Anarcho-Capitalism: A Branden ‘Blast from the Past’


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Calvin,

Very good points,in #47, I think. Individual rights represent the only valid answer

to democracy's inherent fault: that most of the people may not know what's

good for them. (I was happily surprised to hear from Ghs's Cato Institute speech

that no less than Jefferson and Locke - if I recall right - had serious doubts about democracy.)

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For example, as Rothbard and many others have suggested, rational self-interest would generate cooperation among different agencies. The result would probably be a type of confederation. Suppose that two different agencies reach different verdicts in a criminal case. Is it so difficult to imagine that these agencies would have agreed beforehand to submit such disputes to an impartial third-part arbitration agency?

Is it so difficult to imagine that these agencies or their clients would refuse to be bound by the decision -- after it is made -- of the impartial third-part arbitration agency?

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George H. Smith wrote a day ago: Third, discussions of, and debates over, political ideals compel us to think clearly about key concepts, such as what we mean by "government" and "consent." And later George wrote: I have no patience with subjectivists like Bindinotto. They are impossible to argue with, because every time you propose a solution they retreat into their subjectivist catechism with question like: But who is to decide? Or what if someone disagrees? end quotes Precisely, and you supply no blueprint with an answer. H Pitkin in The American Political Science Review (1966), Obligation and Consent-II wrote: The theory of hypothetical consent of the governed holds that one's obligation to obey government depends on whether the government is such that one ought to consent to it, or whether the people, if placed in a state of nature without government, would agree to said government. end quote

Why are you throwing a quotation by Pitkin at me? She didn't even endorse a theory of hypothetical consent. That doctrine comes straight out of Kant, and it was later spiffed up a bit by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. In case you are not aware of it, citing a key theory of Kant and Rawls will not get you a standing ovation from an O'ist audience.

The theory of hypothetical consent is a favorite of modern progressives.. A good example is Elizabeth Warren, who said:

"You built a factory out there? Good for you," she says. "But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did."

She continues: "Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along." (My boldface.)

http://www.cbsnews.c...042-503544.html

So is this the kind of hypothetical consent and social contract you had in mind?

There was at least one earlier thread on Warren. See:

http://www.objectivi...90

Ghs

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For example, as Rothbard and many others have suggested, rational self-interest would generate cooperation among different agencies. The result would probably be a type of confederation. Suppose that two different agencies reach different verdicts in a criminal case. Is it so difficult to imagine that these agencies would have agreed beforehand to submit such disputes to an impartial third-part arbitration agency?

Is it so difficult to imagine that these agencies or their clients would refuse to be bound by the decision -- after it is made -- of the impartial third-part arbitration agency?

It is also not difficult to imagine a government refusing to be bound by the decision of a supreme court. Jackson did precisely this when the Supreme Court ruled against him in the Indian removal case. Other presidents and legislatures have followed suit, if not as flagrantly as Jackson did.

A private agency, far more than a government, must maintain legitimacy in the public eye. If an agency were to violate its own agreements and procedures, it would quickly lose public credibility.

A private agency is not automatically conferred with the aura of legitimacy and authority that established governments typically enjoy. Such respect must be earned -- and that would be a very good thing.

Ghs

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A constitution, a contract, or constant consent needs to be amendable as time goes by, and our Constitution and George’s Rational Anarchism are amendable. But I maintain the requirement of *Constant Consent* required for human action under Rational Anarchism is its god in the machine and it is its monkey wrench.

You need to brush up on the ideas of America's Founders. Many (e.g., Paine and Jefferson) did in fact believe that perpetual consent was both necessary and possible. They certainly did not believe that a decision made by a minority of Americans in 1788 (i.e., to adopt the Constitution) could bind future generations. This notion was wholly alien to their way of thinking. For one thing, to accept it would mean that they were irrevocably bound by the British Constitution and could never sever allegiance to the British government. But they found a way around this problem, didn't they?

