ProfessionalTeabagger

Cars and boats are different because they're created. They're already property and they're not analogous to land. The land in question already just exists. Again you're putting forward an example of someone behaving like a state and calling it a fatal flaw in anarchy. That's why I asked for an example and you're not providing one. You ask if some person has a moral right to own the thousand acres of wilderness but you provide no information other than the fact that he's maybe fenced it off. I have no idea why or what he's planning or what's the point or why he invested in fencing or anything really. Relevant details are required to properly answer questions about ownership of natural resources. You are not providing the relevant details. Therefore I cannot properly answer the question. This is why I usually ask people who put forward this argument to provide a scenario within an anarchist society. That way you can work through the reasons why this is not a flaw at all. The homesteading principle (one has the moral right to homestead, right?) makes sense. Even if there was a finite supply of land and for some reason no one could "homestead" then so what? In the real world it's not like people want to homestead much anyway. They prefer to have a nice house already built on land someone else homesteaded. In a free society the more area of the Earth that's been homesteaded the better off people will be. It's just a statist mindset that thinks of land and resources as things that are carved up like a cake.

Why would a person in an anarchistic society have a "legal" title? Who grants that? If he somehow had this "legal" title then why didn't he take responsibility and warn others that the land is reserved? Even if such a thing could happen why wouldn't he owe the homeless man compensation for his/her gross negligence in not warning people who may want to use the land. The scenario is not realistic within a Libertarian society context. You have to provide a scenario that happens with an anarchistic context, not a state one (as "legal" title implies).

This has cropped up many times. Anyone can use the natural resources and space to create property. People are just so used to states drawing imaginary lines around massive areas of the earth and declaring "That's ours now". If someone is deliberately preventing someone else from essential things like air, land or water then that may be considered an act of aggression but it only happens with states. The only way I know to fully understand why this is not a problem (much less a fatal one) is to play out a scenario. If you provide a such a scenario I'll try to show you why this problem has been solved.

The interesting thing about the closing down of this topic is that in order for any determinist to criticize Stef doing it they have to accept he had the free-will to not do it. Otherwise they have to accept he did not close it but rather it was just the playing out of unconscious material forces over which he had no control and there was no possibility of it being any other way.

Yes I don't support it even though I benefit from it. I only only exist because of Hitler too. So what? Do you support theft or not? Yes or no.

Oh for god's sake, just answer the question. You either support theft in order to pay for science or you don't. Your question is irrelevant. Do you support theft or not? My answer to this question is NO. It's a yes or no question. You can fund these things voluntarily or you can fund them non-voluntarily. Non-voluntarily is theft. Do you support theft? Yes or no?

Do you consider theft morally permissible? Do you advocate it in any way?

Hey Luckynumber23, the thing about what you're saying is that I can't tell if you advocate or support such theft or not. It always winds me up when people point out all the benefits of theft but do not commit to supporting it. So do you support theft? Yes or no?

Well if you know the difference then stop using force and coerce as interchangeable. If you can show coercion then that's a very different thing. I'm sure in some sense it IS relevant to men. Many men would be happier if they had the option not to work. So what? If men were coerced to work "pre-feminism" then that was slavery. I'm sure it happened but I don't think it was at all the norm. Who's arguing that a man having to work is any less reason to be unhappy than a woman? I'm sure most men would prefer the option of not having to work. As I said, you are trying to extract something from Stef's argument that isn't there. If we have the technology to produce "basic human needs" without any labor then go prove it. If by basic human needs you mean basic food, shelter and clothing then I don't think you have to work very hard to get that. I would bet my life that most people in history would look at the average lifestyle of a poor westerner with extreme envy. Remember it was automated machines that to a large degree freed women from household chores and what did they often want to do? Go out to work.

I don't know if it's the work itself that has necessarily made them unhappy. Many women like to work rather than be supported. Who said "forced/coerced"? I just mentioned that certain people were trying to conflate all force with coercion. You seem to be doing it blatantly. Please don't do that. If you find work shit that's your view. You are not being coerced to work. Having to do things to sustain yourself is a fact of nature. If you have a problem with that then become an antinatalist and take it up with your parents. You are trying to extract something from Stef's argument above that isn't there. What you "feel" isn't really relevant. If you have a way to make work optional then go do it. It is essential you understand the different meanings of force. Do you understand them?

