SolarCross wrote: Hypothetically it would be possible to fund them directly and voluntarily and possibly with a lot less bureaucratic overhead and waste. The involvement in gov with roads always had more to do with their strategic interests in roads as means of moving troops around since at least Roman times and nothing to do with your supposed inability of civilians to do these for their own interests in trade.
This is correct.
Pants-of-dog wrote:For example, contract law. Contract law requires legislators to make it, judges to interpret it, and police or bailiffs to enforce it. These people, and the associated pages, janitors, lawyers, etc. all need to be paid, and they need buildings to work in, etc. And my taxes pay for all of this.
Contract law currently requires legislators, but doesn't
logically REQUIRE legislators. Kings can be the originators of contract law, so can the church (as was the case in much of the medieval period), or some private enterprise (such as family-clans as had been the case with the early Germanic
Weregild system) which is recognized by all potential contracting parties. Not to mention, that courts, lawyers, etc could all be privatized; they don't necessarily have to be connected to a third party monopolist of coercion.
As for the taxes you pay, I don't think the above case legitimizes taxation, its still theft and you would be morally correct to be pissed off about it.
Pants-of-dog wrote:By this I mean that essential aspects of capitalism necessarily require certain supports which create costs, and we pay are forced to pay those costs.
I would certainly agree that certain essential aspects of our current system of chrony-capitalism requires certain supports; especially since 90% of the monopolies in existence currently could not function without state protection and laws; like patent-law.
I think you are correct in your analysis that these supports are evil and that you shouldn't have to pay for them.
Pants-of-dog wrote:And I think it would be more correct to say that we do not pay for the whole system, but instead pay for the essential infrastructure that supports capitalism.
Yes, that would be more correct than your previous statement. Though there is no logical basis for the argument that a system of private property absolutism and free exchange would require any such infrastructure; I do agree that our current system which neither absolutizes private property rights nor allows for total free exchange is a monstrosity that should be abolished or seceded from in the pursuance of said abolition.
Pants-of-dog wrote:Then capitalism, as it currently stands, is unjustified.
Yes our current system is unjustified, I agree. Though I would hardly call it capitalism. The means of producing violence, security, and law are not privately owned; nor is the market characterized by entirely voluntary free exchanges, nor are individual property rights acknowledged as absolute.
We have an unjust system of the super rich using the mechanism of the state to protect them from what nature would demand; their unmitigated failure.
However, as anything unnatural, such an arrangement is ultimately untenable and will collapse eventually. The state propping up the billionaire class is akin to propping up a dead horse. Eventually your arms get tired.
XogGyux wrote:And yet you ignore how we arrived to this kind of system. This is how it was in the past, tiny communities of perhaps a handful of families on their own. But hey.... the easiest way to acquire more resources is to have a group of people come and steal (murdering if necessary) the resources of other, weaker people. That is why you have a police force and military to protect yourself against your neighbors (police) and against other countries.
Interestingly enough, the existence of a formal police force funded by the state is a somewhat new phenomena in human civilization and has almost entirely existed during the time of human culture where we have the most crime and social decay (last 300 years); however, neither the police nor the military need to be state funded.
For nearly 1,000 years of western history, most militaries in Europe were privately funded either directly by the king's property, or by the nobility; via their own personal assets. Likewise, stats have shown that private security groups can be more effective and efficient than a state-funded police force.
Indeed, after militaries became almost entirely public-funded via the auspices of a social contract regime; wars became bigger, bloodier, and more global than in any prior time in human history; one only has to look at the world wars for an example. the social contract theory has been responsible for more death and destruction than the patriarchal style regimes it attempted to replace, by an exponential degree.
XogGyux wrote:The other "burdens" of the system have also popped out through history for similar reasons. Public schools? It turns out that having a society based on dumb, ignorant people is usually a worse society than one that is not.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions and nearly NO public schools teach logic or critical thinking; hence we have the universalization of mediocrity in education making everyone equally retarded and equally compliant.
Under your argument, you should be
very PRO homeschooling then as an advancement over public education, as the academic performance is superior by every metric and is only 1/2000th of the cost; this being a privatized alternative to public education.
XogGyux wrote: The reason why the EPA and FDA and FCC, etc all exist is because in the past, at some point, the most powerful people took advantage of their power and made us sick with lead in the air we breathe, poison in the water we drink, etc.
The reasons these agencies exist is because public uproar and hysteria created bad legislation that allows evil companies to still exist so long as they are "more careful." A more just system would allow bad companies to be sued out of existence for making a bad product, executed if they did it intentionally, and go bankrupt from a massive drop in demand.
NOW, our FDA will almost never shuts down a company that behaves this way; rather, they get a fine and are able to continue business. Some companies are now even protected from the government as to prevent them from being sued at all; like Monsanto (See the Monsanto Protection Act), Vaccine Companies (look up the legislation on that sometime, or I can link it for you), and in some states even Beef Companies or other leading industries.
Likewise, many leaders in these regulatory agencies once worked or were in charge of the companies they now regulate; because they use their expertise in these companies to get hired by the state and appointed to these agencies, positions which are almost entirely non-elected. To many of us, that would appear like a conflict of interests, but that is to misunderstand the fact that it is in the very interest of these corporations for things like the FDA to exist. Big corporations don't want a totally free market; they want government subsidy and protection.
So; in the hysterical call for public safety, people traded away their freedom to these very same companies that hurt them in the first place. Now instead of a beef tycoon losing his company to bankruptcy because people stopped buying his toxic beef and he got sued for most his wealth, he now gets a fine and might even get hired by the FDA if he decides hes sick of the whole CEO schtick.
Meanwhile, your kid is still dead.
What was more just my friend? The former or the latter?
XogGyux wrote:To make such a statement is to ignore that not having a government means we pay another price, a much higher price in the form of a less civilized society that is less just and prone to violence.
The 20th century was the time when such a system as you are defending became the most universal and it was arguably the most violent, bloody, and crime-ridden of any we have recorded in human history. Perhaps you would like to clarify your meaning then?