Do you want welfare or not?
Do you want debt or not?
Start your essays.
How can we eliminate the currency prison system as a living society, what do you say?
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@Mall
Do you want welfare or not?
avoiding suffering = good
stealing = bad
stealing to avoid suffering = bad
Do you want debt or not?
Debt to solve cash-flow = good
Debt for immediate satisfaction where the interest is a significant portion of the final cost = bad
Debt as part of an inflation scheme = theft
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@ADreamOfLiberty
not dying of suffocation = good
contributing to global warming = bad
breathing = bad
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@ADreamOfLiberty
avoiding suffering = good
Well, if I have to choose between me suffering or someone else suffering, I would prefer that the other person takes the burden of suffering.
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@Savant
not dying of suffocation = goodbreathing = bad
A poor analogy.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
A poor analogy.
It could be, but that would depend on how you came to the conclusion that "stealing to avoid suffering = bad." If your argument is that good+bad=bad necessarily, then breathing is a counterexample. I would say that things with good and bad effects can sometimes be bad, but not always. So observing that something has bad effects is not sufficient on its own to determine whether that thing is bad.
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@Savant
because breathing is bad?If your argument is that good+bad=bad necessarily, then breathing is a counterexample.
I would say that things with good and bad effects can sometimes be bad
The effect of violating rights is war and anarchy. War and anarchy will never be beat as sources of human suffering.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
because breathing is bad?
Because breathing isn't bad, despite technically having a bad effect. Breathing releases CO2, but sometimes you take the bad with the good.
The effect of violating rights is war and anarchy.
Sometimes. Probably not always. I don't know that tickling someone without their consent would lead to war and anarchy. And if taxes didn't exist, you would just have anarchy anyway.
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@Savant
because breathing is bad?Because breathing isn't bad, despite technically having a bad effect. Breathing releases CO2, but sometimes you take the bad with the good.
Good can outweigh evil for the same choice, but when the evil is the violation of other's rights the cost is social morality itself. That is why the ends do not justify the means. The correct context of "means" is not grilling a burger, it refers to violating the rights of others. The means can never be justified so the ends do not matter.
The effect of violating rights is war and anarchy.Sometimes. Probably not always. I don't know that tickling someone without their consent would lead to war and anarchy.
Do not confuse scale with nature.
There is war between two families and war between two nations and the causes are of the same nature and the suffering per capita can easily be similar.
The possibility of domination and forgiveness are temporal offsets that do not change the grand causality.
And if taxes didn't exist, you would just have anarchy anyway.
That is false.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Good can outweigh evil for the same choice, but when the evil is the violation of other's rights the cost is social morality itself.
Contributing to global warming violates everyone's rights (by a tiny amount).
The possibility of domination and forgiveness are temporal offsets that do not change the grand causality.
I don't think every violation of liberty contributes to that, through. Increased education generally reduces the chances of terrorism and gang violence, for example.
And if taxes didn't exist, you would just have anarchy anyway.That is false.
Anarchy generally means "no government." That's what anarchists advocate for, anyway. I don't think we could have a government (or something recognizable as a government) without taxes.
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@Savant
Good can outweigh evil for the same choice, but when the evil is the violation of other's rights the cost is social morality itself.Contributing to global warming violates everyone's rights (by a tiny amount).
I'm normally not one to dismiss an example when there is a thought experiment to be had, but I can't stand the scientific falsehoods in this case.
Let's imagine a class of actions which in some small way contribute to an event which constitutes an attack on the liberty of others. The normal rules of causality and reasonableness would apply here. If the contribution to the damage can be quantified then only those furtherances which constitute a significant chance of being "the final straw" could be considered intentional attacks.
For instances there are many substances that are completely non-toxic below certain concentrations. If everyone shared a lake, it isn't an attack on others to allow microscopic amounts of arsenic or cyanide to leak into the lake from your actions. Only once it's within an order of magnitude of the concentration required to produce measurable/confirmed theoretical effects would it be "poisoning your neighbors".
