Being the only person in this thread with both reading comprehension AND a pdf reader...

Registered Lib: 9,176
Turnout Lib: 989 (10.8%)

11/4/2010 3:40:24 AM

philihp:

Quote :

"Being the only person in this thread with both reading comprehension AND a pdf reader... Registered Lib: 9,176 Turnout Lib: 989 (10.8%)"

Congrats. You just reading comprehended yourself into a steaming pile of early voting results, not election results.

11/4/2010 3:43:02 AM

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"You don't get rights by belonging to a group. You get rights as an individual. Children don't deserve "special rights" aka government stealing based privileges like SCHIP legislation."

that's why I said rights of children and not Children's Rights.

11/4/2010 9:44:56 AM

Wow, a lot of obvious bullshit has gone unchallenged in this thread.

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"Libertarians like to live in their little fantasy world where everyone is a good person and does the right thing, information is 100% transparent, and corporations don't have evil intentions. The fact is, we don't live in that world and in many instances, government is the one thing keeping a lot of these things from happening. If every person in the world was good, and they worked completely for the betterment of humanity, then yes, libertarianism would be the best form of government and would work. Kind of the same way where if we could get communism to work perfectly, then it too would be the best form of government. Or the way if we could get democracy to function perfectly, then it would be the best form of government."

Where has any libertarian ever suggested that everyone is a good person? Where has any libertarian suggested that all corporations have good intentions? This is a straw man, through and through.

The types of governments that you advocate are the ones that ignore human nature. I understand that people do bad things - that's why we have a government that will protect rights. However, I also understand that people are selfish (sup, that includes you), and they will act in their own self-interest. Systems like communism make no sense, because they demand that individuals act out of some altruistic sense of social responsibility. Democracy is just mob rule, so if you think that mob rule would be great if it worked "perfectly," uh, okay. You're making a great argument against yourself.

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"And stop saying libertarianism is the one pure ideology. It's so easy to refute you based on what you posted. Say I think it's perfectly fine to steal from someone just because I can. Because I'm free to do it. Well, turns out I'm just more libertarian than you are. Boom. Argument destroyed. Go read another Ayn Rand novel, faggot."

Wow. Did you miss the part about freedom and rights? You aren't free to infringe upon someone else's rights. Your freedom ends where my begins. These are very fundamental ideas, man.

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"The rights of children are libertarian ideology's bane."

Nope. What are you referring to? Child labor laws? Those laws are purely a result of our advanced, industrialized society. Children no longer have to work to survive (for now), so many have figured it's immoral for a child to work at all. If a child wants to work for money, they should be able to. I know you want to step in and say, "No, you can't live your life the way you want to, because you're a child" but that's just the totalitarian in you speaking.

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"If Cary decides slavery is great, hey, why not?"

I know you're trolling, but at least read: remember the part where I said, under an ideal libertarian system, any ideology can freely exist, as long as people have the ability to opt out? How does one opt out of slavery?

11/4/2010 12:59:13 PM

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"There's nearly seven billion of us. All it takes is one lone voice in the wilderness shouting, "You can do better than you're currently doing!" Most people will respond to that. They will abandon the dictatorship of the proletariat, or communism, or whatever. They will flock to the idea of making more money/stuff/bullshit they don't need. That is my fundamental problem with Kris' position: it requires perfection. He labors under the delusion that people can be conditioned as one whole mass -- or, perhaps, that the "few" people who don't "get it" can be eliminated or reconditioned. History doesn't back this up. "

There's a better approach than that, and you won't find it in a history book, you'll find it in a science book. Several organisms in our world depend on a similar "prisoner's dillema" sort of cooperation. Obviously what should happen to these organisms is a freeloader would eventually evolve and ruin the entire system, right? But nature has a unique algorithm for dealing with the "cheater" problem. Here's a very interesting article describing how this very problem is deal with in nature: http://www.springerlink.com/content/w7q7644072qt0206/

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"If a child wants to work for money, they should be able to. I know you want to step in and say, "No, you can't live your life the way you want to, because you're a child" but that's just the totalitarian in you speaking."

