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No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

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Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#111

Post by justin66 »

samstave wrote: post #98
justin66 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity. People "believe in" government not because they love it or t…

> People "believe in" government not because they love it or think it is perfect, they do it because they believe the alternative is something like the Hobbsian state of nature. Utter BS. People "believe" in governments largely because they are indoctrinated into the belief system prepared for them based on what country they are born into. Then, based on the actions of that government, their upbringing and life exper…

You didn't actually contradict the portion of my text that you quoted. People really do believe the alternative to having governments is the Hobbsian state of nature, or something close to it. I did not comment on how people arrive at that belief.

It's not totally crazy to think that Hobbes being the foundation of western political philosophy might have something to do with it, so there's your "indoctrination," I guess.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#112

Post by burntsushi »

rayiner wrote: post #110
burntsushi wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the alternative is very, very different and I think libertarians really underestimate how evil and creative and corrupt people can be The entire point of the parent post is that we don't underestimate the corruption that humans are capable of achieving when given power. Hence the revocation of a monopoly on the use of legitimized coercion.

The alternative to a system of monopolized coercion isn't the absence of coercion, it's the diffusion of coercive violence.

I've never claimed or believed otherwise. The absence of coercion would be Utopian.

Also, you left out a key word: legitimized. It's important and absolutely essential to my point.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#113

Post by pyre »

rayiner wrote: post #109
samstave wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People "believe in" government not because they love it or think it is perfect, they do it because they believe the alternative is something like the Hobbsian state of nature. Utter BS. People "believe" in governments largely because they are indoctrinated into the belief system prepared for them based on what country they are born into. Then, based on the actions of that government, their upbringing and life exper…

> There are plenty of brilliant free thinking people in the world Ah yes, and you are one of those brilliant, free-thinking people I assume. One of the enlightened ones, who sees the folly of government and the glory of anarchy?

Always reminds me of this: https://xkcd.com/610/

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#114

Post by jivatmanx »

akiselev wrote: post #81
csense wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's true that religion generally had a lot more influence over politics and policy in the past (the recent past moreso than the present, and the distant past moreso than the recent past, at least in the USA), saying that "once upon a time, religion and government were one and the same" ranges between, at best, a gross oversimplification of complex sociopolitical circumstances, and at worst, a factually incorre…

One of the primary claims to power in medieval Europe was the divine decree, something that was usually "approved" by the Roman Catholic Church, so yes religion has had an absolutely insane amount of influence on politics, so much so that you can easily argue that it was responsible for predominance of monarchies and dictatorships until the enlightenment (and even then it took centuries). Entire governments have rise…

Yes, but for both good and ill.

The reformation's idea was that no authority or intercessor was needed to interpret or use the bible.

I'll skip the details, but this idea was an essential precursor for the idea of self-government, and the enlightenment in general.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#115

Post by dmix »

betterunix wrote: post #95
dmix wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminded me of a famous libertarian quote: "If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Mises If humans are full of logical fallacies and poor decision making, just making a collection of humans and giving them unlimited power does not make the logical fallacies and poor decision making go away. It c…

"If humans are full of logical fallacies and poor decision making, just making a collection of humans and giving them unlimited power does not make the logical fallacies and poor decision making go away. It can often makes it much more harmful." You know, this is not some novel insight. This has been known for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_carta

Indeed, the real underlying problem isn't mass surveillance, the problem is the states ability to give themselves unlimited power through a seemingly legal process:

"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to." - Edward Snowden

Which is quite possibly the predictable outcome of every government that hasn't had a revolution or major political upheaval for an extended periods of time. Self-interest is not just a function of markets.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#116

Post by rayiner »

asperous wrote: post #64
oleganza wrote: post #7

Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any p…

There is an in-between between no government and an all-powerful one: a government that solely exists to secure the rights of its citizens. "to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,..." It is of my opinion tha…

> a government that solely exists to secure the rights of its citizens.

The problem with such governments is that they cannot be truly democratic, and I think that poses a moral problem.

