"because they think the state needs more money to pay for the mouth-breathers who rape my life with regulations to have nice pensions."

And some folks here patted him on the back for clarity and civility. Oy.

I had a lead role in Rand's "The Night of January 16th" at Matt's age. The jury gimmick made it a lot of fun to perform, but the ideas it espoused were infantile.

More than anything, this society based on force has given him the leisure time to imagine that a world without governments would be free and morally superior. In a "free" world, you have to supply your own force and that's a full time job. Human beings aren't mean and nasty because we have laws and the means of enforcement, we have laws and the means of enforcement because human beings are mean and nasty. Not all of us, but enough of us to make you sit up and take notice.

Sorry, young man, that all the land was already taken before you were born. Bad planning on your part. You don't expect anyone to give you a piece of land just for being here do you? It's not our fault you're here. But if you insist on staying on this land that isn't yours, you'll need to abide by our rules. Our house, our rules. If you don't want to opt in to the social contract you can't claim the protections guaranteed in it. You'll have to enforce your philosophy without our help. We don't owe you any more than you owe us. There is still plenty of space available out in the oceans. I'm sure an ingenious young man such as yourself can scratch out a living there.

@96--I loved the quarter-chub comment. A total classic. I can't wait to tell my husband so we can start using it. But the reality of quarter-chub? I love to start with quarter-chub and bring it up to full chub. That's one of the thrills in oral sex.

*sigh*

This is almost a better troll than the ones about loud babies in restaurants, or rabid pit bulls, or Critical fucking Mass. Almost.

And here am I, also feeding the beast...

but libertarians are so cute. Aww, wookit the widdle thing, all self-reliant and stuff! Isn't that adorable? Kind of like seeing a toddler drool.

@84 you could have already served three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Slacker.

@99 - "Though I do wonder what he possesses that he can barter for food, clothing, and shelter."

Well, there's always his quarter-chub.

@84 - yes, you are doing it wrong. By 25 you should have moved beyond these views (unless the folks have a lot of cash, then you can continue on for a few more years)

@87 - the word you are searching for is "Glenn Beck"

Come on SLOGgers, post again. Remember when David Schmader did this with his Courtney Love Pitbull post to unseat Dan?

Give the kid a break and post again. He'll be flying so high at SLOG happy he won't need to drink or smoke anything!

Reading this whole thing, post and comments, has been my most exciting half-hour all day. Thanks!

So, I know my comment @86 is only one of 100+, but I'd really like to see it answered by UI. This is a real-life situation (not a hypothetical) of people who are trying to live by something similar to his philosophy (in fairness, I doubt they've thought about it as much as him, they seem more the plain-old "government = bad" types). Then they go and do something objectionable according to most people's moral standards (and our current government's laws).

How would this be handled, in your ideal world? Let the girl be molested/abused? Private law enforcement (Who gets to decide whether the abuse is really happening? How does this law enforcement org. get its funding? How do these people get their authority if not by violence? What is his punishment? If jail, who built/operates the jail and how do they get funding? If not jail, what?)?

@74: 99.999999999%?

So out of one hundred billion people, only one is unhappy being born under a Constitution the didn't choose and blah blah blah? That's a pretty amazing rate.

Humans are hive animals. Resistance is futile.

Given the large number of comments, I cannot help but marvel at the invisible hamburger helper hand at work as each commenter generates a hit for the advertisements and therefore adds money to the coffers of The Stranger. You have a bright future. Juxtaposed with Charles you can help bring balance to The Schwartz.

@47
I asked you to provide an example of a system of property that didn't rely on threat of violence, and you offered me the names of private security companies. So I guess you didn't understand the question?

Again, thanks for stating your silly views in a polite tone.

I'm still waiting for Mr. Luby to describe how, in a "world without force" he's going to prevent a bigger dick from down the street from using HIS private security force to convert Mr. Luby into a slave on his farm. Or food.

does anyone know the record of hits on slog, and what was the post.

@119: Well, he can't prevent that. But he'll be against it!

Go Paul Constant for calling out this dude's outta line use of the word "rape". Practically jumped off the screen at me. For someone who is so against violence, that's a pretty loaded word to flippantly fling around. Puke.

Also, re: violence. UI is against all kinds of violence but then suggests private policing. Hmm...seems to me the only outcome of his philosophy, if put into real-life play, would end up where others have pointed to: Somalia, Rep. of Congo, Afghanistan, etc.

Practical applications? Also, UI, how did you come to hold these beliefs? UI, what happened back in the Midwest?

Man... seriously, the ad hominem attacks here are depressing me. It's not like he came into your kitchen and tried to liberate you, guys; learn how to disagree without being rude and pompous.

Kid, I like your moxie. Shine on, you crazy diamond. If nothing else, unpopular opinions help us better define our own standpoints on issues, giving us something to be against and better illuminating what we're for. I wish more people commenting here could appreciate that without vitriol and patronizing zingers.

Hey everyone, I brought us some cake andOHGOD!

With that mentality, don't live in a city. Go live off the grid somewhere. The infrastructure that does everything from powering your laptop to allowing food to arrive here is based on taxes.

Man... seriously, the ad hominem attacks here are depressing me. It's not like he came into your kitchen and tried to liberate you, guys; learn how to disagree without being rude and pompous.