Yeah I bet back when we did have child labor, those kids wanted nothing more than to wake up and work in a dirty dangerous factory, right?

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"under an ideal libertarian system, any ideology can freely exist, as long as people have the ability to opt out? How does one opt out of slavery?"

Where do you draw the line? Should I be able to opt out of debt?

11/4/2010 1:12:30 PM

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"So you're basically saying that you think city-states should make a return? What about national defense? Hell, what would stop the city-states from warring with each other? Sounds like some apocalypse shit."

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"If Cary decides slavery is great, hey, why not?"

Apparently reading comprehension is not a strong suit for either of you.

By having an absolute bare minimum of universal laws, each area is free to build their society in the way that best fits the situation.

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"Where do you draw the line? Should I be able to opt out of debt?"

A freely entered contract is much different from slavery.

11/4/2010 1:48:04 PM

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"A freely entered contract is much different from slavery."

But is it? How do you make them pay? Or what do you do if they don't pay? Garnish thier wages?

11/4/2010 1:59:24 PM

you exile them from society

11/4/2010 2:07:04 PM

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"But is it? How do you make them pay? Or what do you do if they don't pay?"

Presumably these remedies would be in the contract, at least if it was competently written. And if it wasn't competently written, then the the creditor just has to bent over and take it, hopefully having learned to improve his contracts and not do business with the deadbeat in question.

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"There's a better approach than that, and you won't find it in a history book, you'll find it in a science book."

Perhaps you will, but I certainly didn't find it in the article you linked. To the extent that I understood it (being averse to math and rusty on my genetics, I will confess) it seemed to show a model for how in some hypothetical animal population certain genes would not spread. I'm assuming that you think this is germane because a similar algorithm could be useful in preventing the spread of selfish ideas in your happy commie land, although that seems like a pretty tenuous thread of logic. And of course it does nothing to explain how you overcome the overwhelming prevalence of the "selfish" ideas currently existing.

Perhaps you could clarify for me.

11/4/2010 5:25:57 PM

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"Presumably these remedies would be in the contract"

So then slavery could exist.

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"I'm assuming that you think this is germane because a similar algorithm could be useful in preventing the spread of selfish ideas"

That's exactly what it is. Ideas and genes are similar, in the way they spread, and the way they die off, ideas simply don't take a lifetime, nor do they come about through a Monte Carlo algorithm.

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"And of course it does nothing to explain how you overcome the overwhelming prevalence of the "selfish" ideas currently existing."

We have already begun that transformation, for example take the average response to the dictator game, people are not completely selfish, we have grown less so as time has gone by. In this way the solution I have suggested will come about naturally, rather than being imposed on people, much as it did during evolution. I know it's a different paradigm than you might conventionally imagine, where "human nature" is some sort of static construct.

11/4/2010 7:11:45 PM

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"Action X only occurs at time T because of the actions that lead up to X, learning simply being a part of that."

and how did those actions occur? Oh right, other actions led to those actions. And what led to those actions? more actions? starting to see what the logical fallacy is here?

11/4/2010 7:27:03 PM

[Edited on November 4, 2010 at 7:48 PM. Reason : ]

11/4/2010 7:35:04 PM

forgot to close a tag. sorry

11/4/2010 7:40:03 PM

Quote :

"and how did those actions occur? Oh right, other actions led to those actions. And what led to those actions? more actions? starting to see what the logical fallacy is here?"

holding two mirrors together is a logical fallacy too right?

11/4/2010 7:42:23 PM

so you deny the existence of a logical fallacy that even YOU mentioned existed the other day? starts with an H and ends with omunculus?

11/4/2010 7:43:53 PM

That's not the homonculus fallacy, it's Newton's third law.

11/4/2010 7:48:08 PM

Homosexualomunculus?

11/4/2010 7:49:33 PM

you might want to read up on the homunculus, buddy. If a thing is driven by an occurrence of another instance of the same thing which is then driven by another instance of the same thing, well, you got it.

11/4/2010 7:51:36 PM

Rand Paul has libertarian pedigree but he’s definitely not a libertarian.