Many of the ideas that you attribute to anarchism are in fact deeply imbedded in the American political tradition. Jefferson preferred "anarchy" above other forms of social organization, though he thought this was impracticable in large societies. Paine, following Locke, called government a "convenience" that is not necessary to maintain social order, and he pointed to a number of American cities that functioned quite well during the American Revolution without any formal governments.

Ayn Rand's nightmarish depiction of a society without government is very similar to that given by Thomas Hobbes, and the Hobbesian view was categorically rejected by most of America's Founders. It was Rand, not modern libertarian anarchists, who departed radically from the Founders.

Beginning in the early 1600s, even before Locke wrote his Two Treatises of Government, those who advocated government by consent were condemned by their critics as advocating a type of anarchy, principally because they advocated a doctrine known as "divided sovereignty" and because they defended the rights of resistance and revolution. In response, the absolutists argued that social order is impossible without a final, absolute sovereign who must be obeyed unconditionally. After all, how can we have objective law without a final authority?

Sound familiar?

Edmund Burke called the French Declaration of Rights (which closely followed the American model) a "Digest of Anarchy," while Jeremy Bentham assailed natural rights as "anarchical fallacies." Both had a point, so brush up on your history, cast off your absolutist ideas, and hop aboard the freedom train.

Ghs

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Individual rights represent the only valid answer

to democracy's inherent fault: that most of the people may not know what's

good for them.

That is not the fault of democracy, that's the fault of the people. Democracy is flawed because it allows the majority to make mistakes?

What's the point in making a law against stealing if the majority of people are thieves? It's a just law, but it's not gonna be enforced if the reality of the situation is that the unjust have more power.

Democracy is a realistic form of government. The idealism is that eventually the majority of people will be rational and will choose to coexist peacefully while simultaneously holding the power to maintain that peace.

The fundamentals of capitalism support the independent and the individualistic, but if they are not the majority, those fundamentals are not going to teach the rest of society a lesson, because they'll simply overthrow the system.

There are some simple facts to be acknowledged, namely, that there is power in numbers.

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I get this definition from Ayn Rand’s “The Nature of Government,” The Virtue of Selfishness, page 109:

The fundamental difference between private action and governmental action—a difference thoroughly ignored and evaded today—lies in the fact that a government holds a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. It has to hold such a monopoly, since it is the agent of restraining and combating the use of force; and for that very same reason, its actions have to be rigidly defined, delimited and circumscribed; no touch of whim or caprice should be permitted in its performance; it should be an impersonal robot, with the laws as its only motive power. If a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled.

Under a proper social system, a private individual is legally free to take any action he pleases (so long as he does not violate the rights of others), while a government official is bound by law in his every official act. A private individual may do anything except that which is legally forbidden; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally permitted.

This is the means of subordinating “might” to “right.” This is the American concept of “a government of laws and not of men.”

end quote

So how is that "American concept of government" thingy workin' out for ya?

Ghs

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Individual rights represent the only valid answer

to democracy's inherent fault: that most of the people may not know what's

good for them.

That is not the fault of democracy, that's the fault of the people. Democracy is flawed because it allows the majority to make mistakes?

What's the point in making a law against stealing if the majority of people are thieves? It's a just law, but it's not gonna be enforced if the reality of the situation is that the unjust have more power.

Democracy is a realistic form of government. The idealism is that eventually the majority of people will be rational and will choose to coexist peacefully while simultaneously holding the power to maintain that peace.

The fundamentals of capitalism support the independent and the individualistic, but if they are not the majority, those fundamentals are not going to teach the rest of society a lesson, because they'll simply overthrow the system.

There are some simple facts to be acknowledged, namely, that there is power in numbers.

Democracies will always degenerate into statism unless a constitution unequivocally prohibits certain kinds of activities by the government. The U.S. Constitution was a miserable failure in this regard. Consider the first three clauses of Article I, Section 8:

1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

2: To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States....

It is not coincidental that three of our biggest problems today are high taxes, a crushing national debt, and an expansive interpretation of the Commerce Clause that has permitted the government to regulate almost everything.

