No mind reading necessary. No matter how you attempt to dress it up your arguments fall on under two related themes: defending Trump and radical individualist autonomy.

You described my intentions but completely missed the mark, I’m afraid. Here again you feign interest but immediately resort to ad hominem. It’s a pattern.

Baloney. You didn't address the gun analogy, for example. Should you not give a shit if you see someone making a gun, and they have the intent to use it? For surely, the possibility and high likelihood should not matter here?? Nonsense.

I fully endorse people making their own guns.

I love it how you arbitrarily just divide the line to make such that only "libertarian" values make sense, but yet nothing else that falls under the logic does... For example in this, it is definitely the case that now someone has to "deal" with things they don't want to deal with, exactly your complaint about compulsory government. It's just all too convenient and cherry picking.

Let me know when some other person or group of persons demand you comply with something and I’ll be there in support. Find some logic that is parallel with this and I’ll give it a shot.

This is just an attempt to repackage your same old argument. In your attempt to defend your desire to benefit from society without taking any responsibility you introduce a "metaphysics" which is nothing more than an abuse of terminology that is already problematic enough.

I’m afraid your mind-reading skills are as poor as your arguments. If you can’t argue a point regarding the topic, why do you bother? Is it some little power trip? An effort at propaganda?

I’m fully aware that we use modal reasoning, but when I ask the question “what in the world is schopenhauer1 referring to”, I can see you are only reporting on your thoughts. You aren’t referring to actual persons, but to your notions, the movements of your brain, in short, yourself. It just so happens myself and my own thoughts differ.

The point is we do not comply with existence because it has no wishes or commands. There is no game of life, and when it comes to survival you only have yourself to answer to. If you’re hungry and must work to feed yourself, it’s you, not existence, telling you to do this. Hunger is your dictate. And you don’t have to comply. You can deny yourself if you choose and can make any efforts towards your own liberation.

I suspect its not a coincidence you bring up antinatalism, and then blame me for rehashing old arguments. Am I supposed to come up with new arguments while you repeat the same old ones? I dub it the schopenhauer1 effect.

Peter L. P. Simpson has often drawn attention to the fact that the state has a monopoly on coercion (and violence) in the modern world, and that this is different from any time in the past.

Sigmund Freud notes they also have the monopoly on crime.

"The individual citizen can prove with dismay in this war what occasionally thrust itself upon him already in times of peace, namely, that the state forbids him to do wrong not because it wishes to do away with wrongdoing but because it wishes to monopolize it, like salt and tobacco."

- Reflections on War and Death

There is a fallacy called the genetic fallacy where you base the truth of a claim on its origin. Even the National Enquirer (an American tabloid) breaks news. One should be able to assess any claim on its merits rather than on who says it.

I don’t think he should be indicted on this. I want to know about the tax evasion and unregistered foreign lobbying and human trafficking, some of which may implicate bigger fish.

Hunter Biden has been indicted for gun charges, and only because a federal judge called out the sweetheart deals. I wager he is the sacrificial lamb of the Biden crime family. Free Hunter Biden!

Hunter Biden had previously reached a deal with Weiss to resolve the matter without charges, but that deal collapsed over the summer amid scrutiny from a federal judge and after a related tax deal unraveled.

His gun-related legal troubles relate to a firearm he purchased in October 2018. While buying a revolver at Delaware gun shop, he lied on a federal form when he swore that he was not using, and was not addicted to, any illegal drugs – even though he was struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time of the purchase.

It’s a federal crime to lie on the ATF form or to possess a firearm as a drug user. (Hunter Biden possessed the gun for about 11 days in 2018.) Prosecutors have previously said the statute of limitations for some of these offenses is set to expire in October.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/14/politics/hunter-biden/index.html

I have tried, repeatedly over many threads. More often than not I don't bother though.

If I understand what you think the issue is, I can address it and give you my arguments. Are you a platonist?

I don’t think that’s true at all and we fundamentally disagree. There is no similarity. There is no person to seek consent from. There is no prior realm of freedom from which we are plucked and placed in a prison-like condition, against our wishes. Existence is all there is. No compliance is necessary, only being. More often than not parents relieve their children from burden, feeding them, carrying them, housing them, protecting them from all manner of danger. If you wish you were never born it is because you regret your life, yourself, maybe your family, not because you were better off before you were conceived.

