Mister Mister

Because the state is not a person. The people who have borrowed that money are not personally liable for that debt. That's the whole point. The State is not like a "professional killer" in your example, because even a hitman takes personal risk for the violence he commits. Also, a hitman doesn't have a legal monopoly on killing for hire. He likely competes with other hitmen, whome he probably respects, ironic as it may seem. But politicians and bureaucrats and even the enforcer class for the most part (especially in more peaceful, 1st world countries), faces little to no risk for the crimes they commit, AND they are the only group that can legally steal within the arbitrary borders of the defined state. This is because of the belief in the State, and the giant mechanisms which accumulate around it. It is this belief we are trying to undermine. Saying "there are bad people and so we need a government to control them" is nonsense, it's an old argument against libertarianism, and it folds easily - this is not philosophy, it is an appeal to fear. As far as I can tell, I was right when I suspected that you are trying to push a scare story, to justify initiating force against people. Yes, these are challenges, they may be difficult, they may be scary, they may seem overwhelming to you. You and I are probably...most likely even, not smart or informed enough to solve these challenges on our own. Neither is Flassbeck, or Stef, or Ron Paul, or Paul Krugman, or Donald Trump, or Bernie Sanders, or anyone for that matter. But that doesn't mean you get to use force against other people. Torero made a great analysis, with many brilliant points, but this one really cooked my noodle: "A stateless society is first small, it's not some "blueprint for the whole world", those are false claims done by statists who are afraid to have to behave morally and not violently." Brilliant. So tell us, why is this important to you?

In principle I support them, but I wish they would direct their energy somewhere more productive. Kind of like libertarians who harass meter-maids or argue for legalizing drunk driving.

Hi Lykourgos, nice topic and rousing debate you've started. Just to clarify some things, I wanted to point out that NAP is a central conclusion of ethics, UPB is an argument for a methodology of ethics. It is similar to the Heliocentric Solar System, a conclusion about the natural world, and the Scientific Method, a methodology for understanding the natural world. Many libertarians accept the NAP, but reject or aren't familiar with UPB. In the same way, many people may accept the heliocentric solar model, but don't consistently apply the scientific method to questions in the natural world. I hope that helps clarify the discussion for you.

Charity or welfare can only occur when there is an abundance of resources for people to give, or for the government to tax (of course, morality aside, charity is more effective). This abundance, historically, has only occurred when there was some degree of a free market. So, as Alan said, libertarians are actually thinking in the long-term more than anyone else. People who support the deficit-inanced welfare state are basically guaranteeing that many people will be hungry in the future, as if someone was telling farmers to eat their seed-crop.

Hrmmm, I guess I'm just saying it depends. People can play this to their advantage, or they can suffer from it. Also depends on if you look at the short-term or the long-term. Relationships can be exploitative of either a man or a woman, but exploitative relationships are bad for everyone ultimately. Of course the important thing is that we are honest about these things, and learning the science is incredibly liberating, instead of shaming one another with cries of "objectification". What Stef has argued, which I think makes the most sense to me, is that we should choose partners based on virtue and compatible values, but of course the woman's fertility and the man's resources are going to be important factors. But in the end, fucking a "10" gets old, and marrying a rich guy can't buy you happiness. So really the issue is not about "objectification", but more about overcoming and seeing past the primitive biological urges, and building families on philosophical standards.

I assume the feminists will be all over this once they have prosecuted all the men for sitting with their legs spread on the subway, legislated speech laws against "micro-aggressions", and brought Jackie's rapists at UVA to justice.

I would also add that this is only half the picture. Women are objectified based on their fertility, but men are objectified based on their utility, what they can DO for a woman. The other part of it that people miss, is that objectification of women doesn't hurt the woman. How many men have doted on a really hot woman, done many things for her, only to find months later, when the hormones wear off, that they are in a co-dependent relationship with someone they hate?

Also f this is true, iit should be okay to hit the mentally retarded or senile old people or dogs

Sorry to nit-pick but I don't think this is accurate. There are a variety of sexual/reproductive strategies in Nature, and none are objectively better or worse than others, they are all adapted to various niches and environments. We can only apply standards of good and bad parenting to creatures who have free will. Various strategies also exist among humans, but the problem becomes when the State distorts things, so that people are getting the wrong information about their environment. The welfare state, financed by debt and inflation, creates the illusion of infinite resources, and less intelligent people breed based of this information, in ways which are unsustainable in the long run.

