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> Just like we shouldn't have to trust the cops not to bust my door down, right? Sure, if it were possible to stop the government from doing anything at all I

> Just like we shouldn't have to trust the cops not to bust my door down, right? Sure, if it were possible to stop the government from doing anything at all I would be in favour of that, letalone obviously positive things like not spying on everybody or busting down their doors. Of course, there are no doors that require more energy than that available in the universe to forcibly enter. That's not the case for cryptography so it makes sense to exploit that. What am I missing here? > It sounds snarky but it cuts to the core of the peoples' relationship with government. How much do you trust the government? How much can you trust the government? This sounds like it is supposed to be some kind of profound question, but the answer is consistent and obvious in both cases, not at all. > That's why libertarians are generally logically consistent when they oppose the NSA, and entitlement programs, and giant government services, etc., because they're the ones who will tell you that a government big enough to give you $FOO is big enough to take it away from everyone else. Sure, I'd tell you that, I don't see why it's inconsistent to believe that and simultaneously want to dismantle the government? Isn't it actually pretty much the only logically consistent position?

mpyne 13y ago
> Sure, I'd tell you that, I don't see why it's inconsistent to believe that and simultaneously want to dismantle the government? Isn't it actually pretty much the only logically consistent position? It is one logically consistent position, yes. I happen to disagree that it is the only logically consistent position, which is one reason I've been poking so hard at the notion that people need to examine under what logical basis government operates at all before they go 'rah rah government bad!'. Much like a corporation is the legal stand-in for the will of the collective shareholders, a government is the societal stand-in for the will of the people at large. A society that tries to maintain no government, or very limited government, is at an unstable point. In the best case it will collapse from internal conflict but be left alone from there (e.g. Somalia, tribal areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan). In the normal case the society will simply be eventually overrun by those who choose to organize (e.g. USA vs. the Native Americans, Hitler vs. the appeasers), but a government will spring up again one way or another.
- etherael 13y ago
  > I happen to disagree that it is the only logically consistent position When I say it's a logically consistent position, what I mean to imply by that is for people who think that government is an abomination, it is logically consistent for them to hope for the dismantling thereof. You, who most decidedly do not think that government is an abomination, as a lawyer, are logically consistent in thinking that it should not be dismantled. > Much like a corporation is the legal stand-in for the will of the collective shareholders, a government is the societal stand-in for the will of the people at large. Except that it most clearly is not. > A society that tries to maintain no government, or very limited government, is at an unstable point. In the best case it will collapse from internal conflict but be left alone from there (e.g. Somalia, tribal areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan). In the normal case the society will simply be eventually overrun by those who choose to organize (e.g. USA vs. the Native Americans, Hitler vs. the appeasers), but a government will spring up again one way or another. That's a normalcy bias, there have been many points throughout history with no centralised productivity extracting parasitic force initiating agency. In fact, the variant we have now with extremely high direct taxation on the incomes of almost all productive activity within a society is the historical anathema. Not only that, but this fails to take into account the methods of control the state actually uses to exercise control on its population, and that currency control was recently removed from their hands. Agorism becomes a very real threat under these circumstances As a nash equilibrium, an involuntary centralised productivity extracting parasitic force initiating agency is not at all stable. It stands to reason that it will only be able to maintain control by either force or fraud. Right now they're going with fraud, from the amount of discontent I see with the political state of the world I don't know how much longer it will last until they devolve to force.
  - mpyne 13y ago
    I'm not actually a lawyer, though I suppose I do sometimes play one on HN. Regarding your noted normalcy bias, I would suggest you're forgetting the very many more points through recorded history with a centralized purveyor of force and taxation. In that light, pointing out isolated counterexamples isn't very suggestive of some realistic future possibility for most or all of mankind, just as pointing out that Athens once had a direct democracy isn't very useful as a way to organize the governance of a nation. Of course, the agorism you point out doesn't even have voting. I can only assume the idea is for some type of useful emergent behavior to come about, but that only talks about how the society would function internally, and it doesn't even really provide details about how that would work in all the important corner cases. Is there some type of existing emergent societal system that you can point out which works in practice and need only be scaled up? > As a nash equilibrium, an involuntary centralised productivity extracting parasitic force initiating agency is not at all stable. It stands to reason that it will only be able to maintain control by either force or fraud. If by 'stable' you mean 'impossible to overturn' then I would argue that no political system meets this. If you mean 'can continue perpetually' then it is certainly a stable equilibrium, though it does unashamedly require force. Fraud alone can't keep it going in any event, otherwise police wouldn't be needed.

