Begging the question

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.

Tax and delegating the right to steal

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

Ban on Alcohol?

Laws to ban drinking at home

• 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:

1. The government doesn’t have the right to do this to people.
2. 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?
3. 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
4. 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.