All these powers were explicitly authorized by the Constitution, and I am not even taking into account the notorious "necessary and proper" clause, which was dubbed by critics of the Constitution (Antifederalists) the "sweeping clause" and the "elastic clause," because it could authorize just about anything.

It is not as if we can only see the problems here with the wisdom of hindsight. Many Antifederalists predicted exactly what would happen if the federal government were given these powers.

Ghs

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Yeah, but really a piece of paper doesn't give anyone power. Again, it's people. If the majority wanted to rewrite The Constitution, they could find a way to do it.

Even if a Constitutional government was re-established by the hard work of a minority, what happens next? "Go back to not caring, everyone. The problem's been fixed."

This idea of protecting the individual from the majority is unattainable. Who's going to protect them? A minority? So a minority is going around protecting a bunch of other minorities?

At least with a democracy there's consistency. People can go, "Remember last time we had a problem like this?" and not make the same mistake. People need to get involved more so that there is progress within the majority, and not just a couple people who end up sounding like lunatics because they actually pay attention to what's going on in the world.

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Calvin,

I repeat, it's a good idea to look into the difference. It's a lot more than "a piece of paper."

And I repeat, a lynch mob is pure majority rule.

In fact, I believe it's a good idea to learn some elementary concepts and fundamentals before trying to teach theory of government to the experts around here. (btw - I don't consider myself as one of the experts, but I do know something about it from cracking open some books and doing the donkey-work. I highly recommend this practice.)

Michael

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Has anyone else around here read that humongous novel, written by a Russian woman, about a bunch of crazy individualists who refused to believe that they had consented to the American government and who therefore repudiated allegiance to that government? What others called "consent", they characterized as "sanction of the victim."

These nutjobs went so far as to start their own anarchistic community in a Colorado valley, which they rendered invisible to possible government intruders via some high-tech gadgetry. Of course,Colorado was within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. government, but these people didn't care. Midas Mulligan owned the land, so he figured he had a right to do with it as he pleased, regardless of what the government might say. I don't think these people paid any taxes, nor did they conform to any other governmental laws that they didn't like. Sounds like secession and anarchy to me.

[W]e have no laws in this valley, no rules, no formal organization of any kind....(AS, p. 664)

We are not a state here, not a society of any kind -- we're just a voluntary association of men held together by nothing but every man's self-interest. I [Mulligan] own the valley and I sell the land to the others, when they want it. Judge Narragansett is to act as our arbiter, in case of disagreements. He hasn't had to be called upon, as yet. They say that it's hard for men to agree. You'd be surprised how easy it is -- when both parties hold as their moral absolute that neither exists for the sake of the other and that reason is their only means of trade....(p. 695)

How could these people possibly know how to arbitrate disputes without having an explicit code of laws and a monopolistic government to "define" objective law? What?! Are we to suppose that reason and rational self-interest alone can deal with such problems? What nonsense!

I'm sure that every right-thinking Objectivist believes that the U.S. government, if it had been able to locate this perfidious community, should have disbanded it with force. After all, what right did these rebels have to establish their own autonomous community within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. government? If they didn't like the current government, they should have run political campaigns and voted to change it.

Q.E.D.

Ghs

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George,

I would have to look up the quote, but I remember Rand at a Ford Hall Forum lecture (one I attended) being asked what the government was in Galt's Gulch. Her answer was that Galt's Gulch was a private estate owned by one man so government did not apply.

I think I remember that correctly.

I'll try to find the quote.

Michael

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George, I would have to look up the quote, but I remember Rand at a Ford Hall Forum lecture (one I attended) being asked what the government was in Galt's Gulch. Her answer was that Galt's Gulch was a private estate owned by one man so government did not apply. I think I remember that correctly. I'll try to find the quote. Michael

Rand's answer, assuming you recall it accurately, doesn't deal with the problem. If Mulligan could legitimately snub the U.S. government on his own land and establish his own legal system, independently of U.S. law, then why cannot every landowner do the same? This is in fact what many anarchists have called for.

In any case, the truly relevant part of the passages I quoted is where Mulligan says that agreements are not all that difficult to reach among rational people who respect each other's rights. This has all kinds of positive implications for an anarchistic society.

