Nick900

I have been thinking about the whole anarchist/self knowledge/philosophy thing and about why I'm doing it, I want to make sure I'm actually pursuing it for the right reasons. I do however enjoy the feeling of the uphill struggle that comes from trying to convince people that self knowledge, philosophy and anarchy is the way forward. This got me thinking ... if one day, all of what is said on FDR was achieved, how would that make me feel? And I can't help but feeling that if the struggle was gone, I would be really bored. I'm sure that I would find other things to learn, this is the aspect I enjoy the most, but it got me thinking, am I just doing this to get the feeling of being superior? - I think that this is what others think I'm doing. Has anyone else experienced this? Edit: Found a Stef vid which cleared this up:

I didn't mean it to be snarky, just sarcastically playful

I'm not talking about the big things like murder which you can easily justify as self defense, but the smaller little things like playing Marilyn Manson music all night long in the middle of a residential neighborhood? If the emo guy owns the land and doesn't agree to keep the music down, how to you get him to stop? How can you justify enforcing rules on others that they don't agree to when common sense suggests something should be able to be done? (e.g., sending the cops around to smash the radio apart)

Correct? - Did Jebus tell you that? It seems that if you want to maximize your own gains its incorrect, why is that wrong?

I was about to create this as a post but I guess I'll put it here since its a sub-question of this ... Why be moral when you can count on others being moral even if you're not? Look at the example of Stefs donations, some people will donate a lot of money keeping the channel alive but others can not bother donating because they can rely on others doing it for them. By not donating they are not losing out on the valuable content because you can rely on other people doing the 'right thing' and donating. You can pretty much rely on other people having empathy and doing the right thing in various situations, so it would be pretty risk-free for you to not do the moral thing and it have no negative consequences. So why bother being moral? Why not lie and cheat and steal and take government money? - By not doing it changes nothing, by doing it benefits you.

Businesses appease groups all the time ... target pulled GTA 5 off the shelves because a group of SJWs said they would not shop there anymore.

I was talking to someone about anarchism and they brought up the scenario of a tower block that allows the use of drugs and a surrounding suburbs that is very much anti-drugs. The tower block has it in the contract that anyone within the tower block limits is allowed to own and do drugs but the surrounding people have drawn up a contract stating that you can't have drugs. Through a series of business deals and land purchases the home owners in the surrounding land have purchased all of the land apart from the road leading to the tower block. Under pressure from the surrounding home owners threatening to use a different road the owner of the one road that leads to the tower block caves into the pressure and bans all drug transportation on that road in effect creating a circle around the tower block. It's not inconceivable that a large group of people would get together to enforce something like a no gun zone basically cutting off people who don't agree. In the example given above the people can still take drugs in the tower block because they own that land but they can't get drugs in or out because the surrounding area + road company have forbid it. How does this get resolved?

Mmh I had a little read through it, seems you can either have a moral theory built on context dropping or context adding ... get rid of the context and you can build a moral theory that works on paper but nobody follows, build a moral theory under some context and it doesn't stand up in every scenario when put to the test. I think I'm rapidly moving towards the consequentialist side of the isle.

The UK has a completely socialist healthcare system, the US less so. However these stats show: UK: http://www.who.int/countries/gbr/en/ Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2013) 3,311 Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2013) 9.1 US: http://www.who.int/countries/usa/en/ Total expenditure on health per capita (Intl $, 2013) 9,146 Total expenditure on health as % of GDP (2013) 17.1 I'm not very familiar with the US medical system (being from the UK) and I was wondering how the government is involved in the US system and what is the cause of these numbers?

Could the case not be made that you don't own yourself? ... To own something, someone has to own it ... objects can't own objects ... isn't being human above just being property? You can say "I own X" which is valid, but to say"X owns X" saying that you own yourself is just redundant because you are yourself. If you come up with a moral theory called UPB and then say you're justified in not helping someone who needs it, but then everyone who uses UPB would give food anyway because of some other moral theory that says you should give food ... doesn't it kind of just bypass UPB and use the moral theory that states you should give food? Maybe the person is evil or whatever, but wouldn't that be a consequentialist argument ... you're not giving him food because he did X. If this is the case are you not building a moral system called UPB which is great on paper but then basically ignoring it when dealing with people in the real world? I get that UPB is logically consistent but if everyone is basing their actions on a specific event rather than some abstract moral principle, what's the point in it? Why not just abandon the abstract principle and act based on consequences? UPB may result in people starving because they take property rights to the extreme Consequentialist arguments may result in people starving because its subjective and open to corruption How is UPB beneficial over any other system? (I think I will listen to the UPB audiobook again after this but I'll just throw my thoughts out here anyways... best way to learn is to be completely destroyed by people who are smarter right?)

