Are anarchists overgrown teenagers?

[sjw]

George H. Smith Saith:

We shall soon see, however, should my not-so-worthy opponent ever get up the nerve to play with the big boys. I have a bunch of questions I would like to ask him about his first sentence alone, viz: "On my theory of government, the smallest unit of government is in fact the home (or other unit of owned land)." After that, I will take the rest of his post line by excruciating line.

In short, my public crucifixion of this blowhard will be slow, thorough, and very, very painful.

Ghs

Okay, enough of your chickenshit cowardice. I will, as I get the time, continue to post questions and criticisms of your headline post. If you want to respond, fine. Or, as now seems more likely, if you want to chicken out, that is fine as well. Should the latter occur, I will of course be far less polite than I would have been otherwise.

Whether I crucify you here or on another thread is of little concern to me. But let me guess -- it might be a while before you regroup with a new thread, right? Fine, then your full crucifixion will take a while, but I will be driving some more nails on this thread.

You can cluck, cluck, cluck all you want, but this chicken hawk has you in his sights. You demanded a real contest, and a real contest you will get -- even if there is no doubt about the outcome -- as long as you remain on OL. When I am through with you, you will have very good reason, for once, to play the pathetic victim.

Ghs

I hope you don't leave OL. That would deprive me of a lot of fun. Of course, if you do leave OL, I will claim all the credit. Your cowardly retreat, before you fired so much as a single shot, will become legendary. Future OLers will tell The Saga of Shameful Shayne to their children, before they are able to understand more complex characters like Peter Keating.

Cowardly retreat eh? I'm very disappointed. I expected to get skewered by the Great George H. Smith, and all I got was silly "you can't define government so nyah nyah" over and over.

Shayne

[Selene]

[sjw]

Rothbard unjustly skewers GHS:

http://www.voluntaryist.com/backissues/005.pdf

If it were me George, I wouldn't have put Rothbard on a pedestal, I would have nailed him to the wall for being a sick, dishonest, creepy, unjust bastard. But then, I wouldn't take up tactics that resemble Rothbard's either. Only a total commitment to truth, reason, and what is right gives the ideas of liberty any kind of a chance.

Shayne

[sjw]

Quoting GHS:

"Strategic Leninism requires obedience and loyalty to the Party. All enemies, and especially internal enemies ("deviationists"), must be "crushed." The end (the good of the Party) justifies the means. Short of violating rights, Libertarian Leninists exhibit few constraints on their behavior. Their tactics run the gamut from gossip and personal attacks to serious misrepresentations."

"Many libertarians are bewildered by the incessant Rothbardian and RC attacks on internal "deviationists," and they are disturbed by the vitriolic and often personal nature of these attacks. But these libertarians fail to comprehend the Party mentality, especially its Leninist Species. An obsession to purge deviat¡on¡sts (especially competitors for internal power) is almost a defining characteristic of strategic Leninists."

"The Leninist sees conspiracies and plots everywhere; reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries infest the movement and threaten to sap it from within. ("Honest disagreement" is rarely found in the Leninist's vocabulary.) Thus what appears irrelevant to an outsider, such as vitriolic personal attacks, is clearly germane — even vital — to the Leninist. The overriding purpose is to neutralize or destroy deviationism, and all else is subordinated to this goal."

Shayne

Edited February 15, 2011 by sjw

[Brant Gaede]

I'll mail in a check for a subscription tomorrow.

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Rothbard unjustly skewers GHS:

http://www.voluntaryist.com/backissues/005.pdf

If it were me George, I wouldn't have put Rothbard on a pedestal, I would have nailed him to the wall for being a sick, dishonest, creepy, unjust bastard. But then, I wouldn't take up tactics that resemble Rothbard's either. Only a total commitment to truth, reason, and what is right gives the ideas of liberty any kind of a chance.

Shayne

As always, I treasure Shayne's opinions on subjects he knows nothing about.