Ghs

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Here's the quote--Robert Campbell transcription.

Ford Hall Forum 1972

Q&A, 32:32 through 37:29

Q: Would you comment please on the difference between government that you advocate in Capitalism and the government that you find, say, in Galt's Gulch? I've heard it said by a friend of mine, why is this government, where judges and lawsuits are privately run, why is it denied to us mortals? That's how he puts it.

(Judge Lurie has trouble understanding the reference to Galt's Gulch, and asks questioner to clarify.)

Q: Why is the lack of government in Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged

A: Denied to whom?

Q: Denied to a rational, a hypothetical, rational society.

A: Because Galt's Gulch is not a society; it's private estate. It is owned by one man who selects those who are admitted so carefully, and even then they have a judge as an arbiter if anything ever came up—only nothing came up among them because they were all men sharing the same philosophy. But in a general society, God help you! If you had a society which all shared one philosophy, that would be dreadful.

Galt's Gulch would cons, probably have consisted of—I never named the number—let's say, optimistically, a thousand people who represent the top genius of the world. Even then, they would agree on fundamentals, but they would never be totally identical. And the reason why they didn't need any government is because if they had disagreements, they were capable of resolving them rationally.

But now how do you project a society of multi-million nation, in which there can be every kind of viewpoint, every kind of brain, and every kind of morality, and you want no government? What do you think [pounding podium] I was talking about when I talked about the Middle Age? There is your no-government society, which leaves men at the mercy of the worst bandits possible, because when there is no government, every criminally inclined individual will resort to force, and every intellectually or morally inclined individual will be left helpless. Government is the absolute necessity if men are to have individual rights, for the simple reason that you do not leave force at the arbitrary whim of other individuals.

And your, euhh, so-called libertarian anarchism is nothing but whim worship if you refuse to see this point, because what you refuse to recognize is the need of objectivity among men, particularly, men of different views—and it is proper and good that mankind at large, or as a large a section as a nation—should have different views. It's good to have different views, provided you respect each other's rights. And there is no one to guard rights except a government under strictly objective rules.

How would you like it if McGovern had his own gang of policemen and Nixon his own? And instead of presenting a campaign, they were fighting it out in the streets? What do you think that would do to you? The rest of us would be caught in the crossfire. Would that make any sense? And yet it certainly has happened throughout history.

Ahh, a rational society, or a group of rational men, is not afraid of the government— they, in a proper society as existed even in this country in the beginning, a rational man doesn't have to know that a government exists, because the laws are clear and he never breaks any. That is the proper way for men to live, and that's the proper government.

I'm not arguing the point either way by presenting this quote. Just trying to maintain accuracy.

Michael

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Calvin,

I repeat, it's a good idea to look into the difference. It's a lot more than "a piece of paper."

And I repeat, a lynch mob is pure majority rule.

In fact, I believe it's a good idea to learn some elementary concepts and fundamentals before trying to teach theory of government to the experts around here. (btw - I don't consider myself as one of the experts, but I do know something about it from cracking open some books and doing the donkey-work. I highly recommend this practice.)

Michael

That post was in reply to George bringing up errors in The Constitution. I was just saying, even without errors a piece of paper is only a representation of a contract that many Americans, I'm sure, feel no connection to. The majority of people don't care about politics that much, and I'd say it's because they don't feel like they have much of a say.

A lynch mob is a group lead by majority rule... yes. I acknowledge this. I stated several times that majority rule does not guarantee justice... but nothing else does either.

Justice will never be guaranteed and must actively be fought for. There is no part of nature that protects good people from bad people, you have to work with what you've got...