An act which does not constitute an attack is having a baby. Even though it is an absolute fact that beyond a certain point quality of life must decrease with overcrowding, people do not have a right to quality of life. They have a right to not be attacked (or threatened with attack, or stolen from, or deceived in a trade)
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Ok, now for this particular example here are all the independently sufficient reasons it is wrong:
Carbon dioxide is cooling the planet, it does not contribute to global warming
A (slightly) warmer planet is not a planet with less quality of life, a warmer more carboniferous planet has more food, more animals, and more temperate climates. It has more severe storms and winds but those can be completely mitigated by good engineering and the winds provide more energy for windmills.
The carbon dioxide an animal breathes out is part of a closed carbon cycle. You don't breathe out any carbon that wasn't captured from the atmosphere or biosphere first.
The carbon expelled by breathing is insignificant compared to that which is emitted by using the vast amounts of hydrocarbon fuels that almost all of us do in some way or another.
Increased education generally reduces the chances of terrorism and gang violence, for example.
Well educated geniuses worked for the nazis. Giving a man a fish may keep him from attacking you for a day. Teaching a man to fish may keep him from attacking you over food. Only teaching a man morals will keep him from attacking anyone except in the defense of liberty.
And if taxes didn't exist, you would just have anarchy anyway.That is false.Anarchy generally means "no government."
I accept that definition, and the conjugate definition of government as any entity that controls territory and enforces a code of behavior (laws) in that territory.
That's what anarchists advocate for, anyway.
All anarchists may be against taxes, but not everyone who is against taxes is an anarchist.
You may assert that lack of taxes implies anarchy, but I deny that and my denial does not make me an anarchist anymore than a pro-choice person admits to supporting murder by denying the personhood of a fetus.
I don't think we could have a government (or something recognizable as a government) without taxes.
I believe if you tried to justify your opinion I cold debunk those arguments.
The question that arises from first principles is not "how would you do it without stealing" it is "why do you need to steal?"
The only answer that has the slightest validity to that question has been the freeloader problem. Solve the freeloader problem in other ways and the how and the why of a government that doesn't steals becomes apparent (often comically obvious).
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Let's imagine a class of actions which in some small way contribute to an event which constitutes an attack on the liberty of others. The normal rules of causality and reasonableness would apply here. If the contribution to the damage can be quantified then only those furtherances which constitute a significant chance of being "the final straw" could be considered intentional attacks.
This would require quantifying what the threshold is for a "significant chance". Climate change is a spectrum and likely has had significant effects already, releasing CO2 has a nonzero chance of having some effect on the environment. If some minor action I do has a 1 in 100,000,000 chance of being the final straw that causes a flood, and that is morally acceptable to you, then that doesn't seem too different from saying that 100,000,000 people's right to do X is worth the risk of causing a flood. The number may not be exactly that, but at some point the ends do eventually justify the means. We could say something similar about driving cars despite the minor risk of hitting a pedestrian.
The carbon dioxide an animal breathes out is part of a closed carbon cycle. You don't breathe out any carbon that wasn't captured from the atmosphere or biosphere first.
Sure, that's true. But it does not negate the fact that you are breathing out carbon, which does have negative effects on the environment.
Carbon dioxide is cooling the planet, it does not contribute to global warming
It cools some parts of the planet, but it correlates positively with global warming overall [source]. Maybe it's not fair to use an example as extreme as breathing, so the same could be said for other actions that increase CO2 or slightly harm the environment (emitting hydrocarbons, showering, flushing the toilet excessively, etc.) These are still pretty extreme examples, but that is how reductio ad absurdums work. We could debate the minutia of global warming, but small actions have a myriad of effects on the environment, and not all of them are unjustified.
A (slightly) warmer planet is not a planet with less quality of life
If we were in an ice age, that would be true, but enough CO2 has ben emitted that the marginal impact of a greater carbon footprint is negative. And measuring net impacts instead of focusing on just negative impacts seems a lot like saying the ends can justify the means in certain circumstances.
Only teaching a man morals will keep him from attacking anyone except in the defense of liberty.
A lot of schools do teach morals. Many of them have units on genocide. I don't know what you would classify "teaching morals" as other than education. And the Nazis as a counterexample does not negate that overall, education does decrease violence [source]. Education can also decrease war [source], so at least some forms of education would be effective in decreasing anarchy. This wouldn't just be a temporary solution if we continue to educate people every generation.
