I like your opinion, James, and I can find some affinity with it.

I can’t get out of my mind, though, that we the people are already in possession of the state. Every lawmaker up there is elected, funded by our donations and taxes, and by some feat of the imagination we believe that they represent us. Anyways, it doesn’t matter who takes power because the machinery, the laws, the regulations, the taxes, the agencies, and their enforcers remain after the politicians who enacted them are a faded memory. While state power accrues, our freedom diminishes. I swear, the distinction between state and citizen on the one hand and lord and serf on the other is steadily decreasing in degree. Is statism not fealty in a sense?

I can’t stand the collectivist and paternalistic superstition that so long as the anointed are in power the future will be better for everyone. So many disasters have been premised on this obsequious and blood-soaked notion. Even so, I’m never disappointed with what Herbert Spencer called “the perennial faith of mankind”, that even though every day chronicles another failure, whether war or injustice or unforeseen consequence, every day it is believed that only the right rulers and an act of legislation can correct it.

All that we have left is to take a vote and perhaps stamp our feet on the pavement now and then. It’s all we can do. We have to beg the state to take care of us because we’ve long since delegated our duties to one another, and any power we’ve had, to an institution of impersonal officialdom.

Again, you fail to grasp the concept of proxy. Whatever. I just see the genius and the effectiveness of their intent and implementation in you: blaming the state for your woes. LOL! Black ants, red ants, who's shaking the jar? If there were an independent state working for the people, it would want the opposite.

And no, I'm not talking about mom and pop s corps. I'm talking about the big c corps that spend all that money on politics. They aren't doing that because it doesn't work. They are buying a product and a service and they are getting what they pay for as the new owners of that which they bought.

Well, I think you imagined their intent and implementation, or at least you haven’t shown it. I blame the state for my woes simply because they are the perpetrator of them. If a corporation ever becomes a parasite, stealing my wealth, skimming from my purchases, restricting my movement, and claiming the right to use force against me should I refuse, my ire will turn to them.

But yes its easy to curry favor with those in power if you have more money. That's why I think no one should have that power. Men are fallen and fallible.

But you narrow the extend to that right to a few specific cases. You don't delineate a general right of free self-expression of actualisation. You're only concerned with some conditions of life (such as bodily integrity), but not with the others. I'd like to know why you think this is a reasonable approach. To me it seems like you're lifting your view straight from 18th century enlightenment texts without accounting for the historical contingency of those demands.

Nothing I’ve said precludes "a general right of free self-expression of actualization”, as far as I'm aware. I just don’t think anyone should have the right or power to make others provide the conditions for it. It seems to me a contradiction to do otherwise.

Yes, these are old principles but so far I haven’t heard any better ones.

But in an anecdotal and ecclectic approach. What's the general rule according to which some methods are admissible and others are not?

If I had to formulate a rule it would be something like “do not make man a slave”.

Has he not given me the right? Everyone has the right to force other to respect what's theirs. So since everyone can demand respect from everyone else, they all mutually have the right to enforce that respect.

Yes, and so you should respect the autonomy and individuality of their body. It’s theirs, not yours. I fully support the use of force to defend that right.

You clarified that you mean freedom as "freedom from", yes, but that doesn't anwer what the force is, or why it's good to be free from it.

I did answer what type of force I was talking about.

That brings us back to my original question regarding what I recall (long time ago) about Mussolini and fascism: six of one, half dozen of the other. If you remove the state, none of that vanishes. You just have the corporations doing the same shit, beholden only to the shareholders. In order for you to have influence, you have to buy stock and attend the shareholder meetings, raise a stink and pray enough other shareholders put their financial interests on the back-burner to support whatever it is you are whining about.

Why do you think cancel culture works when people pressure corporations but it doesn't work on the corporate employees in the legislature? Follow the money.

Mussolini’s statism was a frightening, quasi-religious affair. He was statism and collectivism manifest. I have never seen any corporation rise to his level of ardor. Maybe there is a better example.

I don’t like many corporations either, but they have no control over me. It’s only when they run to the state could they hope to do so. One can stop supporting a corporation and no longer associate with them by refusing to buy or use their products. Not only that but corporations are the work of private, non-state actors like you and myself. You and I could start a corporation and direct it towards good ends. That’s not the case with the state. Refusal to associate or purchase means prison or fine.

