participant-3927, 5:10 AM, December 30
There is now a Disqus comment section under each article.
participant-4603, 11:26 PM, December 30
Minarchy and Capitalism aren’t synonymous, although I’ve met few non-Capitalist Minarchists. I’ve also met few Objectivists who are comfortable with big government. But should there be any limitation on the size of government when fulfilling its mandate? The mandate to protect life, liberty, and property. Don’t individuals bear some responsibility to protect their lives, liberty, and property too?
participant-3927, 11:43 PM, December 30
Let me ask you this. Suppose you want to make a Tetris game for Mac OS. Is there a limitation on amount of code you will write ?
participant-3927, 11:46 PM, December 30
If I told you that I made this game and it’s 20,000 lines of code, excluding third party libraries, what will you think?
participant-3927, 11:47 PM, December 30
The size is the function of the task. It can’t be done in 100 lines, and it can’t be done in 20,000 lines. In both cases there is an error in implementation
participant-3927, 1:04 AM, December 31
@participant-4603 And, about your other question: no, individuals have no responsibity to protect their property. Consider a feminine young woman: she should be able to live out her life without any consideration to learning fighting skills, or having a weapon. And she must feel completely safe. And many women live this way already in 1st world countries. Anything less than this is a failure of police.
participant-3927, 1:08 AM, December 31
I have once forgotten a saxophone in a bus, in Vancouver, Canada, and I have the next day recovered it in lost and found depot. A decade later, in New York, on a bus in Queens from Laguardia, I have forgotten a backpack with laptop. I recovered it later that day in lost and found depot. In a civilized city, and thanks to police work, there are hardly any criminals; there is general good will.
participant-3927, 1:14 AM, December 31
Another thing about size of government. Ayn Rand advocated voluntary taxation, as a check on government. If the government starts doing what it is not supposed to, the public won’t fund it. This also applies to size. If the government hires 10 people to do the job of 1, the public won’t fund it.
participant-3927, 1:15 AM, December 31
Also, if you make tax mandatory and it’s very large, the public will start finding legal ways not to pay it. But if it is small (enough to fund a small government), it will happily pay it.
participant-2236, 1:38 AM, December 31
Indeed, sometimes you sound like a reasonable man!
participant-3927, 2:07 AM, December 31
thanks, I can’t find a normal smile reaction, and have to make a whole comment for it :)
participant-3927, 7:08 AM, December 31
In this brilliant speech (2011), Justice Antonin Scalia shows that what sets a country apart is not words on paper, but the structure of the government (how words on paper are backed by it).
But then I tell them, if you think that a bill of rights is what sets us apart, you’re crazy. Every banana republic in the world has a bill of rights. Every President for life has a bill of rights. The bill of rights of the former “Evil Empire,” the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was much better than ours. I mean it, literally. It was much better. We guarantee freedom of speech and of the press – big deal. They guaranteed freedom of speech, of the press, of street demonstrations and protests; and anyone who is caught trying to suppress criticism of the government will be called to account. Whoa, that is wonderful stuff!
Of course – just words on paper, what our Framers would have called a parchment guarantee. And the reason is, that the real Constitution of the Soviet Union – you think of the word “constitution,” it doesn’t mean a “bill”; it means “structure”; [when] you say a person has a sound “constitution,” [he] has a sound “structure.” The real Constitution of the Soviet Union, which is what our Framers debated that whole summer in Philadelphia in 1787 – they didn’t talk about the Bill of Rights; that was an afterthought, wasn’t it? – that Constitution of the Soviet Union did not prevent the centralization of power, in one person or in one party. And when that happens the game is over; the Bill of Rights is just what our Framers would call a parchment guarantee.
So, the real key to the distinctiveness of America is the structure of our government.
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/antoninscaliaamericanexceptionalism.htm
participant-3927, 7:15 AM, December 31
So, imagine, you put the right words on paper, but you put people into the government, who, for example, are Woke. How do you think it will go, when it comes for this structure to defend the words. It’s not gonna work. Now, imagine, that instead of Woke, you will put people who’s dream is anarchism (they just temporarily settle for a government, as a necessary evil). They are not going to defend the words either.
participant-4603, 8:43 AM, December 31
So, there is a social contract, then? And should or must the government be the one to protect this feminine young woman? What about non-governmental solutions?
participant-3927, 3:24 PM, December 31
The government must protect her. There is no social contract in the conventional sense, but there is the agreement by all people in the country to delegate the monopoly on physical force to the government; which it is permitted to use only for retaliation. There is also general acceptance that an individual must abstain from using non-consensual physical force against another.
participant-3927, 3:28 PM, December 31
Notice that fraud is indirect use of physical force.
participant-3927, 3:33 PM, December 31
Private individuals can own guns , subject of permission from the government. They can exercise it in self-defence only, in situations when police is not around. E.g. in the 9/11 plane.
participant-4603, 3:55 PM, December 31
Ok, so is it okay to posit that the government must, by default, offer protection to the affirmative, feminine young woman?
