Makalakumu

Why not? If I establish ownership over something by creating it with my labor, wouldn't this apply to my children? Yes, children grow into adults, but is the parents who make this possible. The same principle that allows a farmer to own the yeild of his crops apparently turns children into property if we universalize it.

If ownership is obtained because people own themselves and the products of their labor, do parents own their children? Children are produced by parents labor and are therefore products of that labor. Therefore it could be argued that parents own their children. I would love it if someone would poke holes in that argument for me, because right now it's been weighing heavily on my thoughts, when I divert them to philosophy. Essentially, I think that their might be a gaping hole in the self ownership principle here. If parents own their children, when does that ownership transfer to the child? If that ownership transfers to the child, couldn't it be said that parents are "stewards" of their children? Further, if there is an exception to this principle, then it is not universal. Doesn't this undermine the whole basis of owning anything? Perhaps we are simply "stewards" of everything? That could be argued, because property rights are not infinite. If a farm owner dies and the property reverts to a state of nature, that individual no longer has property rights. Also, if we consider that all of the matter in our bodies is continuously cycling through it, humans simply don't have the permenancy for ownership. On the other hand, if parents do own their children and ownership never transfers, then we never truly own ourselves because that ownership never transferred to us. Either way, self ownership doesn't appear to exist in my argument. I wish I could give Stef a ring on this on a Sunday show, but alas I'm too many time zones away. Any thoughts from this community on this?

This debate just appeared in the FDR podcast feed. It is show FDR 2362. Take a listen and comment if you wish.

Let's tinker: 1) A group of people who have a monopoly on the initiation of force in a given geographic area (Government) may not be moral now, but they can become more moral in the future by eliminating(controlling) the initiation of force among individuals. 2) A group of people who have a monopoly on the initiation of force in a given geographic area may not be moral now, but they can become more moral in the future by not initiating force (eliminating the initiation of force among individual). 3) A group of people who have a monopoly on the initiation of force in a given geographic area may not be moral now, but they can become more moral in the future by not acting as a group of people who have a monopoly on the initiation of force in a given geographic area. 4) Government may not be moral now, but it can become more moral in the future by not acting as a government. Government will be moral when A does not equal A. I agree wholeheartedly. I like the changes. One thing that struck me in the debate was the idea that the initiation of force seemed to be a meme all by itself in human society. This type of behavior shapes the brain and makes it easier for itself to replicate, like a virus. Therefore, I wonder if we could view the struggle for human liberty in evolutionary terms? Imagine government being like some kind of really bad, hastily thrown together evolutionary mechanism that is attempting to control this meme. It's not going to be perfect because that isn't how evolution operates. That said, the transition toward human liberty, if it occurs at all, is never going to be perfect, but it might grow to function better over time. It might not as well. Humans could just go extinct. Noting this, I wonder how useful the utopian ideal of Anarchy, where all individuals in a society stop excusing themselves for initiating force, really is? Even in the best scenario, there are still going to be ugly things. I really wonder if society could ever get to the point where it would score a perfect 10 on the scale i noted above.

I just listened to the debate between Stef and Tom on the Peace Revolution podcast (I can't find it in the FDR feed) and I had the following idea when Stef was asking Tom to please respond to his definitions of government and morality. I asked myself, "How would I respond if I had to take Tom's position as an intellectual exercise?" So, here is my swing at this. Government we can define as a group of people who have a monopoly on the initiation of force in a given geographic area. We can also define the initiation of force as immoral. Stef's argument is that it would then follow that the government was immoral. Now, if I were Tom, I would have accepted Stef's definition and then added one. I would add a definition for moral behavior. I would define moral behavior as the control of the initiation of force. Then, I would argue that since some forms of government act as a limitiation on the initiation of force in society, some forms of government have the possibility to be moral. Perhaps a line of reasoning for this could follow as such. The initiation of force in human society is universally accepted as immoral by humans, but all human societies create exceptions to this moral rule. Thus, it could be argued that the overall morality of a society could be measured by it's ability to control the initiation of force. On one end of the spectrum, we could imagine a society in which any human being can initiate the use of force against any other individual without limitations. This would define as a 1 on social evil continuum and truly this society would be hell on Earth. On the other end of the scale, we could imagine a society in which a society has completely controlled the initiation of force among all individuals. We could define this as a 10 on our social evil continuum. Therefore, we can define progress toward morality in a society by charting it ability to control the initiation of force among individuals. Government may not be moral now, but it can become more moral in the future by controlling the initiation of force among it's individuals. As society progresses toward moral behavior, less and less individuals have the ability to initiate force against one another. At the far end of the spectrum, no individual chooses the initiate force in that society which makes every individual in that society equal to one another. Thus, all of society could be considered as being within the monopolistic group and ability to initiate force simply is not exercised. Our definition of government is preserved, our definition of morality and immorality is preserved, and we have argued that "government" has the ability to be moral. There you go, Tom. Use that in the next debate.

