[Eran]

This defeats the point of the free health-care. Eran, you will still be dividing service between the rich and the poor.

Here I thought that the point of free health-care was to make sure that poor people get adequate treatment.

Now I find that the point of a free health-care system is to restrict the quality of health-care we all can obtain to the lowest common denominator?

Under my definition of the term this is governance.

Close enough. I don't have anything against governance as such. My opposition is to government.

This is an ambiguous proposition. Do you mean military power? Economic policy? Do you mean authority over social policy? Judgment's regarding legal procedure? These are not a single thing called "powers".

No, there isn't. The answer is that each power should reside at the most local level possible. Thus national defence has to stay with the national government, but responsibility for schools, streets, wages, drug control, pornography, gun control, health-care, etc, etc. should be at the local level (with inter-local-governmental cooperation as necessary).

Again, this is a far second best to leaving those powers with individuals.

The ambiguity here is problematic. There is a necessity for a division of powers mandated explicitly in our constitution. I may be expected to understand what you mean, but I do not, it is not explained by what you say, what does "alone" and "home" mean to you? The implications are enormous given the influence of wealth and the potential lethality of violence.

I use the "left alone in their own homes" phrase to highlight the inevitably coercive and intrusive nature of government. It forces itself and its rules on every citizen, and thus is ready to use force even against perfectly peaceful and harmless people.

Ideally everyone votes on everything and everyone has the power to withdraw from agreements, without the power to withdraw they would have a veto power so that nothing done in their name is something they don't actively support. Nothing would happen in this case which was not with the full consent of those affected.

So ideally, people couldn't be forced to pay taxes or obey drug prohibition laws, right?

IT appears that your "government" is merely a voluntary organisation of all who choose to vote and abide by the decisions of the majority. I have no problem with it under those terms.

Did occupied Poland in 1940 have a government in your language?

No. It was under military occupation. Not the same thing.

Was the Nazi government "perceived as legitimate" or "illegitimate"?

It was perceived as legitimate in Germany, but not in Poland (at least not early on; those things change over time)

If it was "perceived as illegitimate", was the General Government therefore not a government? And if not, was Poland therefore in "anarchy", your dream state?

Poland was under military occupation, not ruled by a government. The military occupation was, in turn, answerable to a foreign government, but not to a Polish one.

As for anarchy being my "dream state", I really think you know better by know. But just in case you are genuinely confused, let me clarify.

My "dream state" is one in which the NAP is considered the fundamental principle regarding the legitimate use of force. Every society in which that is the case is an anarchy, but not every anarchy is a society in which that is the case. Get it?

[Suska]

I don't have anything against governance as such. My opposition is to government.

That's not a distinction I would make. They are the same word in different tenses.

No, there isn't. The answer is that each power should reside at the most local level possible. Thus national defence has to stay with the national government, but responsibility for schools, streets, wages, drug control, pornography, gun control, health-care, etc, etc. should be at the local level (with inter-local-governmental cooperation as necessary)... Again, this is a far second best to leaving those powers with individuals.

But this doesn't explain anything and it's beginning to seem like dogma. You're just applying a rule instead of a principle.

highlight the inevitably coercive and intrusive nature of government.

More dogma.

So ideally, people couldn't be forced to pay taxes or obey drug prohibition laws, right?

The problem of drawing parallels is that a move to such a non-system seems to involve a serious paradigm shift in people's thinking.

merely a voluntary organisation of all who choose to vote and abide by the decisions of the majority

"merely" ...? And again, "majorty" is meaningless.

Use of NAP legalism is silly Eran. A familiarity with court cases will, I'm sure, demonstrate the difficulty of assigning "initiation" - if you drew a line anywhere you would have our current system, which is to say, most likely you would have corporate legal domination as we have today.

[Eran]

That's not a distinction I would make. They are the same word in different tenses.

Having similar etymology doesn't preclude substantive material differences. "Government" is a single organisation, using force (or the threat of force) to impose its decisions on the population. "Governance" is a much more open term, referring to any number of arrangements by which members of society establish and enforce rules.

"Governance" can take the form of an ordinary government, a military occupation, a violent anarchy or a peaceful anarchy.

Use of NAP legalism is silly Eran. A familiarity with court cases will, I'm sure, demonstrate the difficulty of assigning "initiation" - if you drew a line anywhere you would have our current system, which is to say, most likely you would have corporate legal domination as we have today.

Not at all. There may well be difficulties in specific cases - such legal difficulties exist under any legal system. Judges sit, listen to the facts, and make a determination. Naturally, NAP in its raw form isn't enough - it is merely the foundation upon which more specific legal principles are erected.

[Suska]

Governance and government are different tenses of the same word, that doesn't mean they have a similar etymology. It's more like buy and buying. Governance is the action form of government.

Your notion of wiping the slate clean and starting on an NAP foundation is essentially nonsense. Not only is it already an essential part of criminal justice today much more has been very necessarily added.

[SolarCross]

The point isn't to

wipe the slate clean and start on an NAP foundation

it is to realise no individual or group should get special exemption even if they have a funny flag and call themselves the government. If I can't tax (steal) neither can they. If I can't murder neither can they.

[Eran]

1. Governance is the act of governing. Governments govern. However, there are other forms of governance that do not involve government. Many voluntary organisations, for example, define rules and methods of governance, without having a government.