Are you just playing at being obtuse or do you really not understand what is at issue?

I thought the issue was the metaphysics of it all, specifically the problem of universals and abstract objects. Perhaps you can enlighten me.

What jungle? There is only a bunch of different individuals in the same place.

It's true, but there are too many individuals and factors to name and account for, so, since myself and my language are limited, I just say "jungle".

To me the government is a gang of rogues and scoundrels, a criminal cartel made respectable through centuries of propaganda and bribery, bound together by specious writings and custom. Historically they are little different than others who have invented rules punishable by violence, robbery, and kidnapping, like kings, slavers, and warlords.

As such my relation with the government is as a serf to his landlord, or as a slave to his master. There is no mutual, voluntary coordination going on here. In fact I avoid officials like I would the plague. The reason I follow their rules is because they are allowed to kidnap me or kill me if I do not. They are allowed to take my money, my property, and there are no shortage of goons to support that kind of activity. The reasons I drive on their roads and use their amenities is because it’s funded with the stolen money of mine and my fellow serfs, and because of their monopoly I am unable to find similar amenities, let alone coordinate with others to build our own.

It’s like saying a prisoner has a “real relation” to the prison because he is forced to use their toilet. If your idea of “society” resembles a prison or plantation, I don’t want any part of it. To me the activity and relations you defend are anti-social, anti-society, even anti-human nature.

I thought that was a jungle.

What’s the difference? More individual trees?

Brilliant. Little did he realize he was in a thicket.

Yes, my objection is that corporations are not individual people.

Trump told Ukraine to look into corruption; Biden told him to look away from corruption.

I think that’s a great point. The larger the aggregate, the more difficult it is to discern the extent to which its members relate. A prerequisite of a “real relation” might be that people know each other or interact with each other.

You’d be surprised to hear I don’t believe in law either.

Your responses are a series of out of context quotes, evasions, and goal-post widenings. Thanks for your contributions.

I said it ought to apply to each and every individual, which implies more than one individual. You can label the set whatever you like—to abandon such abstractions and generalizations would render language too laborious. But I’m fully aware that in order to refer to this set you are unable to refer to anything particular in the world (unlike a family, you cannot point to, name, nor understand a vast majority of the particulars involved), and are referring to your idea of a society more than any actual flesh-and-blood human beings and the innumerable interactions between them.

Laws are passed by particular legislators, often opposed by other particular legislators.

Unlike loose aggregates of individuals sharing a roof, families are raised by one another, play with one another, work together, love one another, and so on. The dynamics of their relationship are different. They are not only nominally or proximally bonded, but have a history together.

Worker cooperatives need not be imposed. You’re' engaging in the fallacy of composition. You've also moved from the claimt hat there isno society to a claim something like that social norms ought not be imposed.

I didn’t say they need not be imposed. In fact I just wrote that those who get together to form clubs or company’s do so voluntarily. But you’ll note that the OP is concerned with politics, not with getting together with like-minded people to form companies. I was never trying to write about voluntary associations.

I claimed that society is without a particular referent, so in order to discern what association (a political subject) he is referring to, one must understand another’s metaphysics. Are you a platonist, conceptual realist, immanent realist, or nominalist when it comes to abstractions and universals?
.

Presumably you would count incorporated companies as individuals?

I do not count companies or any other association as individuals.

I am not against people working together voluntarily, whether they incorporate or not.

Laws ought to apply to each and every particular individual, not a set of individuals.

It isn’t a voluntary association like people getting together to form a club or company. It is imposed. Socialism and fascism are anti-social and anti-society in this regard.

I would consider them a family.

I do admit my inability. I can neither see nor know the subject to which you aim your politics. That’s why I think it is mistaken or purely self-concerned.

Incorporation in the general sense is voluntary, and involves the input and voluntary efforts of its particular members. Socialism isn’t. If I am forced to consider what it means to be social or a society, it applies only to the former and not the latter.

So you claim, yet "Common ownership" and "public control" are clear enough in the associations listed on the ASX.

