Sure We can. Enough of Us need to withdraw Our consent, stand sovereign on Ethical ground, protecting One anOther from bullies...and best when We get free energy tech out in the open and obsolete the accounting for Our energy added into a system (the foundational function of "money" in any form).
They will have no more power than You or Me if They can't buy things and People to Their agendas.
On the subject of "positive VS negative rights" I rarely see anyone point out how cheap labor is a "positive right' is that it will always require positive law with a massive police state to enforce it, through various mechanisms, including rent seeking.
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Alas, based on Homes' argument I see a world today that "Requires supremacy."
We have allowed them, government, acting in loco parentis, to raise our children, or more correctly, restrict the maturation of our children to point where many, I suspect the majority today are 50 and 60 year old adolescents; emotional, incapable of critical thought, unable to manage their actions and lives, unreasoning, irresponsible, etc.
Children, not adults in other words, demanding, requiring their little father in Washington, Moscow, London or Paree clothe, feed guide, potty train them.
Salvageable? Maybe but first we need create a viable alternative. Maybe if someone works out plans for an Anarcho-capitalistic Distributed Nation, just might work.
The problem as I see it though is getting from talk the talk to walk the walk.
Correct. But God did not make "because I said so" rights. The rights make sense. They comport with, and flow from, the laws by which the universe operates. This means that even atheists can perceive them, follow them, and know that they are good.
Many years ago, I constructed a metatheory of justice--i.e., a theory of theories of justice--which I'll describe briefly. I started with four partial theories as follows. Justice involves relations of rights and obligations between individuals in a society. The rights of one person imply the obligations of others. Those rights and obligations are either equal or unequal. One who maintains they are equal accepts the libertarian theory of justice. One who asserts they are unequal--so that, say, Smith has rights that Jones doesn't possess, which implies that Jones has obligations to Smith that Smith doesn't have to Jones—endorses the authoritarian theory of justice. “Justice” is often defined as “reward or penalty as deserved.” Either all people are equally deserving of those rewards and penalties or not. Those who state that not all people are equally deserving claim that people deserve the positive or negative consequences of their behavior, which implies that positive and negative externalities should be internalized. Such people adopt the individualist theory of justice and hold, for instance, that those who produce wealth that benefits others deserve reward and those who harm others deserve penalty. Those who declare that all people are equally deserving, so that positive and negative consequences of behavior should be equally distributed, assume the collectivist theory of justice. That theory implies that all wealth that is produced in a society should be equally shared. Furthermore, those who harm others should be treated leniently instead of being singled out for punishment, and the harm they cause should be internalized by “society.”
I combined those four partial theories to produce four complete pure theories of justice: the libertarian individualist theory, the libertarian collectivist theory, the authoritarian collectivist theory, and the authoritarian individualist theory. All other theories of justice are mixed theories, which can be dismissed because they are internally inconsistent. Later, I used the four pure theories of justice to construct the political typology chart I've described before on this site. Briefly, at the lower right corner is pure libertarian individualism (e.g., anarcho-capitalism), at the lower left corner is pure libertarian collectivism (e.g., anarcho-communism), at the upper left corner is authoritarian collectivism (e.g., totalitarian communism), and at the upper right corner is authoritarian individualism (whose nearest example seems to be Chile under the rule of Augusto Pinochet). I believe the typology chart includes all possible political ideologies except one: political nihilism, which not only has no theory of justice, but which rejects the concept of justice. I have arguments that appear to show that all political ideologies represented on the chart, except the two libertarian ideologies in the lower corners, are internally inconsistent. A libertarian collectivist society is demonstrably impractical for any but very small groups, such as a nuclear family. Currently, I don't have an adequate refutation of political nihilism, the only form of anarchy that is not libertarian, which is characterized by chaos and disorder, and which appears to be what most people regard as anarchism.
Maybe it doesn't matter that nihilism isn't charted. It's a political spectrum. Does nihilism—which rejects everything—even need to be on such a spectrum?
According to an AI search, “Political nihilism is not a formal political ideology in the traditional sense but rather a critical or oppositional stance toward existing political, social, and moral structures.” My political typology chart is a two-dimensional spectrum rather than the traditional straight line. Some versions of the Political Compass are nearly identical to my chart. The Nolan Chart is an improvement over the traditional left-right spectrum. The Political Compass and my chart are improvements over the Nolan Chart. But I doubt that any two-dimensional chart is perfect. Incidentally, I wish I had a refutation of political nihilism. Moral nihilism is said to follow from error theory, which is a form of metaethical anti-realism that declares that all moral claims are false. Moral nihilism plus a premise rejecting social and political order is said to lead to political nihilism.
