Quote from: btcbug on March 04, 2016, 11:13:01 PM

Quote from: Fatman3001 on March 04, 2016, 10:10:07 PM

I'm pretty sure you don't live in my country so don't blame me if there are people in your country who want to prevent you from becoming an involuntary sex toy for the bigger boys, or that there are people ready to stitch you up afterwards.

It was an example and of course you avoided the moral question with your "don't blame me" juvenile non-answer. For the sake of argument just assume we do live in the same geographical area under it's government. Now answer my question. Why can't you respect another persons freedom to opt-out of paying for something just because YOU find value in it?

I'll try, but I fear we'll constantly fall back to this problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjmtJpzoW0o (thx macsga)

Your freedom must be limited by the freedom of others. In order to enforce this freedom you need violence. You'll soon find that, as I tried to hint at earlier, you'll need a monopoly of violence. What you've suggested earlier is sometimes called the state of nature, but more accurately to be thought of as a state of war. Now... a monopoly of violence can be a rather depressing thing if it's randomly applied. So you'll want a rechtsstaat or some kind of rule of law. This is best achieved in a democracy. But not just any democracy, you'll want a representative democracy with separation of powers between the courts, the lawmakers, and the ruler.

Ok, so far, so good. Now you have a sound foundation for regulating society in a way that secures the freedom of every citizen. But what is freedom? Now we're back to what I mentioned in the beginning. Your freedom must be limited by the freedom of others. That is the extent and limit of your freedom. If you go beyond this you're causing harm to others. More precisely there is negative freedom. Freedom from being arrested for no good reason, freedom from being caused bodily harm, freedom from persecution, freedom from being deprived of property for no good reason, etc. But there are also such a thing as positive freedom. That is, the freedom to realize your own potential by actually being enabled to pursue the opportunities you find in a society with negative freedom. This must be ensured by having access, in a real way, to education, healthcare, etc. Where the actual lines are drawn are decided by the politics of the system.

But to answer your question: if you retreat from your civic duties to be "left alone" you're infringing on the freedom of others and damaging this entire construct aimed at ensuring the freedom of all.

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Sure there is. Just grab a passport and go to Somalia. I'm sure a bunch of you can manage to carve out a piece of land for yourself. You just have to stop being such a weakly interacting massive particle and get a move on!!!

You can do it!

Yes, the old "if you don't like it you can leave" argument. This would imply that because I was born into it (without choice btw) that I'm actually making my choice to live under the system simply by staying. Well, things aren't that simple. Borders are imposed on people and largely close off to immigration. A lot of people honestly do not have the luxury of immigrating. The other thing that makes this argument completely fucking stupid is that most people that would make this argument, would also have some empathy for the American Indian or other groups that had previously inhabited an area BEFORE the new population forced it's will upon them. If you can see how absurd it is to impose a system on the existing population, than it's not that big of a leap to see why it's just as ridiculous to impose a system on anybody simply because half the population votes for it.

This is similar to the typical Christian who that claims they choose to accept Jesus of their own free will, meanwhile the religion itself is clear that if you reject Christ you are going to hell. Roll Eyes

At best it's a cruel illusion of choice.

I know, it's a ridiculous argument. And I'm not a big fan of the "if you don't like it you can leave" argument. But you actually cried out "No freedom to leave!" so I was curious to see what your response was. It's not unheard of for libertarians/anarchists to look for virgin territory.