Author Topic: The legitimacy of the state  (Read 5641 times)

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AWESOM-O

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The legitimacy of the state
« on: February 22, 2015, 04:03:42 AM »
This is something that used to bother me a lot as a younger dude, and sometimes it still does. Simply put: if you're born into a society whose values you don't agree with, or if you don't really support state-organized society in general, you don't have many options. "Move out" isn't really an option. I don't know of any unclaimed land on the planet. The most notable attempt at building a libertarian island nation ended with the asshole Tongans sending armed ships to claim said island.

The state is legitimate for those who believe in it, but there are some who don't believe in it, and there's no real option for them. I feel like there should be some unclaimed land somewhere, like a freedom preserve, where people can just go and not be a part of any state. There's a whole lot of unused land in the continental United States alone. Did we really need to claim all of it with Manifest Destiny? There oughta be a place you can go to if you don't want to be part of the U.S.

Thoughts on this?

Edit: It's also really hard in general to move. My values might be more at home in Canada or a Scandinavian nation, but actually picking up and moving there would be very difficult with immigration issues, so that's another limit on the "if you don't like it, move out" talking point.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2015, 04:17:30 AM »
The problem is that you're still operating on the terms given and by benevolence of the state. And states are never to be trusted.

In the past there were attempts at setting up communities that mostly failed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopia,_Ohio#First_settlement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Harmony,_Indiana#Harmonist_settlement_.281814.E2.80.931824.29

And attempts at separate economics that failed or were crushed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_Time_Store
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar

There's a few still around that aren't like militia/cult deals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stapleton_Colony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Christiania

My favorite were Fourier's Phalanxes:

Quote
The structure of the phalanstère was composed by three parts: a central part and two lateral wings. The central part was designed for quiet activities. It included dining rooms, meeting rooms, libraries and studies. A lateral wing was designed for labour and noisy activities, such as carpentry, hammering and forging. It also hosted children because they were considered noisy while playing. The other wing contained a caravansary, with ballrooms and halls for meetings with outsiders. The outsiders had to pay a fee in order to visit and meet the people of the Phalanx community. This income was thought to sustain the autonomous economy of the phalanstère. The phalanstère also included private apartments and many social halls. A social hall was defined by Fourier as a seristère.
I think at one point he (or a follower) worked out the exact number of "ideal people" in any community, something like 2528. That any more or any less than this would begin to undermine the phalanxes. So you had to cast out and replace people as that number was breached.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #2 on: February 22, 2015, 04:28:00 AM »
You'll obviously disagree with the politics of this, but it's the same topic and thought exercise you were talking about in the OP:

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #3 on: February 22, 2015, 05:15:48 AM »
 :clap Getting benji to lead off with Liberty "We swear these ain't dollars" Dollars.

Can a comrade get a Michael Badnarik lecture outchea?

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #4 on: February 22, 2015, 05:20:06 AM »
Actually I wanted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithaca_Hours but I couldn't think of the name!

Favorite part of the Liberty Dollars case is that one arm of the government made another switch its position on them so it wouldn't hurt the prosecution.  :lol

EDIT: Reading the wikipage, it's been four years and von NotHaus still hasn't been sentenced.  :lol

But wait, it gets better:
Quote
According to the Spokesman-Review, authorities seized 7 tons of Liberty Dollar coins at the Idaho mint, including "2 tons of freshly minted 'Ron Paul' dollars," coinage stamped with the Texas representative's face.
:dead
« Last Edit: February 22, 2015, 05:25:44 AM by benjipwns »

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #5 on: February 22, 2015, 05:26:46 AM »
Can a comrade get a Michael Badnarik lecture outchea?
Oh, I can give you something even better:

Joe Molotov

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #6 on: February 22, 2015, 07:59:18 AM »
©@©™

Barry Egan

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #7 on: February 22, 2015, 09:12:11 AM »
No the state is not legitimate.
Yes you still have to follow the rules.
You are now post-modern.

