Tyler H

Sure sounds and looks like it.

And not just defined, right? I think you were able to bring in your notes and demand the gold they represented. I see. Though I have noticed a lot of new people who think being red pilled means you're a conservative now, lol. The predations of government hasn't exactly been a hot topic on the show for the past year and a half. I agree. I guess I feel the need to throw the caveats in, but that could be a personal tic. You're right. I guess the reason I pointed it out is because "have to" has become so colloquially detached from necessity - "I have to have this thing" "you have to watch this show" "I have to go to the store" "you have to pay your taxes" - in that way people don't connect the reality of what is occurring vis-à-vis government. Again, that could be a result of my personal experience discussing the topic.

While not incorrect, I would push back on the phraseology of your description. It obscures a level of iniquity inherent in the interaction. The government declares "you owe us x percentage of the product of your labor under threat of incarceration, or death should you resist! And we'll only accept this medium which we alone control!" - essentially forcing you to use that currency. Saying that action is generating value in the currency for the taxpayer.... I don't know. Yes you value the item because it allows you to remove the threat imposed, but it seems to me there should be a clear distinction between the value of removing the infliction of a detriment and the value of the production of a benefit. Should we not say that we use the currency because the government forces us to as opposed to the government says we have to pay our taxes in that currency so it has value? Maybe I'm making too much of it, or perhaps I misunderstood you, what do you think?

Netflix will make the decision that costs them the least. The cancellations proposed will have to cost more than the cancellations that will occur in the obverse situation with the added cost of butthurt adult children burning down their lobbies and parking lots and attacking their employees. I don't see those numbers coming through. They won't pull the series.

You use the fact that Venezuela is a crony capitalist nation (which is arguable) to show why their fate would not foreshadow our own, yet in the same paragraph proceed to describe how the US operates in the exact fashion laid out in the definition you provided bolstering the very point you were trying to rebut, so I'm confused as to your point. Yes, the well-connected use the government to secure their fortune through creating barriers to entry and offloading the costs of enforcement onto the taxpayers. How exactly will they allow their wealth to be confiscated and redistributed if they are in control? Cronies are lobbying to get rules written in their favor therefore the government has to spend a bunch of money...? I'm not following the logic here if you want to expand on that. Right now it seems less an argument and more just an explanatory claim. People look fat and happy during their debt-financed shopping sprees too, that doesn't mean their lifestyle is sustainable. I suppose if the citizens appreciate being taxed so much then they wouldn't need to be coerced to do so, no? What goods could not be provided by the market (i.e. without force)? Please enlighten me, how could it go wrong? I'm definitely open to evidence. You realize your statement asserts that unless something has existed in the past it cannot exist in the future, right? "I have a theory on how we could ride in carriages without a horse!" "Bullshit! And here's a gun to your head to not even let you try."

Well the free market is nothing but the absence of violence. So regardless of which came first, under which situation is science allowed to improve human life the greatest? Freedom or coercion?

So why should there not be competing currencies?

Awesome man! You're helping make the world a better place one childhood at a time.

