The reasons you express are shallow. Your argument ammounts to, "saying that ending government is a solution is childish." This is not a very fuctional argument. Why don't you tell me why it is childish.

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"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

Fair enough (to your last sentence). I will let you have the last word and end the discussion here.

I invite you to join the other active thread in "Economic Issues." We are discussing it there.

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

As I have already told you "Millions of years of biology and thousands of years of culture make it clear there is no humanity, no culture, and no civilization without government and therefore no 'moral law' to be violated by government. Since there is no culture or civilization without government and no government without taxation then taxation is not 'stealing'". And your childish rant against being governed is nothing but a tantrum. You have provided no reason for anyone to care whether you want to be governed and no reason for anyone to believe your desire is any rationale to "end governmtne"..
What I would like is for you to make one serious argument on this subject. And while your'e at it I would like you to acknowledge that "privitizing something" is not the same as serious scholarship arguing for ending government

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

It's childish because it ignores millions of years of human experience based on nothing more than your laughable "I don't want to be governed" whine.

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A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

Ok, now we are getting somewhere. What, specifically, in history does it ignore?

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

Allow me to calrify, as I have made a mistake. When I talk about ending government, I should say I want to end the state. I realize that some form of governmnet is needed for humans to survive as a race. This, however, in no way means that people need a state. A state, after all, is only a group of people. The state is not comprised of demi-gods, or special really smart people. The state is comprised of people like you and me.

So, why should I have to give these people authority over me? This is not childish, it is a serious argument. There are many exmaples showing that less sate involvment provides society with the best results. During the first half of the 19th Century, America had a very limited state and America was prosperous. Likewise, Iceland has had points in history in which there was no state, and it did well.

Contrast this to modern-day Europe. The unemployment rate is about 15% for nearly all of Europe. They have a bigger state than the US, which has rate of about 4% or 5%. The Soviet Union fell apart. North Korea is in bad shape; South Korea is not.

I do realize that in most of these examples there has been some state. However, should not be used as an argument against my thesis. Whenever the state is small, the people benefit the most. This was a major idea in Smith's Wealt of Nations. So, the logical conclusion is that no state is the best. In what periods of American history (if you have example in other countries, that would be ok, too, I just will have to do a little research) has my conclusion been refuted.

Thomas Jefferson said two very good things which I will use to wrap up this portion of my post (I might be paraphrasing a little):
1. That which governs least, governs best.
2. Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

I gave no consent. Once again, this is not a childish argument. I have a right to do as I please as long as I do not violate your rights. Rights, by the way, are not derived from governmet. They are things we have by the virtue of living.

As for scholarship, you are way off. I realize that arguing to prvitize one thing is not the same as arguing to end the state. However, as I have said, it would be silly to make the same argument many times. Look at Block's CV, it is over 100 pages! This is just a list of the things he has done! Can you imagine if every thing he wrote was about the total and complete destruction of the state? It would get old and he wouldn't make much progress with his aruments. So, instead, he writes about a current-events topic. "Oh, the post office messed up, let me write an article about prvitizing it!" "Oh, roads suck, I see an article comming up!" Or he reponds to different articles. For example, one article might argue that such and such a thing is a public good and as such the government must provide it. Well Block (as well as other anarcho-capitalists) are going to write an article refuting this point. They are not going to write a response article that argues for the prvitazation of everything.

The Journal of Libertarian Studies is a journal that is devoted, in large part, to making arguments against the state.

So, you are completly off on this idea that there is no scholarship espousing the same beliefs as I.

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

Nonsense. You give these people authority because that is the price of living in this democracy. That price was determined by your fellow citizens. If you don't like it you can run for office to change it. But in the meantime you must submit to governance.
And there are many examples of less government being harmful to people. Like the abuse of workers during the laissez faire days of early industrialized society. But the next time we find a continent with virtually unlimited and unexploited natural resources whose residents are helpless to protect themselves our 19th century american example will be relevant. And if you want to live in a tribal society in order to avoid government you are welcome to. What you will find though is that tribal structures have their own governing institutions even if they are personal and idiosyncratic rather than institutionalized.

Yes it is childish. And it's an example of willful ignorance. The refusal to pay taxes as required to support this society and government is in fact a violation of the rights of every person who participates in the society. Every participation in human society is by definition a limitation of personal rights and has been since the first band of homo sapiens walked the earth.
Your "less is good so none is better" is absurd - not logical - because the second argument does not logically flow from the first. If I lose 20 pounds I will improve my health. According to you If I stop eating altogether I'll live forever.
Then why, when I said there is no serious scholarship arguing for "ending government" you quoted me crap about "privatizing things"?
Then I was right and there is no serious scholarship arguing for ending government.
I'm not traveling to any more links. All the previous ones were an irrelevant waste of time.
If I had ever said that you would be right. But since what I said was there is no serious scholarship arguing for ending government (as you were doing before this post) I guess I wasn't really wrong at all.

If you have a rational argument to make that some aspect of our government would be better reduced then present it. But save us the "end government" and "I won't be governed" and "moral law" and "taxation is theft" crap.