Great Rumbler

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #8 on: February 22, 2015, 09:26:31 AM »
People as a generalized whole need at least the semblance of formalized structure in order to keep from literally killing one another, and even that only works a small part of the time.
dog

Human Snorenado

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #9 on: February 22, 2015, 11:38:05 AM »
Life isn't fair, and never will be. Now shut the fuck up and get back to work, peasant.
yar

Great Rumbler

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #10 on: February 22, 2015, 12:23:34 PM »
a good place for anyone with libertarian sensibilities.

And hell for everybody else.
dog

Madrun Badrun

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #11 on: February 22, 2015, 12:31:33 PM »
I like that the issue of the legitimacy of the state is nearly identical to the state of legitimacy. 

Madrun Badrun

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #12 on: February 22, 2015, 12:34:02 PM »
The thing is, the U.S. if it would just follow the rule of law - i.e., the document that gives it any authority to exist or do anything at all - would be a good place for anyone with libertarian sensibilities.

Ya if the U.S. would just follow my interpretation of the law - i.e., the documents that I support - it would be a good place for me to live. 

Joe Molotov

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #13 on: February 22, 2015, 12:47:31 PM »
If the US Constitution was replaced with Mel Gibson's The Road Warrior, that would be totally sweet.
©@©™

Great Rumbler

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #14 on: February 22, 2015, 12:48:21 PM »
a good place for anyone with libertarian sensibilities.

And hell for everybody else.

Yes, I suppose hell for authoritarians is not being able to run roughshod over others.

Or for people who don't want to drink poo water.
dog

Great Rumbler

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #15 on: February 22, 2015, 01:00:59 PM »
a good place for anyone with libertarian sensibilities.

And hell for everybody else.

Yes, I suppose hell for authoritarians is not being able to run roughshod over others.

Or for people who don't want to drink poo water.

Of course, I forgot how much the market demands poo water.   ::)

Nah, they just won't tell people it's in there.
dog

CatsCatsCats

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #16 on: February 22, 2015, 01:42:21 PM »
If the US Constitution was replaced with Mel Gibson's The Road Warrior, that would be totally sweet.

:rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #17 on: February 22, 2015, 01:52:17 PM »
Oh this got unlocked? Class please read the following and have your book reports on my desk tomorrow morning.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/

Oblivion

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #18 on: February 22, 2015, 06:55:30 PM »
a good place for anyone with libertarian sensibilities.

And hell for everybody else.

Yes, I suppose hell for authoritarians is not being able to run roughshod over others.

Or for people who don't want to drink poo water.

Of course, I forgot how much the market demands poo water.   ::)

Excellent point.

If the "market" doesn't demand anything bad, then clearly anything bad won't happen.

It's not like we have any examples of say, chemical companies ever intentionally poisoning a water supply or anything.
« Last Edit: February 22, 2015, 07:16:10 PM by Oblivion »

Positive Touch

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #19 on: February 22, 2015, 07:32:50 PM »
now now guys, let's not waste keystrokes debating lolbertarians who live in pretend world
pcp

headwalk

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #20 on: February 22, 2015, 07:35:12 PM »
i hear somalia is nice this time of year.

Great Rumbler

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #21 on: February 22, 2015, 08:57:07 PM »
freedom preserve

I almost forgot about this part of the OP.
dog

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #22 on: February 22, 2015, 09:20:59 PM »
Have you read The Diamond Age, GS? I think you might find its world interesting to a certain extent.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #23 on: February 22, 2015, 09:44:43 PM »
Or for people who don't want to drink poo water.
States, cities, etc. could still make laws against drinking the poo-poo, no?

It's not like we have any examples of say, chemical companies ever intentionally poisoning a water supply or anything.
And then the state gives them effective immunity via regulatory shield rather than having it torn apart by the injured. Everybody wins!

i hear somalia is nice this time of year.
Not anymore, they've got a government trying to impose itself again. Just like with the Communists prior to the good years.

Oh this got unlocked? Class please read the following and have your book reports on my desk tomorrow morning.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
Quote
We do not after all differ with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, we must temporarily make use of the instruments, resources, and methods of state power against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the abolition of classes. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest way of stating his case against the anarchists: After overthrowing the yoke of the capitalists, should the workers "lay down their arms", or use them against the capitalists in order to crush their resistance? But what is the systematic use of arms by ne class against another if not a "transient form" of state?

