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But you agreed to be managed by the government right? Remember when they came round and you signed the contract? To pay 40%+ in taxes? For the ability to vot

• runnerup 4y ago
  • verisimi 4y ago
    I'd move to 'Individuland'! Where is it? Don't tell me that states have claimed everything and everyone?! Must I accept the authority of government and rule by the worst of us? Why do you accept it? Cos you were born somewhere? Do I have the right to create a new country, and make you a citizen? If not, where does the government's right to do that come from?!? In fact, it has no right - all the pieces of paper they write, don't count! It is really an invention by tyrants, who want to you to think your voting is doing something. And you do!
    • epgui 4y ago
      • verisimi 4y ago
        • ceejayoz 4y ago
          > Government is a form of slavery. > 'Democracy' is really 'representative democracy' - you vote for someone to represent you for 4-5 years. You’re comfortable with this overly broad definition of slavery, but have issues with calling a form of democracy “democracy”?
        • AnimalMuppet 4y ago
          [flagged]
          • verisimi 4y ago
            I was expecting you to make a strawman attack - and you did anyway (teen). I prefer to engage with the topic. There are many ways to interpret what is going on in Russia. I've no idea what's really going on - I'm not there. I suspect its just theatrics, to make us all fearful, decrease the population, to gain even more power from the people. Russians believe their government is defending ethnic Russians who have been under attack by literal nazis since 2013. Who has the truth? CNN? I don't say I'm going to create my own country and defend it. All I say is government is slavery. You can justify paying taxes, that you love your country, whatever you like. You can say that sending weapons to Ukraine is fine. But this is because you believe what your government tells you - it is not 'free thinking'. Stockholm syndrome perhaps - you have come to love your captor. They do run the news you know. We actually live in a fascist (government + corporation) state. They don't give you truth, they tell you what is expedient for their aims. And they aim to control what you think. They may have you cheering for infringement of individual people's natural rights - so complete is the way they frame the world to most. My position is that I am forced to accept their immoral force. Unlike you, I'm not going to call government actions 'right' or 'moral'. I don't individually consent to any of it! (There is no such thing as collective consent - you and your friends cannot justly tell me what to do). The appearance of consent is due to the threat and actual use of force. > In the end, it turns out that a reasonably-well-governed country is the optimum of freedom, even though nobody is perfectly free. I know I'm a slave, but you are labouring under the illusion you are free. I'm not sugar-coated the turd - I leave that to others.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • philistine 4y ago
      At its core, you're fervently asking for a world without irregularities, without flaws. A just world. Our world isn't this way. It is unjust. Where you're born is restrictive on your opportunities, plain and simple. The only way to free yourself from the yoke of the US (I presume you are American) is to renounce your citizenship. Which means you cannot enjoy all that comes with this privilege, like living there. Are you ready to do that? And if you're wondering whether you can make a nation: yes you can. Maintaining a nation, having a sole claim on territory, and having recognitions by your peers (other nations), that's the tough part. Again, if you wish to free yourself from american tyranny this way, you need to find another nation, already recognized by the US, willing to agree to your existence as a nation. Are you able to do that? Like I said, an unjust world.
      • verisimi 4y ago
        Does government make justice better or worse? I think most people are fair minded. The state is a tyrant though. What does it say about us, if are so accepting and defensive of it? How much money is it ok to forcibly take (tax)? If any is forcibly taken, are you enslaved? The are individual options are poor. But I'm not going to say the tyranny is 'good', 'right', 'acceptable'.
        • philistine 4y ago
          Wow. Chill out, it's just taxes.
    • HWR_14 4y ago
      > I'd move to 'Individuland'! Where is it? Somalia is the standard answer. Or get on a boat and live at sea.
    • runnerup 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand Just come with a very small, relatively affordable temporary mercenary force.
  • Dracophoenix 4y ago
    > But you don't get to live near society and not "opt in" to our laws. You can protest the laws, you can choose to break the laws (and face any consequences). But you can't just pretend that anarchy should be the default status until you sign some imagined physical contract. Prohibition was defeated because people broke the laws curtailing their individual freedom to drink alcohol. Individuals have been smoking marijuana despite a federal and state bans on it with the latter being being lifted recently but speedily. The abortion issue, at this moment, concerns the right of one to opt out of laws that curtail bodily independence. The social contract is fiction. Every freedom that has ever been sought or protected starts with the individual spiting the mandates of society while circumventing or blunting its punishments. That's not anarchy but a foundational cornerstone of liberty.