The only answer that has the slightest validity to that question has been the freeloader problem. Solve the freeloader problem in other ways
If we slashed all taxes tomorrow, how would anarchy be avoided? We'd need an immediate solution. Has the freeloader problem been solved on a large enough scale in some country that we would not consider that place to be living in anarchy? Even then, my issue isn't lack of alternatives as much as it is that taxes have funded things that have been shown to reduce disorder [source]. If your threshold for anarchy is such that you don't consider a bunch of independent warring clans to be anarchy, then maybe that's an alternative. There's one example where slashing all government functions has been tried and failed [source], and no large-scale success stories that come to mind. This will of course depend on what you consider success. A society with loose authority and 1800s living standards would probably be considered anarchy by most people today.
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@Savant
This would require quantifying what the threshold is for a "significant chance".
Yes
We could say something similar about driving cars despite the minor risk of hitting a pedestrian.
The means isn't a violation of rights. Taking a risk or doing something that could accumulate to a violation of rights is not a violation of rights regardless of the scale of that accumulation or risk, that was my point.
There is a huge moral difference between saying "some people just gota get run over so I can get to work, my job is more important than their life" and saying "The risk of me hitting anyone is acceptable in our society"
The carbon dioxide an animal breathes out is part of a closed carbon cycle. You don't breathe out any carbon that wasn't captured from the atmosphere or biosphere first.Sure, that's true. But it does not negate the fact that you are breathing out carbon, which does have negative effects on the environment.
Of course it does. If you had never lived, or if you stopped breathing and died the exact same amount of carbon dioxide would be in the atmosphere. Actually there would be more. So you have a 'duty' to keep living and keep all that carbon sequestered in your body tissues (if anything).
Carbon dioxide is cooling the planet, it does not contribute to global warmingIt cools some parts of the planet,
It blocks IR radiation from the sun higher in the atmosphere while doing nothing to impede convection currents which dominate energy flow. The asymmetric effect is always to cool the surface, even though the effect is probably immeasurably small and even more so when the carbon dioxide settles near the surface in stagnant conditions.
but it correlates positively with global warming overall [source].
It correlates because warmer temperatures outgas carbon dioxide from the oceans.
And measuring net impacts instead of focusing on just negative impacts seems a lot like saying the ends can justify the means in certain circumstances.
Impacts = ends.
Comparing impacts is comparing ends. Not means and ends.
There is nothing intrinsically immoral about breathing or burning a billion tons of coal per second. The only proposed immorality is the impact/ends/outcome.
If the outcome is a violation of rights, that can make the means immoral for that reason. Ends cannot justify means, but they can condemn them.
Only teaching a man morals will keep him from attacking anyone except in the defense of liberty.A lot of schools do teach morals. Many of them have units on genocide.
Pointing to something and saying "that's bad" isn't teaching morality. Teaching morality requires teaching philosophy, specifically ethics. Anyone can point at concentration camps and say "not again", what the world is missing are people who understand why people thought it was justified to build a concentration camp in the first place and why they thought the government that did it deserved their trust and loyalty.
The only answer that has the slightest validity to that question has been the freeloader problem. Solve the freeloader problem in other waysIf we slashed all taxes tomorrow, how would anarchy be avoided?
Suppose the answer is: It could not be.
That proves nothing. If you free fifty million slaves overnight with no provision for how they would be taken care of / make a living you would get anarchy too. That does not mean slavery is necessary for civilization or that it is morally sound.
Societies can and do get themselves into situations where they are committing mass immorality on false claims of necessity and there is no simple and instant fix.
We'd need an immediate solution.
No, we just need a solution.
Has the freeloader problem been solved on a large enough scale in some country that we would not consider that place to be living in anarchy?
There is no general solution to the problem. It depends on the government service. Examples of solutions are easily found. If you live in the USA you may have an EZ pass. This is a solution to the free loader problem in regards to roads.
You may have noticed tickets to public transportation. This is the solution to the freeloader problem for public transportation.
You may have noticed water delivery fees with meters. This is the solution to the freeloader problem for government supplied water.
Suppose that the answer is that there are no working examples. That does not mean it cannot work. There is always a first time.
Imagine someone complaining that the government can't prevent him from killing other human beings because then he would have no recourse when they raped his wife.
Just because there are not an infinite number of pathways consisting of small beneficial steps does not mean there is not a superior stable point somewhere else. In evolutionary theory they call it scaffolding when there is no directly path with continuous positive feedback.