And the fact the he started his own ophthalmologist accrediting agency makes me think he’s just a little bit crazy.

But i don’t think he’s really an idiot, which is refreshing.

11/4/2010 7:52:00 PM

I think he may well be a libertarian. I can't claim to know his "true beliefs," but I know that the areas where he did veer off from libertarian ideals are in areas that were, frankly, important to Kentucky voters. Like I've mentioned, a real libertarian can't get elected, and if they want to get elected, they're going to have to play politics. I do think they he'll vote like a libertarian.

11/4/2010 8:23:07 PM

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"you might want to read up on the homunculus, buddy"

You wouldn't even know it if you didn't hear me point it out on the thread you mentioned. You should read up on Newton's third law, because it's EXACTLY what we're talking about.

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"If a thing is driven by an occurrence of another instance of the same thing which is then driven by another instance of the same thing, well, you got it."

We're talking about Newton's third law, if you have a problem with it, take it up with him.

11/4/2010 9:27:06 PM

Quote :

"Nope. What are you referring to? Child labor laws? Those laws are purely a result of our advanced, industrialized society. Children no longer have to work to survive (for now), so many have figured it's immoral for a child to work at all. If a child wants to work for money, they should be able to. I know you want to step in and say, "No, you can't live your life the way you want to, because you're a child" but that's just the totalitarian in you speaking."

Either parental rights exists or the rights of children exists. You can't have both.

What by chance, are your views on child sex laws?

[Edited on November 5, 2010 at 12:58 PM. Reason : .]

11/5/2010 12:57:52 PM

hahahahahaha. Newton's third law has NOTHING to do with issues of choice, you stupid fuck. admit it, you got called out, troll. if anything, the third law would support the notion of choice, as it would state there is a reaction that is nullified by the sum total of all events, stupid fuck

11/5/2010 5:08:02 PM

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"Newton's third law has NOTHING to do with issues of choice"

No it is about one action being caused by another, which was exactly what I said, and what you claimed was fallacious.

11/5/2010 5:43:36 PM

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"That's exactly what it is. Ideas and genes are similar, in the way they spread, and the way they die off"

That's a mighty bold claim to make with nothing to back it up. I can think of several real and substantial differences between ideas and genes.

I also found it interesting that your article presented a purely mathematical model without anything in the way of evidence that it actually, you know, happens and stuff in the real world.

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"We have already begun that transformation, for example take the average response to the dictator game"

Or we could take the common response to being in the Millgram experiment or the Stanford prison experiment. You can use the dictator game to prove that we aren't 100% bastards, but that's as far as it goes.

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"So then slavery could exist."

As far as I'm concerned, sure. Presumably a contract could say, "If you don't live up to your end of the bargain then I can come to your house with goons, chain you up, and make you work for me for free forever." I don't think it would exist, though, because very few people are going to roll the dice on the possibility of becoming slaves and so there isn't much benefit to either party. Also, the institution couldn't be hereditary; your kids didn't sign the dumbass contract, you did. All in all, why bother?

11/6/2010 2:07:12 AM

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"That's a mighty bold claim to make with nothing to back it up."

I'm not the only one who recognizes the similarities:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_algorithm

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"I also found it interesting that your article presented a purely mathematical model without anything in the way of evidence that it actually, you know, happens and stuff in the real world."

There are several examples in the wild of this, my favorite is the slime mold, here's a summary article explaining the more in depth study.
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/denis036/thisweekinevolution/2009/09/guest_blog_sneaky_slime_mold.html

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"Or we could take the common response to being in the Millgram experiment or the Stanford prison experiment."

Those just show how people will react given certain situations, it really speaks to our ability to learn and change.

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"Also, the institution couldn't be hereditary; your kids didn't sign the dumbass contract, you did. All in all, why bother?"

So you're a slave, you have kids, what do you do, just cut the cord and they're on their own, or do you still become the parent, forcing them into a state of defacto slavery? And how great would it be to live in a world where if you fell on hard times you could very well be forced into slavery rather than just bankruptcy.