Thank you for starting this thread, Makalakumu, I have had similar questions about sexual relationships in a truly free society. I found Sex at Dawn to be a great book making the case for liberty in this area, and look forward to reading Dr. Epstein's book as well. As to sexual behavior and the state, it does not seem to me to be irrational for those in power to take control of the second (and some say the first) most powerful drive we have and use it to control us. (This aside from the fact that it is irrational to seek that kind of power in the first place.) To have to look to the state for permission to express oneself sexually and to fear punishment for transgressing against arbitrary 'laws' puts us in a place of subservience and powerlessness, less of a threat and the indoctrination keeps the slave-on-slave violence going as well. Do you think this is a concious calculation by power or is this a convenient side effect of irrational thoughts regarding sex? I wonder if the people in power actually think about controlling sex in order to control people, or do they make ideological excuses with faulty reasoning and actually believe it?

That show is interesting and I think it touches on the subject, how would an anarchist view sexual/romantic relationships? How much has the bias of a sexually authoritarian past influenced what we do now? How can libertarians use their philosophy in regards to sex and be more happy? Lastly, I wonder why the state is so obsessed with sex? It seems so trivial when we consider money property and war, but throughout history, societies have had strict laws that used the death penalty to control sexual behavior. It's probably one of the more irrational things that authoritarians do.

Not sure how that (the sentences I marked) was itnended, but there's certainly an (almost obvious, imo) causality between not being able to relate to women and not having sex that early. The way it's phrased there makes it either seem reversed or simply a statement of correlation. Could you explain further how this was meant? I'm probably not paraphrasing well, but I think what he's saying is that when a man delays having sexual experiences, there seems to be a related rise in problems relating to women. The way he explains it is that the drive is so strong and the delays feel like failure and this results in a crisis of confidence. This resonated with me because it fit my experience as a teen. I wonder if he would say this also translated into a decreased capacity for intimacy?

Stef just had an interesting talk during the last Sunday show with a young man who was struggling with interacting with women. It's interesting how his upbrininging when it came to sex helped to shatter his confidence. Dr. Ryan notes that the longer it takes a man to have his first sexual encounter, the more likely it is for the man to have problems relating to women. When it comes to something so fundamental to the human experience, I think the subject of the history and philosophy of sex is definitely important to discuss. Dr. Ryan would be a great podcast guest.

I'm listening to Christopher Ryan's Podcast, one of the authors I noted above, and he has a guest, Eric Berkowitz, who wrote a book called Sex and Punishment. In it, he traces the laws that govern sex throughout society over the last 4000 years. What becomes apparent to me is that government are intensely interested in sex and controlling human desires. As long as rulers have been able to write their laws down, they have recorded laws regarding sex! Here is a link to an interview by Mr. Berkowitz. http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/02/06/sex-and-punishment-eric-berkowitz-talks "Our sex organs were kind of like hands or feet, they were obedient," says Eric Berkowitz, author of Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire. "After we ate the apple and did what we did, the sex organs to Augustine became like little dictators that we have to either succumb to or overpower." ReasonTV's Tracy Oppenheimer sat down with Berkowitz to discuss original sin, trends in sex laws, and societies' perceptions of sexual transgressions."

