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Voluntaryist
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Post by Voluntaryist »

Personally Im against time limits, since obviously both Surlethe and I are having IRL situations that are slowing us down.

Actually, a time limit might be ok if it was generous, like 10 days or something.

What do you think about a 10 day deadline Surlethe?
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Post by Ghost Rider »

Voluntaryist wrote:Personally Im against time limits, since obviously both Surlethe and I are having IRL situations that are slowing us down.

Actually, a time limit might be ok if it was generous, like 10 days or something.

What do you think about a 10 day deadline Surlethe?
Not your choice, given that Mike makes the fucking rules you ignorant twat.

If he wants it sped up because you are dragging your fucking feet, you either keep up or bow the fuck out.
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Post by TC Pilot »

Surlethe: 2 Voluntaryist: 0
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

Oh, snap!
Surlethe wrote:This is an amazing strawman. I have stuck to the dictionary definition of government, unlike you. In the very quote above this, I had explained why anarcho-libertarianism is utopian, which you then conveniently ignored. I nowhere asserted that all voluntary interactions are unrealistic (and the fact you think I did shows that you do not completely comprehend my position). You have nowhere shown that voluntaryism is stable and thus won't give rise to infringements on personal prerogative anyway. Finally, you shift the burden of proof: the onus is on you to show why the assumptions behind the free-market idealisation are in fact realistic.

Let us examine your record. You fail to establish the truth of the idealised free market assumptions. You continue to make false general claims about 'government', hastily generalizing from a few systems of government and your simplistic notions about these government systems. You continue to presume the truth of idealised free-market assumptions. You ignore the real-world examples of anarchy, wherein tribalism and warlordism prevail. You attempt to redefine "government" to suit your argument. You've no evidence for your position. You have, in short, no valid argument to support your contention that anarcho-libertarianism produces a superior society.
You could stand on just this alone, its like the cherry on the ice cream. Quick question, though; Can we avoid making massively nested posts? I don't know what the alternative is, but I'm sure there is one.

Oh, and V?
I challenge you to construct a realistic voluntary society which does not eventually result in a monopoly on force.
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Ah... catharsis.
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Post by Darth Servo »

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Oh, and V?
I challenge you to construct a realistic voluntary society which does not eventually result in a monopoly on force.
<Valley-tard>
It will because free markets are perfect, always produce the best outcome, never fail, because...becuase...because I say so!!!
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Post by Zixinus »

Personally I am awed that Surlethe didn't cuss the Volly with every sentance.

[snip picture]

Ah... catharsis.
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Post by Kodiak »

So, to clarify: Is there now a time limit on responses in the debate?
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Post by Pint0 Xtreme »

Voluntaryist wrote:Oh that’s rich. What is causing all the war today, for example? Free markets, or governments? Do automobile makers slaughter each other, or do government militaries slaughter each other?
I was particularly awed by the idiocy of this little gem. How much intellectual capacity does one need to understand that governments simultaneously cause and prevent conflicts; how hard is it to conceive of the notion that governments keep automobile makers from attacking each other in an anarchic society? Of all the claims he makes, I find this one quite contemptible. What kind of fools does he take us for?
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Post by Zixinus »

What kind of fools does he take us for?
My guess that he sprouted this bullshit on a board filled with more gullible people and got a small hoard of followers and he now expects it to work here as well.
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Post by Surlethe »

If anybody has any criticism of my points or how I addressed Voluntaryist's arguments, I would appreciate that.
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Post by Graeme Dice »

Surlethe wrote:If anybody has any criticism of my points or how I addressed Voluntaryist's arguments, I would appreciate that.
You could have smashed him even more thoroughly over his idiotic "North Korea has more government than South Korea, therefore government is obviously bad." claim. All it takes is to point out one of the countless counterexamples worldwide.
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Post by Darth Wong »

Precisely how does he determine that North Korea has "more" government than South Korea? What method does he use to measure quantity of government? Simply counting personnel, including military personnel? Canada, by virtue of having a miniscule military, must surely have very little government according to that standard.
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Post by The Vortex Empire »

Darth Wong wrote:Precisely how does he determine that North Korea has "more" government than South Korea? What method does he use to measure quantity of government? Simply counting personnel, including military personnel? Canada, by virtue of having a miniscule military, must surely have very little government according to that standard.
I think when he says "more" government, he means a government with more control over the populace. He doesn't seem to realize that government is not a ruler, there either is or is not a government.
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Post by Darth Wong »