I don't believe people control the legislature at all. I believe the state is an anti-social institution. It operates only for its own benefit. It forbids murder but commits murder on a grand scale. It forbids theft but puts its hands on anything it pleases, and claims the right to do so.

Why wouldn’t you blame the state? is the question. They’re the ones with all the power, who accept bribes, and pull all the levers. Remove the state and that all vanishes.

Corporations don't have to do anything like that when they have a state to do it for them

Well, I would have to blame the state in these instances. They could have refused and done otherwise, but didn’t. It’s just another reason why people shouldn’t have that sort of power over others.

I partially agree, especially wherever the state weds itself to corporations. But I just don’t see corporations bombing countries, taxing and jailing citizens, or shooting them dead in the street for victimless crimes. Maybe there is, I don’t know, but states have engaged in countless atrocities and genocides, and that fact cannot be avoided. My point is, only the state has the monopoly on violence. Corporate influence doesn’t exist at that level as far as I know.

It's flawed because it's vague and you're not supplying any argument for why we should accept your conception of compulsion, why it should be avoided etc.

Perhaps a more precise term is “duress”.

It should be avoided because you do not own the person. He is neither your child nor your slave. He has not given you the right to force him to do anything.

This is just circular reasoning. Freedom is the absence of force, and force is bad because it's the absence of freedom. Nothing about this tells me anything beyond establishing "freedom = good, force = bad".

Except I never stated that, so that’s not my reasoning. How can you establish “force = bad” when we were just talking about forcing people to do things against their will? In fact, in the text from which you quoted I clarified what I was talking about.

I don’t see how a voluntary society is implausible, or at least you haven’t shown it. Appeals to incredulity do not suffice to dismiss the notion in any case.

When using the terms “compulsory” and “voluntary” I am speaking of relations between human beings, not between the individual and nature. I thought this was clear. We can discuss the compulsion of nature if you want but I don’t see why we should. To me, speaking of voluntary and compulsory association—that is, between human beings—necessarily involves motivation and human action. Yes, my objections are value judgements, particularly moral ones. And you’re right, when I speak of “force” I do not mean the force described by Newton’s laws of motion. I mean the methods of coercion, violence, and exploitation. I don’t understand how any of this is flawed.

I don’t subscribe to the Hegelian idea of freedom, as if one should be emancipated from the consequences of nature and his own actions, or that man is free so long as he is content with his situation. When I speak of freedom I do so in the social and political sense (negative), as in the absence of the methods of “force” mentioned above.

To me the idea of “unbridled capitalism” is largely a myth. The history seems to me to be one of state interventionism. It’s even written into the American constitution. Congress has the power “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”. I cannot think of many states that have refused intervening in the affairs of the citizens, whether social or economic. Maybe there is, but nowadays the so-called capitalist economies are of the mixed variety, and have been for quite some time. This reeks to me of mercantilism rather than capitalism.

But you’re right. One of the problems with a state is that it is ripe for corrupting influences, as have all institutions of human power. If it has the power, as all states do, to rig the game for its own interest it will do so. It will favor who it pleases, impose tariffs and taxes and so on. I contend that reducing state power will have a corresponding effect of reducing corruption for the simple reason that there will be no one in power besides the citizenry to seek favor with.

You're thinking of capitalism.

I’m thinking of statism, though I’m interested to hear your argument.

But who could be convinced by such a viewpoint? I don't think you can even live according to a standard of "all compulsion is bad", unless you are a hermit subsistence farmer somewhere.

Myself, for one, but also many individualist, anarchist, liberal, and libertarian thinkers. Anti-statism has quite a rich literature if you ever care to take a look. I could be wrong but I doubt you yourself engages in compulsion, and prefer a voluntarist approach to your relations.

It has nothing to do with needing to do it. I want to do it. So do most other people. Most people prefer a technological civilization with all their comforts, long livespans etc. to subsitence farming somewhere.

You can only get to and maintain a technological society via communal action.

The problem I have is I see state "communal action" as compulsory, maintained through coercion and funded by exploitation. This is why I cannot see it as something desirable, no matter the comforts it may be able to provide.