I didn't follow all your reasoning, or read that closely, because you start from faulty premises, and come to conclusions that I reject on moral premises. Anyone who has money, wants to get interest paid on it? Nope...people pursue money for all kinds of reasons. Wealth is not created by investment, wealth is created by acquiring resources from nature, and re-purposing them to have greater value and utility to others. Investment is ideally only a small part of a healthy economy, where people with excess capital can take a risk on people with good ideas who need capital. 100 years ago, finance made up about 5% of the American economy. Today it makes up 25% of the economy. This is due of course to the fiat money system, which it seems you are assuming in your model. In a free society with more stable currency, it wouldn't be possible for so many to make so much money just moving paper around. People would actually have to produce goods and services. First of all, I don't "go for the libertarian idea of abolishing the state", I argue that libertarian ethics are sound and valid and universal and that the state is immoral. But I don't see that you've proven that your 3 premises follow. How could you forbid someone to save for retirement, or force them to take loans, or to run a deficit, without violating the NAP? This just sounds like another scare story. No one knows what the world without a state would look like, though we can make some educated guesses. But I know almost by default that you are full of BS, you have no more idea what a free society would look like than I do. Using a bunch of graphs and intellectualizing to "prove" how horrible things would be in the absence of a coercive monopoly is just manipulation. "Smart guy who writes many articles suggests AS THE ONLY POSSIBLE SOLUTION...", do you think that's a philosophical argument?

r vs. K is a standard of biology. i think you mean, is it's application to human affairs falsifiable? it's a great question, maybe you should call into the show with this question.

How are things going in those countries? Are you not familiar with the potential negative outcomes of mob revolutions?

Wow that's a truly fascinating and moving story. So sorry for the horror of your history, and great admiration for the courage to break from it and build something better. I imagine people ask you about your family, especially around this time of year. Do you tell them the truth? If so, what is the general reaction? Welcome to the boards, look forward to chatting more.

I think the idea is to structure it more sensibly, replacing the welfare "cliff" with more of a smooth ramp. It's supposed to be some kind of compromise with Leftists. The whole thing is naive and based on a fundamental misunderstanding of government and the Left. Sure, BIG is preferable in many ways to the modern welfare state, just as a small state is preferable to a big state, a defensive military is preferable to a nation-building, world-policing, offensive one, and so on. But it's complete fantasy to think that we can just make clever, well-reasoned arguments and restructure government more sensibly, despite the massive conflicts of interest with those who benefit from the existing system, from welfare recipients to bureaucrats to politicians. Also Leftists never accept a compromise in the long-term, they always want more until society collapses. Just another cul-de-sac to trap people interested in Liberty from doing anything productive.

"I was sorely disappointed with the UPB" "there was barely a page I agreed with" "the whole thing seemed a disaster." "I feel like it really is a spectacular disaster in every sense." Do you consider these to be arguments? The closest you get to an actual argument is "It doesn't start with first principles", but just saying that isn't enough. You'd have to show it. In your article, I still didn't get any sense of any real argument. However, this statement did pop out at me: "it seems obvious that two people can commit sexual violence against each other at the same time". I know some feminists make this claim with regards to two college kids getting drunk and fucking, but to me it sounds like nonsense. Can you elaborate or give an example? A helpful way to look at UPB, is that it is a way to examine moral theories, more than anything else. It is not as important to prove that you shouldn't rape or kill or assault or steal, because the people who are open to the concept of morality, generally have empathy and conscience and won't do these things anyway. Where UPB is really useful, essential even, is in debunking false concepts of morality, whereby someone attempts to impose obligations and restrictions on your behavior, i.e. "Taxes are the price you pay for civilization", "You have to obey the Law", "Your family loves them no matter what they do, and you should love them back", "You just have to believe in Christ and you will be saved", "White people owe endless benefits to non-whites for centuries of enslavement and colonialism and imperialism., etc... For me the abstract proof is always confusing, but the method in practice makes sense. When someone uses a should or ought statement, you extract the principle and run it through the UPB Universalization Engine, and see if it holds up in the end. Hope that makes some sense.

