you list aren’t serious problems in the US (China and other places abroad are another story). That would not be the case without IP protections.
I don’t think Liberal was using that as an argument against IP protection, just saying that the advantages of libertarianism would be worth the price, to him. Also, note that two of the three things he mentioned are not actually illegal.
It seems there are different perspectives on copyright and patents from a libertarian point of view. Depending on how you look at it, copyright could be considered as a form of property ownership, a special kind of contract, or a government-granted monopoly. Maybe it’s another one of those things where it all depends on the opinion of the individual arbiter?
I don’t think so, partially because this is a common refrain from Lib when discussing libertarianism, an argument that essentially goes “the status quo isn’t perfect, therefore libertarianism is better.”
We had a similar go-round on the issue of children who trespass and child safety and welfare in general. Lib seized on a couple of horrible real-world cases whenever he was asked how Libertaria would handle certain situations and just kept running back to them, in spite of the fact that (1) no one had ever denied that the current system is flawed, (2) the folks participating had raised some very pertinent (and non-sentient-squidlike) examples of how Libertaria would make things worse.
I agree that there are varying attitudes towards IP amongst Libertarians. However, those who support IP protection tend to be minarchists rather than scrap-the-state-entirely types. I’d love to get Lib to flesh this one out, but he’s balked at the question before and, as you’ve seen, he’s less than eager to answer my queries.
Y’know, “arbitrate” and “arbitrary” share the same Latin root. Libertaria would end up making that more than just an interesting etymological tidbit.
