doglash

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/10/11/destroying-30000-pickup-truck-can-cost-half-million-dollars

And then they'd turn around and walk back to the register when a shotgun was pulled from underneath it.

This guy!! http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26260978 I feel your pain, dude.

http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957 I just found this so awesome I had to share. Great stuff happening in New Zealand.

I think you should try to explain why you think there has to be a difference in moral code from person to person, since this seems to be the premise you are starting from. To rough it out in point form: 1. Morality/ethics is rules of behaviour 2. Our behaviours stem from and are part of our biology. 3. All humans are the same, biologically. 4. Therefore, all humans should be held accountable to the same moral code. I second this motion wholeheartedly

I'll have a go at answering some of your queries. I apologise for all the quotes. If you create a group called "mammals" and say that part or all of what makes them "mammals" is that they are warm-blooded, then you can't take something that is cold blooded and include it in that group. If you designate something "a car", and part of what makes it "a car" is that it runs on gasoline, then you can't also include in that group a horse, since it doesn't run on gasoline. But, if the only characteristic of "a car" is that it runs on gasoline, if it doesn't matter whether it has five wheels or a tail or a central nervous system, if all that matters to your classification of "a car" is that it runs on gasoline then technically a gas powered push lawnmower is "a car", as is a portable generator, as is a gas-fueled lantern. Arguing that these last two are not "a car" then invalidates your original statement that "a car" is something that runs on gasoline. How this relates to morality is this: If you create the classification "human being" that covers all of humanity and propose that we are bound by a set of moral rules, you can't then apply a different set of rules to certain people without showing how they differ from the rest of humanity and invalidating your original classification of "human beings" In regards to lactose-intolerance The example that Stef uses the most I think is a comparison to biology. In biology there is the classification of "horse", which includes the characteristics: four legs, one long tail, hairy neck/mane and one head. When a horse is born with two heads, it doesn't void the classification of "horse", because we understand that there is a certain amount of random mutation in biological reproduction. A two-headed horse is still a "horse". The same goes for the nutritional rule that milk is good. In general, milk has good nutritional properties for the human body. In particular though, it is bad for people who have lactose intolerance. This doesn't void the general rule for the same reasons as the horse example. We hold moral rules to a biological standard of accuracy, accepting that there are going to be exceptions and grey areas that will require further investigation and understanding. This is a fairly brief and muddled explanation. Stef does a much better job of it and so I urge you to keep listening. I'm sure others on the board can direct you to particular podcasts with the answers you are looking for.

Drug - a medicine or other substance which has a physiological effect when ingested or otherwise introduced into the body. (from Oxford English Dictionary) When I say impaired I'm talking about a qualitative lowering. This could be of visual acuity, peripheral vision, concentration, reaction time, motor skills (motor as in body movement not car) or any other aspect of human physiology that affects the ability to drive. I also mentioned speed since, although it has no physiological effects (other than a rush of adrenaline), it does significantly reduce response time to sudden changes in a driving situation. I completely agree with you that safety as a selling point is not a guarantee of profit. There will always be people in society who want to be able to drive while under the influence. The mistake or confusion here I think is in framing this as crime, pre-crime or non-crime. Does crime even exist in a free society? Surely there are just ideas and values, and where those differ there is conflict. One person values being able to drive while under the influence of a particular substance. I value roads free of this behaviour. When we cross paths there is a conflict that needs to be resolved.

Drugs would probably be another one, Anything that impaired driving ability to any significant degree. Excessive speed. I don't think you need to micromanage every aspect of driving but I see some value in providing people with a road where they won't be endangered by people driving impaired. I think people would prefer to have themselves and their loved ones alive rather than dead or injured. That is how I would compete with a road that allowed impaired driving. By providing a safer environment.

If I owned a road I would most definitely put measures in place to prevent drunk drivers from being on my road. My reasoning being I would lose more business from people who didn't want to drive with drunks than I would from keeping the drunks out. I would "punish" drunk drivers by refusing them the benefits of my services.

These sound more like demands than freedoms.