Kid, I like your moxie. Shine on, you crazy diamond. If nothing else, unpopular opinions help us better define our own standpoints on issues, giving us something to be against and better illuminating what we're for. I wish more people commenting here could appreciate that without vitriol and patronizing zingers.

good post. cajones, amigo.

isnt there a political discourse dedicated to the clash of civilizations now? like culture vs culture? the fantasy is that we can form cultural bubbles based on how we want to live. i want to live with you, anarchist friend (or down the road)! the problem is, as you know, you cant tell anybody this because, esp in america, you are surrounded by pragmatist compromisers if not just crazy ideologues. and i dont beleive you are a crazy ideologue (am i mistaken anyone?). but political pragmatism invites all the kinds of uses of force you abhor for the sake of.. civility.

there is something to be said about living between the cracks in any civilization. i agree that civilization is partly about force masquerading as justice and accountability, and that most likely you will face some abuse like the feminazi that lives in fear of uncaged boners, but the anarchist's culture is in the cracks of civilization, hoepfully one with bigger, deeper cracks.

dude we got a long way to go before anarchy outposts rape.

sorry i wont be at the slog happy but i live in eugene //

Where to start, again?

@73 -- Paul and Cienna both confirmed noticing my Ron Paul sticker on day one. So I guess there was no Trojan horse. Damn.

@79 -- Your point about multinationals is wrong, I think. The whole idea of the limited liability corporation only exists because government created it.

@ 80 -- I just don't think it's very "civilized" to force me to pay. Make it voluntary, then I have no problem with it.

@81 -- No and no, unfortunately. There's no real "society" that has ever existed this way, though there used to be frontiers beyond which people like me could escape and do things as they wished.

@82 -- Licenses are enforced by the private licensing companies, who are themselves enforced by robust consumer advocacy groups of an Angie's List-type thing.

You could choose to drive on roads that only permit drivers who hold a license from a certain company/agency. That should solve your problem. And hunting man is clearly impermissible in a nonviolent society.

@86 -- What you're talking about is a violation of consent. I am talking about a voluntary society. Voluntary societies do not look kindly upon people who violate rules of consent. Yes, a private law enforcement agency could intercede against this man to protect the rights of his child. The difference is in how his punishment might be handled. Maybe rather than sitting in a jail cell he could reach a settlement with the victim's family and then agree to be shunned from society? I don't know.

@88 -- I do pay taxes and I am happy. I'd just be happier if I wasn't paying them.

@90 -- For sure, but it's been a fun journey.

@92 -- I am 100% non-violent. Nothing to worry about here.

@93 -- This guy is awesome. I don't think he endorses what I said, but he understands that my position is nonviolent, non-coercive and poses no threat to the conventional statists in this thread.

@97 -- I appreciate your honesty. You are lazy and you assume I must be lazy, too, so you'd like me to be coerced in a way that's convenient for you. No thanks.

@99 -- You do realize there used to be regional currencies right here in the U.S., right? People are pretty resourceful. We like to trade. We will find a medium of exchange with or without government's intervention.

@102 -- I thought the last Slog Happy revealed that Lindy West actually had the most commented post of all-time?

@104 -- Sorry, not a racist bone in my body.

@ Will -- I don't understand your fascination with Afghanistan. Why would a pacifist like me who has been screaming against the war for ages want anything to do with that place?

@118 -- I guess I misunderstood your question. I view self-defense as the only legitimate form of violence and a true last resort. I would hope people in my voluntary community would feel the same way.

the modus of any organized criminal is to navigate the subterranean paths in civilization, trying to blend in as much as possible while not being discovered. being an anarchist is very much the same thing, though the crime might not be the same.

your appropriation of the word--the VERB--"rape" is reprehensible. shame on you.

Remember when (former Stranger staffer) would bitch about all the cripples slowing down her bus? Those were the days.

But fuck it, if these asinine Randian views had a molecule validity, then why are the countries following this philosophy (Haiti, Somalia, etc.) horrifying Mad Max hellholes, while nations that embrace the opposite (Norway, Sweden, etc.) have the best quality of life on the planet by every objective measurement?

Case closed.

You do realize, I hope, that nobody actually advocates for Big Government, right? If you want to take it on you're going to have to get more specific than that.

Also, all social life is violence. Pick your poison: government taxation, or private-sector exploitation. You don't get to live in a world without any.

131 pronoun minus caps?

@129, maybe someday you'll read some actual history and find out what really went on beyond those "frontiers", and why it was like that. You sound like you've been watching some movies. If you think think "frontier" doesn't imply violence or force, you're just misinformed, and if you think there was ever a time when you could find "communities" out there, you're off your rocker.

What I think is, you've always been fairly bright, and it made you intellectually lazy. You think you've got it all figured out, based on ten minutes of pondering, but in truth you know nothing, literally nothing, about anything real. You've got some work to do. Unless you want to be a crank all your life, hanging around the food bank muttering into your beard about Hollywood and the CIA.

@ Fnarf -- Simple. Pay a user fee to a private security company you think can protect you. See, a user fee. These things are voluntary.

@122 -- A lot of reading, debating, and arguing. I'd say Tolstoy, von Mises, Rothbard, John Stuart Mill, and a couple of podcasts have all been very influential. It's not like Cincinnati is a hotbed of voluntaryism.

@123 -- Thank you! I don't argue just to argue. I actually like responding to you guys. It makes me polish my own logic. And it's all peaceful, consensual and voluntary.

@127, 128 -- This guy is my friend. We can be communards together!

I'm going to start with this: Interesting viewpoint. Weird, but interesting.

