Here’s a great youtube video by Stefan Molyneux
Alright I wasn’t originally going to bother writing about this, but all the recent news coverage has got me really pissed off. So basically the pope and his chums are coming down under to spread their lies and misinformation - bad enough on its own. But when you add the fact that they’re doing it with australian taxpayer money, and we’re getting our rights trampled on once again, it becomes even worse.
Thou shalt not annoy on Youth Day - “EXTRAORDINARY new powers will allow police to arrest and fine people for “causing annoyance” to World Youth Day participants and permit partial strip searches at hundreds of Sydney sites, beginning today.”
Protests need our blessing, say police - “POLICE have told organisations planning to campaign during World Youth Day events they need to have placards, banners and T-shirts pre-approved or risk losing their protest “rights” - even those groups representing victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests.”
The thing that makes the least sense is: There is no such thing as “protest rights”, there are only the rights that all people have, and none of those rights includes the power to fine people for expressing a belief in something other than an imaginary man who lives in the sky. It really annoys me how childish and immature the church/government seems in not being able to accept viewpoints different from their own.
The church has been dying lately (less and less christians over time), and WYD is some last ditch attempt to brainwash the kids and reinforce this culture of believing in imaginary beings. It looks to me like they’re trying to make god “cool” again, and I very sincerely hope that they fail.
New essay by Hoppe: Reflections on the Origin and the Stability of the State
I thought this was a great essay, I specifically liked this point:
Finally, the most sophisticated argument in favor of the state must be briefly examined. From Hobbes on down this argument has been repeated endlessly. It runs like this: In the state of nature before the establishment of a state permanent conflict reigns. Everyone claims a right to everything, and this will result in interminable war. There is no way out of this predicament by means of agreements; for who would enforce these agreements? Whenever the situation appeared advantageous, one or both parties would break the agreement. Hence, people recognize that there is but one solution to the desideratum of peace: the establishment, per agreement, of a state, i.e., a third, independent party as ultimate judge and enforcer.
Yet if this thesis is correct and agreements require an outside enforcer to make them binding, then a state-by-agreement can never come into existence. For in order to enforce the very agreement which is to result in the formation of a state (to make this agreement binding), another outside enforcer, a prior state, would already have to exist. And in order for this state to have come into existence, yet another still earlier state must be postulated, and so on, in infinite regress.
So George Carlin died recently and I thought I’d just post a video where he attacks the idea of religion. This guy is a comedy legend and I really like how he thinks religion and voting are bullshit.
Yep, that’s right. They are, they make very little sense at all. In the article, ACCC rethinks eBay payments immunity - the ACCC (Australia’s consumer watchdog government agency - for non australian readers of this blog) is kicking up a fuss over the way that eBay wanted to make it compulsory to use their Paypal service for payments.
Now it doesn’t seem to matter that transactions settled via PayPal are “four times less likely to lead to a dispute” to the ACCC (and the people who wrote up the Trade practices act). All that matters is that they want to throw their weight around, maybe they want to just look like they’re being useful. And even if the fact that eBay is forcing customers to use PayPal is some kind of ’negative’ thing that customers don’t like, well then clearly they’ll just take their business elsewhere.
The thing that annoys me the most about the existence of these types of laws, is that they’re really just arbitrary. They’re just governments imposing their own views on what business practices should be. Like this whole idea that companies can’t use certain things in an “exclusive way” even if they own all those aspects of the process.
Section 47 of the Act prohibits exclusive dealing, which broadly involves one trader imposing restrictions on another’s freedom to choose with whom, in what or where it deals. In some cases, exclusive dealing is prohibited outright, and in other cases, only where it substantially reduces competition.
This is not right because there is no real restriction placed on people’s freedoms, because nobody forced them to buy via eBay in the first place! This is also an arbitrary way to define things, because it doesn’t seem all that different from choosing not to give the economic benefits of something you own to somebody else. (which you’re allowed to do if you own it) Eg. You may own a clothesline, but that doesn’t mean you have to let your neighbour use it. Similarly, a business may have some kind of asset that they only want to let people use in certain circumstances - eBay doesn’t want to let people use its service unless they are willing to pay via PayPal.
Governments and voters tend to think that once a business has become large enough, it has become this institution that can be stripped for its assets and made to do whatever they tell it to, cos might makes right, or whatever screwed up reasoning they have in their own mind. Whether or not using PayPal is the ‘efficient outcome’ doesn’t even matter in the slightest. What matters is: Do you have the right?
So unless you think slavery is morally acceptable, you can’t logically say that you think you can force other people to change the way they do business with their own assets and products/belongings. Because this is suggesting that you can own other people.
