[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-26, 20:28, said:

I believe that every individual is sovereign. By that I mean that every individual has a right to attempt to survive, that every individual owns their own body, that every individual owns the products of their own labor, mental or physical, and nobody else has a legitimate claim against those things. By the same token, an individual has no legitimate claim against those same things owned by other individuals.

Do you agree or disagree?

Fine

Let's play.

I agree with this set of claims. Now what...

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-26, 20:28, said:

I believe that every individual is sovereign. By that I mean that every individual has a right to attempt to survive, that every individual owns their own body, that every individual owns the products of their own labor, mental or physical, and nobody else has a legitimate claim against those things. By the same token, an individual has no legitimate claim against those same things owned by other individuals.

Do you agree or disagree?

Fine

Let's play.

I agree with this set of claims.

However, I also believe that individual have freedom to contract. They can make a voluntary decision to surrender the products of their own labor to third parties (including the "government").

They can also make a voluntary decision of the following form: "The citizens of territory 'foo' have chosen to create a social contract. By agreeing to live in territory 'foo', I agree to abide by the terms of said social contract, even if this limits my own personal sovereignty."

People can chose to withdraw from said social contract. The cleanest way would be to withdraw from territory 'foo' after first discharging all debts, selling off all your property, etc.

In theory, one could chose to withdraw from the contract by breaking the contract. For example, choosing to live within territory foo while refusing to pay taxes. However, in this case one should expect that the government will take action to enforce the contract. And, this action can extend all the way though to coercive force.

Please note: I have framed this all in terms of Lockean constructs like the "social contract". If you prefer, one can arise at precisely the same position using the "invisible hand" as did Nozick in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.

[Zelandakh]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-27, 05:11, said:

I agree with this set of claims. Now what...

It sounds like the start to a standard libertarian argument that the rich cannot be taxed such as here.

Interestingly, I have found that almost everyone, regardless of political ideals, tends to believe that their viewpoint is based on the rights of individuals. That is as true for my right-wing nationalist partner as for me as a [European] (not American (left) or German (right)) liberal, even though our positions are almost diametrically opposite. Not quite - my opposite usually comes out roughly as Communism - but close enough.

Nationalists focus on the rights of individuals from the State against those of foreigners or other groups that they think should have fewer rights. Libertarians focus on the rights of individual freedom versus the rights of the State. Communists focus on the rights of individuals over the Proletariat. Socialists focus on the rights of indivuals to receive a basic quality of life over the rights of the rich. And classical liberals focus on the rights of individuals to be free and equal.

This last word, equal, is fundamentally the difference between (classical) Liberalism and (right) Libertarianism. Both philosophies are built around freedom and individualism with limited central government, many negative rights and generally lassez-faire economics. The most important philosphical difference is that liberals also attach importance to equality. The similarities are no accident. Libertarianism grew from the term liberal being corrupted in America to mean social liberalism through the New Deal era.

Quote

Many of us call ourselves "liberals." And it is true that the word "liberal" once described persons who respected the individual and feared the use of mass compulsions. But the leftists have now corrupted that once-proud term to identify themselves and their program of more government ownership of property and more controls over persons. As a result, those of us who believe in freedom must explain that when we call ourselves liberals, we mean liberals in the uncorrupted classical sense. At best, this is awkward and subject to misunderstanding.
Here is a suggestion: Let those of us who love liberty trade-mark and reserve for our own use the good and honorable word "libertarian".

The person that is generally credited with promoting the term is Murray Rothbard. Since he was opposing interventionist (New Deal) policies this naturally appealed primarily to conservatives. Of course there are also left-libertarians but this term tends to be used more as a general term for any left wing anti-authoritarian ideal rather than a coherent philosophy in its own right.

Anyway, enough of the history. What it means is that I am, in the original 1955 sense, a libertarian in American terms. Yet somehow I tend to find myself disagreeing with almost everything modern (right) libertarians say. Hence I prefer the (UK) term liberal even though that means something quite different in the USA. It also means that I could probably find common ground with Larry quite easily if he were to engage in debate rather than trolling. As I have written, I would welcome that but am not holding my breath. We will see what comes of this latest initiative and where it leads. So far, we have just more of the same - questions and no debate.

[hrothgar]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-27, 05:11, said:

Let's play.

Now for my question:

Why would I want to have this conversation with you when I could have it with David Friedman instead? (Admittedly, I've already discussed this with David on several occasions, however, it seems very unlikely that you're going to come up with some brilliant point that has escaped him)

[Zelandakh]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-27, 05:55, said:

Why would I want to have this conversation with you when I could have it with David Friedman instead?

Please do Richard. Let this be a final test of whether ldrews is capable of any sort of positive contribution to BBF.

