SolarCross wrote:Not in Europe, Christians (though I guess they are not the only ones, I was wrong about that) have been working against slavery for at least a thousand years. The abolitionists of North America were following a precedent already set in Europe since at least the 7th century. The so-called Christians of the colonies were backsliding in that regard.
I have no disagreement with the point that chattel slavery is and was opposed to Christianity, but the idea of being in bondage was never opposed by Christianity, serfdom is a voluntarist and contractual form of slavery, even the word "serf" implies this meaning. The idea of slaves obeying their masters, in the New Testament (Ephesians 6 etc.), was applied to serfs in Europe, so the idea that slavery was opposed after the seventh century be European Christendom is disingenuous, Christianity has opposed the sort of chattel slavery as taught by the Saracens, but it never opposed a contractual voluntarist conception of slavery or indentured servitude. This was precisely my point to my wife regarding Scripture's teaching on the matter and this is technically also the only sort of slavery permitted by Anarcho-Capitalism as well, The idea of chattel slavery is not consistent with the Voluntarism of Anarcho-Capitalism either.
An-Cap and Scriptural thought on slavery are hard to differentiate at all.
EDIT: Also, as my wife mentioned in another thread, here is a Christian attempt at slavery reform (note, its not abolition, but is theologically regulated):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_NoirSolarCross wrote:Consider the case of Somerset v Stewart in 1772. The judges took into account over 800 years of legal precedent and could find no basis at all for one man to own another in English (Christianity inspired and guided) Common Law. You will note that this case reaffirmed the criminality of enslavement just four years before the US declaration of independence. The ugly truth of the American revolt was to that the real motive was to preserve slavery from Common Law precedent.
Once again, the case you site only reinforces my point that the abolitionist attitutude was a liberal innovation in the 18th and 19th centuries. NOTE: I am not saying opposition to
chattel slavery was unorthodox, I am saying abolitionism was unorthodox. Even the defenders of the states rights to have slaves by Confederate apologists still admitted the need to reform chattel slavery to more closely resemble biblical guidelines. Chattel slavery is wrong according to Christianity and Anarcho-Capitalism, but slavery itself is not.
SolarCross wrote:For a Christian that someone would be God, and since that God commanded "thou shalt not murder" it is an entirely a reasonable assumption that He would not consent to this contract.
Obviously, but in my example the billionaire is not a Christian. Like I said, there is no disagreement that such a contract would be impossible or automatically invalid if all parties shared a Christian worldview. There is no disagreement on that point.
SolarCross wrote:I have found the original post I made on it when I first heard of argumentation ethics.
Thanks for digging this up! From 2013 no less! I would say that your critique was valid assuming that the main presentation of argumentation ethics was the praxeological one, rather than the axiomatic one, I don't use the one you critiqued. If Potemkin ever responds to my post, you will witness a whole different animal.
SolarCross wrote:for example they go on and on about how the government is a violator of the NAP, but the truth is that it is government which basically enables the NAP to be a norm for weak civilian people through the government's self-restraint and positive enforcement. The NAP does not and cannot exist in the state of nature only within protected territory and only for so long as it is protected, it depends on might to have any chance of existing.
Egads!!!
That is the Marxist explanation of history.
*feels suddenly ill that his friend SolarCross used a Marxist argument*
*Throws up, feels a bit better, decides to continue...*Okay,
First of all, That is all horse shit.
That the strong desire to dominate the weak is not denied, but you assert this as incompatible with the NAP because the NAP could not exist given "might makes right" attitudes. This is simply untrue.
AnCaps are under no delusions that in a stateless society there will be actors who desire to violate the NAP, kill people and take their property. That is absurd.
AnCaps see the NAP as part-and-parcel of one's rational deducible right to appropriate something for themselves as property if unclaimed. The truth of this has nothing to do with whether people are violent or aggressive, they are.
The question is whether society can be stable without a state, the answer is yes, and in spite of people tending towards might-makes-right attitudes and for the same reasons the cold war did not end in a nuclear holocaust. The risk of mutually assured destruction.
People are most violence in a state of chaos, after a collapse like Rome's fall, but once things settle people end up realigning themselves with a natural order of land holders "haves" and peasants "have-nots." It is as much a state of nature that people want to dominate others as they don't want to be dominated, the fear of the latter as a "risk" will often temper their desire to aggressively pursue the former. This is why those societies that most closely approximate the An-Cap ideal were the longest lasting, such a Medieval-Renaissance Europe, Japanese Feudalism et al. It is natural and the balance of desire-to-dominate, and fear-of-domination, create a natural and generally peaceful balance.