"I wish I had a refutation of political nihilism."
—I just woke up, so I am not going to work out anything completely, but maybe there is something using the performative contradiction.
Positions on a political spectrum are all about coming up with an amount of this vs. that (freedom vs. security, really) that is most conducive to living. Different people want different balances, but all want to be able to live, to be free from total captivity, and to be at least somewhat secure in person, property, and liberty.
The political nihilist claims that none of that stuff matters, but he does so while wanting to continue living, and living in a condition of non-captivity and security in person, property, and liberty. And you can prove it, in the midst of the conversation with him, by threatening any one of those things.
Thus, he is stuck in a performative contradiction: he claims that those things do not matter while simultaneously behaving as if they matter.
Thus, the notion that they matter rises to the level of an axiom, and nihilism is refuted.
You're right: Claiming that something doesn't matter while consistently acting as though it does matter is a performative contradiction. However, a performative contradiction occurs only if the speech act or behavior presupposes what it denies. Political nihilism denies only objective normative authority, not the ability to have preferences. If a political nihilist engages in an argument that assumes the objectivity of such a norm as political justice or injustice, then he commits a performative contradiction.
The sort of refutation I wish I had is one showing that acceptance of political nihilism necessarily entails a contradiction, which would establish the correctness of its denial. Similarly, denial of the law of identity is a self-contradiction, which demonstrates that the law is necessarily true. I have a possible refutation. I've previously mentioned that I have a principle of justice similar to the NAP from which I derived libertarianism. The principle seems to be self-evident in the sense that its denial is a self-contradiction. If I'm right, then political nihilism presupposes a contradiction. However, I could be mistaken.
I am not sure I would discount the performative contradiction yet. There might be something that the nihilist presupposes while denying. Hmmmm…
Maybe there's a hint in Hoppe's argumentation ethics. The nihilist wants to be able to express his opinions without being physically assaulted, and does so when he is arguing for nihilism. But it is precisely some objective norm (the restraint of his interlocutor, rooted in natural law) that enables him to do so. He is denying the existence of that upon which he is relying in order to deny its existence.
Same as yesterday, it's not even 6 AM, but there may be a useful direction in there somewhere :-)
Maybe so. At the least we seem to have refuted all possible political positions except pure collectivist libertarianism, pure individualist libertarianism, and political nihilism. If so, that's quite an achievement. Collectivist libertarianism is demonstrably impractical for any group much larger than an extended family. I doubted that many people would want to live in a society characterized by political nihilism, but I checked some data.
I performed an AI search to discover what percentages of the US and global populations are consistent libertarians, consistent individualist libertarians, consistent collectivist libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-communists, political nihilists, panarchists, and hermits. It's hard to get reliable estimates due to survey limitations, such as scarce data, ambiguity of terms, and reliance on self-identification. The figures I found were these: (1) Consistent libertarians: US: 7%, World: 5%; (2) Consistent individualist libertarians: US: 5%, World: 4%; (3) Consistent collectivist libertarians: US: 2%, World: 1%; (4) Anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-communists: US & World: less than 1% each; (5) Nihilists: US: 3%, World: 2%; (6) Panarchists: US & World: less than 1%; (7) Hermits: US & World: less than 1%.
According to an AI search, panarchy is distinguished by voluntary participation, explicit social contracts, and reversibility of membership. Within a panarchist framework, it's possible for any type of social or political system to exist, whether it has a government or not. It can be libertarian, authoritarian, individualist, collectivist, or nihilist. And panarchy doesn't rule out being an individual hermit.
If informed consent is all that's required to be consistent with libertarianism, then any social or political system or solitary lifestyle that fits within a panarchist framework qualifies as libertarian. I suspect panarchy would be much more popular if more people knew about it. A panarchist world in which all people could enjoy whatever political, social, or solitary lifestyle they choose provided they leave others alone to do the same should be found satisfactory by more people than any competing system.