[hrothgar]

Zelandakh, on 2017-December-27, 05:21, said:

The person that is generally credited with promoting the term is Murray Rothbard. Since he was opposing interventionist (New Deal) policies this naturally appealed primarily to conservatives.

Rothbard was a thoroughly nasty piece of work.

Introducing him into conversations quickly leads to discussions around whether or not he was "really" a racist or just pretended to be one to scam money from Ron Paul acolytes...

So let's not go there

[barmar]

Please stop the petty bickering between ldrews, hrothgar, and Zelandakh. If you want to argue about politics, that's fine. If your posts are trollish, that's acceptable as free speech.

But I don't think any of us are interested in the name-calling and personal attacks. We all know how you feel about each other, it's time to give it a rest.

And Zel, keep the arguments here in the WC. Whether ldrews is a troll in a political discussion should have no bearing on how we treat him in the bridge-related areas of the site. Hrothgar is also an a-hole here in the WC, yet he's a fine bridge player.

[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-27, 05:11, said:

Fine

Let's play.

I agree with this set of claims.

However, I also believe that individual have freedom to contract. They can make a voluntary decision to surrender the products of their own labor to third parties (including the "government").

They can also make a voluntary decision of the following form: "The citizens of territory 'foo' have chosen to create a social contract. By agreeing to live in territory 'foo', I agree to abide by the terms of said social contract, even if this limits my own personal sovereignty."

People can chose to withdraw from said social contract. The cleanest way would be to withdraw from territory 'foo' after first discharging all debts, selling off all your property, etc.

Wow! OK, this is the type of discussion I was looking for. I wish to understand where you are coming from, why, and how you got there.

So, if an individual is born in a territory, does the birth signify that the individual has agreed to the social contract? If not, at what point is the individual considered to have agreed to the social contract? Is this a conscious agreement? Do the citizens of the territory have any inherent right to impose the social contract on unwilling residents?

I am full agreement with the statement that individuals have freedom to contract and can decide to surrender products of their labor to another individual or group. But sans any agreement, the group has no legitimate claim against the individual. And the individual has no legitimate claim against the group.

But then, when living with others, the problem arises of individuals who do not respect the ownership of others, or who initiate force or threat of force against others in order to acquire what they want. And there is always the problem of disagreements and/or misunderstandings of agreements, and how to resolve such disputes. And so we reach the justification for some type of mechanism for handling these problems, i.e., some form of authority to resolve/enforce agreements and restrain the initiation of force.

This also raises the question of how to pay for such a mechanism. Historically in the US the interested citizens formed an association and divided the costs among themselves. This was how early Sheriffs and schools were paid for.

So, keeping the peace, protecting private property, resolving disputes are necessary functions that have to be performed if individuals are going to be able to live together peacefully. Beyond that what are the justifications for a centralized mechanisms, i.e., government? Common defense perhaps.

[Zelandakh]

barmar, on 2017-December-27, 10:11, said:

If your posts are trollish, that's acceptable as free speech.

There seems to me to be a fundamental difference between a contributing member of the BBF community with a prickly side and someone who has thus far shown himself only to be interested in internet trolling.

If you are saying that being a troll is free speech but calling someone an arsehole for acting like one is not allowed then I am sorry but I find this a very strange line. As I wrote before, if you want to ban me then do but do not expect me to give him a modicum of respect while he acts in this way. if that means calling the fückwit a fückwit, then so be it.

From my point of view, he is not welcome here for so long as he only trolls and does not contribute anything.

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-27, 10:35, said:

So, if an individual is born in a territory, does the birth signify that the individual has agreed to the social contract? If not, at what point is the individual considered to have agreed to the social contract?

The act of residing in a territory controlled by a government imposes the social contract on an individual.
Conscious choice / agreement don't really enter into it.

However, as I mentioned before, a "woke" individual may may be in a position to withdraw from the social contract; Extraterritoriality being one such option.

Quote

Do the citizens of the territory have any inherent right to impose the social contract on unwilling residents?

The citizens do not have a right to impose the social contract on unwilling residents.
However, the government, as the properly constitution agent of said citizens does.
(Feel free to reference "Monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force as a defining characteristic of the state")

Note that from a practical perspective, the Whiskey Rebellion pretty much settled this issue in the United States

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2017-December-27, 10:11, said:

Please stop the petty bickering between ldrews, hrothgar, and Zelandakh. If you want to argue about politics, that's fine. If your posts are trollish, that's acceptable as free speech.

But I don't think any of us are interested in the name-calling and personal attacks. We all know how you feel about each other, it's time to give it a rest.

You do understand the rank hypocrisy of claiming that trolling is acceptable because of "free speech", but name calling and personal attacks are not because you find this type of speech annoying?

