This is one of the most tiresome and mendacious arguments of the statist. There is no such thing as a society without theft and murder. It does not follow that we have should therefore abandon the fight against these evils. The statist starts with the false claim that state=government when it is in fact the opposite of righteous government; it is nothing more than a bunch of goons who steal from decent folk. Somehow the statist pretend that theft is government; it is not.
Righteous government? I thought it was you arguing against the government
That being said, what the heck kind of definition of state are you using?!
I normally use this as the definition of state: A state is an entity that occupies a definite geographic area, has a certain culture, people, language history and the like. The term state is used to distinguish a certain territory from another one based on these factors. It is an independent and sovereign entity that can be distinguished from the other states and has certain administrative tasks to be carried out for its proper functioning. These administrative tasks are carried out by the government. This entity has the right to exercise power over the territory and the people. State is the territory in which the government can practice its authority. A state is like an organization and the government is like the management team.
While it is indeed true that there is no example of a modern society which has existed for any period of time without the goon squads taking over, there are certainly are examples many examples of places which have existed with Free Market law, without state Courts, without police and without prisons (there's two more French words for you - police and prison). In fact, there is nothing that the state does where you cannot point to an example of the Free Market performing the same function better.
Citation is required here.
Statist ignorance of history is breathtaking in its scope.
Of course, that was its purpose. It is still its purpose today. The difference between then and now is that the scope of the Common Law has been been narrowed over the centuries from the whole of the Law into the domain of disputes over contracts. For a reference, I would start with Bruce Benson's
The Enterprise of Law. He describes many free market legal systems, including that of Medieval England.
Here is David Friedman on Iceland. Note well, that the Common Law is far older than England; it is part of the heritage of all Germania including Iceland. It was pretty destroyed in Germany proper by Napoleon and Bismark. My understanding, although I know little about it, is that it has best survived in Switzerland.
Is that all?
Is Iceland, a small island, in anyway similiar to US today?
Today, without a proper institution of Law Enforcement, a criminal may be able to elude the law for all eternity.
Let me repeat the point. The purpose of the state is enable the powerful to steal (not leech) from the powerless. There was a time when rich and powerful were pretty much synonymous but one of the effects of the modern democratic state has been to blur the lines between powerful and powerless. The rich are not necessarily the powerful (bureaucrats and politicians, especially the goon squads, are typically more powerful than those who are simply rich) but you can be darn sure that the poor do not qualify.
Yawn. Repeating the point over and over again does not make right.
Of course. The classical liberals recognized that only in liberty is it possible for the powerful and the powerless to be equal in stature before the law. The modern "liberal" somehow believes that he can use the tools of oppression to protect the oppressed. Each time he tries, he invariably fails. That does not stop him from redoubling his efforts and imposing yet more rules and yet more regulation on decent folk. Each time, his rules turn out to favour the insiders and his rules lead to crises which cause the system to break down. The crises and breakdowns only prove to him that he must build yet more bureaucracy to impose yet more control over decent folk. That is the true mark of a fanatic.
Of course you can't protect the "oppressed" using the law, you are supposed to be equal before it.
I'm with you that
Ever notice how crises invariably happen in industries which are heavily regulated like energy, finance, transportation, and health care? In contrast, those which are relatively free like housing, clothing and food generally work smoothly and adapt rapidly and invisibly to new conditions. Furthermore, prices slowly decline over time in these industries whereas in the former group they rise endlessly. In industries which have been completely taken over by the state, nothing works and everything takes years to happen. The injustice system is the most obvious example.
Housing Crisis. Now that we eliminated one of your point, now I believe it is time to address your other points. Textile Industry in America would have failed if there was no federal government to establish tariffs in order to protect the fledgeling industry against the British industry.
I would also guess that prices of energy such as fossil fuels will increase because fossil fuels are a finite resource
.
As for the rest of them, meh, agreed. Although I know that many people will disagree with you there.
As for food, well, food's food, the oldest industry in the history of the world. Draughts and freaks of weather have more to impact that than state control will ever have.
Crap. Truth and beauty, justice and freedom, are eternal values. They do not change with time. Anyway, my point was not so much that Law never changes; it does. Rather it was that, for the Law to be just, it must be comprehensible. The modern system with millions of lines of legislation and regulation is inherently unjust. You can be assured that every single one of those lines was written to benefit some special interest group. E.g. someone with power
Truth, beauty, and justice may be eternal values, but freedom is not. In fact, people's definition of truth, beauty, and justice change over time. As for justice, The British Common Law allowed for Tiral by Combat with a quarterstaff. As for beauty, people have widely differing definition of beauty. You may think that stoneage cave drawing might be bautiful, while I would think it to be mere graffiti art.
Oh Good Lord. God save me from the delusional notion that voting changes anything. In the last US election, the vast majority of the citizenry was against the bankster bailouts but all of the members of the political class wanted to steal trillions of dollars from ordinary people and give it to their billionaire cronies. This includes, just to name a few: the sitting President, both Presidential candidates, the leaders of the House and Senate among others. So it happened. As I recall Nancy Pelosi admitted that her constituents were a thousand to one against the heist. She still voted for it.
You must admit, it did change something.
Jokes aside, do you have a statistic on how your average joe voters thought about the supposed "heist?" Or is the statistic that 97 % of statistics are made up on the spot true?
As for this boner: "Who decides the outcome of a trial? Who can declare somebody guilty as a jury"?, there is the little concept of "voir dire", yet another French term with the meaning that no one serves who is not a willing pawn of the system. There was a time - not too long ago actually - when juries were instructed that they had the right to repudiate the law if they considered the law to be unjust. And they did. Today a defence attorney who dares to point this out is liable to be cited for Contempt of Court.
First of all, what the heck is up with you and France? It doesn't help you with your arguement at all, and in fact, it is getting rather annoying.
As for juries repudiating the law I can't think of any cases in which they should repudiate the law. Can you? I need some examples here.
Actually people in general are neither good nor evil but rather a complex mixture of both, combined with a very strong capacity to believe that what is in their own self-interest is also in the common good.
Of course what is in their self-interest is for the common good, a state is merely a group of individuals anyways.
This being said, the proposition that people are fundamentally scum is a odd defence of a system which places one person in a position of power over another.
The entire point of American republican system of government is checks and balances, so that nobody actually holds full power.
And did I claim that everyone's scum? No, I think your arguement was too full of ludicrous adjectives that I thought you were claiming that everyone was scum.
That being said, good arguement here. I'll give you a B+.