11/6/2010 12:02:03 PM

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"And how great would it be to live in a world where if you fell on hard times you could very well be forced into slavery rather than just bankruptcy. "

The (false) presumption you're making here is that every place would be the same. The purpose of a libertarian federal (and again to some degree state) governments is that smaller regions and subsets would each be able to apply the rules and laws which best fit their particular situation, and equally that the people would be able to best choose the laws which best suit their ideas of freedom.

11/6/2010 4:09:58 PM

Based on an idea shared by some other people and the characteristics of slim mold you have determined the course of human history. That is damned impressive, sir, damned impressive.

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"Those just show how people will react given certain situations, it really speaks to our ability to learn and change."

We've got experiments in which people actually did things, and we have game theory. Hmm.

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"And how great would it be to live in a world where if you fell on hard times you could very well be forced into slavery rather than just bankruptcy."

You're missing the point. I'm not arguing that slavery wouldn't suck, I'm arguing that it wouldn't happen. There's no particular force that would encourage creditors to include slavery provisions in contracts, just as there's none to encourage debtors to sign such contracts. There is no reason that sane people would participate in it from either end.

From the one point of view, having slavery provisions makes you less competitive in a world which certainly includes others who offer contracts that don't risk the loss of freedom until you die. It doesn't help that there's effectively no demand for slaves. From the other perspective, why would you sign a contract that might enslave you instead of one that would take some lesser penalty?

Most of your comments in the last post about hypothetical slavery could just as easily apply to other situations. Losing all of your money doesn't serve your kids very well, and, depending on the totality of your loss, slavery might indeed be more attractive -- slaves get food and housing, whereas penniless, propertyless men with a history of violating contracts might not.

Of course, if we mean bankruptcy purely in the bullshit sense we mean it today, then yeah, obviously that's way better for the debtor all the way around. Still not as good as "not buying shit you can't afford," but better.

11/7/2010 4:19:02 PM

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"The (false) presumption you're making here is that every place would be the same."

The false presumption that you're making is that it would matter if anywhere else was different. For the guy who has been put into slavery, it would offer him little comfort to know that people elsewhere are not.

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"Based on an idea shared by some other people and the characteristics of slim mold you have determined the course of human history. That is damned impressive, sir, damned impressive."

It's more than just that, these are just examples of possible solutions that people tend to overlook.

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"We've got experiments in which people actually did things, and we have game theory. Hmm."

I'm not sure what you meant by this, and while I love game theory, Homo economicus doesn't necessarily represent humanity, there is another, larger force at work than just self interest. I think the articles I've linked help to explain this much more complex force.

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"There's no particular force that would encourage creditors to include slavery provisions in contracts"

Why not? I assure you debt collectors would love to garnish wages and other sorts of things to collect, and given the chance, they would.

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"there's effectively no demand for slaves"

That's only around now due to legal restrictions. Slavery still exists despite these in many parts of the world, even here. There is most definitely a demand for slaves.

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"why would you sign a contract that might enslave you instead of one that would take some lesser penalty?"

With the reduced risk of default, creditors would be able to offer much better rates and require less to get loans.

11/7/2010 7:12:26 PM

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"It's more than just that, these are just examples of possible solutions that people tend to overlook."

It is possible that, every once in a while, people overlook possibilities because they're...well, for lack of a better word, stupid.

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"there is another, larger force at work than just self interest."

Or there are largely random cultural variables. You're big on conditioning, it shouldn't surprise you that some groups are more generous than others, especially when those cultures shun absolute selfishness. The United States has a high rate of volunteering and donations. Nazi Germany had a (relatively) high rate of people turning in their neighbors to the Gestapo to save their own asses. (I could probably have said the same thing about the USSR -- happy 93rd anniversary of the October Revolution, btw!)

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"Why not? I assure you debt collectors would love to garnish wages and other sorts of things to collect, and given the chance, they would."

I've no doubt that they'd put penalties into contracts that would allow them to garnish wages, among other possibilities. But something as extreme and final as slavery does not make for a competitive contract. Are you going to make enough money offering good rates with a possibility of fucking slavery to make you more competitive than someone who offers normal rates with far less stringent penalties?