...

Against, the most remarkable thing in this argument of Engels' is the way he states his case against the anarchists. Social-Democrats, claiming to be disciples of Engels, have argued on this subject against the anarchists millions of times since 1873, but they have not argued as Marxists could and should. The anarchist idea of abolition of the state is muddled and non-revolutionary--that is how Engels put it. It is precisely the revolution in its rise and development, with its specific tasks in relation to violence, authority, power, the state, that the anarchists refuse to see.

The usual criticism of anarchism by present-day Social-Democrats has boiled down to the purest philistine banality: "We recognize the state, whereas the anarchists do not!" Naturally, such banality cannot but repel workers who are at all capable of thinking and revolutionary-minded. What Engels says is different. He stresses that all socialists recognize that the state will disappear as a result of the socialist revolution. He then deals specifically with the question of the revolution - the very question which, as a rule, the Social-Democrats evade out of opportunism, leaving it, so to speak, exclusively for the anarchists "to work out".
I wonder if BA has a synthesis about this.

If the US Constitution was replaced with Mel Gibson's The Road Warrior, that would be totally sweet.
Just walk away.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #24 on: February 22, 2015, 09:47:45 PM »
Or for people who don't want to drink poo water.
States, cities, etc. could still make laws against drinking the poo-poo, no?

It's not like we have any examples of say, chemical companies ever intentionally poisoning a water supply or anything.
And then the state gives them effective immunity via regulatory shield rather than having it torn apart by the injured. Everybody wins!

i hear somalia is nice this time of year.
Not anymore, they've got a government trying to impose itself again. Just like with the Communists prior to the good years.

Oh this got unlocked? Class please read the following and have your book reports on my desk tomorrow morning.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/
Quote
We do not after all differ with the anarchists on the question of the abolition of the state as the aim. We maintain that, to achieve this aim, we must temporarily make use of the instruments, resources, and methods of state power against the exploiters, just as the temporary dictatorship of the oppressed class is necessary for the abolition of classes. Marx chooses the sharpest and clearest way of stating his case against the anarchists: After overthrowing the yoke of the capitalists, should the workers "lay down their arms", or use them against the capitalists in order to crush their resistance? But what is the systematic use of arms by ne class against another if not a "transient form" of state?

...

Against, the most remarkable thing in this argument of Engels' is the way he states his case against the anarchists. Social-Democrats, claiming to be disciples of Engels, have argued on this subject against the anarchists millions of times since 1873, but they have not argued as Marxists could and should. The anarchist idea of abolition of the state is muddled and non-revolutionary--that is how Engels put it. It is precisely the revolution in its rise and development, with its specific tasks in relation to violence, authority, power, the state, that the anarchists refuse to see.

The usual criticism of anarchism by present-day Social-Democrats has boiled down to the purest philistine banality: "We recognize the state, whereas the anarchists do not!" Naturally, such banality cannot but repel workers who are at all capable of thinking and revolutionary-minded. What Engels says is different. He stresses that all socialists recognize that the state will disappear as a result of the socialist revolution. He then deals specifically with the question of the revolution - the very question which, as a rule, the Social-Democrats evade out of opportunism, leaving it, so to speak, exclusively for the anarchists "to work out".
I wonder if BA has a synthesis about this.

If the US Constitution was replaced with Mel Gibson's The Road Warrior, that would be totally sweet.
Just walk away.

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #25 on: February 22, 2015, 10:07:13 PM »
Yesssssssss benji found the parts I wanted him to find.

Barry Egan

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #26 on: February 24, 2015, 01:51:16 AM »
yea PT, Libertarian principles are real because they are! It's not like they're just going around saying they are without underlying legitimacy, like you do.   :maf :maf :maf

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #27 on: February 24, 2015, 02:10:04 AM »
Michael Huemer goes to some Business School and annihilates not just the jerk students but lolbertarians by racking up killstreaks that attack the weak point for massive damage:


BONUS: Both audio AND visual problems (not in the video so much, but for the presentation), the latter of which leads to some random IT dude standing in the frame trying to attach a VGA cable to the laptop for way too long.