The discussion below arose out of an article I was referred to by an acquaintance of mine, a student of political science, on how the workplace is a greater source of coercion than the state. http://crookedtimber.org/2012/07/01/let-it-bleed-libertarianism-and-the-workplace/ I responded with various commentaries on the points made by the article. One particular comment was opposed quite strongly. My comment: "Where an employee can be fired to the disadvantage of the employee, an employee can also quit to the disadvantage of the employer. It works both ways. The reality of the situation is that the reason the employer has the power in the situations mentioned in this article is that there is a surplus of labour rather than a shortage. Because the employer is able to replace the employee fairly easily. If there was a labour shortage (such as the trade shortage that happened when all the plumbers and electricians headed up to the mines) or the job was for a more skilled position where the number of people with those skills was fairly limited, then the situation would be reversed, the power would be in the employees hands, and they would be free to say all the things the author quotes above." His response: "If I quit, my boss will hire someone else to do my job. They hire people all the time, it's easy. It'll be a minor inconvenience for them at worst. I, on the other hand, need to pay rent every week or I will be kicked out of my flat. I need to buy food. I have all sorts of expenses that must be paid for. If I lose my job, either by quitting or getting fired, it's a potentially life-ruining problem. And I'm a young, healthy single guy with qualifications. If I had kids or a health problem (or god forbid, kids with a health problem), I would be in serious trouble. If I was living in libertarian land with no unemployment benefits or equivalent, I need to get a new job that pays just as well as the old one, or I and my children might well end up homeless. And what if nobody is hiring? I need to keep this job. I need it really badly. Unless a particular employee has an incredibly rare and special skill, losing them is almost never as big a deal for the employer as it is for the employee. For many jobs, particularly the sort of unskilled jobs that marginal people (non-white, single parent, few qualifications etc.) work, it's potentially life-ruining for the employee but no issue at all for the employer. That power disparity means that the boss can often do whatever he likes (it is mostly he). There are a lot of examples of this. Sexual abuse is very common in garment factories located in developing countries, for example. The workers there are basically interchangeable, mostly women, and the bosses take advantage of them all the time. What are you going to do? Quit? You need this job. So you bend over for the boss. I don't know if you think this sort of thing is okay, or you didn't think it through, or you think I'm making it up, or you consider it an acceptable price in order to live in a society without taxes or police (except for the for-profit police who will patrol the gated communities of the rich, beating up any poor people who try to sneak in)." How do I adequately rebutt this comment, specifically the part about sexual abuse, from an an-cap perspective? I don't find it okay that this happens. My main thoughts were to focus on why the situation arises in the first place (that the state induces a situation where these women in third world developing countries are uneducated, stopped from forming labour associations etc.) Then follow with how a free-market anarchic situation would reduce or prevent the power disparity. Finally I also planned to outline just how an employer is affected by an employee quitting because people don't always think about these things, having been brought up all their life being told that employers are evil and need to be reigned in by the state.

Society decides what becomes laws. The laws that society demands become the services that the DRO/security companies provide. If demand in society for a law against "looking at people the wrong way" becomes great enough to be provitable to a security company they will provide it. Similarly, if the demand for laws sponsoring slavery fall enough then those services will no longer be provided, and the security companies that support the small band of die-hard slave owners that are left will either stop supporting them or go out of business due to loss of customers.

Thanks for the replies. I think the point of the argument is more to show the flaws in using a monopoly of force as a way to solve problems that arise from violence. It is definitely a generalisation of society though, so in that regard it is not a debate-ending argument, more a good starting point to work from with someone new to the topic. Definitely everyone is capable of using violence. The state doesn't have an actual physical monopoly on violence, though when it is the nukes and armies and flying death machines of the state vs. at best rifles and handguns, sometimes bottles and stones of the civilian population, well they come pretty close. What they do claim is the moral right to monopolise the violence business. This moral stance is where they claim their legitimacy for using force comes from, and why they claim no one else can do the same.

In an FDR podcast I listened to some time ago Stefan outlined a brief argument against the state, the logic of which really appealed to me since it was simple and quite easy to grasp and yet still quite a strong argument, I thought. I can't remember the argument in full, just some of the main points. I paraphrase: "If society is 100% full of corrupt individuals then a government isn't the answer, since it will be populated by these same corrupt individuals who will use the power to their own advantage." "If society is 100% full of good, virtuous and moral individuals then a government is not needed, since everyone is already good and moral and there's no need to force them into this position." What I can't recall are his arguments as to why a government isn't the solution to a situation to where: 1. Society is composed of a majority of moral virtuous and moral individuals with a minority of the corrupt, and 2. The reverse situation, where society is a majority of corrupt individuals with a minority of moral, virtuous people. If anyone on the board knows these arguments off the top of their head and can save me a search through hours of Giant Chatty Forehead's wise words to find what I'm looking for, I would greatly appreciate it.