From the largest trade routes to the smallest transactions, from the global to the local level, pretty much any move we make is regulated by a litany of state policy. Vast legal systems, treaties, trade agreements, jurisdictions, global financial institutions—these are the fetters of state and statist intervention, and their combined reach is global in scale. — NOS4A2
I would also say that the claim that there is private ownership is a myth, used as it is to disguise the reality that we have hardly left the state of serfdom. To purchase some means of production, like land for instance, one cannot just go out and stake an area for private use and claim jurisdiction. It's only "private" if the state allows it to be, which isn't saying much because they can come and take it any time they want.
You can defend yourself when someone wants to hurt you. But it should be quite clear that the person is really going to attack and hurt you. We know very well just how easy the wording "an existential threat" is used in politics even today and "pre-emption" is cherished. — ssu
Especially post-WW2 Cold War got world politics to look to be two sided. Now it's really getting back to being multipolar. Also in the way that so-called allies of one camp can be found meddling in some third countries internal politics being on different sides. Something that would have been unheard of during the Cold War. You have simply more independent and active participants.Why does world politics look like the 19th Century? — frank
Not only eminent domain, but civil forfeiture, taxation, tariffs, subsidies, minimum wages, welfare, regulation, and so on. Wherever the state takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong, there you have plunder, and that is the nature of the business of your lord.
That a law like the 5th amendment and courts make the process of theft more difficult for the state, none of that, nor your authority on project management, negate the intents and efforts to take what isn't theirs and give to whom it does not belong. The courts are still beholden to the same laws as devised by the state, and eminent domain or some version thereof is present in every liberal democracy. In Canada it is "expropriation". In Australia it is "compulsory acquisition". These words do not mean nothing.
Believe it or not neighbors can deliberate with one another without the need of any state authority and men can design and build infrastructure without being a state employee. In fact, the state more often than not contracts out these duties to private entities.
As for collective action, there is nothing collective about state activity. I’ve never once been consulted about roads or bandits. Have you? These sorts of decisions are never collective, but are invariably decided by a cabal of politicians, officials, and their bagmen.
And no wonder people cannot band together to fix a simple road; they have been taught their whole lives that people cannot, nor should not do so. No wonder people cannot band together to help the poor in their community, or fix potholes, because they’ve been taught their whole lives that they do not need to bother, that we can let some politicians and officials take our money and they will handle it for us.
I do not believe that any significant proportion of human beings will turn into bandits and murderers as soon as they find themselves free to do so. I’ve met enough people to conclude otherwise
I've also been to the low-tax countries such as Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai, and can report that their infrastructure is far superior to the ones I see here. Countries that are higher in degrees of freedom, at least according to the Human Freedom Index — NOS4A2
I've also been to the low-tax countries such as Monaco, the Bahamas, and Dubai, and can report that their infrastructure is far superior to the ones I see here. — NOS4A2
Can a centrally planned economy democratically and logically distribute resources, wealth, and labour of the world? — an-salad
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