Tell that to Ayn Rand .

I’m not a Randist. There may be lots of similarities in thinking regarding enlightened selfishness, but Ayn was a statist, and in that sense also similar to you.

I’m pretty sure you can think of various examples of monopoly abuse, I shouldn’t have to point each one out. The general principle is always the same.

You’re the one advocating monopolies, and ones of the worst kind, where the company having a monopoly uses violence to keep competition out and customers locked in. Hint: I’m talking about the state, democratic or not.

Also, Microsoft itself as well as many other corporations use the state to force competition out. Remove the state and “limited liability” enforced by state guns disappeared. Of course, I’ve already told you all this, and you still bring that shit up when you don’t know what else to say. That’s what intellectually dishonest people who can’t accept losing an argument do.

OK, good luck changing the way the human brain works.

Human brain thinks. History shows there have been many shifts in prevalent mentality and widely accepted ideas. Your beloved democracy is one example, so I don’t need luck. It will happen eventually, so long as people like me persist it will happen, and all you can do is cling to your politicians and the guns of the police to persecute those who think differently than you.

But just like in that past, that wont stop change. Ideas are bullet proof.

As long as there are two people who want to use the same object at the same moment, there will be one who thinks the other is coercing and didn’t get “ownership” in a fair way.

Again, when you don’t have anything better to say you backtrack to old arguments which you already tried and failed at before. That’s why we always end up going in circles.

To respond to that I would have to YET AGAIN, talk about the arbitration process, which is much like the current courts except without a monopoly, much less biased and much more specific to the situation at hand (no one shoe fits all bullshit called state laws – the only “law” are prior agreements).

Same to you.

Dream on. The above is such a clear substantiation of my claim that you lack capability of precise thinking or intellectual honesty. When you don’t know what else to say you go back to same old arguments which you’ve already tried and failed at, not to mention that you just somehow “forgot” to think about what precisely is involved in an example that you devise, like ownership dispute. You just assume the next easiest thing that seems like it can support your view.

You lack the capability of precise thinking exactly because you’re drowning in cognitive biases. I know, you’ll throw the same accusation at me, and that’s quite easily predictable, but again and again and AGAIN, I’m not the one claiming to have all the knowledge of the world or how should humans best behave, which is exactly why I’m a voluntaryist. I’m not the one condoning putting guns in people’s faces when they disagree with my vision of the world.

That’s you my friend. And that makes you intellectually defenseless. When the gun is your end all and be all – coercion – every argument is ultimately superfluous.

Tell that to Ayn Rand .

Because you say so.

I’m pretty sure you can think of various examples of monopoly abuse, I shouldn’t have to point each one out. The general principle is always the same.

Advocating non-coercion isn’t the same as merely advocating anarchy (statelessness) with people as they are.

OK, good luck changing the way the human brain works.

When everyone rejects coercion…

As long as there are two people who want to use the same object at the same moment, there will be one who thinks the other is coercing and didn’t get “ownership” in a fair way.

So long as you exist that can’t be true.

OK, my mistake, even if you change the world into hell, it still exists.

Frankly Taco you don’t know how to practice precise thinking nor how to avoid contradicting yourself.

Same to you.

Geez. Well if that’s the case it certainly got enough more of it in the coming decades, so it was at the stage at which you might see it as “reasonable”, yet it obviously didn’t stop there.

Why would I care about the people outside the village ostracizing me? I’ve got the village, and since I was able to buy such amounts of land that I could surround it, I’m probably rich enough to own enough land to grow my own food and make my own things (where “me” means myself and the helpful boot lickers who think I’m cool because I’m a bully).

So I guess your pockets have no bottom? You’ll never run out of your money even when you can’t sell anything you produce? Yet you still have to pay those boot lickers to farm your land as well as the machinery and seeds necessary to farm them. Or are you gonna produce all of that by yourself?

You’re getting more and more absurd, and I know, there’s no limit to absurdity. You can go all the way, write a whole fictional story, but that’s no longer an analogy for anything, just your imagination.

And again, this is only a method of lock-in that is easy to understand, it’s not like there aren’t thousands of others…

Because you say so.

Remove a state, and within time you’ll get another state, one that is worse than what you had before because it hasn’t gone through the fight for democracy yet.

Because you keep saying so. I’ve provided countless of arguments to the contrary which you couldn’t refute, not least of which is the one standing in front of your nose: Advocating non-coercion isn’t the same as merely advocating anarchy (statelessness) with people as they are.

As I said before I’m not advocating the immediate removal of the state, but an evolution in thinking to one that is oriented at voluntary interaction rather than coercion. When everyone rejects coercion you wont HAVE to remove the state, it will simply wither away or turn into a private company doing business without coercion.

