It seems that you would rather play along with the current system and are not interested in rational arguments. It is than pointless for us to debate about libertarianism.
yup, must be a statist! pathetic.
Mark, all of your 'arguments' are simplistic pipe dreams and/or have not responded at all to specifics and even insulted my knowledge while presenting little. All my responses have to do with the gritty unfortunate reality that society has never functioned in the way you speak, so who is being irrational? The problems originate with property, not with government and anyone with any understanding of traditional peoples should know this. You could not improve on a HG society by instituting a 'not-government' of libertarianism where certain parts of the tribe could achieve extreme levels of wealth by exploiting others resources unfettered by law or god and altering their landscape and the life-cycle. Conversely, It is a complete falsity that would create such a similar habitat or dialogue like HG peoples by removing government, as it just creates more of a playground for humanities worst vices and control-dramas. The idea of ownership of land while others have no land, food, no access to hunting, fishing, and clean water, and being able to not pay for others suffering and compensation far fits my definition of stealing. If others could give two shits and arn't coerced to doing something about thw worlds ills other than their own sense of morality and charity, Should I praise the fact that I am free to clean the waters and repopulated the forests with a dustpan and an eyedropper? Seems like I would choose having others pay for that stuff right now rather than have the 'freedom' that you and others speak of. I've slept outside before and it ain't no picnic. freedom isn't always what it is cracked out to be.
Also btw, there ARE people that do not pay taxes for political reasons, they are called political tax protesters. There are some of which who havn't paid taxes due to and since the Vietnam War successfully. If this was any other era, or we were actually speaking about the mafia or any other overblown comparison, you would have your neck slit for not paying tribute, so to me thats progress. Its very easy to feel boxed in or stuck in the 'matrix' like realization of how we are not free, but the situation in the day to day is very freeing with the right mindset.
Since you don't actually want to engage in any actual issue you or I presented, I'll just say that the idea of donation based 'governance' and policy is completely unprecedented, even prior to systems of taxation. Please show me a 'rationalization' by stating that you yourself have donated money towards others education, health needs, retirement, and societal infrastructure and I will agree that no one has a right to 'steal' from you. Or is your income too held back from our evil and inefficient system for you to be so generous? Assuming the system you like is implemented and the world
doesn't become a place of infinite wealth and progress in libertarianism, if one is merely making ends meet, do you think they will 'donate' >10% of their 'wealth' to build a bridge 50 miles away? The one who is in denial is surely not the person that knows both sides of this discussion well, but one who acts on internet propaganda and their inherent sense of dissatisfaction for what
the world owes them, quite ironic for a take on liberty. Since for whatever reasons (anger, poor self-esteem, nothing better to do, whatever) people are driven to such nonsense quite frequently in these kinds of communities, I'd say my take is more radical than you think. Alot about these ideas is appealing even to myself but it is ultimately wrong when one actually considers the evidence instead of allowing others to think for you simply because they arn't the talking heads on C-SPAN.
by example I meant something like this:
- a libertarian community is created within a larger system (most plausible occurrence) on some kind of island/peninsula
- everyone makes their living on some kind of agriculture/livestock and some high tech type jobs outsourced to the statists.
- they insist on being 100% sustainable, so they will export goods but not buy them from outsiders.
if some people actually wanted the freedom to go to the other parts of the world, they might in fact face
a.) tons of 'non-indoctrination' about how awful and wrong those other people are b.) obstruction if they wanted to build bridges and have economical transport for getting their which they did not intend on paying for themselves. c.) any other obstructions through disabilities and other such things. In short its a ghetto of who has economic means.
now, in the event of ANY disaster of man or nature (say a fire) destroyed all the food supply, and the only working currency is the products and services they provide, there is absolutely no charity or infrastructure to return on these peoples goods and services, and there is now no economy to actually provide for any repair. the result would be like corporations where someone else would come in and buy everything out, and you'd have to either move or work for them etc...how is this freedom or progress? wouldn't it make way more sense to just steal from the rest of the population into what amounts to .00000003% of their income to prevent these people's collapse/takeover? particularly if they offered some kind of product that benefited the larger economy. To me that is my understanding of a functional capitalism.
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If you want to hear my personal dreams, I'd say like with anything my goal for society would be small and short term improvements in policy. This would mean legislation that allowed for eventual massive revaluation of damage done through the environment and industrial products, probably would include higher taxes for the top 1% of people. On a local level it would be returning more arts, sports, and education like a greek style polis. Other than that, society seems to be alot better than it has been in previous centuries, alot more consciousness, alot more interesting things going on. I don't think they will be outlawing meat anytime soon so I am not really too concerned about any other poisonous stress people obsess about.