    • the_only_law 4y ago
      > Individuals have been smoking marijuana despite a federal and state bans on it with the latter being being lifted recently but speedily sigh I was hoping we’d see recreational In Florida, as even the older more conservative people seem to have embraced it. I believe it was supposed to be a ballot option, but it was struck down apparently because pendantic lawyers took issue with a single phrase. I’m not sure why that means it has to be removed for this ballot, why can’t the proposers just fix the wording and resubmit.
• davoneus 4y ago
  What a load of BS. The predominant form of social organization is from a majority status. The people who voted in that government are the ones who direct the government resources, and are determining what it's polices are towards the governed. The people in Norway have a clear and simple choice; they can sit and do nothing, or they can do something. Action might entail moving the hell out of the country and complain from a distance. They could also vote in a new government, but it's up to them. As far as that BS idea that "They are meant to serve us", no you are quite wrong. The Government serves the people who voted it in, and gave it control of those resources. That Government, in the end, has no obligation to _anyone_ else . Its only obligation is to those who voted it in, and it uses that granted power as a proxy for those people (and corporations) to enact their will. Don't' like it? Fine, do something about it, rather than complain here about big, bad Government.
  • burnished 4y ago
    Wouldn't it be wild if there were some sort of middle ground between "say and do nothing" and "die in a failed militant uprising"?
• FreqSep 4y ago
  Look, I am far from pro-government interference. That being said, I personally disagree with much of your argument here. You implicitly agree to some measure when you participate in the society set up by government. There is today a very common attitude that governments are intentionally only serving a small elite. This populist - perhaps even intuitive - rhetoric is exaggerated for most of the Western world. If you’re living on your own out in the wilderness, I can see your argument. But this actually does exist to some degree in how uncontacted peoples[0] are generally not subject to the laws of the government whos jurisdiction they fall under. This isn’t a lifestyle most of us would choose but perhaps there is some merit to making this path easier to take for those who desire it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples
  • jdasdf 4y ago
    I dispute your assertion that society is setup by the government.
    • FreqSep 4y ago
      Yes, I agree and see now that I made a bad choice of words there. Correcting it I would rephrase it to say that massive components of society are directly facilitated by the government as one example: (roads -> shipped goods, travel experiences, etc)
      • verisimi 4y ago
        How do you like that the roads previous generations paid for are now being turned into bike lanes, that you pay to park, etc. Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now?
        • FreqSep 4y ago
          Well, roads are temporary and it becomes a bit of a ship of Theseus question there to say who actually paid for them. > Did the government make the right decisions then? Are they making the right decisions now? Government is allowed to occasionally make the wrong decision. Perfection is an imperfect standard.
• hhjinks 4y ago
  You're free to live in the woods if you don't like the deal. You don't get to use any of society's infrastructure if you don't opt in, though. You won't be taxed, of course, since you can't engage with any economic activity within society. I'm sure you could make a nice commune in the wilderness somewhere. Just don't bring anything from society with you, like tools, clothes, food, livestock, seeds. Good luck out there.
  • dvdkon 4y ago
    That's the thing: you can't really do that. And the argument shouldn't be "society vs wilderness", but "existing vs new society". In the past, it was really hard to sever ties with one society and government and go form a new one, but you could actually find places where nobody would immediately chase you away (even then most expansion was at the expense of natives, though). Nowadays that's impossible. A small number of people could maybe live in Siberia undetected, but that's more like partisan warfare than establishing a new country: The moment Russian government finds out anyone's there, they're getting deported. Your best bet for not living in an existing state is amassing an army (likely illegal in your home country) and invading a weak state. Good luck.
  • burnished 4y ago
    You, uh, sorta can't. There is no unowned land left. You can squat but that is living as an outlaw. Also >You don't get to use any of society's infrastructure if you don't opt in, though. You don't represent the rest of us, so why are you pretending to the authority to make stipulations like this? I'd imagine if there were any outlands left to retreat to, you would at least have some bartering going on there at the fringes.
    • hhjinks 4y ago
      I'm not pretending to be an authority on anything, or representing anyone but myself. You can't just pick and choose which parts of society you want to comply with. If you do, you get incarcerated. As a direct consequence, interfacing with society's infrastructure is a soft opt-in, which will result in your incarceration if you don't live within the bounds of that society. So it's not a stipulation, nor do I require any authority, nor do I need to speek for anyone, when saying it, since it's a necessary component of the theoretical.
• mdp2021 4y ago
  > You don't? Nor me Technically (in at least some systems), you do when you ask for residency - when you leave the parent's house to live somewhere defined in the territory, and make that formal. That is the "signature of the contract". The simile of the "service" holds credit. Of course, do not forget that many other models were drawn in History (e.g.: Hobbes, "better compromise than the insecurity which comes with anarchy", etc).