But now I am going to take a stab at guessing more about this Matt fellow:

1. Middle Class (not the middle of the middle class, the lower end)
2. White
3. Age: under 22 (not just gleaned from the internship status, but his worldview)
4. Grew up in the suburbs

Here are my recommendations for ya, Matt: Travel more. Build houses in 3rd world countries, go to different continents, meet more people.

You are young, and while you have many reasons for your belief structure, I think you'll find yourself and your views will change over time. But honestly, traveling outside the USA is the best advice I can give you.

Even if your opinion doesn't change from exposure to other cultures/ideas/people, you'll ideals will be more concrete. /shrug

But good luck here on Slog, cause you're going to need it.

What a silly little twit, even for an intern.

Listen up, midwestern boy: Your entire life, up until moving to the coast, has been subsidized by the government. You have benefited greatly from the taxes you pay, and got quite a bargain.

Midwesterners are a drain, just like the southerners. If we were a smart society we'd just clear the center of the country out and replace it with robotic farmers.

You seem very nice but very young dear. Have you ever spent time in 3rd world countries? I have. They are horrible places. You cannot have civil societies without taxation to support civil laws. Want clean drinking water in a desert, well you had better be rich or the rich had better like you. And you are free to not be taxed. You can live off the grid in the Amazon or join some corporation’s police force and do horrible or good things to people in uncivil societies. That would be your choice as you would be the one who is armed. However, you cannot expect to be welcomed back to civil society where you have not paid your dues. Paying ones dues is not oppression or theft and no one owes it to you, personally, to provide you with a civil society. You have to pay for it to in a public sector not private sector way.

Damn, just saw the comment that Matt is 25. Shit!

@132 -- Really? That's the best you've got? After I've openly said in this thread how bad Rand sucks and how she sucks, you group me in with her small state-endorsing views. You're just being lazy.

Oh, and Haiti? Haiti is not an anarchist paradise. Haiti is run by a criminal gang that just doesn't care about people so long as they skim money from international aid organizations. Somalia's transitional government is the same way.

@ Fnarf -- Your only line of argumentation is this stupid age-ist bullshit. Do you really think this is anything new? Do you think I haven't heard it before? You don't actually engage my ideas at all. You just pooh-pooh them because you're older. I've spent more time reading and thinking about this issue than you've spent posting comments on blogs, which is saying a lot.

@ 138 -- Want to compare passports? Or talk about second language fluency? Thanks for the wishes of good luck, but you're basically selling the same brand as Fnarf in a nicer manner.

@139 -- Hello, troll. How is it under the bridge?

@140 -- It's interesting how your polite society still hasn't managed to move beyond using coercive violence to achieve its ends.

@137, UI...

Thought exercise: I'm 7... my father is sexually abusing me. I'd really like to pay a "user fee" to a private security firm to go after my dad, but imagine that, my allowance won't quite cover it.

Sure, it's easy to tell the white male adult he can pay for private security to protect himself... and if he can't afford it, that's his own problem. But the child? I kinda like having government try to guarantee that whole "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" thing to everyone else, too.

It's not surprising that many people assume you are young, because you don't appear to have thought very far down the chain of consequences that come with your "privatize everything" approach. So, you have private security guards to guard your shit. That helps guard against random vandals, fine, but what happens when your neighbor, who has twice as much stuff as you with twice as many guards, decides he wants your stuff?

You very quickly end up with a feudal system of warring landowners and serfs who don't own anything and owe everything to their bosses. We had this before in human history; it's a problem that representative government was invented to solve, and it's done a damn fine - if imperfect - job of improving things.

@143 So I can assume you're not going to retract "quarter chub," huh?

I didn't sign any constitution, I didn't consent to any of these laws, I was just born here.

Until the age of 18, this argument makes the barest sliver of sense. But at age 18, you could have left the country and renounced your citizenship.

As you are 25 now, you chose not to leave. That's your consent to the laws.

@142 Actually, he did engage your idea. He challenged the accuracy of your impression of lawless and frontier societies. He did so in a Fnarfian way, but c'est la vie.

I notice that you have so-far ignored the question of why, both now and throughout history, ungoverned regions are ruled by violence, poverty and suffering, while modern nations such as Sweden, with the "largest" governments have reasonably strong economies, and reportedly the highest quality of life measurements.

@ Unpaid Intern,

I can point to a dozen countries that successfully implement a high-service, high-tax model which produces longer lifespans, lower incidence of disease, greater educational attainment, satisfactory quality of life, and on and on and on.

I challenge you to name one--one!--that reflects your beliefs and provides anything resembling a decent quality of life. The user fee model has never and will never work due to the free-loader factor.

You cannot name a country because it does not exist. Your anti-sanity beliefs are a fraud--a narcissistic and sociopathic cop-out.

@148, he wants Sweden but with spurs and chaps and all.

Matt, it's put up or shut up time. The opportunity for you to start the society you dream of is available. How hard are you willing to work for it? Are you willing to put in the labor to make it happen? Willing to start from nothing? Without any handouts or piggybacking on existing societies based on government coercion? Or are you just a utopian philosopher without the courage of your convictions more interested in the debate than your ideals? Roughly 70% of the planet's surface is available to you. Yes, resources are few, but if you are able to devise a way to use those resources to create goods that other people will trade for, you can live in your coercion-free, self-reliant society. So, are you willing to live your beliefs?

