Libbies don't watch....

[Hermit]

There are plenty of people who get along fine without being part of a society

Lol. Name one.

Not even Robinson Crusoe managed that feat. No man is an island.

[Seth]

There are plenty of people who get along fine without being part of a society

Lol. Name one.

Not even Robinson Crusoe managed that feat. No man is an island.

...now what was that Japanese soldier's name...the one who spent 40 years alone on an island still fighting WWII?

And there's plenty of people who live in remote places like Alaska and Canada who are self-reliant.

But the fact that "no man is an island" merely proves my point. It is the internal pressures of our human nature that drive us towards community and social interaction, not government regulations. The instincts to band together is evolved behavior that does not inherently require any sort of government at all, as several of the American Indian tribes prove by doing things by consensus and not forcing anyone to do something they don't wish to do.

The essential point, which you constantly evade, is the difference between voluntary associations and cooperation and compelled associations and theft of the labor of the individual based on the interests and judgments of the collective.

The former is moral and ethical. The latter is immoral and unethical.

[Hermit]

There are plenty of people who get along fine without being part of a society

Lol. Name one.

Not even Robinson Crusoe managed that feat. No man is an island.

...now what was that Japanese soldier's name...the one who spent 40 years alone on an island still fighting WWII?

That's what I want to know. A name of someone who got along fine without being part of a society. Out with it.

[Hermit]

Too busy practising your survival skills or making a buck driving your taxi to reply? OK, I'll help you out the best I can.

The man who comes closest to meeting your claims is Hiroo Onoda. He fought on for another 29 years after the Japanese surrender, and yes, it was on an island. He was not the sole human living on Lubang Island, though. To begin with, he had three comrades with him, the last of whom was with him until two years prior to Onada's eventual surrender.

More importantly, apart from the Japanese crew, the island was populated by a lot of villagers. Onada was of course aware of their existence. He and his mates killed 30 and wounded 100 of them over the years. The intrepid fighters survived chiefly by stealing from the villagers. The first of his comrades was shot dead when they were caught slaughtering a cow they had stolen. Onada left the island in 1974. About 20 years later he returned for a visit. He delivered a speech to the islanders. It included this sentence: "For whatever reason I don't know, when I left this island I wasn't able to say thank you for all you did for me."

If you mean that getting along fine without being part of a society includes living near one and stealing from it, I guess you are right. Don't expect too many people to agree with such a definition, though.

[Brian Peacock]

Great part of that order which reigns among mankind is not the effect of government. It has its origin in the principles of society and the natural constitution of man. It existed prior to government, and would exist if the formality of government was abolished. The mutual dependence and reciprocal interest which man has upon man, and all the parts of civilised community upon each other, create that great chain of connection which holds it together. The landholder, the farmer, the manufacturer, the merchant, the tradesman, and every occupation, prospers by the aid which each receives from the other, and from the whole. Common interest regulates their concerns, and forms their law; and the laws which common usage ordains, have a greater influence than the laws of government. In fine, society performs for itself almost everything which is ascribed to government.

To understand the nature and quantity of government proper for man, it is necessary to attend to his character. As Nature created him for social life, she fitted him for the station she intended. In all cases she made his natural wants greater than his individual powers. No one man is capable, without the aid of society, of supplying his own wants, and those wants, acting upon every individual, impel the whole of them into society, as naturally as gravitation acts to a centre.

But she has gone further. She has not only forced man into society by a diversity of wants which the reciprocal aid of each other can supply, but she has implanted in him a system of social affections, which, though not necessary to his existence, are essential to his happiness. There is no period in life when this love for society ceases to act. It begins and ends with our being.

--Thomas Piane, The Rights Of Man. CHAPTER I. OF SOCIETY AND CIVILISATION. http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3742/3742-h/3742-h.htm

Thank you Brian for that wonderful recitation of Thomas Paine's thoughts. What one ought to take from this exegesis is that what drives men to form and conform to a society is neither the rule of law nor the power of government. Their inclination towards society is, as Paine so beautifully puts it, in the nature of human beings. Their desire for social inclusion and their understanding of rational self-interest, their inherent altruism and charitable instincts, their compassion and concern for the well-being of the community are what form and reinforce the social bonds that cause people to work together in harmony to achieve a common goal, and to do so voluntarily, without coercion by those who would presume to rule others by force.

