How many people understand the US Constitution?

DiogenesTheWiser said:

I'm saying that without a government, gang, or some source of power legitimizing claims to property ownership, the issue would be moot. In other words, property ownership would not carry the same value.

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There are other ways to protect property than via a permanent central authority.

Would you agree ?

DiogenesTheWiser said:

The anthropologist Clifford Geertz studied the phenomenon of cock fighting in Bali and produced a lengthy study of his work about the culture of the Balinese cock fight. Males there groomed their cocks for years and years before putting them into a fight. They carried their cocks around with them, nurtured their cocks, stroke them, and talked to their cocks. then the state decided it was time to shut down the cock fights citing animal cruelty standards and the like, but the Balinese people resisted for years, and held their cock fights regardless.

Reason was because the cock symbolized something more important for Balinese males. Their cock was their cock!

Similarly, American gun lovers are merely showing off their cocks when they strut around with their assault rifles and pistols.

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That's not true.

I'm sure for some it is but not all.

I carry every day. I own an ar15. I don't see the point of carrying an ar or ak into stores. Maybe a political statement. I say if you don't use your rights you will lose them. I will however say that I don't think its a great idea to do what some of these people do. Carry guns like that into stores and around communities just to get a rile out of a cop just to film it.

Not all people that carry want to be a cowboy, hero or are pussies. You have to remember where some of us live and how we were raised. I don't have the convenience of the police or ambulance being minutes away. Growing up and now it is hours sometimes for response times. Even if it were minutes I will not rely on police to luckily be there when they are needed.

I can also assure you its not about wanting to kill someone either. Two times, a third possibly, I was in a situation where I could've killed someone and been in the legal right to do so. I didn't.

Some of us are not looking for a conflict or to be a hero. The only thing I want is, if the situation requires, to be able to get myself and family away from a dangerous person or situation.

Rob Roy said:

There are other ways to protect property than via a permanent central authority.

Would you agree ?

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But you're missing the point that property ownership is only made possible by the existence of some power source, government or gang or whathaveyou that recognizes that property A belongs to person A and so forth and so on.

DiogenesTheWiser said:

Your characterization of gov. is not representative of the sum total of all forms of government. Governments, for example, bestow rights upon people...rights that would not exist without government. For example, property rights.

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Where you use the term "rights" (above) I would have said privileges.

DiogenesTheWiser said:

But you're missing the point that property ownership is only made possible by the existence of some power source, government or gang or whathaveyou that recognizes that property A belongs to person A and so forth and so on.

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No, I am disagreeing that is the only way property can exist. I think you are not considering that mutual cooperation, absent a central authority is a possibility.

Rob Roy said:

No, I am disagreeing that is the only way property can exist. I think you are not considering that mutual cooperation, absent a central authority is a possibility.

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How do you know that mutual coop would exist sans government? What examples do you have to go on?

Right and privilege are synonymous. I don't see how there's much difference in either term, so why's it important to say "privileges" rather than "rights"?

DiogenesTheWiser said:

How do you know that mutual coop would exist sans government? What examples do you have to go on?

Right and privilege are synonymous. I don't see how there's much difference in either term, so why's it important to say "privileges" rather than "rights"?

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I'm pretty sure there are many people on this very website who have made consensual exchanges of "illegal substances" where government wasn't needed or wanted and the exchange was honorable.

Do I really need to get into the second question ?

Rob Roy said:

I'm pretty sure there are many people on this very website who have made consensual exchanges of "illegal substances" where government wasn't needed or wanted and the exchange was honorable.

Do I really need to get into the second question ?

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But those exchanges on the black market occurred as a government exists, and not all of those black market exchanges are honorable.

Rob Roy said:

I'm pretty sure there are many people on this very website who have made consensual exchanges of "illegal substances" where government wasn't needed or wanted and the exchange was honorable.

Do I really need to get into the second question ?

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Why do you not want to answer the second question. I don't understand why it's important for you to characterize "rights" as "privileges" when the terms mean the same thing.

Here's a suggestion that might speed things up @Rob Roy :

Why don't you post a thread and in it you state your best argument (hopefully with citations) for no government. I'll make an argument in a separate thread for government. Then we can poke holes in each.

What'dya say? Let's set a deadline, like Friday or something and we create our threads at the same time.

DiogenesTheWiser said:

But those exchanges on the black market occurred as a government exists, and not all of those black market exchanges are honorable.

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One thing that we do know, which is a constant. You can't have something which uses coercion systemically be the standard and then accept its claim that it exists to protect people from coercion.

So, while not all free market exchanges are honorable, it could be said that NO coercion based government can possibly be honorable if coercion is a dishonorable thing. (It is)

Rob Roy said:

I ask questions that others can't answer without revealing their duplicity.

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tell us more about how a black person buying lunch is totally "initiating force" like slavery, rape, and theft.

DiogenesTheWiser said:

Why do you not want to answer the second question. I don't understand why it's important for you to characterize "rights" as "privileges" when the terms mean the same thing.

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I think of a privilege as something another person(s) grants you. You want to borrow my car, I loan it to you. That's a privilege, because I granted it to you.

If I DIDN'T want to grant you the privilege of using something which belongs to me, I would have been exercising a property right, because I own the car and can say no to your request.

Rob Roy said:

consensual exchanges

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with 11 year olds?

@tampee

Rob Roy said:

I think of a privilege as something another person(s) grants you. You want to borrow my car, I loan it to you. That's a privilege, because I granted it to you.

If I DIDN'T want to grant you the privilege of using something which belongs to me, I would have been exercising a property right, because I own the car and can say no to your request.

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So this is why I've complained of equivocation.

Care to write up your best argument, with sources, post them in a new thread and I do the same? Feel free to propose more rules or restrictions, but given you're an anarchist, I'm assuming you'd have none.

UncleBuck said:

tell us more about how a black person buying lunch is totally "initiating force" like slavery, rape, and theft.

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You seem focused on race in a conversation about property rights. That's odd.

DiogenesTheWiser said:

Here's a suggestion that might speed things up @Rob Roy :

Why don't you post a thread and in it you state your best argument (hopefully with citations) for no government. I'll make an argument in a separate thread for government. Then we can poke holes in each.

What'dya say? Let's set a deadline, like Friday or something and we create our threads at the same time.

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I'll make an argument right here.

Government is illegitimate in that it purports to have rights which no person has. If government is a thing which consists of people, my argument is unassailable, since you cannot aggregate a sum of zeroes and arrive at anything other than zero.

Rob Roy said:

You seem focused on race in a conversation about property rights. That's odd.

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no, civil rights is about equal rights for everyone, regardless of race. you even called this debate a debate about civil rights just a day or two ago.

Rob Roy said:

By your statement, I think you may have concluded that "civil rights" means equal rights.

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see?

now that it exposes your stance for the pure, unadulterated racial segregation that it is, you are trying to make it be about something else.

it's not though.

ordering lunch while black is not "initiating force" you dumb racist retard.

Rob Roy said:

I'll make an argument right here.

Government is illegitimate in that it purports to have rights which no person has. If government is a thing which consists of people, my argument is unassailable, since you cannot aggregate a sum of zeroes and arrive at anything other than zero.

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you're just bitter because the government prosecuted you for inappropriately touching that 11 year old boy who you claimed totally consented.

pedophile.