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Not necessarily anarchy. When you join twitter, you agree to be bound by its terms. To envision competing twitters providing arbitration and security services d

by pithic 10y ago

Not necessarily anarchy. When you join twitter, you agree to be bound by its terms. To envision competing twitters providing arbitration and security services does not take a heroic imagination. If you are not jarred from exposure by this essay to the bone-chilling injustice of our current arrangements, you likely did not read it.

cbd1984 10y ago
I've read it and I think it's juvenile. If you want to opt out of a society, wonderful. Leave it. Most governments will allow you to leave, and I certainly agree that those which do not are tyrannical. However, if you try to opt out and refuse to leave, you're a free rider, getting the benefit from the society without agreeing to the rules which helps make it work. It is immoral to benefit from clean air if you refuse to abide by the laws limiting air pollution. It is immoral to benefit from a functional banking system if you refuse to abide by the laws regulating that banking system. Yes, there are a lot of immoral people in the world. However, waving your immorality around like a flag by saying you don't agree to the system you benefit from is a level to which most of the immoral will not stoop. If you are going to do wrong, at least have the decency to admit you're doing wrong, and attempt to change the system in a constructive way, instead of trying to paint free riding as a moral alternative.
- colejohnson66 10y ago
  You can't renounce your US citizenship for quite a while after you leave. During that time you have to pay US taxes.
  - int_19h 10y ago
    Or without paying a fee. Which is currently $2,350. (Ironically, you have to pay more to renounce US citizenship, then you have to pay in all the various filing fees etc when acquiring citizenship through naturalization.)
  - cbd1984 10y ago
    As a practical matter, you can evade US taxes if you have no financial contact with the US; the IRS can deem you liable for any amount of taxes and it won't have any effect on you if they're unable to collect them.
    - colejohnson66 10y ago
      But if you have family you left in the US, you're almost certainly gonna have financial contact with them.
- pdonis 10y ago
  > If you want to opt out of a society, wonderful. The Constitution is not the same as society, and saying that the Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation is not the same as opting out of society. In fact, the unthinking conflation of these two concepts (the Constitution and society) is exactly the sort of thing this essay was intended to argue against.
  - hexscrews 10y ago
    I'd argue otherwise. The constitution sets out the defining goal of a society. Call it the rule-set for the society as a whole. If you disagree with the defining rules, that is fine. You can chose any number of governmental models on this planet. But don't expect the rest of us to agree to your rule-set.
    - pdonis 10y ago
      > The constitution sets out the defining goal of a society. I don't see that in the US Constitution. The preamble talks about things like securing certain blessings, but doesn't really say what they actually are; it uses vague terms like "Justice", which mean different things to different people. The US founding document that comes closest to setting out a defining goal, at least in terms of what government is for, is the Declaration of Independence, and even that is vague: what does "pursuit of happiness" really mean?
      - sverige 10y ago
        And "pursuit of happiness" was "pursuit of property" originally.
  - cbd1984 10y ago
    It's impossible to have a society without laws, written or unwritten, and the Constitution is the underlying legal document which all laws must be in accordance with. (A society without written laws is anarchistic, or despotic. A society without any laws at all is impossible.)
brightball 10y ago
I read most of it. Was quite a long read and most of the later sections were attempts to reinforce his overarching point across different areas of possible consent. The issue that I take with a paper from 1870 appearing today regarding the governing power of the Constitution is largely one of sheer irony for the situation that we are currently is...because our current system of government was exactly what the US Constitution was designed to prevent. It's fitting that this was written in 1870 only a few years removed from the Civil War and in the midst of Reconstruction when the US began it's current trek toward consolidated federal power in which a man really does have very little say in the matters of his own governance. State and local governments are more tangible and adaptable to the votes of the people and the ongoing interests of it's citizens as times change. States that can experiment. Learn from each other. Compete with each other. See things in other states that they like and adopt them with their own local nuance if need be. As a bonus, states have to have balanced budgets.

by pithic 10y ago

cbd1984 10y ago

I've read it and I think it's juvenile. If you want to opt out of a society, wonderful. Leave it. Most governments will allow you to leave, and I certainly agree that those which do not are tyrannical. However, if you try to opt out and refuse to leave, you're a free rider, getting the benefit from the society without agreeing to the rules which helps make it work. It is immoral to benefit from clean air if you refuse to abide by the laws limiting air pollution. It is immoral to benefit from a functional banking system if you refuse to abide by the laws regulating that banking system. Yes, there are a lot of immoral people in the world. However, waving your immorality around like a flag by saying you don't agree to the system you benefit from is a level to which most of the immoral will not stoop. If you are going to do wrong, at least have the decency to admit you're doing wrong, and attempt to change the system in a constructive way, instead of trying to paint free riding as a moral alternative.

colejohnson66 10y ago
You can't renounce your US citizenship for quite a while after you leave. During that time you have to pay US taxes.
- int_19h 10y ago
  Or without paying a fee. Which is currently $2,350. (Ironically, you have to pay more to renounce US citizenship, then you have to pay in all the various filing fees etc when acquiring citizenship through naturalization.)
- cbd1984 10y ago
  As a practical matter, you can evade US taxes if you have no financial contact with the US; the IRS can deem you liable for any amount of taxes and it won't have any effect on you if they're unable to collect them.
  - colejohnson66 10y ago
    But if you have family you left in the US, you're almost certainly gonna have financial contact with them.
pdonis 10y ago
> If you want to opt out of a society, wonderful. The Constitution is not the same as society, and saying that the Constitution has no inherent authority or obligation is not the same as opting out of society. In fact, the unthinking conflation of these two concepts (the Constitution and society) is exactly the sort of thing this essay was intended to argue against.
- hexscrews 10y ago
  I'd argue otherwise. The constitution sets out the defining goal of a society. Call it the rule-set for the society as a whole. If you disagree with the defining rules, that is fine. You can chose any number of governmental models on this planet. But don't expect the rest of us to agree to your rule-set.
  - pdonis 10y ago
    > The constitution sets out the defining goal of a society. I don't see that in the US Constitution. The preamble talks about things like securing certain blessings, but doesn't really say what they actually are; it uses vague terms like "Justice", which mean different things to different people. The US founding document that comes closest to setting out a defining goal, at least in terms of what government is for, is the Declaration of Independence, and even that is vague: what does "pursuit of happiness" really mean?
    - sverige 10y ago
      And "pursuit of happiness" was "pursuit of property" originally.
- cbd1984 10y ago
  It's impossible to have a society without laws, written or unwritten, and the Constitution is the underlying legal document which all laws must be in accordance with. (A society without written laws is anarchistic, or despotic. A society without any laws at all is impossible.)

brightball 10y ago

I read most of it. Was quite a long read and most of the later sections were attempts to reinforce his overarching point across different areas of possible consent. The issue that I take with a paper from 1870 appearing today regarding the governing power of the Constitution is largely one of sheer irony for the situation that we are currently is...because our current system of government was exactly what the US Constitution was designed to prevent. It's fitting that this was written in 1870 only a few years removed from the Civil War and in the midst of Reconstruction when the US began it's current trek toward consolidated federal power in which a man really does have very little say in the matters of his own governance. State and local governments are more tangible and adaptable to the votes of the people and the ongoing interests of it's citizens as times change. States that can experiment. Learn from each other. Compete with each other. See things in other states that they like and adopt them with their own local nuance if need be. As a bonus, states have to have balanced budgets.