How does one demonstrate that having no government doesn't automatically generate some other form of tyranny or overarching organizational process?
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? — NOS4A2
Yes, just ask. — NOS4A2
Maybe I’m naive but I thought theft and robbery would be the last resort, so consider me surprised. — NOS4A2
Why must you be governed? — NOS4A2
I never said it could. — NOS4A2
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. — NOS4A2
People would first need to shed statism as they did religion. — NOS4A2
I thought it was the superior man’s property. — NOS4A2
I’ve never read Ayn Rand. That’s the hilarious part of the accusation. — NOS4A2
Since a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep, and the amount of possible action is the duration of one's lifespan, it is a part of one's life that one invests in everything one values. The years, months, days or hours of thought, of interest, of action devoted to a value are the currency with which one pays for the enjoyment one receives from. — Ayn Rand, Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, Concepts of Consciousness
“He sees it, admires it, knows that there it is, safeguarding his existence; but he is not conscious of the fact that it is a human creation invented by certain men and upheld by certain virtues and fundamental qualities which the men of yesterday had and which may vanish into air to-morrow. Furthermore, the mass-man sees in the State an anonymous power, and feeling himself, like it, anonymous, he believes that the State is something of his own”
…
“The mass says to itself, “L’ État, c’est moi,” which is a complete mistake. The state is the mass only in the sense in which it can be said of two men that they are identical because neither of them is named John. The contemporary State and the mass coincide only in being anonymous. But the mass-man does in fact believe that he is the State, and he will tend more and more to set its machinery working on whatsoever pretext, to crush beneath it any creative minority which disturbs it—disturbs it in any order of things: in politics, in ideas, in industry.”
No, I thought it was the superior man's property, you thought it was the property of the one who tilled it. Thus we disagreed as to whose property it was.
You were about to enlighten me as to how we resolve that dispute between you, me, and the 7 million other people who have a legitimate say in what you (or I) do with our piece of rainforest without any formal system of representation.
The resolution to the dispute between you and I is inevitably violence. Your claims to my garden are unreasonable — NOS4A2
It’s always someone else. — NOS4A2
I think your unreasonableness and propensity towards destroying another’s property is a silly ruse. — NOS4A2
Even your “system of representatives” would laugh in your face about your claims to my property. — NOS4A2
You know I would choose peaceful resolutions because I suggested peaceful resolutions — NOS4A2
You would prefer a third party, the monopoly on violence, to fill in where your own morals and conscience and deliberation wouldn’t. — NOS4A2
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.