ProfessionalTeabagger

It means not in violation of any valid moral rule. For example, rape cannot be morally justified because any justification breaks down into contradiction. Justifications for having a child do not violate any such moral rule. There's no coercion involved and no violation of universality. If you can show a valid moral rule that childbirth violates then you've shown it cannot be morally justified.

There's nothing morally wrong with harm. The only harms that are immoral are those that cannot be morally justified. Having a child in and of itself can be morally justified and the burden is on the person claiming it isn't to show that it isn't. Just pointing out that the child will experience existential harm which it would otherwise not have experienced does not show that that harm is in the same category as rape, murder, robbery or theft. To say the parents have initiated a from of harm is to subtly conflate two different concepts of harm and blur the valid distinction between immoral harm and existential harm.

Hi. Welcome. Concepts like objective meaning, purpose or intrinsic value would be fundamentally the same as a square circle. That's because all of them are logical contradictions and such things cannot exist. Imagine you'd been taught from childhood that square circles exist and that they were necessary. You come to psychologically rely on square circles. Then you learn they can't and don't exist. The only thing that changes is that you know you were lied to and if you hadn't been lied to the absence of square-circles would not make you feel despair or be any kind of issue at all. Nihilism is just another way of saying "there's no god", for what is god if not objective meaning, purpose and intrinsic value?

Maybe there should be an awards section on the forum. The categories could be things like "Most incoherent argument against anarchy of the year" or "Saying philosophy when you mean opinion, fail of the year", etc.

You do not argue that the NAP should be enforced. You assert that it only works if it is enforced. You argue that it should be violated because you're arguing for minarchism which necessarily requires its violation to some degree. The efficiency of violating the NAP to throw one person out of the neighborhood is not a rational justification. It's just mobbing. Why would everyone else have to move? Why does the majority get to attack the one? This is just you making bald assertions. It is so wrong on almost every level and we're barely past the first sentence. I don't know if people will stop stealing because of the principle. The no more slavery principle seems to have stopped people from owning slaves in many places. It doesn't matter because the NAP is not there to stop people from stealing anymore than the scientific method is there to stop people believing in young-earth creationism. I've already told you the principle does not need to be enforced. It's a principle, NOT a law. Learn what the hell you're talking about. The rest is just you making claims and expressing your opinion and as they appear to rest on your initial failed arguments there's no need to rebut them.

Imagine the mafia families as corporations, and they simply offer services in exchange for money. Except that they happen to have the internal policy that if you are on their own territory (private property), they make the taxes mandatory. However, it is more efficient to pool resources if you have many clients. Also, the clients express their CONSENT by STAYING IN THAT territory. But there still is competition between families. You are free to move to the territory which offers you the best service for the least money. The families which listen to what people need and inform them what they're getting into are the ones which more people will consider worth migrating to. And if you really think about the "mandatory tax" part, perhaps it's better that way, because it's much, much more expensive to live on your own on a deserted island. So the tax is just the profit of the Mafia. EDIT: also solving the free rider problem. Even in Somalia, while it was anarho-capital-ish, you HAD to belong to a Mafia style clan in order to have any rights, even though you were free to migrate between them. Mafia families work best when small and adaptable to what their people want. And it's better to have many small families so people more easily migrate. So, do your job by telling people who don't like it to either migrate, or to fight for lower taxes or division.I am no longer an anarcho-capitalist, but a minarchist. Can you convince me otherwise? 1st premise is Wrong. The NAP does not need to be enforced. It's just a rational principle. Conclusion is wrong. Paying people for defense does not involve coercion. A state necessarily involves coercion. So paying people for defense is not a state.

What is this?

Ask for proof. When you don't get it, just start asserting the opposite of these claims. The eventual response will be some form of "fuck you, we outnumber you and we got the guns". This demonstrates they don't believe what they're saying and are just throwing out apologetics.

Presenting the argument would be "the initiation of harm" so if you accept the argument it would be immoral to ever present the argument and possibly also immoral not to present it as this would also lead to harm. It's gets pretty illogical.

1: No because it involves coercion. The person is choosing to coerce the other into eating cake. Free means free from coercion. 2: Don't know because the details necessary are not provided and it is phrased ambiguously. Why is the person starving and why is the other making this the only choice? What does the contract involve? If you are replacing the cake with a wage contract then this implies the contract involves little more than the equivalent of eating a cake. Is the person being offered the contract a hideously evil person who killed the other's family? If so then the other could been considered quite merciful. So many questions would need to be answered before any valid answer can be given.

