Mike Fleming

I started to read your mother's letter but then couldn't do it. It's so reminiscent of the kind of letters I received from my mother, which I now just completely ignore. It's not fair what they do in my view. It's just emotional blackmail. All the times I have asked my mother to change her bad behaviour and basically got nothing. Just ignoring it. when we are in person she pretended she didn't hear me and stared off into the distance while I was looking at her until I gave up. Then there were the times where I would "take a break" from the family. Upon, my "return", they were on the best behaviour initially. Then once they got comfortable again it was back to the same old bad behaviour. All of the above was incredibly taxing on me emotionally until I finally had to face facts. They weren't going to change. The abuse was never going to end. I've said it before in here but I'll repeat it. The day I finally knew I'd had enough was the day I just imagined to myself that I'd heard that they'd died in a car crash. I really tried to imagine it had actually happened, put myself in the moment and ask myself how I felt. I realised I didn't care at all. I was relieved they were gone. In fact, I imagined life without them around and it felt like bliss. It felt like freedom. And that was it. They weren't my parents any more in any meaningful way. In fact they never had been. I had always been just their pet.

I simply meant if they want something that isn't possible or is not a very good idea. If say the child says that it wants to drive the car or wants to put it's hand in the oven or something like that. If say, pulling a child out of danger, thereby acting, at least initially against the child's will is a concern, ask the question of two adults. Let's say one adult is in the path of an onrushing car and for whatever reason doesn't see it, maybe he's busy talking on his mobile or something. Another adult grabs him and pulls him out of the way. That's not a violation of the NAP. You are not being aggressive. You have used the required force to pull that person out of danger.

In my view it goes something like this. Part of the principle of owning land is having a legal protection, and ultimately actual security, over that land. This legal security would be provided by the network of DRO's, and hence would have a certain cost attached to it. So, if say you were to put a fence around an area of land the size of a small country, that would have serious costs in terms of security. Maybe you want to defend it yourself and not go the DRO route. but it neither seems practical nor cost effective. Apart from where they live people will desire property that can be made cost-efficient for them so that they can easily cover the costs of the DRO agency for the legal protection. For this they have to meet the needs of consumers at large with the use of that land. Given the tremendous amount of unused land in the world I don't think it's going to be a problem that either all land will be swallowed up or that most of it will and much of it lay unused just being the property of someone. It's just not practical in terms of security expense.

I probably wasn't clear enough. Atheists do not "lose" to him, imo. It's all just opinions who wins debates anyway and in my opinion he loses the majority of them, that I have seen. The one exception that I've seen was when he debated Harris about morality and Harris put forth his view of morality, which is basically bullshit in my view. Craig can destroy someone who has a bad argument. Atheism though is not a bad argument and he ends up looking like, well, an asshole in my opinion to anyone who has knowledge of philosophy. The average person though just would not know how to dissect his arguments and he ends up appearing like a respected authority figure. In fact, he does have many mannerisms of authoritarianism and tries to bulldoze opponents rather than actually debate. I'm not impressed with him in the slightest, Quite the reverse. He feels to me like someone who uses his knowledge and intelligence for evil. Maybe that's a bit strong but he's certainly not someone you could respect.

Ambiguous is fair. There's a couple in there where I'd prefer him to elaborate before giving him the benefit of the doubt. OTOH, there's some interesting quotes in there that tell me he doesn't quite get the system but might be willing to learn. One of the things I like about Neil is the way he sticks to facts and doesn't wander into politics the way many of his contemporaries do. That's why I'd like to introduce him to the NAP and it's application to government. How could someone like him argue with it? Just the facts, Neil, let's just stick to the facts. He might need help understanding free market concepts to feel comfortable with it though.

I have to say I really don't like this feature. I understand why it's a part of the forum functions. On many sites people's emotions get high and it things can turn into a war of words with some people just looking to agitate others all the time. But is that what FDR is really about? People do things like that often because they have some personal problems and need to vent. It seems to me like we understand these to some extent and have an opportunity to be empathetic to such people. I know there are times when I've gone looking for a fight on forums so I think I get it to some extent. Just a thought. Someone could end up with a negative rep not entirely fairly and end up thinking it's just not worth it, when they may have had good contributions to make.

The child owns itself, the parent is looking after he/she until they are able to look after themselves. Too many parents I think treat their children as if they do own them and the child becomes more like a pet who is human. One way to know if this is probably the case is when parents say something like "they were so cute before they grew up". The parent should negotiate with the child along the lines of what Stef does. You are bringing a little human being into your life, not a pet. If there are good reasons why the child's position is not valid, they should be explained, if the child is able to understand them.