Again, it still doesn’t follow. The idea that “humans are only capable of forming such relationships with a couple dozen to maybe a few hundred people” does not lead me to the conclusion “additional institutions are necessary in order to organize communal action”. Why would you need to force someone into “communal action” because he doesn’t know enough people? You don’t; you do it because you require his labor, his wealth, and his obedience to complete your schemes, and you will take it by force.

Because the first time we spoke about this you were quite happy to tar every BLM protestor, however peaceful, with the same brush as it's worst individuals and, indeed, opportunistic looters who had nothing to do with the protests (while maintaining that a minority of murderous, racist cops does not look bad for the police system that arms and trains them). And you seem to be doing that again here: I spoke of protestors; you substituted protestors for rioters and looters, not me.

You accuse me, falsely, of criticizing people “protesting their oppression and lives lost in the hands of a violently oppressive state”. In fact, I was criticizing the rioting, looting, and assaulting, which left dozens deceased and the damage in the billions of dollars. Then it turned out I was criticizing the black people protesting. Now its BLM protesters. I fear we’re entering duck-speak territory.

In any case it’s probably better to ask my opinion on these matters instead of inventing them.

You don't seem to understand. I'm not equivocating between humans in their natural state and larger groups with an egalitarian policy: I've said twice now that larger groups can't support that default behaviour. I'm saying that modelling a state on our natural egalitarianism would be better than carving one out protect tyrants, oppressors, exploiters and thieves from the masses, which I gather is your preference.

Of course larger groups can’t support support natural human behavior. It’s why collectivism has always sought to wipe out natural human behavior and association in order to enforce compulsory behavior and association. So no matter which way you model your state, at some point you’ll run out of voluntary participants and move right to force. In the end this scheming and state building will snuff out natural human behavior, not compliment it.

One of your straw men against BLM was that it had communes. I guess you mean you're all for white people starting their own communes?

That’s not true. I claimed then that no activist network such as BLM can substitute for family or community, and still stand by that.

Curious question, but why do you keep bringing up race?

Ah okay, so when black people protest, however peacefully, it's still a violent crime, so you can freely substitute those occurrences as if they were the same. I guess this is the logic certain police officers employ too. Anyway, good to know the world hasn't turned upside down.

I was speaking about riots, violence and theft. So why bring up black people and peaceful protest? Logic?

A faction of human beings in control is powerful, they don't need to seek favour. Or do you mean between factions, like land owners and politicians? Then yes.

I mean between those who possess the monopoly on violence and those who do not.

I suppose people imagine human beings to be approximately like them. I don't know how seriously you take science, but the reigning wisdom is that, yes, human beings are naturally egalitarian and altruistic by default. We've had tens of thousands of years of social cooperation within groups; the exploitative power dynamics we're used to are thought to be relatively recent, post-agricultural. There are still many hunter gatherer tribes in the world now who, far from civilisation, remain egalitarian and altruistic.

However, key to their success is staying small. Basically it relies on everyone being close. This gives everyone a reason to want to help each other, while also allowing everyone to keep everyone else in check.

Power differentials are at odds with that, and that's one reason why you need a state to maintain them. I don't think there's anything untotalitarian in brainwashing people into thinking that their disadvantage from birth isn't real and enforcing the point with violence and dual-standard policing. It seems infinitely better, if we must have a state, to have one that ensures everyone's stake in society is comparable. After all, the lie that is the American dream is meant to appeal to precisely that sense of egalitarianism and self-realisation.

Equivocating between protean and compulsory egalitarianism makes it all the more confusing. To me it doesn’t follow that because people are generally altruistic or egalitarian they all must be given a comparable stake in some combination of civil order, presumably by some benevolent and incorruptible group of brokers.

I’m all for people starting their own communes, so long as people are there by their own free will. I’m against the involuntary, statist communes, however. The list of failed attempts and the corpses they are built upon is long enough for me dismiss the notion outright.

What I said was I see no use with the social contract theory of state. I simply don’t believe that is how man transitioned from earlier times to what we have now. I believe states form through conquest and exploitation. I didn’t say or mean to imply I eschew the use of social contracts.

There are plenty degrees of statism, not just two. I mentioned this already. But it is true that I prefer and expect a better deal from one side of the spectrum over the other.

I don’t recall conversing with you at all so it might not have been that interesting. But yes I tend to criticize violence, rioting theft, and the destruction of property, and my own statism require rights and properties be defended. I also think all collectivist ideologies are pap, and should be criticized, communism included.

