Has Stefan Molyneux hooked you?

[Russell Kanning]

sometimes guys that call themselves anarchists ... like having some government .... it keeps them out of trouble with the thugs

[Faber]

Faber is a "he"

[Lex]

you have to have a little "top down" approach activity?

I think so.

how much?

There is obviously no right answer to this. But you can always defer to the free market and let those that want to take the approach via politics to do so.

[Lex]

That appearance of legitimacy is exactly the source of their power though. You take that away, and you take away the power and the threat that accompanies it. I can print a sticker with "president" on it and go order some army personnel around. Without legitimacy, military personal will not feel compelled to follow my orders. Without legitimacy, people won't feel compelled to pay taxes that support that military, report on their neighbors, etc. Government survives because we all fuel it with both moral and tangible support. If we stop fueling it, the legitimacy and the threat diminishes and we want to diminish it as much as we possibly can with a (perhaps asymptotic) goal of zero. Without legitimacy, whoever assumes the then meaningless role of governor, or mayor, or whatever, has gained no power from that worthless title. They may as well print their own sticker. In such a scenario with no legitimacy, government has failed to provide the thug with any power he didn't already have. A government with no appearance of legitimacy is no threat at all.

We don't live in a pure democracy. A majority of Americans can disagree with something the government is doing and still nothing may change. Ron Paul has suggested that 70% of Americans are against the war and it's a telling sign that the government doesn't need majority approval to do very evil things.

Are you suggesting that if a majority of Americans stopped voting the government would somehow stop functioning?

Or how do you foresee the elimination of government unfolding?

The idea that the government needs a sense of legitimacy to function is fairy tales. All they need is to have more guns than you.

Which brings up another question, how will you liquidate the government assets, all those guns? Who will do the liquidation and where will the proceeds go?

[Lex]

If Ron Paul is this anarchist that you claim he is, why does he talk about the "limited role of government"? Why is an anarchist saying there is a role for government?

I'm assuming this is a rhetorical question because we both know full well that in order to even become invovled in politics you have to consciously agree to compromise some of your principles.

I'm also a strong believer that anarchy is a direction, not a destination. Ron Paul definitely believes in Austrian economics and that is the direction he has been going, consistently.

Sure you can start getting into a debate of the end doesn't justify the means, but as I have said above there is no end, there are only the means. We have to think strategically not in absolutes.

[dalebert]

The idea that the government needs a sense of legitimacy to function is fairy tales. All they need is to have more guns than you.

Then go order armies into war against other nations. Go out to some army base and boss soldiers around and see what happens. Without that sense of legitimacy, those guns are carried by a bunch of individuals with individual will, and they will laugh at you or anyone else who orders them around unless they have bought into the B.S. that the person ordering them around has legitimate authority to do so! It is that appearance of legitimacy and nothing else that separates them from any other petty gang of criminals. It is that and that alone that allows them to form enormous functional armies that carry out the will of a few elites. They fund those armies with tax dollars that people hand over to them because they've been indoctrinated to believe it's not theft. Not voting is just one piece of the equation. We make it SO easy for them to control us. If we stopped cooperating constantly, tyranny would become more and more burdensome. It doesn't take many people not going along with it to start throwing a serious wrench in the gears.

[dalebert]

If Ron Paul is this anarchist that you claim he is, why does he talk about the "limited role of government"? Why is an anarchist saying there is a role for government?

I'm assuming this is a rhetorical question because we both know full well that in order to even become invovled in politics you have to consciously agree to compromise some of your principles.

So you're suggesting that Ron Paul is really an anarchist and he's lying to get into a position of power over our lives? Well, I don't buy that. I think he's attempting to portray himself honestly.

[Faber]

An apparently unsolicited review of Stefan Molyneux's three books:

[youtube=425,350]YKS0Qz1eeOs[/youtube]

(sorry to drag this thread back on topic )

[Lex]

Then go order armies into war against other nations.

If I was savvy enough I could probably pull it off by making up some story about being from a new secret national security bureau that has authority to start wars, blah, blah.

Don't underestimate the effectivness of social hacking. Especially on such a large scale where nobody would be expecting it.

Go out to some army base and boss soldiers around and see what happens. Without that sense of legitimacy, those guns are carried by a bunch of individuals with individual will, and they will laugh at you or anyone else who orders them around unless they have bought into the B.S. that the person ordering them around has legitimate authority to do so!