The system of "you don't kill people in revenge" requires "we'll defend all your rights".
The diversity of civilizations throughout time and space give ample evidence of the fact that many of the things we call necessary public services are not necessary to have those services and that voluntary funding can be sufficient to maintain public order. Theory and empirical evidence agree. If there is a lack of a tax-free government it is for the same reason that there were once no nations without slavery. When a universally tempting corruption is legal and normalized it will be universal.
Even then, my issue isn't lack of alternatives as much as it is that taxes have funded things that have been shown to reduce disorder
Cotton has been shown to be an excellent fiber for fabric. That does not mean slavery is moral or necessary (for cotton).
If your threshold for anarchy is such that you don't consider a bunch of independent warring clans to be anarchy, then maybe that's an alternative.
Push it to the extreme in the other direction:
If warring clans are anarchy, then why not warring nations? "Special military actions" "Police actions", or whatever other nonsense they call all this constant killing.
If the justification of taxes is to assure peace and prosperity then isn't the constant war proof that even if the price is paid the goods are not delivered? Indeed one might remark upon the fact that where ever there is large scale war there were taxes to build the weapons and pay the soldiers.
There's one example where slashing all government functions has been tried and failed [source]
I find the notion that this was an example of failure hilarious.
Too much liberty = confused bears
Too little liberty = 60 million dead of starvation plus tens of millions more dead in a global struggle mostly featuring socialists who advertised their contempt for individual liberty
and no large-scale success stories that come to mind. This will of course depend on what you consider success. A society with loose authority and 1800s living standards would probably be considered anarchy by most people today.
I do consider the industrial and technological revolutions of 1880 -> 1910 to be an example of positive correlation of economic liberty and prosperity
If that is what someone wants to call anarchy, then by their standards I am an anarchist
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@ADreamOfLiberty
The means isn't a violation of rights. Taking a risk or doing something that could accumulate to a violation of rights is not a violation of rights regardless of the scale of that accumulation or risk, that was my point.
Let's say your threshold is 1%. If you do something with a 1% chance of killing someone 100 times, how is that morally different than doing something with a 100% chance of killing someone once? For example, starting a car company is statistically certain to lead to some deaths. Doing something that will kill an average of 5 people doesn't seem better than doing something that will kill exactly 5 people.
If you had never lived, or if you stopped breathing and died the exact same amount of carbon dioxide would be in the atmosphere. Actually there would be more. So you have a 'duty' to keep living and keep all that carbon sequestered in your body tissues (if anything).
This is not true. Population correlates with climate change [source]. And emitting some CO2 so you can keep living and help the environment would be another example of looking at net effect.
Comparing impacts is comparing ends. Not means and ends.
This would apply to taxes then too. Wealth redistribution makes people poorer (an end) and some people richer (an end). We're comparing ends in the trolley problem too. Maybe you're referring to the doctrine of double effect, but that gives a lot of leeway to utilitarians.
Pointing to something and saying "that's bad" isn't teaching morality. Teaching morality requires teaching philosophy, specifically ethics.
A lot of schools do cover that. Even English classes cover theories like social responsibility. What you describe as "teaching morality" falls under education and could be funded by taxes.
That proves nothing. If you free fifty million slaves overnight with no provision for how they would be taken care of / make a living you would get anarchy too. That does not mean slavery is necessary for civilization or that it is morally sound.
Sure, so we agree that sometimes anarchy is acceptable compared to alternatives. But in our discussion on taxes, you were arguing that the government violating liberty would lead to anarchy. So it sounds like you are arguing that we should accept anarchy to avoid government programs that might lead to anarchy. That comes across as self-defeating.
No, we just need a solution.
If we don't have an immediate solution, we would have a period of anarchy. Maybe that gets resolved eventually, but it will be harder to transfer power and organize now that society has turned to anarchy.
You may have noticed tickets to public transportation. This is the solution to the freeloader problem for public transportation.You may have noticed water delivery fees with meters. This is the solution to the freeloader problem for government supplied water.
Those do not cover police or paving of communal roads. And even if upper classes are provided for, some people will still be too poor to access those and will not be able to advance either. An "everyone out for themself" system is anarchy, regardless of whether you think it is good or not.