So you claim. But it would be clear only if you knew which investors owned how many shares. By then your notion of “public” wouldn’t fit the reality of it.

To start, nonviolent coexistence (i.e. sustainable eusociality) ...

Nonviolent coexistence is not a thing, I’m afraid. And I do not think any political institution should serve only your ideas.

Some like to speak of the common good and society. These are the political subjects towards which political institutions should be mobilized. But the political subject is without a particular referent. So what thing or things in the world should these institutions work for?

Of course.

It's weird to believe in social entities as defined by imagination but refuse social entities as defined by contract and common goal.

I have read his essay, and I’m weary of the unibomber’s holistic methodology. I don’t think “leftism”, for example, is any sort of ideology that anyone actually holds, and the use of it as a subject of opprobrium risks painting with the same brush a myriad of competing beliefs and individuals, most of whom are without any common political goal. It also leaves out the very similar beliefs and behaviors of the so-called right. On top of that, I do not think the left/right spectrum is worth a damn.

But beware how collectivist the unibomber is. Does society really socialize children? What are society’s expectations? Upon who or what should we place our blame? I can only speak for myself but I have never felt the pressure of one, or have been the coerced to meet the expectations of other.

Metaphysically speaking I am unable to reduce a marriage to anything between two people, especially when it appears there is nothing between them, connecting them, and bonding one to the other. It also appears they are not “in” anything of the sort. I would say each of them relate to one another, or at least I would recognize that one is speaking figuratively when using such language. That isn’t to say one should never use the word “marriage” or “relationship”—abstractions, generalizations, universals are necessary to speak and think about the world—it’s just that one ought not to include them in his ontology, metaphysically speaking. As such he should not apply his politics to them.

But you raise some good questions in regards to political subjects (the people, the nation, the workers, the race, society). What sort of bond or relationship can we infer between the aggregate parts of these sets? Are these bonds actual? Or are they assumed and imposed? If they are not there, is it the goal of the politician to create them?

I agree that careful language is a solution, but it could be painstaking to speak in such a way. I think it's better to wrestle with the metaphysical questions first before adopting any particular politics.

I have a bad habit of breaking down an “ism” to its component parts (despite its prevailing definition) to get at the root of the belief. If the suffix “ism” implies a belief, practice, or philosophy, a consideration of its root word is paramount to understanding its basic focus. I guess we can thank the French for that.

For “fascism”, for example, the notion of the “fasces” is its guiding metaphor, a bundle of sticks around an ax, which Mussolini described as a “symbol of unity, of force and of justice”. I know you know this. But what thing or things in the world these are these words and metaphors supposed to represent? I’m not sure, but I suspect that the fascist imagines a political environment that may one day arise, where a multitude of objects and functions combine to form a recognizable pattern to which he can one day point and say “Behold, fascism”. His motivation and his actions must one day lead to this preferred pattern of political organization, the objects themselves be damned. The actual objects themselves, having been erased of their own significance and dignity, serve only as the pawns and play-pieces to this imaginative end. I do believe that, should one express a combination of these ideals, motivations, and methodology, he might rightly be called fascist, at least in some general sense.

Newly-found documents suggest that Biden fired Ukrainian prosecutor Victor Shokin despite the glowing reviews of the European Commission and his own State Department months earlier. Biden bragged about his quid pro quo in 2018, dangling the promise of US aid over Poroshenko’s head should Shokin not be fired.

Shokin claims that he was fired for investigating Burisma while Biden’s crack-addled son was employed there. According to him they have provided zero evidence for his corruption.

Trump was impeached for asking Zelensky about it.

https://nypost.com/2023/09/08/despite-bidens-claim-europeans-werent-trying-to-oust-ukraine-prosecutor-targeting-hunters-firm

Speaker McCarthy has announced a formal impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden.



https://abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/speaker-mccarthy-expected-endorse-impeachment-inquiry-president-biden/story?id=103114626

Which was the sole result of economics. It was profitable, it was immoral, and it was done. This is exactly what would happen without the protection of the government. Yes, governments can worsen crises if they also behave immorally, like the European governments who encouraged the slave trade. But at least the government (in its democratic form) is accountable, while individuals are not if a proper justice system doesn't exist.