Hi Stef and FDR community I've been listening to FDR for a while and I've yet to hear an in depth discussion about human sexual relationships in a free society. This seems like it would be a great show topic that could be of great benefit to the community as a whole because humans are sexual beings and society seems like it is obsessed with controlling sexual relationships. There are two books I'd like to recommend on the subject. Both of these authors would be great interview subjects for shows. The first is Sex at Dawn, by Dr. Christopher Ryan. http://www.amazon.com/Sex-Dawn-Stray-Modern-Relationships/dp/0061707813 In this book, Dr. Ryan uses the methodology of evolutionary psychology to understand human sexual relationships, drawing on the most current brain science and biologic relationships to describe how the human brain has evolved in regards to human sexual relationships. He also traces the history of how religious and government insitutions have sought to control these relationships for their own benefit and he discusses how this has shaped our modern ideas about sexual relationships. The second is The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen by Dr. Robert Epstein. http://www.amazon.com/Case-Against-Adolescence-Rediscovering-Adult/dp/188495670X In this case, Dr. Epstein presents the studies, statistics, and brain science that shows how our entire conception of adolesence is artificial. Dr. Epstein makes the case that teens are infantalized adults in western culture and he shows how this notion has been damaging to the development of teens and to society as a whole. Dr. Epstein devotes several chapters to teen sexual relationships and makes the case that the dysfunction we see in this area is entirely the result of institutional societal coercion. As an aside, I recommend this book for anyone who is going to raise a teenager or currently is raising a teenager. I think that this material makes a general case for self ownership for teenagers it also supports the tenents of peaceful parenting through the teen years. I think this book gives enough data and rational explanation to make the case for increasing liberty for teens and is important for people in this community to read in general. I certainly learned a lot about myself by reading Dr. Epstein's book. It helped me understand why I felt the way I did as a teen in certain situations. I believe that Dr. Epstein has penned a tome that supports everything that libertarians have been saying about teens for years and it provides the scientific underpinning to help support those ideas. Back to the topic at hand. After reading these two books and thinking about how sexual relationships would look if the Non-Aggression Principle and Self-Ownership were universalized throughout society, I believe that we can arrive at some surprising conclusions regarding sexual relationships in a free society. I also think that these conclusions apply to how family structures in free society would look. The conclusions I'm going to write below are heavily informed by the books I recommended above. 1. In a free society, the Nuclear Family unit that we are used to in our culture is probably going to be far less common. The human brain has evolved to form small cooperative groups where children are raised cooperatively by many adults. As the child gets older and approaches puberty, all of these adults inform the child through modeling about how adults should act. Thus, I think the family structure in a free society will resemble many polyamorous relationships where responsibility, finances, and romantic love is shared in smaller cooperative communities. 2. In a free society, children will become adults much earlier than they do now. A free society would not spend the inordinate amount of time infantalizing youth forcing them to remain like children with less personal responsibility. This will result in the child growing up with a great sense of purpose and responsibility, allowing the child to assume the role of adult much faster than they do in modern society. 3. In a free society, the subject of sex will be more openly discussed and it will result in a higher level of sexual knowledge for adults and children. 4. In a free society, the sexual behavior of teens will be better understood and even encouraged. The greater knowledge of sex among society as a whole will create entirely new social rules about sexual behavior for younger humans. Masturbation, mutual masturbation, and oral sex will be considered acceptable forms early human sexual activity. Coitus will be behavior that will be encouraged by the community after the individuals have shown that they are responsible enough to raise any possible children. 5. In a free society, people will have babies at younger ages. Teens will have more responsibility and have more economically viable skills, allowing them to start families earlier. There will be much more community support for the raising of children so mistakes and/or immaturity will result in far less social disfunction. Thus, early pregnacies will be far less damaging to teens than they are now. This will also reduce the amount of birth defects and mental retardation because the overall quality of sex cells has had less time to degrade with age. 6. In a free society, women would probably not have children with people their same age. This is because fatherhood will be postponed until a greater level of economic utility has been acheived by the man. 7. In a free society, there will be less sexual deviance. Violence and coercion will be less common in relationships in general and thus leading to a decrease in the amount of rape. There would be less fetishes because young people would be more exposed to healthy sexual models and they would not imprint on physical objects. There would also be less bondage, S&M, and porn because the same reasons. 8. In a free society, the distinction between heterosexuality and homosexuality will be less defined. Two people of the same sex would be allowed to relieve their sexual needs and form close relationships and this would strengthen the community. 9. In a free society, promiscuous sexual behavior, aka one night stands with strangers, will be discouraged. The community will exert pressure on individuals to know their sexual partners well in order to cut down the spreading of sexual diseases and to handle any potential children that might come from the relationship. 10. In a free society, paternity will be much less important. Males will be allowed to act as fathers to children they bond with within their communities whether they are directly related or not. It is very possible that children will have several names for different kinds of fathers. Anyway, I think that's enough for now. Let me know what you think. Add some more insight if you want. @Stef, I think this would be a great podcast series and a wonderful topic to discuss. I think it's often assumed that modern family is a natural structure and not a creature of government/religious institutions and this informs many of the discussions regarding parenting. There are a lot of assumptions in the idea of the family unit that are challenged by the work presented above.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/ayn-rands-gospel-selfishness-and-billionaire-empowerment-plaguing-america?page=0%2C0 It's very obvious to me that the authors haven't read the book. If the authors had read the book, they would have discovered that Ayn Rand spits most of her criticism at a class of billionaires that use the power of government to crush their competition and line their pockets. I've never understood why Liberals constantly ignore this...Or maybe they do understand it... So, Mr. Thom Hartmann, are you saying that without super rich patent trolling lawyers that squash innovations that would create competition and new wealth, without a court system that is regulated and tilted toward the rich where justice is determined by how much money you have to spend, without a dumbed down and indoctrinated populace that is cowed to lick the boots of their masters, without infrastructure projects that create a monopoly for auto and oil companies, no one would get rich in America?Mr. Hartmann, read the damn book next time.