Suppose that the answer is that there are no working examples. That does not mean it cannot work. There is always a first time.That does not mean slavery is moral or necessary (for cotton).
Studies have shown that slavery decreased overall efficiency. (Even if it didn't, we obviously agree that slavery would not be justified. But that's not the point here.) But policing does reduce crime, so an absence of policing would mean an increase in violence. Places that defunded police did not see more effective alternatives emerge [source]. Hypothetical alternatives are unlikely if we can compare places with and without the current system and do not see alternatives emerging. With slavery, we could see an alternative (factories) in places where slavery was nonexistent.
The diversity of civilizations throughout time and space give ample evidence of the fact that many of the things we call necessary public services are not necessary to have those services and that voluntary funding can be sufficient to maintain public order.
The diversity of civilizations throughout time shows that places without taxes lived in anarchy by today's standards. Some places did have no government services, but that's what anarchy is.
Push it to the extreme in the other direction:If warring clans are anarchy, then why not warring nations? "Special military actions" "Police actions", or whatever other nonsense they call all this constant killing.
Anarchy tends to indicate a much lower scale of organization or authority than the conflicts existing today. We have large countries and alliances like NATO. People in most first-world countries do not live in fear of being dragged into war. Even WW2 had a "home front" in the US that was largely immune from direct war casualties.
Too little liberty = 60 million dead of starvation plus tens of millions more dead in a global struggle mostly featuring socialists who advertised their contempt for individual liberty
Well that's comparing anarchy on a small scale to socialism on a large scale. And this would be a good reason to not embrace either extreme, rather than accepting a false dichotomy of socialism and government abolition.
I do consider the industrial and technological revolutions of 1880 -> 1910 to be an example of positive correlation of economic liberty and prosperityIf that is what someone wants to call anarchy, then by their standards I am an anarchist
That's an example of the success of market freedoms in regulated capitalist societies, and regulated capitalist societies are not the same as government abolition. Just as Finland is not an example of socialist success despite having public healthcare.
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@Savant
Get up,
Do something,
Go to bed.
Modern systematic society evolved naturally.
Compliance affords survival.
Reasonably comfortably.
Other options might be workable.
Offering varying levels of comfort,
Blah Blah Blah.
Bearing in mind,
There is more than one sub-system.
Though currency is the general system of control.
Better that than anarchic brutality I suppose.
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@Savant
The means isn't a violation of rights. Taking a risk or doing something that could accumulate to a violation of rights is not a violation of rights regardless of the scale of that accumulation or risk, that was my point.Let's say your threshold is 1%. If you do something with a 1% chance of killing someone 100 times, how is that morally different than doing something with a 100% chance of killing someone once?
Well it's still possible that you don't kill someone after a 100 1% risks, but is (by definition) probable.
Maybe the punishment should be different, but both are immoral.
For example, starting a car company is statistically certain to lead to some deaths.
and just as certain to save some lives
A suicide that never happened because there was a job at the factory. A person who was saved because your car brought them to the hospital in time. Etc.. etc...
Doing something that will kill an average of 5 people doesn't seem better than doing something that will kill exactly 5 people.
One of the big differences in practice (meaning most of the time as opposed to the purely abstract) is that people consent to risks.
No five people will consent to die (well maybe they would, but then that's not a problem either). 500,000 people may consent to a risk with the general knowledge that five of them won't survive.
This is entirely rational because we are fragile beings and life is full of risks. We balance small risks against our lifetime satisfaction in any case.
If you had never lived, or if you stopped breathing and died the exact same amount of carbon dioxide would be in the atmosphere. Actually there would be more. So you have a 'duty' to keep living and keep all that carbon sequestered in your body tissues (if anything).This is not true. Population correlates with climate change [source].
Carbon dioxide doesn't cause climate change. Population may correlate with carbon dioxde release, but not because of breathing but because we dig it up for energy.
Comparing impacts is comparing ends. Not means and ends.This would apply to taxes then too.
You can compare the effects of taxes vs non-taxes, and I do. That is a different thing from looking at the means of taxes vs non-taxes and determining that taxation is immoral.
Wealth redistribution makes people poorer (an end) and some people richer (an end).
Theft is not wrong because someone got poorer. It is wrong because you violated their rights.