The point I was going to make is if you can establish a scenario in which property rights is a violation of the NAP, wouldn't that justify the state? If a free market would leave someone to die because they can't afford something wouldn't it justify the welfare system? If you can justify forcibly taking the bottled water in the emergency example you can justify tax? (Or not... I don't know, tis just a thought)

I'm mainly concerned with natural resources and the like, I don't think anybody would object to the spleen point mentioned above but there does seem to be a distinction in denying someone the use of something that won't hurt you if they need it ... like the bottled water salesman in the desert thing stef mentioned. How is the building of the wall different if you are claiming those resources to be your own?

Could the idea of property rights be considered the initiation of force? When you've got something and you deny the use of it to others are you initiating force indirectly by not sharing it? If you don't give food to a starving person, if you build a wall around a bunch of resources needed to make cancer medication, etc ... How does UPB/Free market/Anarchism handle this?

These are pretty great points, will give them a go next time I'm in a discussion

I'm not intentionally trying to be a weasel, I get that we don't live in an anarchist society so it's a bit of a grey area, I'm just trying to think about how to counter the arguments of (the many) people who think war is necessary for self defence. I guess the easiest way to do this is just to argue the side of the statist and see if the position can be defended.

I don't fully see how a debt is created when A initiates force against B? When I say war I mean using force and when I say country I mean group of 2 or more people to protect 1 or more people (i.e., father goes off to defend child, soldiers go off to defend citizens (group membership)) ... Although when stated like this you could probably be morally justified in going after a specific group of people who have aggressed against you but certainly not carpet bombing an entire country, however it creates a new problem of whether collateral damage is ever acceptable?

Could this not be a justification for invading Iraq or some other country a terrorist is coming out of? (assuming no ulterior motive) Terrorists are attacking state-xyz so state-xyz goes into the terrorist country to defend themselves.

In an Anarchist society the only acceptable use of force is to defend ones self (right?). I have a couple of scenarios I would like to consider: 1. Someone tries to attack you with a gun - clearly you can use self defence 2. Someone tried to attack someone else with a gun - does this still come under self defence to assist them? Now thinking about how the state justifies their actions: 3. Could war against a country be classed as self defence? 4. Is there a moral difference between proactive self defence and reactive self defence (on a state and personal level)?

Here's a list of 187 companies that Google alone have purchased: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google The goal of app building is to make an app, get some ad revenue then sell it to Google

Hi The FDR iPhone app is a little outdated, some of the buttons on the quick (swipe up) menu don't work too well and there are a few features such as adding a 30 sec rewind button and quickly showing the podcast that you're up to which would be nice to have. There are just a couple of UI problems that can get annoying if you're a regular user of the app. If you could make the app source code available I would love to work on it a bit to give it some new features.

Hmm :/ dictator does seem appealing at this point

When I bring up anarchist principles to people I tend not to get the aggressive responses that Stef mentions in his videos, instead I just get a total lack of interest in the topics. Generally a lack of interest in politics. How do you get people who are totally disinterested in the topics to take an interest? These are people that sort of acknowledge the ideas you put forward but think the whole situation is set in stone, and it's pointless to try.

So once the government has hung up its hat and rod and we are living in an anarchist society, how do you prevent the second coming? It may not happen for a while but 7 generations later when people have forgotten about the problems of the state, how do you prevent them from getting it going again? (I'm assuming some sort of snow ball effect with more and more people signing on) Alternatively what's to stop some massive group like a religion from taking over? It may not be logical to take over, it may not be financially viable to do so, but hey ... Religion might do it anyway?

Thank you all for your responses, it's given me a lot to think about, I'll be checking out the book reccomended and going over the suggested podcasts.

Usually during a debate (if you can call it thtat) the conversation goes like this: Him: How did the universe begin? Me: I think _insert any theory_ Him: But what created *THAT* Me: I don't know, nobody does *YET* Him: Well it must be god Me: what created God? Him: Gods outside of time, is infinite, and always existed How do you argue this? We currently only have partial information on how the universe began so it leaves it open to the god-dun-it argument ... I know a bunch of logical reasons why this is bs but how can I convince him of that?