True. The overtly social focus of Paine's tract is clear from beginning to end. One has to remember that what he was railing against were ingrained political and civil systems constructed and maintained by "those whom would presume to rule others by force", who administered social control by various measures of coercion - overt/covert, explicit/implicit.

Paine was at the vanguard of the class war of his era; a war he felt was both rationally and morally justified; a war between the interests of society and those of an oligarchy which sustained itself through appeals to heredity, self-declared god-given authority, but chiefly through economic and para-military means. It was essentially a conflict of ideas, but nonetheless one he recognised would require action if the forces which were brought to bear upon society by a self-serving elite - forces he considered a detriment to the individual and the wider community - were ever to be replaced with one that was at-one-and-the-same time conducive to our innate social instincts - to be a part of, not apart from, societies which are peaceful, ordered, and meritorious - and functional.

The old systems had clearly failed on these grounds, and so a new system was to be sought out and actualised; a system which acknowledged and embraced the social affections which, though not necessary to an individual's existence, are nonetheless essential to all peoples' happiness, well-being and prosperity.

Nothing can appear more contradictory than the principles on which the old governments began, and the condition to which society, civilisation and commerce are capable of carrying mankind. Government, on the old system, is an assumption of power, for the aggrandisement of itself; on the new, a delegation of power for the common benefit of society. The former supports itself by keeping up a system of war; the latter promotes a system of peace, as the true means of enriching a nation. The one encourages national prejudices; the other promotes universal society, as the means of universal commerce. The one measures its prosperity, by the quantity of revenue it extorts; the other proves its excellence, by the small quantity of taxes it requires.

[...]

It could have been no difficult thing in the early and solitary ages of the world, while the chief employment of men was that of attending flocks and herds, for a banditti of ruffians to overrun a country, and lay it under contributions. Their power being thus established, the chief of the band contrived to lose the name of Robber in that of Monarch; and hence the origin of Monarchy and Kings.

The origin of the Government of England, so far as relates to what is called its line of monarchy, being one of the latest, is perhaps the best recorded. The hatred which the Norman invasion and tyranny begat, must have been deeply rooted in the nation, to have outlived the contrivance to obliterate it. Though not a courtier will talk of the curfew-bell, not a village in England has forgotten it.

Those bands of robbers having parcelled out the world, and divided it into dominions, began, as is naturally the case, to quarrel with each other. What at first was obtained by violence was considered by others as lawful to be taken, and a second plunderer succeeded the first. They alternately invaded the dominions which each had assigned to himself, and the brutality with which they treated each other explains the original character of monarchy. It was ruffian torturing ruffian. The conqueror considered the conquered, not as his prisoner, but his property. He led him in triumph rattling in chains, and doomed him, at pleasure, to slavery or death. As time obliterated the history of their beginning, their successors assumed new appearances, to cut off the entail of their disgrace, but their principles and objects remained the same. What at first was plunder, assumed the softer name of revenue; and the power originally usurped, they affected to inherit.

From such beginning of governments, what could be expected but a continued system of war and extortion? It has established itself into a trade. The vice is not peculiar to one more than to another, but is the common principle of all. There does not exist within such governments sufficient stamina whereon to engraft reformation; and the shortest and most effectual remedy is to begin anew on the ground of the nation.

[...]

Can we possibly suppose that if governments had originated in a right principle, and had not an interest in pursuing a wrong one, the world could have been in the wretched and quarrelsome condition we have seen it? What inducement has the farmer, while following the plough, to lay aside his peaceful pursuit, and go to war with the farmer of another country? or what inducement has the manufacturer? What is dominion to them, or to any class of men in a nation? Does it add an acre to any man's estate, or raise its value? Are not conquest and defeat each of the same price, and taxes the never-failing consequence?—Though this reasoning may be good to a nation, it is not so to a government. War is the Pharo-table of governments, and nations the dupes of the game.

