Anti-politics

[dalebert]

The only place "voting" is anything special is in the minds of those who believe in democracy.  To anyone else, it's just an expression of opinion.  I can express the opinion that Ron Paul as President would right a number of wrongs, even if he isn't by any means perfect.

Can I say that to you?  Can I write that opinion down for you?  Should you care which particular piece of paper I write it on?

What matters most is whether it's the truth or a lie and whether it enlightens people or feeds into their irrational belief systems. It doesn't take magic to create delusions in people's minds so they'll engage in highly irrational behavior. I see organized religion doing great harm based on irrational belief systems even though I don't believe their gods are anything more than figments in their minds.

You can certainly express your opinion that Ron Paul will right some wrongs. I'd disagree with you for reasons already given. I've expressed why I believe minarchy is a unicorn that presents false hope. I think Ron Paul is going out there and telling people that Santa Claus is going to bring them a bicycle and when they don't have a bicycle under the tree Xmas morning, they're going to resent him for it. And because he's presenting minarchy as freedom when it's not, they're going to resent the message of freedom as well which is a set back. That's my opinion.

As I said, I don't expect to convince people to stop campaigning for Ron Paul or not to vote. I'm sure the excitement will have to die down before anything I'm talking about could sink in. I just hope that if the bicycle isn't sitting under the tree next year, perhaps some people will consider this debate in new light and choose a better message to promote freedom the next time around.

But for the record, as for where you write your opinion down- if a mafia don writes my name down on a hit list and hands it to his minions, I'm going to care. If his minions are known to act on his "opinions" about who should live or die, then I resent him writing my name down on that particular piece of paper. If people know some minions referred to as the electoral collage are going to act on their opinions about who should be president, and if that president impacts my life for the negative, I will be resentful toward all the people who wrote that opinion down knowing full well that people were going take actions based on it. That game, absurd as it is, impacts all our lives.

[MaineShark]

You can certainly express your opinion that Ron Paul will right some wrongs. I'd disagree with you for reasons already given. I've expressed why I believe minarchy is a unicorn that presents false hope. I think Ron Paul is going out there and telling people that Santa Claus is going to bring them a bicycle and when they don't have a bicycle under the tree Xmas morning, they're going to resent him for it. And because he's presenting minarchy as freedom when it's not, they're going to resent the message of freedom as well which is a set back. That's my opinion.

Your opinions are not cause to call others hypocrites.

But for the record, as for where you write your opinion down- if a mafia don writes my name down on a hit list and hands it to his minions, I'm going to care. If his minions are known to act on his "opinions" about who should live or die, then I resent him writing my name down on that particular piece of paper. If people know some minions referred to as the electoral collage are going to act on their opinions about who should be president, and if that president impacts my life for the negative, I will be resentful toward all the people who wrote that opinion down knowing full well that people were going take actions based on it. That game, absurd as it is, impacts all our lives.

This comparison is what's absurd.  A "mafia don" writing your name on a hit list is creating a situation which did not previously exist.  As with many others, you are implicitly claiming that if no one wrote down anything, the government would just vanish.  That's patently ridiculous.

The government will impact your life.  That's a fact.  Changing who is running the show does you no harm, so long as the level of negative impact does not change (or even gets less).

Try again.

Joe

[dalebert]

This comparison is what's absurd.  A "mafia don" writing your name on a hit list is creating a situation which did not previously exist.  As with many others, you are implicitly claiming that if no one wrote down anything, the government would just vanish.  That's patently ridiculous.

I don't think crime will ever be zero and I certainly don't expect a rapid change overnight. I only hope to minimize it. It seems crucial that we don't go out there and perpetuate an irrational belief that crime is necessary and a normal healthy part of our lives.

The government will impact your life.  That's a fact.  Changing who is running the show does you no harm, so long as the level of negative impact does not change (or even gets less).

