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A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#271

Post by qntty »

patrickaljord wrote: post #269
qntty wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They don't... private property isn't the same thing as personal property. Anarchists aren't against personal property.

How about a second car? How about a second residence?

This all counts as personal property (though of course people disagree about what exactly should count as personal property). An example of private property is owning a factory that you don't personally work in, or even owning an apartment which you have never lived in and don't intend on living in. The Sauk leader Black Hawk articulated something like this idea when he said

My reason teaches me that land cannot be sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to live upon, and cultivate, as far as necessary for their subsistence; and so long as they occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to the soil—but if they voluntarily leave it, then any other people have a right to settle upon it. Nothing can be sold but such things as can be carried away.

Locke[1] also believed that people shouldn't be able to own things that they don't personally use or hoard resources if they are scarce.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockean_proviso

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#272

Post by chillacy »

willholloway wrote: post #199
patrickaljord wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they didn't really lost in Vietnam, what happened in the end was that they had to pick between two alternatives: carpet bomb the place to hell and "win" or go home. That "win" would have been political suicide for the administration at the time as the majority of the US wanted to go home. In the end it was a victory of the will of the people so I'm glad they went home and I'm not even American so it's not like I…

The US carpet bombed Vietnam and Cambodia and still didn't win. See Operation Rolling Thunder [1] The US sought to destroy all North Vietnamese infrastructure, rail, bridges, and communications. The North Vietnamese responded by decentralizing. They sent half the population of Hanoi to the country side. When a bridge was bombed, they rebuilt it with dirt or set up a ferry. When rail was bombed, they split it into sma…

> The US could have annihilated Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia with atomic weapons > The idea that we "kept the gloves on" is a myth

Aren't these two statements contradictory?

Anyways, I agree with your point in general. Guerrilla tactics are extremely effective against an enemy with superior funding attacking your home turf (hello American Revolutionary War).

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#273

Post by chillacy »

Koshkin wrote: post #177
jdimov9 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what twisted mind is communism an acceptable proposition???

I am not seeing how communism can become a viable idea on a large scale, but on a smaller scale it is nothing new or unusual. In a family people normally share property, food, money, and products of labor. That's communism. Israeli kibbutz is another example.

Some aspects are present in large companies too. For instance at many companies teams don't directly pay for infrastructure that they use, it's all provided by the company. Or computer equipment, air conditioning, etc. Of course this has issues of its own, like people under-appreciating the all the VMs they're provisioning, and it gets especially bad if the budget gets tight.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#274

Post by im3w1l »

nl wrote: post #116
im3w1l wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ISIS is commiting genocide. They are killing and raping, and destroying monuments from eons ago. Are you saying that these are acts of legitimate self defence??!!

That's not what they said. Don't escalate a difficult topic of discussion into an argument unnecessarily.

What are they saying then? Because to me it really looks like he is saying that CIA did something wrong by interfering and what happened afterwards just followed necessarily from that. And that all blame lies with the CIA.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#275

Post by nl »

im3w1l wrote: post #274
nl wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what they said. Don't escalate a difficult topic of discussion into an argument unnecessarily.

What are they saying then? Because to me it really looks like he is saying that CIA did something wrong by interfering and what happened afterwards just followed necessarily from that. And that all blame lies with the CIA.

They are relaying the fact that bin Laden used US intervention as a reason for his actions. There was no implied justification in that statement, just a statement of fact.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#276

Post by patrickaljord »

qntty wrote: post #271
patrickaljord wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a second car? How about a second residence?

This all counts as personal property (though of course people disagree about what exactly should count as personal property). An example of private property is owning a factory that you don't personally work in, or even owning an apartment which you have never lived in and don't intend on living in. The Sauk leader Black Hawk articulated something like this idea when he said My reason teaches me that land cannot be s…

What if you're the best at managing said factory without working in it, should I own it instead because I work there even though I have terrible management skills that will lead it to bankruptcy? Seems awfully inefficient. Should the people working at Apple factory own Apple? Not making much sense. How long would it last?

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#277

Post by viraptor »

Retra wrote: post #238
viraptor wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming that a "true AI" if it existed would care about the continued existence of humanity? Past the point of ability to self-repair and self-fuel, what would be the reason to even care about humanity then beyond self-defence?

You're assuming that if "true AI" existed, it would be in total control of all the infrastructure needed to maintain it's own existence.

Not at first. That's exactly why I wrote "Past the point of ability to self-repair and self-fuel"

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#278

Post by qntty »

patrickaljord wrote: post #276
qntty wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This all counts as personal property (though of course people disagree about what exactly should count as personal property). An example of private property is owning a factory that you don't personally work in, or even owning an apartment which you have never lived in and don't intend on living in. The Sauk leader Black Hawk articulated something like this idea when he said My reason teaches me that land cannot be s…

What if you're the best at managing said factory without working in it, should I own it instead because I work there even though I have terrible management skills that will lead it to bankruptcy? Seems awfully inefficient. Should the people working at Apple factory own Apple? Not making much sense. How long would it last?

I think managing a factory counts as working in it (working in the office rather than on the floor). With respect to the idea that there should be no private property, it seems to me that there's no reason that this implies that a factory should be managed by factory workers. By all means hire managers to manage the factory, it's what they're best at. But managing a factory (i.e. being the person that coordinates the business side of the company) isn't the same thing as owning it or controlling it. You can imagine, for example, a factory that is managed by a manager but ultimately owned and controlled by a worker collective (which includes the manager). The most important decisions of the factory could be made democratically (supported by data gathered by managers) whereas the day to day business decisions would be made by people who manage the factory.

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#279

Post by seanmcdirmid »

maxlybbert wrote: post #204
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In practice yes, but not in theory, which is an important distinction. To use an analogy, genocide of Jews is an unacceptable ideal, you don't have to try it out to know its bad. In retrospect, no one thought the nazi's plan could have ended up working in a "good" way. Compare that to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, given communism as an ideal alone, it wasn't inherently flawed or "evil", it just turns out people are selfi…

> In practice yes, but not in theory, which is an important distinction. Communism is an economic system that falls apart in practice because of greed. An economic system that fails to account for greed is not good, even in theory.

If someone said "let's go communist", you would have to argue with them why it was a bad idea. A reasonable proposition that turns out not to be a good idea.

If someone said "let's kill the Jews", you would probably slowly and carefully walk away from that person because they were nuts. An unreasonable proposition that you probably don't want to bother arguing against (because what kind of person would even say that?).

Re: A former CIA spy has revealed his key role in the arrest of Nelson Mandela

#280

Post by dragonwriter »

qntty wrote: post #268
patrickaljord wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a natural thing to want to own the property you live on at least, even lions urinate on their turf to mark it as theirs. How would you start preventing humans from doing what every mammals has ever done ever?

They don't... private property isn't the same thing as personal property. Anarchists aren't against personal property.

As usually used, "private property" is a superset of "personal property", as all non-government-held (non-"public") property is " private property", including both real and personal property.

But I think you are probably using an unusual and ideologically-specific definition of "private property" that you should probably detail explicitly.

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