They might if the government didn't tax them into poverty, regulate them out of business, or rob them through debasing the currency. If government regulations had stayed at the levels at which they were in 1949 the GDP today would be $53T, an average of $330k per person. Instead we sit at $15T, about $53k per person. And that's just the opportunity cost of regulation, just imagine what the cost of the misallocated resources (the real source of booms and busts due to the government creating false market signals that can't be backed up by actual consumer demand) and undeveloped innovations due to the forceful transfer of wealth from peaceful people to highway robbers who can't make a case for a voluntary transaction. There's no reason to invest in combine harvesters when you have slaves. Also, school doesn't have to cost as much as it does. How much cheaper do you think it would be if there weren't a bunch of unnecessary bureaucrats getting paid to fatten their asses? A private system that seeks to make a profit and satisfy customers (the salient aspect) will compete to lower prices and elevate quality. In the early 19th century, before government intervention, a private school offered education at $2.50 a year. Thats $60 dollars a year today (~10k). Do you think people who have rejected the use of force as a useful method for organizing society would be so cruel as to not provide an education to the few who would not be able to afford it? Especially when they're average wealth is six times (at least) greater than it is now and the cost of education is vastly cheaper? Perhaps you still think it's necessary to steal from people under the threat of death is necessary to fund education? Well let's take a look at what people who use guns can accomplish. Well it looks like they're really good at collecting money, but thats about it. Oh! And producing entitled, social justice warrior nincompoops. Voluntarists are not utopian ideologues who fantasize about an unachievable society. We say it's wrong to initiate force so stop trying to take a shortcut at my expense and use your brain to figure out another way to get what you want done and society will be better for it. I'm sure at one point an argument was made that abolishing slavery was a utopian ideal, but aren't we all glad that abolitionists said "I don't care, it's wrong!" And they said it, and they said it, and they said it until enough people got it. The free market isn't perfect, but it is fantastically wonderful at self regulating based on human incentives (more likely to limit greed than exacerbate it since only the government can transfer the risk from the investor to the public). It's truly amazing. Bastiat, Mises, and Rothbard are some of my favorite authors on the subject. I really suggest you read them. If you're curious how an anarcho-capitalist society would run there is plenty of material available without cost from Stef, the Mises Institute, and the rest of the internet. You'll soon find that your criticism of ancaps regarding ignorance and lack of rigor is grossly unfounded. You may be surprised at how much you're not being told by left wing sites like Mother Jones or by your professors who enjoy a government provided shield from the free market which would no doubt expose how little value they provide. Here check this out to start. By the way yes, religion (if taught to children as true) is indoctrination. And if it includes the threat of hell it's outright abuse.

By that definition everything is force, not just tools - or everything is a tool. Our bodies are a tool for movement, they force the air to move around us, they force light to change direction, our lungs force air in and out of our bodies... what is not force by this definition?

Eyeglasses are a tool, are they force? One tool is force does not necessitate that all tools are force.

It's important that Sauron didn't get the ring, but our job isn't done until the ring is destroyed. The coercive power of the state will continue to attract people who have more to gain from force than voluntary association. Even if Trump is unique, it won't take long for these bad actors to copy his formula and ride the wave to secure power, lay low for a while, and continue the creep towards totalitarianism once the citizenry thinks they're safely returned to the protective arms of the Constitution. Trump may have been a necessary step, but I think a constant backfill of anarcho-capitalistic principles and pathways are still absolutely necessary. We should take these opportunities to speak out against the nature of government, not particular carpetbaggers inherent to the existing structure.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean by this either. How are tools force?

That's what the MSM is saying so probably not, lol.

Maybe it's a pro-Trump, pro-white European immigrant commercial reminding people that immigrants used to come here to make something of themselves not leech off of the existing society. I didn't see any muslims in the commercial. Why aren't you boycotting the lumber company? Their commercial was far more blatantly representative of the kind of immigration that is "destroying western civilization" compared to the uplifting example expressed in the Budweiser ad. It's not immigration that's the problem, it's the state. If there's no coercive welfare state, if there's no forced imposition of will through democracy, then there's no problem with immigrants. It's fine to stop and clear the road, but don't lose sight of the real issue.

What are the criteria for boycotting? In order to apply to other companies.

Thanks for taking the time to read it. I'm not sure what you mean here. Why is this a problem? Could it not similarly apply to anything else?

Yeah I agree this justifies welfare (for those who have paid in) and see no moral issue with that conclusion. Yes, I think that's a fair point. The people ordering the money stolen from you in the first place are not the ones paying out now when you are collecting, and I wouldn't suggest taking more than you put in (although I think an argument can be made in regards to the opportunity cost you've incurred due to a coercive society). However, anyone who supports taxation is still supporting the initiation of force against you for any other money you make and is fine with stealing from everyone else in the present as well. Anyone who supports the use of force against me (or anyone for that matter) to steal my money is someone I have no qualms collecting at their expense welfare, SSI, or any other program. If I ever find myself in that position I'll be happy to refund the fraction of a cent to every an-cap who didn't support taxation, and happier still the more I have to reimburse.