There's a difference between just expressing your opinion to persuade people to your point of view and issuing a command that you reasonably expect to be followed. It's your judgment that changing who's running the show to your choice will reduce the negative impact on me but that's your fallible judgment. If people are going to act based on what you write on a particular piece of paper and I don't like the action they're going to take, then yes, I care. I'm only human and I realize my judgment's fallible as well, so I'm not personally comfortable playing that game.

[Lex]

It's strange that the pure anarchists are throwing the political process completely out the window which has actually worked to keep NH more free than other states and then replace it with something that has had absolutely ZERO past success.

In fact, we've had proof on the contrary:

Legislator to sponsor "Outlaw Manicurist" bill

Over two months after going to jail for performing an unlicensed manicure, Newmarket resident Mike Fisher is still reaping rewards for his sacrifice. This week State Representative Paul Hopfgarten publicly announced he would sponsor legislation easing barriers to entry for aspiring manicurists and other cosmetic startups.

"We'd need to craft it in such a way that it would be palatable to the majority of the House and Senate," writes the Derry Republican, "but YES, I would be willing to sponsor."

On May 9, Fisher appeared outside the the Board of Barbering, Cosmetology, and Esthetics office in Concord and began administering for-profit manicures without a license. Board representatives called police, who then cuffed and jailed him when he refused to stop. Fisher aimed to draw attention to the idea that "in a free country, you do not need permission from the government to start a business." He succeeded in achieving statewide headlines, but now he's achieved something more: the promise of legislative action to ease business regulation.

"I think that would be awesome," says Fisher. "It's a very hopeful development to see that we're getting support from all different types of people."

The exact wording has yet to be determined. But Fisher has said he hopes the bill will significantly reduce the number of hours of training required to attain a license from the Board and limit required training to issues that have to do with customer safety only. Currently the state requires 300 hours and thousands of dollars worth of schooling to buff a nail for profit.

Only a small fraction of bills become state law, but activists say it is a victory just to see Fisher's defiance translated into potential legislation.

Without pro-liberty folks working inside the system the story of the Outlaw Manicurist would have ended at the arrest.

So, unless you can at least explain how your purely outside the system approach would work I would rather go with a tested and working system than some imaginary philosophical approach that nobody can even concretely explain how it would work.

"It will work because I think it will work", isn't a very convincing argument. At a minimum you would have to at least explain your vision of how it would work in practice. Just convincing some people to agree that anarchism is cool won't achieve anything, especially not liberty in our lifetime.

How can you achieve a result without knowing how to achieve it?

[Lex]

Purely anarchist methodology of attaining freedom:

1. Convince people that anarchism is the best philosophy.
2. ???
3. Freedom.

[dysurian]

You can certainly express your opinion that Ron Paul will right some wrongs. I'd disagree with you for reasons already given. I've expressed why I believe minarchy is a unicorn that presents false hope. I think Ron Paul is going out there and telling people that Santa Claus is going to bring them a bicycle and when they don't have a bicycle under the tree Xmas morning, they're going to resent him for it. And because he's presenting minarchy as freedom when it's not, they're going to resent the message of freedom as well which is a set back. That's my opinion.

Your opinions are not cause to call others hypocrites.

I think (and Dale can let me know if I'm totally wrong) that the "opinion" part of that statement just covered any future occurrences. As in, "it's my opinion that Ron Paul for president will backfire and people will resent the message of freedom because of it." What's hypocritical is if someone is going to claim any of the following...that:

1) The initiation of the use of force is immoral...
2) Government is an ineffective method of solving problems...
3) Compromising the full, logical extent of your views for a more widespread following is disingenuous...
4) Power corrupts...
5) I'm into voluntary solutions to problems...
6) The free market will fix any problem given to it...
7) The initiation of the use of force is immoral...

...but then use the government anyway. That's just a logical contradiction, no bones about it. There's no personal attack in pointing out logical contradictions. There is, however, an amazing amount of damage that can be done by following through on illogical premises or conclusions. All we're suggesting is that everybody put down the gun and give up on irrational fantasies. If you believe in any of the above initial premises (and I'm sure many more) then you can't logically support the use of government power in any way, for any reason, without being a hypocrite.

