Existing Alternatives

By that logic, there will be no transfer to the descendants as well. If all contracts cease upon death, all property should go to some sort of free-for-all pile. Fortunately, current precedent based common-law legal system (which is considered to be very much DRO-like or at least DRO-compatible) provides a solution for these type of problem, by creating estates. Estates are extension of dead people, if you will. Thus, while no dead person can be forced to satisfy contracts, estate can be. And yes, any unsettled contract is superior to will prescriptions. This arrangement strikes me as very much non-aggressive, so I don’t see any reason for it to disappear or be at odds with any anarchic society.

My understanding of NAP is that it only applies to individuals. As long as I did not use force to get property from you, you’ve got no claim against me. If you steal ten bucks from me, can my kid beat your kid up and demand the money back? If I’m a 1/13th Navajo and I bought a piece of land from a guy who is 3/5th Apache. Now, another guy who is 14/15th Iroquois claims that the land belongs to him since his ancestors used to live there. First of all, all of these tribes were migratory and at some point may or may not have occupied any given piece of land, and in many cases had no notion of land ownership. Now the question is who owns who the restitution, and most importantly how much? To take a less American-centric example, let’s take a look at a small village in southern Poland. It might have been occupied by different nations throughout history with previous owners savagely dislocated. So, now you have descendants of Romans, Hungarians, Lithuanians, Russians, Jews, Germans, and Polish fighting over it. Whose claim is superior? Perhaps the issue is in the “transfer-upon-death.” As far as most common laws go, the estate of the deceased continues ownership and claims could be made against it. The debts and claims have to be paid first before the transfer of the remainder takes place to the descendants. So, no, if somebody stole something from you and died, you can claim restitution against his estate.

Wikipedia has a pretty good detailed explanation of Normal vs. Economic profit. And I didn't even edit it...

I remember seeing a side question in one of the discussions on whether or not super-rich will exist in the anarchic society. But I can’t no longer find it, so I figured I start a separate thread… The short answer is No, the super-rich will not exist in the anarchic society. Here is why… Current view of economic theory states that profits consist of two major components: normal and economic. Normal profit is the minimum return that a business owner receives in exchange of his time spent running the business. If the return was any lower the business owner would engage in something else. It is effectively equals to opportunity costs incurred by the business owner. Think of it as a minimum pay that you would accept for your work, something that would make it worth you getting out of bed and putting on pants in the morning. Economic profit is anything in excess of the normal profit and is usually fleeting. If McD’s stat paying salaries higher than Wendy’s, those employed at Wendy’s will earn an economic profit. However, everyone employed at McD’s will swiftly apply for work at Wendy’s. Now either Wendy’s will no longer feel the need to pay extra, or McD’s will have to adjust their wages upwards, thus closing the gap. Economic profit is usually obtained by innovation, monopoly, or plain structural in nature. The structural nature refers to brief periods of time when the business finds itself able to charge excessive prices or pay diminished costs for no fault of their own (like a competitor exiting a particular market). Innovation’s benefit is highly unsustainable, as the moment a business develops a new product the market is usually flooded by similar offerings (think iPhone vs. Galaxy), in order to stay ahead the business would have to constantly innovate, which is highly costly and risky (No, I don’t think Apple will be able to stay ahead of the crowd forever). And, of course, monopolies are usually either caused or protected by state. So, in the anarchic society, with no state to support monopolies, opportunities of economic profit will be reduced to sporadic blips, caused by short innovation or random market movements. As the result, overall incomes will normalize and will be much closer reflective of one’s value contribution. To think of it, it would be Marx’ Workers’ Paradise.

How do the people that you like handle disagreement, and do you like that? This is an excellent point. It’s not the disagreement per se, but rather ability to handle a disagreement constructively (or at least civilly) that would have an impact on LIKE / dis-LIKE.

As obvious as it may be, I never thought of it as a Stockholm syndrome. It does seem to have many of its characteristics though... According to Wikipedia, it is “strong emotional ties that develop between two persons where one person intermittently harasses, beats, threatens, abuses, or intimidates the other.” I’d have to think more on this one.

Yes, all relationships have issues and take different ways in resolving them. However, I don’t think your example would qualify as NOT LIKE. Despite the judgments and abuse you still “love fatherly things” in him, which, in my view, qualifies as a pretty significant LIKE. To me (and apparently to Peter’s father Francis) NOT LIKE would be closer to complete inability to stand that person. I have huge disagreements with a lot of my friends, lots of them are statists, some of them are fundamental Christians, but I still LIKE them, which is why I hang out with them. At the same time, I’m sure there are some people that I would agree close to 100% on many things, but won’t be able to stand them. I guess my point is that disagreement is not a prerequisite for LIKE or dis-LIKE.