And let me add to myself at @147, your passport and your need for a second language is totally irrelevant. You could have, if you'd wanted to at all, gotten into Canada without a passport or the need for a second language. There's plenty of space into which to vanish in Canada. Why didn't you? Seriously, why didn't you do this? And in what way is that active exercise of free will not an implicit consenting to the laws of the country you chose to stay in?

Also, I'd like to hear your specific answers to @144 and @145.

Might makes right is not the society in which I choose to live, personally.

No one is obligated to follow the orders of private security officers. They "protect" you. What if my firm does not like you and your firm and has bigger guns? If you want societal laws then society must collectively enforce them. Otherwise laws are just suggestions. And when children are molested they are entitled to justice. Payment to the family and shunning is measly and to suggest that is enough is immoral. No prisons. Ok, when a molested kid is strong enough they get to take revenge even if it means taking out a few employees of the molester’s private security firm. That's reasonable.

would it be better to have 2 or 3 world governments, or thousands of sovereign, differing micro states in the present future? seattle as one nation, bellevue as another?

@151, of course he's not willing to live his beliefs. If he were, he would have already left this country for - for example - the Canadian north, and we wouldn't be having this conversation (over an internet developed largely with money from the government).

The reason for people saying "it's an age thing" is because, well, your viewpoint is generally held by young people. I am close in age to you, and I held many of your viewpoints (not to your extreme, but damn close) when I was 17-24. After living (not just vacationing) abroad for 4 years, paying for services (both private and public) my viewpoints have changed. We could compare passports, I guess, but many people who travel go to nice places and only stay for a week or 2. I am talking about living abroad, or at least staying abroad for a while. And at the very least visiting a very, very poor country with limited government. Maybe you have done this, I was postulating that you had not.

And If you read at the end, I say that maybe your viewpoints won't change, but in my experience (and I would argue most people here on Slog have a similar one), as you get older these extreme viewpoints change/mellow.

Also, since you did not address them, I am going to assume I was correct about 1, 2, and 4 of my original post.

@129: I can only conclude that you're pretending to misunderstand my question. I asked for an example of a system of property that worked without force. You offered no such example.

Initially you claimed that your opposition to government sprang from a dislike of violence. Now you seem to be saying you're all in favor of violence to defend your property, provided it is committed by your paid employees (presumably paying agents to commit violence by proxy on your behalf falls under your rather loose definition of "self defense?") How is this any different from saying that whoever has the resources to employ the most dangerous thugs gets to make the rules?

When you say you are opposed to violence it creates the impression that you are adopting a moral position, but then you abandon this opposition the moment it threatens the rest of your ideology. I can only conclude that the elements of your ideology that you do not drop like a hot potato at the first sign of cognitive dissonance is what you truly believe, and these can be summed up as follows: "Keep your hands off my stuff. It's mine and you can't have it!"

@127, 128 -- This guy is my friend. We can be communards together!

Yes, you two run off and rape women together.

@139 -- Hello, troll. How is it under the bridge?

Catalina has exhibited more sense and reasonableness in YEARS of commenting on Slog than you have in all your inane ramblings here. And you claim to have put more thought into this? You don't even recognize longstanding commenters. You are a fucking liar.

I appreciate your views, UI. I never said I wanted you to live like me (back at 67 and 97). I just said how I wanted to live.

And yes, I am lazy. I don't want to sweep the streets in my neighborhood or pick up everyone's litter. I don't want to feed the homeless or change their diapers. I don't want to pay 100 bills a month. (Count the services the government gives you in return for stealing your money - you'll end up paying more bills than that, just on the services you'd sorely miss. Assuming you live in a city. Which, um, you do.)

So it's cool if you don't want to live like me. But then, it begs the question, why are you?

I'm curious what you think - what you apparently wish - would become of the orphaned, infirm, mentally ill, and otherwise, through no fault of their own, badly disadvantaged in a government-free libertarian paradise.

Because as far as I call tell you either haven't thought that far - perhaps you can't see over your towering, gleaming walls of entitlement? - or you have a positively psychopathic lack of empathy and social responsibility.

If this has already come up in the thread, well... hell, "tl;dr" was invented for just such situations.

But at least you were well-spoken and didn't once make an objectionable pun out of "Barack Obama." That's worth points in your favor.

@143, What percentage of your parents' dime filled your passport? I assume that an unpaid internship at The Stranger is probably not going to be sufficient to fund such excursions.

@158, Proudhon put forth the proposition that "all private property is theft." While I may not share the sentiment of a good chunk of his work, he does hit the nail on the head with the notion that private property by definition necessitates coercion.

@142: Yeah, Haiti is run by a criminal gang that doesn't care about people. But because humans are humans, you get to choose between "coercive violence" in the form of a system that allows you to go about living your life to the extent that you are free to work to change the entire system itself, or criminal gangs that don't care about people.

Pining for some imagined anarchist paradise is about as effective as wishing for powers of flight and invisibility. It's just not possible given human nature.

Idiologues always have no sense of irony paired nicely with a lack of critical thinking skills.

I like this post very very much. The logic is deeply flawed, but the argument is smart and passionate, and I am damn glad to see a view point represented here that is nowhere near the mainstream of anything, INCLUDING the liberal group-think of the Stranger.

