3 ms·

You know, this whole "men with guns" thing is a pretty tired, and basically vapid analogy. The whole point that libertarians fail to realize -- and one of the

You know, this whole "men with guns" thing is a pretty tired, and basically vapid analogy. The whole point that libertarians fail to realize -- and one of the most basic and obvious lessons of thousands of years of recorded human history is that one way or another, we're all stuck on this same, leaking boat together. And we're just going to have to find a way to cooperate on some basic level. Else things start to get really inefficient and wasteful -- or potentially really, really ugly and violent -- really, really fast. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

mseebach 13y ago
"Mens with guns" isn't an analogy, it's literally what happens if you don't play by what a small majority says are the rules. It's what happens if you smoke weed and it what happened if you were gay until very few years ago. It's what happens if you're really annoying on Twitter in the UK. But the golden irony is that you follow up with an analogy about the greatness of coercive government. Leaking boat? Cooperation? Sounds great, clearly that's why we need to throw Aaron Swartz in jail for 35 years. I'm not convinced that no government is the right size, but the current scope of government across the western world has an immense moral authority problem. We may well be on a leaking boat, but it seems clear to me that the life raft isn't going to save us.