But yes, wherever a faction of human beings is in control that’s where the powerful and powerless alike seek influence and favor. They cannot do otherwise. So why put a faction of human beings in control?

I don’t believe there is a natural egalitarianism in our species, nor would I want an equal stake in a land that is unequal. It seems to me building and enforcing such an association would require totalitarian methods and an unfathomable suppression of regular human activity. I’ll pass.

I don’t see the use of any social contract theory of the state. I prefer the idea that states form and rule by conquest and exploitation, and never by voluntary or consensual association. Colonialism and imperialism are examples of this. Vast empires have seized power and exploited the people all across the globe throughout recorded history.

In his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, La Boétie wondered why people will suffer under a tyrant who has no other power than what they give him. He concluded that it was simply customary to do so. In order for a citizenry to shrug the tyrant from their backs, all they must do is refuse to consent to their own enslavement. As for the tyrant, “it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing”.

It’s not that easy, of course, especially in a tyranny without a tyrant.

I defined statism as “the belief that a select coterie of fallible human beings should operate an all-powerful institution to meddle in the lives of everyone else”. Philosophical discussion should rarely appeal to the dictionary, anyways, because dictionaries define common usage, what it may have meant to the authors at a certain time, and not what words should mean. Either way, the Oxford definition you provided suffices for my own tastes.

I don’t think it’s true that democratic governments swing back and forth between individual freedom and regulation. There is a great quote of James Madison’s that exemplifies a common excuse for the conversion of individual liberty into state power. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson he wrote “you understand the game behind the Curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the Government”. Little more needs to be said. The most glaring example of this in recent times was the contingency of megadeath upon which the state would pilfer our liberties.

This transfer of power is progressive, like a disease. The sum of federal laws in a country like the United States is seemingly uncountable; no lawyer or judge, let alone the layman, could know what they all are. In a system where ignorance of the law is no excuse this presents a problem. When the laws of the US were codified as the United States Codes in 1926 they occupied a single volume. This is to say nothing of state and local laws. Each principle recorded in these volumes are intended to restrain the individual in directions where his actions were previously unchecked and compel his actions which previously he might perform or not as he wished.

The corresponding effect of this progressive diminution of individual liberty is statism, in my opinion.

We have the cadaver farms that document each stage of decomposition, and archeological evidence showing a wide variety of methods of disposal of human corpses, all of which proves to us the extent of what happens to us after death.

Under many black codes freed men weren't allowed to bear arms, and the KKK were their enforcers. So the state authority and their thugs first denies the right of a man to defend himself, then it presents itself as the solution to his woes, like a protection racket. Martin Luther King himself was denied this right to own a gun nearly a century later, as were many others fighting for their freedom.

No, I don't think there will be an uprising in the US.

Since it was done with war power, the jurisdiction ended at the MD line.

Yes, sometimes state power is the only way to accomplish some good, but once the state has power, it will be used by the corrupt.

Welcome to the human race.

I often wonder how the country would have been had the state listened to the brilliant individualism of Frederick Douglass. On the question of what should be done with the slaves once emancipated he gave the perfect answer: "Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone."

But statism couldn't help itself. So-called "black codes" restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. It went to great lengths to meddle in their lives, essentially slavery by a different name.

I mentioned earlier that the state moves begrudgingly and only under great pressure towards any benefit to the citizenry, but with alacrity towards anything that increases its own power and benefit. That's probably why the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the enemy states, and not to the slavery within its own borders.

Was the emancipation proclamation statist?

Perhaps it was.

Upon the basis of what information would you consider it unlikely, rather than likely? Note: I think it neither likely nor unlikely, on account of what I consider to be not enough information.

According the the writers at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 2012, it was quite likely.

Simple mathematical analysis gives real reason for concern about the handling of these dangerous viruses. Consider the probability for escape from a single lab in a single year to be 0.003 (i.e., 0.3 percent), an estimate that is conservative in light of a variety of government risk assessments for biolabs and actual experience at laboratories studying dangerous pathogens. Calculating from this probability, it would take 536 years for there to be an 80 percent chance of at least one escape from a single lab. But with 42 labs carrying out live PPP research, this basic 0.3 percent probability translates to an 80 percent likelihood of escape from at least one of the 42 labs every 12.8 years, a time interval smaller than those that have separated influenza pandemics in the 20th century. This level of risk is clearly unacceptable.

https://thebulletin.org/2012/08/the-unacceptable-risks-of-a-man-made-pandemic/

No, it isn’t. The suffix ism and the way in which I used the term indicate otherwise.