Given a proper uniform and some coaching on how to talk the talk it can probably be done. A lower rank soldier is unlikely to question an order from what appears to be a superior officer.

It is that appearance of legitimacy and nothing else that separates them from any other petty gang of criminals. It is that and that alone that allows them to form enormous functional armies that carry out the will of a few elites.

Fear is another method of creating armies - legitimacy not required. And of course money is a third option. Some soldier wouldn't care who they're shooting at as long as they get their paycheck at the end of the day.

They fund those armies with tax dollars that people hand over to them because they've been indoctrinated to believe it's not theft. Not voting is just one piece of the equation. We make it SO easy for them to control us. If we stopped cooperating constantly, tyranny would become more and more burdensome. It doesn't take many people not going along with it to start throwing a serious wrench in the gears.

They'll just take away everyones wrenches and fix the gears. Unless you have mechanics on the inside help keep the gears from working.

[Lex]

To get back on subject:

Listen to this podcast about self-defense: http://www.freedomainradioshows.com/Traffic_Jams/traffic_jam_1.mp3

He argues against self-defense... by equating personal defense with government wars

[dalebert]

A lower rank soldier is unlikely to question an order from what appears to be a superior officer.

So you would use the appearance of legitimacy to manipulate them... exactly as I said.

[J’raxis 270145]

I would hope that the least the Ron Paul antagonists could do is just use your energy on attack the other candidates or the system or going out and doing civil disobedience but to sit there and spend time coming up with ways to hurt the Ron Paul movement is just mind boggling to me.

This is how most idealistic social/political movements usually end up collapsing: The purists within the group start attacking those that aren't, wasting everyone's time. Ultimately, two or more factions emerge, each a fraction of the strength of the previous group.

Why purists have to behave in such a manner, I don't know. Perhaps it's because they think it's easier to convert people who are "almost there" than it is to convert people who are completely opposed to them. Perhaps it's because it's more maddening to keep quiet about someone who shares your worldview except for one or two minor points, than it is to keep quiet about someone who's so different that you can't relate at all to them.

And there's no good way to respond to them: You can waste your time engaging in their arguments with them (have you noticed just how many of the threads on this forum recently have been nothing more than debate?), or you can split from them—which is the starting point of the factionalism I mentioned earlier. Either way, nothing is accomplished except everyone involved getting pissed at everyone else.

[Faber]

To get back on subject:

Listen to this podcast about self-defense: http://www.freedomainradioshows.com/Traffic_Jams/traffic_jam_1.mp3

He argues against self-defense... by equating personal defense with government wars

He said "personal defense against a mugger is the same as a government war"?  I didn't hear him say that.  I heard him say that the need for personal self-defense is rare.  I've got a few decades under my belt and I've never had to use self-defense.  I credit that with good fortune, but mostly good decisions.  And if I was mugged or whatever, I'd hand over my wallet and call it a day; it'd probably cost me less than buying a gun. 

Self-defense also tends to be ambiguous and lead to escalation.  And I heard him draw the analogy to the World Wars in showing that escalation and ambiguity thing, which is where you might have gotten lost.  But I also heard him say that self-defense is a morally valid concept.  People twist that concept into "Well what about World War II, HUH?!", which he finds obnoxious and historically ignorant (as do I).  It's also hypocritical, of course, because if self-defense is a valid option, then the first form of self-defense should be defense against a government that taxes.

As far as I know, having listened to the podcasts and read the books, he's never called personal self-defense immoral.

[J’raxis 270145]

To get back on subject:

Listen to this podcast about self-defense: http://www.freedomainradioshows.com/Traffic_Jams/traffic_jam_1.mp3

He argues against self-defense... by equating personal defense with government wars

He said "personal defense against a mugger is the same as a government war"?  I didn't hear him say that.

And you guys just demonstrated the (on-topic) post I was about to make:—

I am not hooked on Stefan Molyneux, nor will I be, until he learns to pick up a keyboard and bloody write articles instead of speak them. I don't want to waste forty-five minutes listening to someone say something, when I could've read the same in five minutes. When an article is textual, I can skip around, jump back and re-read something if a later paragraph referenced something earlier, and so on. I can't do that easily with audio or video recordings. Finally, I often like to save articles that I like—I'm not saving dozens of 80MiB flash videos that could've been 10KiB HTML files.

And most importantly, for purposes of discussion and debate, it's nigh impossible to quote anything he said—unless you're a stenographer.

[dalebert]

J, I'm going to respond to you in the anti-politics thread to keep from further hijacking this thread.