And that if there are auxiliary non-governmental protection agencies, that’s fine—but there must, at a minimum, be an effective and competent one?
participant-3927, 3:58 PM, December 31
There cannot be private protection services, the example was for personal ownership of a gun, not an organized private defence force.
participant-3927, 3:58 PM, December 31
That’s because the government must have a
monopoly on force
participant-3927, 4:04 PM, December 31
It would be impossible to enforce this monopoly in the presence of gun owner coalitions. It will turn the country into a civil war zone.
participant-4603, 4:08 PM, December 31
So, this feminine young woman shouldn’t have access to bodyguards or private security in addition to there being, let’s call it, a blockchain layer one provided by the government?
Why shouldn’t her homeowners association or neighborhood watch association also offer different layers?
participant-3927, 4:11 PM, December 31
If police deems it necessary, it should appoint a policeman undercover to protect her. Perhaps there is reason to believe that she is a celebrity target (e.g. Taylor Swift).
participant-3927, 4:15 PM, December 31
As long as the neighborhood watch does not challenge the government’s monopoly on force it’s ok. It must be extremely low key.
participant-3927, 4:18 PM, December 31
But it’s also unnecessary. If criminals can be strolling the streets of a neighbourhood, it’s a failure of police. These situations don’t exist in a peaceful stable society.
participant-3927, 4:20 PM, December 31
In Vancouver, I can walk through any housing community, there are no gates , no locks.
participant-3927, 4:23 PM, December 31
Did you read my article on Islam ? @participant-4603
participant-4603, 8:23 PM, December 31
No, not yet.
participant-4603, 8:25 PM, December 31
I see what you mean. So, free-market solutions are okay, provided they are in concert with the government’s monopoly and do not step on their toes.
But this is only true for the basic services that the government should or must provide, and nothing else.
participant-3927, 8:28 PM, December 31
Correct
participant-3927, 4:15 AM, January 5
The opening of my next article:
The first question anyone asks about creating a new state is, “Where will it be?” To answer this, let’s heed the advice given to entrepreneurs: find someone with a problem and get in front of him with a solution.
The first-world countries do not have a pressing problem. Although they have not achieved the level of freedom that Objectivists advocate, their people are frogs in slowly heated water—unaware of the danger until it is too late, too complacent to support any radical changes.
But things are not so dire in dire places. Here, locals and neighboring states may be more inclined to support the formation of a new state if it helps resolve regional tensions.
To illustrate this approach, consider one such troubled region: the Cyprus buffer zone. What if, instead of a no man’s land, it became a vibrant little country—let’s call it Cypria?
participant-3927, 6:29 PM, January 5
Critique of Prospera:
Past libertarian initiatives have failed to learn that local support is paramount. The most recent case is Prospera, founded on the Honduran island of Roatan. It failed to gain local support, for it restricted entry to locals unless they incorporated a company in Prospera. This, among other factors, led to the repeal of the ZEDE law by the Honduran government, the law that had granted Prospera its Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status.
But Prospera is not a gateway community, where everything, including the roads, is privately owned by a corporation. The governing body of Prospera, the Prospera Authority, does not own the entire territory; it only enforces a legal framework. This framework cannot set arbitrary rules, and must be consistent with the protection of individual rights, one of which is the right of movement through non-private territory.
Besides the cost of $1000 per year, which most locals cannot afford, incorporating in Prospera would place a reporting and accounting burden on the incorporator–burdens that are nonsensical to someone who wants to walk through the region, enjoy the sights, or set up a hot dog stand. Isn’t this place supposed to be about freedom and zero regulations?
Imagine a hypothetical scenario where the U.S. government makes some public roads and parks inaccessible to people who don’t pay an extra $10,000 tax per year. Now, place this experiment in a region where most locals cannot afford the tax, making them accessible only to outsiders. Indeed, why wouldn’t it fail?
participant-3927, 6:41 PM, January 5
I plan to interview Michael Strong this Friday or the next. He said he’s some kind of investor into Prospera. Do you have question suggestion I can ask him?
participant-3927, 6:43 PM, January 5
I have no information about it. I was not involved in any way. Feel free to share.
participant-3927, 6:51 PM, January 5
Also, @participant-4603 would you like to join the session with Michael Strong as a 2nd guest?