Wal-Mart Is Right

[FrankChodorov]

They're too completely different deffinitions that use the same word.

they are both "a grant made by a government that confers..."

[fourthgeek]

But how many benefits do we really see, going from small government to no government?

In early Pennsylvania they had small government .... and chose no government for a few years. They must have seen some benefit.
I also want no government. Should I have that choice? We should not all have to agree.

If you want to live in an anarchy, you are already. There's just roaming thugs calling themselves "government" that everyone gives in to. 

As difficult as anarchist theory can be on some points, I'm willing to accept it as possible based upon the grounds that, in theory, government should not work. Hey guys, let's give one group of people the authority to do virtually whatever they want. In theory, government should not work. Presidents should be instituting military juntas to keep from losing their position, congressmen should be in cahoots to keep each other in office indefinitely and to raise their pay a thousandfold. The government may have checks and balances within itself, but there is really no check or balance outside of the government beside citizens and other governments.

I think what does make it work at all is that people are timid and don't want to be thought of poorly among peers or in the history books. Timidity (and the will not to be shot by your neighbors) may be the saving grace of anarchist theory as well.

If enough of our citizenry truly is anarchist-minded, perhaps we could settle on an opt-out system?

[AlanM]

You define self-ownership to suit your own theories, then you call us liars. What a hypocrite.

fine - we will use your definition then...

how would you define the "right of self-ownership"?

here are a few to get you started:

"The property rights that each citizen has in himself are the foundation of a free society." -- James Bovard, Freedom In Chains, p. 86

"Libertarianism begins with self ownership." -- David Bergland, Libertarianism In One Lesson, p. 35

"There is only one fundamental right (all others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action--which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life?Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life." -- Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, pp. 321-2

I would choose Ayn Rand's definition.