I saw this article on smh.com.au today:The game’s up: jurors playing Sudoku abort trial
So apparently this bunch of jurors in a $1m drug case got bored and started playing Sudoku instead of watching the trial. Let’s see, so you can be ‘chosen’ at random out of a pool of eligible people to do jury duty, and be made to stop your regular job. Instead of getting paid what you normally do, you can get paid less than what you would otherwise be earning. All this when you never chose to do jury duty!
And then people wonder why jurors get bored and all this money has been wasted.
In a free society, jurors would need to be given an actual choice, and if they aren’t going to do it for a certain rate - then the court would not have the right to force them to do it. In the free society, the right to somebody’s time is not taken for granted.
Ok so there’s this logical fallacy called “Begging the question“, which is using circular reasoning to try and assume that the premise of your argument is true. It can happen in an implicit or explicit way.
The reason I’m pointing this out is because I often see that some people think the existence of government by democracy is justified because the majority willed it. It looks to me like this is an example of begging the question.
The fact that ‘the majority willed it’ has value to somebody, suggests that that person is already using democracy. So it couldn’t be said that “Because democracy has suggested we should use democracy, we should do that”. You can’t use democracy to try and determine that democracy should be used, beecause this is begging the question. That is circular reasoning.
So this means the choice to start a government with control over land, must have been unanimously supported by each individual, a majority consent could not have been enough.
I recently read a really interesting blog post, so my post is just going to echo that same point which was made on FSK’s blog: Do You Have the Right to Steal? It’s just something that I really wanted to reiterate to any non-anarchists who stumble across this blog:
If you as an individual believe that it is wrong to steal, why is it that you think you are allowed to delegate this right to the government? If you never had the right in the first place, then how could you ever delegate it to somebody else? Democracy doesn’t give you any more rights than what you already had beforehand.
It really looks to me like people lack consistency in the way they approach this, mainly because the government represents a nice easy way to conceptually outsource the immorality of stealing. If you honestly believe that you don’t have the right to steal from other people, you cannot fairly argue for the existence of government.
Lastly, if its just that you don’t think taxation is theft, see this post: Tax is Theft
- New laws that are <10 weeks away can label areas ”restricted alcohol areas”
- Can apply anywhere in the state of NSW
- Left broad so it can mean any of these: Sale, Consumption or Possession
wat?
Not that I’m a big drinker, but I do support every person’s right to do as they choose.
So one of the politicians says:
“This is for communities that say ‘we have a specific issue and we want to try this as part of the solution’. It might be a restriction of types of alcohol, times of alcohol sales or (a ban on) alcohol being brought into the area,” he said.
“It could be that light beer only is allowed or it could be a restriction on all alcohol brought into the area - it is a full range of options that have been left pretty broad.
Well let’s see:
- The government doesn’t have the right to do this to people.
- It doesn’t matter that the ‘community’ wants to try something, it matters that an individual is not a slave to the government - because slavery is wrong remember?
- It doesn’t matter that “only some types of beer might be outlawed” - the point is that individuals have the right to choose for themselves
- The fact that the law is going to be very broad is not a positive. It is actually a negative because it takes more and more rights away from the individuals who are left not even knowing what their rights are
To be honest, I’m not trying to be the preacher of doom or whatever, I don’t think the government is actually going to totally outlaw alcohol in the state of NSW (alcohol drinkers form a huge portion of the voteshare), but I do want to point out how disturbing this is.
Just a quick post today about why we can’t know exactly how the market society will work. In some ways, to ask the question “Exactly how will it all work?” is to miss the point. Why? Because if we did know exactly how it would all work, then that would itself would prove the possibility of central planning.
As was proved decades ago by Mises and co, rational calculation cannot ever be performed by central planners, which makes central planning impossible. This automatically means we should stop trying to run government socialism, because we’re just wasting our resources and time. It also means that we shouldn’t try and completely work out all the details about how anarchic society will work, because this will only have about as much relevance to us as trying to draw a map of the Star Wars universe.
Now it is possible to come up with some rough ideas on how things will work, which is what I try and show you guys in this blog. But if there’s one thing non-libertarians take away from my blog, I want it to be this: Understand that the reason I propose no government is primarily because I consider it wrong that the government steals and imposes rules on us. The problem is that governments are allowed to do more than an individual person can. If an individual person went and took someone else’s money without their consent, we would call that theft. Why is it any different when a government does it?
So it doesn’t even matter if I can’t come up with some perfect alternative, all that matters is that the proposed solution (or guideline) is a morally acceptable one. So if there are two solutions to fund a project, one of which involves you pointing a gun at me and taking my money, and another that involves voluntary cooperation – I think we can safely rule out the one where you point a gun at me and steal my money.
So drop the gun, and let’s talk.