this is fog. I don't want a 19 - point platform about your theological positions, I'm asking HOW you would teach things to kids. Do you allow them to question or disagree? Do you tell them they are bad for disbelieving. Do you also tell them that many other people in the world have many different beliefs? Do you tell them they are born with Original Sin? Do you tell them about Hell? These are the main things a peaceful society would be concerned about. After thinking about it a little bit, the whole premise of the post annoys me. It seems like you are saying, "this is how I intend to raise my children, and any criticism of my intentions as a bigoted attack on my person". And by immediately going to the last possible response, forcible separation of children from parents, you are trying to frame US as the intolerant aggressors, and yourself as the hypothetical victim, which immediately escalates things. Usually when people unjustly frame themselves as the victim it's because they are trying to take advantage of other people, so this concerns me. Since this is a hypothetical, as you don't have kids (I'm guessing?), and we don't live in a free society, why not start from a place of calm exploration, rather than this hysterical ultimatum? A more productive conversation might go something like, "what aspects of a Christian upbringing are abusive, and what aspects might be tolerated in a free society?".

and Statism. He is an interesting and important and very original thinker IMO however. Worth listening to, whether you agree or not, just based on the sheer force of his intellect and arguments. There is SOME degree of intellectual integrity on the forums on his website as well, moreso than most places.

in my opinion the issue with religious instruction isn't the content of the instruction, but the form of the instruction -- "Accept things which I cannot prove to you, because I say so, and if not you are bad." The same method is practiced by many atheist parents. just curious, how would you indoctrinate children into Christianity? would you tell them about hell? Original Sin? my understanding is that Stef's argument is not that ALL religious instruction is necessarily child abuse, but threatening them with Hell, and inflicting the guilt of Original Sin, for which the greatest and most perfect man ever died a horrible and brutal death after being tortured for several days, IS indeed abusive. If you plan to tell these things to a toddler, I would take a good look in the mirror. and yes, in a future society, you could expect serious pushback from a community with moral integrity, towards this kind of parenting. If, on the other hand, you tell them the truth, something like "This is what Daddy believes for X and Y and Z reasons, though many other people believe in different gods, and other people believe in no gods at all. I hope you will be open to Daddy's beliefs, and take part in these rituals because I think it will make your life better." I don't think there could be a problem there. Because you are allowing the child the freedom to think for themselves. I don't think, in a free society, children would be forcibly separated from their parents unless it was the last possible option. the costs and risks are just so high, that it wouldn't make sense to do this over a disagreement about metaphysics. but you are asking us like we are the Department of Child Protection in an anarchist society, which wouldn't exist. it would be up to experts and leaders in the community to negotiate and come to the best solution. Why is this an issue? Is this really your biggest concern in the world?

The user named LovePrevails I believe is in Scotland and writes this blog

I agree to some extent, and I would add that the Left seems to be set on destroying the philosophical foundations of civilization - Freedom of Speech, Reason, Evidence, Separation of Church and State, Freedom of Association, the Free Market, and any unity of culture save for the culture of Statism. Republicans aren't great on these issues, but at least they don't explicitly want to destroy them. I also agree with A4E that maybe you should make videos or podcasts about these issues, and/or call into the show with this point.

He's a Rothbard style anarchist, though very big on Ron Paul. This particular episode is not as much about that however.

This is a podcast I listen to called Part of the Problem, with libertarian comedian Dave Smith. Usually it's heavy on politics, but this episode he talks with fellow comic Luis J. Gomez about Peaceful Parenting, both of them make strong arguments, and Dave credits Stef with convincing him on this position. I just wanted to share because it made me happy to see these guys bringing these ideas to a different kind of audience. Also I recommend the podcast if you want to follow US politics from an entertaining, libertarian perspective.

...I'm not sure that answers my question. If you're open to being convinced, then how do you square that with "philosophy makes me unhappy I can no longer justify it" ??? My suspicion is that none of us can convince you, because the problem is not a lack of proper arguments, but a deficiency of self-knowledge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/23/opinion/bernie-sanders-to-rein-in-wall-street-fix-the-fed.html

I'm sorry, I was trying to point this out before, but I have to make the point again to you utopian. Do you not see the contradiction in your behavior? You are saying "I am giving up on philosophy" because you'd rather be happy. But here you are on a philosophy forum putting time and energy into trying to justify your actions with reason. So what are you really trying to do here?