I think Neil Degrasse Tyson is great on science. But I cringe when I hear him (and most other scientists) talk about government. I've heard him speak a lot, I very much enjoy hearing him talk, but my impression is that he does say that government is required for big science projects. If that's not his position then I apologise and I'd appreciate if someone pointed me to a YouTube clip or article showing that he doesn't mean that. I think he's generally a very rational thinker so I'd love to hear someone ask him about Non-aggression and how it applies to government and science funding. Incidentally, I did have problems with the clip also, it wouldn't go beyond 3 mins or so.. I think I fast forwarded to 4 minutes and didn't have any problems after that.

No-one owns the government. As many people are fond of saying, there is no such thing as the government. Only the unjust use of aggression because some people believe they have authority and others believe they have that authority. As for the rest of your post I'm not sure what point you are trying to make? Can you elaborate?. The quote I think comes from Rothschild. I'm not sure of it's authenticity. Technology is a double-edged sword, I think that's well established by now. I'm sure it wasn't long after the first caveman made the first axe that one subsequently sank one into someone else's head. Not what it was originally designed for, but hey, we humans are nothing if not inventive. The pace of technological progress is why I think government, and the idea of authority, is too dangerous an idea to be allowed to live. It's already wrought too much destruction. With more and more advanced computer technology the state becomes more dangerous to us and our freedoms than ever. That's why I'm in this community. Before I discovered libertarianism and, then anarchism I was deeply depressed about society because, working in IT, I could see where the development of technology was going and how it would empower the state and what the state was already doing to shut down freedom in the name of security. It seemed we were doing a tailspin into a 1984 world. And it felt like I was the only person in the world who realised it and that's why I was depressed. I'm much more optimistic now, but I still recognise it's a long fight.

Google Engineers Speak Out Against NSA Surveillance, And Drop The F-Bomb While Doing Sohttp://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-engineers-say-fuck-these-guys-to-the-nsa-2013-11

In fact, I think we are very much into being responsible here despite our histories. If we can excuse our own behaviour because of our histories, then we have to excuse our parents behaviour too (and everyone else in society who does bad things) or we are hypocritical. The reality is that people know they are being abusive or doing something wrong. Even if not straight away they realise it at some point. Upon realisation, you have a choice. Accept it as such and do what is necessary in terms of therapy and reconciling and making good for it. Or doubling down and continuing the behaviour hoping that they will continue to get away with it. Society as a whole seems to prefer the second option.

You keep misdiagnosing the problem. I clearly said that the interference and distortion of the financial monetary system is causing misallocation of resources. Until RBE'ers accept the fact that money was a completely necessary (and brilliant) invention, you won't understand it at all. If money was so terrible, what else could we have used to get from the stone age to today? Would cavemen have invented a super-computer? Governments taking over and abusing the money system have led to a great many of the problems we see today. It was what caused the depression which was what led to the worst war in man's history. Who owns and controls the money system? Who does the counterfeiting? It's really not hard to figure out.

The financial system tells you whether something is viable or not. Whether the resources are there to provide such a product and/or whether such a product is wanted by people. It manages scarce resources. It's when central planning systems start messing with the monetary system that this information becomes distorted and doesn't match reality. Imo, money was the greatest invention ever in mankind because it allowed the division of labour to really get started and allow technological process. Many of the greatest tragedies in mankind's history have been due to the constant meddling with money by "authorities", thereby disrupting the division of labour process leading to inefficiency in the system which has meant scarce resources do not get to where they are supposed to. This has mostly been government reassigning resources to itself or it's friends with all the associated ill-effects throughout society or making people think that more resources are available at any given time than actually are, leading to booms and busts (when the market finds out that the resources don't actually exist or aren't truly wanted by people).

I should point out that one is a valid form of power, though temporary until the child is able to look after himself. The other form of power (government) doesn't have any validity nor did it ever. The power being exercised becomes violent and aggressive when you don't do what it says because it doesn't have any validity to it. if government workers were always to restrain their use of power then I would be the first to stop paying taxes, car registration, etc.

For me it's not just my childhood. It's the fact that my parents didn't change when I became an adult. Even as I consistently pointed out their abusive behaviour. It wasn't the same abuses as a child, they knew there were various things that they couldn't in a million years get away with now. Unfortunately, society teaches parents new tricks, things like using guilt, emotional blackmail etc and also the fact that society assists in making adult children feel guilty if they don't think their parents are wonderful regardless of how the parents behave. Society does everything it can both to encourage parental bad behaviour and then uses social conditioning, by saying things like "don't blame your parents" to basically allow the abuses to continue but in a different form. If the abuse ended at 18 and the parents and child reconciled at that point and had good relationships going forward that would be one thing. But how often do parents change? Never in my experience. Some of the abuses end, but only what they can't get away with any more. Never all of them. And I don't see any reason to excuse abusive behaviour in any form. I just think most adult children are conditioned by society to think that abusive parental behaviour is not abusive when they are adults and so you are just getting angry for those few times when they spanked you as a child. And one of the reasons the adult children do go along with it is because they know it will be useful for them to be able to say it to their children, because they are just going to continue the abusive cycle.