mpyne 13y ago

> Sure, I'd tell you that, I don't see why it's inconsistent to believe that and simultaneously want to dismantle the government? Isn't it actually pretty much the only logically consistent position? It is one logically consistent position, yes. I happen to disagree that it is the only logically consistent position, which is one reason I've been poking so hard at the notion that people need to examine under what logical basis government operates at all before they go 'rah rah government bad!'. Much like a corporation is the legal stand-in for the will of the collective shareholders, a government is the societal stand-in for the will of the people at large. A society that tries to maintain no government, or very limited government, is at an unstable point. In the best case it will collapse from internal conflict but be left alone from there (e.g. Somalia, tribal areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan). In the normal case the society will simply be eventually overrun by those who choose to organize (e.g. USA vs. the Native Americans, Hitler vs. the appeasers), but a government will spring up again one way or another.

etherael 13y ago
> I happen to disagree that it is the only logically consistent position When I say it's a logically consistent position, what I mean to imply by that is for people who think that government is an abomination, it is logically consistent for them to hope for the dismantling thereof. You, who most decidedly do not think that government is an abomination, as a lawyer, are logically consistent in thinking that it should not be dismantled. > Much like a corporation is the legal stand-in for the will of the collective shareholders, a government is the societal stand-in for the will of the people at large. Except that it most clearly is not. > A society that tries to maintain no government, or very limited government, is at an unstable point. In the best case it will collapse from internal conflict but be left alone from there (e.g. Somalia, tribal areas of Afghanistan/Pakistan). In the normal case the society will simply be eventually overrun by those who choose to organize (e.g. USA vs. the Native Americans, Hitler vs. the appeasers), but a government will spring up again one way or another. That's a normalcy bias, there have been many points throughout history with no centralised productivity extracting parasitic force initiating agency. In fact, the variant we have now with extremely high direct taxation on the incomes of almost all productive activity within a society is the historical anathema. Not only that, but this fails to take into account the methods of control the state actually uses to exercise control on its population, and that currency control was recently removed from their hands. Agorism becomes a very real threat under these circumstances As a nash equilibrium, an involuntary centralised productivity extracting parasitic force initiating agency is not at all stable. It stands to reason that it will only be able to maintain control by either force or fraud. Right now they're going with fraud, from the amount of discontent I see with the political state of the world I don't know how much longer it will last until they devolve to force.
- mpyne 13y ago
  I'm not actually a lawyer, though I suppose I do sometimes play one on HN. Regarding your noted normalcy bias, I would suggest you're forgetting the very many more points through recorded history with a centralized purveyor of force and taxation. In that light, pointing out isolated counterexamples isn't very suggestive of some realistic future possibility for most or all of mankind, just as pointing out that Athens once had a direct democracy isn't very useful as a way to organize the governance of a nation. Of course, the agorism you point out doesn't even have voting. I can only assume the idea is for some type of useful emergent behavior to come about, but that only talks about how the society would function internally, and it doesn't even really provide details about how that would work in all the important corner cases. Is there some type of existing emergent societal system that you can point out which works in practice and need only be scaled up? > As a nash equilibrium, an involuntary centralised productivity extracting parasitic force initiating agency is not at all stable. It stands to reason that it will only be able to maintain control by either force or fraud. If by 'stable' you mean 'impossible to overturn' then I would argue that no political system meets this. If you mean 'can continue perpetually' then it is certainly a stable equilibrium, though it does unashamedly require force. Fraud alone can't keep it going in any event, otherwise police wouldn't be needed.