There's also the increase in productivity that will be generated by new technology as well. A new internet for example. Regardless of whether or not governments can manipulate the system, they do not seem interested in prosperity.

If the government can simply move the goal posts and repudiate bad debts by printing money, couldn't that prop up the system indefinitely? It's like playing a game of Monopoly where the banker can make up the rules at will and all of the players are chained to the board and have guns to their heads. That system could slog along for a long time...

For those of you who would like to shift this into an economic discussion, I think there is a principle here that is directly related to the underlying principle of this thread. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem This strikes me as just another form of Hayek's Knowledge Problem. In any centrally planned system, there is no way for the planners to know all of the relevant information for economic exchange. Thus, centrally planned systems are always inefficient, dare I say stupid, when it comes to the allocation of resources. Couldn't the same be said of large governments and law makers? The average voter is voting on a platform of laws of which they have no understanding. Even the lawmakers don't understand them, they don't even read them! Thus the Law of Unintended Consequences is always present negative for some group. Even in a large, well intended democracy, this knowledge problem predicts failure. In a fascist corporate state, where information is doled out by talking heads and the people have been conditioned to lap up the words of authority, it predicts catastrophic failure.

I'm sure there will be lots of "chi woo woo" in a world without mandatory public school. But organizations will be spawned that will protect the consumer and out fraudsters. The education consumer is going to have to be savvy when shopping for schools in a free market, just as people have to be savvy when shopping for martial arts schools. On the other hand, learning information to better yourself is much more important than martial arts and I think the cream of the crop will become apparent quicker and will eventually lead to copy cats. We see the same kind of thing happening in martial arts. All of the "chi woo woo" schools are pretty much getting crushed by schools that actually practice and work on pragmatic technique. BJJ copy cats and "MMA" gyms are appearing all over the place in place of Kung Fu and other forms of bullshido.

