Quote from: practicaldreamer on January 20, 2014, 10:57:56 PM

I agree with all of that - but is management of any type unnecessary then (and under any circumstance), in your opinion ?

I know that William Blake said that if a fool were to persist in their foolishness they would become wise - but on that I'd have to disagree with him Wink

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If my kids start playing with matches whilst in my garage right next to a tank of petrol I'm not going to stand by and watch.

And what if my rational self interest should clash with that of someone elses rational self interest ? Who is to arbitrate ? What if my everyday life decisions are demarcated by illness - or by old age, or by any other form of under privilege/disadvantage ? Who then will intervene when the man whose everyday life decisions aren't so constrained as my own takes from me all I have and hold dear ?

In my belief, I don't think government should need to act as a parent to its child citizens; naturally if your children did something life-threatening, you'd stop them, but if the parents are so incapable that they need the guidance of government, they aren't fit to have children to begin with. The relationship doesn't follow; if we truly do live in a society where the majority of people have the mental capacity of children who play with matches by petrol, and such a society where the people elected into office are these children, elected by the children, we still have the issues of the blind leading the blind; it follows, then, that you are no better off with or without government guidance, as your general population will be just as stupid as it was before (except in this case, they're stupid enough to let themselves be ruled and rallied into state-socialism or something akin.)

Anyway, if your rational self-interest (just as an example, as I'm sure you're a nice guy in reality Grin

) is a detriment of another person's rational self-interest, that person isn't going to want to know you anymore; if the person was a grocer, for example, now you have to find another grocery store since you treated him poorly, and this is assuming he's the only one who cares about your action (which of course, life doesn't occur in a vacuum, so your consequence will actually be much more severe than this example will provide.) If you continue to act in such a manner to everyone you know, nobody will want to know you anymore; eventually, after so much of this now irrational self-interest (since you're effectively cutting yourself off from the labor of other people, which is ultimately detrimental to your ability to participate in civilization), you become a threat to the general populace. Society, then, becomes a distant concept to you, the mountain-man who had to live in the wild because nobody wanted to be around you.

Now: if you decide to then force your irrational self-interest on other people, as they no longer want to know you, then one of two proceeding actions will follow:

1. You become a ruler, provided you could amass the funds and manpower to do so
2. You become a prisoner for threatening the lives of innocent people

I think people are smart, however; they know what's good for them, we all know what's good for us, and the best relationship we could ever have with another human being is a cooperative-competitive one, as it is the most productive whilst being the path of least resistance; the most detrimental relationship, I think, is one acquired through violence, a coercive monopoly (i.e. uncooperative and non-competitive, or otherwise known as government services), as the people you're now assuming control over completely lose the will to live, and become incredibly under-productive, not to mention the sheer amount of energy required to keep them in your control (that is, in this case, ensuring taxation remains in effect to pay for the interest on debts which is then used to pay for these things.) Nobody will view the serial killer as good if the state isn't around to punish them; we all agree that death is at the top of our lists as things we don't want to happen to us, this doesn't change. And if you're too weak or ill to work, then it should be obvious that you will stop working, and hopefully you led a good life where people, friends or family or co-workers, will want to help you through it, or help you pass if that's the case.

Or are you referring to private police as protection in old age? I hear Detroit's got something like this now with the failure of local government (assuming Somalia as well but I haven't studied them yet); what's more, they're actually peaceful police, if you can imagine. It appears to me that the idea of the state owning certain businesses because the private sector doesn't want them is a myth; my understanding of business is, if people want something, they will be willing to pay for it, and it seems everyone wants to be protected, so it should follow that people would pay for a service of protection i.e. police, and follow that businesses would emerge to compete cooperatively for business. As stated, people know what's good for them; they know what they want, it's just that they're fooled into thinking this or that is impossible or required for society to remain intact and such, irrational beliefs instilled in people before they could truly reason i.e. in primary school, or through religion, or through spankings and other such punishment.