If someone steals your bike, you can "steal" it back. If someone forcibly "sells" you something, by the form of the interaction it is known that what they provide to you is not as valuable as what they take. There is no way to know the dollar value of what's been stolen from you in forced transactions or even the level to which you've been robbed by the massive retardation of the society you could have been living in if it weren't for the state, so as long as you honestly feel you're not taking more than you've been stolen from... Morally? I think you're good. Now Stef makes good arguments as to how not being dependent on the state will make you stronger and I tend to agree. Take the money and try not to use it unless you're base needs are in serious danger of going unmet. This way you won't starve, and if you can make it along without the money you're better for it and you can use the money for a charity of your choosing instead of letting it go to line some crony's pocket.

Have you read Atlas Shrugged? Particularly Francisco d'Anconia's speech on the essence of money. I urge anyone who has not to do so.

I am confused by your bewilderment. You think the government is corrupt enough to require a bill to end corruption, yet when this corruption manifests itself you are shocked and appalled. Not that you shouldn't be, but I inferred an element of surprise from your post and was curious as to why. From the voluntarist position: this is the nature of government, left and right alike. If you set up an institution that can force "customers" to purchase "services" it is inevitable that the so called customers will have very little to no influence over the operation of that institution. The goal should not be to alter how the power is achieved, but to remove the power altogether. As long as society creates a category within itself exempt from the laws that govern everyone else, that category will be occupied by the people with the greatest incentive to avoid the consequences of those laws. In other words, evil people will rush in to commandeer the power of the state in order to shield themselves from any negative consequences were they to operate in that manner outside of the state. All the corruption in government stems from its legal right to initiate force. The only way to end corruption is to repudiate this legal right. Aside from that I see a major problem with this bill. The proposed method of funding elections is as bad if not worse than the current model. They intend to supply citizens with a "credit" that can be applied to the candidate of their choice. This means that some people will be stolen from in order to support a candidate with aspirations opposite their own interests. It is just another transfer of wealth from the citizenry to the rulers under the guise of honor and compunction. One thing that remains fairly consistent is that every law intended to fix something has unintended consequences that necessitate yet another law. We have reached the point where we are now subject to so many laws that the average person unknowingly commits three felonies a day. There are now more laws than can be counted when we only need two: don't initiate force, respect property rights.

I think the issue with this is that it creates a positive obligation in order to be good. So anytime you are not acting in a certain way, that hasn't even been defined, you are being evil? How can that be so? I think the inverse makes more sense, although I still take issue with it. Good is the absence of evil. But either way you arrange this sentence it places a moral value on inertia. I like the suggestion of hypocrisy being the root of all evil. It holds consistent as a necessary component when you think of commonly agreed evil actions, however it also applies to actions most wouldn't consider evil. For example if I said "I think people should park between the lines" yet I consistently park outside of the lines, I am a hypocrite. But am I evil? Maybe some would argue so. Ayn Rand said that "the root of all evil is the desire for the unearned." Abusers demand authority they have not earned, knaves and thieves property, rapists sex, murderers life. Is there an action that stems from the desire for the unearned which would not be considered evil?

I think the reason a moral rule has to be universal is because if it isn't then there is no reason someone can't make the inverse rule to cancel it out. This is what makes arbitrary application (as opposed to universalization) logically inconsistent and as you alluded quickly devolves into morality being defined by whoever has the power to impose their will and can scarcely then be called objective or moral. I think these are good questions you raise and it is certainly important for us to be able to articulate the answers if we wish to convince people of these ethical propositions, the ones that will listen to reason anyways.

It is my understanding that UPB is claiming that very interchangeability. Throughout history philosophers try to further define morality; they say morality is deontology or consequentialism or liberalism, et cetera. UPB, like all the others, is an attempt to define ethics - with the additional goal in mind of maintaining an objective framework so that ethics cannot be manipulated to suit the subjective preference of the moralizer. I think that all preferences are subjective by definition. Whether or not the woman wants to have sex is her subjective preference, however once she has made her choice the fact that she does not want to have sex, yet is forced to do so, is objective. The objective component of UPB is not in the individual preferences of each actor, but in the fact that those preferences and behaviors are expressed, and in the methodology for determining if those preferences and behaviors can be universalized. So UPB is not trying to determine the subjectivity of a preference, rather the universal applicability of a behavior that has a preferential component to it.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you denying there is a moral component to that event?