Thanks everyone for the input. I am leaning towards a disconnect – while LOVE and LIKE can exist independently they cannot exist in opposition. It almost sounds like a cop-out: it’s ok for you not to like me, but you have to love me. It seems that people use this substitution to deal with the fact that they are stuck with people they sincerely do not like. They must “love” them then, otherwise why they’d stick around. @MCS: I think we all grew up with this disconnect – at first you rely on this people for your very survival, then you hang out with them all the time. Perhaps your psyche processes it some kind of feeling, so love seems to fit the bill. I totally agree, one should be pre-requisite for another. Even if you assume “falling in love,” would you not want to “like” the person in order to develop a long term relationship? @darknova: Sorry, it is my phrase. The original is a lot less subtle: LOVE. Having said that, it does not seem all that subconscious. I keep on probing whether “you would still hang out with these people if you were to meet them at a party,” and the answer is usually NO, but then this weird LOVE-NOT-LIKE argument comes in. @STer: I wonder if it’s true definition differences or people just hide behind it and misuse it to their benefit. So, Love takes more of a Christian form: you have to love (i.e. sincerely care for) everyone. But then why would the same term be used for some of the most intense emotions (i.e. sexual / romantic love). @MrCapitalism: It’s kind of funny. I just realized that the very show is called FAMILY Guy. @JamesP: I don’t know if it is propaganda, at the end of the day, it is Family Guy. Although, I see how this can fit in the whole “War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength” domain.

A Quick add specifically re: US… If my logic holds water, then it is way too early for American patriotism to start showing any signs of deterioration. First, the economic situation is not drastically worse than before - a mere decline in housing prices would not equal bread lines. Secondly, US distraction policy is quite successful: they keep on switching focus from specific countries, to tragic events, to generic partisan bickering, to seemingly never ending election cycle – there is no time to stop and think for common citizenry.

Ok, I do watch Family Guy on occasion, so what!? In one of the episodes Peter (main character) has a hear-to-heart conversation with Francis, his adoptive strict and distant father. To Peter’s relief it turns out that Francis LOVES him, just does NOT LIKE him. As serious as the format of the cartoon allows for, it is an interesting concept, which seems to gain some traction with many of my friends that I watched the episode with (no, there weren’t that many). According to my friends it is perfectly normal to have loving feelings towards your family, even though you don’t like them as individuals. What do you make of that?

I’m not sure why Soviet Union maintained its network of satellites. But it seems that money and soldiers were the only way to keep them together. They did sell it to their own people as "the spread of Communism all over the globe", which demanded ever more sacrifices. England perhaps is different because, at least they extracted some kind of material benefit from their colonies. Although an interesting case would be for Falklands. US seem to maintain a similar structure today with foreign aid, propped-up dictators and military bases. Perhaps that’s what empires do.

Does propaganda have an expiry date? I think eventually it wears out – you can only demand and receive sacrifices for so long, unless you constantly feed propaganda with proof that it works or constantly distract the populace with wars and such. At the outset there was proof (things were improving), then there was war, after that things were improving again, next round of distraction (aka Afghanistan) failed and the house of cards came down. Keep in mind that only the system and the actual structure of the country collapsed. All the internal workings remained the same. Ok, it is Russia now, Communism is reduced to a second class political party and people are not “guaranteed” work or income anymore. At the same time, the leadership / bureaucracy remained virtually unchanged – some old Soviet ministries are still in exact same shape and place employing same (albeit younger) bureaucrats. Look at KGB for example – all they did was re-brand it to FSB and that’s pretty much it. Many “red” directors now own the factories they used to run. Vast proportion of population is employed at exactly the same factories and institutions they were before. Effectively, all it was a reset button for the top to upgrade the extracting mechanisms. I think they did backfire. Thanks to Glasnost people learned of many horrors that Communism represented and Perestroika put some property into the hands of producers. So, suddenly people can no longer remain ignorant, and they have something to worry about.

The satellites question, in my mind, is easy. They only survived as long as Soviet Union propped up (or outright funded) their economies and provided the troops and weaponry to keep the people from uprising. Closer the country was to the enemy lines, more support it would receive. The best example would be Cuba, from which SU was exporting tonnes of sugar. Keep in mind that SU produces its own sugar from beats, which is relatively cheap and requires little transportation. Now take a look at the map and imagine what additional cost it would take to ship cane sugar from Cuba. I read somewhere an estimate of 7x the cost of local production. The best examples of the military “support” would be Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Once Soviet Union could not afford to subsidize their economies and station their troops, the game was over.