Perhaps I should state at this juncture that I'm playing devil's advocate here. I don't trust the libertarian system because it tends to assume a near-perfect sharing of information in contracts that I don't think will exist. But, assuming that people who signed a contract had equal knowledge of how likely slavery was, I don't see many people signing that contract.

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"Slavery still exists despite these in many parts of the world, even here. There is most definitely a demand for slaves. "

I meant in this country, where the cultural norm is very much against slavery. Certainly we have slavery here, but I see no reason why the demand for it should expand dramatically.

11/8/2010 1:03:44 AM

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"Why not? I assure you debt collectors would love to garnish wages and other sorts of things to collect, and given the chance, they would."

Fun fact. I can sign all the contracts I want, but there is nothing I can sign that would impose a requirement upon a third party, such as my employer. My employer never signed anything promising to garnish my wages, so unless my employer volunteers, when their incentives tell them not to, they wont. This extrapolates to the whole of society. The taxi driver never promised not to help me escape my owner. The people of Canada never promised to return me to my owner. Absent Government and Law Enforcement personnel eager to enforce it, Slavery as a concept is difficult to maintain.

11/8/2010 12:08:20 PM

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"Only libertarianism allows everyone to have their... clean ecosystems..."

I'm going to need this one explained, please.

11/8/2010 4:01:23 PM

Environmentalism is all about limiting freedoms of people for the sake of something that isnt even a person. Thats about as far from Libertarianism as it gets.

11/8/2010 5:19:39 PM

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"Or there are largely random cultural variables. You're big on conditioning, it shouldn't surprise you that some groups are more generous than others, especially when those cultures shun absolute selfishness."

You're not seeing the forest for the trees. All cultures are making the shift.

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"Are you going to make enough money offering good rates with a possibility of fucking slavery to make you more competitive than someone who offers normal rates with far less stringent penalties?"

Apparently you can, look at the growth of "payday lending" in places where the government hasn't stepped in to stop or at least stifle their growth.

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"assuming that people who signed a contract had equal knowledge of how likely slavery was, I don't see many people signing that contract"

When you are in extreme desperate need of money, it may be your only option.

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"I meant in this country, where the cultural norm is very much against slavery."

Well you know supply and demand, right? New socks at a high price has little demand, new socks at a low price has higher demand. Apply the same thing for labor, right now labor is being sold at a much higher price than under slavery, obviously the lower prices at slavery would warrant a higher demand.

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"Slavery as a concept is difficult to maintain."

Really? Because your plan seems very ham-handed. If I were writing up the contract I would simply state that if you don't pay, I force you to work off the debt for me, then all I would have to do is pay you less than the interest on the loan and I would have nearly free slave labor. Slavery is a very easy concept to maintain without government, which is in fact the only force willing or able to stop it, that is why it has existed since the beginning of time, and despite our world's government's best efforts, continues to this day. Slavery and debt-bondage would, without a doubt, grow without a government to stop it.

11/8/2010 6:20:58 PM

^^
I may have misunderstood the context of the quote.

I was thinking that it implied that libertarianism was the only way to keep one's own ecosystem clean.

11/8/2010 7:01:27 PM

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"right now labor is being sold at a much higher price than under slavery, obviously the lower prices at slavery would warrant a higher demand."

I'm not sure the prices are that much lower. You've got to feed and house a slave -- their value is 0 if they're dead. You've got to pay for a system to keep the slave from running off. And the supply of slaves would be low relative to general unskilled labor.

I'm sure the demand would increase from what it is now, but since right now it's effectively -0- that's not saying a lot.

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"When you are in extreme desperate need of money, it may be your only option."

How would one get in that extreme, desperate need? The only situation where risking life and liberty for money makes sense is when you you need that money to protect your life and liberty -- in other words, it would only make sense to take out a slavery-possible loan because you're in default on another slavery-possible loan.

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"Apparently you can, look at the growth of "payday lending""

There's a difference between "high interest rates" and "spending the rest of your life in involuntary servitude as chattel"

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"You're not seeing the forest for the trees. All cultures are making the shift."