The Vortex Empire wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:Precisely how does he determine that North Korea has "more" government than South Korea? What method does he use to measure quantity of government? Simply counting personnel, including military personnel? Canada, by virtue of having a miniscule military, must surely have very little government according to that standard.
I think when he says "more" government, he means a government with more control over the populace. He doesn't seem to realize that government is not a ruler, there either is or is not a government.
And how does he measure the amount of control? Does he not give a damn what type of control it is? If there are a hundred regulations governing telecommunications, is that "more" or "less" control than one regulation governing who you may or may not have sex with? Do laws stipulating the right of individual citizens to vote in free elections represent more government, or less government? And does he make no allowances whatsoever for beneficial aspects of government?

See, I don't think he has any idea how to determine how much government a country has. If he did, he should be able to show us his detailed method for determining the amount of government a country has. Then, we could take this method ourselves and use it to evaluate other countries, like the US, Switzerland, Canada, France, Russia, Somalia, etc.

No, he simply makes a gut-level call as to how much government a country has, and then uses that completely subjective, meaningless pseudo-assessment as the basis for numerous arguments.

If you asked him to describe his method for determining how much government a country has, he would probably give something completely half-assed, and then when you applied it to a different country to come up with a result he doesn't like, he would simply add various extra conditions onto his method: one extra condition for each example you bring up, until it's a hash of disclaimers and special exemptions.
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Post by Darth Wong »

I wonder how Volly would try to spin something like the destruction of the Atlantic cod fishery, on Canada's eastern coast. After decades of overfishing Atlantic cod almost to the point of extinction, Canadian fishermen and fishing companies angrily raged at the federal government for not stopping them from destroying the fishery. The fact is that "free market competition" had no real mechanism to prevent this: while a monopolist would have recognized the long-term implications of overfishing and reduced yields to prevent the destruction of the fishery, competing fishermen and fishing companies knew that if they unilaterally reduced their own yield, others would simply take up the slack and steal their profits.

There was simply no realistic way to prevent the destruction of the cod fishery without government regulation (including the use of police and military force, which eventually became necessary in order to stop Spanish fishing vessels with gigantic 30 mile trawling nets), even though the preservation of the fishery was to the long-term benefit of everyone involved.
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Post by Rogue 9 »

Darth Wong wrote:And does he make no allowances whatsoever for beneficial aspects of government?
I don't presume to speak for him, but I've debated several people with very similar views, and it comes down to this: Anarchocapitalists do not make any allowances for the beneficial aspects of government, because as they see it, all aspects of government are funded by theft, and are therefore detrimental no matter what use the tax proceeds are being put to. It's an exceedingly simplistic mindset, but if you don't keep this in mind when debating anarchocapitalism, you're not going to comprehend where they're coming from a lot of the time.
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Post by Darth Wong »

Rogue 9 wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:And does he make no allowances whatsoever for beneficial aspects of government?
I don't presume to speak for him, but I've debated several people with very similar views, and it comes down to this: Anarchocapitalists do not make any allowances for the beneficial aspects of government, because as they see it, all aspects of government are funded by theft, and are therefore detrimental no matter what use the tax proceeds are being put to. It's an exceedingly simplistic mindset, but if you don't keep this in mind when debating anarchocapitalism, you're not going to comprehend where they're coming from a lot of the time.
And that goes back to what I said earlier, about how they are so stupid and arrogant that they honestly believe they earned every dollar all on their own, with no help whatsoever from society.
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Post by Mayabird »

Darth Wong wrote:I wonder how Volly would try to spin something like the destruction of the Atlantic cod fishery, on Canada's eastern coast. After decades of overfishing Atlantic cod almost to the point of extinction, Canadian fishermen and fishing companies angrily raged at the federal government for not stopping them from destroying the fishery. The fact is that "free market competition" had no real mechanism to prevent this: while a monopolist would have recognized the long-term implications of overfishing and reduced yields to prevent the destruction of the fishery, competing fishermen and fishing companies knew that if they unilaterally reduced their own yield, others would simply take up the slack and steal their profits.

There was simply no realistic way to prevent the destruction of the cod fishery without government regulation (including the use of police and military force, which eventually became necessary in order to stop Spanish fishing vessels with gigantic 30 mile trawling nets), even though the preservation of the fishery was to the long-term benefit of everyone involved.
Actually, Iceland's cod fisheries are privately managed, with different fishing fleets monitoring and managing different schools of fish. Since they "own" the schools instead of just taking them from the commons, they do prevent the destruction of the fishery.

