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Thread: The Single Tax - Land Value Tax (LVT)

  1. #451
    Quote Originally Posted by sailingaway View Post
    Kindly refrain from personal attacks. 'Stupid, cretinous, quasi-autistic drivil' counts as an attack.
    I see. But "lunacy... gibberish... stupid" (just in post #444 in this thread) doesn't?

    Somehow, I kinda figured it'd be something like that...



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  3. #452
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    Are you ignorant of the fact that this^^ is a false fact?
    It is true, and known to everyone who isn't a "meeza hatesa gubmint" feudal libertarian dittohead.
    This has never been and never will be the purpose of government.
    "...to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men..."
    It's just a lie perpetuated by State-run indoctrination centers (aka "public schools").
    There were no public schools when the above line was written.
    The State is always and everywhere the greatest violator of rights.
    Such comments are just absurd and historically ignorant. Somalia proves you wrong, and so does every other place where the state has ever disappeared. When Roman state power disappeared from western Europe in the 5th C, the population declined by a quarter over the next century, and the economy collapsed. That did not happen because people's rights were being violated less than before.

  4. #453
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    It is government's JOB to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor. When your rights are being violated without just compensation, it is the mark of a civilized human being (nothing you would know anything about, to be sure) to petitiongovernment for relief and redress, not to take matters into your own hands like some sort of feudal libertarian vigilante.
    Here you are engaging in wishful thinking again. This has never been the government's job-though the propagandists and cronies would certainly like you to believe so. You really think the government cares about your petitions for relief and redress? I thought you were a student of history-you must have overlooked civic history 1790-present.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  5. #454
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    Such comments are just absurd and historically ignorant. Somalia proves you wrong, and so does every other place where the state has ever disappeared. When Roman state power disappeared from western Europe in the 5th C, the population declined by a quarter over the next century, and the economy collapsed. That did not happen because people's rights were being violated less than before.
    Nonsense. Somalia has had a "transitional" government since 2004. The pre-"civilized" American West was more lawful and rational than the post-civilized era. No single person or group has the means and/or will to destroy and enslave than States. Recorded human history bears this out. There's a whole lot of literature about historical stateless societies-I would think you'd be aware of it, being such a mighty pseudo-intellectual as you are.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  6. #455
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    False, and certainly not according to your intended meaning.
    Everyone who isn't a delusional "meeza hatesa gubmint" feudal libertarian dittohead knows it is true.
    Example 1 (pass)
    I am kidnapped, or otherwise unlawfully detained, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to choose my own path. However, I have been deprived of my "rightful" liberty (already established as a right) in the process.
    How was it established as a right?
    Thus, I have a "cause of action".
    Oh? Suppose you were in Somalia, had been kidnapped by pirates, and the local warlord ("government," according to you) ruled that the kidnappers were merely exercising their property right over the ocean, a property right conferred by the local government just as validly as any property title to land?
    Example 2 (fail)

    I am walking along, exercising my right to liberty, and encounter a brick wall and a locked door - the exterior that encloses the vault area of a bank. Had the bank not existed, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to enter that space. That is indisputable. It is also indisputable that I am "deprived" of my liberty (my capacity and ability, but not my right) to enter and occupy that space.
    False. Physically, you could enter the space if you had appropriate equipment, and you are definitely being deprived of your right to enter it.
    Because no right is established, I have no cause of action.
    Nonsense. Other than in law, which merely begs the question, your right to liberty is just as well established as in the kidnapping case. It is merely being violated with the local government's assistance, just as in the amended Somalia kidnapping case.
    Example 3 (fail)

    I am prevented, both physically and legally, from taking a piece of gold that someone finds on public ground (National Park, whatever), and is now in their possession.

    I could truthfully say that:

    a) I have "suffered" a deprivation,
    No. Unless you knew of the gold and intended to pick it up yourself, you have suffered no deprivation. You have lost nothing. The gold is NO LONGER THERE, so no forcible coercion need be applied to you to stop you from picking it up. That is entirely unlike the bank case, where coercion must be applied to prevent you from using the land sitting under the bank for your own purposes.
    and that
    b) I would "otherwise be at liberty" to have that gold (i.e., if that person had not found it, did not possess it, or had not even existed)
    False, as proved above. The natural opportunity no longer exists, so no coercion need be applied to prevent you from exercising your liberty to use it. There can be no right to turn back the clock, or do what is logically or physically impossible.
    Those are undeniable indisputable facts,
    False, as proved above.
    and yet there is no right of possession on my part, ]no unjustified deprivation, and no cause of action.
    Right, because the opportunity nature provided no longer exists.
    So, no, your "'otherwise would be at liberty' to do is exactly what a right to liberty IS" fails as any kind of definitive or axiomatic statement.
    False, as proved above.

  7. #456
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    Nonsense. Somalia has had a "transitional" government since 2004.
    It is a government only in name, not in fact, and exercises little or no authority outside a small zone, like any other power that naturally emerges from a power vacuum.
    The pre-"civilized" American West was more lawful and rational than the post-civilized era.
    That's just absurd nonsense with no basis in fact. There is more violence in modern American cities than in the old west mainly because there are hundreds or thousands of times as many people there now, and because the US government, specifically, creates a culture of violence by maintaining a large standing army that is routinely exposed to the psychological damage of waging unjust wars against innocent civilian populations; by its evil and insane War on Drugs that exposes much of the impressionable young male population that isn't in the army to the violent cultures of the criminal underworld and prison; and by economic policies that forcibly create a permanently unemployed underclass, and transfer immense quantities of wealth from ordinary working and poor people to a wealthy, greedy, idle, privileged, parasitic elite, creating enormous resentment among the hundreds of millions of victims who know very well they are being robbed, but are prevented from understanding how. In countries with less corrupt and more competent governments, such as in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., life is far less violent than it ever was in the old west. If you had ever lived in a civilized country, you would know that.
    No single person or group has the means and/or will to destroy and enslave than States.
    But collectively, they do, as Somalia and every other stateless society proves.
    Recorded human history bears this out.
    Nonsense. Pointing to a few bad governments and claiming that therefore all governments must always be bad is just laughable garbage.
    There's a whole lot of literature about historical stateless societies-I would think you'd be aware of it, being such a mighty pseudo-intellectual as you are.
    I am definitely aware of it, and it is mostly ridiculous garbage that ignores facts such as I identified above.



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  9. #457
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    In countries with less corrupt and more competent governments, such as in Western Europe, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc., life is far less violent than it ever was in the old west. If you had ever lived in a civilized country, you would know that.
    You think West European governments are less corrupt and more competent? LMFAO!!!


    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    But collectively, they do, as Somalia and every other stateless society proves.

    Nonsense. Pointing to a few bad governments and claiming that therefore all governments must always be bad is just laughable garbage.

