Kind of a useless reminder. Not a single source given for 'real armed obedient guys on the border'. On what border? Where? Besides, his revoked passport is not virtual. It is quite real.
What do you think was stopping Snowden from sitting on a bus and going to Moscow? Armed soldiers.
What do you think is stopping Google from non-complying with an order to install a fedbox in their datacenter? Armed guys who would go in and confiscate equipment, or even put some managers in jail for "aiding the enemy". "Court order" is just a paperwork to justify concrete violence.
What stops you from not paying your taxes (when you dislike war, spying or whatever gov is doing)? It is armed people who would come in and extract your property from you. And they will always be slightly more violent than amount of self-defense you'd try to apply.
Armed soldiers are also stopping me from going to any country I want, without a visa. Should I start protesting about my right to travel any-fucking-where?
Your argument is silly. "Armed people" are just a tool to enforce policies enforced by governments. It is them, not the soldiers, we should be worried about.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it is typical braindead libertarian rhetoric, but there sort of is a valid point in there.
I think one of the big injustices of our time we will look back to with disgust (like slavery 200 years ago) is not allowing people to go wherever they want to go. What gives us any right to deny people to live anywhere on the planet they want to?
It’s just that I absolutely do not believe that abolishing (all or large parts of) government is any kind of solution to this.
(And, yes, this would have often dire economic consequences for some. Just as abolishing slavery had dire economic consequences for some. Doing the right thing isn’t free.)
Lets have slavery as an example. You feel uncomfortable abolishing government completely. That's fine. How'd it work with slavery? Imagine we decide that slavery is not good. Should we just let every slave run away (at the expense of cotton plantation owners who'd immediately incur losses)? Or should we release every 10th slave this month, then every 9th next month etc.? Is it then moral to shoot down a slave who'll be freed two months from now, if he runs away today?
Armed people are those who make the choice. Gun does not kill, Putin does not kill. Armed dude who can follow or not follow the orders kills.
The whole point of my comments is that what is generally considered immoral (threatening and killing) becomes 180 degrees different when some man in a nice costume says so. Don't you think someone was bullshitting us?
In my view, murder is never justified. Even in self-defense. However, in case of self-defense, you don't have much choice (and people around might understand you), while guys in the airport don't have any kind of attack and everyone can be peaceful and nice to each other and walk their way.
So what? That's sad, but in the end we rely on existence of these armed guys to do whatever we need to do. In post-apocalyptical fantasies where government armed guys cease to exist, who would usually thrive? Organized armed guys.
At least we have some mechanisms to influence the armed guys we have now.
In places with lack of central government, (ruthless) armed group tends to become the de facto ruling regional organisations, like Somalia, Libya, etc. This is debatable that the lack of government is the only issue with these areas. However, I don't have examples who come to mind where the lack of central authority transitioned in a peaceful coexistence of different factions/regions/tribes.
Let's conduct a thought experiment: tomorrow everyone in the US wakes up and realizes there's no government, no cops, no army etc. And for the purity of the experiment, let's say there is no way to create a new government. Do you think it'll be like Syria or Somalia? Do you think the demand for security and peace will suddenly evaporate?
It is really too far-fetched to provide a meaningful answer or discussion. Does it includes prison guards ? Are the inmates left to starve, or running freely ? Does it includes fire-fighters ? FDA, can I sell you my cure for cancer ? ...
It is probably due to my education, and the time I was born, but I can't imagine a society working without "safeguards". Maybe it is because of lack of imagination, but I would like to see a working example, before making the jump. Which is a kind of chicken egg problem, because if no one tries, you can't know it works. Maybe it will seem obvious retrospectively in 500 or 1000 years, but currently it is not.
I would recommend a non-fiction book "The Machinery Of Freedom" by David D. Friedman, it depicts and discusses how a society could function without a government.
1. Government doesn't provide food
2. Government only provides SOME jobs
Even if we assume that ALL people who can no longer be employed because government disappeared cannot find jobs, it would only demonstrate that they can't work on jobs no one wants to pay for voluntarily. That is, if people wouldn't need cops anymore, because (let's imagine) there was no crime - no one would pay to private protection agencies and they would have to find something else to do. "Jobs" are not the desirable result, it's "doing something valuable" that's important.