Good article. You mention the creativity of scammers and also some examples of how reputation may fail today as a deterrent but maybe not enough about the creativity of anti-scammers (who will have the advantage) and that the examples are within the context of a statist system. Anti-Scammers will have access to most of the resources and money as the majority will be supporting them. Reputation is not particularly effective with debts today because unless the law's coming after you few people will consider your rep to be that bad. Take the state away and there'll be lots of incentive to come up with solutions. Not having a criminal record will no longer be much of a guarantee that you are a reliable person to lend to. Lenders will HAVE to check people's rep. Saying we MUST solve issues now may be falling into a trap. We CAN'T solve these issues now because any ideas we come up with cannot be sufficiently tested and the statist apologist knows that. They do not stay statists because WE have failed to solve things anymore than theists stay theists because atheists have failed to show a belief in god is not justified. Ultimately it's morality that will sustain a justice system.

I'm not basing all my answers on that. My first answer didn't involve social sanctions but instead direct action. But you altered the scope of the question. If social sanctions don't work then you can take direct action. That's the answer.

Did I answer your question sufficiently or not?

Well if they really are outside the purvey of society and all possible sanctions then by definition there'd be nothing you could do about it because you'd never know about it. However it does raise the point that the person abusing the animals would HAVE to try to avoid society in order to continue torturing. This already happens to some degree in today's statist societies; imagine how much more risk the person would be taking an anarchist society were their lives depended on reputation. For the animal abuser an anarchist society may become a nightmare. You also have to consider that the right to initiate force would no longer be a generally accepted principle and, as animals share certain properties with humans, the abuse of animals could not be morally justified. What is the most common characteristic of animal abusers? That they themselves were abused as kids. As anarchy is founded on the NAP and child abuse is a violation of the NAP we would surely see a massive reduction in child abuse. It follows from that that we'd see a massive reduction in animal abuse. Someday I hope it becomes as unthinkable as slavery.

Can you understand how this could be perceived as a significant moving of the goal-posts? Could you first tell us if you have any answers to this question and what they are?

Go and take his animals away.

Those syllogisms are brilliant. I have a hard time trying to express my views about this subject. Causality and laws of nature and their relationship to mind can be so slippery and confounding. I think those may be the best arguments of that kind I have ever read about this specific subject. Fantastic job.

Look. You tell me how to get rid of rape and we'll go from there. You tell me how you stop people from using coercion to obtain sex and we'll concede. You tell me how an anti-rapist can tell a person how to have sex and we can discuss that interesting angle.

I would ask the person - Who should get let go or not get employment because the minimum wage workers wanted more? Which poor people should get screwed because these other poor people want more cash?

There are several assumptions embedded in this that are wrong. Humans do not grow exponentially, at least not in the way bacteria do. Bacteria multiply mindlessly at an extremely rapid rate and cannot choose to not reproduce or reproduce less. That is not the case with humans. Humans can choose to base their reproductive choices on the circumstances so that's how the free-market solves any supposed problem. It is often the state that incentivizes and subsidizes reproduction, enabling millions of people to have kids when they cannot afford it. Bacteria cannot manipulate their environment in the way humans can so the notion that we live in a closed system or finite system is fallacious. We can live in space FFS. It does not follow that because we can invent new ways to sustain a growing population that that will necessarily lead to just more exponential growth. This is fallaciously derived from this guy's sinister analogy of humans with bacteria. He's an environmentalist activist who supports taxation to protect the environment. As with many environmentalists he sees human beings as a problem. We're in the 59th minute and most scientists you've "talked to" agree??? Scare-mongering crap. "Over-population", just like "the balance of nature" is nonsense. There is no objective standard for the correct number of humans. If there were only a few thousand humans on the planet but they had problems feeding themselves then that could also be called overpopulation.