Purely anarchist methodology of attaining freedom:

1. Convince people that anarchism is the best philosophy.
2. ???
3. Freedom.

Purely minarchist methodology of attaining freedom:

1. Convince people, through force of government, that the force government uses is immoral.
2. After done using force, just stop somehow, and hope nobody has gotten used to it.
3. Hope nobody sees your methods as legitimizing the use of force, so that no nasty government grows back.
4. Freedom?

Sorry Lex, I couldn't resist 

We currently live where the most successful minarchist revolution in the history of government took place. Why didn't it stay that way? Please don't give me "eternal vigilance." Nobody should have to beg for their freedom at gunpoint. That's not freedom.

[MaineShark]

I don't think crime will ever be zero and I certainly don't expect a rapid change overnight. I only hope to minimize it. It seems crucial that we don't go out there and perpetuate an irrational belief that crime is necessary and a normal healthy part of our lives.

Which has what to do with what was said, exactly?

No one is saying that engaging in political activism is "a normal healthy part of our lives."  Getting a tumor surgically removed isn't "healthy."  Getting cut is never healthy.  But it is less unhealthy than the alternative.

There's a difference between just expressing your opinion to persuade people to your point of view and issuing a command that you reasonably expect to be followed. It's your judgment that changing who's running the show to your choice will reduce the negative impact on me but that's your fallible judgment. If people are going to act based on what you write on a particular piece of paper and I don't like the action they're going to take, then yes, I care. I'm only human and I realize my judgment's fallible as well, so I'm not personally comfortable playing that game.

Someone's going to play the game.  Ask yourself this: who's opinion would you rather have being weighed?  I expect my judgment is a lot better than the typical voter...

Still, the point remains that the only way a vote has any likelyhood of "causing" a result is within the system called "democracy," which is not a system any anarchist would be accepting.

I think (and Dale can let me know if I'm totally wrong) that the "opinion" part of that statement just covered any future occurrences. As in, "it's my opinion that Ron Paul for president will backfire and people will resent the message of freedom because of it." What's hypocritical is if someone is going to claim any of the following...that:

1) The initiation of the use of force is immoral...
2) Government is an ineffective method of solving problems...
3) Compromising the full, logical extent of your views for a more widespread following is disingenuous...
4) Power corrupts...
5) I'm into voluntary solutions to problems...
6) The free market will fix any problem given to it...
7) The initiation of the use of force is immoral...

...but then use the government anyway. That's just a logical contradiction, no bones about it. There's no personal attack in pointing out logical contradictions. There is, however, an amazing amount of damage that can be done by following through on illogical premises or conclusions. All we're suggesting is that everybody put down the gun and give up on irrational fantasies. If you believe in any of the above initial premises (and I'm sure many more) then you can't logically support the use of government power in any way, for any reason, without being a hypocrite.

I can use the government against itself.  That's called self-defense, and does not constitute an initiation of force.

Joe

[Lex]

I think (and Dale can let me know if I'm totally wrong) that the "opinion" part of that statement just covered any future occurrences. As in, "it's my opinion that Ron Paul for president will backfire and people will resent the message of freedom because of it." What's hypocritical is if someone is going to claim any of the following...that:

1) The initiation of the use of force is immoral...
2) Government is an ineffective method of solving problems...
3) Compromising the full, logical extent of your views for a more widespread following is disingenuous...
4) Power corrupts...
5) I'm into voluntary solutions to problems...
6) The free market will fix any problem given to it...
7) The initiation of the use of force is immoral...

...but then use the government anyway. That's just a logical contradiction, no bones about it. There's no personal attack in pointing out logical contradictions. There is, however, an amazing amount of damage that can be done by following through on illogical premises or conclusions. All we're suggesting is that everybody put down the gun and give up on irrational fantasies. If you believe in any of the above initial premises (and I'm sure many more) then you can't logically support the use of government power in any way, for any reason, without being a hypocrite.