[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-27, 11:25, said:

The citizens do not have a right to impose the social contract on unwilling residents.
However, the government, as the properly constitution agent of said citizens does.
(Feel free to reference "Monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force as a defining characteristic of the state")

The government certainly has the ability to impose the social contract through the use of overwhelming force. To me that does not constitute a "right". Unless, of course, you subscribe to the doctrine that "Might makes Right".

To me the use of force in that way is inherently immoral. The fact that I sometimes passively participate does not make it any less immoral.

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-27, 11:59, said:

The government certainly has the ability to impose the social contract through the use of overwhelming force. To me that does not constitute a "right". Unless, of course, you subscribe to the doctrine that "Might makes Right".

To me the use of force in that way is inherently immoral. The fact that I sometimes passively participate does not make it any less immoral.

De gustibus non est disputandum

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-27, 11:59, said:

The government certainly has the ability to impose the social contract through the use of overwhelming force. To me that does not constitute a "right". Unless, of course, you subscribe to the doctrine that "Might makes Right".

To me the use of force in that way is inherently immoral. The fact that I sometimes passively participate does not make it any less immoral.

De gustibus non est disputandum

[awm]

It may be worth thinking about how the social contract applies to children.

It's pretty obvious that a small child has very little chance of survival on his or her own. Infants are not really equipped to feed themselves, nor to make informed decisions about entering into contracts. But realistically we are not going to let children "attempt to survive" on their own; besides being cruel this will basically be the end of the human race!

So despite all the rhetoric about "sovereign individuals" the reality is that children are going to rely on other people to help them survive and make critical decisions on their behalf, at least up to some "age of majority" where they are deemed able to make their own decisions and have some realistic chance of survival without significant help. These other people will in many cases be the child's parents, but there are often situations where the parents may be unavailable or incompetent in some way, and other caregivers will take over.

The question then, is whether the caregivers are "owed" anything for taking care of the child during his or her formative years, whether the caregivers have some particular responsibility to the child (who, after all, is not generally able to select his or her own caregivers and is somewhat at their mercy at least in the early years), and what sort of contracts the caregivers can enter into on the child's behalf.

I would argue that modern society provides a great deal to young children -- in particular they are provided with a right of food and shelter (even if their parents are not able/willing to provide such), with a basic education (even if their parents are not sufficiently educated/interested to provide such), with basic health care including vaccines (even if the parents are poor/not doctors/crazy anti-vaxxers, etc), and with protection from various abuses by unscrupulous or incompetent caregivers... as well as the basic protections all citizens receive. In exchange, the children are obligated to follow the laws of the society when they grow up (including paying taxes, etc) at least until they undertake whatever methods are necessary to switch to a different society.

There was basically no way to get "informed consent" from a newborn to such a deal, and keeping this in mind there are presumably ethical limits to such bargains ("you will be a slave for the rest of your life" is NOT an acceptable "obligation"), but the principle of requiring some repayment (once the child becomes an adult) for the resources spent on his or her upbringing seems sound.

[ldrews]

awm, on 2017-December-27, 13:12, said:

It may be worth thinking about how the social contract applies to children.

It's pretty obvious that a small child has very little chance of survival on his or her own. Infants are not really equipped to feed themselves, nor to make informed decisions about entering into contracts. But realistically we are not going to let children "attempt to survive" on their own; besides being cruel this will basically be the end of the human race!

So despite all the rhetoric about "sovereign individuals" the reality is that children are going to rely on other people to help them survive and make critical decisions on their behalf, at least up to some "age of majority" where they are deemed able to make their own decisions and have some realistic chance of survival without significant help. These other people will in many cases be the child's parents, but there are often situations where the parents may be unavailable or incompetent in some way, and other caregivers will take over.

The question then, is whether the caregivers are "owed" anything for taking care of the child during his or her formative years, whether the caregivers have some particular responsibility to the child (who, after all, is not generally able to select his or her own caregivers and is somewhat at their mercy at least in the early years), and what sort of contracts the caregivers can enter into on the child's behalf.

I would argue that modern society provides a great deal to young children -- in particular they are provided with a right of food and shelter (even if their parents are not able/willing to provide such), with a basic education (even if their parents are not sufficiently educated/interested to provide such), with basic health care including vaccines (even if the parents are poor/not doctors/crazy anti-vaxxers, etc), and with protection from various abuses by unscrupulous or incompetent caregivers... as well as the basic protections all citizens receive. In exchange, the children are obligated to follow the laws of the society when they grow up (including paying taxes, etc) at least until they undertake whatever methods are necessary to switch to a different society.