Rothbard, for all his eccentricities, was a brilliant theoretician, historian, and writer whose contributions to the modern libertarian movement were immense. Shayne, in contrast, is a third-rate hack. Shayne is not fit to lick Rothbard's boots.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Quoting GHS:

"Strategic Leninism requires obedience and loyalty to the Party. All enemies, and especially internal enemies ("deviationists"), must be "crushed." The end (the good of the Party) justifies the means. Short of violating rights, Libertarian Leninists exhibit few constraints on their behavior. Their tactics run the gamut from gossip and personal attacks to serious misrepresentations."

"Many libertarians are bewildered by the incessant Rothbardian and RC attacks on internal "deviationists," and they are disturbed by the vitriolic and often personal nature of these attacks. But these libertarians fail to comprehend the Party mentality, especially its Leninist Species. An obsession to purge deviat¡on¡sts (especially competitors for internal power) is almost a defining characteristic of strategic Leninists."

"The Leninist sees conspiracies and plots everywhere; reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries infest the movement and threaten to sap it from within. ("Honest disagreement" is rarely found in the Leninist's vocabulary.) Thus what appears irrelevant to an outsider, such as vitriolic personal attacks, is clearly germane — even vital — to the Leninist. The overriding purpose is to neutralize or destroy deviationism, and all else is subordinated to this goal."

Shayne

Is there a point here? -- other than the one on the top of your head, that is. What may we expect next? Some passages about the Ontological Argument that I wrote for Why Atheism?

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

I expected to get skewered by the Great George H. Smith, and all I got was silly "you can't define government so nyah nyah" over and over.

Shayne

No need to fret, Shayne; I will continue to skewer you. What I said was this.

Should you ever decide to answer my question, let me know, and I will continue this exchange. Meanwhile, find someone else to play your childish games with. (New italics.)

I will not continue our exchange . Instead, I will post a few more criticisms, as I was doing before, while ignoring your replies, should you decide to post any. For it has become abundantly clear that there is no greater obstacle to understanding Shayne's ideas than to ask Shayne about them.

Of course, you will whine some more, complaining that I have misunderstood or misrepresented your profound ideas, but you would whine anyway, no matter what I might say.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Any attempt to unravel the Gordian Knot that Shayne likes to call a "theory" is bound to be a frustrating and ultimately futile enterprise, but one thing is clear: Shayne throws the term "government" around so indiscriminately that anyone who owns property of any kind would qualify as the "government" of that property.

Of course, Shayne wants to restrict this appellation to owners of land, but there is no rational basis for doing so. Consider the example, which I mentioned in a previous post, of a car rental agency (which I shall hereafter call the Agency). This Agency, like the owner of land, has the right to specify conditions and rules that must be agreed to by anyone who wishes to rent one of its cars. It can, for instance, specify that no smoking is permitted inside its cars. And should a renter violate his contract by smoking, the Agency can "evict" that renter from the car.

Thus if, as Shayne does with apartment leases and other contracts pertaining to land, we choose to call the conditions of the car rental agreement "laws," we arrive at the conclusion that the Agency constitutes a "government" over the "territory" of its cars and those people who use them. Having enacted the arbitrary man-made law of "no smoking" inside its cars, the agency can also enforce this law, either by refusing to rent to anyone who will not consent to this law or by evicting anyone who, having agreed to this law, proceeds to disobey it.

These are the only essential requirements for a "man made government," according to Shayne. The fact that land is fixed property whereas cars are movable property makes not the least bit of difference. A car rental agency meets the same requirements that Shayne specifies for landowners, so we should call every car rental agency a "man made government."

A little reflection -- and here I am obviously addressing every reader except Shayne -- will show that this reasoning applies not only to landowners and car rental agencies but to every owner of property, of whatever kind. To own property means that you can set the conditions and rules -- or "laws," as Shayne prefers to call them -- to which other people must consent before you will loan or rent your property to them. Moreover, since property ownership (again, of every kind) entails the right of the owner to enforce the arbitrary man made laws that he has decreed for the use of his property, every property owner in the world qualifies as a government over his own property, according to Shayne's conception of "government."

Now, if this Pickwickian use of "government" makes Shayne happy, so be it. But to dilute the meaning of "government" in this manner is a theoretical disaster, and it accounts for a good deal of the confusion in Shayne's approach.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Property=government=property=do what the property master says?

--Brant

no room for anarchy

[anthony]

Anybody else having a nostalgic reminder of our parental dinner table?