Maybe the difference is that you guys trust philosophy more than I do. I think it's a great way to help guide the bigger picture. But I also live a normal life from time to time (below you suggest that we shouldn't be vigilant, right?). And I want freedom now, damn it. The whole premise of the Free State Project is political. There is absolutely no point of getting a bunch of people to move to one political sector (NH) if you are going to disregard its existance and work completely outside the system. If your effectiveness is not measured by how many freedoms we haved gained then what makes NH the ideal state for a philosophical revolution? I have asked a similar question in my previous posts and nobody has even tried to answer it.

1. Convince people, through force of government, that the force government uses is immoral.

How did State Rep. Paul Hopfgarten use government force to convince his colleagues to vote for the Outlaw Manicurist bill? Nothing bad would happen to them if they had voted against the bill.

2. After done using force, just stop somehow, and hope nobody has gotten used to it.

This part isn't as important as in the purely anarchist approach because there has been a positive outcome in less government. So by the time you get to the point where you have to figure out how to close down the last government position you have already achieved a lot of success, possibly to the point where most people will not even notice the government in their daily lives. But on the last day of the government the last employee in the last building will sign the bill of sale selling this last government asset to some private individual with proceeds evenly distributed among some charities (or some such arrangement, in the end the same issue of what do with government assets would come up in a purely anarchist solution as well).

3. Hope nobody sees your methods as legitimizing the use of force, so that no nasty government grows back.

Government will always try to grow back. That is human nature. Some peoplare born to be rulers and some are born to be followers and then the rest of us just want to be left alone. You can convince many of the rulers and followers about the virtues of individualism but you won't convince all of them.

4. Freedom?

More freedom, absolutely.

We currently live where the most successful minarchist revolution in the history of government took place. Why didn't it stay that way? Please don't give me "eternal vigilance." Nobody should have to beg for their freedom at gunpoint. That's not freedom.

Welcome to reality. Any society, whether anarchist or republican requires eternal vigilance. Because if consumers don't look into the products they buy on their own or think for themselves there is aboslutely no reason some group of people won't figure out a way to rule them. It's a given. We all have to be eternally vigilant in either type of government. It's just that in an anarchist type of society vigilance will probably be a bigger part of the culture since people will be inherently skeptical of businesses and organizations in fear of them becoming too powerful and eventually turning into a defacto state.

[MaineShark]

Question for the supposed "purists": most (all) of you claiming that anarchists using politics are being hypocritical came to your supposedly-anarchic beliefs at some point during your adult life, correct?

Before that, you spent time not believing in the zero-aggression principle, correct?

You aggressed against others, correct?

Have you made restitution for your actions?

The minute you do that, we can talk about "philosophical purity" and whatnot.  If you have not, then you possess no acreage of moral high ground.

Joe

[Lex]

No one is saying that engaging in political activism is "a normal healthy part of our lives."  Getting a tumor surgically removed isn't "healthy."  Getting cut is never healthy.  But it is less unhealthy than the alternative.

I think you've nailed it. That's exactly how I feel about this issue. The surgery really sucks, but it's definitely better than the alternative.

Thinking that you don't have cancer is just not going to work. Convincing your doctor that you don't have cancer isn't going to work either.

Your only practical solution is to try and actually do something about it even if there isn't a 100% success rate; it's better than just wishing it to be gone.

[dysurian]

I can use the government against itself.  That's called self-defense, and does not constitute an initiation of force.

Joe

If we can successfully use the government against itself to get rid of the government, my face would freeze wide-eyed with surprise. I would apologize profusely, and offer to take you kids to the zoo every weekend for the rest of my life. All moral objections aside, it's a hard concept for me to swallow even from an "effect only" standpoint.

If we're able to turn a morally corrupt institution against its primary purpose (to steal wealth), and convince it to stop using its primary means (threatening to shoot people) by joining its ranks, I'd frankly shit myself with amazement. Sorry for the crudeness, but I would. I'm not trying to belabor the point to bully anyone into agreeing with me, I just find it to be that impossible.

