Moderator Action: Boundless and Kochman, stop it please. "Learn to read" is fairly trollish but as usual, don't respond to it with your own troll. Fair warning.
At what point did we become "unsustainable?"
- Thread starter amadeus
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amadeus
Apply directly to the forehead
I've been busy the last few days dealing with contract stuff so I've missed most of the thread.
Second, what is "greed" and who is greedy? I see "greed" as a pejorative meaning "someone else who wants more than I do."
First, I've never heard this narrative from any libertarian; the finiteness of resources is why we have economics. The idea of a society absent scarcity is found much more commonly in Marxism than libertarianism.
Second, what is "greed" and who is greedy? I see "greed" as a pejorative meaning "someone else who wants more than I do."
Yeah, it's not so much an 'infinite' vibe that we get. It's more of a "oh, it'll work out optimally (vs. any intervention), so don't worry about the macro-effects".
I think greed here is a perjorative, because it implies that the person "wants more than I have", but is also willing to harm others in the process of getting it.
I think greed here is a perjorative, because it implies that the person "wants more than I have", but is also willing to harm others in the process of getting it.
JohnRM
Don't make me destroy you
Circa 8,000 BC
The moment a small group of human beings in several locations, around the globe, decided that it was a good idea to destroy everything in their path that did not increase human population and comfort. Once they destroyed everything in their own little area, they went to their neighbors' and destroyed them. This process has been ongoing ever since. At some point, it WILL end. Whether or not there is anything left is up to us.
The moment a small group of human beings in several locations, around the globe, decided that it was a good idea to destroy everything in their path that did not increase human population and comfort. Once they destroyed everything in their own little area, they went to their neighbors' and destroyed them. This process has been ongoing ever since. At some point, it WILL end. Whether or not there is anything left is up to us.
GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
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Interestingly, that might have been to start cultivating breeding stocks for alcohol fermentation.
Boundless
Deity
New Scientist disagrees. The latest issue argues we will still be here in 100,000 years...
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Sorry it took me so long to get back to this 
However, since free market rules is the topic you refer to, in the Middle Ages European merchants created their own law entirely outside the jurisdiction of the state. The courts didn't enforce their verdicts but everyone obeyed them because, if they didn't, people would refuse to deal with them. The same rules still apply to diamond cutters today. Unfortunately, the state eventually stamped it out for most other businesses.
What the state does is two-fold. First it makes rules to discriminate against small companies and private individuals in favour of the wealthy and well-connected. Examples include regulations banning a guy with a car from becoming a taxi-owner and preventing a poor woman from cutting hair without an expensive "training" course.
Secondly, it makes contracts vastly more expensive since they have to be written by expensive lawyers and litigated in even more expensive state courts.
Similarly, when tires suddenly started blowing on Ford SUVs (a fact discovered by private insurance companies, BTW), Ford and Bridgestone worked together to resolve the problem and had it fixed before the bloviating demagogues even realized that they had something to bloviate over. But, natch, bloviate they did.
Private industry lives and dies on their reputation. If pollution is considered an acceptable price to pay for development, as it is in poor countries, then companies will dump waste. As countries get richer, it becomes unacceptable so companies stop. They want to be good corporate citizens. It's worth a lot to the bottom line.
This idea that there is something magical about the state is simply ludicrous. Law existed before the state and state-free law still exists today. As for the government injustice system, it has nothing to do with "supplying rules". It exists to make jobs for parasites. What it does to private citizens, especially the poor, is far more egregious than what it does to companies.
However, since free market rules is the topic you refer to, in the Middle Ages European merchants created their own law entirely outside the jurisdiction of the state. The courts didn't enforce their verdicts but everyone obeyed them because, if they didn't, people would refuse to deal with them. The same rules still apply to diamond cutters today. Unfortunately, the state eventually stamped it out for most other businesses.
What the state does is two-fold. First it makes rules to discriminate against small companies and private individuals in favour of the wealthy and well-connected. Examples include regulations banning a guy with a car from becoming a taxi-owner and preventing a poor woman from cutting hair without an expensive "training" course.
Secondly, it makes contracts vastly more expensive since they have to be written by expensive lawyers and litigated in even more expensive state courts.
Why did Tylenol spend millions of dollars poison-proofing their products? Not because the state forced them. After all, it wasn't at fault for the outbreak of deaths from poisoned product. The reason is simple: reputation. Tylenol wanted people to know that they could trust them. When they invented poison-proof packaging, their competitors copied them - despite the additional costs.
Similarly, when tires suddenly started blowing on Ford SUVs (a fact discovered by private insurance companies, BTW), Ford and Bridgestone worked together to resolve the problem and had it fixed before the bloviating demagogues even realized that they had something to bloviate over. But, natch, bloviate they did.
Private industry lives and dies on their reputation. If pollution is considered an acceptable price to pay for development, as it is in poor countries, then companies will dump waste. As countries get richer, it becomes unacceptable so companies stop. They want to be good corporate citizens. It's worth a lot to the bottom line.
Obviously some people would be worse off without the state. Specifically those who use it to exploit their fellow man - banksters, politicians, bureaucrats, the military industrial complex, lawyers, etc. Ordinary people would all be far better off within a year.
The world's largest expressway system is almost entirely privately funded and operated. It didn't exist 20 years ago and now is bigger than that of the US or the entire EU. There are plenty of other examples around the world and throughout time.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Sumer was before Babylon, which fairly represents the general trend in history. The more imagined the community, the more you need abstract law to govern your people. The more you need abstract law, the more you need an enforcement mechanism. You like to call that the state. Others call it a social contract. It's government none the less.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Nonsense from one end to the other. The English Common Law did not derive from either Babylon or Sumeria. And of course law requires an enforcement mechanism. What it does not require is goons to make up the law and goons to enforce it. You may recall that the question was how the free market could exist without goons making up the rules. As I pointed out (and you ignored) ostracism is more than sufficient for this purpose.
