The Necessity of Government

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GPC100s
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Re: The Necessity of Government

Post by GPC100s »

brimstoneSalad wrote:So you're asking me to support a system in which I, along with the vast majority of humans, must willingly sacrifice our lives so that rich people may live more freely, and have the liberty to pollute us to death?
Ugh... You're going back to the "should" again when I specifically said I don't think this... NO! I'm not saying people "should" breathe from air tanks!!!! I'm not saying I want society to be reduced to a few people living in poor conditions! What I'm saying is your premise that we need air to be collectively owned is false. The libertarian society I envision is one where everyone helps one another due to the incentives of trade. No one HAS to trade, but almost everybody will because it benefits themselves.

And no, government doesn't guarantee you anything. They say they do, can even deliver sometimes, but it's no guarantee. If you want the closest thing to a guarantee, set up a system where you and others like you pay someone to help you and doesn't get paid if you're not satisfied. Still not a guarantee because they can just say "you know what? I'm just gonna piss away all my reputation today!", same with government: "you know what? I think it's time for a war. Time for cut backs!", but at least with a free society, you have the option to take your business elsewhere.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: The Necessity of Government

Post by brimstoneSalad »

GPC100s wrote: Ugh... You're going back to the "should" again when I specifically said I don't think this... NO! I'm not saying people "should" breathe from air tanks!!!! I'm not saying I want society to be reduced to a few people living in poor conditions!
But that is what would happen.

It only takes one person behaving badly to force us all to breathe from air tanks, and kill everybody who doesn't.

If I have the right to stop that person from doing that, everything's good.

When I lose the right to stop him from pumping Sarin gas, Chlorine gas, botox dust, ricin dust, or anthrax spores into the air in the middle of a major city, that's a problem.
It just takes one wack job to kill billions of people- it's remarkably easy if nobody is allowed to lift a finger to stop him, and the police defend his right to kill everybody in that way.

GPC100s wrote: What I'm saying is your premise that we need air to be collectively owned is false.
It's only false if you believe people should be allowed to kill others.
GPC100s wrote: The libertarian society I envision is one where everyone helps one another due to the incentives of trade. No one HAS to trade, but almost everybody will because it benefits themselves.
And it's a society in which the only way you can stop Al-Qaeda from pumping nerve toxins into the air in the middle of New York City and killing the entire population is telling them that, if they do that, you'll boycott their products.
That'll teach em' they won't kill people now, right?

Look, helping each other and not relying on government is great- but there are certain things that you just can't allow. Polluting the air is one of them.
It's not a slippery slope to a welfare state, it's a requirement for life.

GPC100s wrote: And no, government doesn't guarantee you anything. They say they do, can even deliver sometimes, but it's no guarantee. If you want the closest thing to a guarantee, set up a system where you and others like you pay someone to help you and doesn't get paid if you're not satisfied. Still not a guarantee because they can just say "you know what? I'm just gonna piss away all my reputation today!", same with government: "you know what? I think it's time for a war. Time for cut backs!", but at least with a free society, you have the option to take your business elsewhere.
No guarantee is ever perfect. I just want some recourse. And in some respects, Libertarianism may be better, because services like police have competition so may be less abusive. But if I can't breathe, none of that matters.
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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You make a good point about the biotoxins, brimstoneSalad. Such a thing is very concentrated and can be targetted, which is very unlike CO2 pollution. One could argue that, because of the precision of biotoxins, you CAN claim ownership of the air; but you can't when the substances are not precise. The definition of property rights requires divisibility, that's why the atmosphere usually does not qualify.

Like, if Al-Quaeda wanted to destroy the whole world with CO2, and they really could do it, you gotta ask yourself: how do they have the resources? If it's because people willingly gave it to them, then destruction of the world is the will of the people, who are you to say that's not valid? Yes, you die, and your body is yours to command, but the air is not... And I feel silly having to say this but NO I don't want this to happen, and I think it wouldn't happen because the will of the people is to survive.

You keep coming back to the idea that if it's allowed to happen, it will happen. Sure, people will want to do it, but they are few, therefore they won't be able to, even though they are allowed.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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GPC100s wrote:You make a good point about the biotoxins, brimstoneSalad. Such a thing is very concentrated and can be targetted, which is very unlike CO2 pollution.
There's no real difference between when something is targeted and when it is more dispersed. It's always a range- an effect could be local, and gradually become more widely spread. An effect could travel randomly on the wind, thousands of miles, or it could stagnate in one area.

The issues is in what you're putting out, how dangerous it is at the likely concentration people will have to breathe it, how many people will breathe it, and what kind of damage it will do (to people, or property).

A lot of products of pollution affect buildings and infrastructure, for example, creating acid rain that can damage things hundreds of miles away.