In the political context, I am advocating a society in which governance is dispersed amongst multiple organisations. None of them singly, nor all of them collectively, constitute government. Yet they conduct the function of governance within society.

2. Your answer shows why using NAP isn't nonsense. True, much of it is already part of the criminal justice system as applied to individuals. The "much more" that has been added tends to contradict the NAP, especially in the context of government actors.

To be clear, I don't realistically expect a libertarian revolution, at the end of which the slate will be clean. In practice, I expect, at best, a gradual process whereby exceptions to the NAP are gradually reduced and eliminated.

[Suska]

Pedantry, fine. In a political context the distinction can be useful, but linguistically your formula is nonsense. A group of governing groups is government, you just hate (your) government.

This is not the Libertarian forum and we've heard your nonsense already too often. You want to say taxation is theft, you want to say government is tyranny because you have an opinion about YOUR government. I'll say it again, it entitles me to call you extremists, but this is not the place for your dogmatism.

Rationally speaking taxation is taxation and governance is government and the conditions vary. If you dispute this I suggest you go find a Libertarian forum thread and do your little voodoo chant over there.

[Eran]

A group of governing groups is government, you just hate (your) government.

I hate any organisation (or group of organisations) which uses aggression. Mine and all other governments (in the sense normally understood in the context of politics) do use aggression, and so I object to them.

While a forced monopoly, by virtue of being a forced monopoly, will always use aggression, a group of organisations, freely contracted or dismissed, could (though is not guaranteed to!) perform the function of governance without aggression, and this win my support.

The difference isn't pedantic or semantic - it is substantive and critical.


This entire discussion was prompted by your statement that "Taxation in itself is not certainly involuntary."

Reasonable people can disagree as to whether taxation is theft or not, but I don't see any reasonable room to argue that taxes can ever be voluntary.

[Suska]

The point is you use the special language of your creed, which I do not accept. I don't accept it because it is basically just an attaching of your opinion to a word. You co-opt the word as if it were your own. So government is force and taxation is theft... These are nonsensical statements outside your weird little cult mentality. In engineering a governor is a device that governs - as distinct from a mechanism for delivering force, and governments have long ago effectively rationalized the need for taxation even if you do go out of your way to ignore the rationale.

I don't deny that our current situation is problematic, I don't think our views are very divergent, why do you feel a need to indoctrinate me in your newspeak? In fact, why can't you even understand that it is that?

I will always stand with the position of language as art. You will never change that. I will always criticize language that is artless. You will never change that. You think you have some superior process whereby you can discern the true meaning of these words, what this means is you have a custom dialect. It may very well play out in the Libertarian forum that in order to even be understood I must adapt myself to your idiosyncrasies. I don't feel the need to do that here though I do not have a language of Anarchism; I have a language of making sense of my experience and I feel free (I feel correct) to use language as inevitably imprecise, potentially meaningful, and most correctly a lot of fun.

[Eran]

I am trying to use precise terms. There is a real, substantive, morally-relevant difference between "government" (conventionally understood) and "governance" in general.

Set aside semantics, and join me in the Libertarianism (or even Anarchism) forum for a discussion of how it is that all governments ever created and, in fact, any organisations fitting the generally-accepted (not my creed's) definition of "government" must, by definition, be engaged in initiation of force (which, for short, I call "aggression").

Many people believe that the initiation of force is legitimate under certain circumstances (e.g. if it is done in compliance with a democratic constitution). My difference with them is, again, substantive, not semantic.

If you don't like my words, by all means, suggest your own, as long as your terminology preserves real-world differences. I will gladly adopt your language.

[SolarCross]

All you need to know about the right of governments to kill and steal -->> Government is magic

[Suska]

I know the arguments, I appreciate the sense they make. In my opinion there's quite a lot more to it than the labels suggest or the descriptions encompass. I look at the world in my own way, but the arguments have all been made to death and I don't think systems matter really, I think language is being abused if it's used for technicalities, it means more as nonsense sounds, in that case its music, a better way. Poetry and wisdom. I don't like to talk politics, talk of anarchism is a way of presenting the responsibility I take for myself for instance, in reality ideals are dangerous and difficult, and the entire action of mankind is equally suspect of harm.

[Demosthenes]

I have to find that I strongly agree with the OP.

I am no Libertarian and won't dare define Anarchy in their terms. As such, though of course the ideal is no government, the reality is indeed, as little as is humanly possible and what is left should serve the most number of people in all its actions.

To wit: Meeting basic needs: Food, medicine, shelter, community (to some small extent), and defense (Absolutely, only defense, not "offense").

I don't see that these things need to be achieved by large overbearing mechanisms either. Most of them... with this notion of community I suspect, can be easily organized.

As for the tax discussion, if there is no money there are no taxes. End of discussion.

[Someone5]

Anarchists don't want "the smallest government possible". They want no government at all. That's what separates them from non-anarchist libertarians, for example.

Correction; it's what separates them from communists. Libertarians live in some other fantasy land--AKA Unicorn Capitalism.

A single-payer health-care system refers to a system in which a single organisation in the whole country pays for everybody's healthcare costs. You could, I guess, build such system entirely on voluntary contributions. But that's not what advocates typically have in mind. Much more likely, such single-payer would be funded through taxation, i.e. through government.

Such a system is inconsistent with libertarianism, not to mention anarchy.

It's possibly inconsistent with anarchism; on the other hand the abolition of property that would follow from an anarchist revolution would make the concept kind of meaningless anyway.