Ibid.

[laklak]

Going from "no man is an island" to "government must be involved in every aspect of your personal life" is a bit of a stretch. It's almost impossible to be completely cut off from human society, but who except a whacked-out hermit (not you, Hermit) would want to do that? The difference lies in where you draw your lines.

[Seth]

Too busy practising your survival skills or making a buck driving your taxi to reply?

Both.

OK, I'll help you out the best I can.

The man who comes closest to meeting your claims is Hiroo Onoda. He fought on for another 29 years after the Japanese surrender, and yes, it was on an island. He was not the sole human living on Lubang Island, though. To begin with, he had three comrades with him, the last of whom was with him until two years prior to Onada's eventual surrender.

More importantly, apart from the Japanese crew, the island was populated by a lot of villagers. Onada was of course aware of their existence. He and his mates killed 30 and wounded 100 of them over the years. The intrepid fighters survived chiefly by stealing from the villagers. The first of his comrades was shot dead when they were caught slaughtering a cow they had stolen. Onada left the island in 1974. About 20 years later he returned for a visit. He delivered a speech to the islanders. It included this sentence: "For whatever reason I don't know, when I left this island I wasn't able to say thank you for all you did for me."

If you mean that getting along fine without being part of a society includes living near one and stealing from it, I guess you are right. Don't expect too many people to agree with such a definition, though.

Um, the other occupants of the island hardly "did for" him, they suffered his banditry and outlawry. To say that he was a member of that society is balderdash. He was the very essence of the initiation of force and fraud because he took what he thought he was entitled to without even asking. He was a simple criminal who deserved to be shot and killed. That he got away with it, perhaps by playing on the sympathies of the villagers, only goes to show the fundamentally charitable and altruistic nature of mankind.

But it was not a good example, 'tis true.

So I'll rephrase. There are plenty of people who get along fine on the margins of society by not demanding that others serve their needs, but rather through honest trade voluntarily undertaken by all. No government is required to do anything other than ensure that the trade is honest and voluntary and that no force or fraud is initiated by either party. It is not the place of government to manipulate individual transactions to enhance or degrade the economic or social position of one or the other parties to the contract, and it is absolutely not within the legitimate purview of government to confiscate from one person in order to redistribute the wealth to another person against the will of the producer of the wealth.

Government is empowered, at best, to keep an accounting of the costs and uses of common goods and to require that those who make use of common goods (and services) pay their equitable share of the costs of providing and maintaining those goods, and preventing those who would steal the fruits of the labor of the community voluntarily donated for the purposes of creating or managing public goods and services from doing so, and punishing them if they do.

Governments should not pick economic winners and losers in the markets, nor should it take from one person for the benefit of another person absent a valid and voluntary contract for that transfer of wealth between the two.

[Seth]

True. The overtly social focus of Paine's tract is clear from beginning to end. One has to remember that what he was railing against were ingrained political and civil systems constructed and maintained by "those whom would presume to rule others by force", who administered social control by various measures of coercion - overt/covert, explicit/implicit.

Paine was at the vanguard of the class war of his era; a war he felt was both rationally and morally justified; a war between the interests of society and those of an oligarchy which sustained itself through appeals to heredity, self-declared god-given authority, but chiefly through economic and para-military means. It was essentially a conflict of ideas, but nonetheless one he recognised would require action if the forces which were brought to bear upon society by a self-serving elite - forces he considered a detriment to the individual and the wider community - were ever to be replaced with one that was at-one-and-the-same time conducive to our innate social instincts - to be a part of, not apart from, societies which are peaceful, ordered, and meritorious - and functional.

The old systems had clearly failed on these grounds, and so a new system was to be sought out and actualised; a system which acknowledged and embraced the social affections which, though not necessary to an individual's existence, are nonetheless essential to all peoples' happiness, well-being and prosperity.