The existence of a common-moral and religious system is what enables such an order to "Work" as contracts must have a common moral "language."
The decline of a common-moral and religious system is what eventually leads to statism, but statism is not necessary for the NAP, that misunderstands what the NAP is, the NAP is a right deduced from reason that people tend to observe naturally once the risk of mutually assured destruction forces them to temper their own "might-makes-right" ambitions.
Like I said, the fact that men fear death as much as they desire to kill is what makes the NAP work, not the State.SolarCross wrote:I am sure you try to square your political fads with scripture but why cast outside of your Christian scripture at all? Why not just be a Christian theocrat? I put it to you that ideology is just a synonym for religion, a political ideology is a set of ideas on:
- how the world is
- how we ought to act in this world
And the second rests upon the foundation of the first.
Dafuq bro?
First, I am not casting Scripture aside or trying to make religion comport to what I want politically, that is a slanderous claim. A bit below the belt if I do say. But I don't mind a bit of abuse from my frands.
Lets be clear, I am making the claim that an AnCap political system is
demanded by Scripture. But once again,
Ancap political views have only to do, for me, with what constitutes a valid form of governance, contracts, and theory of property.1. Scripture teaches that basically any mutual-consented voluntarist contract is binding,
even if they are immoral.
So do Ancaps.
2. Scripture sees the head of one's household and property as the only divinely instituted form of governance.
So do Ancaps.
3. Scripture sees land as belonging to the one who appropriated it, purchased, or justly acquired it.
So do Ancaps.
4. Scripture teaches that the only form of violence (excepting some special and extraordinary command from God on High), is the Just War Theory, which is basically the NAP.
Which is
essentially Ancap.
Everything else is a difference of moral-system, so I will say this. Ancaps act like consistent Christians, so if you want me to call myself a Christian theocrat instead of an Ancap, thats fine, but on all the most defining aspect of Ancap political ideaology, Christianity agrees.
So, its not that I am trying to act like an AnCap, Ancaps are trying to act like Medieval Christians.
SolarCross wrote:Ancaps arrive at a few "oughts" which coincide with Christianity's "oughts" but the underlying "is" is really profoundly different and that will lead to some very different "oughts". Where do you think ancap's basically atheistic assumptions and ideas of self-ownership can logically arrive on the "oughts" for homosexuality, drug use, prostitution etc? Mainstream ancaps don't see anything wrong in any of those things, its the individual's choice what they can do with their own biological property, but for Christians they are prosecutable sins exactly because they don't assume self-ownership but believe that mankind is God's property and thus subject to God's choices.
You are seeing a conflict where non exists. Ancaps are right-libertarians in the sense that they would argue that the Praxeological conditions of a stateless society will yield, by necessity, conservative social values. Hence, Ancaps arguing that homosexuality is not to be prosecuted with a state only reflects their opposition to the state; however, Hoppe himself argues that homosexuality itself is only prevalent because of high time preferences due to statism and that it would not last under stateless conditions (nor would any other decadent lifestyles); likewise, a property owner (according to Hoppe) has every right to expel homosexuals from his property (
).
You must understand, in the Old Testament, the system of "theonomy" where homosexuals, adulterers, horse-fuckers, blasphemers, etc. were punished with death, all occurred under Ancap conditions as directly prescribed by God,
the era of the Judges. In this system, authority to carry out the penology of this common-law code,
was incumbent upon individual property owners over their own kindred on their own lands. So, there was no "state" as a third-party monopolist of coercion when God first instituted his strictest laws and peneology and when the people wanted to adopt a "monarchy" God warned them against doing so through the Prophet Samuel because it was rejection of God ruling directly through His ministers (which had a similar role to the Pope in Feudal Europe) and because of its "aggressive" enforcement of things like taxation and conscription. (a classical Ancap argument, coming straight from God Himself).
To be Theocratic my friend, is to be Anarcho-Capitalist according to Scripture. To trade this condition for a state, is to reject the direct rule of God through his ministers, where the authority of the enforcing the covenant is given to heads of households over their own property.
SolarCross wrote:You may be able to ally with ancaps where your interests coincide such as on privatised healthcare and education but being one at the same time as being a christian is a contradiction.
Secular Ancaps are like any inconsistent nihilists, reality will correct them or "thin them out" when the proper time comes. Consistent Anarcho-Capitalism has no real similarity with western decadence, that is a caricature, not the reality and anyone who has read Hoppe knows this already.
Come home my friend. We need you for the Next Crusade.
- By wat0n
- By Tainari88
- By Skynet