Everyone is forced to work to some extent. It is coercion that's the problem. Do not conflate force necessarily with coercion. I am forced to eat and sleep but not coerced. The coercive effects of the state have significantly limited women's choices. They are then forced to work in order to maintain lifestyles that previously they would not have had to work for in this way. This is not the same as Stef's argument against PJ's claim that being forced to trade is coercion. Also women are still free not to work and go find ways to support themselves other than through trade. It is completely essential that you understand the different meanings of force. PJ tries to conflate them in such a way that's there's no fundamental distinction between coercion and non-coercion.

Okay they are two different things. I'm going to start another RBE project called "The Saturn initiative". Now I can say I'm not "affiliated" with Zeitgeist or the Venus project. Maybe you should just clearly and unambiguously state what you are arguing FOR so we don't have to waste time wondering whether you're surreptitiously advocating an RBE by throwing cold-water on freedom and free markets. Am I affiliated with Ron Paul. "Affiliated"? I guess not but I would advocate much of what he does and when someone argues with me against those things within the context of Ron Paul I don't just say "Well I'M not affiliated with Ron Paul" and just leave it at that. "Affiliated" is a weasel word. You are an RBE advocate and you are advocating those ideas here. It doesn't really matter whom you are "affiliated" with. Yes I CAN call it cooperation because it is demonstrably the case. Most businesses fully cooperate with each other. There almost no competition in the market. It's probably less than one percent. In your nutcase mustache twirling conception of the market I'm sure things are dog eat dog and if you lose you die but that is not reality. If I want to exist in a market I have to cooperate with virtually everyone in it. The market is the ultimate community. Where competition exists it is there to provide alternatives for consumers. Hey maybe Milton Friedman is "directly" responsible for it but I'm guessing that "directly" is the weasel word that's being used here. So what if he was? If Milton Friedman advocated any kind of dictatorship for any reason then he was not, by definition, advocating a FREE market. I would guess that the people who directly implemented it and the actual dictator themselves and his cronies are "directly" responsible. But you are an RBEer so you'll do whatever you can to redirect the evils of the state onto the market.

"Am not talking about privileges here, unless you think basic human rights are privileges, while I view food, access to education, medical treatment and housing, not as privileges but the very minimal necessary for survival. And when you say they can't have it, is like saying Profit is more important than taking care of human suffering." Please tell us how we can can be as good a person as you. It never occurred to us that things like food were necessary for survival. We are truly shamed and will now accept an RBE (even though you are not "affiliated" with that in any way). "Have you heard about the Chicago School / Pinochet experiment in Chile? Why you think the lesser the government intervention, more people went bankrupt/hungry? And why it was necessary to use a brutal dictator in order to enforce a free market?" A statist plan run by statists for statists. That was not a free-market. A free market is a market without coercion. That's what it fucking means. If you won't respond to this point will you at least admit that you have acknowledged it?

What? Why are you asking me why people started using agriculture? I made no mention of that. I'm sure people started using agriculture because it was better and avoiding food scarcity must have been a primary concern. I'm also pretty sure that settlements formed around the farmland and bad people started initiating force, thus forming states. I don't see how the rise of states was an anti-famine measure. That is an awfully generous assumption about the motives of rulers. Don't confuse the state with civilization. The state consists of thugs you have to pay off in order to HAVE civilization.

Here in Ireland we did not have famine and we were to some extent stateless. Then the British state came. We lost 20 to 25 percent of our population in a famine were a million starved to death. That'd be like about 75 million people starving to death in the US. It's still in the Irish consciousness today. This doesn't prove much but any claim that states were an "anti-famine" measure seems like a load of fucking shite to me.