Personally I think anarchist ideas are well worth exploring, and I only wish they worked as well in the real world one iota as well as they work in our imaginations. I'm not of the libertarian bent myself - my ideal anarchist society would be something along the lines of the Spanish experiments in the 1930's which strongly emphasized collective responsibility. Electricity and other utilities were run through worker committees, farms became communes, factories were collectivized and managed by their workers, etc. It wasn't a tax-free state (people paid into a central pool of funds by region), and it wasn't a pacifist state (there were MANY enemies of that state and lots of arms) but it was a basically free and well coordinated anarchist effort governed by a principle of solidarity.

Of course, it all went to hell in about three years for various reasons, some internal and some external. But that doesn't mean that the ideas are uninteresting, or that the experiment wasn't worth trying. I want to read more of Mr. Luby's ideas, and I hope he doesn't get discouraged too quickly by either the Slog curmudgeons or by the real world.

Stop being such a whining hypocrite and move to Alaska already. Did you know that one could homestead in Alaska up until the mid-eighties? So go to Alaska, the last frontier, and make your living in the utter wilderness -- with luck you can find a nice corner of some privately owned land where no one will bother you. You'll keep sounding like a buzzing refrigerator until you do so.

Alternatively, perhaps isolated parts of the Amazon basin would be more to your liking? You can sail a home-made boat there and then hike your way in.

whatever happened to i hate Keshmeshi club USA? guess a revival is in order

i can see where a lot of UI's frustration comes from. i also respect his own personal beliefs on what the most appropriate conditions are for human happiness and peace, even if i dont' agree with them. everyone has their opinion on this, and i think it's worth continuing to explore our opinions and possibly modifying them from experience and further research. definitely better than setting things in stone, other than your core values - what comes from the heart. my suggestion to UI (and i have no idea what his circumstances are) is to practice more of what he's saying. a lot of people are pissed off by his post because they assume he isn't doing this, and frankly, if he's living in seattle, he's not really. get out of seattle. you didn't get to chose where you were born, but you do have the choice of where you will spend your life, especially now that you are an adult. you could go live off grid (and there are some beautiful places in this country off grid). it IS possible to have a comfortable lifestyle off grid, my aunt and uncle do. see what happens and learn from it. maybe you're already doing the best you can, but try to go 100%, don't get stuck in a place whose system disgusts you, and a system you simply can't avoid by staying here. live by example, i think you have a lot of heart and only want positive things for humankind.

@159, that's a good point - Catalina has kindly schooled the rest of us many times on just what it was like growing up in the midwest, where she's said everybody just loves to hate the very government without whose immense benefits and subsidies they'd long ago have been forced to flee for the coasts.

@142, I have repeatedly engaged your so-called ideas here, one by one as they dribble out, but you aren't listening -- can't listen, by the sound of it. That's not ageist, it's just the truth. Your argument is mush. It's stupid. It's uninformed. You can't just say words like "community" and "frontier" and wave your hand. Just because you've addressed a couple of words to a question doesn't mean you've answered it.

But here, I'll try again.

So, it's your perfect world, and state coercion has gone away, but the guy down the street has been stockpiling weapons and he comes over and takes your family prisoner. Makes you all slaves. He's got thousands of them. Your answer is "pay a user fee to a private security firm". OK, great. But the bad guy shoots your private security guards in the head on his way over, because he's a bigger badass and more heavily armed than they are. Because they don't exist; all the private security firms already work for the bad guys. You're a slave, OK? If you try to explain to him that he shouldn't be using force like that, he just shoots you too without a second thought and finds some more pliable slaves.

This is a fact. This is what happens. The bad guy always has more firepower than you and zero compunction about using it. In a world free of state coercion, Mexican drug lords gather heads with impunity. Think about that word "impunity" for a minute, and what it implies.

This was actually the standard operating procedure out beyond the edge of that "frontier" (and for most people within it) for large portions of history.

Ah, but you think history is stupid.

These social constructs you wave away so airily were developed over many hundreds of years specifically to address this problem. The government's primary function is, in fact, to PROTECT you from violence. Governments exist to secure you your rights. All the rest of it, the taxes and regulations and roads and drivers' licenses and libraries and even state liquor stores are part of that imperfect process.

And for chrissakes, Rothbard, are you fucking kidding me? Von Mises? There is nothing so tiresome in all the world as a fool who's read a little bit about The Austrian School. That's WORSE than Ayn Rand, and equally divorced from the real world. There are legitimate arguments around the notions of personal freedom, state power, and so on, but the Austrian School is not really part of the discussion -- and Rothbard and von Mises in particular are just beyond the pale, associated almost entirely today in the intellectual sphere with their neo-Confederate "institute" in Alabama. "Not a racist bone in your body", eh? That Ron Paul sticker says otherwise.

John Stuart Mill on the other hand, he's hugely relevant to college dorm bull sessions. Tolstoy, writer of Adventure Stories for Boys. You're not being very persuasive here.

Come back when you've read some REAL history. And skip the philosophy entirely; bringing Rothbard into the discussion is taking you further away, not closer.

But to engage your viewpoints: no matter how much "thought and reading" you have done on this idealism, it can't and won't ever happen. Ever.

I think that is why people are mocking you. You are focused on an ideal that is so intangible, it is absurd. You fail to grasp simple basic known facts about humans, their behaviors, and how that shapes societies. These concepts have been played out and well documented since humans have been around. You are side-stepping these issues, creating a version of humanity that DOES NOT EXIST. You can't be that ignorant to think your ideas could work with how human nature is?

But youth is all about ideals, and pretending that maybe one day you'll buy an island and make all your own rules, yadda yadda yadda. A more mature viewpoint is taking the best part your ideals, and trying to find ways they can actually be implemented. This is the difference between youth and maturity. Rather than tear down a system in your mind, find an ACTUAL way to fix the system around you.

