I never said it could. Why do you personally need to be governed?

There's no theft and robbery until there's property. We're discussing who owns what so we cannot already be thieving and robbing it can we? We have yet to establish who's property it is.

I thought it was the superior man’s property.

That’s a misleading answer because it avoids the question outright and quickly enters fantasy. Elon musks private army will be of humanoid drones while Bezos’ rockets will look like dicks. They will maraud around the world spreading freedom while searching for weapons of mass competition. Public armies are controlled by democracy and history proves they have never taken or destroyed any property.

How does one demonstrate that having no government doesn't automatically generate some other form of tyranny or overarching organizational process?

I don’t think he can. The state is by now so ubiquitous and so many dependant on it that its abolition would invariably lead to some form of tyranny as they scramble for new states. People would first need to shed statism as they did religion.

Hang on. A minute ago you had s right to your garden because you tilled it. Now you're saying we could come to some arrangement?

What about the rainforest? Cycles the oxygen for everyone on the planet. You're going to need an awfully big hall to hold that meeting...

If only there were some system of representatives to simplify this mass negotiation process... Oh well, one can only hope...

Yes, just ask. Maybe we can trade, maybe I can donate, maybe we can till it together. Maybe I’m naive but I thought theft and robbery would be the last resort, so consider me surprised.

Therefore you have no right to your garden.

That there is logic. Allow me to sell you some.

I’ll pass. I am by now we’ll aware that you will not afford anybody a right to their own garden. What do you say to the Amazonian, then, given that they have stolen their village “the commons”? They have no right to keep their village?

Oh, a social contract.

We have not agreed to anything. No social contract. Just you coming upon my garden and deciding what to do next: destroy it, steal from it, or leave it alone. There’s always that other niggling option of voluntary cooperation, where we can work together towards a solution. How does one decide?

I don't need to be governed. I said at the outset that I am an anarchist. But you need me to be governed.

I don’t want you to be governed, nor want to govern you.

A right? Where do they come from? God? You get more and more desperately ambitious in your pronouncements. No, it is an insane suggestion that any man has a right to fence off land and reserve it to his own use without the agreement of his neighbours - which is to say, without entering into a social contract with his neighbours to mutually grant each other such and such rights and such and such redress. And should you wonder who is your neighbour, I refer you to the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Rights come from men. That’s why I’m asking you and not God. Will you destroy my garden, should there be no “social contract”? Is this why you need to be governed?

No. I'd turn your garden back to a state of nature. No appropriation of any fruit (figurative or otherwise), in fact a rejection of the fruits of your labour.

You’d destroy my food, then, and any food-bearing plants I created, because you are a superior gardener. I still fail to see how one justifies the other. .

Do you not believe that a man has a right, as a matter of dignity and survival, to put effort into a place of nature for his own living?

There we go. You believe you are entitled to the figurative and literal fruits of another’s labor because you think you can do a better job. The corollaries of such a sense of justice are profound. A man has no right to use nature to provide for his own survival. The superior man has rights to the nature, the efforts, and by extension, the bodies of lesser men. And this sense of justice and property is why you need to be governed.

But you yourself frame your concept of 'statism' as a violation of a preexisting condition. It is at least as abstract as any idea employed by Locke.

I would say the State itself was a violation of sorts insofar as it was the organized means of exploitation imposed on others, but only that the preexisting condition to the state was no state. If I were to get concrete about it, I would point to those who act out its functions, it’s written laws, and so on. Statism is rather a belief or ideology, and I would argue the prevailing one.

Nor should they be. It’s a brute fact that such abstract terms are without a referent. As intimated, the collectivism in Hobbes or Rousseau, statism in general, is nothing to be proud of.

Ah! The old 'you agree with me really though' argument. I wondered how long it would take to get there.

That you can't wrap your head around anyone thinking differently is your problem, don't project it onto others.

It was a question, actually, as evident by the question mark. Your efforts to skirt around it are obvious, because no one is stupid enough to act like a question was an argument.

Of course. You ruined my wilderness. I'd definitely use what force I have at my disposal to requisition it and return it to its proper state.

Why is it your wilderness? Is my garden on your property?

Like Rousseau says, family is the first society. I suppose kinship could be considered natural, but then again to say “state of nature” is redundant, because every state is one of nature anyways.

Alright. We have a big long discussion. We still disagree. Now what? Fisticuffs?

Do you really disagree, though? Would you actually lay claim to a garden someone else has built and cultivated, and upon disagreeing, physically take what he has built and cultivated?

But yes, if theft is your aim, you’ll just have to take it, won’t you?

Deliberation.

A state prohibits rule of the people. It’s very function is the rule of some people.

That is my justification. Now we weigh that against your justification, which I suppose is coming any moment now.

It’s true. And history does not look kindly on them.

I created it and nurtured it. It wouldn’t exist had I not done so. How does your superior gardening abilities justify your claims to it?

It’s true. I would assume, perhaps wrongly, that you have a conscience, and some modicum of respect for the livelihood of others, their labors, and so on. Absent that we are at an impasse, and you’ll have to try and take it.

Not just someone else. You.

Someone you do not know nor have ever dealt with. Another bogieman.