Here is my theory: the history of Bolshevik Russia / Soviet Union can probably be broken into the following periods: - 1917-1922 Revolution, Civil War, early expansion. Complete destruction of the economy, anti-Czarist propaganda at its highest. Rock bottom – only up from here. Hence, the state blossoms - 1922-1928 New Economic Policy. Relative economic liberalization -> ensuing prosperity. “This thing actually works” mentality. - 1930s The Purge. Prosperity extracted from the previously built economic framework (NEP), the first five-year plan marks the beginning of planned economy. Everything that’s wrong is blamed on the “Enemies of the State.” Peak of personality cult. “We are still moving forward despite the efforts of imperialistic spies.” - 1940s The War. Radical Industrialisation for the war effort actually causes an increase in productivity and prosperity (Red Army started the war with cavalry and ended it with ground-to-ground missiles). “Communist paradise is just around the corner.” - 1950s The Reconstruction. Earlier industrialization is heavily leveraged for grand projects: dams, rail roads, super-factories, apartment blocks, etc. Death of Stalin causes many cases of the Purge to become public. “So, Stalin was wrong in some areas (still a great leader), now all we need is a small adjustment to get there.” - 1960s The Corn Decade. Relative openness with the US (caused by the threat mutual nuclear destruction) results in adoption of progressive agricultural processes, which significantly increase food production. - 1970s Oil. Instability in the Middle East causes the oil prices to skyrocket. Soviet Union, the only major oil producer that is not bound by OPEC’s restriction, handily capitalizes on it. Gigantic pipelines are built straight from the oil wells to consumers in Europe, easy cash flow right back. Relative prosperity all but replaces the need for propaganda. - 1980s Zastoy (stagnation). Literally nothing’s happening. Oil prices stabilize – excessive revenues dry up. No significant technological changes. Populace spirits decline. Alcoholism rampages. “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work” is the mantra of the day. Big bet that an easy win in a war (Afghanistan) should spruce things up fails miserably. - 1990s The End. Early relative economic and political liberalization backfires and accelerates the demise. So, my theory is that Communists simply ran out of things to either grow the economy or distract the populace with. Maybe if the war was successful (or at least better framed) or another economic leap would occur things would go back into the cycle.

Physics of Equestria… This has nothing to do with the discussion. But I found it particularly interesting. So, in case you have not seen it…

All the best and speedy recovery! It is great to hear that you using this situation to further examine your own life and continue enhance ours. My thoughts go out to you and your family. Please continue your work, but only as much as you can.

I’m not sure if this is entirely correct. As you go on to state silence is included in music. Funny enough, Wikipedia’s definition of music is “an art form whose medium is sound and silence.” Perhaps, silence would be an absence of sound? ...but then, what about the tree falling in the forest... []

They run out of money. During 70s Soviet Union was able to cash in on the embargos and high oil prices by pumping tonnes of oil to the west. Eventually those “eurodollars” dried up. A lot of apparatchiks at the top started seeing the impending doom, started syphoning as much funds (gold, foreign currency, what have you) out of the country, thus accelerating the process. Gorbachev’s relative liberalisation was the last ditch attempt to stimulate the economy, but it was too little too late. At the same time, as Soviet Union was not able to support their satellites (both internal and external), their grip slipped and they started to pull away, first Germany (the most financially dependent of the Pact members), then Poland, CSSR, followed by Baltics and the rest. They did not “choose” to dissolve, they imploded. As soon as the financial aid stopped flowing and the military was being withdrawn there was nothing to hold the empire together. Afghanistan was actually secondary here. Yes, it was a war they could no longer afford. But, yes they did eventually pull out. New Economic Policy was implemented in almost opposite situation: the economy was already in shambles and there was still lots of propaganda to be leveraged. In the ‘80s the economy was beginning to deteriorate after an extended period of relative prosperity, and nobody cared anymore about the “brighter tomorrow.”

That’s the part I don’t get: why is this religion / atheism issue? This is solely about weighing effectiveness of vaccine combined with likelihood of contracting decease and severity of symptoms with possible side effects of such vaccine. Nothing is 100% effective, contraction likelihoods are usually low, and side effects are always present. In the case of swine or even seasonal flu, the window between discovery and identification of possible culprit and required in-market dates is usually impossibly narrow, that only government mandated program would be able to “deliver”. On a separate note, this is how Canadian government deals with those disagreeing with effectiveness of vaccines: schoolchildren with out-of-date vaccination records get suspended.