__________________
A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

I don't deny that government provides some very useful and even necessary services, and that I should contribute towards them. Given a proper accounting and a note to the effect of 'Pay what you can, we recommend X', there are some services I would probably even fund in excess of my share.

As it is, we get various bills and notices that say something to the effect of "Pay us this amount, or we will variously take away your freedom, your vehicle, your house, and/or appreciably more money than we're currently demanding." Does this sound like something consentual? Yes, in the way that complying with "Take off your clothes and lie on the bed, or I will variously destroy your property, burn down your house, and/or do worse things to you than I had originally planned" would be consentual. The fact that one chooses the obvious course of action or lives someplace that one or the other of these demands is commonplace is irrelevant. (As is the option of living someplace where one might be subjected to worse circumstances.)

Taxation is, at its core, theft. But since not everyone (or not enough anyway) would willingly pay for necessary governmental functions, it is a necessary evil. And like all evils, it should be minimized when it cannot realistically be eliminated.

__________________
Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

What it sounds like is an honest presentation of your choices. Just like the choices you are offered by every other law. By your definition every restriction of freedom is theft. In fact by your definition society itself is theft of freedom. And that broad a definition of theft robs the term of meaning.

__________________
A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

The price of living in this democracy? According to this agument, the state can do no wrong to its citizens. The State wants to tax its citizens, its ok, it is the price the people have to pay. The state wants to tell the citizens that it cannot carry guns, that's ok, its "the price." The state wants to wipe out a group of dissenters, that's ok because it is just the price of living in a particular country.

This argument begs the question. Your conclusion is that the state is just. Your premise is that the state is just because the state says it is just. When I disagree with this premise, you tell me that I am wrong because the state is just, and therefor what it says is the truth. If I have misunderstood something, please let me know.

What do you think of the American Revolution? They decided that they wanted to be free, and they said, "Dammit, we have rights, we are no longer a part of you, Great Britian!" When this happend, GB got mad and attacked. But, the colonists did not tell the Birttish government that "We are going to be free from you after we win a war with you." No, they said, very clearly in the Declaration of Independance that they were free from Brittish rule.

This is essentially what I am arguing. The colonists argued that no state had the legitimate authority to coercivly govern over people. I am saying the same thing. If you agree with me that the colonists were within their rights to seceede from GB, then how do you reconcile this with your other view on the state? If a group of indivduals have a right to break from a state, then it follows that indivduals also have a right to do this. And, if you are going to argue that this is not true, I would like an explanation. Only indivduals have rights. Groups don't have rights that the indivdual does not have. Therfor, if you agree that the colonists were right in leaving GB, you implicitly admit that I am right in this argument.

Now, In understand that you havn't made the claim that you think the colonists were right. If you don't think they are right, then I have lost this particular portion of the argument. Not because I am wrong, but because I am going about it the wrong way.

Following from my above idea that groups of indivduals only have the right to do things that the indivduals that compose the group have a right to do, we can come to the same conclusion.

First, let me clarify what my definition of a right is. In short, people have the right to do whatever they want, as long as they are not interfering with the property of other people.

Indivduals do not have the right to take money from other indivduals. Why? The indivdual that is being robbed has a right to his propety; in this case the property is his money. I imagine this is something to which you and I can agree. Following from this, we can say that it is unjust for a group of invivduals to steal from one indivdual. If, for example three people went to rob one, the fact that the one person being robbed is the minoirty is of no importance. He has a right to that money, and no one else can allocate that resource with out his permission. We might be able to use your argument and say that this four person thing is a democracy. The price of living in it is set by the three robbers, and the robbee must pay. From this we can get the same conclusion in today's society.

When were workers abused? The workers came out of the woodwork to work at these "abusive" factories. The fact that they chose to work in the factories is indicative of the fact that the factory is their best option. If the factory had not existed, the workers would have to have done something even worse than factory work.

So, we had a situation in which two parties cooperated and and benefited from the cooperation. This is obvious a priori because both parties voulantary traded with eachother. If they did not derive some benefit from the trade, they would not have made the trade. So, next we have the state come in and end this cooperation. This is what the state does: hampers cooperation.

Whoopie, let's have more of this same thing!

Society has progressed since the 19th Century. What does economic progression mean? It is the allevation of scarcity. We have things now that 19th Century people didn't even imagine. We have cheap running water, cheap electricity, and really good transportation.
So, what does this mean relative to your argument? The fact that scarcity has been reduced means that we have even more than we had in the 19th Century! So our resources are even more "virtually unlimited."
Tribal society? What? Why does it have to be a tribal society? Are you suggesting that it is the state that has served as impetus for all economic growth? If you are, you are dead wrong. The private sector deserves the credit for this.

Who gave us an affodable car? Henry Ford- private sector.
Who has given us telephones? At&T, Bell, etc- private sector.
Who has made it possible for people to have computers in their homes- Bill Gates- private sector.
And the list goes on.
How is it a violation of people's rights? I am not saying that I still want to recieve the benefits of paying taxes. I won't use the Fire Department, or Police. However, as long as I am going to be forced to pay taxes, I am going to use some state-provided services.