Well based on your fiat of course I accept it.

11/8/2010 8:36:57 PM

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"Yeah, well, why don't you join us?"

because i don't care about

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"individual rights, minority groups, and multiculturalism in general."

i'm a middle-class white dude...life's good, so far

11/8/2010 9:19:03 PM

^^^I got the same impression, and I wanted to point out that the opposite is true.

11/8/2010 11:06:56 PM

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"Because your plan seems very ham-handed. If I were writing up the contract I would simply state that if you don't pay, I force you to work off the debt for me, then all I would have to do is pay you less than the interest on the loan and I would have nearly free slave labor. Slavery is a very easy concept to maintain without government, which is in fact the only force willing or able to stop it, that is why it has existed since the beginning of time, and despite our world's government's best efforts, continues to this day. Slavery and debt-bondage would, without a doubt, grow without a government to stop it."

And what happens when you show up to collect on your slavery contract, and I'm not there? If I am there, what happens if I and my neighbors don't agree to enforce the contract? Keeping an army around just to enforce your non-self enforcing contracts is costly. If you do manage to capture me, what happens when I walk away? A Slave that you cannot let out of your basement is not much of a slave. Far better to set me free and make monthly installments.

Absent Government, all contracts must be pretty self-enforcing. In an anarchist world, there is no court to which you can bring your burdensome contract for enforcement. Finish redoing my kitchen, I pay the other half of the agreed price. Pay last months bill, I keep providing electricity. This is a major problem with anarcho-whatever societies, the individuals living within them must get creative when it comes to working together, as merely signing a contract or holding a vote ceases to be the end of negotiations, merely the beginning. And finding yourself a slave sounds a lot like a post-negotiation position, which is anathema to an anarchist world.

As for human history, we have had slavery about as long as we have had government. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest law based government I know of, codified the death penalty for anyone assisting or otherwise dealing with runaway slaves without forcibly returning them to their master. Without government, how would such a law be possible?

[Edited on November 8, 2010 at 11:22 PM. Reason : .,.]

11/8/2010 11:14:48 PM

It must be real dandy to claim as inevitable a thing that has never existed.

It sucks when you have to argue against a self-proclaimed communist who claims that communism never *really* existed.

11/9/2010 12:15:58 AM

^^ are you trying to say that slavery only existed because of government?

11/9/2010 12:59:12 AM

^^ are you trying to say that slavery only existed because of government?

11/9/2010 12:59:12 AM

I don't think that's his point. I don't think that's his point. (I'll condense the double-post)

Slavery will probably always exist, as it always has. Nowadays, it is relegated to the fringes. It is criminal, and it is prosecuted when found in most countries. But government endorsement of slavery allows it to thrive. The plight of African-Americans would have been lessened if there weren't a governmental decree that runaways be prosecuted/sent home regardless of what state they were in. Harriet Tubman might have racked up a higher count of freed slaves if she hadn't had to take them all the way to fucking Canada.

11/9/2010 1:10:26 AM

Yep.

I think it was in the "What is the role of government thread," but one of my problems with contract enforcement is that you could basically sign away your rights. If the role of government is to protect rights, how does enforcing a "slavery contract" fit into that? It doesn't.

Also, hardly anyone reads the contracts they sign as carefully as they should.

11/9/2010 2:24:06 AM

Quote :

"are you trying to say that slavery only existed because of government?"

What I was trying to say is that slavery as a private matter is very costly and and ineffective without Government. Without Government, you must keep your slaves locked up, lest they walk away. Economically speaking, the chains, guards, and high walls to contain your slaves are costs too high to make slavery profitable, especially when family and friends show up to threaten violence for their release, unless Government is there to make the rest of society pay those costs for you. As such, while slavery certainly exists without Government, it requires Government to make it a commonplace business model.

To put it another way, the cost of keeping slaves without Government approximates the cost of keeping slaves under a Government hostile to slavery. Especially in some instances, such as when the slaves in question are illegal immigrants and fear of deportation keeps them quiet.

