Principles

[sSsflamesSs]

Pasa, for some odd reason, every time I see your new avatar, I think of a hairy armpit, only to realize, seconds later, that it's a fiery dragon. I'm not kidding, lol.

Oh sorry, the subject.

Honesty and respect for all that deserve it.

[Anonymouse]

Gee, the same bafoons who cry for "honesty" are the same ones who vote for the politicians and uphold the system which is ipso facto deception.

Political deception is the easiest and most obvious, yet few acknowledge it.

[loseyourname]

Who the hell said we voted for anything? I'm talking about interpersonal honesty, anyway. I don't want the government to operate completely in the open. Governments need to keep secrets to remain in power, and I certainly want my nation to have a government.

Now what principles do you hold yourself to?

[Aphrodit3]

Respect, honesty, trust, blah blah.
This is my foundation for any relationship. If it's not there then I waste no time or effort.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Who the hell said we voted for anything? I'm talking about interpersonal honesty, anyway. I don't want the government to operate completely in the open. Governments need to keep secrets to remain in power, and I certainly want my nation to have a government.

Now what principles do you hold yourself to?

But that is the essential problem. Honesty means just that, honesty. You don't have to make it elastic. Honesty to thyself is the most important. From this all else flows. Thus government is dishonesty towards me, while expoiting and taking for granted my trust. The government is composed of people, people who beg for votes, who promise this and that, and essentially use coercion to keep order and entangle this country in foreign wars that I didn't want myself to be entangled. Thus "democracy" is a failure in representing me, the individual. Was I consulted? No. I was lied to. Now, thanks to them, my life is threatened if I go to Latin America, or the Middle East, or Asia and tell them I am "American". That is what deception is, so I don't agree with your attempt at trying to make "honesty" by mitigating its meaning.

[loseyourname]

Fine. Write up your own little version of a national constitution for us. Tell us how it might be possible for a government to operate in full honesty without going under. You don't like what we have? Give us an alternative, or give your tired rants a rest.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Fine. Write up your own little version of a national constitution for us. Tell us how it might be possible for a government to operate in full honesty without going under. You don't like what we have? Give us an alternative, or give your tired rants a rest.

There is no government alternative to government. It's either despotism or anarchy.

The theory essentially rests on 3 empirically meaningful assumptions. First is that a government, the State, is a territorial monopolist of coercion and exploitation, and governemnt subjects as the victims of the initials action. Second is between a privately owned, inheritable monopoly, and a public uninheritable monopoly run by caretakers instead of owners. Third, the assumption of self interest on the part of the exploiting governments agents and its subjects, since government agents prefer more wealth, more income and more power, and their subjects prefer more wealth, income, and freedom.

From this then it deductively flows that a private owner of government would be more interested in the preservation of capital values, as opposed to a public caretaker of government ( which is essentially what the presented "democracy" is ). This is not a new idea and is equivalent to saying that a private slave owner will take better care of his slave, than a public one.

To criticize this you must prove either an error in the premises or the conclusion.

[loseyourname]

Again, provide a better alternative. Anarchy is not viable. I have no qualms with your theory. I also have no qualms with the existence of government. Of course it exists to exert its will forcibly upon the people. I don't see what choice we have.

[Anonymouse]

Originally posted by loseyourname Again, provide a better alternative. Anarchy is not viable. I have no qualms with your theory. I also have no qualms with the existence of government. Of course it exists to exert its will forcibly upon the people. I don't see what choice we have.

Anarchy is not viable? You did not show any errors in my previous premises or conclusion, thus what is your statement based on? So you accept being submissive? There are no "alternatives" in the way you are conceiving them. What you conceive to a government alternative, is yet another government. What choices we have is simply to live without government, that simple. Private institutions will do the rest.

For example. We pay taxes to government for its services, whether police or national defense. Government is already defined as a territorial monopoly of force. From an economic point of view, a monopoly is bad. If I as an individual consumer cite as an example the failure of government on the scene of national defense, and its policing services' corruption and overall lack of protection, and I want to take my business elsewhere, perhaps a private institution, or simply myself, I cannot do that, for I must pay the tax and I have no choice. That is coercion. No choice, means no liberty, no freedom. Thus when politicians or us speak of this country representing "liberty" that is not so. This country was not always so. The framers recognized the rights of a state militia for their recognized that a centrally organized state would be dangerous. Thus the right to secede was something agreed upon up until the Civil War.

Freedom is something outside of government. Government only curtails it and takes it away. Government believes that freedom is something it gives to individuals. Thus the contention is with a centrally organized ruling authority by coercion. From that it deductively flows that this is in obvious contradiction with the principles of economics. Either politics of Statism are seriously flawed, or the principles on which economics exist are false. And we all know that economic laws claim to be apodictically true empirical propositions, in other words praxeological laws, of human action and conduct. Hence it would be a categorical mistake to think of them as ever being confirmed or falsified by historical experience.

[loseyourname]

You didn't make an argument for the viability of anarchy. Go buy an island, invite your friends, and set up no government. Then remember Lord of the Flies.