    I am definitely aware of it, and it is mostly ridiculous garbage that ignores facts such as I identified above.
    You can't be serious. Let me know when a stateless society commits genocide on a mass scale or drops fire bombs or nuclear bombs on a civilian population, and I'll take this empty argument seriously.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  10. #458
    btw, Roy-since you clearly didn't read the article about the American stateless West I linked to earlier, I will post it here for easy reading:
    The Not-So-Wild, Wild West
    In a thorough review of the “West was violent” literature, Bruce Benson (1998) discovered that many historians simply assume that violence was pervasive—even more so than in modern-day America—and then theorize about its likely causes. In addition, some authors assume that the West was very violent and then assert, as Joe Franz does, that “American violence today reflects our frontier heritage” (Franz 1969, qtd. in Benson 1998, 98). Thus, an allegedly violent and stateless society of the nineteenth century is blamed for at least some of the violence in the United States today.
    In a book-length survey of the “West was violent” literature, historian Roger McGrath echoes Benson’s skepticism about this theory when he writes that “the frontier-was-violent authors are not, for the most part, attempting to prove that the frontier was violent. Rather, they assume that it was violent and then proffer explanations for that alleged violence” (1984, 270).
    In contrast, an alternative literature based on actual history concludes that the civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century wasnot very violent. Eugene Hollon writes that the western frontier “was a far more civilized, more peaceful and safer place than American society today” (1974, x). Terry Anderson and P. J. Hill affirm that although “[t]he West . . . is perceived as a place of great chaos, with little respect for property or life,” their research “indicates that this was not the case; property rights were protected and civil order prevailed. Private agencies provided the necessary basis for an orderly society in which property was protected and conflicts were resolved” (1979, 10).
    What were these private protective agencies? They were not governments because they did not have a legal monopoly on keeping order. Instead, they included such organizations as land clubs, cattlemen’s associations, mining camps, and wagon trains.
    So-called land clubs were organizations established by settlers before the U.S. government even surveyed the land, let alone started to sell it or give it away. Because disputes over land titles are inevitable, the land clubs adopted their own constitutions, laying out the “laws” that would define and protect property rights in land (Anderson and Hill 1979, 15). They administered land claims, protected them from outsiders, and arbitrated disputes. Social ostracism was used effectively against those who violated the rules. Establishing property rights in this way minimized disputes—and violence.
    The wagon trains that transported thousands of people to the California gold fields and other parts of the West usually established their own constitutions before setting out. These constitutions often included detailed judicial systems. As a consequence, writes Benson, “[t]here were few instances of violence on the wagon trains even when food became extremely scarce and starvation threatened. When crimes against persons or their property were committed, the judicial system . . . would take effect” (1998, 102). Ostracism and threats of banishment from the group, instead of threats of violence, were usually sufficient to correct rule breakers’ behavior.
    Dozens of movies have portrayed the nineteenth-century mining camps in the West as hot beds of anarchy and violence, but John Umbeck discovered that, beginning in 1848, the miners began forming contracts with one another to restrain their own behavior (1981, 51). There was no government authority in California at the time, apart from a few military posts. The miners’ contracts established property rights in land (and in any gold found on the land) that the miners themselves enforced. Miners who did not accept the rules the majority adopted were free to mine elsewhere or to set up their own contractual arrangements with other miners. The rules that were adopted were often consequently established with unanimous consent (Anderson and Hill 1979, 19). As long as a miner abided by the rules, the other miners defended his rights under the community contract. If he did not abide by the agreed-on rules, his claim would be regarded as “open to any [claim] jumpers” (Umbeck 1981, 53).
    The mining camps hired “enforcement specialists”—justices of the peace and arbitrators—and developed an extensive body of property and criminal law. As a result, there was very little violence and theft. The fact that the miners were usually armed also helps to explain why crime was relatively infrequent. Benson concludes, “The contractual system of law effectively generated cooperation rather than conflict, and on those occasions when conflict arose it was, by and large, effectively quelled through nonviolent means” (1998, 105).
    When government bureaucrats failed to police cattle rustling effectively, ranchers established cattlemen’s associations that drew up their own constitutions and hired private “protection agencies” that were often staffed by expert gunmen. This action deterred cattle rustling. Some of these “gunmen” did “drift in and out of a life of crime,” write Anderson and Hill (1979, 18), but they were usually dealt with by the cattlemen’s associations and never created any kind of large-scale criminal organization, as some have predicted would occur under a regime of private law enforcement.
    In sum, this work by Benson, Anderson and Hill, Umbeck, and others challenges with solid historical research the claims made by the “West was violent” authors. The civil society of the American West in the nineteenth century was much more peaceful than American cities are today, and the evidence suggests that in fact the Old West was not a very violent place at all. History also reveals that the expanded presence of the U.S. government was the real cause of a culture of violence in the American West. If there is anything to the idea that a nineteenth-century culture of violence on the American frontier is the genesis of much of the violence in the United States today, the main source of that culture is therefore government, not civil society.
    The Real Cause of Violence in the American West
    The real culture of violence in the American West of the latter half of the nineteenth century sprang from the U.S. government’s policies toward the Plains Indians. It is untrue that white European settlers were alwaysat war with Indians, as popular folklore contends. After all, Indians assisted the Pilgrims and celebrated the first Thanksgiving with them; John Smith married Pocahontas; a white man (mostly Scots, with some Cherokee), John Ross, was the chief of the Cherokees of Tennessee and North Carolina; and there was always a great deal of trade with Indians, as opposed to violence. As Jennifer Roback has written, “Europeans generally acknowledged that the Indians retained possessory rights to their lands. More important, the English recognized the advantage of being on friendly terms with the Indians. Trade with the Indians, especially the fur trade, was profitable. War was costly” (1992, 9). Trade and cooperation with the Indians were much more common than conflict and violence during the first half of the nineteenth century.
    Terry Anderson and Fred McChesney relate how Thomas Jefferson found that during his time negotiation was the Europeans’ predominant means of acquiring land from Indians (1994, 56). By the twentieth century, some $800 million had been paid for Indian lands. These authors also argue that various factors can alter the incentives for trade, as opposed to waging a war of conquest as a means of acquiring land. One of the most important factors is the existence of a standing army, as opposed to militias, which were used in the American West prior to the War Between the States. On this point, Anderson and McChesney quote Adam Smith, who wrote that “‘[i]n a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier: in a standing army, that of the soldier predominates over every other character.’” (1994, 52). A standing army, according to Anderson and McChesney, “creates a class of professional soldiers whose personal welfare increases with warfare, even if fighting is a negative-sum act for the population as a whole” (52).
    The change from militia to a standing army took place in the American West immediately upon the conclusion of the War Between the States. The result, say Anderson and McChesney, was that white settlers and railroad corporations were able to socialize the costs of stealing Indian lands by using violence supplied by the U.S. Army. On their own, they were much more likely to negotiate peacefully. Thus, “raid” replaced “trade” in white–Indian relations. Congress even voted in 1871 not to ratify any more Indian treaties, effectively announcing that it no longer sought peaceful relations with the Plains Indians.
    Anderson and McChesney do not consider why a standing army replaced militias in 1865, but the reason is not difficult to discern. One has only to read the official pronouncements of the soldiers and political figures who launched a campaign of extermination against the Plains Indians.
    On June 27, 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman was given command of the Military District of the Missouri, which was one of the five military divisions into which the U.S. government had divided the country. Sherman received this command for the purpose of commencing the twenty-five-year war against the Plains Indians, primarily as a form of veiled subsidy to the government-subsidized railroad corporations and other politically connected corporations involved in building the transcontinental railroads. These corporations were the financial backbone of the Republican Party. Indeed, in June 1861, Abraham Lincoln, former legal counsel of the Illinois Central Railroad, called a special emergency session of Congress not to deal with the two-month-old Civil War, but to commence work on the Pacific Railway Act. Subsidizing the transcontinental railroads was a primary (if not the primary) objective of the new Republican Party. As Dee Brown writes inHear That Lonesome Whistle Blow, a history of the building of the transcontinental railroads, Lincoln’s 1862 Pacific Railway Act “assured the fortunes of a dynasty of American families . . . the Brewsters, Bushnells, Olcotts, Harkers, Harrisons, Trowbridges, Lanworthys, Reids, Ogdens, Bradfords, Noyeses, Brooks, Cornells, and dozens of others” (2001, 49), all of whom were tied to the Republican Party.
    The federal railroad subsidies enriched many Republican members of Congress. Congressman Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania “received a block of [Union Pacific] stock in exchange for his vote” on the Pacific Railroad bill, writes Brown (2001, 58). The Pennsylvania iron manufacturer and congressman also demanded a legal requirement that all iron used in constructing the railroad be made in the United States.
    Republican congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts was a shovel manufacturer who became “a loyal ally” of the legislation after he was promised shovel contracts (Brown 2001, 58). A great many shovels must have been required to dig railroad beds from Iowa to California.
    Sherman wrote in his memoirs that as soon as the war ended, “My thoughts and feelings at once reverted to the construction of the great Pacific Railway. . . . I put myself in communication with the parties engaged in the work, visiting them in person, and assured them that I would afford them all possible assistance and encouragement” (2005, 775). “We are not going to let a few thieving, ragged Indians check and stop the progress [of the railroads],” Sherman wrote to Ulysses S. Grant in 1867 (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 264).
    The chief engineer of the government-subsidized transcontinental railroads was Grenville Dodge, another of Lincoln’s generals during the war with whom Sherman worked closely afterward. As Murray Rothbard points out, Dodge “helped swing the Iowa delegation to Lincoln” at the 1860 Republican National Convention, and “[i]n return, early in the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Dodge to army general. Dodge’s task was to clear the Indians from the designated path of the country’s first heavily subsidized federally chartered trans-continental railroad, the Union Pacific.” In this way, Rothbard concludes, “conscripted Union troops and hapless taxpayers were coerced into socializing the costs of constructing and operating the Union Pacific” (1997, 130).
    Immediately after the war, Dodge proposed enslaving the Plains Indians and forcing them “to do the grading” on the railroad beds, “with the Army furnishing a guard to make the Indians work, and keep them from running away” (Brown 2001, 64). Union army veterans were to be the “overseers” of this new class of slaves. Dodge’s proposal was rejected; the U.S. government decided instead to try to kill as many Indians as possible.
    In his memoirs, Sherman has high praise for Thomas Clark Durant, the vice president of the Union Pacific Railroad, as “a person of ardent nature, of great ability and energy, enthusiastic in his undertaking” (2005, 775). Durant was also the chief instigator of the infamous Credit Mobilier scandal, one of the most shocking examples of political corruption in U.S. history. Sherman himself had invested in railroads before the war, and he was a consummate political insider, along with Durant, Dodge, and his brother, Senator John Sherman.
    President Grant made his old friend Sherman the army’s commanding general, and another Civil War luminary, General Phillip Sheridan, assumed command on the ground in the West. “Thus the great triumvirate of the Union Civil War effort,” writes Sherman biographer Michael Fellman, “formulated and enacted military Indian policy until reaching, by the 1880s, what Sherman sometimes referred to as ‘the final solution of the Indian problem’” (1995, 260).
    What Sherman called the “final solution of the Indian problem” involved “killing hostile Indians and segregating their pauperized survivors in remote places.” “These men,” writes Fellman, “applied their shared ruthlessness, born of their Civil War experiences, against a people all three [men] despised. . . . Sherman’s overall policy was never accommodation and compromise, but vigorous war against the Indians,” whom he regarded as “a less-than-human and savage race” (1995, 260).
    All of the other generals who took part in the Indian Wars were “like Sherman [and Sheridan], Civil War luminaries,” writes Sherman biographer John Marszalek. “Their names were familiar from Civil War battles: John Pope, O. O. Howard, Nelson A. Miles, Alfred H. Terry, E. O. C. Ord, C. C. Augur . . . Edward Canby . . . George Armstrong Custer and Benjamin Garrison” (1993, 380). General Winfield Scott Hancock also belongs on this list.
    Sherman and Sheridan’s biographers frequently point out that these men apparently viewed the Indian Wars as a continuation of the job they had performed during the Civil War. “Sherman viewed Indians as he viewed recalcitrant Southerners during the war and newly freed people after: resisters to the legitimate forces of an ordered society” (Marszalek 1993, 380). Marszalek might well have written also that Southerners, former slaves, and Indians were not so much opposed to an “ordered society,” but to being ordered around by politicians in Washington, D.C., primarily for the benefit of the politicians’ corporate benefactors.
    “During the Civil War, Sherman and Sheridan had practiced a total war of destruction of property. . . . Now the army, in its Indian warfare, often wiped out entire villages” (Marszalek 1993, 382). Fellman writes that Sherman charged Sheridan “to act with all the vigor he had shown in the Shenandoah Valley during the final months of the Civil War” (1995, 270). Sheridan’s troops had burned and plundered the Shenandoah Valley after the Confederate army had evacuated the area and only women, children, and elderly men remained there (Morris 1992, 183). Even Prussian army officers are said to have been shocked when after the war Sheridan boasted to them of his exploits in the Shenandoah Valley.
    “[Sherman] insisted that the only answer to the Indian problem was all-out war—of the kind he had utilized against the Confederacy,” writes Marszalek. “Since the inferior Indians refused to step aside so superior American culture could create success and progress, they had to be driven out of the way as the Confederates had been driven back into the Union” (1993, 380).
    Sherman’s compulsion for the “extermination” of anyone opposed to turning the U.S. state into an empire expressed the same reasoning he had expressed earlier with regard to his role in the War Between the States. In a letter to his wife early in the war, he declared that his ultimate purpose was “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.” Mrs. Sherman responded by expressing her similar wish that the conflict would be a “war of extermination, and that all [Southerners] would be driven like the swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing” (qtd. in Walters 1973, 61). Sherman did his best to take his wife’s advice, especially during his famous “march to the sea.” It is little wonder that Indian Wars historian S. L. A. Marshall observes, “[M]ost of the Plains Indian bands were in sympathy with the Southern cause” during the war (1972, 24).
    One theme among all of these Union Civil War veterans is that they considered Indians to be subhuman and racially inferior to whites and therefore deserving of extermination if they could not be “controlled” by the white population. Sherman himself thought of the former slaves in exactly the same way. “The Indians give a fair illustration of the fate of the negroes if they are released from the control of the whites,” he once said (qtd. in Kennett 2001, 296). He believed that intermarriage of whites and Indians would be disastrous, as he claimed it was in New Mexico, where “the blending of races had produced general equality, which led inevitably to Mexican anarchy” (qtd. in Kennett 2001, 297).
    Sherman described the inhabitants of New Mexico, many of whom were part Mexican (Spanish), part Indian, and part Negro, as “mongrels.” His goal was to eliminate the possibility that such racial amalgamation might occur elsewhere in the United States, by undertaking to effect what Michael Fellman called a “racial cleansing of the land” (1995, 264), beginning with extermination of the Indians.
    Sherman, Sheridan, and the other top military commanders were not shy about announcing that their objective was extermination, a term that Sherman used literally on a number of occasions, as he had in reference to Southerners only a few years earlier. He and Sheridan are forever associated with the slogan “the only good Indian is a dead Indian.” “All the Indians will have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers,” he said. Sherman announced his objective as being “to prosecute the war with vindictive earnestness . . . till [the Indians] are obliterated or beg for mercy” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 270). According to Fellman, Sherman gave “Sheridan prior authorization to slaughter as many women and children as well as men Sheridan or his subordinates felt was necessary when they attacked Indian villages” (1995, 271).
    In case the media back east got wind of such atrocities, Sherman promised Sheridan that he would run interference against any complaints: “I will back you with my whole authority, and stand between you and any efforts that may be attempted in your rear to restrain your purpose or check your troops” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 271). In later correspondence, Sherman wrote to Sheridan, “I am charmed at the handsome conduct of our troops in the field. They go in with the relish that used to make our hearts glad in 1864–5” (qtd. in Fellman 1995, 272).
    Sherman and Sheridan’s troops conducted more than one thousand attacks on Indian villages, mostly in the winter months, when families were together. The U.S. army’s actions matched its leaders’ rhetoric of extermination. As mentioned earlier, Sherman gave orders to kill everyone and everything, including dogs, and to burn everything that would burn so as to increase the likelihood that any survivors would starve or freeze to death. The soldiers also waged a war of extermination on the buffalo, which was the Indians’ chief source of food, winter clothing, and other goods (the Indians even made fish hooks out of dried buffalo bones and bow strings out of sinews).
    By 1882, the buffalo were all but extinct, and the cause was not just the tragedy of the commons. Because buffalo hides could be sold for as much as $3.50 each, an individual hunter would kill more than a hundred a day for as many days as he cared to hunt on the open plain. This exploitation of a “common property resource” decimated the buffalo herds, but the decimation was also an integral part of U.S. military policy aimed at starving the Plains Indians. When a group of Texans asked Sheridan if he could not do something to stop the extermination of the buffalo, he said: “Let them kill, skin, and sell until the buffalo is exterminated, as it is the only way to bring lasting peace and allow civilization to advance” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 265).
    The escalation of violence against the Plains Indians actually began in earnest during the War Between the States. Sherman and Sheridan’s Indian policy was a continuation and escalation of a policy that General Grenville Dodge, among others, had already commenced. In 1851, the Santee Sioux Indians in Minnesota sold 24 million acres of land to the U.S. government for $1,410,000 in a typical “trade” (as opposed to raid) scenario. The federal government once again did not keep its side of the bargain, though, reneging on its payment to the Indians (Nichols 1978). By 1862, thousands of white settlers were moving onto the Indians’ land, and a crop failure in that year caused the Santee Sioux to become desperate for food. They attempted to take back their land by force with a short “war” in which President Lincoln placed General John Pope in charge. Pope announced, “It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. . . . They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made” (qtd. in Nichols 1978, 87).At the end of the month-long conflict, hundreds of Indians who had been taken prisoner were subjected to military “trials” lasting about ten minutes each, according to Nichols (1978). Most of the adult male prisoners were found guilty and sentenced to death—not based on evidence of the commission of a crime, but on their mere presence at the end of the fighting. Minnesota authorities wanted to execute all 303 who were convicted, but the Lincoln administration feared that the European powers would not view such an act favorably and did not want to give them an excuse to assist the Confederacy in any way. Therefore, “only” 38 of the Indians were hanged, making this travesty of justice still the largest mass execution in U.S. history (Nichols 1978). To appease the Minnesotans who wanted to execute all 303, Lincoln promised them $2 million and pledged that the U.S. Army would remove all Indians from the state at some future date.
    One of the most famous incidents of Indian extermination, known as the Sand Creek Massacre, took place on November 29, 1864. There was a Cheyenne and Arapaho village located on Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado. These Indians had been assured by the U.S. government that they would be safe in Colorado. The government instructed them to fly a U.S. flag over their village, which they did, to assure their safety. However, another Civil War “luminary,” Colonel John Chivington, had other plans for them as he raided the village with 750 heavily armed soldiers. One account of what happened appears in the book Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars (1972) by the renowned military historian S. L. A. Marshall, who held the title of chief historian of the European Theater in World War II and authored thirty books on American military history.
    Chivington’s orders were: “I want you to kill and scalp all, big and little; nits make lice” (qtd. in Marshall 1972, 37). Then, despite the display of the U.S. flag and white surrender flags by these peaceful Indians, Chivington’s troops “began a full day given over to blood-lust, orgiastic mutilation, rapine, and destruction—with Chivington . . . looking on and approving” (Marshall 1972, 38). Marshall notes that the most reliable estimate of the number of Indians killed is “163, of which 110 were women and children” (39).
    Upon returning to his fort, Chivington “and his raiders demonstrated around Denver, waving their trophies, more than one hundred drying scalps. They were acclaimed as conquering heroes, which was what they had sought mainly.” One Republican Party newspaper announced, “Colorado soldiers have once again covered themselves with glory” (qtd. in Marshall 1972, 39).
    An even more detailed account of the Sand Creek Massacre, based on U.S. Army records, biographies, and firsthand accounts, appears in Dee Brown’s classic Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West: “When the troops came up to [the squaws,] they ran out and showed their persons to let the soldiers know they were squaws and begged for mercy, but the soldiers shot them all. . . . There seemed to be indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children. . . . The squaws offered no resistance. Every one . . . was scalped” (1970, 89). Brown’s narrative gets much more graphic. The effect of such behavior was to eliminate forever the possibility of peaceful relations with these Indian tribes. They understood that they had become the objects of a campaign of extermination. As Brown writes, “In a few hours of madness at Sand Creek, Chivington and his soldiers destroyed the lives or the power of every Cheyenne and Arapaho chief who had held out for peace with the white men” (92). For the next two decades, the Plains Indians would do their best to return the barbarism in kind.
    The books by Brown and Marshall show that the kind of barbarism that occurred at Sand Creek, Colorado, was repeated many times during the next two decades. For example, in 1868 General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered Custer to attack a Cheyenne camp with infantry, which Custer did. The attack led Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy to report to Washington that “General Hancock’s expedition . . . has resulted in no good, but, on the contrary, has been productive of much evil” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 157). A report of the attack prepared for the U.S. secretary of the interior concluded: “For a mighty nation like us to be carrying on a war with a few straggling nomads, under such circumstances, is a spectacle most humiliating, and injustice unparalleled, a national crime most revolting, that must, sooner or later, bring down upon us or our posterity the judgment of Heaven” (qtd. in Brown 1970, 157).
    As the war on the Cheyenne continued, Custer and his troops apparently decided that to “kill or hang all the warriors,” as General Sheridan had ordered, “meant separating them from the old men, women, and children. This work was too slow and dangerous for the cavalrymen; they found it much more efficient and safe to kill indiscriminately. They killed 103 Cheyenne, but only eleven of them were warriors” (Brown 1970, 169).
    Marshall calls Sheridan’s orders to Custer “the most brutal orders ever published to American troops” (1972, 106). This is a powerful statement coming from a man who wrote thirty books on American military history. In addition to ordering Custer to shoot or hang all warriors, even those that surrendered, Sheridan commanded him to slaughter all ponies and to burn all tepees and their contents. “Sheridan held with but one solution to the Indian problem—extermination—and Custer was his quite pliable instrument,” writes Marshall (1972, 106).
    One of the oddest facts about the Indian Wars is that Custer famously instructed a band to play an Irish jig called “Garry Owens” during the attacks on Indian villages. “This was Custer’s way of gentling war. It made killing more rhythmic,” writes Marshall (1972, 107).
    During an attack on a Kiowa village on September 26, 1874, soldiers killed more than one thousand horses and forced 252 Kiowas to surrender. They were thrown into prison cells, where “each day their captors threw chunks of raw meat to them as if they were animals in a cage” (Brown 1970, 270). On numerous occasions, fleeing Indians sought refuge in Canada, where they knew they would be unmolested. Canadians built their own transcontinental railroad in the late nineteenth century, but they did not commence a campaign of extermination against the Indians living in that country as the government did in the United States.
    No one denies that the U.S. government killed tens of thousands of Indians, including women and children, during the years from 1862 to 1890. There are various estimates of the number of Indians killed, the highest being that of historian Russell Thornton (1990), who used mostly military records to estimate that about forty-five thousand Indians, including women and children, were killed during the wars on the Plains Indians. It is reasonable to assume that thousands more were maimed and disabled for life and received little or no medical assistance. The thousands of soldiers who participated in the Indian Wars lived in a culture of violence and death that was cultivated by the U.S. government for a quarter of a century.
    Conclusions
    The culture of violence in the American West of the late nineteenth century was created almost entirely by the U.S. government’s military interventions, which were primarily a veiled subsidy to the government-subsidized transcontinental railroad corporations. As scandals go, the war on the Plains Indians makes the Credit Mobilier affair seem inconsequential.
    There is such a thing as a culture of war, especially in connection with a war as gruesome and bloody as the war on the Plains Indians. On this topic, World War II combat veteran Paul Fussell has written: “The culture of war . . . is not like the culture of ordinary peace-time life. It is a culture dominated by fear, blood, and sadism, by irrational actions and preposterous . . . results. It has more relation to science fiction or to absurdist theater than to actual life” (1997, 354). Such was the “culture” the U.S. Army created throughout much of the American West for the quarter century after the War Between the States. It is the “culture” that all military interventions at all times have created, and it contrasts sharply with the predominantly peaceful culture of the stateless civil society on the American frontier during much of the nineteenth century.
    Fussell made this statement based on his personal experiences in combat, but it echoes the scholarly writing of Ludwig von Mises (who, let us remember, was also an Austrian army officer who had substantial combat experience during World War I): “What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate Instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action.” Human cooperation under the division of labor in the civil society “bursts asunder,” Mises wrote, whenever “citizens turn into warriors” and resort to war (1998, 827).
    It is not true that all whites waged a war of extermination against the Plains Indians. As noted earlier and as noted throughout the literature of the Indian Wars, many whites preferred the continuation of the peaceful trade and relations with Indians that had been the norm during the first half of the nineteenth century. (Conflicts sometimes occurred, of course, but “trade” dominated “raid” during that era.) Canadians built a transcontinental railroad without a Shermanesque campaign of “extermination” against the Indians in Canada. It is telling that the Plains Indians often sought refuge in Canada when the U.S. Army had them on the run.
    The U.S. government dehumanized the Plains Indians, describing them as “wild beasts,” in order to justify slaughtering them, just as Sherman and his wife, among many others, dehumanized Southerners during and after the War Between the States. The same dehumanization by the government’s propaganda machine would eventually target Filipinos, who were killed by the hundreds of thousands at the hands of the U.S. Army during their 1899–1902 revolt against the U.S. conquest of their country barely a decade after the Indian Wars had finally ended. President Theodore Roosevelt “justified” the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Filipinos by calling them “savages, half-breeds, a wild and ignorant people” (qtd. in Powell 2006, 64). Dehumanization of certain groups of “resisters” at the hands of the state’s propaganda apparatus is a prerequisite for the culture of war and violence that has long been the main preoccupation of the U.S. state.
    It was not necessary to kill tens of thousands of Indians and imprison thousands more in concentration camps (“reservations”) for generations in order to build a transcontinental railroad. Nor were the wars on the Plains Indians a matter of “the white population’s” waging a war of extermination. This war stemmed from the policy of the relatively small group of white men who ran the Republican Party (with assistance from some Democrats), which effectively monopolized national politics for most of that time.
    These men utilized the state’s latest technologies of mass killing developed during the Civil War and its mercenary soldiers (including the former slaves known as “buffalo soldiers”) to wage their war because they were in a hurry to shovel subsidies to the railroad corporations and other related business enterprises. Many of them profited handsomely, as the Credit Mobilier scandal revealed. The railroad corporations were the Microsofts and IBMs of their day, and the doctrines of neomercantilism defined the Republican Party’s reason for existing (DiLorenzo 2006). The Republican Party was, after all, the “Party of Lincoln,” the great railroad lawyer and a lobbyist for the Illinois Central and other midwestern railroads during his day.
    References
    Anderson, Terry, and P. J. Hill. 1979. An American Experiment in Anarcho-capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West. Journal of Libertarian Studies 3: 9–29.
    Anderson, Terry, and Fred L. McChesney. 1994. Raid or Trade? An Economic Model of Indian-White Relations. Journal of Law and Economics37: 39–74.
    Benson, Bruce. 1998. To Serve and Protect: Privatization and Community in Criminal Justice. New York: New York University Press for The Independent Institute.
    Brown, Dee. 1970. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West. New York: Holt.