If you stole a disgusting statute from someone's front garden, that is still theft even though you could argue that the property value went up by the action. Those who steal very often do justify themselves by appealing to the greater good, governments most often of all.
We're comparing ends in the trolley problem too. Maybe you're referring to the doctrine of double effect, but that gives a lot of leeway to utilitarians.
It is lack of comprehension of the difference between evaluating the morality of means and evaluating the morality of ends that confuses so many people in the trolley problem.
Yes, the trolley problem is about ends. Not means.
Pulling a track lever is not immoral. Pulling a trigger is not immoral. Only the end makes it immoral in some cases. When the immorality comes from the ends, the ends may be compared and you can choose the lesser evil.
The ends and the means are contextual. In the ends in a narrow scope can be the means in the wider scope. It is very relevant who sets up the scenario where evil ends are unavoidable.
For instance if you are the one who tied the people to the track then you're wrong no matter what way you switch the track.
The theft version of the trolley problem would be choosing between stealing a lot and stealing a little. The means cannot be avoided so it is not part of the moral calculation. If however you could choose a path with no theft, that is the path you must take regardless of the ends.
So suppose you tied the people to the track because you've convinced yourself that if either of the parties on the tracks died a hundred other people would live.
That is analogous to taxes, whether you commit one murder or multiple murders you committed murder because you tied people to a track where they would get run-over.
What you describe as "teaching morality" falls under education and could be funded by taxes.
Or we could enslave people to build the school and teach. That would be no less ironic than enslaving people to pay other people to build the school and teach that enslaving people is wrong. Slavery is just continuous institutional theft after all, a compatible definition with taxation.
But in our discussion on taxes, you were arguing that the government violating liberty would lead to anarchy.
Or war, which is anarchy on some scale, and causes anarchy on other scales.
So it sounds like you are arguing that we should accept anarchy to avoid government programs that might lead to anarchy. That comes across as self-defeating.
I at no point said or implied we should accept anarchy. It is your assertion that the lack of taxation is equivalent to anarchy, I have not ceded that point.
No, we just need a solution.If we don't have an immediate solution, we would have a period of anarchy.
Or we could have a transitional plan which is ordered by clear and enforced laws.
You may have noticed tickets to public transportation. This is the solution to the freeloader problem for public transportation.You may have noticed water delivery fees with meters. This is the solution to the freeloader problem for government supplied water.Those do not cover police
No, because as I said the freeloader problem is different for each case. I have at other times described a business model which revolved around insurance and highly localized benefits: https://www.debateart.com/forum/topics/9511-california-proposes-exit-tax-for-fleeing-refugees?page=3&post_number=71
or paving of communal roads.
If a communal road is just a road without a toll, and people find this necessary all they have to do is pay for the road by donation.
And even if upper classes are provided for, some people will still be too poor to access those and will not be able to advance either.
Stealing doesn't increase general prosperity. In fact it makes it much worse.
The public services required for civilization to persist (or non-anarchy) will not be too expensive, even for the poor because the poor in the society will be richer than the middle class of a society which wastes money through theft-enabled corruption.
Or in other words, are there really people so poor they can't afford a toll road? Or a bus pass?
No. Even now, with corrupt and inefficient government poor people rely on public transportation because owning a car is the greater cost.
When people have limited resources (their own production) they are forced to be more efficient, not less. Busses are more efficient. Lots of people being efficient improves production/demand ratios making things cheaper making poor people less poor.
There was a time when a single person could pay for a whole family and pay off a house in ten years. That is what high production/demand ratio looks like. In those societies you're always poorer than someone else but you're not anywhere near being so poor that you can no longer live a life of dignity.
An "everyone out for themself" system is anarchy, regardless of whether you think it is good or not.
Then we redefine anarchy. If rational self-interest is anarchy, then I am an anarchist. However I reject that definition and will not use that label.
Suppose that the answer is that there are no working examples. That does not mean it cannot work. There is always a first time.That does not mean slavery is moral or necessary (for cotton).Studies have shown that slavery decreased overall efficiency.
I would doubt any study that found otherwise; but you won't find such academic work in societies which practice slavery.
If and when a more perfect human civilization comes about, they will write studies showing that government theft (taxation) decreased overall efficiency and marvel at the fact that we who lived in such societies could not see the obvious: https://www.usdebtclock.org/
But policing does reduce crime, so an absence of policing would mean an increase in violence.