BONUS2: Huemer has recently shaven sparing everyone his usual terrible mustache. It doesn't work Mike, just like the state! Either go beard or give it up!

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #28 on: February 24, 2015, 02:29:14 AM »
Pardon my ignorance, my time on your fringe was more... introspective, but do voluntaryists view libertarians like we view social democrats?

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #29 on: February 24, 2015, 02:50:31 AM »
Not really. It's usually more "Splitters! People's Front of Judea!" jokes.

Anarcho-capitalists can get into it sometimes. And other more fervent anarchists of various stripes, C4SS just published this that starts with GamersGate a few days ago: http://c4ss.org/content/35931
Quote
Stop and think about this for a minute: These are people who actually call themselves libertarians — advocates of human liberty — and who presumably want to spread these ideas in society at large and attract new adherents to them. Hoppe’s prerequisite for a “libertarian society,” if you want to call it that, is for the minority of rich property-owning paterfamiliases who have appropriated all the land in a society to round up all the people with beliefs or lifestyles they disagree with, and forcibly evict them. North would add stoning to the list of sanctions. “We can only have a totally free society after I’ve expelled all the people who do things I disapprove of!”

They don’t favor liberty because it promotes the widest possible flourishing and self-actualization of human beings. They favor it because it gives local patriarchs and lords of manors a free hand to dominate those under their thumbs, without a nasty state stepping in to interfere. For them, “libertarianism” — a term they pollute every time they utter it with their tongues — is simply a way of constructing the world of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale by contractual means. And Block, who shares beliefs with Men’s Rights Advocate creepos and “Race Realists,” is apparently ready to pack up his bags and leave libertarianism for the neo-reactionary movement at a moment’s notice.

...

A certain kind of libertarian, disproportionately represented in the mainstream of the movement, takes a similar view of women, queers and people of color who invade their stronghold and try to put social justice concerns on the table. These people are used to seeing libertarianism as the final refuge for rational white middle-class males like themselves, where they can hide in the catacombs and read “Isaiah’s Job” to each other while the outside world goes mad under the onslaught of statist racial minorities and welfare moms demanding handouts from the government. And here a girl has the nerve to show up in the clubhouse and suggest that issues like racism, sexism and homophobia (or anything else besides Bitcoin, vaping, Uber and the capital gains tax) should be taken seriously by libertarians.

In both cases, the reaction is one of outrage — taking the form of trolling, abuse, insults and threats — at the affront to their sense of entitlement.

A libertarian movement with this demographic as its core base is doomed to extinction. The reason is that these people, for the most part, aren’t interested in winning hearts and minds among the general public. They’re not interested in recognizing the concerns of poor and working people, women, LGBT people or people of color as legitimate, and showing ways that an ideology of human freedom can address those concerns in a meaningful way. They’re interested in being superior, in being the last tiny remnant of rational people who’ve not bowed their knees to the collectivist Baal.

They’re interested in convincing themselves that, contrary to common sense perceptions, white guys in $3,000 suits, investment bankers and venture capitalists are the state’s true victims, and the enormously powerful constituency of black welfare mothers are its main beneficiaries.

Frankly, I’m sick of libertarian outreach being sabotaged by the need to apologize for people like this. I’m sick of trying to challenge the perception of libertarianism as the movement of entitled 20-something middle-class white males who think “big business is the last oppressed minority,” and the world is going to hell in a hand-basket because of women and racial minorities — and then going to Mises.org, Lew Rockwell, Cato and Reason and seeing a bottomless cesspool of people saying that very thing.

I don't particularly agree with his view of Mises since they've transitioned to mostly being about interviewing/publishing a wide-spectrum and doing "civil" debates.

One similarity even though they agree like 95% on stuff is that Lew Rockwell writers often fight with other libertarians more than anarchists do I think though. They accuse Reason/Cato of being "cosmos" for thinking that cultural factors can contribute to the spread of libertarian ideas and as a bulwork against statism. Especially over gay issues, Lew Rockwell tends to take a negative view because it's "another foot in the door for the state!" while Reason/Cato's view is more "look, we can't change the system immediately, so equal rights even if it leads to some bakers being sued is a problem with other laws, not gay people or gay marriage."