There was basically no way to get "informed consent" from a newborn to such a deal, and keeping this in mind there are presumably ethical limits to such bargains ("you will be a slave for the rest of your life" is NOT an acceptable "obligation"), but the principle of requiring some repayment (once the child becomes an adult) for the resources spent on his or her upbringing seems sound.

A child does not choose to be born (at least I think that) and therefore incurs no obligation to its parents or society. However, an argument can be made that society has some kind of claim because of the resources spent in raising the child. A possible resolution might be to present the child, at the age of maturity, a bill for the costs, repayment to be scheduled. The mature child may choose to accept the obligation as part of remaining a member of the society, or refuse the bill and leave the society. Now we have informed and conscious agreement to the social contract.

Of course the social contract must be comprehensible in its entirety in order for the agreement by the individual to be effective.

I have often thought that the rights, privileges, and obligations of citizenship should be accepted by conscious agreement at the age where such consciousness is present. And revokeable at any time with consequent loss of rights and privileges.

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-27, 14:15, said:

Now we have informed and conscious agreement to the social contract.

The decision not to withdraw from the social contract is more than sufficient.

If folks don't like it here in the US, then can always - say - run off to Mexico...

Alternatively, if you are going to live in a country, you are damn well expected to live by its laws, ridiculous claims about your moral right to violate them aside...

[ldrews]

hrothgar, on 2017-December-27, 15:14, said:

Alternatively, if you are going to live in a country, you are damn well expected to live by its laws ridiculous claims about your moral right to violate them aside...

That would certainly be true for visitors, green card holders, and naturalized immigrants. They all had a choice to come or not. Not so with people born in the US. So you are merely "enslaving" the future generation in order to placate your sense of unease. But that is to be expected from people in a privileged class.

Would you apply the same reasoning to Germany in the 1930's where the prevailing social contract included the Holocaust? After all, Hitler was freely elected and the populace, in general, did not object. They were "damn well" expected to live by its laws, ridiculous claims of moral rights aside.

[hrothgar]

ldrews, on 2017-December-27, 15:28, said:

That would certainly be true for visitors, green card holders, and naturalized immigrants. They all had a choice to come or not. Not so with people born in the US. So you are merely "enslaving" the future generation in order to placate your sense of unease. But that is to be expected from people in a privileged class.

Would apply the same reasoning to Germany in the 1930's where the prevailing social contract included the Holocaust? After all, Hitler was freely elected and the populace, in general, did not object. They were "damn well" expected to live by its laws.

How does the old saying go...

Quote

“As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress.

Congratulations on concluding this experiment so efficiently.

(Though honestly, asserting that paying taxes violates your own personal morals was pretty much equally effective at shutting down intelligent conversation)

[cherdano]

1. I think quite a few people who object to ldrews being called "troll" don't understand the term. It's not a meaningless insult, but rather has a fairly precise meaning.
A troll is someone who tries to sabotage discussion by generating outrage. This is done by posting insincere opinions or provocative opinions, not for the purpose of generating more interesting discussion, but in order to generate outrage. I.e., they are trying to get the discussion off track by making posts that pretend to be genuine opinions, but in fact are just made because they hope they would make other posters upset.

2. I get the sense that many of the moderators haven't read as many ldrews posts as, e.g., Zel. If Zel's seemingly infinite patience (see e.g. the climate change thread) finally runs out with someone and he starts calling them an f*cking a*hole trollish piece of s*t, then maybe it is worth consider the possibility that this someone has proved again and again that their role in this forum is to choose to be a f*cking a*hole trollish piece of s*t. This may or may not have anything to do with their real life personality; for all we know they may have chosen a more productive role even in online forum under other circumstances (say, a forum with actual moderation). But it should be a strong suggestion about their BBF personality.

If you don't think it is accurate to call ldrews a "troll", maybe you should revisit the post where he suggested that NFL players who choose to kneel peacefully during the national anthem at NFL games should be called "terrorists". Maybe, like nige1, you really think that there is value to be gained by discussing the subtle differences between a group of people conspiring to kill large numbers of civilians in order to terrorise an entire population, and a group choosing to kneel down during the national anthem. Maybe ldrews thinks that. Maybe ldrews really thinks they should both be labelled "terrorists". Personally, I don't think ldrews is that idiotic, and he only posted it because he thought it might beget upset responses from BBF posters sympathetic to the BLM cause.

There is a reason trolls get banned in well-moderated forums - their existence makes the discussion worse. That's not an unfortunate side effect of their contributions - it is their goal.

Of course, banning trolls is a hassle for moderators (they might try to come back etc.), and hence there are good selfish reasons for BBF moderators not to ban trolls. But I would be a little more sympathetic if they were able to admit that the only reason not to ban trolls is the hassle involved - BBF itself would undoubtedly be better off if trolls were to get banned.