Have you read up on/visited this place? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_Ch…

But I digress, I have real work to get done.

By the way, I should add that it would be relatively easy to walk to the Alaskan frontier from Seattle while entirely avoiding public roadways. You might have to walk through publicly owned wildlands (since they're publicly owned, you will most likely be astounded by their beauty, but I digress), but most of the way you could probably use private logging roads.

UI, I didn't know Lindy West was the most commented ever (I've never been to SLOG Happy, I wish I could but I don't live in Seattle or even WA) (and sorry I don't remember reading about that) but Dan pretty consistently has the most commented posts here. Afterall he is an Internationally Known World Renowned Celebu-gay so it would still be a coup to unseat him even if it's only momemtarily.

Unpaid Intern, do you have Asperger's Syndrome? I don't know what else could possibly explain such a twisted view of society combined with cold mechanical indifference to other humans (at least at the age of 25).

...my Libertarian phase was well over by age 25, though, sadly, the Asperger's isn't a "phase". I think I'm a "big government socialist" now.

Crap, that would be momentarily.

For the people that have a poor command of the English language:

RAPE
1. a. trans. and intr. To take or seize (something) by force (cf. RAPE n.3 1). In early use occas. of an animal: to seize or devour prey (obs.) (cf. RAPING adj. 2).

UI's use of the word is completely appropriate.

@ 135 aardvark: what in the hell are you talking about? the word "rape" is being used in UPI's sentence as a verb, a VERB. caps intended.

@140 -- It's interesting how your polite society still hasn't managed to move beyond using coercive violence to achieve its ends.

There is nothing interesting about it. We are a nation of laws. There is nothing wrong with a level of coercive "violence" to enforce them. If we don’t we will have violent anarchy. In a completely privatized society security firms would also use coercive violence to enforce the laws of polite society on behalf of everyone who is willing or able to pay them, no one else. And private firms like Blackwater would use excessive violence on law breakers and innocents alike, depending on the mood of the hired thug, with no recourse for those who cannot afford to hold the hired thugs accountable, unless of course the violated are well armed, then they can just shoot their way to justice. One follows the laws here and puts into the community pot to have them enforced or they are thrown in jail. But those who don’t like it can escape such oppression needed to prevent much harsher oppression for everyone else around them. They are free to leave. There is no law against that and there are plenty of places to go.

Since there is relatively clean air in modern cities thanks purely to gubmint coercion, I respectfully request that Unpaid Intern stops breathing.

@172, but on those private logging roads you wouldn't get far before their private security firms picked you up. Since we live in a society of laws, they wouldn't just shoot him and hang his body in a tree for the eagles to eat; they'd probably escort him safely to the local authorities.

@176: You're dictionary-correct, but you're not context-correct. Certain words gain a certain type of weight over time (off the top of my head, see: queer, holocaust, gay, boner) that change the word's meaning. Rape is definitely one of those words.

@ Balderdash @ 161,

Thank you, thank you, for stating that far more eloquently than I could have.

I'm especially thinking of children in the state's foster care system whose parents cannot or will not care for them, how frightening that is for them, and how the state's social workers and foster families have stepped in and given them a home and, most importantly, hope.

The total disregard for the less fortunate is why I find UI's and his ilk's views so nauseating and utterly appalling.

And fuck that youth excuse. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but by 25, a person has had more than enough life experience to not be a pathological asshole.

@142

Oh, and Haiti? Haiti is not an anarchist paradise. Haiti is run by a criminal gang that just doesn't care about people so long as they skim money from international aid organizations. Somalia's transitional government is the same way.

uh....anybody out there?

@86: people out in the woods abusing their children is certainly awful, but anecdotes don't make that situation more true than the 15 year old who got raped by a juvenile counselor in a Manhattan Family Court.

Other countries do have pay for service where we have public service and it works really well. I lived in South Korea for a year and had to buy special trash bags, the cost of the bag was a per use fee on disposing of garbage. They also pay for many of their roads with tolls and swipe cards, a lot fewer potholes than we have in LA (except the 73 a private toll road which is smooth as butter).

Somalia is an interesting example because a few years ago the World Bank rated the areas that were outside of formal government control as better off in some respects (particularly infrastructure) than those that were controlled by bad government. (Not that I have any interest in living in ungoverned Somalia)

Afghanistan is another. They have extremely high rates of cell phone penetration, and a semi-formal, opt-in judicial system is being developed where people would conference call in when they can't reach an actual judge.

During the Spanish Civil War, Syndicalists controlled Barcelona and had some of the only functioning infrastructure in the country.

My main problem with the anarchist ideal is as a professor once put it "everything's great with the anarchists until the communists form a police force, build jails and throw them all in."

I'm always late to the flame wars. This one looks like it would've been fun. Good luck with the internship!

This is my last post before Slog Happy. Meet the man behind the mask at Highline!

@ 144 -- This is a serious question and I don't have a great answer for it. I'll have to read up and get back to you. I would say that there's plenty of instances in which our current coercive society isn't doing a great job of protecting kids, either.

@146 -- It was a quarter chub kind of day. That stays.

@147 -- I can still renounce my citizenship, but I need to have an alternative. What's the alternative?