If you want real fights, it's Objectivists vs. everyone else. Especially on foreign policy. Objectivists are totally down with the whole white males who run corporations are the pinnacle of human society, other countries violate rights so their people don't have rights because they implicitly support that nation by not leaving so turning them into glass is justified, etc.

Voluntaryists are an incredibly small segment of the whole libertarian/anarchist axis. I think it's because of the whole focus on talking and educating (ymmv) and thinking about things instead of engaging in pointless political fights. Most other groups want to talk about events in the news and elections and take positions on everything. Voluntaryism is a bit more about...

...

...synthesis.

chronovore

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #30 on: February 24, 2015, 04:35:08 AM »
If the US Constitution was replaced with Mel Gibson's The Road Warrior, that would be totally sweet.
JUST WALK AWAY.

Brehvolution

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #31 on: February 24, 2015, 10:52:14 AM »
You misspelled troglodyte.
©ZH

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #32 on: February 24, 2015, 12:43:36 PM »
Will make a more substantive post later, but going to have to disallow Obbies. They're what everyone thinks you'll roleplay if you roll a chaotic evil character.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #33 on: February 28, 2015, 05:11:16 AM »
You've might have seen it before, but I actually put new stuff on it after posting a link on PoliGAF, and thought you'd be amused by its stupidity in any regard: http://politologie.tumblr.com/

It's mostly garbage quotes and youtubes I come across randomly and like for one reason or another. I feel like I should set a goal to post garbage on it more often than every three to six months. Then I can tell my therapist about a goal I've met. Though I can't let him ever see the tumblr for its clearly insane content.

Should read more BA to post. Make it a regular feature. "Your Weekly BA Synthesis."

You're right, weekly seems like too much of a commitment. Maybe fortnightly.

Olivia Wilde Homo

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #34 on: February 28, 2015, 07:53:51 AM »
I made a PDF of this thread so when Green Shinobi inevitably open fires at his employer, I can show this thread as proof that the mentality has been simmering for some time.
🍆🍆

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #35 on: February 28, 2015, 11:32:06 AM »
I feel like I should set a goal to post garbage on it more often than every three to six months. Then I can tell my therapist about a goal I've met. Though I can't let him ever see the tumblr for its clearly insane content.

:dead This kind of gallows humor can only resonate with the frequent flyer.

Dickie Dee

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #36 on: February 28, 2015, 11:37:07 AM »
I made a PDF of this thread so when Green Shinobi inevitably open fires at his employer, I can show this thread as proof that the mentality has been simmering for some time.

Jesus, dude just asked a question and was inviting answers. Chill the fuck out.
___

jakefromstatefarm

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #37 on: February 28, 2015, 12:15:15 PM »
benji have you read James C. Scott? I've heard Seeing Like a State is pretty convincing

Brehvolution

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #38 on: February 28, 2015, 12:42:54 PM »
http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda-0

Quote
Every couple of years, mainstream media hacks pretend to have just discovered libertarianism as some sort of radical, new and dynamic force in American politics. It’s a rehash that goes back decades, and hacks love it because it’s easy to write, and because it’s such a non-threatening “radical” politics (unlike radical left politics, which threatens the rich). The latest version involves a summer-long pundit debate in the pages of the New York Times, Reason magazine and elsewhere over so-called “libertarian populism.” It doesn’t really matter whose arguments prevail, so long as no one questions where libertarianism came from or why we’re defining libertarianism as anything but a big business public relations campaign, the winner in this debate is Libertarianism.

Pull up libertarianism’s floorboards, look beneath the surface into the big business PR campaign’s early years, and there you’ll start to get a sense of its purpose, its funders, and the PR hucksters who brought the peculiar political strain of American libertarianism into being — beginning with the libertarian movement’s founding father, Milton Friedman. Back in 1950, the House of Representatives held hearings on illegal lobbying activities and exposed both Friedman and the earliest libertarian think-tank outfit as a front for business lobbyists. Those hearings have been largely forgotten, in part because we’re too busy arguing over the finer points of “libertarian populism.”