What we disagree on is whether or not voluntaryism will collapse and be succeeded by something very much like all those examples you provided.

The argument emphasized above is the reason why that simply doesn’t make sense. Voluntaryism cannot “collapse”. It’s a mentality, not a system. If a free market turns back into any form of statism then there was no voluntaryist mentality to begin with, or people became corrupt again by coercion, which is the kind of corruption far less likely than all the corruption naturally occurring within any state because it depends on contradictory principles. Naturally self-interested individuals are expected to work in the interest of people whom they don’t even know and merely see as a “crowd” to be campaigned.

Or the end.

So long as you exist that can’t be true.

Frankly Taco you don’t know how to practice precise thinking nor how to avoid contradicting yourself. Your primary purpose is either to argue for the sake of arguing or defend your view at all costs (like sacrificing your intellectual honesty). And that’s pretty pointless. I don’t know how you can bear yourself.

And since I can easily point to *actual* examples of worse statism, and now you seem to admit it can lead to worse things, isn’t voluntaryism an idea worth pursuing?

We agree that bad statism is bad. What we disagree on is whether or not voluntaryism will collapse and be succeeded by something very much like all those examples you provided.

You only need to change yourself to change the world – you’re the beginning of the world you know.

Or the end.

Perhaps that’s because it started with too little rather than too much?

too expensive to pull off as it’d most likely generate a hell of ostracism on part of others aside from that surrounded village

Why would I care about the people outside the village ostracizing me? I’ve got the village, and since I was able to buy such amounts of land that I could surround it, I’m probably rich enough to own enough land to grow my own food and make my own things (where “me” means myself and the helpful boot lickers who think I’m cool because I’m a bully).

And again, this is only a method of lock-in that is easy to understand, it’s not like there aren’t thousands of others…

Remove a state, and within time you’ll get another state, one that is worse than what you had before because it hasn’t gone through the fight for democracy yet.

Speaking of fiction, your only method to get out of a situation of monopoly abuse other than violence is teleportation .

Only after your example became fictive enough to warrant such a response. It’s still a fictive example whereas WW2 Germany, Mao’s China or North Korea actually happened.

And actually.. even USA is a pretty horrid example of what statism leads to, and this was even very minimal statism (USA started off as a minarchy of sorts). Yet they pretty much did a genocide on native american population, induced an excuse to get into WW2, killed millions of people in their modern wars (Iraq, Afghanistan etc..) and tortured people in camps (Guantanamo, US prisons which can also be known as “rape cells”). In total, US could be seen as the single worst statist power in history, and yet it started only with a little bit of coercion.

I’m not saying that anarcho-capitalism leads to worse things than statism, I’m saying that anarcho-capitalism can easily be hijacked to become a very bad type of statism, without any initiation of force by the oppressor.

But it wouldn’t be statism (statism needs coercion) and you can’t really claim how bad it is when all you could do is play catch up with me on how could the villagers and the surrounding property owner outsmart each other. Aside from being totally unplausible (too expensive to pull off as it’d most likely generate a hell of ostracism on part of others aside from that surrounded village) it’s not even so unresolvable.

And since I can easily point to *actual* examples of worse statism, and now you seem to admit it can lead to worse things, isn’t voluntaryism an idea worth pursuing? You only need to change yourself to change the world – you’re the beginning of the world you know.

I’m not saying that anarcho-capitalism leads to worse things than statism, I’m saying that anarcho-capitalism can easily be hijacked to become a very bad type of statism, without any initiation of force by the oppressor.

Oh, you meant that as part of that example. Well… as I said, we’ve beaten that horse already. That likelihood of that scenario is lesser than the likelihood of Netherlands becoming a fascist dictatorship. Reread my past comment on that.

A place where it is OK to initiate force against someone whose business practice you disagree with is NOT a voluntaryist society.

Yes.

Examples of ugly coercion are not counterexamples to a method to abuse non-initiation of force. Farmer A tells farmer B “your horse has escaped from the barn”. Farmer B replies “no it hasn’t, because your cows are in your meadow”. You’re farmer B.

Backtrack a little there, you’re trying to prove voluntaryism leads to worse consequences than justifying a little coercion (which appears to be your belief), remember?

So it’s perfectly valid of me to point examples of justifying coercion leading to even worse scenarios. And examples I named aren’t even fiction like yours.

Cause, if you need to be reminded, that’s what we’re fundamentally hung up on: coercion vs. non-coercion.. dude.