I’m just thinking it could be beneficial to you. You seem to harbor some negative feelings towards him. Maybe getting it off your chest will make you feel better. Nothing violent – just a heart-to-heart chat. There is nothing wrong with what you said (short of tearing the beard). And who knows, maybe he will re-evaluate some of his behaviors. This could be a feedback loop that most teachers simply don’t have. If he still teaches, his students would be better off. As far as tracking him down – teachers don’t move much due to the realities of the government pension-based work. He must have a Facebook page or something. I’m sure most teachers would be thrilled to hear back from their students, unless they are aware of the impacts of their behavior and fear reprisals.

Ron Paul does not seem to get much respect on this board, but I’m thinking that’s the model you would try to emulate, correct? He is probably the most successful libertarian politician out there. He’s been a Member of Congress for 37 years. How much has he accomplished? Sure, you’d say that he launched this whole Liberty movement, but that only started ten years ago, and still only reached to about a couple of percentage points of the populace. How many laws has he passed? How many did he prevent from passing? By how much did he shrink the government size? But throughout all these years he’s been ridiculed, called horrible names, been outcaste, backstabbed by his own party. I can only imagine the sacrifices his family had to endure to support his constant campaigning. And don’t forget, he is the most successful one! What about all those who weren’t as strong, persistent, lucky, etc? What kind of toll this type of career took on them? Do you think you really have what it takes? If you do, keep in mind that politicians’ job is to distribute taxpayers’ money to their friends and campaign donors. Will you be able to stand idly by not being able to fight and not being tempted to partake? I’m sure it’s hard if not impossible. If you are still bent on it, I think there is a lot that can be done on local level, like a local council, assembly or board. Sometimes it does not take that much money and or effort to get elected into those. It will give you a bit of exposure to the “political process.” Good luck!

Have you looked that guy up lately? Maybe you can have an adult chat with him now. Perhaps it will help you with a certain degree of closure. Bullying, in traditional understanding, is all about approval seeking. In this case, sadly, from a crowd of kids. This maybe not be the right example, but it reminded me of many History channel documentaries about Hitler, how kind and caring he was towards (Arian, obviously) children.

If it collapsed tomorrow, you would have "chaos." People have been under the same statist paradigm for thousands of years, when it goes away people will panic and scurry and rush to get back under that system like an abused person runs back to their abuser. They see the state as that which dictates morality and rationality, and they will rush towards it with great speed. Nothing will change until people's minds have changed. The American Revolution would never have worked if the minds of a large number of Americans at the time hadn't already shifted to a certain philosophy. The philosophy always comes first. Forcing philosophy at gunpoint never works. This is also why political action is pointless (that is, by the time you have enough people agreeing with you that political action would be worthwhile and somewhat effective, you don't need political action anymore). So personally I think humanity is decades away of broad awareness, and, depending upon how things play out, it could be much much longer. Thats why I think the most useful mentality these days is that of comedy (then again don't take my word for it, I'm not exactly the happiest fellow): this whole statist faith and superstition is just one big dark comedy show, and we are all background extras that can choose to find humor in spectating. Having that mentality, talking to others about freedom, and then being peaceful and kind and fair to those in our own lives - that is all we really have the power to do. I agree – it’s an excellent attitude. But, “as a movement” we are still nowhere near our objective. This “scurrying” will arguably set us back even further in terms of philosophical and moral development. What to do?

There is no avoiding statism completely. You need a degree to get (most) jobs. You need to take certain courses to get that degree. Any government-funded institution (and most of them are, even the private ones) will ensure that you get enough indoctrination. Your only hope is to be cognizant of this and separate gems from garbage. Good luck!

Just made my way to podcast #272 (the one about Somalia). As every libertarian out there I have very high hopes for Somalia. In this podcast Stef essentially rains on our parade. His thesis (in case you don’t remember) is basically that since Somalis did not seek to establish a rational and moral (market anarchy) society, this whole mess they are in right now will simply result in another state. This made me pause for a second. Does this mean that if the Western financial / government system collapses tomorrow, vast majority of people won’t be looking for morality and rationality either? Are we doomed to end up with maybe even more oppressive state? Given the speed of dissemination of these ideas so far, we are still decades away from any kind of broad awareness? Is there no hope for Somalia or us?