Against Anarchism


sjw

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At the end of the essay it credits those who helped me with critical feedback, if George approves I'd like to add his name there. He didn't critique this essay but my arguments with him led to some of what is there. Hopefully he will provide critical feedback on this essay as well.

Shayne

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Shayne:

Just did a quick read. Looks good.

I will have time to read it carefully by the end of this week.

Adam

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Shayne:

Just did a quick read. Looks good.

I will have time to read it carefully by the end of this week.

Adam

No laughably stupid sporting events to distract you?

JR

Were there arguments you disagreed with, or was it just the conclusion?

Shayne

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Shayne:

Just did a quick read. Looks good.

I will have time to read it carefully by the end of this week.

Adam

No laughably stupid sporting events to distract you?

JR

Arizona beat Texas yesterday. Sin loi!

--Brant

Duke is next

I can't read Shayne's essay now--later

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Shayne:

Just did a quick read. Looks good.

I will have time to read it carefully by the end of this week.

Adam

No laughably stupid sporting events to distract you?

JR

Arizona beat Texas yesterday. Sin loi!

--Brant

Duke is next

I can't read Shayne's essay now--later

sinloide.jpg Tracers & Sin Loi Desidario. Oil on canvas, forged steel, and neon. 13'x6'x9' 1989.

Go Kansas!

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Just to separate your imaginary construct from all the real governments, I suggest that we call yours a "sjwernment."

You define govenment: "A government as an association of individuals that formally identifies,

enforces, and adjudicates the laws governing a given jurisdiction."

The definition has a problem because you use the word itself: government acts upon the laws that govern a place. A government governs. To me, a government is any person or group that seizes absolute control over a territory, allowing no rivals. Government is the monopoly on physical force. Here in Michigan the cop on the street has more power than the state because we have no capital punishment, but the police use deadly force. Just to say, there's a lot to this government thing you have not considered.

You claim: "But it is the case that to be pro-government is not to be antianarchism (in the sense of permitting someone to exist outside of the jurisdiction of one's government) ...

Yes, we all associate in many ways, sports teams and leagues, businesses, churches, civic associations, neighborhood committees, and more. I am currently engaged in a community project to raise public awareness of computer security issues: The Washtenaw County Cyber Citizenship Coalition. It was called by a county commissioner, but is a volunteer organization with no legal standing, though the many public officials, including law enforcement officers, do bring social status. This morning, I got an email from one of the members bowing out. She cannot make the next meeting and asked to be taken off the mailing list. Can you do that with a government?

Governments have often not adhered to a strict notion of monopoly jurisdiction. For example, the United States routinely violates the alleged “sovereignty” of foreign governments, subjecting them to this or that thing the United States government desires. NATO has various governing activities in various jurisdictions, in an overlapping manner. Different levels of government – Federal, State, City – represents overlapping government jurisdiction. International waters are

explicitly recognized as regions of overlapping government jurisdiction. This has never implied that there is no government jurisdiction there, it implies that there is multi-government jurisdiction there.

Most governments permit their own citizens to come to the defense of other citizens when Natural Rights are being violated – this is tantamount to not truly enforcing a monopoly jurisdiction. So the

anarchist definition of government as necessarily being a geographic monopoly is quite unjustified.

This is not the "anarchist" definition, it is the actual, formal, meaningful definition, commonly understood, as opposed to "sjwernment."

It is true that there are overlapping jurisdictions. And it is true that people and corporations shop among them. Here in the USA, we have a cliche "Don't make a federal case out of it." Bank robbers would rather be prosecuted under state law. That is part of the negotiation within competing jurisdictions. A corporation may be licensed in Delaware but have its actual operations in a different state. Shipping companies fly "flags of convenience" from Liberia and Panama. These are among the many reasons why I am not an "anarchist" and do not "advocate" anarchy and do not claim that things "should be" this way. This is reality. We have competing governments.

Governments do allow dual citizenship, also, as you noted. However, they do not allow statelessness. You just cannot go wherever you want, and do whatever you want (non-coercively) even if you had all the property permissions in place.

BTW: When governments unilaterally cross each other's territory, we call that war.

More than "competing government" we have competing legal systems. Read any significant contract you ever signed to borrow money for a home or new car. It will specify adjudiction and an agency for that. A contract might specify the Uniform Commercial Code, a recent invention of a self-appointed team of jurists, completely voluntary. (Some states have enacted it en toto, other partially, but it can stand alone contractually.) The point is that law comes first. Government is a traditional ("folkways") institution for enacting law.