The slave trade occurred with the protection and intervention of government, with the granting of slave-trade monopolies and charters, the treaties, the slave codes, the military protection, to the funding of colonialism and mercantilism that required all that cheap labor. It was only begrudgingly and under great public pressure that such efforts were eventually abolished. And so it is with anything that tends to human rights and welfare.

The Hobbesian notion that justice is a one-to-one ratio with a state legal system is a mistake, in my opinion. Justice systems are more often than not unjust. In order to discern whether a system is unjust or not, one must first form a sense of justice in order to compare it to that state system of justice, and this must occur outside and beyond any state justice system. At any rate, I hold that it is easier to pressure and affect change morally and economically than it is to pressure and affect a government and its laws politically.

This may be true, but at least citizens can modify the contract via voting. Because of this, the nature of government has changed drastically in the past two centuries, with an increased emphasis on social welfare.

The nature of government has changed drastically insofar as it has grown in size and has monopolized, captured, and converted social power into state power. So far has it gone that we cannot imagine achieving social welfare without government. The result is a people conditioned to seek state intervention rather than to develop their responsibilities to one another. The result is a people who believe consuming, working, paying taxes, and voting for more state power, is tantamount to compassion and welfare. I fear that, as far as welfare is concerned, people only want government do what they themselves refuse to.

Does that not occur economically? I'd much rather a government, which I help elect, take 20% of my paycheck than have rampant monopolies price-gouge the consumer with poverty wages, or literally sell my life to make ends meet. And at least that 20% funds the livelihoods of millions of government employees and the unemployed, and provides me with essential services that would otherwise be monopolized, rather than feeding the incessant greed of a few thousand robber barons.

All I can say is that the government is the monopoly par excellence.

I don’t think it is reasonable because it involves the same activity: holding out for something better than the world. Theism is idealism run amok. It’s an exercise in slandering or dismissing the world, and holding oneself (one’s ideas, consciousness, mind) over and above it.

The problem with seeking the middle and not leaning one way or the other is that you never get to help decide where the center is.

That’s true. But we could trust ourselves, our families, our friends, our communities, without seeking the blessing from some distant authority. We could fully and easily reject corporations and powerful individuals, especially if there were no state mechanisms with which they could achieve monopoly, subsidy, contracts, and power.

I would argue large corporations want high taxes. They have the means to game the system, find tax havens, employ teams of lawyers, lobby the government, while the smaller businesses suffer the high costs of doing business, eliminating much of the competition. And there are many ways to avoid the rise in costs, like raising prices on consumers or freezing wage growth for employees.

It occurs in any collective where the people are bound by no more than some inkling of an idea. It could be a nation, a race, the greater good, the common weal, a union, and so on—not any actual entity or anything that can be pointed to, let alone be social with, but an epitaph on a fleeting sensation of one’s own brain. It’s easier to afford rights to this idea than it is to do so for flesh-and-blood human beings because in the end it’s easier to afford rights to oneself.

It seems to me that if a fellow worker has fallen on hard times the others ought to rally around him and help him rather than to penalize him, ostracize him, and abandon him to the whims of some union administration. But that would be the social thing to do.

That's what all societies expect. Obey the law - yes, even the petty traffic rules. Serve in the armed forces if there is war. Send your children to school. Pay your taxes. Pay your debts.
It's what every collective expects. If you join a golf club, you pay your fees, wear the right shoes, keep honest score, stay on the cart track, keep quite when others are hitting.
No collective can function without so-operation and giving up some individual freedom. If you want to be a loner, go it alone, but if you want the benefits of a society, pay your dues and mind the rules. When you take a job in a union shop and accept the wages and benefits that union has previously won through collective action, you commit to collective action.

A collective that excludes the needs and wants of its own members is not a collective, least of all any sort of community. At best it is an aggregate of factions, each concerned with their own advantage. Whoever makes the rules and to whom we pay our dues is the only collective that matters in any of your analogies. As you mentioned the rest are expected to pay up and fall in line. In my mind it sounds more anti-social than social, anti-society than society.