Oh so this is what you were trying to get at. Quite frankly this thread is mostly tldr and I've just skimmed over it for the most part, but since you succinctly asked the question here I'll answer it. Yes, people in both situations can restrain their exercise of power if they choose. Now can you tell me what point this proves? Preferably without going into more tldr territory.

It's just the waste of time that gets me about public schooling. 12 years!!! For God's sake! It felt like for much of that I was just marking time. I'm sure I could have done it in half the time. Certainly primary school. But people just get dragged back to the average student. And the average student doesn't much care at all. It's a disaster imo. We need competition in schooling. One size does not fit all.

Who is to say the competitors that come into the market won't have a huge amount of investment money behind them? I remember the early days of the cable TV companies in Australia where they were just burning millions of dollars of cash just to stay in the market. They'd never made any profits, it was just massive losses year after year. If the monopoly is serving the customers and no-one feels like they can compete because they give the customers what they want it will become a natural monopoly. But as soon as it starts to abuse it's relationship with it's customers it creates an opening in the market. Reputation is everything. Once lost, they'll never get it back so abusing your customers just because you can, in a free market, will get you short-term gains at the expense of long-term gains.

Thanks for saving me time, I just fast forwarded straight to around 13 minutes or so and saw exactly what you mean. It was degenerating fast.

It is true that I never saw a happy family situation (including, especially my own) when I was young (0-18) and that influenced my desire never to have children when I was younger (in my 20's). As well, I thought about it logically and asked the question how do you even be a good parent? How can you if you've never seen examples of good parenting? All I ever saw was people fucking up their children. Maybe I would have turned out differently, because I would have asked questions, but I didn't have confidence in that. When you start to get a bit older you start to do the math on what age you will be when the child/children are a certain age, etc. I know Stef did it at 40 or so but that never seemed appealing to me either. If I wasn't a dad by 40, the idea was completely off the table. There's no need to have children. I think society pressures you because of the biological drive on one hand and the need to procreate and keep society going on the other hand from the past where there was much death in society. I can't imagine that kids would have made my life happy when I didn't have philosophy and therapy to sort out my issues. Having kids doesn't magically fix things in your life. One gripe I've always had about society is this "having kids will make someone responsible or happy" or whatever. Would we say to someone who doesn't want a dog that they should get a dog? How do we imagine that might turn out? I remember someone who was in a bad marriage and people told her, "you should have kids". Well, she did have a child. 2 years later she was in a very, messy expensive divorce, which I predicted at the time, and all the people saying she should have kids and congratulating her on her pregnancy were nowhere to be seen. Have my experiences soured me against kids? Yes. But I think I have valid reasons as well not to have had them.

This person is deflecting the anger he feels for his parents onto everyone else. Especially those who have dealt with their trauma in a way he obviously doesn't want to.

It's kind of like the parent who says do as I say and I won't spank you anymore. You do as you're told and there is no more violence. But it doesn't take away the threat of violence. Nor does it give you freedom. The reverse happens, you've lost your freedom and are doing what a tyrant wants to keep the "peace".

And I think you are trying to make my argument sound like something it isn't. In regards to the atheists, they are skeptics when it suits them. I never knock someone's contribution. I'm not knocking MRA's contributions. All I said is, I don't feel comfortable in a community that isn't completely rational. Notice the emphasis on I. Me. That doesn't mean I'm knocking the community. I don't feel comfortable around people advocating the political process or talking about politics like it is a valid concept is what I'm trying to say.

I don't want to put everyone in one category. There are certainly individuals in the MRA, just as any group. I just don't feel comfortable with them as a whole. It's the same way I don't feel comfortable with the "atheist community" even though I'm an atheist. I don't think, though I'm happy to be corrected, but I don't think they are coming from a philosophical position for the most part. That it's more a reaction. Same with atheists. They claim to be skeptics but how many of them are really skeptical? Certainly not the likes of Harris or Hitchens. And I would say that the situation is because we have a state. Hundreds of millions of dollars of tax money (perhaps billions) have gone into the propaganda. If it was a free market there's no way there would have been that kind of financing for it. That pot of money in the middle of society screams to be abused. Do we blame the bankers, who abuse state power and money, for the GFC or do we blame the existence of the state (the violation of the NAP) for it?

Milton Friedman had a lot of good things to say about free markets. However, he thought he could reform the state as an institution. He was wrong. He never acknowledged this error to my knowledge. His son, David, seems to have learnt from it though. It's just redefining words. War is Peace, freedom is slavery, poverty is violence, etc... Once you've put the violence label on something that then justifies violence (as a self defence mechanism) to solve it.