"Ask your mother to please pass the mash."

(...frosty silence)

"Please tell your father that the car needs a service."

(...)

"Er, Mum, Dad, may I speak, pl...?

(in unison) "NO!!!"

Sorry - as you were.

[George H. Smith]

Property=government=property=do what the property master says?

--Brant

no room for anarchy

You summarized the matter nicely.

As I have pointed out before, Shayne's original argument for "government," one based on contractual agreements between landowners to form proprietary communities, is a red herring, because, according to Shayne's reasoning, each landowner is already a government over his own land before he enters into any such agreements. The only consent that is relevant here is the consent that a landowner must give before someone is permitted to use his land.

Of course, as I pointed out in my last post, the same reasoning applies to every property owner, regardless of the type of property involved. Since I own my computer, I qualify as a "government" over the territory of my computer, because I can establish "laws" that others must consent to before I will let them use my computer.

There are nearly 7 billion people in the world, according to the last estimate I checked, and nearly every adult in this population owns personal property, however modest, of some kind. Leave it to Shayne to defend the legitimacy of "government" with a line of reasoning that leads to the conclusion that we have, and should have, billions of governments in the world, each with his or her own man-made laws.

Talk about "competing governments"! Not even the most wide-eyed libertarian anarchist has ever envisioned this amount of competition.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

Bow wow!

--Brant

[George H. Smith]

Anybody else having a nostalgic reminder of our parental dinner table?

"Ask your mother to please pass the mash."

(...frosty silence)

"Please tell your father that the car needs a service."

(...)

"Er, Mum, Dad, may I speak, pl...?

(in unison) "NO!!!"

Sorry - as you were.

Now that I am ignoring Shayne, the conversation is moving along nicely, don't you think?

Ghs

[sjw]

Any attempt to unravel the Gordian Knot that Shayne likes to call a "theory" is bound to be a frustrating and ultimately futile enterprise, but one thing is clear: Shayne throws the term "government" around so indiscriminately that anyone who owns property of any kind would qualify as the "government" of that property.

Don't forget, you are not talking about my concept of government per se here, but rather my concept of the government over a jurisdiction of man-made laws. I know, it's all so confusing. (But I did give you those four definitions of government to help you after you whined and whined and whined. But what did I tell you -- the definitions wouldn't help you. Those aren't your problem. Serves me right for spoiling the kid.)

Concerning man-made law (or rules, same thing here), it is definitely true that if you borrow my bike, I get to set the rules, if you step onto my land, I get to set the rules. Same concept. Very confusing to an anarchist, but simple nonetheless.

Your problem is with the concept of course, but you don't want to talk about that. You only want to wave around this magic and grandiose-sounding word, "government", and say "oh, look how silly, everyone knows that no one has a "government" over one's bike. That would be ridiculous!" You count on the reader to be as concrete-bound as you, to not be able to discern the principle at work here.

Consider the various words for "work to be done": chore, task, project, job. Your argument is that "a job isn't a mere chore, that's ridiculous! A job is something we do week after week, year after year, with countless projects, tasks, chores!" As I said, concrete-bound.

Have I cut the "Gordian Knot"? Well all I did was look at what people want government for, and, being an engineer, tried to figure out how to deliver the goods at an architectural level (by which I mean: I am not designing a specific implementation, but rather identifying the governing principles of any implementation), but without breaking any moral laws. Leaving aside their criminal desires, I noticed that they want two things from their government.

First, they want their own natural rights to be protected. Solving this problem involves recognizing that everyone has a natural right to come to the defense of anyone else, no matter where we are. Therefore, any government of any size can in principle be created for this natural law purpose, and can exercise its powers anywhere. There is no particular reason not to advocate that existing States remain intact and simply scale back their ambitions such that they only provide natural law protection, and take for their natural law jurisdiction the jurisdiction they already have. Importantly, they cannot prevent others from also coming to other's defense, but I do not advocate competing governments as an ideal to strive for, rather, if someone wants to be a superhero, and doesn't do anything stupid, my point is that throwing him in jail for helping people is injustice. And if jailing the superhero is wrong, then so is jailing the superfriends.