11/9/2010 5:58:05 PM

Quote :

"I'm not sure the prices are that much lower."

No offense, but that is completely retarded. Slaves could be meagerly housed and fed for much less than $5,000 a piece per year. Far lower than the average FTE salary, not to mention you don't have to pay benefits or any sort of other things.

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"I'm sure the demand would increase from what it is now, but since right now it's effectively -0- that's not saying a lot."

Demand is not zero, demand is actually much higher than that, thus why we have a black market for it. It's like saying the demand for cocaine is fairly low because less than 1% of the American population uses it regularly.

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"How would one get in that extreme, desperate need?"

Predatory lending is like gambling in that it takes advantage of when humans act the least rational. Perhaps you were young and got a credit card. Perhaps you had to pay for a loved one's medical procedure. Perhaps you were addicted to drugs, shopping, or any number of other things. Maybe you lost your job and thought you would be able to find another quickly. There are literally millions of scenarios where people fall prey to predatory lending. People don't always know better, or simply fall on very hard times.

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"There's a difference between "high interest rates" and "spending the rest of your life in involuntary servitude as chattel""

That difference is the American government.

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"Keeping an army around just to enforce your non-self enforcing contracts is costly."

Assuming the government didn't enforce contracts, most likely I would have some sort of repo service contracted that would be able to collect, hell it would work about the same way it does now, except they would grab you rather than your car.

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"what happens when I walk away?"

You know we have slavery now, and that is the least of their worries.

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"Absent Government, all contracts must be pretty self-enforcing. In an anarchist world, there is no court to which you can bring your burdensome contract for enforcement."

I believe the scenario was less anarchist, a government there to enforce contracts, not regulate them. Absent government, I wouldn't need a contract to snatch you or your daughter up and force them into slavery.

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"As for human history, we have had slavery about as long as we have had government."

Actually, slavery not only predates government, it predates humanity. Forcing our will on others comes pretty naturally.

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"It is criminal, and it is prosecuted when found in most countries. But government endorsement of slavery allows it to thrive."

Are you saying government sponsorship of slavery increases it, and government discouragement decreases it? GASP!

11/9/2010 9:05:15 PM

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"Forcing our will on others comes pretty naturally."

And we call it "Government"

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"Absent government, I wouldn't need a contract to snatch you or your daughter up and force them into slavery."

As you yourself pointed out, with government you don't need a contract to snatch someone into slavery. Government can make it harder, by having a police officer guarding them 24/7, or it can make it easier by making sure non-criminals are disarmed, but with or without government, kidnapping will still exist.

Quote :

"most likely I would have some sort of repo service contracted that would be able to collect, hell it would work about the same way it does now, except they would grab you rather than your car."

Cars don't shoot back. And once you have them, they don't often drive themselves away and back home, only to come back with an armed mob eager to punish you for your transgression.

The question is not whether slavery would exist at all, but whether a non-governed World could ever have as much slavery as existed in the governed world of 1850s America.

11/9/2010 11:09:26 PM

I don't think I'd own many slaves if I had to do all that flogging and will-breaking myself. Hard enough to do it horses. Maybe I could get a slave to do the flogging for me.

11/10/2010 1:04:29 AM

Quote :

"And we call it "Government""

Better than the alternative, because it will happen one way or another.

Quote :

"with or without government, kidnapping will still exist."

Obviously, but without it, it will happen to a much greater degree.

Quote :

"Cars don't shoot back. And once you have them, they don't often drive themselves away and back home, only to come back with an armed mob eager to punish you for your transgression."

How often does that happen with slavery today?

11/10/2010 10:33:23 PM

Kidnapping is absurdly rare. But, a sizable percentage of all attempted crimes are thwarted due to potential victims being armed. I'd assume the same pattern holds for kidnapping too.

Quote :

"Better than the alternative, because it will happen one way or another."

Says you. The rest of us recognize that it was only through government that Chairman Mao, Adolf Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot managed to kill millions of their fellow countrymen. What non-government entity could ever hope to achieve such heights of mass murder?

11/11/2010 12:13:11 AM