I'll have a crack. I'm a better gardener than you, so I deserve it.

How do your gardening abilities justify you having another person’s garden?

My garden? Not because I say so, but because I can justify it. I built it, planted it, and tilled it. If you can justify why it is yours, perhaps you can have it.

You and your desire to steal and appropriate another’s things is not unlike the State’s.

It's you.

It’s always someone else.

Note how no one can answer why they themselves need to be governed. I expected as much. It’s always someone else who needs to be governed, like the murderer in your condescending fantasy. Someone else needs to be governed so I can drink clean water. Someone else needs to be governed because I don’t want to be mugged. And because you cannot single out this someone else, everyone must be governed. To protect you from these bogiemen you’re willing to put up with and justify despotism, whether hard or soft, on entire populations of people, so that you can carve out a safe habitat somewhere on the spectrum of slavery.

But your government is an actual murderer, slaver, liar, brigand, knave. The historical record makes this clear. So who protects you now?

“Government is a tool of the human race to ensure survival of groups of people.” No greater propaganda has been uttered. The state cares only for its own existence. There is no right it hasn’t violated, no law it has not broken, no truth it hasn’t suppressed, to benefit itself. It’s not the institution you claim it is; it is an anti-social institution. You’re not participating in society; you’re aggrandizing the state at the expense of society.

Yes, but you are claiming that when you do it, it isn't the state. The divine right of NOS to his private army etc. Privacy is itself government - thou shalt not forage in my garden. My agri-culture necessarily excludes you, and there can be no privacy without government. Privacy entails contractual agreement just as much as community. You and your insistence on your private property are the predatory and disagreeable government you complain of. Alas for you," To live outside the law you must be honest."

I wouldn’t do anything like a state. I’ve only claimed that there are ways to organize without the state, on grounds of voluntary rather than involuntary cooperation, and only claimed such as a counter argument to the suggestion that a state is required. Unlike the state, I would not monopolize any of those activities, nor would I regulate anyone’s lives and livelihoods, that is, until they sought to regulate mine. If Unenlightened wants VIP access to my garden or other people’s things you might try asking nicely.

I’m quite certain that you and I could come to some sort of agreement, neighbor to neighbor, and abide by that agreement without including a third party. We could abide by it because we have consciences and it is the right thing to do. Rather, if your agreements need to be governed by a third party, I fear your word probably means little.

I do not know what unspoken agreements you speak of. But if you speak them they are no longer unspoken. How can I agree to such an agreement?

If it is not an explicit agreement then it is not a contract. Since a condition is not a contract, it is a poor analogy on Rousseau’s part. Perhaps “social condition” better describes the state of affairs we’re in, since most of us are born into it, after all.

I can’t imagine a state of nature, only social organizations that are voluntary and not ruled by this or that class. Rousseau’s Social Contract is not only statist, but collectivist, which history has proven is a poor combination indeed. Submitting to the general will, being forced to be free, and all that, isn’t the best look for the social contract theory in my mind.

It’s the State. They formed when one group of predatory men sought to exploit the rest. There is nothing public about the State except that they do it all in the open.

I use “private” in this sense to mean something doesn’t have any official standing nor is it owned and controlled by any government. I see no nefarious connotations. Besides, I hardly see any difference between a state and any other criminal organization, except that one seeks to control me and the other doesn’t, so if a private organization seizes power and the monopoly on violence I will naturally oppose it.

My own view is that states form through conquest and appropriation. They are imposed. Not one man agreed to any contract. This is because no such contract exists.

I didn’t advocate for any of those, nor anarchism. I’m speaking against the state, not for or against other forms of organization. They were examples of man using other, non-state, collective means to accomplish tasks deemed worthy of government only,

But the government can?

Very true, Paine. Both Rousseau and Hobbes believed in the social contract. Perhaps this belief, despite its lack of evidence, persists as the undercurrent of statism.

I’m not so sure of that. History is replete with state violence and democide. There is not one human right that the state has not violated. They can and have taken as much property as they wish, and in fact claim ownership and jurisdiction upon entire territories. See what happens when you don’t pay your property taxes. Your proof of ownership in any state system is contingent on what the state wants to do with your property, nothing more or less.. I’d much rather defend my own property than be subject to what amounts to slavery.

Sure you can. Private schools, private roads, private insurance, private firefighting, private healthcare, private charity, private armies, ….the model of voluntarily exchange for such services has been in effect since time immemorial. The idea that a man must be in government before he can provide any such services is damn near ludicrous.

I appreciate the effort it took to write that down, and find little to disagree with. But I’m just asking why you yourself must be governed.



Rather, I was asking why you must be governed. Can I extrapolate from your answer that you require the State to protect you?



I just can’t see how man in his government form is the only one capable of providing or funding such services.

The authoritarian statist barks but cannot provide an answer.

Quid Pro Joe is at it again. According to the Saudis he was asking them to postpone their OPEC decision to cut oil production for another month, until after the midterms. I can’t think of any reason, moral, economic, or otherwise, that Biden would ask them to postpone such a move, besides that it benefits Biden and his party. Of course they declined.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/10/13/biden-admin-asked-saudi-arabia-to-postpone-opec-cut-by-a-month-saudis-say.html