Having dealt with the desire of people for natural law to be upheld, another set of desires remain. Now these have no cohesion at all. They are variable and sundry: some want social safety nets, some want corporate safety nets, some want a fiat money system, some want extreme regulation of medicine or of this or that field, some want community schools, some want to come to the defense of peoples in foreign lands, speed limits, etc. etc. I personally would like to live by neighbors who shovel their walks, take care of their yards, and don't buy the particularly dangerous breed of dogs that might attack children. I fully recognize that I have no natural right to expect these things, as none of the average people in our culture have no natural right to the rest of the things they want, unless they come from consensual relations.

What's more, I think that if we take off our "libertarian" glasses and look at some of these things, we will find that something like a "homeowners association" on a larger scale could be quite nice, so long as no coercion is involved. I mean, you can live in the neighborhood where everyone does what they damn well please with their property, or you can live in a more "upscale" (which is not necessarily to say "wealthy") area, where people obey various civilized rules such as taking good care of their property.

If you want to be a hillbilly, you should be free to do that. But the rest of us should be free from having you as a neighbor, given that we had created such a possibility consensually. We don't need the Beverly Hillbillies coming in and ruining our property values. This is just one consideration of course. We could go on and on speculating about how this or that man-made rule might improve human life in a given area for this particular personality type or that particular geographic zone. What would come from this is not a boring uniformity, but an incredible variety of different kinds of cities, each one designed to suit their local populace, where everyone has the liberty to found a new kind of city with their cohorts. You wouldn't have to go halfway around the world to experience vibrantly different culture, you could ride your bike 20 miles to the next town.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Concerning man-made law (or rules, same thing here), it is definitely true that if you borrow my bike, I get to set the rules, if you step onto my land, I get to set the rules. Same concept. Very confusing to an anarchist, but simple nonetheless.

-----

If you want to be a hillbilly, you should be free to do that. But the rest of us should be free from having you as a neighbor, given that we had created such a possibility consensually. We don't need the Beverly Hillbillies coming in and ruining our property values. This is just one consideration of course. We could go on and on speculating about how this or that man-made rule might improve human life in a given area for this particular personality type or that particular geographic zone. What would come from this is not a boring uniformity, but an incredible variety of different kinds of cities, each one designed to suit their local populace, where everyone has the liberty to found a new kind of city with their cohorts. You wouldn't have to go halfway around the world to experience vibrantly different culture, you could ride your bike 20 miles to the next town.

Shayne

We already have that, Shayne, and the Beverly Hillbillies were multi-millionaires.

--Brant

[sjw]

We already have that, Shayne, and the Beverly Hillbillies were multi-millionaires.

--Brant

What the hell? We obviously don't. Watch what happens to you if you try to set up a community independent of the man-made laws of the Federal Government. In effect, they have claimed property ownership of the whole continent, even though they do not legitimately own it.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

I was referring to the first paragraph I quoted, not your general philosophy of government.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

While I don't find your philosophy of government very coherent, Shayne, I've never found much coherence in anarcho-capitalism either. That's why I tend to lump you with George, believe it or not.

--Brant

[sjw]

I was referring to the first paragraph I quoted, not your general philosophy of government.

--Brant

We don't have my first paragraph either. I don't know what you're talking about.

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

Concerning man-made law (or rules, same thing here), it is definitely true that if you borrow my bike, I get to set the rules, if you step onto my land, I get to set the rules. Same concept. Very confusing to an anarchist, but simple nonetheless.

-----

If you want to be a hillbilly, you should be free to do that. But the rest of us should be free from having you as a neighbor, given that we had created such a possibility consensually. We don't need the Beverly Hillbillies coming in and ruining our property values. This is just one consideration of course. We could go on and on speculating about how this or that man-made rule might improve human life in a given area for this particular personality type or that particular geographic zone. What would come from this is not a boring uniformity, but an incredible variety of different kinds of cities, each one designed to suit their local populace, where everyone has the liberty to found a new kind of city with their cohorts. You wouldn't have to go halfway around the world to experience vibrantly different culture, you could ride your bike 20 miles to the next town.

Shayne

We already have that, Shayne, and the Beverly Hillbillies were multi-millionaires.

--Brant

There you go. I think you pulled the trigger too fast.