You say: "... but to be anarchist is by definition to be anti-government, totally and completely, everywhere." And you claim that to deny people the right to form unanimous associations is to violate their rights.

That is not "anarchy" that is "sjwanarchy." Anarchy is exactly what you call "government" and what I call "sjwenment": people getting together non-coercively to solve common problems.

Rather than the folkways model of law, I favor an agoric model, in which like the UCC, the Hague Convention on Private International Law, professional jurists, negotiators, arbitrators, and adjudicators, create products and services that people contract for.

The problem is, of course, what happens when one side breaks the basic agreement? In other words, do you ever gain the right to use coercion? If so, when? Is that limited? If so, how is it limited?

Edited by Michael E. Marotta
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Just to separate your imaginary construct from all the real governments, I suggest that we call yours a "sjwernment."

No. If you must call it something, call it a federation of city-states, with natural law jurisdiction outside the bounds of the city-state, and man-made law jurisdictions inside with the natural law jurisdiction overlapping. Regarding the real world, in the United States, this would lead to a shift in Federal power to create man-made laws toward the localities, but it would retain the ability to deal in natural law.

Also, please learn to use the quote function, you attributed things to me that I didn't actually say.

To me, a government is any person or group that seizes absolute control over a territory, allowing no rivals. Government is the monopoly on physical force.

I am trying to point out to anarchists that the federation of city-states construct, which unlike your conception of government is morally permissible, and is still a government. Concerning the real world, this is similar to the way the United States was originally conceived. So the main point here is that going by their own natural-rights premises, we end up with a kind of government: the federation(s) of city-states. In other words, their fundamental starting points leads away from their conclusion.

Anarchy is exactly what you call "government" and what I call "sjwenment": people getting together non-coercively to solve common problems.

On the contrary, a city is hardly something as vague as your conception, we should call this vague thing a marottaucracy not "sjwenment."

Shayne

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Relevant:

http://www.ted.com/t...paul_romer.html

Not exactly what I'm advocating but shares important similarities.

Shayne

Romer's Charter Cities sound a bit like the City States of ancient Greece. Perhaps Romer and Aristotle would have had many points in common in matters of politics and economy. I also noticed an element of Henry George's Single Tax idea. That is revenue for the government is based on a land tax, not an income tax.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Relevant:

http://www.ted.com/t...paul_romer.html

Not exactly what I'm advocating but shares important similarities.

Shayne

Romer's Charter Cities sound a bit like the City States of ancient Greece. Perhaps Romer and Aristotle would have had many points in common in matters of politics and economy.

Ba'al Chatzaf

A key problem with his idea is that these "charter cities" are subject to the laws of the advocate nation. This severely restricts the evolution of laws he seeks. What's needed is a system where the competing city-states takes place not with a national law foundation but with a natural law foundation (see Chapter 3 of my book).

The way Romer talks it seems he is oblivious to considerations having to do with moral philosophy, ergo he's stuck in this rut where all he can see is having "successful" nations set the terms (where "success" is arbitrarily defined to be as far as he can see, i.e., not past his own pragmatist nose).

Shayne

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The way Romer talks it seems he is oblivious to considerations having to do with moral philosophy, ergo he's stuck in this rut where all he can see is having "successful" nations set the terms (where "success" is arbitrarily defined to be as far as he can see, i.e., not past his own pragmatist nose).

Shayne

I would not call a set of operating principles that promote better material health, wealth and comfort, greater opportunity to flourish "arbitrarily defined". Implicit in Romer's view is a notion of what is Good for Humans and that has to be aligned with and constrained by natural laws, particularly the underlying biological laws governing how humans live and operate.

I am all in favor of the Pragmatism that leads to Live Long and Prosper, assuming such pragma exist.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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At the end of the essay it credits those who helped me with critical feedback, if George approves I'd like to add his name there. He didn't critique this essay but my arguments with him led to some of what is there. Hopefully he will provide critical feedback on this essay as well.

Shayne

Because of our earlier flamewar, I did not look at your article until 30 minutes ago. I started to read it, thinking that you might have made some changes, but I stopped on page 2 after reading this passage, and I see no reason to continue.