http://news.yahoo.com/people-arent-smart-enough-democracy-flourish-scientists-185601411.html "The democratic process relies on the assumption that citizens (the majority of them, at least) can recognize the best political candidate, or best policy idea, when they see it. But a growing body of research has revealed an unfortunate aspect of the human psyche that would seem to disprove this notion, and imply instead that democratic elections produce mediocre leadership and policies. The research, led by David Dunning, a psychologist at Cornell University, shows that incompetent people are inherently unable to judge the competence of other people, or the quality of those people's ideas. For example, if people lack expertise on tax reform, it is very difficult for them to identify thecandidates who are actual experts. They simply lack the mental tools needed to make meaningful judgments. As a result, no amount of information or facts about political candidates can override the inherent inability of many voters to accurately evaluate them. On top of that, "very smart ideas are going to be hard for people to adopt, because most people don’t have the sophistication to recognize how good an idea is," Dunning told Life's Little Mysteries." I've pondered this many times in the past. How can any voter decide who to vote for based on information for topics that are way above their heads? The whole idea of providing people with sophisitication enough through public education is debunked by this study.

http://www.examiner.com/article/in-praise-of-the-mcdojo-what-a-free-market-education-could-look-like “The martial arts are numerous and varied. Some of them are more popular than others. Some of them have clarified principles that the curriculum is designed to teach. All of them are voluntary. The martial arts industry is more or less a free market depending on the country. In some countries there are governmental organizations that regulate the practice of martial arts through licensing and testing. In other countries, there are very few laws and regulations on martial arts schools. On the whole, most governments on this planet have very little interest in regulating martial arts and this has allowed an interesting experiment to take place. The martial arts industry, from the owner of a multimillion dollar business to the man who teaches a few students in his garage, is an example of what a free market education system could look like.” I actually wrote this article, btw. I am a teacher and I own my own martial arts studio. Thoughts?

To start the discussion, here's the wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-group_awareness_training I personally have experience with this organization. http://www.psiseminars.com/ Noting this, I was wondering if anyone else has any opinions, positive or negative about the efficacy of these trainings in reaching any kind of self knowledge. I have attended the PSI Seminars classes about four years ago and I still feel like it was a good experience for me. It helped me want to know more about myself and eventually find a good therapist. Yet, I know there are some legitimate criticism about these organizations and I share some of them. Paramount among these is the often authoritarian approach used by the facilitators of the classes. What do you think of these experiences? Does anyone else have any first hand experiences they'd like to share? If people are interested, I could share some of mine for comment...

Thank you so much.

Aloha Everyone I was attempting to upload an avatar today, but I couldn't get it to work, nor could I find any guidelines. Can anyone point me in the right direction to the directions? John

Aloha FDR Community My name is John. I just joined FDR and I thought I would introduce myself. I discovered Stef while listening to Alex Jones and I thought that his material was really more appealing then what I was listening to at the time. I really enjoyed the focus Stef put on personal growth because that has been an intense interest of mine for about the last five years. Where to start... I currently am 36 years old. I live in Hawaii. I teach Science and Technology at the middle and high school level at a private school. I am married and have two children and these are the factors that caused me to actually join this forum. I'm trying to take in the information that Stef puts out about parenting because it seems to be the most rational way that we can acheive liberty in our lives. From my own experiences in therapy and in some personal growth classes I took, I've learned about how the events in my childhood have programmed me. I continue to learn more about this everyday. One of my biggest regrets is that I didn't get into this subject earlier in my life. I wish that I would have known more about personal growth and about the benefits of therapy before I had children, before I got married. In fact, I wish that my parents simply would have loved me more, that my father would have been there for me while I was growing into a man, and that I had simply grown into the strong and empathetic man that I was destined to be. Sometimes I feel like my emotions have been footbound and that some of these programs from my childhood will never fully recover. During those times, I try to stand up straight and walk naturally so that my children can see me as I would have grown if I had the family that I needed. The effort is very tiring and I think that is why I joined this community. I appreciate the truth and I need a place to speak it with others who appreciate the truth. Mahalo Stef. Mahalo to all of you. See you around the community. John