dsayers

Ironically, I think the problem is one your post makes also. The problem is that we're not taught to think of things in terms of value. It's easy when something has a price tag on it because the value, even if disagreeable, is brought to the forefront of the exchange. Outside his books, which miss the mark a bit anyways, Ron Paul hasn't provided anything of value outside of his medical practice. Stef is a much better example because he provides a lot more value. I say this as an utter hypocrite because it took me a very long time to give value in return and the value I've given in return is a pittance compared to the value I've received. I only know this because I'm looking at things in terms of value.

Yes, non-coercive rape is good. However, the word rape denotes the coercion. There is no government that does not violate property rights by inflicting edicts upon people that haven't consented. If somebody consents to something, that is a voluntary contract and not government. Also, saying we need a State that most people perceives as legitimate, that perpetually violates the property rights of everybody all the time to avoid a much smaller organization that MIGHT violate property rights, that nobody would perceive as legitimate is irrational to the point of being psychotic. It's akin to burning your house down to avoid the potentiality of a small kitchen fire in the future. It exchanges the risk of a negative outcome for the guarantee of it, it exchanges understood illegitimacy for perceive legitimacy, and it exchanges isolated occurrence for omnipresence. I appreciate your honesty. If you're right, I'd certainly like to know that too. However, if you operate under this conclusions without using sound methodology to arrive at it, then all you're doing is limiting your scope. Which unfortunately on this topic leaves the correct conclusion outside your scope of consideration. What I'm saying is that the way I see it, you should either be able to make the case that government is necessary or be open to the possibility that it is not. I think we're saying about the same thing. The main point of contention is what government means. We seem to agree on that also except that you describe it as something with the potential for good. Like righteous rape. When the accurate phrase would be sexual intercourse.

I don't think so. For example, I don't have to ask you if it would be preferable to you to not be stolen from, assaulted, raped, or murdered. From what little I know of you, I know that you accept property rights because you've used your property to communicate with others on this forum. I also know that the moment you prefer one of those behaviors on the list, it is no longer theft, assault, rape, or murder because those words denote involuntary participation.

The act of making the statement is a behavior. Also, with the caveat that I'm only familiar with the broad strokes of UPB, I think that there is a difference between preference and preferable. This is to say that we universally cannot know universals. "The initiation of the use of force is immoral," which is known as the non-aggression principle, is not an ought statement. It is an observation of the real world. Axiomatically, we own ourselves and people are not fundamentally different. Syllogistically, everybody owns themselves. If everybody owns themselves, then theft, assault, rape, and murder are immoral as the require exercising ownership over that which is owned by somebody else. This is why I tend to shy from using the acronym NAP. It's a handy shortcut for people who already accept the proof. For those struggling with it, it's clearer to focus on self-ownership. Because property rights, morality, the NAP, anarchism, and capitalism all flow from self-ownership. We know rape is immoral because the rapist is simultaneously accepting and rejecting property rights. Because threat of murder is a violation of property rights is how we know that logical, reasonable, and necessary counter force is justified even though it's mechanically identical to the threat itself. In other words, what you are talking about is not a prescription, but rather a dictionary. I hope this has been helpful to you. I really enjoy this topic, so feel free to voice any detail you find issue with.

The whole point of the against me approach is to take the abstract out of the equation and interpret what's being talked about very literally. If somebody is used to the obfuscation, clarity will indeed feel like being pinned down. Because it is. It's very cool that he was able to be honest about his feelings.

Change ignore to override and I think that's a good point.

You are certain that nothing is certain. That's another performative contradiction. What was your goal in creating this thread? Your title suggests you are curious, though you've behaved as if you're certain. You use your sister telling you about determinism as the result of her studying it as proof. Then when it's pointed out to you that this is not causal and doesn't fit into the deterministic explanation, you just re-assert that we do not choose. This is confirmation bias at best and bigotry at worst. Either way, it's a waste of time. I guess we can add opportunity to the list of words that have no meaning in the determinist lexicon.

Inflation is an increase in the money supply. If there are only $100 in circulation, a dollar is worth 1/100th of all currency. If there is $1million in circulation, a dollar is worth 1/1,000,000 of all currency. Prices increase as an effect of inflation. Yes, supply and demand cause VALUE to stabilize, but amid a paradigm of fiat currency, prices can actually rise while value declines.

Ah, there's the flaw. Success/failure is not the measure of evil. If you are unable to identify what is (not) evil, how can you make truth claims about the inherent (lack of) evil in something? What you describe here is inherently evil. People are not fundamentally different in ways that could separate them into categories of rightful rulers and the rightfully ruled. Your opening post was predicated on the assumption that government is necessary. What follows is an extensive exercise in trying to make that assumption fit into reality instead of exploring whether or not it accurately describes reality. There are only four things that coercion can accomplish that voluntary interaction cannot: theft, assault, rape, and murder.

How about an outstretched hand with a blue pill in it with text that reads, "You take the blue pill and you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe."