Anarchism is easy to define – it is the idea that there should be no government.

To be consistent, every anarchist has to believe that there should be no government, anywhere, for if the anarchist allows that a given group can legitimately have government if that is what they want (so long as that government doesn't violate the rights of those who do not want it) then the anarchist actually believes in government of precisely that kind. An anarchist who would admit that government

can be legitimate under some circumstances would be like an atheist who thinks that God is created when someone decides to believe in him.

In other words, an anarchist must believe that in principle any government in the process of genesis ought to be destroyed, and that existing governments should be in some manner or other dismantled. For the anarchist, there is no room on the planet Earth for government....

You asked for my "critical feedback." I am willing to do this to some degree, but I have no intention of getting involved in another knock-down, drag-out fight.

The problem here is that you will not like the sort of "critical feedback" that I am willing to give. I learned this the hard way early on in our last encounter, when my "critical feedback" was treated as a desperate attempt to guard my reputation against your devastating criticisms.

Anyone who has known or worked with me over the past 40 years can tell you that I am very good at donning different thinking caps, depending on the situation. I am good at this because I have consciously worked at it, and focused on it. I am not perfect when it comes to not letting my partisan views warp my professional judgments in history and other disciplines, but I am as good at this as anyone you are likely to find in libertarian and O'st circles.

The emotionally charged environment of OL can make this difficult, especially when I am a participant in a partisan debate. But there are times when I want to take off my partisan cap and put on my scholar's cap or my historian's cap, and say, "No, this won't do." And this is how I feel about the passage I quoted above.

In short, I am willing to give you advice of the sort that a teacher would give to a student, e.g., advice on how you might make your arguments stronger. But I suspect you would be offended by the kind of relationship this implies, even though I am at least as qualified to give such advice on this topic as anyone else in the world. I am not a braggart, but I make this claim without hesitation.

I would not expect you to agree with my advice, of course, but I would expect you to give it serious consideration. And though I would be willing to give the reasons for my advice, I would not be willing to defend those reasons in detail. You would either take them or leave them.

I suspect you already know the kind of advice I have in mind, given our previous exchanges. The main difference this time is that I would make a special effort to stay in my teaching mode and not permit myself descend to the personal level. My evaluative language would be the same that I would use in an academic setting, essentially.

As for the passage I quoted above, it is unacceptable in virtually every respect as a way to structure the debate. I would go so far as to call it unconscionable.

I say this as a scholar of anarchism, not as an anarchist per se. If you are able to overthrow the anarchist position, that would be fine with me, since anarchism functions mainly as an albatross around the neck of modern libertarianism.

Ghs

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Because of our earlier flamewar, I did not look at your article until 30 minutes ago. I started to read it, thinking that you might have made some changes, but I stopped on page 2 after reading this passage, and I see no reason to continue.

I don't understand why you stopped reading after that section but you may want to skip "true" anarchism and read the "semantic" anarchism section. I don't consider your position "true" anarchism. I understand that you think "true" anarchism is some kind of strawman.

You asked for my "critical feedback." I am willing to do this to some degree, but I have no intention of getting involved in another knock-down, drag-out fight.

The problem here is that you will not like the sort of "critical feedback" that I am willing to give. I learned this the hard way early on in our last encounter, when my "critical feedback" was treated as a desperate attempt to guard my reputation against your devastating criticisms.

I'd appreciate rational feedback, but you're of course under no obligation to provide any. This particular feedback looks like pure ad hominem and mind-reading to me.

Anyone who has known or worked with me over the past 40 years can tell you that I am very good at donning different thinking caps, depending on the situation. I am good at this because I have consciously worked at it, and focused on it. I am not perfect when it comes to not letting my partisan views warp my professional judgments in history and other disciplines, but I am as good at this as anyone you are likely to find in libertarian and O'st circles.

The emotionally charged environment of OL can make this difficult, especially when I am a participant in a partisan debate. But there are times when I want to take off my partisan cap and put on my scholar's cap or my historian's cap, and say, "No, this won't do." And this is how I feel about the passage I quoted above.

In short, I am willing to give you advice of the sort that a teacher would give to a student, e.g., advice on how you might make your arguments stronger. But I suspect you would be offended by the kind of relationship this implies, even though I am at least as qualified to give such advice on this topic as anyone else in the world. I am not a braggart, but I make this claim without hesitation.