Movements toward panarchy appear to be underway in the US. Specifically, they're the current secessionist and state sovereignty movements primarily motivated by frustration with political polarization and dissatisfaction with federal government policies. There are secessionist movements in 12 states, and according to a YouGov poll, about 23% of Americans support secession. Dozens of states participate in the state sovereignty movement motivated by the desire to reclaim state powers under the Constitution's 10th Amendment. That movement enjoys the greatest popularity in red states in the West and the South. The secessionist movement could result in another civil war with great loss of life and destruction of property. The movement for state sovereignty can achieve essentially the same goal without all the violence. Currently, according to information I got online, with some exceptions, the states having the highest percentage of registered Democrats seem to be concentrated mainly on the west coast and in the northeast, while Republican states seem to be found mostly in northern states west of the Rocky Mountains but east of the west coast, in the Midwest, and in the south. Democrats and Socialists can be separated from Republicans and Libertarians without literally dividing the country if federal officials comply with the 10th Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution grants the federal government only limited powers, and if it were strictly enforced, most powers would lie with the states and the people. Democrats and Socialists could live in blue states, while Republicans and Libertarians lived in red states. The people in each state could manage most political affairs the way they pleased. They would no longer have to contend with each other to prevent the other side from being in control of the federal government.
This process seems to be underway by other means. Political leaders in several states are said to have engaged in or attempted gerrymandering to benefit their party in the elections. Despite widespread criticism, this is not necessarily a bad idea. Many politicians of both parties appear to be unintentionally moving the U.S. in the direction of state sovereignty by using gerrymandering to disenfranchise members of the other party, which gives the disempowered voters an incentive to move to another state whose politics are more to their liking. People appear to be migrating to states whose political environments better suit their preferences. According to one online search, population shifts tend to be from blue states to red states. I suspect a successful state sovereignty movement would accelerate the process as people in blue states learned from their own experience that blue state policies are dysfunctional.
The way I look at it is, there are three categories that NONE of Us would say would be okay if someOne did them to Us.
The three Laws of Ethics (Natural Law expressed as the three things not to do):
1. Do not willfully and without fully informed consent hurt or kill the flesh of anOther
2. Do not willfully and without fully informed consent take or damage anything that does not belong to You alone
3. Do not willfully defraud anOther (which can only happen without fully informed consent)
No One would say, "Sure! Do #3 to Me! I'd love it!" And if You say "yes" to any of these, You are consenting and leaving the question unanswered.
If these Laws are kept by All, there would be no problems in the social structure. Of course... They're all broken by enough of Us now, and mostly Ones with money...
Well, you'll never solve the biggest crime in history...government.
Sure We can. Enough of Us need to withdraw Our consent, stand sovereign on Ethical ground, protecting One anOther from bullies...and best when We get free energy tech out in the open and obsolete the accounting for Our energy added into a system (the foundational function of "money" in any form).
They will have no more power than You or Me if They can't buy things and People to Their agendas.
On the subject of "positive VS negative rights" I rarely see anyone point out how cheap labor is a "positive right' is that it will always require positive law with a massive police state to enforce it, through various mechanisms, including rent seeking.
Yes, there is definitely no (real) right to cheap labor!
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Alas, based on Homes' argument I see a world today that "Requires supremacy."
We have allowed them, government, acting in loco parentis, to raise our children, or more correctly, restrict the maturation of our children to point where many, I suspect the majority today are 50 and 60 year old adolescents; emotional, incapable of critical thought, unable to manage their actions and lives, unreasoning, irresponsible, etc.
Children, not adults in other words, demanding, requiring their little father in Washington, Moscow, London or Paree clothe, feed guide, potty train them.
Salvageable? Maybe but first we need create a viable alternative. Maybe if someone works out plans for an Anarcho-capitalistic Distributed Nation, just might work.
The problem as I see it though is getting from talk the talk to walk the walk.
I will do my best. It's slow going, but I am working towards next steps.
We are given this right from God, not by people. “Endowed by the Creator with these inalienable truths…life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.”
Our governments need prayer
Correct. But God did not make "because I said so" rights. The rights make sense. They comport with, and flow from, the laws by which the universe operates. This means that even atheists can perceive them, follow them, and know that they are good.
CC - Great stuff.
Thank you! It requires a lot of thought, but it is worth it.
Many years ago, I constructed a metatheory of justice--i.e., a theory of theories of justice--which I'll describe briefly. I started with four partial theories as follows. Justice involves relations of rights and obligations between individuals in a society. The rights of one person imply the obligations of others. Those rights and obligations are either equal or unequal. One who maintains they are equal accepts the libertarian theory of justice. One who asserts they are unequal--so that, say, Smith has rights that Jones doesn't possess, which implies that Jones has obligations to Smith that Smith doesn't have to Jones—endorses the authoritarian theory of justice. “Justice” is often defined as “reward or penalty as deserved.” Either all people are equally deserving of those rewards and penalties or not. Those who state that not all people are equally deserving claim that people deserve the positive or negative consequences of their behavior, which implies that positive and negative externalities should be internalized. Such people adopt the individualist theory of justice and hold, for instance, that those who produce wealth that benefits others deserve reward and those who harm others deserve penalty. Those who declare that all people are equally deserving, so that positive and negative consequences of behavior should be equally distributed, assume the collectivist theory of justice. That theory implies that all wealth that is produced in a society should be equally shared. Furthermore, those who harm others should be treated leniently instead of being singled out for punishment, and the harm they cause should be internalized by “society.”