    ———. 2001. Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow. New York: Owl Books.
    DiLorenzo, Thomas J. 2006. Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know about Dishonest Abe. New York: Crown Forum.
    Fellman, Michael. 1995. Citizen Sherman: A Life of William Tecumseh Sherman. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press.
    Franz, Joe B. 1969. The Frontier Tradition: An Invitation to Violence. InThe History of Violence in America, edited by Hugh D. Graham and Ted R. Gurr, 127–54. New York: New York Times Books.

    Fussell, Paul. 1997. The Culture of War. In The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John Denson, 351–57. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
    Hollon, W. Eugene. 1974. Frontier Violence: Another Look. New York: Oxford University Press.
    Kennett, Lee B. 2001. Sherman: A Soldier’s Life. New York: HarperCollins.
    Marshall, S. L. A. 1972. Crimsoned Prairie: The Indian Wars. New York: Da Capo Press.
    Marszalek, John F. 1993. Sherman: A Soldier’s Passion for Order. New York: Vintage Books.
    McGrath, Roger. 1984. Gunfighters, Highwaymen, and Vigilantes: Violence on the Frontier. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
    Mises, Ludwig von. 1998. Human Action. Scholar’s Edition. Auburn, Ala.: Ludwig von Mises Institute.
    Morris, Roy. 1992. Sheridan: The Life & Wars of General Phil Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
    Nichols, David A. 1978. Lincoln and the Indians: Civil War Policy and Politics. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
    Powell, Jim. 2006. Bully Boy: The Truth about Theodore Roosevelt’s Legacy. New York: Crown Forum.
    Roback, Jennifer. 1992. Exchange, Sovereignty, and Indian-Anglo Relations. In Property Rights and Indian Economies, edited by Terry Anderson, 5–26. Savage, Md.: Roman & Littlefield.
    Rothbard, Murray N. 1997. America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861. InThe Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, edited by John Denson, 119–33. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction.
    Sherman, William T. 2005. Memoirs. New York: Barnes & Noble.
    Thornton, Russel. 1990. American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492. Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press.
    Umbeck, John. 1981. Might Makes Rights: A Theory of the Formation and Initial Distribution of Property Rights. Economic Inquiry 19: 38–59.
    Walters, John Bennett. 1973. Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total War. New York: Bobbs-Merrill.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  11. #459
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    Everyone who isn't a delusional "meeza hatesa gubmint" feudal libertarian dittohead knows it is true.
    No more ad hominem attacks, either way. We've both been warned, so knock it off.

    Suppose you were in Somalia, had been kidnapped by pirates, and the local warlord ("government," according to you) ruled that the kidnappers were merely exercising their property right over the ocean, a property right conferred by the local government just as validly as any property title to land?
    Since all governments are both instituted and defended by force, then yes. Of course. A legal "right" doesn't mean "morally right". If Congress passed a Constitutional amendment saying that I had a right to enslave you, or to shoot you dead on sight for any reason whatsoever, I would be within my [legal] "right" to do either. Period. That does not make it morally right, but it would be valid. And if you didn't like it, and had no meaningful legal recourse to keep me from hunting and shooting you dead, seeking to overthrow the government would be among your many your options. Only principles are sacred to me. There is absolutely nothing sacred, or inherently good or bad, about government.

    Example 2 (fail)

    I am walking along, exercising my right to liberty, and encounter a brick wall and a locked door - the exterior that encloses the vault area of a bank. Had the bank not existed, I would "otherwise have been at liberty" to enter that space. That is indisputable. It is also indisputable that I am "deprived" of my liberty (my capacity and ability, but not my right) to enter and occupy that space.
    False. Physically, you could enter the space if you had appropriate equipment, and you are definitely being deprived of your right to enter it.
    Yes, if I had sufficient force, I could physically enter. But you are ahead of yourself on the second part, where you simply presume that I have a de facto "right" to enter. That's where you make a circular argument from your own premise.

    All one may conclude, in that example, is that I am deprived of my ordinary capacity (without C4, drills, jackhammers, etc.,) to enter. I am not "at liberty" to enter, but that does not mean I am deprive of a "right to enter it". Until such a liberty is recognized and/or codified as a "right", such a "right" exists only in the minds of the dissenters who are unable to establish it by force and defend it as such.

    Nonsense. Other than in law, which merely begs the question, your right to liberty is just as well established as in the kidnapping case. It is merely being violated with the local government's assistance, just as in the amended Somalia kidnapping case.
    See above. It is not question begging - it is in fact what is at issue. Question begging would be to simply declare something to be a right based on your own logic and rationale and nothing more.

    No. Unless you knew of the gold and intended to pick it up yourself, you have suffered no deprivation. You have lost nothing. The gold is NO LONGER THERE...
    Well, if I'm a constant gold-digger, I would always have the intent to pick up any gold I found, so I guess your rule is based on a combination for both prior knowledge and intent. Interesting. Back to the homesteader who built in private, only to be discovered years later by a band of LVT Ruffians, who insisted on camping next to him. He was good enough to hire them to help improve his property, and the trails leading to it. They had all been paid for their services, but they later claimed to have infused his land with "community provided value", for which they demanded he give them just compensation for their suffered deprivations, or else he would be forced to leave his humble domicile.

    What gives? They were land-diggers, for sure, but they didn't know of his land before, and had no intentions of using it. The land still exists, of course, just as the gold does in the other example. Thus, they have suffered no deprivation, and have lost nothing. I know that in your mind land has a special property that distinguishes it from gold, or anything else that can be taken from the land, as it truly is finite. But the finite supply nature of land, in itself, does not make GOLD VS. LAND any more or less of a deprivation. The same principles apply, whether I am denied the use of a tiny piece of mobile land (gold) or a parcel of land itself, and all that is therein.

    You say that I no longer have the opportunity to possess the gold. That is not true. If I have the tools, I have the ability to possess it still. The gold still exists, and so therefore does the opportunity to possess it. Except that I am being forcibly deprived of it by the current exclusive possessor. That gold "otherwise would have been there", had the current possessor not taken exclusive possession to it. And I might have "otherwise been at liberty to have it" had someone else not picked it up. I have, therefore, suffered a deprivation. And I am forcibly prevented from taking exercising my "natural liberty right" to the use of that gold (the non-exclusive use of which I, of course, would be willing to share. With everyone.) The current exclusive possessor of that gold can continue to possess it, but not without just compensation to me for my deprivation.

    The natural opportunity no longer exists, so no coercion need be applied to prevent you from exercising your liberty to use it. There can be no right to turn back the clock, or do what is logically or physically impossible.
    Interesting. I think I told you that once or twice. But the gold is still available - as a present opportunity, since I know where it is. But I have a dilemma, because I am being forcibly prevented from entering the bank vault where it is stored. Thus I am being forcibly deprived of my opportunity to use not only the vault, but the gold that is buried thereunder. I have the tools to enter the vault, but police have guns drawn on me, and told me to put down my jackhammer, or they would shoot me.

    How can I get a "right" to enter that vault area, and also a right to use that gold, so that I can exercise my liberty at using both?
    Last edited by Steven Douglas; 03-23-2012 at 04:38 PM.

  12. #460
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    You think West European governments are less corrupt and more competent? LMFAO!!!
    I certainly do, and I am objectively correct. There are exceptions, like Italy and Greece, which are certainly corrupt and incompetent, though not as deadly dangerous to their own people as the US government. But the great majority are far superior to the USA, as proved by every accepted measure of well-being.

    Are you unaware that West European governments don't generally make war on civilian populations in faraway countries, or lock up a large fraction of their populations in prison, or subject the great majority of their populations to economic duress that forces them into poverty or lifelong servitude? I would laugh at your ignorance, but it is too sad.
    You can't be serious.
    I am serious, and I am factually correct. You just have never lived in a country with a good government, which is sad. You also have never lived in a country with no government, which I suppose explains your utter ignorance of prevailing conditions in such places.
    Let me know when a stateless society commits genocide on a mass scale
    What fraction of all the states that have ever existed have done that, hmmmmm?

    Stateless societies can't do anything on a mass scale, including enable human progress and well-being. But they have certainly committed genocide on a scale almost unknown among states, when measured relative to the size of the societies involved. It's just that in stateless societies, conditions are invariably so catastrophic that no one is literate, or has the leisure, to record such incidents for posterity. Nevertheless, genocide among stateless societies has been quite common. In pre-colonial Africa, genocidal tribal wars were a major source of slaves for the slave trade to the Americas. Many tribes were entirely exterminated or enslaved. And it's not just Africa. In 1577, for example, the clan MacLeod, not a government or state, nor with the blessing of any government or state, exterminated the entire population of the Isle of Eigg. Read and learn:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_..._Spoiling_Dyke

    The saga-era Icelanders who are so often proclaimed as the model of a society without government in fact got into a civil war over land that was so violent and bloody, they petitioned the King of Norway to govern them and put an end to it.
    or drops fire bombs
    Stateless societies don't have airplanes, duh. They lack the societal infrastructure needed to keep such complex machinery operating.
    or nuclear bombs on a civilian population,
    How many governments, in the whole history of the world, have ever dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations, hmmmm? And just which one do you suppose it was? Take your time.
    and I'll take this empty argument seriously.
    It is not empty. It is fact. You just refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.

  13. #461

  14. #462
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    I certainly do, and I am objectively correct. There are exceptions, like Italy and Greece, which are certainly corrupt and incompetent, though not as deadly dangerous to their own people as the US government. But the great majority are far superior to the USA, as proved by every accepted measure of well-being.