I would not expect you to agree with my advice, of course, but I would expect you to give it serious consideration. And though I would be willing to give the reasons for my advice, I would not be willing to defend those reasons in detail. You would either take them or leave them.

In principle I'd be more appreciative than offended. You don't have to defend your status, by default I already regard you as more knowledgeable and skilled. But I would regard trying to paint me as an irrational party who won't accept well-intended feedback as ad hominem.

I suspect you already know the kind of advice I have in mind, given our previous exchanges. The main difference this time is that I would make a special effort to stay in my teaching mode and not permit myself descend to the personal level. My evaluative language would be the same that I would use in an academic setting, essentially.

As for the passage I quoted above, it is unacceptable in virtually every respect as a way to structure the debate. I would go so far as to call it unconscionable.

Since I was just trying to proceed in an orderly fashion I'd be most interested in finding out why. If you are objecting to me preemptively defining your anarchism, I already said there were two kinds, I'm not saying the shoe fits for the first kind.

I say this as a scholar of anarchism, not as an anarchist per se. If you are able to overthrow the anarchist position, that would be fine with me, since anarchism functions mainly as an albatross around the neck of modern libertarianism.

Ghs

Incidentally, I have no particular predilection to not call myself an anarchist beyond the fact that it's not accurate. When I began reconsidering the issue several years ago (having accepted the Objectivist view previously) I considered Ayn Rand's dismissal of anarchism to be, well let's see, what's the right word -- "unconscionable". In a key respect I still think her view of ramming a government not of your own choosing down your throat is unconscionable, perhaps even on par with her throwing the efforts and property of an innocent second inventor into the trash bin. But in some ways I've come to realize that she was more right than I originally thought she was. That's more her fault than mine, and as far as I know she might have only been right on accident.

Although I would like to be able to address "scholarly anarchism" to the extent possible, the idea is to address rational anarchists. If anarchism were true then I would proudly advocate it, but since I believe it is false I think it's worse than a mere albatross, I think it's a tragic waste of some of the best people. The reason I bother addressing anarchists isn't because I despise them, on the contrary, I admire that they take natural rights seriously enough to try to be fully consistent.

Shayne

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I would not call a set of operating principles that promote better material health, wealth and comfort, greater opportunity to flourish "arbitrarily defined". Implicit in Romer's view is a notion of what is Good for Humans and that has to be aligned with and constrained by natural laws, particularly the underlying biological laws governing how humans live and operate.

The arbitrary part is where he promotes the laws of "successful" nations, not considering the fact that what made the best one, the US, successful is rapidly becoming an historical artifact. His strategy guarantees a poor "local minima" not a true evolution of solutions.

Shayne

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"Anarchism functions mainly as an albatross around the neck of modern libertarianism."--George H. Smith

That's a great quote, can I use it? :)

Shayne

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Shayne

This is hopeless. My objection to the passage I quoted has nothing to do with anarchism per se or with my views about anarchism. It has to do with the minimal requirements for an objective discussion of any position. I would have objected just as strongly if you were an anarchist who used a similar tactic to criticize minarchism. In fact, I sometimes have chided fellow anarchists (e.g., the late Sam Konkin) for presenting this controversy in a skewed and prejudicial manner. This is what I meant by putting on different caps.

In my earlier years, when I was in the process of formulating my ideas, I actively solicited advice from people who knew a lot more than I did in a given field, and who had far more experience than I in presenting their ideas to the public. When I was fortunate enough to get the attention of someone like this, I shut up, I listened (often taking notes), and then I asked more questions. I sometimes didn't take the advice, but I got as much potentially helpful information as I could, and I sorted it out later. And if I still had problems, I would bug the person with even more questions.

The last thing I would have done is to condescending tell these high caliber thinkers how they are tragically wasting their time, etc. You don't have to take advice from anyone, Shayne, but there are people in this movement you could learn a lot from. I am one of those people. I have worked closely with hundreds of students over the years, many of whom have later thanked me for giving them libertarian-oriented ideas for a master's thesis, a doctoral dissertation, etc.