:dead
©ZH

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #39 on: February 28, 2015, 12:46:15 PM »
benji have you read James C. Scott? I've heard Seeing Like a State is pretty convincing
No, I haven't, I'll have to look into it. I have heard of it before. I do have his book Two Cheers for Anarchism which I had come across and mentioned in the book thread, but I haven't read it yet. I still think Michael Huemer's book Problems of Political Authority is the ultimate because of its synthesis and presentation.

Somewhat along the lines of what Scott's Seeing Like a State sounds like regarding central lack of knowledge and tendency to overrun localized knowledge is Hayek's lecture (and infamous theory regarding the pretense of knowledge) after receiving the Nobel Prize which I was recently reminded of: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1974/hayek-lecture.html
Quote
The particular occasion of this lecture, combined with the chief practical problem which economists have to face today, have made the choice of its topic almost inevitable. On the one hand the still recent establishment of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science marks a significant step in the process by which, in the opinion of the general public, economics has been conceded some of the dignity and prestige of the physical sciences. On the other hand, the economists are at this moment called upon to say how to extricate the free world from the serious threat of accelerating inflation which, it must be admitted, has been brought about by policies which the majority of economists recommended and even urged governments to pursue. We have indeed at the moment little cause for pride: as a profession we have made a mess of things.

It seems to me that this failure of the economists to guide policy more successfully is closely connected with their propensity to imitate as closely as possible the procedures of the brilliantly successful physical sciences - an attempt which in our field may lead to outright error. It is an approach which has come to be described as the "scientistic" attitude - an attitude which, as I defined it some thirty years ago, "is decidedly unscientific in the true sense of the word, since it involves a mechanical and uncritical application of habits of thought to fields different from those in which they have been formed."1 I want today to begin by explaining how some of the gravest errors of recent economic policy are a direct consequence of this scientistic error.
Quote
In some fields, particularly where problems of a similar kind arise in the physical sciences, the difficulties can be overcome by using, instead of specific information about the individual elements, data about the relative frequency, or the probability, of the occurrence of the various distinctive properties of the elements. But this is true only where we have to deal with what has been called by Dr. Warren Weaver (formerly of the Rockefeller Foundation), with a distinction which ought to be much more widely understood, "phenomena of unorganized complexity," in contrast to those "phenomena of organized complexity" with which we have to deal in the social sciences.2 Organized complexity here means that the character of the structures showing it depends not only on the properties of the individual elements of which they are composed, and the relative frequency with which they occur, but also on the manner in which the individual elements are connected with each other. In the explanation of the working of such structures we can for this reason not replace the information about the individual elements by statistical information, but require full information about each element if from our theory we are to derive specific predictions about individual events. Without such specific information about the individual elements we shall be confined to what on another occasion I have called mere pattern predictions - predictions of some of the general attributes of the structures that will form themselves, but not containing specific statements about the individual elements of which the structures will be made up
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Of course, compared with the precise predictions we have learnt to expect in the physical sciences, this sort of mere pattern predictions is a second best with which one does not like to have to be content. Yet the danger of which I want to warn is precisely the belief that in order to have a claim to be accepted as scientific it is necessary to achieve more. This way lies charlatanism and worse. To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm. In the physical sciences there may be little objection to trying to do the impossible; one might even feel that one ought not to discourage the over-confident because their experiments may after all produce some new insights. But in the social field the erroneous belief that the exercise of some power would have beneficial consequences is likely to lead to a new power to coerce other men being conferred on some authority. Even if such power is not in itself bad, its exercise is likely to impede the functioning of those spontaneous ordering forces by which, without understanding them, man is in fact so largely assisted in the pursuit of his aims. We are only beginning to understand on how subtle a communication system the functioning of an advanced industrial society is based - a communications system which we call the market and which turns out to be a more efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information than any that man has deliberately designed.
They give him an award and he basically comes in and shits all over everybody there and their goals. Even says if asked he thought a Nobel Prize in Economics was a silly idea. :lol