@148 -- I'd say there's a lot more to Sweden's success than it's model of government. It's a socially homogeneous country with a history of wealth. Social democracy in fact put the country in the doldrums in the 1970s and the Social Democrats are now at their lowest ebb since the turn of the last century in Sweden. So let's not get too hyped up about that example.

@149 -- "It doesn't exist, therefore you are not right!! HAHAHAHA!!" How many republican democracies existed when the United States was founded?

@151 -- There are actually some folks trying what you're pitching--it's called seasteading. I'd rather stay here and try to win hearts and minds than rough it out on an oil platform.

@155 -- Exactly! Let governments compete for people. Throw open the borders and watch what happens.

@156 -- The internet developed with money from the government that was stolen from private citizens who might have invested in creating their own version of the internet. That was the rest of your sentence.

@158 -- I don't know how thugs making rules has anything to do with self defense. It's quite simple. If people attack you or your property, you can defend it. This does not mean you have the right to attack the property of other people--the thug example you propose. Basically, chill the hell out and leave people alone.

@161 -- It's called private charity. There's been infirm and disabled people throughout history. For most of it, they haven't just been thrown to the wolves.

@Gurldoggie -- Great post! I would love for you to go for your worker-run socialist commune. My voluntaryist commune would be happy to trade with you guys and encourage you to do things your own way.

@168 -- This is heartfelt advice and I appreciate it. I'm not ready to make that step yet. I like being around people too much. I do see myself running a subsistence farm deep in the backwoods in my old age, though.

@171 -- Believing in these ideals and striving for them is the only way I can feel morally consistent and satisfied with myself. Maybe they're not attainable. I'd rather think that they are work for something noble and moral than compromise with something that's not. And yes, I have heard of Christiania, though I have not yet been there. I think there's been some crackdown on it, actually.

@173 -- Trust me, I got that answer wrong at Slog Happy trivia. I guessed Dan, too. He is, after all, the guy who told me about The Stranger.

@174 -- I don't have an indifference towards other humans at all. I love humanity. It fills me with anger to see people hurt, imprisoned, aggressed against, tortured, killed, etc. I just don't want to realize my beliefs through violence or coercion.

I hate Capitalism,
I resent my comfy home,
I hate my public education,
My cash, my car, my phone.

So when it comes to revolution,
And social paradise,
Of course I'll give up all of these,
But until then, they're quite nice.

Ah, Unpaid Intern, so you're OK with vulnerable people being hurt or killed by your inaction (see @161), but collecting taxes to pay for orphanages would be "violence or coercion". That seems like indifference toward humans to me.

Also, you didn't answer my question about Asperger's. If you don't know if you have it, you should read up on it. My guess is that you've got it, so you might as well understand how it affects you. The more you learn about it, the less you'll feel like everything that goes wrong for you is because you didn't "try hard enough" or "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" or whatever. Then eventually you'll learn it's that way with other people too.

@185, "chill the hell out" is laughably dim advice to thugs.

@167 i dont know what the hell im talking about. no harm intended.

im skipping reading all the threads but im sayin- the problem with the lack of education argument is that, while it may be the only thing missing, there are plenty of highly educated peeps that take the same position as the intern. i know chomsky is a joke among the uh urbane sophisticated, but hes an example. equally fascinating are people on the other end of the political spectrum who are very well educated and can argue point for point. but i dont know what those points are as my points only go so far.

political viewpoints are often based on personal bias anyway, its very rare someone can be persuaded, except when very young. which apparently is what people are saying.. lala

i dont know why people are so pissed i guess.

quel choc! un anarchiste chez l'etrangere?

are you a, like, anti-industrialist black block dude? anyways. you'll grow out of it and that will kinda suck. but not entirely. the key will be when you realize that logically consistent ideology has a terrible track record. Your belief system (whatever it is) is right, logically coherent, indubitably how things should be. But anarchosocialist, Zerzanesquista, or Randian, it's analysis over experience. Someday, you will dominate someone and force them to your will. It probably won't even be for a bad reason. I bet you'll even like it. Welcome to the monkeys, young 'un. We suck.

Oh, and by the way, I've been to Christiania. It's a shithole, full of stinky hippies living in mostly grossly inadequate housing. The place is supported by the semi-legal drug supermarket they run there, which has predictably attracted all sorts of unwanted attention from murderous drug gangs. That, and the fact that a good number of the residents are just scroungers looking for cheap rent, who have cars and outside jobs. Not a pretty sight. I'd predict its imminent failure if it didn't look like it was somehow going to hold on forever. The authorities want to turn it into condos. They should.

If that's what your von Mises Institute gets you, I'll pass. Man.

@185

I don't know how thugs making rules has anything to do with self defense. It's quite simple. If people attack you or your property, you can defend it. This does not mean you have the right to attack the property of other people--the thug example you propose. Basically, chill the hell out and leave people alone.

Because, when directly asked to give an example of a system of property that didn't involve violence, you offered up paid security forces as your answer. As Fnarf so eloquently illustrates, this "system" amounts to mercenary armies charged with protecting property, which invariably means the biggest, meanest thugs get to make the rules. There is no system of property where "your" stuff can be protected purely through your own efforts. Nor is there a system where those who restrict their efforts to personal self defense can triumph over armies. It's not for lack of trying -- people have been at this governance stuff for a long time.

Since violence is a necessary component of any system wherein you get to keep "your" stuff, you are signing off on violence of one sort or another. The case you have failed to make is why your violence-for-hire solution is more humane than a government police force.

Again: you are not taking a moral stance against violence. You are taking a stance against parting with any of the property you think of as "yours." It is not, in point of fact, a moral stance at all.