There is probably no living libertarian intellectual who has earned more respect, both in and outside libertarian circles, than Randy Barnett, Austin B. Fletcher Professor, Boston University School of Law. Here is what Randy had to say in the "Acknowledgments" to his book, The Structure of Liberty: Justice and the Rule of Law (Oxford, 1998):

It was not too long after that when I met George Smith. For a time, we were something of friendly intellectual rivals. The first indication that we would become more than this came on the heels of a debate we had on the subject of procedural justice. I had commented somewhat critically on a paper by George at a conference held at Princeton. Sometime later, when I was already in practice as a criminal prosecutor in Chicago, the papers were published, along with George's reply. I remember quickly skimming through his response and feeling a bit uneasy. For he had refined his initial position in such a way as to make my argument seem less than entirely persuasive. A bit disconcerted, I tossed the volume aside, being too enthralled by my involvement with the criminal justice system to focus on such matters. When I picked it up again some years later, my initial instincts were confirmed. Without question, he had bested me in that debate and taught me an important lesson about the centrality of legality, as distinct from justice, in the structure of liberty. It was not to be my last lesson from George.

My instruction continued when, for many years, George and I both taught in the summer seminars organized by the Institute for Humane Studies. Every summer I would audit his lectures which were fascinating from the beginning and which became increasingly so over time. Though trained in philosophy at Arizona State [sic], George had abandoned his formal schooling to pursue a decade-long course of independent study, a large measure of which was devoted to the long-forgotten classical natural rights theorists. It was his synthesis of their arguments that caused my thinking to take the direction reflected in this book, most importantly in Chapter 1 but also in the argument on the inalienability of certain rights, which is presented in Chapter 4. In more ways than I can know or acknowledge, this book has been influenced by George's distillation of the classical approach to natural rights as well as his own theories of justice. I am and will forever be deeply indebted to him.

I have not quoted Randy's kind remarks in order to pull rank, or to suggest that I have bested you in some arguments, or anything petty like this. I have quoted them in the hope that it will help you to understand my response when, having made a sincere offer to advise you on how you might improve your article, I am greeted with this kind of remark:

I don't understand why you stopped reading after that section but you may want to skip "true" anarchism and read the "semantic" anarchism section. I don't consider your position "true" anarchism. I understand that you think "true" anarchism is some kind of strawman.

I stopped reading after that section because I have no interest in reading an article by someone who will not make even a minimal effort to present the basic ideas of his adversaries in a fair and impartial manner. That passage is an intellectual disgrace, pure and simple. It destroys your credibility at the outset, and the reasons for this have nothing inherently to do with the subject matter of anarchism. They certainly have nothing to do with the fact that I happen to be anarchist.

If you had the sense to listen to me, instead of lecturing me about "semantic" versus "true" anarchism, it might have been possible to improve your article considerably without changing your overall approach. You see everything through partisan lenses. I don't. I can easily distinguish between an argument and a manner of presenting that argument.

Ghs

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"Anarchism functions mainly as an albatross around the neck of modern libertarianism."--George H. Smith

That's a great quote, can I use it? :)

Shayne

If you have a serious interest in what I meant by it, sure. Are you intrested in what I meant?

Ghs

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If you had the sense to listen to me, instead of lecturing me about "semantic" versus "true" anarchism, it might have been possible to improve your article considerably without changing your overall approach. You see everything through partisan lenses. I don't. I can easily distinguish between an argument and a manner of presenting that argument.

Ghs

If you want to set aside your partisan view of me and the ad hominems that go along with it, I'd be more than happy to consider what you have to say, in fact I'd be very appreciative if you would give me your genuine opinion of my arguments. Regarding the ad hominems, I have zero interest in your wrong assumptions about how I won't listen to this or that advice and whatnot, and consider it a bad sign that you seem to be wanting at the outset to lay a foundation premise that I am hopelessly biased. If you want to persist in waging ad hominem war, I suggest we go back to the other thread and pick up where we left off.

Regarding the substantive criticism you gave, I'm not married to any particular formulation. I think my ideas are sound (and if they aren't then I'll change them) but my expression can always be improved. On the one hand, I see your point that some anarchists will think I've not treated their view fairly, but on the other hand, I see anarchism as not a single view but a spectrum of views. That introductory part was only intended to be addressing the part of the spectrum that is so unreasonable that it thinks, for example, that if something didn't exist in the past then it can't exist in principle. I only make this point because, stupid as it is, real anarchists have actually made this argument with me.

Shayne

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"Anarchism functions mainly as an albatross around the neck of modern libertarianism."--George H. Smith

That's a great quote, can I use it? :)

Shayne

If you have a serious interest in what I meant by it, sure. Are you intrested in what I meant?