    Are you unaware that West European governments don't generally make war on civilian populations in faraway countries, or lock up a large fraction of their populations in prison, or subject the great majority of their populations to economic duress that forces them into poverty or lifelong servitude? I would laugh at your ignorance, but it is too sad.
    So, the historical basis for this opinion is the post-war era? Read European history Roy. I'm not going to spoon-feed it to you. It would take years. You need to get out of your pretentious, self-righteous bubble and learn about the real world around you-and its history.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    I am serious, and I am factually correct. You just have never lived in a country with a good government, which is sad.
    I am factually correct. No one has lived in a country with an objectively good government (except for a few benevolent kings, but that is statistically insignificant).

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    You also have never lived in a country with no government, which I suppose explains your utter ignorance of prevailing conditions in such places.
    No, but I've been in the middle of nowhere-effectively ungoverned. People in these places live in good conditions (better than the cities, really-unless you really like cities).

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    What fraction of all the states that have ever existed have done that, hmmmmm?
    Enough to know that they are undesirable. You don't need shoot 10,000 people point blank in the head to know it's deadly.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    Stateless societies can't do anything on a mass scale, including enable human progress and well-being. But they have certainly committed genocide on a scale almost unknown among states, when measured relative to the size of the societies involved. It's just that in stateless societies, conditions are invariably so catastrophic that no one is literate, or has the leisure, to record such incidents for posterity. Nevertheless, genocide among stateless societies has been quite common.
    Woefully incorrect. Culture has more to do with the success of lack thereof in society. The American West is an example of this.


    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    Stateless societies don't have airplanes, duh. They lack the societal infrastructure needed to keep such complex machinery operating.
    Again, false. The stateless American West was industrialized and developed long before incorporation into the union.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    How many governments, in the whole history of the world, have ever dropped nuclear bombs on civilian populations, hmmmm? And just which one do you suppose it was? Take your time.
    Thus far, just one. But every State has brutalized its citizens. There is no other reason for the State to exist (the "defense" and other arguments have long been disproven).[/QUOTE]

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    It is not empty. It is fact. You just refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
    A false fact, yes. My beliefs are rooted in fact and antithetical to evil. It is tools of the State like yourself who are detached from your own humanity and allow Statism to destroy you.

    P.S. I insist that you go back and read post 485 of this thread before you continue making an utter fool of yourself. And don't respond to me till you've done so (and comprehend it).
    Last edited by heavenlyboy34; 03-23-2012 at 11:33 PM.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  15. #463

  16. #464
    your email is @telus.net??

    ROY IS CANADIAN?!?!?!



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  18. #465
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    So, the historical basis for this opinion is the post-war era?
    Of course. That's when modern, constitutional, democratic government really became the norm in Western Europe. Before the 19th C, Britain was the only major country in the world since classical times that had effective democratic institutions.
    Read European history Roy. I'm not going to spoon-feed it to you.
    <yawn> I have. Lots of undemocratic governments before the 20th C. So? They were mostly STILL better than the non-government of early post-Roman Europe.
    You need to get out of your pretentious, self-righteous bubble and learn about the real world around you-and its history.
    As they say in Japan, "It's mirror time!"
    I am factually correct.
    No, you are not.
    No one has lived in a country with an objectively good government (except for a few benevolent kings, but that is statistically insignificant).
    False and absurd. Any objective measure of national well-being shows people who live in places like Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Canada, Singapore, New Zealand, etc. enjoy good government.
    No, but I've been in the middle of nowhere-effectively ungoverned.
    Hermits don't need government, duh.
    People in these places live in good conditions (better than the cities, really-unless you really like cities).
    Have you ever lived in a city in any of the countries identified above?

    Thought not.
    Enough to know that they are undesirable.
    Nope. You have no evidence for your claims, so you simply assume them, contrary to the evidence.
    You don't need shoot 10,000 people point blank in the head to know it's deadly.
    You don't seem to understand. Your claim is not that some governments have been bad. That's indisputable. Your claim is that ALL governments must ALWAYS be bad. And that claim is a ludicrous fabrication that flies in the face of the evidence. You are effectively claiming that because some people have been made ill or died from eating tainted food, no one should eat any food.
    Woefully incorrect.
    It is fact.
    Culture has more to do with the success of lack thereof in society. The American West is an example of this.
    More garbage. The American West is merely an example -- and there are others, such as saga-era Iceland -- of how a population that has access to an abundance of good land and the associated opportunities has little need for government to administer its possession and use; but once the good land is all appropriated, the violence inherent in landowning comes to the fore. If the American West had not been all but depopulated of aboriginals by Old World diseases -- smallpox, typhus, measles, influenza, bubonic plague, cholera, malaria, tuberculosis, mumps, yellow fever, and pertussis, which reduced the indigenous population by something like 90% in the preceding centuries -- leaving vast areas of good, fertile land available for use, violent conflict over land would have been chronic, as it was during the European colonization of Africa.
    Again, false.
    It is fact. No stateless area in the world has ever maintained air transport infrastructure.
    The stateless American West was industrialized and developed long before incorporation into the union.
    That is an absurd fabrication. The only significant industries were agriculture and mining, and they were low-tech. Almost all manufactured goods had to be imported from areas with government.
    Thus far, just one. But every State has brutalized its citizens.
    Another absurd fabrication. And you ignore the INVARIABLE brutalization in stateless societies.
    There is no other reason for the State to exist (the "defense" and other arguments have long been disproven).
    No, of course they have not.
    My beliefs are rooted in fact and antithetical to evil. It is tools of the State like yourself who are detached from your own humanity and allow Statism to destroy you.
    Nonsense. Your ideas are not only evil and not rooted in fact, they cannot survive contact with fact, which is why you refuse to know any facts. The notion that the level of evil per capita in countries such as those I identified above is even comparable to the level in places that have had no government is absurd and laughable.
    P.S. I insist that you go back and read post 485 of this thread before you continue making an utter fool of yourself. And don't respond to me till you've done so (and comprehend it).
    I read it before, and understood it before. It is idiotic, unscientific garbage. There is NO ATTEMPT to describe conditions in the American West in the pre-Civil War era, let alone to make a valid statistical comparison. The Civil War, as we now understand, created a large population of millions of brutalized, psychotic, racist, violence-prone males trained to dehumanize, attack and kill their fellow human beings. The only available outlet for their psychological need to express their chronic anger and hatred through violence was the West. Hence the litany of brutality the article chronicles. But YOUR OWN SOURCE even proves your claims flat wrong, as it repeatedly states that aboriginal refugees from the violence and brutality of Civil War veterans and the US government often fled to Canada, where the government respected and secured their rights.

  19. #466
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    Since all governments are both instituted and defended by force,
    As is, not coincidentally, all ownership of land...
    then yes.
    If you have a cause of action contrary to local law, then so does everyone who is forcibly excluded from land they want to use. Thanks for conceding the whole argument.
    A legal "right" doesn't mean "morally right".
    You again concede the whole argument. All your "arguments" have depended on legal recognition of property in land. Without that, you have nothing to offer in opposition to the rights to life and liberty.
    If Congress passed a Constitutional amendment saying that I had a right to enslave you, or to shoot you dead on sight for any reason whatsoever, I would be within my [legal] "right" to do either. Period. That does not make it morally right, but it would be valid.
    You need to clarify the difference between "right" and "valid."
    Only principles are sacred to me.
    But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty. Right.
    Yes, if I had sufficient force, I could physically enter.
    Equivocation fallacy. The kind of "force" needed to enter a bank building is the same as needed to enter a natural cave sealed by rock, not the kind of force needed to impose one's will on other human beings.
    But you are ahead of yourself on the second part, where you simply presume that I have a de facto "right" to enter. That's where you make a circular argument from your own premise.
    An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular. I have identified the premises of my arguments, and they imply the conclusions. They are not themselves dependent on the conclusions, so the argument is not circular.
    All one may conclude, in that example, is that I am deprived of my ordinary capacity (without C4, drills, jackhammers, etc.,) to enter. I am not "at liberty" to enter, but that does not mean I am deprive of a "right to enter it".
    Yes, of course it does.
    Until such a liberty is recognized and/or codified as a "right",
    Question begging fallacy.
    such a "right" exists only in the minds of the dissenters who are unable to establish it by force and defend it as such.
    Like slaves' rights to liberty...? That is merely the might-makes-right fallacy. HOW CAN RIGHTS EVER BE ESTABLISHED AND DEFENDED BY FORCE EXCEPT BY ALREADY EXISTING IN THE MINDS OF "DISSENTERS"?? Your "argument" is baldly self-contradictory.
    It is not question begging - it is in fact what is at issue.
    No, it is not, because no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law to remove others' rights to liberty that slave owners had when slavery was legal.
    Question begging would be to simply declare something to be a right based on your own logic and rationale and nothing more.
    ?? Nonsense. That's what all arguments are based on. Question begging is assuming the conclusion in the premises.
    Back to the homesteader who built in private, only to be discovered years later by a band of LVT Ruffians, who insisted on camping next to him.
    You misspelled, "people innocently exercising their rights to liberty."
    He was good enough to hire them to help improve his property, and the trails leading to it.
    No, he was not. You are begging the question by assuming that the landowner pays for all improvements and infrastructure. He doesn't.
    They had all been paid for their services,
    No, that is a false and ludicrous assumption that simply evades the real issue.
    but they later claimed to have infused his land with "community provided value", for which they demanded he give them just compensation for their suffered deprivations, or else he would be forced to leave his humble domicile.
    The only way LVT "ruffians" could do that would be by OFFERING TO PAY HIM THE SAME AMOUNT.
    They were land-diggers, for sure, but they didn't know of his land before, and had no intentions of using it. The land still exists, of course, just as the gold does in the other example.
    Wrong. The gold is no longer a natural opportunity. The land is.
    Thus, they have suffered no deprivation, and have lost nothing.
    Garbage. The land "owner" is forcibly depriving them of their liberty to use the opportunity nature provided.
    I know that in your mind land has a special property that distinguishes it from gold, or anything else that can be taken from the land, as it truly is finite.
    No, the difference is that land truly is something they would otherwise be at liberty to use.
    But the finite supply nature of land, in itself, does not make GOLD VS. LAND any more or less of a deprivation. The same principles apply, whether I am denied the use of a tiny piece of mobile land (gold) or a parcel of land itself, and all that is therein.
    Nope. The gold is not "mobile land." Once removed from nature, it is a product of labor, and land, by definition, can never be a product of labor.
    You say that I no longer have the opportunity to possess the gold. That is not true. If I have the tools, I have the ability to possess it still.
    No, what I say, and is indisputably true, is that the gold is no longer a natural opportunity but a product of labor.
    The gold still exists, and so therefore does the opportunity to possess it.
    The opportunity nature provided no longer exists.
    Except that I am being forcibly deprived of it by the current exclusive possessor.
    But that deprivation is not of something you would otherwise have. The gold is no longer the natural opportunity but a product of labor.
    That gold "otherwise would have been there", had the current possessor not taken exclusive possession to it.
    Irrelevant. It ISN'T there, which means no coercion is applied to you to stop you from picking it up, and your rights are therefore not being violated.
    And I might have "otherwise been at liberty to have it" had someone else not picked it up. I have, therefore, suffered a deprivation.
    Wrong. You would only have suffered a deprivation if you were deprived of your liberty to pick it up when it was still a natural opportunity. But you were not. No one did anything to you at all, so your rights were not violated. You just missed the opportunity, and now it no longer exists.

    You are mistaking the product of labor for a natural opportunity. It isn't, any more than a naturally growing apple that I picked and ate before you ever knew of its existence is a natural opportunity for you to eat an apple. It's gone.
    And I am forcibly prevented from taking exercising my "natural liberty right" to the use of that gold (the non-exclusive use of which I, of course, would be willing to share. With everyone.)
    Nope. You indisputably aren't. No one uses any force to prevent you from picking up the gold from its natural place, because it is no longer there.
    The current exclusive possessor of that gold can continue to possess it, but not without just compensation to me for my deprivation.
    Nope. He is not depriving you of anything you would otherwise have.
    Interesting. I think I told you that once or twice.
    I doubt that.
    But the gold is still available - as a present opportunity, since I know where it is.
    Wrong. You also know where the apple is. But like the gold, it is no longer an opportunity you would otherwise be at liberty to use.
    But I have a dilemma, because I am being forcibly prevented from entering the bank vault where it is stored. Thus I am being forcibly deprived of my opportunity to use not only the vault, but the gold that is buried thereunder.
    Both the vault and the gold have been put there by others, and you consequently have no liberty right to use them. The land, by contrast has always been there, waiting for you to exercise your liberty to use it.
    I have the tools to enter the vault, but police have guns drawn on me, and told me to put down my jackhammer, or they would shoot me.

    How can I get a "right" to enter that vault area, and also a right to use that gold, so that I can exercise my liberty at using both?
    You have no such right, as the vault and gold, unlike the land, are there only because others put them there.

  20. #467
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas
    Since all governments are both instituted and defended by force,
    As is, not coincidentally, all ownership of land...
    ...as would be, not coincidentally, an LVT regime. You see that force is used to defend landownership rights (as recognized and codified), but seem to gloss over the fact that the exact same force would be used to institute and enforce LVT law. So what? It's a use of force in both cases, and therefore a wash, and not at issue.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    If you have a cause of action contrary to local law, then so does everyone who is forcibly excluded from land they want to use. Thanks for conceding the whole argument.
    That wasn't the argument at all, and you are still begging the question, arguing from your own premise. A cause of action contrary to local law is a two-edged sword. If local law is LVT-based, I could say that I have a cause of action contrary to local law -- that I am forcibly deprived of a right to own land (my normative). You are claiming the reverse (from the positive reality that LVT is not the current regime) that you have a cause of action that you are forcibly excluded from land you want to use (your normative). They are two mutually exclusive propositions - either of which could be codified and recognized as a right - to the exclusion of another would-be right.

    You want your normative ("ought") to be recognized as the de facto positive, based on your rationale. I want the exact opposite. But that isn't what establishes a right.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    You again concede the whole argument. All your "arguments" have depended on legal recognition of property in land. Without that, you have nothing to offer in opposition to the rights to life and liberty.
    Again, your rationale, your normatives, based on how you personally interpret "rights to life and liberty". All BOTH of our arguments depend on our interpretation of what OUGHT to be rights, which would in turn dictate which entity (government or individuals) have legal recognition of property in land. Again a wash.


    Your position did not become de facto correct
    That's true, and my point entirely. Neither did yours - at any time.
    If Congress passed a Constitutional amendment saying that I had a right to enslave you, or to shoot you dead on sight for any reason whatsoever, I would be within my [legal] "right" to do either. Period. That does not make it morally right, but it would be valid.
    You need to clarify the difference between "right" and "valid."
    Right, as in "morally right" (the context you quoted) is an internal judgment. By "valid", I only mean "in keeping with the law", or "not contrary to [state] law". I think that was obvious enough.

    But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty. Right.
    All your dogma, your paradigms, your moral governing assumptions, pretty much all of which I reject, and do not share.