So, I grant that within a “voluntary society” such as the Free State Project, child abuse/molestation might be less likely to happen. And payment/shunning might be an effective punishment in that type of society. But you know what? The family clan I’m talking about was also a “voluntary society”. The adults chose to life that kind of life (the kids not so much). The example I gave is not a thought exercise. It happened. And if it weren’t for the government, it might still be happening. As @144, @161 and @182 point out, your utopian ideal doesn’t do such a good job of protecting the powerless and the weak. This is a serious problem with your worldview.

Your utopian ideal really only works if all people act in an inherently moral way. I probably don’t need to say this, but… that isn’t always the case in the real world. This is why people keep pointing to examples like Somalia -- we have real world examples of what people act like with no government. Are there problems with the way things currently work in this country? Of course. But I prefer living here to living in lawless chaos.

@185:
Re Sweden's history of wealth:
"Through most of the recent history up to the middle of the twentieth century Sweden was a poor agricultural country."
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/swed…

Re thugs: So your solution to the threat of warlordism is just to hope people leave you alone? Cause violence and stealing is not cool. OK, good luck with that.

Re private charity:
Ye gods, even Dickensian workhouses were taxpayer-funded! And they were an improvement on "free market" charitable "responses".

Re backwoods solution:
I bought the land next to yours for my gang of uranium-mining, meth-abusing cannibals. So, yeah, sorry about that.

Poor Anarcho-Libertarians. There be nothing you can do. You won't be able to leave the country with out the stamp of the beast on you. And god, how will you be able to stay and suffer all these indignities? If only you could convince enough people you'd be able to have like-minded utopia where there is no taxation, and everybody will work for trade... or something... one day after the collapse of this civilization you finally have your chance!

Look.

What you have here is the classic fantasies found in the cognitive conflict zone between how the world works and how you'd want it to —IF ONLY— the entire world would change (or have the good graces to collapse) for you.

It's Sci-fi, man. It's a fantasy. What you want won't ever happen. And deep down you know that. I'd love for a fusion reactor and a matter transporter to be a reality. But our collective Star Trek fantasies are essentially cognitive dissonant derails. The more you feed the fantasy the more you will need it. Out here in the world we have to compromise. Out here in the world the fog of life is filled spectrum of gray areas an no one perspective or way is right all of the time. So we have to navigate the best we can.

Your entire life you have benefited from everything you decry. And not like most young people you have hit on that one mind blowing idea that lets you point fingers at the man and fianlly play like a victim. A victim in your own head. You want this anacrho-libertarian life. Go live it. Have the strength of your convictions. Quit whining. Find a way and do it. People that do... and there have been a few... I respect. But they don't bitch with such petulance. That's how you can tell the real deal from the poseurs,

But you never will. You stay here and whine till you give in and be another privileged white guy who may occasionally blog about the injustice of the man.

Basically your entire life philosophy will be to bitch at the the rest of us who will be doing all societies heavy lifting for you.

Your welcome.

This post is actually some of the best writing to be found on Slog; although I can't say I agree with most (actually, any) of what you've written, the fact it is it was a good read. Post more, please.

This has been most entertaining.

And also, and no offense to UI, it's been, uh, very nostalgic for me.

Dude, your heart is in the right place ("It fills me with anger to see people hurt, imprisoned, aggressed against, tortured, killed, etc. I just don't want to realize my beliefs through violence or coercion"). Your head will eventually catch up, trust me. Life has a way of grounding our ideals in reality.

Q: How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division?

A: None, obviously market forces will take care of it if there's a need.

Has Unpaid Intern met Charles yet?

I love this unpaid intern. I feel exactly the same way. I can only be emphatic with my Seattle friends about police brutality and drug laws. Raising taxes, etc,etc I need to pretend to agree. If I disagree, I get more backlash than I feel is appropriate for an interesting conversation (point in case, these comments). I think the only time people from the PNW are full-on aggressive is when they're discussing politics. And the fact that group mentality stresses this rude backlash is part of the problem because it's a group problem and it needs to be solved by the group (not the corrupt group representatives/decision makers). The government, an unaccountable entity, gets to take people's money and distribute it how they see fit. I don't remember ever agreeing to anything. He's right, the only reason I follow the laws isn't because I choose to, it's because I have to. And I have to because I was born in this society. Not because I believe in it. The ideas he discusses can't be discounted as they've never been attempted in a non-half-assed manner.

Re: Renouncing your citizenship; I hear Costa Rica is nice and friendly to NorteAmericos fleeing the Federal Government. There are plenty of former Soviet bloc republics that won't care about your past either. Or Somalia, which doesn't actually have anything approaching functional government. Or you could pull a Bobby Fischer and hide out in the South Pacific. Parts of Mexico have no functioning government right now. There are plenty of places to be anonymous from the local government if you just had the stones to go there and try to survive. If you actually had the courage of your convictions instead of the unfocused hormonal rage of youth you would be gone by now.

Don't pin your hopes on New Hampshire; even if it goes totally teabag you wouldn't escape the consequences of the Constitution.

Libertarianism is politics for sociopaths, but you have to go where the sociopaths rule to truly live it.

ha,
ya gotta "love" how this guys douche factor is presented as slightly less than equal measure to his lack of understanding and basic decency .

On Ayn Rand: only people who don't have a fucking clue what Objectivism is about would draw the comparison between this guy's views and Rand's.