Police and laws are implicit requirements for civilization. A population without enforced laws is not in a state of liberty it is simply being oppressed by small scale tyrants. Police need to be paid. They do not need to be paid with stolen wealth.
With slavery, we could see an alternative (factories) in places where slavery was nonexistent.
Factories aren't the alternative to slavery. Freedom is.
You can have an agrarian labor based society without slavery. Factories will beat slave labor and free labor because factories are efficient.
The reason there were factories in places that slavery wasn't is because people could not enslave each other there and thus rational self-interest motivated increasing the efficiency of labor, especially with mechanization.
It was not efficiency made slavery obsolete, it was freedom that created efficiency.
In the exact same way we do not need an alternative to police. We need to fund police morally. Once we do, those improvements to the police which are efficient will be developed and prioritized and we will end up with a more efficient "art of policing".
The same is true for all government funded services. Those who support stealing often like to harp about "no examples of non-theft working" but they are everywhere: In cases where liberty-respecting alternatives are legally allowed the contrast is clear, see charter schools vs public schools. Especially note that difference in spending per student / academic performance.
The charter schools would not fail because the government stopped stealing to run inefficient and corrupt public schools. Hospitals would not fail because the government stopped stealing to run medicare.
There is no cliff to walk off of, only the propaganda of the beneficiaries of the corruption to overcome.
The diversity of civilizations throughout time shows that places without taxes lived in anarchy by today's standards.
The Greek City states under Roman Empire were the farthest thing from anarchy that existed in those times. The best evidence says their public institutions were voluntarily funded.
Some places did have no government services, but that's what anarchy is.
Again, if you're willing to call 1880s UK or US anarchy, then the word ceases to have significance.
When I say anarchy I mean the tyranny of petty thieves and thugs that results when laws against theft and violence do not exist or have no bite.
Anarchy tends to indicate a much lower scale of organization or authority than the conflicts existing today.
Organization relates to scale. "authority" means nothing. Everyone justifies their violence by creating a mythos of authority. See "The godfather" or the origin of local nobility.
People in most first-world countries do not live in fear of being dragged into war.
Thanks to nuclear weapons more than any special capacity for national deep-states to keep their power-lust under control.
Even WW2 had a "home front" in the US that was largely immune from direct war casualties.
and when clans fought each other they left most of their population in castles and forts to stay safe. They weren't always safe, and the British public certainly weren't safe in WW2. If the war had gone poorly the US population base would not be safe either.
This is nothing but the same on a larger scale.
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@Savant
Too little liberty = 60 million dead of starvation plus tens of millions more dead in a global struggle mostly featuring socialists who advertised their contempt for individual libertyWell that's comparing anarchy on a small scale to socialism on a large scale. And this would be a good reason to not embrace either extreme,
New Hampshire is not anarchy. Confused bears aren't mutually exclusive with civilization.
Liberal civilization (which is true civilization) has better ends and moral means. It's just superior. Confused bears and whatever other detrimental ends might exist in global adoption are insignificant compared to everyone being a much wealthier and having far fewer reasons to fight.
rather than accepting a false dichotomy of socialism and government abolition.
I'm not. I say you can have government without any stealing what so ever. You are the one propagating that dichotomy.
That's an example of the success of market freedoms in regulated capitalist societies
"regulation" is a propaganda term designed to confuse the difference between civilization and socialism (government slavery).
People call punishing fraud regulation, but they also call price-fixing regulation.
Punishing fraud is the maintenance of liberty. Price fixing is the violation of liberty.
There is no reason to expect the violations of liberty which did exist in the 1880s to have been contributors to the increased prosperity much less necessary to it. The only empirical evidence we have is that when more liberty is violated prosperity per capita and prosperity growth is reduced.
You are pointing to a tick on a proud horse and saying "Yea the horse is fast and strong, but he still had this tick so clearly horses can't be fast and strong without ticks"
Now we live in a time where the horse is sickly and covered in ticks and people like you are saying "Ok, things aren't great but if we removed these ticks the horse would die. There has never been a horse without a tick so we know they are necessary and beneficial"
regulated capitalist societies are not the same as government abolition
Moral governments are not the same as immoral governments, but more moral governments are correlated with more successful economies.