I combined those four partial theories to produce four complete pure theories of justice: the libertarian individualist theory, the libertarian collectivist theory, the authoritarian collectivist theory, and the authoritarian individualist theory. All other theories of justice are mixed theories, which can be dismissed because they are internally inconsistent. Later, I used the four pure theories of justice to construct the political typology chart I've described before on this site. Briefly, at the lower right corner is pure libertarian individualism (e.g., anarcho-capitalism), at the lower left corner is pure libertarian collectivism (e.g., anarcho-communism), at the upper left corner is authoritarian collectivism (e.g., totalitarian communism), and at the upper right corner is authoritarian individualism (whose nearest example seems to be Chile under the rule of Augusto Pinochet). I believe the typology chart includes all possible political ideologies except one: political nihilism, which not only has no theory of justice, but which rejects the concept of justice. I have arguments that appear to show that all political ideologies represented on the chart, except the two libertarian ideologies in the lower corners, are internally inconsistent. A libertarian collectivist society is demonstrably impractical for any but very small groups, such as a nuclear family. Currently, I don't have an adequate refutation of political nihilism, the only form of anarchy that is not libertarian, which is characterized by chaos and disorder, and which appears to be what most people regard as anarchism.
Maybe it doesn't matter that nihilism isn't charted. It's a political spectrum. Does nihilism—which rejects everything—even need to be on such a spectrum?
According to an AI search, “Political nihilism is not a formal political ideology in the traditional sense but rather a critical or oppositional stance toward existing political, social, and moral structures.” My political typology chart is a two-dimensional spectrum rather than the traditional straight line. Some versions of the Political Compass are nearly identical to my chart. The Nolan Chart is an improvement over the traditional left-right spectrum. The Political Compass and my chart are improvements over the Nolan Chart. But I doubt that any two-dimensional chart is perfect. Incidentally, I wish I had a refutation of political nihilism. Moral nihilism is said to follow from error theory, which is a form of metaethical anti-realism that declares that all moral claims are false. Moral nihilism plus a premise rejecting social and political order is said to lead to political nihilism.
"I wish I had a refutation of political nihilism."
—I just woke up, so I am not going to work out anything completely, but maybe there is something using the performative contradiction.
Positions on a political spectrum are all about coming up with an amount of this vs. that (freedom vs. security, really) that is most conducive to living. Different people want different balances, but all want to be able to live, to be free from total captivity, and to be at least somewhat secure in person, property, and liberty.
The political nihilist claims that none of that stuff matters, but he does so while wanting to continue living, and living in a condition of non-captivity and security in person, property, and liberty. And you can prove it, in the midst of the conversation with him, by threatening any one of those things.
Thus, he is stuck in a performative contradiction: he claims that those things do not matter while simultaneously behaving as if they matter.
Thus, the notion that they matter rises to the level of an axiom, and nihilism is refuted.
Something like that.
You're right: Claiming that something doesn't matter while consistently acting as though it does matter is a performative contradiction. However, a performative contradiction occurs only if the speech act or behavior presupposes what it denies. Political nihilism denies only objective normative authority, not the ability to have preferences. If a political nihilist engages in an argument that assumes the objectivity of such a norm as political justice or injustice, then he commits a performative contradiction.
The sort of refutation I wish I had is one showing that acceptance of political nihilism necessarily entails a contradiction, which would establish the correctness of its denial. Similarly, denial of the law of identity is a self-contradiction, which demonstrates that the law is necessarily true. I have a possible refutation. I've previously mentioned that I have a principle of justice similar to the NAP from which I derived libertarianism. The principle seems to be self-evident in the sense that its denial is a self-contradiction. If I'm right, then political nihilism presupposes a contradiction. However, I could be mistaken.
Yeah, philosophy can be hard!
I am not sure I would discount the performative contradiction yet. There might be something that the nihilist presupposes while denying. Hmmmm…
Maybe there's a hint in Hoppe's argumentation ethics. The nihilist wants to be able to express his opinions without being physically assaulted, and does so when he is arguing for nihilism. But it is precisely some objective norm (the restraint of his interlocutor, rooted in natural law) that enables him to do so. He is denying the existence of that upon which he is relying in order to deny its existence.