WTH do you mean by "abstract law" anyway?
Actual attempts to refute Abegweit's posts mght be interesting. And no, he does not think government is bad. Hint government is not a synonym for state. The state is founded on lies. Just government is not.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Laws set in stone with universal, impersonal legislation rather than customs of some tribe or "law" as defined by someone not subject to law, making it up on the spot to deal with that specific, personal instance and nothing else.
Anyway to the top part...
How can I explain this... I was using a historical example to remind us what happens when society grows beyond the earliest stages of subsistence in a larger civilization, and therefore why we know that "the state" existed prior to law. The original state was in effect the guy who could organize society by force and rule with effective impunity. Gilgamesh basically, representing what actually happened--a might-makes-right situation in which one guy ruled a small enough city that he could arbitrarily enforce customs. There was no law. Law came later as the state got bigger and they needed to codify things to maintain order and make sure those the king would later delegate power to would do things effectively rather than arbitrarily and therefore hurting his rule. England common law, coming a good 3000+ years later, of course
Individual liberty is of course a modern concept rooted in centuries of evolving law and concurrent philosophy. The community came first, inequality and the state came second, law came third, and the individual as a self-governing, self-sovereign individual came a lot later.
I'm not disagreeing we can't have a freer, more peaceful society, and that we can't move toward less governance as history moves on, but let's make sure our arguments aren't constructed from modern myth.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Oh I see. Abstract Law is what generally is referred to as Natural Law. Thomas Aquinas, like most classical scholars, thought that Law was something to be discovered rather than something to be made. I like to call it Free Market Law because the free market is the way that Natural Law is discovered.
Nonsense. The Law existed before the State. The State cannot create anything. On the contrary, its purpose is to destroy everything decent and replace it with theft. State law does not provide any recompense to the victims of crime. Instead, it steals from third parties and claims that theft is justice. Sick.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Well if you're going to make things up you can never lose an argument. I'll give you that much 
Natural law is, of course, different from the rule of law as defined by abstract legislation, and free markets are hard to define, but the fundamental rules of economics only really serve the times they are created or "discovered" for. They aren't natural law but philosophical presuppositions that happen to work often enough that we use 'em anyway.
And of course the idea that the state cannot create anything realllllllly stretches the meaning of "create". I suppose you could say the people in the state are doing all the creation, including the organization necessary to aggregate that many people into collective actions of creation. But then all the state's "destruction" and "theft" is done by individuals and not the state anyway. In fact if that's your argument the state does not even exist. But if it does exist of course it can create.
Unless you're a complete back-to-the-wilderness anarchist, in which case I could see how you would argue anything short of naked, tribal, isolated, wild-man is a distortion of the true nature of people.
Natural law is, of course, different from the rule of law as defined by abstract legislation, and free markets are hard to define, but the fundamental rules of economics only really serve the times they are created or "discovered" for. They aren't natural law but philosophical presuppositions that happen to work often enough that we use 'em anyway.
And of course the idea that the state cannot create anything realllllllly stretches the meaning of "create". I suppose you could say the people in the state are doing all the creation, including the organization necessary to aggregate that many people into collective actions of creation. But then all the state's "destruction" and "theft" is done by individuals and not the state anyway. In fact if that's your argument the state does not even exist. But if it does exist of course it can create.
Unless you're a complete back-to-the-wilderness anarchist, in which case I could see how you would argue anything short of naked, tribal, isolated, wild-man is a distortion of the true nature of people.
Abegweit
Anarchist trader
Let's cut to the chase. The only thing that the state ever does is to steal, to control and to kill. Yes, indeed, this done for the individuals who control it.Well if you're going to make things up you can never lose an argument. I'll give you that much
Natural law is, of course, different from the rule of law as defined by abstract legislation, and free markets are hard to define, but the fundamental rules of economics only really serve the times they are created or "discovered" for. They aren't natural law but philosophical presuppositions that happen to work often enough that we use 'em anyway.
And of course the idea that the state cannot create anything realllllllly stretches the meaning of "create". I suppose you could say the people in the state are doing all the creation, including the organization necessary to aggregate that many people into collective actions of creation. But then all the state's "destruction" and "theft" is done by individuals and not the state anyway. In fact if that's your argument the state does not even exist. But if it does exist of course it can create.
Unless you're a complete back-to-the-wilderness anarchist, in which case I could see how you would argue anything short of naked, tribal, isolated, wild-man is a distortion of the true nature of people.
Oh. And it creates nothing. Other than theft, control and death. Give me one example where this instrument of power has ever done anything for the common people. Hint: the common people do not have power.
I guess the OP needs to help us define "unsustainable".
Is it:
- driving towards a cliff?
- passing the point where the car cannot be prevented from going over the cliff?
- once the car has left the lip of the cliff?
- hitting the valley below?
To me, the time to start raising alarms is when the predicted course of the vehicle is towards a cliff. Unless there's a reasonable gameplan to redirect the car, the situation becomes increasingly serious with each second the foot is on the accelerator.
Is it:
- driving towards a cliff?
- passing the point where the car cannot be prevented from going over the cliff?
- once the car has left the lip of the cliff?
- hitting the valley below?
To me, the time to start raising alarms is when the predicted course of the vehicle is towards a cliff. Unless there's a reasonable gameplan to redirect the car, the situation becomes increasingly serious with each second the foot is on the accelerator.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
"Let's cut to the chase" means "let's go back to my worldview and ignore evidence and any logic that contradicts my feelings". Again
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