I think you'll find that the presence of effective, competent governance is pretty strongly correlated with the availability of both food and jobs.
You missed my point, anyway, which is that your comfortable notions of a safe, orderly society will go right out the window once the economy breaks down, which it would if you removed the framework in which it operates, which is basically indistinguishable from government.
"Any society is only three square meals away from revolution"
The proposition is not to remove the framework, but to de-monopolize it. We currently have a government framework of law, but nothing (except people not realizing it's even possible) prevents us from having multiple frameworks, each operating on its own client base (even when those clients physically live on the same territory) and negotiating with each other when disputes between clients of two different agencies arise.
The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them. If they don't want protection or don't like specific laws, they stop paying or switch. The monopoly we have now extracts money from taxpayers at gunpoint and provides a rather crappy service.
> The proposition is not to remove the framework, but to de-monopolize it.
To demonopolize it is to remove it. The monopoly is the essence of the framework.
> We currently have a government framework of law, but nothing (except people not realizing it's even possible) prevents us from having multiple frameworks, each operating on its own client base (even when those clients physically live on the same territory) and negotiating with each other when disputes between clients of two different agencies arise.
This kind of patron/client system is not novel, and most people do, in fact, recognize that it is possible.
> The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them.
Unless there is some supervisory entity that does have a monopoly enforcing it (in which case, this remains a monopoly system with low-level enforcement farmed out, not a demonopolized system), voluntariness seems, well, dubious. You've just invented a system competing warlords (well, invented is too strong a term, its the basic model of primitive feudalism.)
Yes. I don't know (and frankly, hardly imagine) of any societies without any hierarchies though. I could imagine communities with democratic collegial decision-making, but it still implies there is a way to enforce decisions, which means armed men.
"A general reminder whenever budget issues are discussed: the U.S. government is — this isn’t original — best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. When you talk about federal spending, you’re overwhelmingly talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. And the bulk of the insurance — all of Social Security and Medicare, about 2/3 of Medicaid — is for the elderly and disabled."
So... it's real. It's a piece of paper required to travel internationally. It's not virtual. A driver license isn't a virtual document stating you can legally drive a car, it's just a document stating you can legally drive a car.
Lets start with "Reality 101". The documents do not talk and do not act. It's just a piece of paper (real) with some text on it (real). But it becomes a legal thing only when some particular armed dude is looking at it and makes decisions.
So: the decisions of the armed dude are real, but "legal statement" is just a virtual abstraction invented to hide the fact that some violence will be applied.
You should attend "Reality 102", where they explain how abstractions and inventions like "rights" or "patriotism" or "duty" can affect the mind of the guys with the guns and influence whether they shoot or not.
Millions of people believe in one god or another and visit churches where they are being taught about what's good and what's right. Does that kind of "education" make something right or wrong? Does it make it right for me to comply with soldier's orders if he was properly educated about patriotism by some people I don't even know about?
So lets simply pray that gunned men are educated well and let them do their thing. E.g. killing innocent people overseas.
I thought you wanted to talk about what happens in reality. If you start discussing what's right or wrong, then you are no longer talking of what things are. You've switched courses to Ethical Philosophy 101; Reality was taught in the hard sciences faculty, Ethics is at liberal arts.
In that case you'll have to consider all kind of perspectives, because what's considered right or wrong varies greatly by who is doing the consideration.
I am talking about what's happening in reality. "Morality" and "ethics" are creations of our minds, not something we find lying around. When these abstractions are used to justify violence, then I come and expose it.
I'm not the one who teaches you what's good and what's bad. I'm just pointing out grave contradictions in other people's justifications that lead to all sorts of things that many consider "evil".
In other words: I'm not the one who will violently oppose your lifestyle, nor will I support those who will violently intervene in your life. Believe in what you want, live with people you like. I'd only like the same respect from you towards me. And in case we have some conflict, I'm all for peaceful non-violent solution. E.g. dialog, public debate, "defamation", boycott, economic ostracism etc. But no guns and ass-kicking (unless someone pulls out knifes and forks, in which case I'd have to run away and/or fight back, but I still don't justify violence).