To show that I am a comprimiser, tell me if you can agree with this plan:
We allow private sector companies to compete with gov't. If you want to use the post office use it, but if you don't you can use FedEx. Also, if you want to use private sector companies instead of public sector companies, you can. But, if you make this choice, you cannot use the public sector services. Does this sound ok?

There is serious sholarship relating to ending the state by anarchists. As I said, not every article is going to be an argument for the end of the state. They are applications of the conslusion to current-day situations, and current-day scholarship.

Murray Rothbard wrote extensivly, he was an Endowed Chair at UNLV before his death in 1995. He wrote two books:
The Ethics of Liberty and For a New Liberty
Both of these books argue for the end of the state.

This is in addition to the numerous articles that he wrote that espoused ideas of non state intervention.

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

Nothing I wrote is even remotely like "the state can do no wrong to its citizens".
Nothing I wrote is even remotely like "the state is just because the state says it is just".

Your ramblings about the revolution have no relevance to this discussion that I can see.
Your ramblings about the private sector have no relevance to the discussion that I can see.
Just because worse things could have happened to workers than child labor, starvation wages, deathtrap working conditions, goon squads for trying to organize etc does not mean those things are not abuse. Do you even think before you post this stuff?
Your fantasy compromise makes no sense to me and also has no relevance that I can see to what we've been discussing.

You keep saying there is serious scholarship arguing for ending government. I've never seen or even heard of any and you have yet to provide any so I wish you would drop it.
The rest of your post is so confused and disconnected to anything we've been talking about that I don't even know what to say about it.

I asked you to bring a serious argument if you had one. This entire post is nothing but misrepresentions of my post and off topic ramblings.

__________________
A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon

Ok, so you admit I win.
Once again, you have not responed in any real way to what I posted. I will ask you this, again:

Did the founders have a right to leave the Brittish state?

Perhaps we can work from here. Or you can explain to me the difference in your argument and my characterazation of it.

If I am correct in my understanding, you posit that the state is legitmate because it is a social contract, or something similar?
Is this correct?

If it is a social contract, then we have agreed with it, and this is why we must obey it.
Is this correct?

If those two are correct, it would seem that the state can do whatever it pleases because we have agreed to it. In other words, the state can do no wrong. I am interested in having a serious discussion, but you very rarely do anything but tell me I am wrong. You never provide me with reaons that I am wrong.

In what sense are voulantary agreements abuse? Are you suggesting that people are siginging up to be abused? Let's assume that you get what you want and all sweat shops are forced to close. (I imagine you apply the same argument to current-day sweat shops.) This means that the workers are forced to do something even worse than working in a sweat shop. How is this good. Oh you great humanitarian, you.

As for scholarship, I just listed 2 or 3 books whose main argument is to end the state because it is unjust. I also gave you CVs of four anarchists. Most of the things they have written are in the sphere of anarchy. I have, to this point given you the name of 5 tenured professors (three endowed chairs) that are anarchists. This scratches the surface.

Please tell me how I misrepresented your post rather than just telling me that I did. That is how a debate works.

__________________
"Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question."
-Thomas Jefferson in his first inauguration address

So then you'd be fine with somebody stopping by your place and saying "Take off your clothes and lie on the bed, or I will variously destroy your property, burn down your house, and/or do worse things to you than I had originally planned," assuming it was an honest presentation of your choices?

No, theft is something taken without consent. The society we live in dictates that I'm not allowed to kill you for disagreeing with me. Taking away that freedom is not theft, as I both didn't want it in the first place and also gladly trade it for a similar protection from you if it were needed. I similarly consent to give up my freedom to steal others' property, violate their persons, and abdicate contractual agreements, as do most people in our society.

If all laws were stricken tomorrow, and/or liberty1776 succeeded in eliminating the state, would most people suddenly become homocidal, or otherwise violate the basic rights I listed above? No, because such restrictions are consentual. Would most people continue to pay their tax bills in full? I expect very few (if any) would, including me. Why not? Because taxes are taken without true consent.

__________________
Today's forecast: Government corruption.

Tomorrow's forecast: 100% chance of more 'politics as usual'

Maybe it's finally time to vote Libertarian

There is a continuum of "consent" to laws from the nearly universal agreement not to murder all the way to the nearly universal flouting of the speeding laws. The fact that people are happier to obey some laws than others is irrelevant if those laws have been passed according to the rules of this democratic republic (or whatever it is). So taxes are no more a "theft" of money than laws against murder are a "theft" of your freedom to kill.

I have no doubt there are people in this world who are more willing to pay taxes than they are to refrain from killing someone. If we let your personal preference determine what is theft then why not the murderer's?

__________________
A nation of slaves is always prepared to applaud the clemency of their master who, in the abuse of absolute power, does not proceed to the utmost extremes of injustice and oppression.
Edward Gibbon