On a small scale, the mafia is an institution that steals wealth by threatening to point guns at people. They're pretty successful at it, but nowhere near as successful as the government (to whom they're constantly and accurately compared in political discussions). If we can turn around morally corrupt institutions from the inside by making fundamental policy changes--policy changes that would turn the institution against its own primary objective, and its primary means--then the mafia should be a cakewalk. We'd just need to get inside, rise though the ranks (while somehow avoiding getting our hands dirty), and once powerful enough, institute the paradigm-shifting policy changes. If you can convince me how to infiltrate the mafia and turn it from a leg-breaking, "protection" money-taking, baseball bat-wielding institution into one that distributes free candy to orphans...then maybe we can talk about how the same methodology can be used to get rid of government power.

The mafia should be a total pushover compared to the government, since people know and recognize their immorality. It'll be so much easier to get people to rally to your cause against the mafia. With the government, lots and lots and lots of people think that welfare is moral, that war is necessary, that taxation is inevitable. That's a harder fight than the mafia. But I can't think of how this would work even on the ultra-tiny small scale of the mob. So how can we even come close to reasonably expecting the same exact methods to work on the government? You can't convince people that government is bad by taking it away from them. People like the government (well, silly people do...but there are lots of silly people mucking about these days). The only way we can convince people that government is bad is by convincing people government is bad. Smokers don't stop smoking when their families hide the cigarettes, they stop when they know in their minds that they've had enough, and it can't go on safely, and it's unhealthy. Nobody can make that decision for them, just like nobody can make the decision of more vs. less vs. no government for people. Whenever you try to make a decision (any decision at all) for another person, you end up with unintended consequences. I think this is something Ayn Rand said well, "No one's happiness but my own is for me to create or to destroy."

Update: LOADS of new posts since I started writing this...dang this thread is hoppin'  I'm just going to post it.

[MaineShark]

I can use the government against itself.  That's called self-defense, and does not constitute an initiation of force.

If we can successfully use the government against itself to get rid of the government, my face would freeze wide-eyed with surprise. I would apologize profusely, and offer to take you kids to the zoo every weekend for the rest of my life. All moral objections aside, it's a hard concept for me to swallow even from an "effect only" standpoint.

You cannot use the government to eliminate the government.  That's patently absurd.  But you can use the government to hurt the government.  As demonstrated by the successes in NH.

No matter how successful the minarchists are, they will never be able to eliminate the government.

But they can weaken it to the point that it can be eliminated more readily by apolitical means.

To go back to the cancer analogy, sometimes a cancer is too big to remove without doing excessive damage to surrounding tissue, so chemotherapy is used to shrink the tumor to a more manageable size, before surgery is used to excise it completely.

Joe

[dysurian]

Question for the supposed "purists": most (all) of you claiming that anarchists using politics are being hypocritical came to your supposedly-anarchic beliefs at some point during your adult life, correct?

Before that, you spent time not believing in the zero-aggression principle, correct?

You aggressed against others, correct?

Have you made restitution for your actions?

The minute you do that, we can talk about "philosophical purity" and whatnot.  If you have not, then you possess no acreage of moral high ground.

Joe

I'm not looking for any kind of weird "purity," just logical consistency. It's not the philosophy of ethics if it's not logically consistent, it's just personal preference. I'm not striving for moral high ground, just moral consistency. Inconsistent moral systems have led to all sorts of atrocities in the past. People do the most nasty things using logically invalid moral systems (all the while calling them "moral"), and I just want to make sure my friends and I don't make the same mistake. Communism makes perfect sense if you ignore a few key illogical premises and conclusions. Same deal with the divine right of kings. I honestly believe that as long as government exists, people will be unnecessarily aggressed upon. I honestly believe the only way to eliminate government is through a cultural paradigm shift. I really hope I'm not seen as saying, "I'm better, you're worse," and sticking my nose up in the air and riding off on my high horse. I just want to be logically consistent in following through with my principles. After all, one can never be too morally consistent

You're right, there was a portion of my life where the non-aggression principal was unknown to me. I must have done some damage in that time (though I'm not sure to whom...I'm only old enough to have voted in 3 pres. elections, and none of them won, but there's got to be something...my student loans, perhaps). To the extent that I work to help get people free of the unchosen obligations in their lives, I consider my restitution paid to society. To the extent that I grab the gun of state power and point it around the way I want it pointed around, I consider my further damage to society. We can always recover from the damage evil does to us, but we can never recover once we've done the evil.