    Equivocation fallacy. The kind of "force" needed to enter a bank building is the same as needed to enter a natural cave sealed by rock, not the kind of force needed to impose one's will on other human beings.
    No, that would be both your equivocation and composition fallacy in one. A natural cave sealed by rock may not have armed guards or police threatening violence and use of force if I attempt to enter. A bank building most certainly would.

    An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular. I have identified the premises of my arguments, and they imply the conclusions. They are not themselves dependent on the conclusions, so the argument is not circular.
    An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular, but an argument that states the premise as the conclusion is, by definition, circular. And your arguments are chock full of those, to wit: "But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty." That's just one example of nothing but question begging and presumptive circular reasoning.

    Like slaves' rights to liberty...? That is merely the might-makes-right fallacy. HOW CAN RIGHTS EVER BE ESTABLISHED AND DEFENDED BY FORCE EXCEPT BY ALREADY EXISTING IN THE MINDS OF "DISSENTERS"?? Your "argument" is baldly self-contradictory.
    Hardly. All rights exist first as mental seeds, and not only in the minds of dissenters. Might-makes-right is a fallacy wherein one attaches moral meaning strictly on the basis of force. Which I do not. Remember above? ALL rights are instituted and defended - by force. AKA - Might. Not might-makes-right -- rather MIGHT MAKES A RIGHT. That's true of both landownership AND LVT.

    No, it is not, because no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law to remove others' rights to liberty that slave owners had when slavery was legal.
    See what you did there? Look at that question-begging (assuming the conclusion in the premises - emphasis mine)

    ...no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law to remove others' rights to liberty

    See that? You slipped in your normative "rights to liberty" - as if that kind of right, as you meant it, had already been established. You took your normative dissenting mental seed of what you believe OUGHT to be a right, one that is NOT current law, and therefore NOT a recognized right, and enthroned it in your sentence - the assumption concluded - as if it was.

    Until such a liberty is recognized and/or codified as a "right",
    Question begging fallacy.
    No, I was calling you out on your question begging fallacy, wherein you refer to a deprivation of land use as a deprivation of a "liberty right". That's question begging on your part, as you state your normative assumption (your mental seed of what OUGHT to be a right) as if it was already a positive. How is what I wrote question begging? Untying your logical knot is not the same as tying a knot.

  21. #468
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    That doesn't "demolish" anything. All you do is claim xyz to be "nonsense", etc. You, as usual, don't "prove" anything. It's Rothbard who did the demolishing there.
    Quote Originally Posted by Torchbearer
    what works can never be discussed online. there is only one language the government understands, and until the people start speaking it by the magazine full... things will remain the same.
    Hear/buy my music here "government is the enemy of liberty"-RP Support me on Patreon here Ephesians 6:12

  22. #469
    Quote Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34 View Post
    That doesn't "demolish" anything.
    You are just lying. I demolished Rothbard's stupid crap utterly. And more, I showed, virtually sentence by sentence, that his "arguments" were nothing but absurd, dishonest garbage that no one over the age of six could possibly believe or take seriously.
    All you do is claim xyz to be "nonsense", etc.
    Identifying stupid, absurd, dishonest nonsense as such IS demolishing it. Just as one example, his claim that LVT would raise no revenue IS nonsense. LITERALLY nonsense. It is absurd and idiotic.
    You, as usual, don't "prove" anything.
    Lie. I proved his claims were absurd and dishonest. Claiming I didn't demolish Rothbard cannot alter the fact that I did.
    It's Rothbard who did the demolishing there.
    ROTFL!! Learn how to read. Or think. Or something.

  23. #470
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    ...as would be, not coincidentally, an LVT regime.
    Correct. As I have stated repeatedly, there is no way to allocate exclusive tenure to land but by force. It is impossible.
    You see that force is used to defend landownership rights (as recognized and codified),
    <sigh> Question-begging fallacy. If recognition and codification created rights, there would never have been any basis for challenging slavery.
    but seem to gloss over the fact that the exact same force would be used to institute and enforce LVT law.
    As usual, you have to lie about what I have plainly written. I have stated repeatedly that there is no way to allocate exclusive land tenure but by force. You know that.
    So what? It's a use of force in both cases, and therefore a wash, and not at issue.
    ROTFL!! By that "logic," the protection racketeer and the police both use force, so that's a wash, too, and not at issue.
    That wasn't the argument at all,
    Yes, actually, it was.
    and you are still begging the question, arguing from your own premise.
    All arguments are from premises, duh. I have shown that my premises are objectively correct, while yours are objectively false.
    A cause of action contrary to local law is a two-edged sword.
    Unless you have some weird redefinition in mind, it's a bald contradiction.
    If local law is LVT-based, I could say that I have a cause of action contrary to local law -- that I am forcibly deprived of a right to own land (my normative).
    But that would merely be another question-begging fallacy. You could with equal "logic" claim that you are deprived of a "right" to own slaves.
    You are claiming the reverse (from the positive reality that LVT is not the current regime) that you have a cause of action that you are forcibly excluded from land you want to use (your normative).
    I think it is more accurate to call it what it is: a forcible, uncompensated removal of my liberty.
    They are two mutually exclusive propositions - either of which could be codified and recognized as a right - to the exclusion of another would-be right.
    No, you are just trying to play it deuces wild by claiming that rights are not based on anything, merely "codified and recognized." That is the legalistic fallacy.
    You want your normative ("ought") to be recognized as the de facto positive, based on your rationale. I want the exact opposite.
    But I can support my views with fact and logic, while you cannot.
    But that isn't what establishes a right.
    True. So, what do you imagine does?
    Again, your rationale, your normatives, based on how you personally interpret "rights to life and liberty". All BOTH of our arguments depend on our interpretation of what OUGHT to be rights, which would in turn dictate which entity (government or individuals) have legal recognition of property in land. Again a wash.
    It would only be a wash if we both had equal factual and logical support for our views. We don't. My views are based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their logical implications, while yours are based on nothing but your desire for unearned wealth.
    That's true, and my point entirely. Neither did yours - at any time.
    You chopped up the context so I can't tell what you are talking about.
    Right, as in "morally right" (the context you quoted) is an internal judgment.
    No, it is not. That is a commonly held but mistaken notion. Right is not subjective, it is merely an aspect of objective reality that may change according to circumstances, and is difficult to discern.
    By "valid", I only mean "in keeping with the law", or "not contrary to [state] law". I think that was obvious enough.
    Yes, it WAS obvious enough: by "valid," you just meant the validity slavery had when slavery was legal.
    No, that would be both your equivocation and composition fallacy in one. A natural cave sealed by rock may not have armed guards or police threatening violence and use of force if I attempt to enter. A bank building most certainly would.
    Exactly my point: the "force" that the prospective user of the land under the bank would have to use is not the kind of force the armed guards and police use to stop him from doing so. Your claim that they are the same is a blatant equivocation fallacy.
    An argument from a premise to a conclusion is not circular, but an argument that states the premise as the conclusion is, by definition, circular.
    No, that is question begging.
    And your arguments are chock full of those, to wit: "But mainly the "principle" that your desire for unearned wealth trumps others' rights to life and liberty." That's just one example of nothing but question begging and presumptive circular reasoning.
    Nonsense. It just reminds you that claiming to be motivated by "principle" is not an argument.
    Hardly. All rights exist first as mental seeds,
    No, they do not. There must be something in reality to create that mental seed. It can't and doesn't come from nowhere.
    and not only in the minds of dissenters.
    Wrong. By definition, before it is codified and recognized, only dissenters see the rationale for it.
    Might-makes-right is a fallacy wherein one attaches moral meaning strictly on the basis of force. Which I do not.
    Yes, actually, you do. You believe forcible appropriation of land confers a moral right to deprive others of their liberty to use it. That is the only basis for your claims.
    Remember above? ALL rights are instituted and defended - by force.
    No, that is not what was said above, and it is certainly not true. Exclusive LAND tenure -- which is NOT a right -- can only be instituted and defended by force. THAT is what was said above. The genuine and valid property right in products of labor is instituted by recognition that it is in the interest of all.
    AKA - Might. Not might-makes-right -- rather MIGHT MAKES A RIGHT.
    Blatant self-contradiction.
    That's true of both landownership AND LVT.
    Because neither of those are RIGHTS. Landownership is merely a means land thieves use to take wealth from producers and contribute nothing in return. LVT is a means society can use to secure and reconcile people's equal liberty rights wrt land -- in fact, it is the only possible means to do so while securing the producer's right to property in the fixed improvements he makes.
    See what you did there? Look at that question-begging (assuming the conclusion in the premises - emphasis mine)
    I did nothing of the sort.
    ...no one denies that landowners have the same "right" under law [U]to remove others' rights to liberty

    See that? You slipped in your normative "rights to liberty" - as if that kind of right, as you meant it, had already been established.
    Of course it has already been established. Our ancestors indisputably lived by that right for millions of years. They could not have existed without it. It is the removal of that right by landowning that has yet to be established as rightful -- and it won't and can't be.
    You took your normative dissenting mental seed of what you believe OUGHT to be a right, one that is NOT current law, and therefore NOT a recognized right, and enthroned it in your sentence - the assumption concluded - as if it was.
    No, I pointed out that in FACT, landowning removes a right that is already recognized. Landowning has simply been inserted into law by landowners to provide a legal pretext for their greed, parasitism and evil, and the productive have been stupid and cowardly enough to go along with it on the assumption that it must somehow be justifiable, though it has never actually been justified. You just have to refuse to know that fact, as you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
    No, I was calling you out on your question begging fallacy, wherein you refer to a deprivation of land use as a deprivation of a "liberty right".
    That is an indisputable fact of objective physical reality, not a fallacy. The right to liberty is simply assumed, for legal purposes, to have been removed rightly. That is why Locke and others have sought to justify landowning by fallacious and historically naive and laughable arguments about "homesteading."
    That's question begging on your part, as you state your normative assumption (your mental seed of what OUGHT to be a right) as if it was already a positive.
    Garbage. It is indisputable that our ancestors used land non-exclusively by pure right of liberty, without owning it, for millions of years. How was that universal human right, by which all human beings lived until a few thousand years ago, rightly removed? You need to explain that, and you can't.
    How is what I wrote question begging? Untying your logical knot is not the same as tying a knot.
    It is question begging because you merely ASSUME that the human right to liberty that our ancestors indisputably enjoyed has somehow rightly been removed, without providing any credible basis for such a claim.

  24. #471
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    <sigh> Question-begging fallacy. If recognition and codification created rights, there would never have been any basis for challenging slavery.
    No, you missed the parts where all rights begin as mental seeds. Recognition and codification are how ALL "legal rights" are created. All of them. Without exception.

    I have stated repeatedly that there is no way to allocate exclusive land tenure but by force. You know that.
    Ah, but my point was that what YOU are advocating is no different, as there is no way to implement LVT except by use of that exact same force, and yet you attack landownership on the basis that force is used -- as if you've actually said something meaningful, or that distinguishes it in some way from LVT, when it does not.

    ROTFL!! By that "logic," the protection racketeer and the police both use force, so that's a wash, too, and not at issue.
    You don't get it, do you? To the British, the Colonists themselves were protection racketeers -- the mountain thugs that eventually banded together, broke former ties, and formed their own GUBMINT. So yes, if the protection racketeer became organized enough to defeat both the police and the military - to stage a coup that overthrew the existing government, a new "government" would be born, as might makes, not right, but new "rights". Nothing magical or mysterious there.

    You could with equal "logic" claim that you are deprived of a "right" to own slaves.
    Yes, I could, and with that exact logic. If I had a mental seed planted that made me feel entitled to someone else's labor, I could push for it to be a right - including slavery (in all its myriad forms). That would not make it right (or wrong), as those are moral pronouncements. But it could be the basis of a newly recognized and codified legal right.

    I think it is more accurate to call it what it is: a forcible, uncompensated removal of my liberty.
    That would make it precisely accurate to yours and others' paradigms, and contrary - wholly inaccurate - to mine.

    No, you are just trying to play it deuces wild by claiming that rights are not based on anything, merely "codified and recognized." That is the legalistic fallacy.
    I'm pretty much stating reality. In China I have the right to do things that I do not have the right to do in the US -- and vice versa. There is no universal standard when it comes to rights, nor can there be. At best we try to persuade using our normatives, and hope that it will eventually equate to enough force (a plurality of votes even) to have them recognized and codified despite the dissenters who see it otherwise. Again, no magic, no mystery to it. It's all subjective normatives and brute force.

    But I can support my views with fact and logic, while you cannot.
    Circular logic using you as the arbiter of what is fact and logic. Can't accept that at all. How about we just talk our best talk and let others be the judge?

    My views are based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality and their logical implications, while yours are based on nothing but your desire for unearned wealth.
    Is this where I'm supposed to say I'm rubber and you're glue?

    Right is not subjective, it is merely an aspect of objective reality that may change according to circumstances, and is difficult to discern.
    Yes, and you keep telling yourself that. The "difficult to discern" part will keep tripping you up. I personally "believe" in the concepts of right and wrong - and I personally don't think they are difficult at all to discern (not even a tiny bit). I even "believe" (note the root - belief) in such a thing as universal right and wrong, good and evil, etc.,. However, I also "recognize" (acknowledge, stipulate) that my discernment, my conclusions about what is right and wrong differ from those of many others, including you, whom I "believe" also hold their differing, often contradictory, views in earnest. That alone is evidence to me that while "right" may not be subjective, our human discernment most definitely is. You and I each have taken the position that our view is "right" and the others' wrong/evil. Big deal, what's new? Welcome to politics, as you try to manifest your mental seed - what you believe to be "right" - as something that is recognized and codified by others, and defended by force.

    Exactly my point: the "force" that the prospective user of the land under the bank would have to use is not the kind of force the armed guards and police use to stop him from doing so.
    Wrong. The prospective user of the land under the bank, kept out by police and armed guards, successfully implements an LVT regime. Suddenly the same police, the same guards which kept him out under a non-LVT regime, are potentially on his side. Where they were once keeping him out, now they are there, potentially, to remove the previous owner and let the new occupier in. Happens all the time, as would-be criminals become patriots and heroes, and vice versa, as power shifts, and might makes a whole new set of rights.

    A classic example: Eisenhower federalizes the entire Arkansas National Guard in one day. The very troops used to block integration are suddenly the same troops that are there to enforce it. No equivocation to it.

    There must be something in reality to create that mental seed. It can't and doesn't come from nowhere.
    Yes, there is external stimulus from which all mental seeds are derived. We both look at the same thing and come away with different, not always incorrect or mutually exclusive, conclusions. So what? You could even say, "Yes, but my conclusion is based on indisputable reality and logic, while yours is not." And it wouldn't mean a thing in and of itself (even though you make this very assertion ad nauseam).