--Brant

[sjw]

While I don't find your philosophy of government very coherent, Shayne, I've never found much coherence in anarcho-capitalism either. That's why I tend to lump you with George, believe it or not.

--Brant

George, Rothbard, and myself, all take the moral matter of consent very seriously. Objectivists don't. If you do not think my solution to the problem of consent is coherent, tell me how to coherently solve it. I think my solution is perfectly coherent, but I'm open-minded about hearing your solution. Or tell me you don't give a damn if someone's natural rights are violated. It's either-or.

Concerning government, there's no matter of higher theoretical or moral importance than this, yet Objectivists don't give a damn about it.

Shayne

[sjw]

Concerning man-made law (or rules, same thing here), it is definitely true that if you borrow my bike, I get to set the rules, if you step onto my land, I get to set the rules. Same concept. Very confusing to an anarchist, but simple nonetheless.

-----

If you want to be a hillbilly, you should be free to do that. But the rest of us should be free from having you as a neighbor, given that we had created such a possibility consensually. We don't need the Beverly Hillbillies coming in and ruining our property values. This is just one consideration of course. We could go on and on speculating about how this or that man-made rule might improve human life in a given area for this particular personality type or that particular geographic zone. What would come from this is not a boring uniformity, but an incredible variety of different kinds of cities, each one designed to suit their local populace, where everyone has the liberty to found a new kind of city with their cohorts. You wouldn't have to go halfway around the world to experience vibrantly different culture, you could ride your bike 20 miles to the next town.

Shayne

We already have that, Shayne, and the Beverly Hillbillies were multi-millionaires.

--Brant

There you go. I think you pulled the trigger too fast.

--Brant

We don't have the first paragraph or the second. No one gets to define the man-made laws of their land, they are subject to the laws of the existing governments. Seriously Brant, WTF are you smoking?

Shayne

[Brant Gaede]

While I don't find your philosophy of government very coherent, Shayne, I've never found much coherence in anarcho-capitalism either. That's why I tend to lump you with George, believe it or not.

--Brant

George, Rothbard, and myself, all take the moral matter of consent very seriously. Objectivists don't. If you do not think my solution to the problem of consent is coherent, tell me how to coherently solve it. I think my solution is perfectly coherent, but I'm open-minded about hearing your solution. Or tell me you don't give a damn if someone's natural rights are violated. It's either-or.

Concerning government, there's no matter of higher theoretical or moral importance than this, yet Objectivists don't give a damn about it.

Shayne

"Consent" is apropos to the moral foundation of government, but really tells us nothing about the government itself. As an advocate of individual rights I'm also an advocate of critical thinking, real liberal arts education, and moving toward more and more freedom over time, recognizing things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, regardless. It was one thing for Madison and the other Founding Fathers way back then when the country was young to create a workable constitutional structure, it's head-in-the-clouds stuff today unless you want to tweak the Constitution here and there.

I think most of the conflict between you and George has to do with him blasting any possible competition to his own ideas on governance. I'm certainly no competitor. It's a turf war, but he can't slay you, ultimately, without slaying himself. That's why this thread is so long.

--Brant

Edited February 15, 2011 by Brant Gaede

[sjw]

"Consent" is apropos to the moral foundation of government, but really tells us nothing about the government itself. As an advocate of individual rights I'm also an advocate of critical thinking, real liberal arts education, and moving toward more and more freedom over time, recognizing things are going to get a lot worse before they get better, regardless. It was one thing for Madison and the other Founding Fathers way back then when the country was young to create a workable constitutional structure, it's head-in-the-clouds stuff today unless you want to tweak the Constitution here and there.

I think you misunderstand me. My ideas here are just a "plumb line." They aren't the thing. They're just a standard by which the thing can evolve and change toward something better. I mean this fairly literally -- my ideas are like a simple outline sketch of a house, they aren't the house itself. There is a rich array of detail in an actual house that I don't intend or presume to specify.

I think most of the conflict between you and George has to do with him blasting any possible competition to his own ideas on governance. I'm certainly no competitor. It's a turf war, but he can't slay you, ultimately, without slaying himself. That's why this thread is so long.

--Brant

I agree with you there...

Shayne