GPC100s wrote:One could argue that, because of the precision of biotoxins, you CAN claim ownership of the air; but you can't when the substances are not precise. The definition of property rights requires divisibility, that's why the atmosphere usually does not qualify.
You can easily divide responsibility for pollution. You output a million tons of CO2, then you're responsible for capturing a million tons of CO2- it balances perfectly.

People suffer because of global climate change- they suffer in terms of extreme tropical storms, and they suffer because of rising sea levels (particularly island nations, where people are losing their homes). Every company and individual outputting CO2 shares a tiny slice of that responsibility.
The problem is that until now we've failed to hold anybody accountable for it, because we didn't understand the magnitude of the problem.

Now, I don't want to be responsible for cleaning up somebody else's mess- and I shouldn't be. Nobody should have to be responsible for cleaning up the messes of others.
What we can do is tell each person to clean up their own messes. It's not that difficult to do with CO2.

With other things, it can be much more difficult.
GPC100s wrote:Like, if Al-Quaeda wanted to destroy the whole world with CO2, and they really could do it, you gotta ask yourself: how do they have the resources?
CO2 output is more expensive and less dangerous per capita than a nerve toxin would be, but it's not a fundamentally different thing. It's just harder to destroy the world with it. There are all sorts of pollutants with varying levels of danger and expense.

How can you draw a line allowing one pollution, but prohibiting another?

If you put something out, then clean it up. Doesn't mater if it's Sarin or CO2- responsibility for our own messes works no matter what that mess is.

GPC100s wrote:If it's because people willingly gave it to them, then destruction of the world is the will of the people, who are you to say that's not valid?
Because it's much easier to destroy the world than to protect it. And the efforts of a few people do not speak for everybody.

With nerve toxins, it might take a few dozen people's effort.

With greenhouse gases, maybe the resources of a million people, less in the first world- by no means the majority.
You can [removed general description of how to destroy the world] putting the Earth in a critical state of natural disaster by releasing those gases and adding to the thermal energy in the atmosphere beyond anything anybody can control.
GPC100s wrote:And I feel silly having to say this but NO I don't want this to happen, and I think it wouldn't happen because the will of the people is to survive.
It would never happen as long as we're allowed to stop them. But it doesn't take many people to screw things up for everybody.

There are enough crazy people on Earth NOW to do these things if we allowed them to work together openly without interference.
GPC100s wrote:You keep coming back to the idea that if it's allowed to happen, it will happen. Sure, people will want to do it, but they are few, therefore they won't be able to, even though they are allowed.
They would most certainly be able to do it. I think you over-estimate the difficulty of causing massive havoc through destroying the environment and other shared resources.

The concerted effort of a few thousand people could destroy most human life on Earth by those "legal" means if we didn't lift a finger to oppose them.
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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You would be wrong there.

Somebody has to decide who collects the votes. You can't vote on who collects the votes, because somebody has to collect the votes for that vote too, and you can't vote on who collects those votes, because somebody has to collect those votes.

Do you see the problem of infinite regression?

It's like the question "who created god?"

At some point, you have to have an authority if you want to enact regulation.
Ohhh, I see. I would argue that having one person/a few people collect and count votes one time without vote on who does it isn't the same as authority. It's having a service... but either way, the less authority, the better. This would only be a one time thing.
That doesn't work.
Are you going to explain why not or nah?
Again, that doesn't work.
Again, why not?
Sorry, that's just silly. You can't assume this. There are no examples of this ever occurring in the history of humanity, this has never been tested, and there is no such complete theory of human psychology as to predict this kind of outcome.

You're just guessing here.

Karl Marx was just guessing when he wrote the Communist Manifesto. Some great ideas there too, but it wasn't tested.
Just think about it.
If people see that they need to cooperate to get things done, they wouldn't want to oppress each other. That would get in the way.
Even if I agreed that this was wrong^, I would think peoples' oppression would change the way it does in our society today. So this wouldn't just be a problem with anarchism, it'd be one with a governed society too.
How did that turn out when it was finally put into practice without testing it first?
We wouldn't have those problems because there would be no government, but I'm all for testing out this kind of society.
"I am not a Marxist." -Karl Marx
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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EquALLity, "just" thinking about it is the problem.

Read my comment about Marx again. Study political history of that era.

People are not rational, they are not well educated, and many of them are also not honest.

You have to have incredible faith in humanity - faith against overwhelming evidence to the contrary - to believe a system like that would work.
If people see that they need to cooperate to get things done, they wouldn't want to oppress each other. That would get in the way.
That's not the reality of human nature. A great many things should be painfully obvious, but people do not practice them.