[MaineShark]

I'm not looking for any kind of weird "purity," just logical consistency. It's not the philosophy of ethics if it's not logically consistent, it's just personal preference. I'm not striving for moral high ground, just moral consistency. Inconsistent moral systems have led to all sorts of atrocities in the past. People do the most nasty things using logically invalid moral systems (all the while calling them "moral"), and I just want to make sure my friends and I don't make the same mistake. Communism makes perfect sense if you ignore a few key illogical premises and conclusions. Same deal with the divine right of kings. I honestly believe that as long as government exists, people will be unnecessarily aggressed upon. I honestly believe the only way to eliminate government is through a cultural paradigm shift. I really hope I'm not seen as saying, "I'm better, you're worse," and sticking my nose up in the air and riding off on my high horse. I just want to be logically consistent in following through with my principles. After all, one can never be too morally consistent

Saying, "the government is wrong and illegitimate" and then saying, "the government claims that marks on these pieces of paper give them magical powers, so it's true" are not logically consistent statements.

You're right, there was a portion of my life where the non-aggression principal was unknown to me. I must have done some damage in that time (though I'm not sure to whom...I'm only old enough to have voted in 3 pres. elections, and none of them won, but there's got to be something...my student loans, perhaps). To the extent that I work to help get people free of the unchosen obligations in their lives, I consider my restitution paid to society. To the extent that I grab the gun of state power and point it around the way I want it pointed around, I consider my further damage to society. We can always recover from the damage evil does to us, but we can never recover once we've done the evil.

You cannot pay restitution to "society."

Joe

[dysurian]

I can use the government against itself.  That's called self-defense, and does not constitute an initiation of force.

If we can successfully use the government against itself to get rid of the government, my face would freeze wide-eyed with surprise. I would apologize profusely, and offer to take you kids to the zoo every weekend for the rest of my life. All moral objections aside, it's a hard concept for me to swallow even from an "effect only" standpoint.

You cannot use the government to eliminate the government.  That's patently absurd.  But you can use the government to hurt the government.  As demonstrated by the successes in NH.

No matter how successful the minarchists are, they will never be able to eliminate the government.

But they can weaken it to the point that it can be eliminated more readily by apolitical means.

I sincerely hope it works this simply (and within the next 40 or 50 years).

Maybe the difference is that you guys trust philosophy more than I do. I think it's a great way to help guide the bigger picture. But I also live a normal life from time to time (below you suggest that we shouldn't be vigilant, right?). And I want freedom now, damn it. The whole premise of the Free State Project is political. There is absolutely no point of getting a bunch of people to move to one political sector (NH) if you are going to disregard its existance and work completely outside the system. If your effectiveness is not measured by how many freedoms we haved gained then what makes NH the ideal state for a philosophical revolution? I have asked a similar question in my previous posts and nobody has even tried to answer it.

For me, as someone currently outside NH it's looking more attractive for philosophical revolution simply because there is a nice concentration of FSP anarchists. I honestly signed up because I believe certain public demonstration can influence peoples' opinions, and because I want to live somewhere where the philosophy of liberty can be openly discussed with my friends and improve every day. NH isn't just a political sector, but also a geographical area. The closer I am to a good (read: better than anywhere else) concentration of anarchists, the better. I'm pretty sure my one vote won't make a big difference in state politics. If you think it will, please feel free to recruit one more voter to feel comfortable In fact, I plan on being very vocal within the community, and will likely assist in changing peoples' minds on who they vote for (though I wouldn't explicitly endorse politics, I'd certainly endorse freedom and people can do with that what they want).

I want freedom now too (damn it  ), but to my mind, that's like wanting a million dollars now...just ain't gonna happen.