I saw that comment as well and remembered the call as I had listened to it before. It was a good call and you were great. The comment you quote was completely uncalled for and lacking any empathy. I felt it was another example of what I often see in the comments section. That is, a massively disproportionate and insulting criticism of any perceived flaws in the caller's performance. There are lots of perfectly nice callers who receive this treatment and I often wonder how these obnoxious comments make them feel. Aren't we supposed to be a community with an above average understanding the difficult and often painful problems people have to work through? It's like, a person opens up to others he trusts and one of them throws a rock. You had the guts to put yourself out there and risk being vulnerable and all this other jerk can do is insult you from behind the safety of his keyboard. So the comment is really about him and his issues I'm guessing. I'm really sorry it affected you this way and that the experience was somewhat spoiled. I can understand to some extent why it it did hurt you. If I called in to the show and then saw such comments, especially from FDR fans, I think I'd be kinda crushed. I think this comments thing is important. Consider the preposterously overblown hostility Stef got (from so-called friends) for posting a sad face after a donations comment on facebook. It seems that us libertarians and freedom folk are often just as shitty as everyone else. I'd like to hear you on the show again sometime soon and maybe you could mention this incident. All the best to you friend.

If you would not consider an intentionally nonsensical proof to be an act of good-faith then you should not have made the previous comment. You just don't like being paid in your own currency because you know it's counterfeit. That's why you won't interact anymore. "Space-time (location) Energy-matter (massivity spread across a location)Law (causality)singularityPoint AMassivity level Auniversalcontrast (separate unique)Poin BMassivity level BselfEmergent property of contrasttimeinformationmoralityThe start of the big bang has 1 unique location, 1 unique mass, 1 unique law. When other unique points entire the equation its creates a contrast between them. This contrast creates a new property altogether, but without contrast, the emergent property simply cannot exist. Its not necessary the universe has multiple unique causalities, but without that contrast morality is an impossibility." Mind (Location) Energy / matter (constructivity) Law (descriptive consistency) Point A Thoughtiness level A Universal Point B Thoughtiness level B Self Sub-mergent property superimposition of Captain - We have whales. Therefore you're wrong. Also, Define causation. What is causation?

Oh that's easy to disprove. The semi-interealionality of of the sub-system is actually an income/outcome process which cannot logically be integrated with dependent communication. Obviously! Therefore your definition of causation is wrong. "i claim a dog is a thing. you say its too vague. i say no its spot on. (dog is named spot btw) you say a cat is a thing. i compare the 2 ideas and agree. the definition is larger than what it was intended to represent. something falls inside my definition but outside the word." In the interests of aiding understanding could you try to make this more vague? Thanks.

Well I KNOW you have not given an adequate definition of causality and I responded to your previous three attempts at a definition. If you feel perplexed about my continuing to ask you then consider how perplexed I am when your definitions are intelligible only to yourself. Saying "the concept of causality means x causes y." is circular. It's just a restatement of causality using other words. X causes Y; So what? That's not a definition. It's an description of how you and most others perceive causality. Considering that philosophers and scientists have a very hard time defining causation, that such relationships between things and events in the universe may be beyond our mind's ability to even model and that you've used it in an objective way (as some sort of law which you seemingly fully understand) in order to support some extraordinary claims, why do you think "Causality mean X causes Y" is an "adequate" definition? Also I'm pretty damn sure definitions are NOT supposed to be vague. You made that up. Definitions can include all possible examples without being vague. If you believe definitions are supposed to be vague then it's no wonder you much of what you say appears to be confused nonsense. I would like a definition of causation that is not circular, vague or incoherent. Your arguments rest on it being an objective concept so again, what is causation?

You don't explain what "integration with reality" means and now you've re-framed it as "non-zero relationship with reality". What does THAT mean? If every person on this board had to guess what you mean by those two phrases and their life depended on getting it right how many do you think would survive (if any)? "Factors that produce an outcome" is so broad it could include anything. A wizard made a square-circle. That's a factor that produced an outcome. What is not explained by you is what the objective definition of causation is. You are using it in an objective manner and basing some quite controversial conclusions on it. I can't give you an objective definition of causation; I only use the concept because I know other people have a general idea of what I'm referring because they perceive the world pretty much the way I do. Causation/causality/ cause and effect generally describe the relationships we perceive between events. It is a useful concept but you are not using it in that "everyday" way. I believe you only have a vague everyday notion of causality which you're transposing in your mind into some universal law but in actuality your usage of it is incoherent. The reason I'm asking you the question is because of that. The nature of causation (if it even exists an as objective thing) has been debated seriously. Bertrand Russel for example said "The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm" and "the word "cause" is so inextricably bound up with misleading associations as to make its complete extrusion from the philosophical vocabulary desirable." I'm not even sure Russell would make some of the claims YOU are making so I think it's entirely reasonable to ask you to define a concept upon which your entire argument rests. What is causation?