    I see land, and the need for land to survive on Earth, and I want the capacity for access to and OWNERSHIP of land - recognized and codified as a right - not a conditional privilege - for everyone. You see it otherwise, on the basis of something you want codified as a different right - one that is mutually exclusive of landownership. But somehow you have convinced yourself that your normatives (OUGHTS) are positives (ARE/IS). You seem to believe that your concept of right and rights are matters of objective physical reality - and I see that as delusional on your part. Because you don't see them as they really are - nothing but normative assertions, no different than mine in that regard.

    Yes, actually, you do. You believe forcible appropriation of land confers a moral right to deprive others of their liberty to use it. That is the only basis for your claims.
    Wrong. I always, without fail, draw a sharp distinction between what I know is a legal right, and what I believe to be morally right or wrong. My ability to forcibly appropriate land is a legal right that I have now - one that I only HAPPEN to believe is a moral right. But I do not believe the legal right CONFERRED the moral right. In my mind, as in yours, I believe, the "moral right", whatever we each believe that it to be, is always independent of the legal right. So you are incorrect in the absolute, and have it completely backwards. I do not believe that forcible appropriation CONFERS a moral right. Rather, it was the belief in a moral right that CONFERRED my willingness to forcibly appropriate.

    Exclusive LAND tenure -- which is NOT a right -- can only be instituted and defended by force.
    No, it is not a LEGAL right (be specific in your meaning - don't conflate moral and legal as if they were one and the same). Not yet. But it may become such in North Dakota. The fact that it can only be instituted and defended by force comes with the territory - regardless of the regime.

    The genuine and valid property right in products of labor is instituted by recognition that it is in the interest of all.
    "genuine and valid" and "interest of all" - both collectivist gibberish sentiments - both absolutely, completely, and at all times subjective.
    Last edited by Steven Douglas; 03-27-2012 at 08:15 PM.

  25. #472
    Roy's right to a certain extent. Land has a natural collective aspect to it. However, it benefits everybody to enforce private property ownership. Society does much better when people feel secure in their possessions.

    What's the alternative? Decide what to do with land by a group of government bureaucrats? Commandeer land value and give it to a group of government bureaucrats?

    In a sense it all has to do with control. Control is much better when it's distributed widely and individually. Handing it over to a centralized government is a failed policy that has been proven failed over and over again.

    Personally I'm both a "neo-libertarian" and "neo-socialist" at the same time. I don't have a problem using monetary policy to allocate money to individuals. I have a problem giving it to government bureaucrats, though. And you don't do it by adding a fixed cost like a property tax to homeowners and small business owners who are just trying to eek out a living in today's cut throat world.

    This is a novel economic concept that is gaining discussion in interesting circles. For most ordinary people governments should give you money or be neutral, not take it away from you. Don't preferentially target homeowners, small farmers, & small business people, either. They're doing what we want people to do, become self-sufficient and not need government help. It's better to let people keep property taxes than it is to take the taxes from them and give it back to them in the form of government "services" that nobody wants.
    Last edited by furface; 03-27-2012 at 01:42 PM.



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  27. #473
    Quote Originally Posted by furface View Post
    However, it benefits everybody to enforce private property ownership.
    Oh, really? Does it benefit slaves to enforce private property ownership? If the government decided to issue a title deed to the atmosphere as well as the land, so the airlords could charge us all rent for air to breathe, would it benefit everybody to enforce private ownership of that property?

    You need to stop typing and start thinking.
    Society does much better when people feel secure in their possessions.
    That depends entirely on what those possessions are, as proved above. Hong Kong proves that society does just fine without any private property in land. In fact, it does a lot better than many societies where private property in land is well established and enforced, such as Bangladesh, the Philippines, Guatemala, Pakistan, etc.
    What's the alternative?
    Liberty, justice and prosperity are one alternative I would support.
    Decide what to do with land by a group of government bureaucrats?
    No, let the free market decide the most appropriate and productive use.
    Commandeer land value and give it to a group of government bureaucrats?
    <sigh> There are, in this world, certain people who like to claim that tax revenue is "given to" government officials, as if they were spending it on themselves rather than for public purposes and benefit as determined by (however admittedly imperfect) democratic processes. Those people are called, "stupid, evil, lying sacks of $#!+."
    Control is much better when it's distributed widely and individually.
    Like control of WMDs....?

    Stop typing. Start thinking. It's time.
    Handing it over to a centralized government is a failed policy that has been proven failed over and over again.
    Nope. Flat wrong, as the contrast between Hong Kong and Third World $#!+-holes like Pakistan, Guatemala and the Philippines proves.

    All governments administer possession and use of land. That's what government IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. The only question is, will government exercise that authority in the interest of, and to secure and reconcile the equal human rights of, all the people, or will it do so only in the narrow financial interests of a small, idle, wealthy, privileged, greedy, parasitic landowning elite?
    Personally I'm both a "neo-libertarian" and "neo-socialist" at the same time.
    That's OK. I can fix ignorance. Stupidity and dishonesty are the problems I can't fix.
    I don't have a problem using monetary policy to allocate money to individuals. I have a problem giving it to government bureaucrats, though.
    See above. The claim that government revenue is "given to" government bureaucrats is not only false and absurd, it is cretinous and dishonest.
    And you don't do it by adding a fixed cost like a property tax to homeowners and small business owners who are just trying to eek out a living in today's cut throat world.
    OMG. You saw the answer, you even specifically IDENTIFIED it, and you didn't even notice: the cost of land rent is FIXED. You cannot increase it or reduce it by government fiat. All you can do is give it away to private landowners in return for nothing, or recover it to pay for the public services and infrastructure that create it in the first place. And giving it away to landowners just means the productive not only have to pay that much more for land, but must also pay that much more in other taxes to make up for government's failure to recover the land rent its spending creates. Look at what has happened in CA since Prop 13 slashed property taxes: not only has the cost of buying a home soared out of reach of ordinary working people, the cost of all taxes other than property taxes has soared by a similar amount. AND THAT WAS INEVITABLE.

    ANY LAND RENT THAT IS LEFT IN LANDOWNERS' HANDS DOES NOT REDUCE TOTAL COSTS FOR HOMEOWNERS AND SMALL BUSINESSES, IT INCREASES THEM.
    This is a novel economic concept that is gaining discussion in interesting circles.
    Giving money to the idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic rich in return for nothing is far from being a novel economic concept -- though I suppose the kind of big, greedy, evil corporate real estate interests that have profited so astronomically at the expense of ordinary Californians since Proposition 13 could be considered "interesting" circles.
    For most ordinary people governments should give you money or be neutral, not take it away from you.
    But somehow, it should help corporate landowning interests and mortgage lenders take it away from you...?
    Don't preferentially target homeowners, small farmers, & small business people, either.
    LVT would be enormously favorable to the productive, including small farmers and small business people. You just don't know enough economics to understand why. As for "targeting homeowners," which California homeowners do you think have been "targeted": the few dozen a year who decided to pocket large, tax-free capital gains by selling their homes and seeking accommodation better suited to their needs and means before Proposition 13, or the MILLIONS who are literally losing not only their homes but their life savings and being booted into the gutter since Prop 13 slashed property taxes? You don't know enough economics to understand why Prop 13 made the current disaster for CA homeowners inevitable, but I do.
    They're doing what we want people to do, become self-sufficient and not need government help.
    Wrong. As landowners, they are being parasites on government and the community, because the value of land is precisely equal to the minimum value of what the landowner expects to take from society and not repay in taxes.
    It's better to let people keep property taxes than it is to take the taxes from them and give it back to them in the form of government "services" that nobody wants.
    Stop lying. If people didn't want those services, they would not be willing to pay landowners such astronomical sums for access to them.

  28. #474
    Note to thread. I'll respond to all comprehensible replies to my comments.

  29. #475
    Quote Originally Posted by furface View Post
    Note to thread. I'll respond to all comprehensible replies to my comments.
    Is that your way of saying that you know you have been refuted and have no answers, but you decline, merely on that account, to reconsider your proved-false beliefs?

  30. #476
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    No, you missed the parts where all rights begin as mental seeds.
    No, I proved they can't begin as "mental seeds." They must derive from some aspect of objective reality, not arbitrary "mental seeds." There could not be such broad agreement about them if they were not founded in objective fact. If you want an example of something that DOES begin as arbitrary mental seeds, look at religion, which has no such basis in objective reality.
    Recognition and codification are how ALL "legal rights" are created. All of them. Without exception.
    <yawn> I thought we had agreed that legal rights are not relevant, as slavery proved?
    Ah, but my point was that what YOU are advocating is no different, as there is no way to implement LVT except by use of that exact same force, and yet you attack landownership on the basis that force is used -- as if you've actually said something meaningful, or that distinguishes it in some way from LVT, when it does not.
    No, you are just lying again, Steven. I have never attacked landownership on the basis that force is used. I have attacked it on the basis that force is used to VIOLATE people's rights without just compensation, rather than to secure and reconcile them. What I advocate is different because it wields force to establish justice, not injustice, and is therefore as different from landowning as cheese is from chalk. Your claim that force is force, and there is therefore no moral difference between landowning and LVT, is logically equivalent to claiming there is no difference between a protection racket and a security service.
    To the British, the Colonists themselves were protection racketeers
    No, of course they weren't. You are just lying again.
    -- the mountain thugs that eventually banded together, broke former ties, and formed their own GUBMINT.
    That is not what protection racketeers do, and you know it.

    You just always have to lie.
    So yes, if the protection racketeer became organized enough to defeat both the police and the military - to stage a coup that overthrew the existing government, a new "government" would be born, as might makes, not right, but new "rights". Nothing magical or mysterious there.
    Nothing truthful, either. Protection racketeers do not organize to defeat the police and the military. They DEPEND ON the police and military to create a social environment where extortion from private businesses is profitable. They have no interest in overthrowing or being the government, because unlike you, protection racketeers are honest enough to know the fact that takers depend on producers to produce something worth taking.
    Yes, I could, and with that exact logic.
    ?? Right. And as we already know there can be no right to own slaves, we know that logic is fallacious, with no further argument needed.
    If I had a mental seed planted that made me feel entitled to someone else's labor, I could push for it to be a right - including slavery (in all its myriad forms). That would not make it right (or wrong), as those are moral pronouncements. But it could be the basis of a newly recognized and codified legal right.
    Thank you for admitting that you have no more basis for your claim of a "right" to own land than there is for a "right" to own slaves. You just conceded the whole debate.
    That would make it precisely accurate to yours and others' paradigms, and contrary - wholly inaccurate - to mine.
    So in fact, you also agree that your "paradigm" is contrary to objective fact. Good.
    I'm pretty much stating reality.
    No, you are dodging the issue and the facts by using the legalistic fallacy.
    In China I have the right to do things that I do not have the right to do in the US -- and vice versa. There is no universal standard when it comes to rights, nor can there be.
    OK, so you also agree that your views cannot be reconciled with any universal standard of human rights. You intend to violate others' rights, and you see nothing wrong with that. Check.
    At best we try to persuade using our normatives, and hope that it will eventually equate to enough force (a plurality of votes even) to have them recognized and codified despite the dissenters who see it otherwise. Again, no magic, no mystery to it. It's all subjective normatives and brute force.
    OK, so you also agree that your claim of a right to own land is not based on anything but your private greed for unearned wealth, backed by government force.

    What you have yet to -- and won't -- explain is how that makes you different from a communist, or any other sort of greedy thug who wants mommy government to do his dirty work for him.
    Circular logic using you as the arbiter of what is fact and logic.
    No, valid logic based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
    Can't accept that at all.
    I know. I have told you many times that you refuse to know facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil.
    How about we just talk our best talk and let others be the judge?
    That's what we're doing, Steven. And you have been demolished, utterly.
    Is this where I'm supposed to say I'm rubber and you're glue?
    That would be a step up from the standard of your usual "arguments."
    Yes, and you keep telling yourself that.
    If it were not the case, our discussion would make no sense. There would be no point in just shouting our arbitrary opinions at each other. You have merely realized that your views are not defensible by fact and logic, and have consequently given up trying to defend them and retreated into emotivism.
    The "difficult to discern" part will keep tripping you up.
    No, it trips up those who are not as discerning as I.
    I personally "believe" in the concepts of right and wrong - and I personally don't think they are difficult at all to discern (not even a tiny bit).
    Oh, really? How do you discern when someone is capable of giving consent to sexual relations? How do you discern the difference between a victim of fraud and a victim of their own foolishness and greed?
    I even "believe" (note the root - belief)
    I note that claiming belief is the root of belief is a blatant circular reasoning fallacy.
    in such a thing as universal right and wrong, good and evil, etc.,. However, I also "recognize" (acknowledge, stipulate) that my discernment, my conclusions about what is right and wrong differ from those of many others, including you, whom I "believe" also hold their differing, often contradictory, views in earnest. That alone is evidence to me that while "right" may not be subjective, our human discernment most definitely is. You and I each have taken the position that our view is "right" and the others' wrong/evil. Big deal, what's new? Welcome to politics, as you try to manifest your mental seed - what you believe to be "right" - as something that is recognized and codified by others, and defended by force.
    As above. You have realized you cannot defend your views, and have retreated to a position that others' views can be no more defensible than yours. But they can.
    Wrong. The prospective user of the land under the bank, kept out by police and armed guards, successfully implements an LVT regime.
    No, you are just trying to change the subject to get away with your equivocation. He has no interest in LVT. He just wants to use the land, and has the equipment needed to do so. You just have to refuse to know the fact that the force he proposes to use -- the bulldozer, excavator, etc. -- is entirely different from the force the police and guards propose to use: violence.
    Suddenly the same police, the same guards which kept him out under a non-LVT regime, are potentially on his side. Where they were once keeping him out, now they are there, potentially, to remove the previous owner and let the new occupier in. Happens all the time, as would-be criminals become patriots and heroes, and vice versa, as power shifts, and might makes a whole new set of rights.
    You again concede that there is nothing behind your views but force.
    A classic example: Eisenhower federalizes the entire Arkansas National Guard in one day. The very troops used to block integration are suddenly the same troops that are there to enforce it. No equivocation to it.
    Of course there is an equivocation. See above.
    Yes, there is external stimulus from which all mental seeds are derived. We both look at the same thing and come away with different, not always incorrect or mutually exclusive, conclusions. So what?
    So there is an objective reality that is the source of our concepts of right and wrong, and when our views on that reality conflict, we can't both be right.
    You could even say, "Yes, but my conclusion is based on indisputable reality and logic, while yours is not." And it wouldn't mean a thing in and of itself (even though you make this very assertion ad nauseam).
    I make that "assertion" because it is in fact correct.
    I see land, and the need for land to survive on Earth, and I want the capacity for access to and OWNERSHIP of land - recognized and codified as a right - not a conditional privilege - for everyone.
    But in fact, what you want is logically inconsistent with the objective facts you perceive. Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it. People need land to survive on earth, just as you said; but when the land is owned, they must pay a landowner for that access, or die. They therefore can have no recognized or codified right of access to or ownership of land. They have nothing but the conditional "privilege" -- actually an unchosen obligation forced upon them by violent, aggressive, physical coercion -- of paying a landowner for it.
    You see it otherwise, on the basis of something you want codified as a different right
    No, you are lying about what I have plainly written. I want the right to liberty codified because of the self-evident and indisputable facts of objective reality I perceive, not the other way around.
    - one that is mutually exclusive of landownership.
    For the logically indisputable reason given above.
    But somehow you have convinced yourself that your normatives (OUGHTS) are positives (ARE/IS).
    No. I have based my normative views on positive facts.
    You seem to believe that your concept of right and rights are matters of objective physical reality - and I see that as delusional on your part.
    OTC, it is self-evidently and indisputably delusional to think you can recognize and codify a right by recognizing and codifying a "right" to remove it.
    Because you don't see them as they really are - nothing but normative assertions, no different than mine in that regard.
    See above. The fixity of land's supply is not a normative assertion, it is a fact of objective physical reality. The fact that owning land removes others' liberty to access and use it is not a normative assertion, it is a fact of objective physical reality. These are merely facts that you have decided not to know, because you have realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.
    Wrong. I always, without fail, draw a sharp distinction between what I know is a legal right, and what I believe to be morally right or wrong.
    No, you merely assert that there is a difference, and then proceed to base the latter on the former.
    My ability to forcibly appropriate land is a legal right that I have now - one that I only HAPPEN to believe is a moral right. But I do not believe the legal right CONFERRED the moral right. In my mind, as in yours, I believe, the "moral right", whatever we each believe that it to be, is always independent of the legal right. So you are incorrect in the absolute, and have it completely backwards. I do not believe that forcible appropriation CONFERS a moral right. Rather, it was the belief in a moral right that CONFERRED my willingness to forcibly appropriate.
    But as we have seen, your belief in that right is logically self-contradictory, and in fact, it is based on nothing but your own desire for unearned wealth.
    No, it is not a LEGAL right (be specific in your meaning - don't conflate moral and legal as if they were one and the same).
    You know I meant it's not a moral right.
    But it may become such in North Dakota.
    Nonsense. Do you really imagine that if ND abolishes property taxes, land titles will somehow become immune to legal process for satisfaction of debts, including OTHER tax liabilities and (especially) mortgage payments? Talk about delusional.
    The fact that it can only be instituted and defended by force comes with the territory - regardless of the regime.
    Right. The only question is, will that force be exerted to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all, or only to serve the narrow financial interests of a small, wealthy, idle, greedy, privileged, parasitic landowning elite?
    "genuine and valid" and "interest of all" - both collectivist gibberish sentiments - both absolutely, completely, and at all times subjective.
    That is an absurd lie.