In instituting government, we ask the people, every person, to give up the most fundamental freedom of action they possess in the state of nature: the use of violence. In sacrificing freedom of action, the people should be able to vote themselves the sort of government they collectively want, not the kind of minimal government, protecting some arbitrary set of "rights," some philosopher king believes they should have.

It should be noted that all of the talk of "limited government" among the founders was directed at the nature of the federal government, which was to exist in addition to state governments which were not limited.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#117

Post by rayiner »

burntsushi wrote: post #112
rayiner wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The alternative to a system of monopolized coercion isn't the absence of coercion, it's the diffusion of coercive violence.

I've never claimed or believed otherwise. The absence of coercion would be Utopian. Also, you left out a key word: legitimized . It's important and absolutely essential to my point.

In the absence of government, all violent becomes de facto legitimate, as it is in the state of nature. It is meaningless to call something "illegitimate" versus "legitimate" when you have no recourse to stop "illegitimate" actions.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#118

Post by samstave »

rayiner wrote: post #109
samstave wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People "believe in" government not because they love it or think it is perfect, they do it because they believe the alternative is something like the Hobbsian state of nature. Utter BS. People "believe" in governments largely because they are indoctrinated into the belief system prepared for them based on what country they are born into. Then, based on the actions of that government, their upbringing and life exper…

> There are plenty of brilliant free thinking people in the world Ah yes, and you are one of those brilliant, free-thinking people I assume. One of the enlightened ones, who sees the folly of government and the glory of anarchy?

Nice ad hominem -- so lets discuss; first though I'm posting from my phone so this first post will be brief:

There are soon to be 7 billion people on this earth, comparatively, yes, I've won the genetic lottery...

But that has nothing to do with the fact that there is an active war on the minds of humanity. If you want references and are completely devoid of any understanding of history I'd be happy to provide some sources, but lets hear you actually chime in on the meat of my comment as opposed to you're sophomoric attempt at discrediting what I said.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#119

Post by burntsushi »

rayiner wrote: post #117
burntsushi wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never claimed or believed otherwise. The absence of coercion would be Utopian. Also, you left out a key word: legitimized . It's important and absolutely essential to my point.

In the absence of government, all violent becomes de facto legitimate, as it is in the state of nature. It is meaningless to call something "illegitimate" versus "legitimate" when you have no recourse to stop "illegitimate" actions.

> The difference between legitimized coercion and de-facto coercion is a distinction without a difference.

It would be appreciated if you made this fundamental disagreement clear when responding. It literally makes no sense to speak of anything else on this topic if we disagree on this point.

Legitimized coercion is a concept that distinguishes organizations governing an arbitrary geographic location and its people/property and the natural coercion that arises from conflicts between individuals. The former is permitted by the law of the land (whatever it may be); the latter is not.

I believe the distinction is worth making. More than that, I believe the former can be scrubbed out while the latter cannot.

EDIT to address your EDIT

> In the absence of government, all violent becomes de facto legitimate, as it is in the state of nature.

I have never seen any libertarian philosophy use the word "legitimate" to mean "natural" in this context. I certainly am not. My hope is that the other part of this comment clarifies.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#120

Post by Volpe »

dragonwriter wrote: post #74
pvnick wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this simple piece of logic so difficult for anti-GMO extremists to understand? These technologies literally have the potential, without even being hyperbolic, to save Billions of lives. And these clowns are worried about the providers making an extra buck.

> Why is this simple piece of logic so difficult for anti-GMO extremists to understand? These technologies literally have the potential, without even being hyperbolic, to save Billions of lives. Any description of technology "saving" lives is hyperbolic. Technology can extend lives, or make more lives possible to start, but we haven't yet found any technologies that will actually save lives.

... what are you talking about?

Are you arguing the semantics of "save"? Bullet proof vests save lives... Polio vaccines save lives...

Or is that just "extending": "He was suppose to die with a bullet to the chest, so by stopping it, we extended his life"

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