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Here's the quote--Robert Campbell transcription.
Ford Hall Forum 1972 Q&A, 32:32 through 37:29 Q: Would you comment please on the difference between government that you advocate in Capitalism and the government that you find, say, in Galt's Gulch? I've heard it said by a friend of mine, why is this government, where judges and lawsuits are privately run, why is it denied to us mortals? That's how he puts it. (Judge Lurie has trouble understanding the reference to Galt's Gulch, and asks questioner to clarify.) Q: Why is the lack of government in Galt's Gulch in Atlas Shrugged … A: Denied to whom? Q: Denied to a rational, a hypothetical, rational society. A: Because Galt's Gulch is not a society; it's private estate. It is owned by one man who selects those who are admitted so carefully, and even then they have a judge as an arbiter if anything ever came up—only nothing came up among them because they were all men sharing the same philosophy. But in a general society, God help you! If you had a society which all shared one philosophy, that would be dreadful. Galt's Gulch would cons, probably have consisted of—I never named the number—let's say, optimistically, a thousand people who represent the top genius of the world. Even then, they would agree on fundamentals, but they would never be totally identical. And the reason why they didn't need any government is because if they had disagreements, they were capable of resolving them rationally. [snip]

Rand was inconsistent on this matter. Consider this passage from VOS, p., 112:

[E]ven a society whose every member were fully rational and faultlessly moral could not function in a state of anarchy; it is the need for objective laws and of an arbiter for honest disagreements that necessitates the establishment of a government.

Galt's Gulch had an arbiter but no formal laws, so, according to Rand's later statement, it should not have been able to function in "a state of anarchy" at all, even though every inhabitant was fully rational.

Of course, it might be said that, in the passage I quoted from VOS, Rand speaks of a "society," whereas she denies that Galt's Gulch is a society. Rand sometimes used "society" in a peculiar manner; certainly a community of 1000 people who interact on a regular basis would qualify as a "society" by every standard I know of. Calling it a "private estate" is merely to call it a private -- i.e., a nongovernmental, or anarchistic -- society, if a relatively small one.

Rather than engage is a fruitless debate over the meaning of "society," I am willing to grant Rand's premises for the sake of argument. Say 1000 people are invited by the owner of an estate to live on his land, but that this land legally falls within the territorial jurisdiction of the U.S. government. May this "private estate" then secede from the United States, in effect, by ignoring laws they disapprove of and appointing their own arbiter to resolve disputes?

If the O'ist answer is Yes, then the O'ist already has one foot in the anarchistic grave and his other foot on a banana peel.

Ghs

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Calvin,

Here is a crash course for you. It's just broad strokes, but it's a pretty objective presentation in terms of fundamentals and some historical overview. At least it will give you a few basics to think about.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VZPZOpFLHVE?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

I admit reading books takes effort and time. But if you don't have even 10 minutes to watch a video to educate yourself just a little on what you are trying to discuss, well...

You know...

:)

Michael

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Here is an interesting question:

Suppose a member of Galt's Gulch committed a crime of passion, say, by killing the lover of his adulterous wife. Would the Gulchers have called a Colorado police force and turned him over for trial, or would they have handled the matter themselves?

Ghs

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George,

I have a feeling Rand was where I am on this. I just simply do what I want and when the government gets in my way, I work around it, legally or illegally if I believe I can get away with it.

I do think there is a point where she would have considered the USA government no longer worthy of being obeyed and this point was portrayed in her novel. Her thing was principles, not USA qua USA.

So I don't believe she would have approved of such a decision being made at whim (or lightly), nor do I think she would have agreed that Galt's Gulch was undertaken capriciously.

In her wording, I believe setting up a parallel government (although this was not the case with Galt's Gulch) would have to be because all objectivity broke down in the regular government and there was no hope for fixing it through the channels established in the charter documents, or something like that.

Maybe I'm wrong, but at this moment, I don't think so.

On another point, I don't recall the deeds and other legal documents attesting to Mulligan's ownership of Galt's Gulch being discussed in AS. But I think it is reasonable to presume an implication that there were some kind of documents on file somewhere in the USA government (within the novel).

Michael

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Suppose a member of Galt's Gulch committed a crime of passion, say, by killing the lover of his adulterous wife. Would the Gulchers have called a Colorado police force and turned him over for trial, or would they have handled the matter themselves?