But sometimes it seems like you come arguing for arguments sake, rather than to enlighten me or any other.. higher purpose.. I’m usually keep replying just cause I can’t resist it, but I think I am (and have on some occasions) coming to the point at which I could just say.. stop it, just drop it. This is so fucking pointless. Go your way, enjoy your ideas, don’t go trying to convince someone you should have figure by now you aren’t capable of convincing. We’re a mutually lost cause.

Cheers

The thing is, I’m attacking them using an unfair but peaceful business practice. I’m not initiating force, just buying land and keeping people off my property. If they choose to “defend” themselves against that using those weapons and training, they stop being voluntaryists.

A place where it is OK to initiate force against someone whose business practice you disagree with is NOT a voluntaryist society.

That’s just rehashing the beaten enough example. We need not to go around in circles. All I’ve said as counter examples still apply, including the reference to the worst case scenario of your coercionism (WW2 Germany, North Korea etc.).

Examples of ugly coercion are not counterexamples to a method to abuse non-initiation of force. Farmer A tells farmer B “your horse has escaped from the barn”. Farmer B replies “no it hasn’t, because your cows are in your meadow”. You’re farmer B.

You could say that it is an emergent “order” among humans whom still believe in initiation of force and fraud or at least never think about it enough to realize when they’re actually doing or supporting it.

But assuming that this can never change is assuming that evolution never happens, but that assumption is countered by long term historical and empirical evidence. From monarchies to democracies (as flawed as they are). From Earth centric view of the universe to Einstein’s relativity. From primitive technologies of the cave men to sophisticated 21st century technology, evolution is clearly happening.

And none of it could happen if it weren’t for the evolution of prevalent human thinking; ideas. You cannot create something without first having it as an idea. You cannot discover a new understanding without daring to think differently.

So the key has always been in the mind, the ideas. Influence a change in prevalent thinking among living humans and you have changed the world, instigating a new observable evolutionary leap.

So if you become convinced yourself that you own yourself, have the right to your life, liberty and property and its defense and that everyone else has the same – non-coercion emerges as the ultimate moral principle. Convince most other people in your community of that and the evolution will begin to happen.

You could just say it is impossible so why bother trying, but that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. It isn’t impossible for you so it must be possible for others too. You can’t justify evil by the fact that there’s too much of it, obviously.

That’s what I’m doing. I reject the status quo. I reject the idea that evolution cannot happen. I evolved. Many other people did. That’s enough proof for me that it is possible.

So you can continue there making excuses for your coercive order or you can try your best to turn it into a non-coercive one.

And don’t let the fact you depend on current government stop you. It doesn’t matter. You lead your life, you can empower yourself more than any government can. Their funds mean nothing. You can in time create your own wealth.

There is a problem with the way this order emerges: it always starts with an individual or small group screwing everyone else

Yes, when most of everyone else is duped into believing resistance to that minority is futile (like today) and don’t have a solid grasp of the non-coercion principle and why exactly is it so valid.

There have been stable anarchies in the past, some lasting for centuries, but they eventually collapsed into a coercive society because they initially developed “accidentally” so to speak, without a true deliberate grasp of the non-coercion principle. Today is different. The voluntaryist philosophy is about deliberate rejection of coercion and there is plenty of readily accessible material providing rational and empirically backed reasoning for its validity.

So if you remove the hierarchy and move to voluntaryism, don’t be surprised when some of the children or grandchildren of the idealists who created your “free state” makes a big oppressive mess.

You’re again overlooking, aside from the parental influence and natural simplicity of these ideas, the fact that everyone believes in self-defense so any such statist uprising is more likely than not, to be doomed. It’s one thing to rise a gang among people who are unarmed and defenseless and quite another to do so among people who are armed, trained and have absolutely no qualms about defending themselves.

The only real difference with the medieval method of conquering a city is that I buy the land around the city instead of just letting my army take that land by force. That difference is quite alarming – it’s not just possible to seize power, it can even be done without stopping being a voluntaryist.

That’s just rehashing the beaten enough example. We need not to go around in circles. All I’ve said as counter examples still apply, including the reference to the worst case scenario of your coercionism (WW2 Germany, North Korea etc.).

A person more evil than me surely could come up with a less obvious lock-in business practice, and with the social tools available to a voluntaryist there is nothing you could do to get rid of your dictator.

First of all, you’re not convincing me with your gradient of evil. Whether there is someone more or less evil than you is a very subjective matter and has no bearing towards the facts and possibilities.

Secondly, yes there is a lot you can do. Everyone has a culture of self defense, and weapons of self defense, unlike in modern democracies.

I very much prefer a system – any system – in which the leaders can be kicked out of their position and replaced without resorting to violence.

But the default state of democracy already IS violence. Majority forces their will on minority even when the difference between the two is dismal.

Face it already, it doesn’t work. You’re defending a crude old primitive system.