HOWEVER, and this is the part that Volleyball wouldn't note, is that it only resulted after the Cod Wars between Iceland and Britain (which involved Royal Navy and Icelandic Coast Guard ships ramming each other, cutting each other's fishing nets, and a potato gun powerful enough to disable said cutting gear, since two NATO members couldn't exactly shoot bullets at each other - it's actually pretty hilarious, and Marina of course has the book on it), and that the fishing fleets are protected by the Icelandic coast guard (the only branch of their military) which prevents outside groups from coming and taking the managed fish.
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Post by CaptainChewbacca »

So, is there now an official countdown/time limit for V's next post?
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Post by Ghost Rider »

Given that Mike hasn't set one?

I kind of doubt that. He expressed a complaint, and Mike is never one to go "Oh, and that meant I wanted you to read my mind.".

So, let Volly move at his glacial pace. It's not as if we'll see anything new from the retard.
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Post by Darth Wong »

Mayabird wrote:
Darth Wong wrote:I wonder how Volly would try to spin something like the destruction of the Atlantic cod fishery, on Canada's eastern coast. After decades of overfishing Atlantic cod almost to the point of extinction, Canadian fishermen and fishing companies angrily raged at the federal government for not stopping them from destroying the fishery. The fact is that "free market competition" had no real mechanism to prevent this: while a monopolist would have recognized the long-term implications of overfishing and reduced yields to prevent the destruction of the fishery, competing fishermen and fishing companies knew that if they unilaterally reduced their own yield, others would simply take up the slack and steal their profits.

There was simply no realistic way to prevent the destruction of the cod fishery without government regulation (including the use of police and military force, which eventually became necessary in order to stop Spanish fishing vessels with gigantic 30 mile trawling nets), even though the preservation of the fishery was to the long-term benefit of everyone involved.
Actually, Iceland's cod fisheries are privately managed, with different fishing fleets monitoring and managing different schools of fish. Since they "own" the schools instead of just taking them from the commons, they do prevent the destruction of the fishery.

HOWEVER, and this is the part that Volleyball wouldn't note, is that it only resulted after the Cod Wars between Iceland and Britain (which involved Royal Navy and Icelandic Coast Guard ships ramming each other, cutting each other's fishing nets, and a potato gun powerful enough to disable said cutting gear, since two NATO members couldn't exactly shoot bullets at each other - it's actually pretty hilarious, and Marina of course has the book on it), and that the fishing fleets are protected by the Icelandic coast guard (the only branch of their military) which prevents outside groups from coming and taking the managed fish.
The first paragraph of your post doesn't help Volly either. A managed oligopoly is not much different from a monopoly in terms of its effect on free market competition. The only way to prevent the problem was some kind of managed solution; an unregulated free market has no corrective mechanism whatsoever.
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Post by Zixinus »

HOWEVER, and this is the part that Volleyball wouldn't note, is that it only resulted after the Cod Wars between Iceland and Britain (which involved Royal Navy and Icelandic Coast Guard ships ramming each other, cutting each other's fishing nets, and a potato gun powerful enough to disable said cutting gear, since two NATO members couldn't exactly shoot bullets at each other - it's actually pretty hilarious, and Marina of course has the book on it), and that the fishing fleets are protected by the Icelandic coast guard (the only branch of their military) which prevents outside groups from coming and taking the managed f
Got picture or online links? This I have to see.
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Post by Vohu Manah »

Zixinus wrote:Got picture or online links? This I have to see.
Top 3 Google results for "Cod Wars:"
Wikipedia - The Cod Wars
Britain's Small Wars - The Cod Wars
American University - TED Case Study: Iceland Cod War
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Post by The Yosemite Bear »

yeah, or the whole destruction of the atlantic fish schools off the Carolinas due to unregulated toxic dumping from the US Hog industry.
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Post by Lusankya »

Now, this is just me thinking, but would PvP servers on online games such as WoW be an example of a voluntaryist society? Obviously they don't accurately model real-life societies, since they don't have to worry about scarcity or permenent death or anything like that, but they do seem to have many of the ideas that volly is proposing: there's little regulation of the economy (such as there is one in WoW) and people voluntarily form groups to go and engage in questmaking/levelling/whatever.

Of course, if you happen to be low level, you really should either go to a non PvP server or risk having some level 60 dickhead run up and stab you, saying "STFU, n00b!", but eh, maybe that kind of thing wouldn't happen in a real-life voluntaryist society.
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