Same as yesterday, it's not even 6 AM, but there may be a useful direction in there somewhere :-)
Maybe so. At the least we seem to have refuted all possible political positions except pure collectivist libertarianism, pure individualist libertarianism, and political nihilism. If so, that's quite an achievement. Collectivist libertarianism is demonstrably impractical for any group much larger than an extended family. I doubted that many people would want to live in a society characterized by political nihilism, but I checked some data.
I performed an AI search to discover what percentages of the US and global populations are consistent libertarians, consistent individualist libertarians, consistent collectivist libertarians, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-communists, political nihilists, panarchists, and hermits. It's hard to get reliable estimates due to survey limitations, such as scarce data, ambiguity of terms, and reliance on self-identification. The figures I found were these: (1) Consistent libertarians: US: 7%, World: 5%; (2) Consistent individualist libertarians: US: 5%, World: 4%; (3) Consistent collectivist libertarians: US: 2%, World: 1%; (4) Anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-communists: US & World: less than 1% each; (5) Nihilists: US: 3%, World: 2%; (6) Panarchists: US & World: less than 1%; (7) Hermits: US & World: less than 1%.
According to an AI search, panarchy is distinguished by voluntary participation, explicit social contracts, and reversibility of membership. Within a panarchist framework, it's possible for any type of social or political system to exist, whether it has a government or not. It can be libertarian, authoritarian, individualist, collectivist, or nihilist. And panarchy doesn't rule out being an individual hermit.
If informed consent is all that's required to be consistent with libertarianism, then any social or political system or solitary lifestyle that fits within a panarchist framework qualifies as libertarian. I suspect panarchy would be much more popular if more people knew about it. A panarchist world in which all people could enjoy whatever political, social, or solitary lifestyle they choose provided they leave others alone to do the same should be found satisfactory by more people than any competing system.
Movements toward panarchy appear to be underway in the US. Specifically, they're the current secessionist and state sovereignty movements primarily motivated by frustration with political polarization and dissatisfaction with federal government policies. There are secessionist movements in 12 states, and according to a YouGov poll, about 23% of Americans support secession. Dozens of states participate in the state sovereignty movement motivated by the desire to reclaim state powers under the Constitution's 10th Amendment. That movement enjoys the greatest popularity in red states in the West and the South. The secessionist movement could result in another civil war with great loss of life and destruction of property. The movement for state sovereignty can achieve essentially the same goal without all the violence. Currently, according to information I got online, with some exceptions, the states having the highest percentage of registered Democrats seem to be concentrated mainly on the west coast and in the northeast, while Republican states seem to be found mostly in northern states west of the Rocky Mountains but east of the west coast, in the Midwest, and in the south. Democrats and Socialists can be separated from Republicans and Libertarians without literally dividing the country if federal officials comply with the 10th Amendment, which states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The Constitution grants the federal government only limited powers, and if it were strictly enforced, most powers would lie with the states and the people. Democrats and Socialists could live in blue states, while Republicans and Libertarians lived in red states. The people in each state could manage most political affairs the way they pleased. They would no longer have to contend with each other to prevent the other side from being in control of the federal government.
This process seems to be underway by other means. Political leaders in several states are said to have engaged in or attempted gerrymandering to benefit their party in the elections. Despite widespread criticism, this is not necessarily a bad idea. Many politicians of both parties appear to be unintentionally moving the U.S. in the direction of state sovereignty by using gerrymandering to disenfranchise members of the other party, which gives the disempowered voters an incentive to move to another state whose politics are more to their liking. People appear to be migrating to states whose political environments better suit their preferences. According to one online search, population shifts tend to be from blue states to red states. I suspect a successful state sovereignty movement would accelerate the process as people in blue states learned from their own experience that blue state policies are dysfunctional.
The way I look at it is, there are three categories that NONE of Us would say would be okay if someOne did them to Us.
The three Laws of Ethics (Natural Law expressed as the three things not to do):
1. Do not willfully and without fully informed consent hurt or kill the flesh of anOther
2. Do not willfully and without fully informed consent take or damage anything that does not belong to You alone
3. Do not willfully defraud anOther (which can only happen without fully informed consent)
No One would say, "Sure! Do #3 to Me! I'd love it!" And if You say "yes" to any of these, You are consenting and leaving the question unanswered.
If these Laws are kept by All, there would be no problems in the social structure. Of course... They're all broken by enough of Us now, and mostly Ones with money...