Can we get a written summary of the questions?
It would be easier to read.Originally Posted by heavenlyboy34
Nah. I didn't create/write it myself. Not sure how that would help ya, though.
There are two reasons I finally gave up on minarchy. One was the simple fact that the most minarchist state in the history of mankind, the USA, has fast become one of the largest Leviathan states there has ever been. The other was that no matter how you try and frame it, minarchy still relies on violent compulsion at the end of the day. It still wants to force something upon you. And that seed is why the minarchist state will never remain that way. When you give someone to invalidate the choices of another, to force their will and ways upon another, oppression and tyranny will be the inevitable result. That seed will grow into a choking weed and kill the tree of liberty.
This should be attributed to democracy.
There's nothing inherent in the state which causes it to grow over time.
There is something inherent in the democratic state which causes it to grow over time.
It is not coincidental that modern democratic states are vastly larger than their non-democratic predecessors.
This video won't play for me. Sorry. I'm not a statist, anyway.
I would like to ask the so-called Libertarians why they put forth a statist candidate.
#NashvilleStrong
“I’m a doctor. That’s a baby.”~~~Dr. Manny Sethi
Democrats aren't democratic, and Republicans aren't republican.
Even the Constitution party isn't constitutionalist.
I thought that was the point of having a party - to have an excuse to stop being the thing your name says.
There are no crimes against people.
There are only crimes against the state.
And the state will never, ever choose to hold accountable its agents, because a thing can not commit a crime against itself.
I watched the first few minutes of the video...Nah. I didn't create/write it myself. Not sure how that would help ya, though.
...nothing about minarchism at all.
The questions were about gun control, welfare, etc - i.e. things minarchists also oppose.
No it isn't coincidental. But that isn't because of the desires of the state, merely in its means. Kings and Emperors of a thousand years ago, absolutists who ruled with an iron fist, would have loved to have been able to spy on all their citizens and regulate what they saw, thought, or said. They couldn't because the technology to do so didn't exist. It does today. That is the only separation.
Let's take the New Deal as an example.
What technological deficiency would have prevented Louis XVI from implementing similar policies, had he been so inclined?
Not a technological deficiency. A wealth deficiency. After he took his cut, he left the peasants just enough so they didn't starve to death. Give Louis XVI decades of post industrial revolution wealth to squander and he would look just like Roosevelt.
Not true at all. Standards of living in Europe were rising for hundreds of years before the advent of democracy.
Had kings been stealing all of the surplus wealth of the population, this would not have been possible.
Most of the interventions that constituted the New Deal were not taxes - they produced no revenue for the government. Make-work projects, for instance, were all cost for the government, no revenue; FDR pursued them because they won him votes. Louis didn't need votes. Why would he have pursued make-work projects?Give Louis XVI decades of post industrial revolution wealth to squander and he would look just like Roosevelt.
Likewise, why would he have created regulatory agencies? Why would he have sponsored labor unions or business cartels? Such policies make sense for an election politician, since they help him gain the support of constituencies he needs to win elections. For an absolute monarch? They represent costs, both out of pocket and in terms of reducing the tax base (i.e. future royal revenues); there is no benefit.
Last edited by r3volution 3.0; 09-22-2016 at 06:31 PM.
The make work projects used capital goods, in other words wealth, that was produced by the private economy. It was paid for by borrowed/stolen money. Those resources were no longer available to meet the demand of consumers. Why would Louis have pursued make-work projects? If people were starving to death, he would have pursued something so that they didn't kill him. If not make work projects, then something else.
Such things were in Louis' time called guilds. The word "guild" encompasses every one of those ideas and they were absolutely sponsored by the crowns of the era.
We don't have to answer why. We only have to point out that he did.
There are no crimes against people.
There are only crimes against the state.
And the state will never, ever choose to hold accountable its agents, because a thing can not commit a crime against itself.
This raises an important issue, which I've mentioned in other discussions of monarchy, but not yet in this thread: security. For monarchy to have the advantages I describe, it must be sufficiently secure. A monarch who has to fear revolt as much as an elected politician fears losing his reelection campaign has the same perverse incentives as the elected politician to pander to special interests. That said, a king being dethroned/killed in a revolt is much less likely, ceteris paribus, than an elected politician losing his reelection bid. People will much sooner vote against Sen. Jones than rise up in armed revolt against King Jones, for the reason that voting costs virtually nothing and has no risks, while armed revolt against the state costs and risks a great deal. Thus, it is much easier for a king to resist demands for make-work projects et al.
Guilds were on their way out by Louis' time, relics of the medieval period which kings of Louis' generation were attempting to abolish.
Medieval kings were not absolute monarchs like Louis. They were quite weak, sharing power with a variety of interest groups (e.g. the nobility). Kings had to placate these interest groups in order to rule, just as elected politicians have to placate interest groups to win reelection. Guilds, serfdom, and many of the other illiberal economic policies of the medieval period should be understood in these terms: as privileges extracted from weak kings by various interest groups. Later, as kings eliminated the power of the nobility et al, centralizing power in their own hands, they began dismantling these privileges. Guilds in the Habsburg empire were gutted by the Emperor Joseph II in the 18th century, serfdom in Russia was abolished by Tsar Alexander II in the 19th century, etc, etc. Google "enlightened despotism" or "enlightened absolutism" for many more examples. The movement toward economic liberalization began under absolutism. That movement was slowed and ultimately reversed by the advent of democracy.
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