George,

Using Rand's standard above, geniuses who hold the same rational philosophy would never do that. So the problem would never arise.

:)

Michael

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Suppose a member of Galt's Gulch committed a crime of passion, say, by killing the lover of his adulterous wife. Would the Gulchers have called a Colorado police force and turned him over for trial, or would they have handled the matter themselves?

George,

Using Rand's standard above, geniuses who hold the same rational philosophy would never do that. So the problem would never arise.

:smile:

Michael

You forget there was a truck driver in there.

--Brant

turns up the heat

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From: BBfromM@aol.com

To: atlantis@wetheliving.com

Subject: Re: ATL: ayn rand quote

Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 17:40:36 EDT

George wrote:

<< I am convinced that Ayn Rand was essentially an anarchist in substance, if not in name. She was at most a nominal governmentalist. If the conventional meaning of a word is to count for anything at all (and it should), then Rand's ideal "government" is in fact no government at all, but is merely a sheep in wolf's clothing. >>

Since you were concerned, rightly, with Nathaniel's statement of the meaning of volition he intended, it is, by the same standard, incorrect to call Ayn Rand "an anarchist in substance." She was not for "nominal" government; she was for *minimal* government -- limited to police force, courts, and defense. Her ideal government IS a government; no anarchist would sanction a national/state police force, courts, and defense. **Ayn Rand said that she was NOT an anarchist.**

George wrote:

<<How can I make this outrageous claim? I base it on Rand's moral opposition to coercive taxation. >>

Ayn Rand was, indeed, against coercive taxation. But she argued that government should be financially supported by its citizens -- in the form, as an example, of a payment when a contract is signed, since government is required to enforce contracts should they be abrogated. Her idea was that to the extent that one uses the services of government, one should pay for those services.

George wrote:

<<Virtually every defender of government -- from John Locke to Thomas Jefferson to Ludwig von Mises -- has recognized coercive taxation to be an essential component of sovereignty, a power without which no true government can exist.>>

With all respect to Locke, Jefferson, and Mises -- So what? Ayn Rand did not agree with them that no true government can exist without coercive taxation, and she presented an alternative.

You wrote:

<< Perhaps when Rand wrote that, she was thinking of some other type of anarchist rather than an anarcho-capitalist or anarcho-libertarian.>>

No, she was not. She rejected *all* forms of anarchism, communist, socialist, anarcho-capitalist, and anarcho-libertarian, and any yet-to-be-imagined kind of anarchism.

Barbara

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Michael, I don't think you're getting my point. America was a proper Republic, with perhaps a little bit of short sightedness in The Constitution, but for the most part, they covered their bases... and look what's become of it.

The Constitution, even if it took every precaution to protect the people from an overly intervening government, could not force people to follow it. A politician could simply convince people that they should permit some changes to the law that enables the government more power... and the people could be convinced. Why? Because they would not have learned the same lessons that the founders had before deciding individual rights were important and needed protecting.

If people don't know how important freedom is, how do you expect them to perpetuate a free society?

Individuals feel they have no say in the way government works, and for good reason. However, they aren't pushed to fight for a say until things get really bad.

"I repeat," I understand the moral reasons why a republic is favorable to a democracy, but like I said the first time, how sustainable is it? Let's deal with reality: you can't force irrational people to form a rational society. You have two options: let them learn to be rational, or exhibit force upon them to keep them in line or keep them out.

A democracy is realistic and does not guarantee a rational society, but a democracy that has become a rational society would face almost no threat of becoming irrational again. It's like an individual, you can't really unlearn a lesson.

And there is no example of a true democracy in history, because there's no way everyone could vote on everything. It's possible now, though.

Do I think everyone should be allowed to vote on everything the way things are right now? No, that'd be like throwing a domesticated house pet into the amazon. It would have to happen gradually, and like everything, there would be some trial and error to it.

How long do you think civilizations should be handled like herds of animals?

To clarify: A democracy is compatible with a majority that votes for individual rights. That's the ideal society. It's also compatible with a majority that votes in favor of competing protection agencies and free markets.

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