Maybe if everybody in the world were like you, but they most certainly are not.
I would think peoples' oppression would change the way it does in our society today.
Yes, it would change - it would get much worse without the checks and balances of government to protect the rights of minorities. The slight majority would rule, or there would be civil war.

And the absolute suppression of capitalism would also lead to a totalitarian police state, as has been demonstrated.

There's a lot of political science and history you're missing out on. Is there a library near you? Maybe some books could be recommended.
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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Charity. Studies show that people who have the ability to "like" charities on facebook are less likely to donate. Therefore, if we were to take away the excuse "that's what my tax dollars are for" then we would see an increase in charity.
Tax dollars do go to the poor (not saying all), so how is that an excuse?
. Plus, people will have more money because they aren't being taxed (this includes the poor because they still buy some stuff which is taxed)
I disagree. The average person wouldn't have a lot of money; without threat of government action, employers won't have to treat employees well. There would be no minimum wage, no required healthcare, and the union wouldn't have much power.
I also think we can expect less poor people to exist because getting a job would be easier without minimum wage laws; although you may disagree
If there is no minimum wage, what incentive do employers have to give employees a good amount of money?
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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EquALLity wrote:Tax dollars do go to the poor (not saying all), so how is that an excuse?
You read the part of my reply that mentioned that people who think they're helping won't help, right? Well what I'm saying is that if you take that mandatory help away, people cannot say "I'm already helping" therefore charity would increase to replace those mandatory welfare... This is probably due to the fact humans get enjoyment from helping others; if not charity, it's having a job that positively changes the lives of others in small ways.
EquALLity wrote:If there is no minimum wage, what incentive do employers have to give employees a good amount of money?
Competition for good workers would drive up the wage, just like competition between producers drives down the price of goods... If you understand this, then you'll have to agree that the average person (the middle class, if you will) would get richer over time, as economic efficiency keeps getting better (as it does in any vaguely capitalist society the world has had).
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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EquALLity, "just" thinking about it is the problem.
Again, I'm all for testing this society.
Read my comment about Marx again. Study political history of that era.
What specifically?
People are not rational, they are not well educated, and many of them are also not honest.
I disagree... that's rather cynical.
That's not the reality of human nature. A great many things should be painfully obvious, but people do not practice them.
Meh. I think you're really overestimating peoples' stupidity.

I would also argue that one of the core beliefs of anarchism is that you are in control of your life... so it would automatically be against the rules to oppress others.
There's a lot of political science and history you're missing out on. Is there a library near you? Maybe some books could be recommended.
Like what?
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: The Necessity of Government

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EquALLity wrote: Again, I'm all for testing this society.
It has been tested. Many times. It always fails. Anarchy is fundamentally unstable.

Look, as an analogy, do you understand this: Earnshaw's theorem

Understand that, then you will be able to understand why you are so mistaken.
EquALLity wrote: What specifically?
The failures of the communist revolution.

The nature of communism itself. Even just read Marx.
EquALLity wrote:I disagree... that's rather cynical.
You can disagree with the observation that the Earth is not flat, but it doesn't stop it from being true.

There's nothing cynical about it, it only lacks naïveté.

Most people are religious and deeply unskeptical, and even among self described skeptics, most people are deeply irrational and non-skeptical about the vast majority of their lives and behaviors (even about certain canonical skeptic dogmas- yes, they exist), even among atheists there is deep and undeniable irrationality that pervades the community (look at the recent schism over Elevator-gate). Read the thread on Feminism here, in this very forum. Read the one on Bottled water. The one on Organic food. Read this very thread we're talking in right now and observe your own irrationality in promoting Anarchism, completely ignorant of political science, history, and every example of this kind of thinking ever.

There are relatively decent people out there, but nothing like what you're describing. People are not good enough to give up what they have and refuse to accumulate and better their hedonistic lives. Even political Anarchists won't do that.

You don't understand the magnitude of authority required to suppress something as natural and emergent from the facts of economics and human nature as capitalism.
EquALLity wrote: Meh. I think you're really overestimating peoples' stupidity.
Meh? Your argument is "Meh"?

Have you met people?

EquALLity wrote: I would also argue that one of the core beliefs of anarchism is that you are in control of your life... so it would automatically be against the rules to oppress others.
People don't magically follow rules just because somebody came up with them, or even because they agreed to them. The world doesn't work like that.
EquALLity wrote:Like what?
Anything ever written on political science or history.

Start with Marx. The communist manifesto.

Study the history of the cultural revolution in China, as well as Stalinism, and the problems faced in those cases.

Study the numerous "utopian" colonies that have been created in the past, and the failures of those colonies.

What you're talking about isn't just unrealistic, it's so beyond the scope of even the most basic understanding of psychology and sociology... it's not even wrong.

Pure Anarchism is not a thing, never will be a thing, can not be a thing. It just doesn't work.
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