I’ve already stated the extent of my own statism in the OP, which directly aligns with that of Paine. But in your febrile responses you need to pretend I know nothing about it. I suppose fakery and mischaracterization is how you get on in life.

Good insights.

We should remember that state institutions tend to outlive its creators, those it was designed to favor, and finally, its original purpose. The New Deal programs that still exist in the American administrative state are myriad. Fannie Mae was created to alleviate the burdens of the Great Depression, only to have the public bail it out in the Great Recession some 80 years later. The Farm Credit System is over 100 years old, and during its life other regulative institutions, associations, “government-sponsored enterprises” have popped up to keep it going. That the state might wither away over time, I fear, is mistaken.

That is a decent point about technology. Perhaps the state, too, is a technology. Over time it has made obedience, subjugation, oppression and exploitation at least manageable for those of us born into it.

The misinformation and censorship regarding the lab theory is quite the scandal. Facebook went so far as to ban any discussion of the theory on its platform, ironically to protect the public from misinformation. And these measures were all based on poor science. One has to wonder what sort of information and evidence has been lost during that time.

I cannot think of anyone, dead or alive, with enough moral sense to pick and choose what people can or cannot say, and by extension, what we can or cannot hear. I do not envy the censor because they find themselves among the worst humanity has ever produced.

That being said some enforcement is inevitable should one want to present a modicum of respectability.

I think there is a direct relationship between statism and population.

You're probably right. Perhaps it is inevitable, the product of proximity.

I don't understand your point, Tim. Perhaps this is because you insert quotes where your own thinking could have been.

You are right. I do not believe in any common good that must sacrifice its own members in order to reach it. That to me is a fundamental contradiction and ultimately an exclusionary project. But in practical terms I do not advocate for any abolition of the state because I think that would lead to misery.

All that you say is well and good, I suppose, but we should also remember the horrors of statism. If history is any indication, the state moves begrudgingly and only under great pressure towards any benefit to the citizenry, but with alacrity towards anything that increases its own power and benefit.

Theft, robbery and forced labor are evils the last time I checked. If it is true that the impact of these consequences depend on your circumstances, and not on morals or principle, then it seems the circumstances that favor this sort of relationship is one of servility and obedience to authority, and not much else.

I personally know some people, none of whom were well off, that were born stateless, born in anarchy, and happened to have parents who believed they could "go it alone". Indeed, they did go it alone for decades, their lives consisting of mostly surfing and fishing, but state enforcers burned their houses to the ground because the government wanted to expand a provincial park. So it's just untrue that a sheltered life begets disdain for state meddling, theft and taxation.



No one wields similar power to the state, is my point, and I still do not understand how one can conflate state power with anything else. Perhaps you can explain it because no one seems to be able to move beyond simply repeating it. The state has the monopoly on violence, with military and civilian enforcement at its beck and call. It can defend its interests from domestic and foreign threats with violent force, with little accountability. The only vague comparison I can make between state and private power are organizations of the criminal variety, like the mafia.

I am not persuaded. To me, willingly paying for goods and services are not the same as having my wealth coercively taken from at every transaction. If I refuse to buy from private hands I do not receive their service; if I refuse to buy from state hands I go to jail and have to pay anyways, and with interest. I fear the latter, not the former, and I am unable to see how one could say otherwise.

You can also evade the tax authorities and live in a cave. Theoretical options abound. But you must eat, have shelter, etc. So in a practical sense you are not free to decline any offer, just as you're not free to not pay taxes or refuse someone with a gun to your head.

In the case of food and shelter, one can choose between a variety of options. If a loaf of bread is too expensive or too stale I can decline to purchase it and choose another. The fact that I must have food doesn’t mean that I must eat the first thing that’s offered to me, though that is probably not possible with the destitute and those trapped in command economies.

Then you must be quite wealthy. Lots of people are less lucky then you are and don't really have the option to think about their consent.

Well no, it’s just that I understand the basics of trade. Which private actors take your wealth without your consent, and how are they able to do it?