Ghs

I don't know how many more times I have to say that I'm interested in what you have to say... I'm not interested in this stance you seem to be developing that I'm not interested or that I'm partisan etc.

Shayne

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If you had the sense to listen to me, instead of lecturing me about "semantic" versus "true" anarchism, it might have been possible to improve your article considerably without changing your overall approach. You see everything through partisan lenses. I don't. I can easily distinguish between an argument and a manner of presenting that argument.

Ghs

If you want to set aside your partisan view of me and the ad hominems that go along with it, I'd be more than happy to consider what you have to say, in fact I'd be very appreciative if you would give me your genuine opinion of my arguments. Regarding the ad hominems, I have zero interest in your wrong assumptions about how I won't listen to this or that advice and whatnot, and consider it a bad sign that you seem to be wanting at the outset to lay a foundation premise that I am hopelessly biased. If you want to persist in waging ad hominem war, I suggest we go back to the other thread and pick up where we left off.

Regarding the substantive criticism you gave, I'm not married to any particular formulation. I think my ideas are sound (and if they aren't then I'll change them) but my expression can always be improved. On the one hand, I see your point that some anarchists will think I've not treated their view fairly, but on the other hand, I see anarchism as not a single view but a spectrum of views. That introductory part was only intended to be addressing the part of the spectrum that is so unreasonable that it thinks, for example, that if something didn't exist in the past then it can't exist in principle. I only make this point because, stupid as it is, real anarchists have actually made this argument with me.

Shayne

I have no patience for this. Let's just call it day. I've got plenty to do on other threads.

Ghs

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If you had the sense to listen to me, instead of lecturing me about "semantic" versus "true" anarchism, it might have been possible to improve your article considerably without changing your overall approach. You see everything through partisan lenses. I don't. I can easily distinguish between an argument and a manner of presenting that argument.

Ghs

If you want to set aside your partisan view of me and the ad hominems that go along with it, I'd be more than happy to consider what you have to say, in fact I'd be very appreciative if you would give me your genuine opinion of my arguments. Regarding the ad hominems, I have zero interest in your wrong assumptions about how I won't listen to this or that advice and whatnot, and consider it a bad sign that you seem to be wanting at the outset to lay a foundation premise that I am hopelessly biased. If you want to persist in waging ad hominem war, I suggest we go back to the other thread and pick up where we left off.

Regarding the substantive criticism you gave, I'm not married to any particular formulation. I think my ideas are sound (and if they aren't then I'll change them) but my expression can always be improved. On the one hand, I see your point that some anarchists will think I've not treated their view fairly, but on the other hand, I see anarchism as not a single view but a spectrum of views. That introductory part was only intended to be addressing the part of the spectrum that is so unreasonable that it thinks, for example, that if something didn't exist in the past then it can't exist in principle. I only make this point because, stupid as it is, real anarchists have actually made this argument with me.

Shayne

I have no patience for this. Let's just call it day. I've got plenty to do on other threads.

Ghs

I see now more precisely what you meant by this: "When I was fortunate enough to get the attention of someone like this, I shut up, I listened (often taking notes), and then I asked more questions."

What you mean is that even when you are very clearly wrong, even when you are engaged in blatant ad hominem, pretending to be able to read my mind, etc., I am supposed to shut up and glean whatever I can. I would accept these terms for private mentoring as I would with any professor, that's just par for the course if someone is teaching you. It's not par for the course in public discussion however.

Shayne

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I see now more precisely what you meant by this: "When I was fortunate enough to get the attention of someone like this, I shut up, I listened (often taking notes), and then I asked more questions."

What you mean is that even when you are very clearly wrong, even when you are engaged in blatant ad hominem, pretending to be able to read my mind, etc., I am supposed to shut up and glean whatever I can. I would accept these terms for private mentoring as I would with any professor, that's just par for the course if someone is teaching you. It's not par for the course in public discussion however.

Shayne

Yeah, that must be what I meant. It sure sounds like something I would say. :lol:

Thanks for the invitation to provide "critical feedback" on your article. I gave one criticism, and I got a lot of feedback.

In an earlier post, you wrote:

At the end of the essay it credits those who helped me with critical feedback, if George approves I'd like to add his name there.

George does not approve.

Ghs

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