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #40 on: February 28, 2015, 12:58:03 PM »
http://www.alternet.org/visions/true-history-libertarianism-america-phony-ideology-promote-corporate-agenda-0

:dead
And of course it's Mark Ames. I think he's written this same article a hundred times now. I love that he thinks that an ideological family that half goes back to at least the individualist anarchist movement of the late 1800's and the other half is steeped in American classical liberalism was invented in the 1950's by FEE as a front for businesses' secret plot to...never win any elections*. And that Milton was the founder considering how he gets treated, especially if anyone brings up tax withholding or his monetary beliefs. (Not that he hasn't contributed, but others got there first.)

Dude also has some kind of crazy anger problem, even with people on his "side." Like after two back and forths he'll basically accuse them of being child molesting Lakers fans.

*Unless you're counting lets see...Justin Amash and Rand Paul. And Ron Paul prior.

jakefromstatefarm

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #41 on: February 28, 2015, 01:13:14 PM »
Physics Envy! It's pretty prevalent in the social sciences, macroecon being the worst offender. The thing is, even in the hard sciences, practical applications are contingent on the dynamic between their constituent parts. When you try to take physics/chem/whatever outside of a controlled environment you run into the same problems when predicting shit.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #42 on: February 28, 2015, 01:27:32 PM »
The datasets often used in political science research are like, it's just no...I know your regression says this but you're using five total variables from eleven countries. All of which use different definitions for their officially recorded numbers. My NBA stats file is more useful than this. For political science research.

And the number of papers that use that U of M dataset regarding voters, good god.

One funny paper I read was regarding how people will take immoral orders from political leaders. The effective formula for the theory was like the (corruption index + crimes per capita + military spending)/state murders or genocides or something that they hand counted. And it used like five civil war torn African states, some Middle East/Asian nations and five European states. Was like 40 pages, the lit review was probably like 35 and half of it about the Nazi's and the Wehrmacht.

But I did find out that in the Nigerian Civil War, a lot of people died potentially due to ethnic factors.

Phoenix Dark

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #43 on: February 28, 2015, 01:29:46 PM »
010

jakefromstatefarm

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #44 on: February 28, 2015, 01:53:01 PM »
The datasets often used in political science research are like, it's just no...I know your regression says this but you're using five total variables from eleven countries. All of which use different definitions for their officially recorded numbers. My NBA stats file is more useful than this. For political science research
Yeah, this is what it ultimately boils down to; if you're dealing with voluntary action, your data probably aren't gonna be justified. My favorite batshit formula application is Richard Carrier proving God's existence from Bayes' Theorem.

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  • The probability of God’s existence is one in two (since God either exists or doesn’t exist).
  • The probability that God became incarnate is also one in two (since it either happened or it didn’t).
  • The evidence for God’s existence is an argument for the resurrection.
  • The chance of Christ’s resurrection not being reported by the gospels has a probability of one in 10.
  • Considering all these factors together, there is a one in 1,000 chance that the resurrection is not true.

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #45 on: February 28, 2015, 01:53:45 PM »
Gorbachev just wanted to reform the system is one of the great crocks of shit.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #46 on: February 28, 2015, 02:06:55 PM »
Yeah, this is what it ultimately boils down to; if you're dealing with voluntary action, your data probably aren't gonna be justified. My favorite batshit formula application is Richard Carrier proving God's existence from Bayes' Theorem.
The one I liked recently that got regular mainstream attention (instead of just academic circles) was the "study by researchers proving" if McDonalds raised their minimum wage to $15 it would add like 17 cents to the price of their food. When it was an undergraduate students' (who was passing himself off as a professor) paper and he didn't take into account like half the employees at McDonald's corporate and even worse didn't count franchisees which are like 80% of their restaurants. (And he told reporters that he had.) And he also had the profits of McDonald's off by ten times the actual amount.

And it was running in Forbes, the NYT, HuffPo, Business Insider, newspapers, etc. without any checking at all.

benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #47 on: February 28, 2015, 02:46:41 PM »
McDonalds one is garbage.