It is not a zero sum game. When my gains are added up and the losses of the person I may be competing against are subtracted they do not necessarily or even often come to zero. The free-market is almost all cooperation and very, very little competition. Who the hell DIES when they make a loss in the market? If I invest in building a business and it fails I don't DIE. That's a raw state of nature you're thinking of. This along with a view of the market as zero-sum means you are superstitious. Generally superstitions originate in the nonsense we were fed as children. I am willing to bet you're father's views were highly socialist and anti-capitalist.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aAH_G5hcAg

Check your privilege!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The claim is that scarcity is a fact of nature, not that it's necessary in all cases. But even if you get rid of the scarcity of basic necessities there will still be scarcity because even time itself is scarce. The claim of structural violence is that certain structures are inherently violent, like the free market. It follows that one has the right to self-defense from this violence caused by people trading without coercion. Therefore those those who accept structural violence as a valid concept have a pretext for using coercion to forcibly prevent something like the free-market. This is advocating violence. It's just not explicit. We are not fighting for scraps. The poor in western society live better than virtually everyone in history. The analogy with starving animals is not valid as we are not starving animals in a raw state of nature. People in society who have such needs taken care of STILL want more. There are reasons why a small amount of food gets scraped which you are trying to spin. There's always some waste. Do YOU eat every single scrap of food you buy or cook? It's virtually impossible to calculate the exact amount of food people will use so it's virtually impossible to avoid waste completely. IMO these businesses do quite a good job. They have no interest in wasting anything. Free food would not put these people out of business. First, it would not be free food as someone had to spend time and labor creating it. The food exists in the first place because they made it. Second, if food became basically free then they can take the capital and invest in something else. They idea that they're not giving away free food because it would put them out of business is nonsense. They wouldn't have a business in the first place if they gave away the food and people would simply have to find another way to get food. Your thinking gets everything backwards. I can make a buck from playing music and music is not scarce so that claim is wrong. What does people having to pay for their right to live mean? You offer no proof so other than under the state I can only accept that as bullshit. Money is just a medium of exchange that allows for an efficient division of labor. I don't have to spend years building a phone. I can work a few days and buy one. I don't have to gather or hunt all my food. I can go buy it for a fraction of the time and labor it would take. If I buy it at Walmart I can save even more time and labor. If you are criticizing fiat currency (paper) then most people here already agree. I don't know what an economic system based on saving resources is. It seems to me to be of those sophistic tricks of putting anyone who argues against you in a position of advocating an economic system based on WASTING resources.

You are not responding to the arguments made. Instead you are now making an imputation of me being a sheep. Of course you offer no proof and even if it were true it would not negate anything I've argued. It's a red-herring. Kindly shove your patronizing accusations. Do lecture me about being a good philosopher when you have got the sack to just admit you jumped the gun when you made this post and you got thing wrong. "And then you can tell me how quoting someone word by word is slander." So you quoted him verbatim. So what? I can quote you word for word and then spin that anyway I want. Just because I can claim I quoted you word for for word, does it follow that any conclusion I draw from your words is valid? No. I ask again, If you agree with Stef that stealing to fund science is wrong then what is the purpose of the original post? Also why do you constantly avoid answering my questions?

All you've done is transcribe the video and draw some vague conclusions and what I would consider slander. He does not talk like an expert and often points out his own lack of expertise in these matters. What about the many times he has praised the science you mention? Would you still claim he is too ignorant to comment on the nature of their funding? You have made a claim that he attacked their profession and you're wrong. You refuse to concede you're wrong so you're moving the goal-posts to make this about him being not fit to criticize the research. You just just don't like what he said, you made an attack that was wrong and now that you know you're wrong you're trying to spin it to appear that Stef is attacking something he's not. Also, I'd like you to tell me what you think that comment about having to know as much as the physicist in order to be able to criticize them actually means. You should be able to tell us what it means and explain exactly how that relates to to Stef's criticism of government funding for science hobbies, right?

What proposition?

Who the hell claimed that those scientists were useless or attacked their professions. AGAIN, Stef attacked the theft, not astronomy or cosmology so what are you talking about? Are you saying he depends on theft? Should he also not criticize theft because the science was done largely through theft? Again, if you already agree with Stef's view then what was the point of the original post?

So your answer is "NO". It wasn't obvious at all as I had to ask you this yes or no question several times and you did not initially answer. If you agree with Stef that people should not steal to pay for this research then what's the point of this post?

I just told you he already knows about technology funded through government. We all know this. It's not a secret. He did not criticize astronomy or cosmology, he criticized THEFT. You think Apple just re-branded some device the government made? Fine. I ask again - do you support stealing to pay for such research? If you are an anarchist and want to live in a world free of price tags then go make that world. It's completely irrelevant. I ask AGAIN - do you support stealing to pay for such research? It's a yes or no question.