Prisons are predicated on two assumptions: The people inside are violently actionable and merely keeping them away from folks is a valid way to address their transgression. I rather like the Hannibal Lecter quote from Red Dragon: "We live in a primitive time, don't we? Neither savage nor wise. ...any rational society would either kill me or put me to some use." Rotting in a cell might give their victims peace of mind, but does nothing towards restitution. Back to the first requisite: That those inside are violently actionable. That's a tall claim. I'm sure there are those there who fit this description. Unless it's 100% though, the requisite is window dressing at best. There are probably even people there who ARE violently actionable, but were never properly vetted. Tamper with evidence to make a charge stick, bargain bullying to discourage any effort to resist or clarify. The people who put people there deserve to be there more themselves in these cases, which are all too commonplace. I think a prison is an admission of defeat. "We don't know the answer and are too lazy to figure it out." At least that's the admission of its inception. Present day, it's more like, "We believe that those before us knew what they were doing." What a horrible thing to expose a five year old to. It's bizarre the way some people will go out of their way to pretend that everything's about saving the children, yet they'll actually approve of something like this as if its anything short of traumatic. Aggression of any kind is not age-appropriate for five year old exposure. I'm really sorry that is a fact about your childhood.

The market corrects by way of competition and consequence. In regards to your scenario, competition is the answer. If this isn't what people want, then each of the colluders has enormous incentive to cross that line. Or anybody else can begin to produce food. The scenario you describe is a fictitious snapshot. It ignores everything that would be unrealistically required in advance and everything that would come after it.

That's a highly convoluted way of agreeing with me that exposure leads to opportunity, not a certainty in how the opportunity is addressed, which is what your chain of causality was claiming.

You're describing acting out. When children are abused, it's a way for them to communicate their experience when nobody's listening. Since you're older than that, visible damage would only serve as a beacon for virtuous people to avoid you and abusive people to swoop in. You wouldn't be doing yourself any favors. Plus, at your age, you can talk with words to communicate your experience with others. Your answer to my question about anger hovers around the end of the story. What was the beginning? Like you can't talk about the abusive girlfriend, but how were you able to attract such a person? This is what I meant by not being able to avoid symptoms when you don't know the root of the problem.

Please don't harm yourself. Whomever abused you to the point of doing such a thing benefits from you doing so. I don't think that's somebody you should be helping. You mentioned you're angry; Why? At what? At whom? You mentioned trying to avoid it, but this isn't something you can do if you not understand what the problem actually is. Cutting is a symptom. I'm glad you spoke up. I'm not really qualified to help you, but maybe I can help by helping you to identify the problem itself. Do you know what it is?

I too would like a definition of shallow. You mentioned women liking men for money, but there are biologically necessary reasons for this. Which is not to marginalize the segment who do it out of laziness and decadence rather than the protection of their offspring.

How do you know? What would be your criteria for disproof? And what is your definition of "government"?

How many people study philosophy and don't explain to [you] what determinism is? You're essentially saying that somebody could not join this forum without first knowing about this forum. Obviously that is true, but you're describing opportunity. Whatever reason you can provide as to why YOU joined the forum, the same could be said about 100s of others who did not. This isn't causal or deterministic.

It's a performative contradiction. By trying to influence others, you're accepting their free will. Have you explored what about your past has led you to this conclusion?

Well she's not required to give you something just because you value it. However, she does have to not force things on you that are harmful, same as in her relationship with everybody else on the planet. And I would argue that by choosing to bring you into this world, she does have a commitment to at least take an interest in WHAT you value in order to model for you that you are not below anybody and how to be curious in regards to other people (empathy).

Yes, among healthy people, it manifests as constructive discourse. This doesn't change the fact that by posting that adjustment/correction, you were resisting my effort to define something while pushing yours on anybody that reads it. We wouldn't discuss ideas if we felt powerless to alter others. I'm not saying that our participation in this is nefarious, just pointing out that "want to be ruled" is dysfunction and how.

It's immoral to point a gun at somebody. It's not immoral to point a gun at somebody who threatens to point a gun at you. This is why "gun" is a bad analogy in the context of determining morality: Because a gun is a tool that has moral and amoral purposes. This in contrast of the state, which is immoral by nature. For this reason, the very act of trying to grab a hold of it is immoral by extension. I know Stef has argued that this is like steroids being legal and playing sports without them; You're just going to lose. I don't think that that is a valid justification. That the State alters the ground on which people compete in the business world is a reason to get rid of it, not a reason to make use of it.

This is a symptom of dysfunction. I would much rather buy a television set than to make one on my own because the effort:yield disparity between the two options is enormous if my life's joys and work are not an integral part of the process of making a television set. By this same token, somebody who has been abused rather than nurtured to developed into somebody capable of thinking, negotiating, and making decisions for themselves similarly yields these acts to those who claim the ability to do it for them. This is why child abuse is so damaging. EVERYBODY is trying to rule on some scale. Why, as I post this, I'm indirectly thinking for others. A healthy person might find value in something I say and choose to assimilate it. However, the dysfunctional might say, "I don't want to think about it and that sounds right, so I'll just go with that." In other words, there is NO SHORTAGE of people trying to think for others, which is why it's paramount that a parent treat their child with love and care that they may be strong of self enough to weather this perpetual storm. Does that make sense?

To me, this seems like a good time to say that the definition of a man is a physically matured male. Since the connotations of the word vary so wildly, to use it outside of its denotation is an act of ambiguity and should be avoided for accuracy's sake. It would be irresponsible while trying to encourage somebody to speak in a manner that could be interpreted as shaming. What do you guys think? I'm ambivalent myself. I'm not for just abandoning words because they've been poisoned or else I'd have little to make my sentences with! For example, I'm all for "taking anarchy back."

Haha! Thank you for making my point