Couldn't find the Walmart one you were talking about but this one says $12 an hour would only increase costs on average 46 cents and a little over $12 a year: http://laborcenter.berkeley.edu/pdf/2011/bigbox_livingwage_policies11.pdf

The one problem I'd have with this paper is the estimates for the number of Walmart workers and what they're currently making and the hours they work and would work. But it's not like you can get Walmart's data for every single employee.

Walmart claims their average full-time worker makes $12.94 an hour. If that's true then the cost increase would be even lower.

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #48 on: February 28, 2015, 03:30:15 PM »
Not dying on these hills, but remember impressionable young jake, this one operates from certain assumptions.

Do your sovkhoznik parents proud.

Joe Molotov

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #49 on: February 28, 2015, 03:35:00 PM »
Did we ever find out if the state was legitimate or not? I'm not reading through this whole thread.
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benjipwns

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #50 on: February 28, 2015, 03:47:30 PM »
Did we ever find out if the state was legitimate or not? I'm not reading through this whole thread.
Yes, but only after the Franchise Wars end.

But it's a moot point because the state withers away into Taco Bell.

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #51 on: February 28, 2015, 05:14:16 PM »
ngl, if we lived in the Jennifer Government universe and my name had to be John Taco Bell, I'd be a happy man.

Joe Molotov

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #52 on: February 28, 2015, 05:19:07 PM »
Perhaps living in the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment.
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Rufus

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #53 on: February 28, 2015, 06:21:04 PM »
Side comment from a tired idiot: Whenever I hear or read any implications of "beautiful math" and it's not actually about mathematics in and of itself (which I have no business reading; numbers are scary, especially when they're letters) I shut down internally. "But their formulas didn't predict..." Oh, really.

chronovore

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #54 on: February 28, 2015, 08:54:41 PM »
I made a PDF of this thread so when Green Shinobi inevitably open fires at his employer, I can show this thread as proof that the mentality has been simmering for some time.

Jesus, dude just asked a question and was inviting answers. Chill the fuck out.

Even Glen Shinobi would accept his own occasionally unhinged history.

I have to admit that I got a little bit of a weird chill at the post to which MTW is responding.

chronovore

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #55 on: March 01, 2015, 12:42:00 AM »
What gave you the weird chill? Was it the bit about freedom preserves?
It was the tone of solitude in the OP, where there’s a supposition that one’s own participation in a society with which one does not agree would necessitate emigration, perhaps even to unclaimed land.

No-one can even agree on what America stands for. The lefties and the Tea-Partiers all think they’ve got a lock on what America should be, but in reality no extremist is even close to what the bulk of the people actually want. And then, of course, there’s the fallacy of thinking that the bulk of people are, at an individual level, representative of a culture.

You can live a life separate from the state within the state, at least in the USA. It may be even easier to live as an outsider in cultures where we are physically identifiable as outsiders. I find this true in Japan, and I suspect you had similar experiences involving the duality of freedom-from-assimilation / loneliness in Korea.

Kara

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #56 on: March 01, 2015, 04:26:02 PM »
Unless you wholly discount local government, I don't really agree with that. Your relationship with the state can be somewhat obfuscated (e.g. paycheck withholding) but that doesn't mean it's not happening.

To wit, I shrink the premise of the thread: is it moral to subjugate people to states they live under because of a deterministic series of events over which they had absolutely no input? States may or may not have the justification to exist, but is it right that capital can move more freely than human beings? And in light of the late aughts financial implosion, let's not pretend that the unencumbered movement of the former is any less of a "threat" than the latter.

I'm fortunate in that if I want to leave all I need is money (which is another freedom argument for another day) and a stomach for some bureaucratic red tape. If I had been born somewhere else? My only option would (in all likelihood) be undocumented migration.

Brehvolution

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Re: The legitimacy of the state
« Reply #57 on: March 01, 2015, 06:00:44 PM »
The McDonalds one is false?

What about the study where Walmart could give all employees a $1/hr raise by adding like 2 cents to each customer's bill?

If Costco pays their employees $20/hr without charging customers extra, what defense does Wallyworld really have?
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