Political Theory

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Thisprogramhasnotbeenrated — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 07:25:36 GMT

Sen. Ieyasu should have come straight and said it. The government has a right by virtue of being the most powerful entity and having a monopoly on force. It has a right because it has guns, badges and public support behind it. There's no need to logically analyse the legitimacy of the state, it is merely enough to acknowledge the fact that it is strong, and you, the individual are weak. In politics, just as in the animal kingdom, the weak are ruled by the strong. Democracy is nothing but a mass sham to keep the public oblivious of this simple fact. The populace has no bearing over public decisions, yet it still pretends to consent with the wise dictates of our overlords which the mass media drills in our heads, are intended for our common benefit. "Democracy" as defined in modern political linguo is finding the boot stomping your face agreeable after the fact it was stomped on.

EDIT: I didn't know that Inoye passed away while writing this message. I suppose I should pay my respects. Whatever he may have done or failed to do as a senator, he had a legendary reputation for his wartime deeds as part of the ethnic Japanese units in the United States Army, which were some of the most decorated soldiers in the war. Although I do not morally support US involvement in any wars it fought, I still view with respect true soldiers who gave everything for what they believed in.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Anenome — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 22:00:42 GMT

Inouye.

He typifies the kind of person who climbs the highest mountain in life, only to discover that he's climbed the wrong mountain.

Except, in his case, he never did discover he was on the wrong mountain, and died thinking he'd done great things.

When in fact he's done nothing great in political life because everything "great" politicians accomplish is terrible for society.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

jmorris84 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 14:22:23 GMT

Anenome:
What a waste of a life.

Jan or the guy he is interviewing?

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

cab21 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 09:57:05 GMT

funny how the comment section has a guy saying politics did not make him, but war did, and he should be respected for war

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Anenome — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 07:57:42 GMT

What a waste of a life.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

jmorris84 — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 05:28:52 GMT

Since I watched these videos, not a day goes by where I replay them in my mind. I'm seriously in awe of how this guy is able to control a debate or conversation.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

shackleford — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 04:03:38 GMT

A senator since 1963. Son of a bitch. Hawaii is stupid.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/senator-daniel-k-inouye-of-hawaii-is-dead-at-88/

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Autolykos — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:35:55 GMT

I asked because I wasn't sure what you think a "nation" is. Many people equate "nations" with states/governments.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

National Acrobat — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 21:51:12 GMT

Autolykos:

Just what do you think is a "nation"?

I'm not sure I have a very well developed idea of what a nation is exactly, but I'd say it is a self-identified group along some informal or customary trait(s) like ethnicity, religion, language or region.

Why do you ask?

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Autolykos — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:05:02 GMT

National Acrobat:
The point about about international interactions deals with the centrality of sovereignty in the international community. I'm not sure how an anarchistic society would deal with international relations without some notion of sovereignty, and what that notion would look like I think is an interesting and unexamined question.

Just what do you think is a "nation"?

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Autolykos — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:03:22 GMT

thetabularasa:
Getting back to the original post in the thread, yes, it's an awesome argument he poses in the video. He's spot on with his logic, and the other guy looked like a fool because he had no valid response.

How about you respond to this post already?

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

National Acrobat — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:22:46 GMT

Willy Truth:

You talk about the social contract as if it were a tangible document that was signed at some point. Do you mean that the social contract came to being under an early form of the state, as a result of the state?

I don't think the social contract was a tangible document (and I don't know of a social contract theorist who actually believes it was ever an actual document, even explicitly stating the exact opposite).

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

National Acrobat — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 04:19:40 GMT

Cortes:

Yeah. If you want to go deeper one has to challenge the social contract in the first place, or why one legal monopoly is legitimate at all. I don't think either Locke, Hobbes or the OP's argument address this so it's beside the point; The OP doesn't address the social contract (people had conflicting ideas of rights so created conflicting legal codes which led to violence, so they all agreed on giving the guns to Jonny Gummint and its monopoly on the legal code), which itself doesn't adequately address why one territorial monopoly is the most efficient or stable, or legitimate at all.

This then leads to speculation on how any anarchist community will interact in the international sense in terms of a stable legal code, to recall one of your earlier posts, right?

Basically, yeah.

The point about about international interactions deals with the centrality of sovereignty in the international community. I'm not sure how an anarchistic society would deal with international relations without some notion of sovereignty, and what that notion would look like I think is an interesting and unexamined question.

The social contract being a very important justification of internal sovereign power is intimately tied to this problem.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

jmorris84 — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 05:51:43 GMT

Wheylous, thanks for sharing this video. I've actually been watching many of his other videos since I saw the one you posted. This guy is a ninja, the way that he is able to shine a light on the contradictory beliefs that his interviewees have.

Re: Awesome rebuttal to government taxation

Anenome — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 01:57:04 GMT

The Romans discovered they could rule a client province by installing one its citizens as a quizzling, a puppet ruler, the people would accept that and generally fall in line. Before that they'd been trying to rule them with outside rulers and had nothing but revolts.

Maybe we discover what it is about human beings that causes them to accept oppression when it's foisted upon them by the 'in-group' but not the out-group.

If we could discover that, it may be possible for us to change perceptions of who is part of the in-group and who isn't, and by the foment resistance to internal oppression.

I think Marx actually achieved this exact thing by recasting society as social classes, the bourgeoise versus the proletariat or w/e. But, Marx's categories were essentially true in feudal society's and then misapplied to capitalist ones. We need not make up things like he did.

The truth is, we are oppressor and oppressed. Where this gets muddled is the idea that 'we are the government.' That idea lends legitimacy to all state actions, as if the man killed by a cop has committed suicide or something.

It seems the government control of schools and information means they will always have a major advantage on controlling who the in-group is perceived to be.

Therefore, libertarians won't have a chance to reshape that view until that narrative becomes unsupportable by every-day reality. Meaning, sadly, once again, that the first chance for ideological realignment in the US can come only with a delegitimizing crisis, something much larger and worse than the '08 housing crash, which the intellectuals managed and shaped to their whim just fine.

It's gonna have to be something life-threatening to the republic. A major financial crash, or the debt exploding, or the dollar devaluing--or WWIII.

Were we communists, and thereby not aligned to the NAP, that would mean fomenting revolution ourselves, creating that crisis ourselves. But we cannot do it, not positively. But we can do it in reverse, in NAP-friendly negative terms.

By that I mean we can leave and then create a society which is free, and which will brain-drain, talent-drain, and investment-drain the US and the rest of the world. A seastead would be a great way to do that.

The resulting drains will bring about the US fiscal crises much sooner than otherwise. The governments of the whole world is reliant on basic similarity to keep their population in check. Provide a way out and that functions as citizen-competition, which can have a very strong check on the policies of those other countries, because politicians will be forced to do a political calculation as to whether, for instance, raising taxes to X level will result in another million citizens migrating to a libertarian seastead :P