  31. #477
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    No, I proved they can't begin as "mental seeds."
    You make many assertions, but you have proved nothing.

    They must derive from some aspect of objective reality, not arbitrary "mental seeds." There could not be such broad agreement about them if they were not founded in objective fact.
    Let me unravel your confusion. There is a world of difference between objective fact and "broad agreement about" objective fact (e.g., normative conclusions drawn, which are often anything but objective). For example, you see exclusive use of land as a deprivation to those who are excluded. This is a perfect example of an objective fact. What is not an objective fact is saying that someone has been "deprived of their right to use" (such land). You make incessant, persistent attempts to slip in that qualifier, as if by phrasing it in this way a right (which has not been established) could be made to seem as if it was an objective fact - but it's not.

    If you want an example of something that DOES begin as arbitrary mental seeds, look at religion, which has no such basis in objective reality.
    LVT looks an awful lot like a religion to me.

    A mental seed is nothing more than "taking thought" - making an observation and drawing a conclusion about a thing. It can happen before or after the fact. Before the fact: You see something, find it desirable, and conclude that you want it. After the fact: You take/have something without having taken prior thought (you find a gold nugget on the ground), and afterward concluded why you should keep it. Before or after, it doesn't matter. It takes a mental seed to establish ANY right. And objective reality is a matter of positive statements about things like physics - not normative statements about things like rights.

    I have never attacked landownership on the basis that force is used. I have attacked it on the basis that force is used to VIOLATE people's rights without just compensation, rather than to secure and reconcile them. What I advocate is different because it wields force to establish justice, not injustice, and is therefore as different from landowning as cheese is from chalk. Your claim that force is force, and there is therefore no moral difference between landowning and LVT, is logically equivalent to claiming there is no difference between a protection racket and a security service.
    • Compensation (a "right" thereto) not established
    • Rights violated (not established)
    • Secure and reconcile (nothing established that needs to be reconciled)
    • "Justice, not injustice" (your normatives, your paradigm, not established)
    • Comparing a landowning with a protection racket and LVT with a security service - your paradigm, your normative, your subjective conclusions.


    Protection racketeers do not organize to defeat the police and the military. They DEPEND ON the police and military to create a social environment where extortion from private businesses is profitable.
    Protection racketeers that are able to DEPEND ON the police and military have, in a very real way, defeated them, making the police and military part and parcel to protection racketeers. In your mind defense of landownership is a protection racket (for landowners), while in my mind LVT is a protection racket (for elitists that control and suckle on productivity in the name of a nebulous collective).

    OK, so you also agree that your claim of a right to own land is not based on anything but your private greed for unearned wealth, backed by government force.
    That would be a Roy sentiment, not a Steven one. To me, private interest is not greed, and a right to landownership has nothing to do with the concepts of "unearned" and "earned". That's your "deserving" trap. "Earning" is not a criteria for homesteaded land, and there is no acceptance on my part of any gibberish that attempts to equate homesteading with theft from others - individually or collectively. That whole "unearned wealth" is nothing but gibberish - a collectivist sentiment that means nothing.

    What you have yet to -- and won't -- explain is how that makes you different from a communist, or any other sort of greedy thug who wants mommy government to do his dirty work for him.
    Knock off the ad hominem attacks. Remember?

    Now we're back to the use of force to implement and defend either regime (LVT or landownership). Why is it "mommy government" in the case of landownership, but something different in the case of LVT? And if you answer with sentimental gibberish about liberty, rights, justice, etc., you'll be stuck in your own circular logic.

    No, valid logic based on self-evident and indisputable facts of objective physical reality.
    With you the sole arbiter of what is valid and objective, as you do a Vulcan-Hand-Meld in an attempt to combine subjective normatives and objective positives in one statement - as if one could take on the attributes of the other. But it's gibberish.

    BTW, notice that I am not responding to your one-line retorts, which offer no argument and have no context.

    You have merely realized that your views are not defensible by fact and logic, and have consequently given up trying to defend them and retreated into emotivism.
    Actually, that's my charge to you. I am no longer using words like evil, justice, injustice, greedy, etc., as they are not necessary or germane. You, on the other hand, are. That's not a retreat to emotivism on your part. It is, rather, something you have yet to retreat from.

    You again concede that there is nothing behind your views but force.
    Actually, that's what I'm trying to get you to concede. Beyond the emotivism - nothing but force. You just happen to believe that in your particular case the end justifies the means. Welcome to the club, nothing special about that, nothing to see here.

    So there is an objective reality that is the source of our concepts of right and wrong, and when our views on that reality conflict, we can't both be right.
    I didn't say there was "an objective reality" that is the source of OUR CONCEPTS of right and wrong. That's your error, not mine. If either of us have a FALSE CONCEPT of right and wrong, it can hardly be considered "objective". I said that I BELIEVED in such a thing as right and wrong, and that they are INDEPENDENT of OUR CONCEPTS, our conclusions about them. So you're wrong. I don't engage in false choice fallacies. Even if I proved you were "wrong" about a thing I am not so dense as to suppose that would make me "right by default - as if my concept was the only alternative left. So no, it's not that we both can't be right - more that we could both be wrong. Capice?

    But in fact, what you want is logically inconsistent with the objective facts you perceive. Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it.
    At least stipulate this one thing, Roy. NO "OTHERS' RIGHT OF ACCESS" exists to be removed. That's YOUR NORMATIVE ASSERTION. It is neither recognized nor codified, and therefore not "a right", except in your mind, and in the minds of those who think the way you do. So why persist with the OBJECTIVELY, INDISPUTABLY, FACTUALLY INCORRECT statement that:

    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L.
    "Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it."
    Remove the words "rights of" and the statement is factually correct. Landownership does inherently remove others' ACCESS to that land. Leave the words "RIGHTS OF" in there, and it is a complete, bald-faced lie - absolutely, objectively, indisputably, factually incorrect wherever no such "RIGHT" exists (except in your mind - as a "mental seed"). Constant repetition will not make it otherwise.
    Last edited by Steven Douglas; 03-30-2012 at 10:00 PM.

  32. #478
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    You make many assertions, but you have proved nothing.
    You are lying. I have proved my statements derive from objective fact while yours are objectively false.
    Let me unravel your confusion.
    Prediction: you will now lie.
    There is a world of difference between objective fact and "broad agreement about" objective fact (e.g., normative conclusions drawn, which are often anything but objective). For example, you see exclusive use of land as a deprivation to those who are excluded. This is a perfect example of an objective fact. What is not an objective fact is saying that someone has been "deprived of their right to use" (such land). You make incessant, persistent attempts to slip in that qualifier, as if by phrasing it in this way a right (which has not been established) could be made to seem as if it was an objective fact - but it's not.
    There is no "qualifier" there. You just have to refuse to know the facts, and ignore the logical contradictions in your position. It is an objective fact that landowning deprives people of their liberty to use land. If you believe, as I do, that people have a right to liberty, then it follows that landowning deprives them of that right. You just do not believe in the right to liberty. It's that simple.
    LVT looks an awful lot like a religion to me.
    Lie. Religions are not based on facts of economics, and you know it.
    And objective reality is a matter of positive statements about things like physics - not normative statements about things like rights.
    No. Evolutionary psychology is showing that rights ARE fundamentally aspects of objective reality, like the behavior structures observed in animal societies. They are just implemented in a much more abstract and sophisticated way, as befits humanity's conceptual nature and the human manner of social existence, especially conceptual language and economic exchange. But that's an argument for another thread, if not another forum.
    [*]Compensation (a "right" thereto) not established
    Denying is not refuting. Removing people's liberty by force is a violation of rights that must rightly be compensated.
    [*]Rights violated (not established)
    If you believe in a right to liberty (which I realize you don't), it is indisputably being violated by landowning.
    [*]Secure and reconcile (nothing established that needs to be reconciled)
    Refuted above. Our hunter-gather and nomadic herding ancestors had to have rights to own the fruits of their labor and to use land, or they could not have survived. Once fixed improvements become a significant factor, those rights need to be reconciled. You need to explain why our ancestors had rights to use land, but we don't. And you can't.
    [*]"Justice, not injustice" (your normatives, your paradigm, not established)
    You are just lying. Any ordinary understanding of the English word, "justice" includes the concept of just deserts: rewards commensurate with contributions, and penalties commensurate with deprivations. Landowning violates the basic principle of just deserts by enabling the landowner to deprive others of their liberty without suffering any penalty, and to obtain wealth without making any contribution to its production.
    [*]Comparing a landowning with a protection racket and LVT with a security service - your paradigm, your normative, your subjective conclusions.
    Lie. The conclusions are objective facts. It is an objective fact that the landowner qua landowner takes a portion of production without contributing to production. It is an objective fact that he deprives others of the liberty they would otherwise enjoy.
    A protection racketeers that is able to DEPEND ON the police and military has, in a very real way, defeated them.
    Nonsense. You are just trying to equivocate on the word, "defeat," which you intended in the military sense.
    That would be a Roy sentiment, not a Steven one. To me, private interest is not greed, and a right to landownership has nothing to do with the concepts of "unearned" and "earned". That's your "deserving" trap.
    Justice is about nothing but deserving. You just want to ignore considerations of justice, because your beliefs are diametrically opposed to justice.
    "Earning" is not a criteria for homesteaded land,
    That is nothing but an arbitrary and subjective assertion on your part, with absolutely no basis in fact. Indeed it is contrary to fact. In the only reliably attested historical examples of homesteading, earning was most definitely a criterion for homesteading.
    and there is no acceptance on my part of any gibberish that attempts to equate homesteading with theft from others - individually or collectively. That whole "unearned wealth" is nothing but gibberish - a collectivist sentiment that means nothing.
    It definitely means something, and you know it. It is just something that you have to keep out of your brain, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
    Knock off the ad hominem attacks. Remember?
    I will continue to identify the facts and their logical implications.
    Now we're back to the use of force to implement and defend either regime (LVT or landownership). Why is it "mommy government" in the case of landownership, but something different in the case of LVT?
    Because to secure and reconcile the equal rights of all to life, liberty and property in the fruits of their labor is government's JOB.
    And if you answer with sentimental gibberish about liberty, rights, justice, etc., you'll be stuck in your own circular logic.
    There is nothing circular about it, and you might want to have a look at what the American Founders said about liberty, rights and justice. Thomas Paine, for example.
    With you the sole arbiter of what is valid and objective, as you do a Vulcan-Hand-Meld in an attempt to combine subjective normatives and objective positives in one statement - as if one could take on the attributes of the other. But it's gibberish.
    No, combining the positive and normative is the only way society can function. That is exactly what law does. Hello?
    BTW, notice that I am not responding to your one-line retorts, which offer no argument and have no context.
    Lie. One line is often sufficient to identify and refute your fallacies.

    See?
    Actually, that's my charge to you. I am no longer using words like evil, justice, injustice, greedy, etc., as they are not necessary or germane.
    But they are accurate, so I will continue to use them.
    You, on the other hand, are. That's not a retreat to emotivism on your part. It is, rather, something you have yet to retreat from.
    <yawn> Google "emotivism" and start reading.
    Actually, that's what I'm trying to get you to concede. Beyond the emotivism - nothing but force.
    I have disproved that claim many times.
    You just happen to believe that the end justifies the means.
    Arbitrary and unsupported claim.
    I didn't say there was "an objective reality" that is the source of OUR concepts of right and wrong.
    I know you didn't. But there is.
    That's your error, not mine.
    It is not an error. If you think about it, it's self-evident (unless you deny evolution, and think human nature is simply a decision taken by God for His own reasons).
    I said that I BELIEVED in such a thing as right and wrong that is INDEPENDENT of our concepts, our conclusions about them.
    Now that really is gibberish.
    So you're wrong. It's not that we both can't be right - more that we could both be wrong.
    That was implied by my statement. You just don't know enough logic -- and it's not much -- to realize that.
    At least stipulate this one thing, Roy. NO "OTHERS' RIGHT OF ACCESS" exists to be removes. That's YOUR NORMATIVE ASSERTION. It is neither recognized nor codified,
    False. Law is full of recognized and codified rights of access to land, such as easements, rights of way, etc. You are just objectively wrong. As usual.
    and therefor not "a right", except in your mind, and in the minds of those who think the way you do. So why persist with the OBJECTIVELY, INDISPUTABLY, FACTUALLY INCORRECT statement that:

    "Ownership of land inherently REMOVES others' rights of access to it." - that statement is factually incorrect - a complete lie wherever no such "RIGHT" exists. Constant repetition will not make it otherwise.
    That's the legalistic fallacy again. By that "logic," slaves had no right to liberty, and there could never have been any reason to emancipate them.

  33. #479
    Quote Originally Posted by Roy L View Post
    It is an objective fact that landowning deprives people of their liberty to use land.
    Correct so far, others are indeed deprived of their liberty to use land that is exclusively held by others. I believe justly so, you believe unjustly so.

    If you believe, as I do, that people have a right to liberty, then it follows that landowning deprives them of that right. You just do not believe in the right to liberty. It's that simple.
    Finally, you said it, and that is where you do a face plant every time, as you attempt to slip in what you "believe" as if it was also a matter of objective reality or indisputable fact. This particular kind of liberty is indeed deprived, but the "right" to this type of liberty, which is not now recognized or codified as a right, nor do I believe it should be, is not.

    So no, I do not "believe" (my normative vs. yours) that people have, or even should have, such a "right" to that kind of liberty. See that? Not "liberty", but rather THAT KIND OF LIBERTY.

    You take great "liberty" with your usage of the word liberty, as if all liberty could be lumped together as a noble and good thing, in itself, and just by use of that word. I am "at liberty", and "have the liberty" to pick your pocket. I do not have that right, nor should I. And being against "the liberty to pick someone's pocket" does NOT mean that I am "against liberty". That's playing fast and loose with a term that is neither good nor bad in itself.

    I am against anyone having the LIBERTY to enslave others -- and by that I do NOT mean the false LVT presumptive paradigm whereby exclusive landownership is somehow tantamount to slavery of those who are excluded from its usage. I mean actual direct enslavement. I am opposed to that kind of liberty - to compel someone to labor against their will. I am also vehemently opposed to the liberty to kill, rape, batter, steal, pillage, etc., - those are liberties which are not anyone's right, nor do I believe they should be.

    Does that mean I am opposed to liberty? No, that would be a GROSS fallacy of composition - the very one you have erred with, as I am in favor of some types of liberty, and opposed to others.

    No. Evolutionary psychology is showing that rights ARE fundamentally aspects of objective reality, like the behavior structures observed in animal societies. They are just implemented in a much more abstract and sophisticated way, as befits humanity's conceptual nature and the human manner of social existence, especially conceptual language and economic exchange. But that's an argument for another thread, if not another forum.
    Gibberish. "Evolutionary psychology is showing..." is a meaningless statement, and I draw a very sharp distinction between the hard sciences, especially those which really are based on objective reality, empirical observation and indisputable facts, and the social sciences which try to borrow prestige and authority from them by mimicking their terms and methodologies - as if it gave greater weight to their "soft science" conclusions. Too many of them are clowns to me, drawing normative conclusions, trying to pass them off as positive statements, from a vacuum. Interesting clowns, but clowns nonetheless -- with too many examples of soft science tenets and society-manipulating dogma, that is accepted by many who lack critical thinking skills and BELIEVE IN those conclusions as if those papers written were RELIGIOUS CANON -- which makes much of it very much like religion.

    Removing people's liberty by force is a violation of rights that must rightly be compensated.
    Did you think you wriggled free from your original conundrum? You didn't. Go back up and read. Stop slipping that in, as you conflate the kind of liberty you believe in, and think OUGHT to be a right, with an actual right.

    If you believe in a right to liberty (which I realize you don't), it is indisputably being violated by landowning.
    Again, stop trying wriggling past that one. Go back up read where I said "THAT KIND OF LIBERTY" is not, in my mind a right - nor does THAT KIND OF LIBERTY equate to simply "liberty". You are playing fast and loose with "liberty", as if all liberty was the same...and somehow good.

    That's the legalistic fallacy again. By that "logic," slaves had no right to liberty, and there could never have been any reason to emancipate them.
    Slaves had a right to liberty IN THEIR MINDS (and in the minds of others - including me) -- normatively speaking (the OUGHT of it all). They did NOT have a legal right to liberty. That much is indisputable. That is not a legalistic fallacy, because I make a strong distinction between rights as BELIEFS, or mental seeds, and rights that are actually manifested (recognized, codified and defended by force). I make that distinction every time - the one you can only be dragged kicking and screaming to make (but you did above - read the first quote). That whole error in thinking is what causes you to put the "rights" cart before the "certain kind of LVT liberty" horse.
    Last edited by Steven Douglas; 04-01-2012 at 02:21 PM.

  34. #480
    Quote Originally Posted by Steven Douglas View Post
    Correct so far, others are indeed deprived of their liberty to use land that is exclusively held by others. I believe justly so, you believe unjustly so.
    Right. You believe that the bandit in the pass is simply exercising his valid right of landownership when he demands money from the merchant caravans to let them proceed.
    Finally, you said it, and that is where you do a face plant every time, as you attempt to slip in what you "believe" as if it was also a matter of objective reality or indisputable fact.
    Why even bother with such silly lies, Steven? I've never said the right to liberty is an indisputable fact. Clearly it isn't, as many people, including you, do not believe in it. I have stated that the right to liberty is BASED ON objective facts of human nature, and that is not a "face plant" or "attempt to slip in what I believe."
    This particular kind of liberty is indeed deprived, but the "right" to this type of liberty, which is not now recognized or codified as a right, nor do I believe it should be, is not.
    Right. Just as, 200 years ago, the slave's right to liberty of any type was not recognized or codified.
    So no, I do not "believe" (my normative vs. yours)
    That is an attempt to pretend that you have offered facts and logic in support of your views with weight equivalent to the facts and logic I have offered in support of mine. But you haven't.
    that people have, or even should have, such a "right" to that kind of liberty. See that? Not "liberty", but rather THAT KIND OF LIBERTY.
    I know you do not believe people have a right to "that kind" of liberty, because that is the kind of liberty that honest people and good dictionaries mean when they use the term, "liberty." The "kind" of liberty that you mean by "right to liberty" is the kind that enables greedy, idle, privileged parasitic landowners to rob the productive of a quarter of their rightful earnings, and to murder 10 or 15 million innocent people every year, year after year. You believe the right to liberty is a "right" to pay an extortionist for not exercising his legal authority to prevent one from doing what one would otherwise be perfectly at liberty to do.
    You take great "liberty" with your usage of the word liberty, as if all liberty could be lumped together as a noble and good thing, in itself, and just by use of that word.
    No. You merely oppose the human condition that the word, "liberty" denotes.
    I am "at liberty", and "have the liberty" to pick your pocket.
    No, that is one of your fundamental errors, where you always do a face plant. You are NOT at liberty to pick my pocket, because I have to be there with a pocket before you can pick it. I HAVE TO PROVIDE THE OPPORTUNITY for you to pick my pocket. If I don't provide you with that opportunity, you physically can't pick my pocket. There can be no such thing as a "right" to something others have to provide, because if others aren't there to provide it, you don't and can't have it. That is why there is a liberty right to use what nature provided (a right our ancestors indisputably exercised for millions of years), but not to use what other people must provide.

    You just have to refuse to know these indisputable facts, as you have realized that they prove your beliefs are false and evil.
    I do not have that right, nor should I. And being against "the liberty to pick someone's pocket" does NOT mean that I am "against liberty". That's playing fast and loose with a term that is neither good nor bad in itself.
    It is you who are playing fast and loose -- and dishonest -- with the term, as proved above.
    I am against anyone having the LIBERTY to enslave others -- and by that I do NOT mean the false LVT presumptive paradigm whereby exclusive landownership is somehow tantamount to slavery of those who are excluded from its usage.
    There is nothing false about it, as the invariably slave-like condition of the landless proves in countries where landowning is well established but government does not intercede on behalf of the landless to rescue them from the full effects of landowner privilege. It is self-evidently and indisputably true in the case of a single landowner:

    "Place one hundred people on an island from which there is no escape. Make one of them the absolute owner of the others -- or the absolute owner of the soil. It will make no difference -- either to owner or to the others -- which one you choose. Either way, one individual will be the absolute master of the other ninety-nine. Denying permission to them to live on the island would force them into the sea." -- Henry George, Progress and Poverty

    And it further makes little difference if the island is all owned by one man or two, or three, or a dozen, save that under several owners the landless would at least be able to escape the arbitrary caprice of a single owner. But assuming the owners -- one or several -- were rationally self-interested fellows who only wanted the maximum income their ownership of the land could afford, there would be no difference between the one owner and the dozen "competing" owners. The land market is always a monopoly market, so none of the landowners can do better than to charge the full market rent for all the land they own. Any attempt to get more just results in some land remaining unused, and his total income declining. That is in fact what happened in many places where landowners sought to reduce their tenants to absolute poverty and servitude, such as czarist Russia, France under the ancien regime, and Ireland under the English landlords (who committed genocide by starvation against their Irish tenants in the 1840s), and many other historical cases: good land remained vacant, the landowners got less income than they could have, and the tenants were reduced to utter, slave-like destitution. The good ol' USA provides another example

    "During the war I served in a Kentucky regiment in the Federal army. When the war broke out, my father owned sixty slaves. I had not been back to my old Kentucky home for years until a short time ago, when I was met by one of my father's old negroes, who said to me: "Mas George, you say you sot us free; but 'fore God, I'm wus off than when I belonged to your father." The planters, on the other hand, are contented with the change. They say: "How foolish it was in us to go to war for slavery. We get labor cheaper now than when we owned the slaves." How do they get it cheaper? Why, in the shape of rents they take more of the labor of the negro than they could under slavery, for then they were compelled to return him sufficient food, clothing and medical attendance to keep him well, and were compelled by conscience and public opinion, as well as by law, to keep him when he could no longer work. Now their interest and responsibility cease when they have got all the work out of him they can."
    -- From a letter by George M Jackson, 1885

    I know you have seen that letter before, more than once. You just have to refuse to know the facts it identifies -- facts which, btw, were well known and widely remarked at the time.
    I mean actual direct enslavement. I am opposed to that kind of liberty - to compel someone to labor against their will. I am also vehemently opposed to the liberty to kill, rape, batter, steal, pillage, etc., - those are liberties which are not anyone's right, nor do I believe they should be.
    Oh, but you do, Steven. You definitely believe that landowners have a right to steal. I already proved that by the example of the bandit in the pass. There is absolutely no moral difference between the bandit stealing from the caravans, and the same man proclaiming himself the "owner" of the pass -- or the government proclaiming him the owner -- and making the same demand for the exact same amount of money. You know this. Of course you do. You just have to refuse to know it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
    Does that mean I am opposed to liberty? No, that would be a GROSS fallacy of composition - the very one you have erred with, as I am in favor of some types of liberty, and opposed to others.
    You are only in favor of the type of "liberty" that results in the privileged being legally at liberty to rob the productive by forcibly depriving them of their liberty.
    Gibberish. "Evolutionary psychology is showing..." is a meaningless statement,
    Lie.
    and I draw a very sharp distinction between the hard sciences, especially those which really are based on objective reality, empirical observation and indisputable facts, and the social sciences which try to borrow prestige and authority from them by mimicking their terms and methodologies - as if it gave greater weight to their "soft science" conclusions. Too many of them are clowns to me, drawing normative conclusions, trying to pass them off as positive statements, from a vacuum.
    When observed empirical facts prove your beliefs are false and evil, you delete those facts from your brain. Simple.
    Interesting clowns, but clowns nonetheless -- with too many examples of soft science tenets and society-manipulating dogma, that is accepted by many who lack critical thinking skills and BELIEVE IN those conclusions as if those papers written were RELIGIOUS CANON -- which makes much of it very much like religion.
    Do you believe animal behavior can be studied scientifically, and understood by establishing how it confers a survival or reproductive advantage? Well, human beings are animals.
    Did you think you wriggled free from your original conundrum? You didn't.
    More accurately, you didn't show there was any "original conundrum" in anything I said. OTC, the "original conundrum" is all yours: you can't justify the forcible removal of people's rights to liberty -- rights they indisputably had and exercised before they were removed by landowning -- and neither can anyone else, and lots of people much smarter than you have tried.
    Go back up and read.
    The stench of your evil, dishonest garbage is not lessened by repeated exposure.
    Stop slipping that in, as you conflate the kind of liberty you believe in, and think OUGHT to be a right, with an actual right.
    Legalistic fallacy again. A "right" to "liberty" that denies one the liberty to breathe atmospheric air, to drink from a natural spring, or to use the land and resources nature provided to provide oneself with food is a right without content, and nothing but an evil lie.
    Again, stop trying wriggling past that one.
    Again, stop lying about what I have plainly written. I can be accused of many things, but "wriggling" is not one of them. And you know it.
    Go back up read where I said "THAT KIND OF LIBERTY" is not, in my mind a right - nor does THAT KIND OF LIBERTY equate to simply "liberty". You are playing fast and loose with "liberty", as if all liberty was the same...and somehow good.
    I realize you oppose liberty.
    Slaves had a right to liberty IN THEIR MINDS (and in the minds of others - including me) -- normatively speaking (the OUGHT of it all).
    Based on what? Why did they have a right to liberty?
    They did NOT have a legal right to liberty. That much is indisputable. That is not a legalistic fallacy,
    It is a legalistic fallacy when you claim the landless's lack of a legal right to liberty means they have no right to liberty.
    because I make a strong distinction between rights as BELIEFS, or mental seeds, and rights that are actually manifested (recognized, codified and defended by force).
    Throughout this and the previous LVT thread, you have done nothing but confuse them.
    I make that distinction every time - the one you can only be dragged kicking and screaming to make (but you did above - read the first quote).
    You are lying, Steven. I have never had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make the distinction between legal and natural rights. OTC, I have had to remind you dozens of times that legal rights are IRRELEVANT to this discussion, because it is about CHANGING THE LAW, and any appeal to legal rights is automatically a question-begging fallacy.
    That whole error in thinking is what causes you to put the "rights" cart before the "certain kind of LVT liberty" horse.
    It's the other way around, duh.



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