Well said, sir!

[Seth]

Going from "no man is an island" to "government must be involved in every aspect of your personal life" is a bit of a stretch. It's almost impossible to be completely cut off from human society, but who except a whacked-out hermit (not you, Hermit) would want to do that? The difference lies in where you draw your lines.

True. But drawing those boundaries is remarkably simple actually. If you make use of some benefit provided by others, you owe compensation for that use unless the provider explicitly makes a gift of that benefit to you. If you contract with someone to do some thing, then do it. If you don't, then society has every right to compel you to complete that contractual obligation or suffer a penalty and every right to refuse to associate or trade with you in the future because of your proven dishonesty. Do not take what is not yours without permission. Do not initiate force or fraud against others. Be responsible for your own conduct and your own life, don't expect or demand that others care for you, support you or relieve you of the natural consequences of your own decisions and actions.

That's a simple recipe for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

[Brian Peacock]

I think many Libertarians -- accepting that it's a term most often applied to a predominantly US-type of proto-anarchism - often confuse 'wealth' with 'income' and view taxation wholly in the negative; as a theft of personal resources rather than a social obligation that contributes to the wealth (health and well-being) of the societies in which we are all unavoidably embedded.

[laklak]

That's particularly true of Big "L" libertarians. Like any other political philosophy there are those on the extreme end of the bell curve. I've heard people claim, for example, that the FAA should be abolished and anyone who can afford to fly a jumbo jet should be allowed to do so. That's plainly silly on the face of it. I've also heard "all taxation is theft", which I also do not agree with. Some level of taxation is necessary to a functioning society. There are roads to build, a military to pay, schools to support. However, the Federal government, IMO, gets involved in far, far to many issues that are completely unnecessary and usurp the powers reserved to the various states. Again, this is a case of line drawing.

[Svartalf]

go back in time and explain that to Abe Lincoln and every elephantic president since...

[Brian Peacock]

That's particularly true of Big "L" libertarians. Like any other political philosophy there are those on the extreme end of the bell curve. I've heard people claim, for example, that the FAA should be abolished and anyone who can afford to fly a jumbo jet should be allowed to do so. That's plainly silly on the face of it. I've also heard "all taxation is theft", which I also do not agree with. Some level of taxation is necessary to a functioning society. There are roads to build, a military to pay, schools to support. However, the Federal government, IMO, gets involved in far, far to many issues that are completely unnecessary and usurp the powers reserved to the various states. Again, this is a case of line drawing.

I tend to agree here., and it is unfortunate, and perhaps even reprehensible, that contemporary political debate does not address where these lines might be drawn, instead focusing on an ever-expanding raft of instrumental means and measures by which a nation can be controlled.

This mostly results in the dishonest debate of posturing politics, which itself encourages the political aspirant to pay little more than lip-service to principle only where it serves their personal ambition. Thus the wise, tolerant, rational politician is demeaned for not being sufficiently and unbendingly stentorian and patriarchal, the very qualities which the ignorant but unprincipled politician is so keen to casts as among their personal virtues - at least until the election results are in.

The deficiencies of government in Paine's time followed from the privations of a system overburdened by systematic dynastic nest-feathering, predominantly by an aristocratic class who felt that the privileges of their station reflected an automatic, not to mention god-given, superiority in moral outlook, intellectual and administrative ability - the aristocracy considered themselves born leaders born to lead.

The reason Paine's pamphlet sold so well and was read and recited so widely was because it lent a clear voice to what the peoples of England, France and America already thought and felt - that dynastic tenure in government did not produced a society of progressively expanding opportunity and prosperity, but merely a progressively more limited, narrower world in which the dim-witted were habitually preferred over the talented, the unscrupulous sycophant was preferred over the principled reformer, and where the primary goal of any civil administrator was to maintain and entrench the political 'traditions' of their forebears while maximising their personal wealth.

In such a situation it is hardly surprising that taxation was seen by most, quite rightly in my view, as an unjust ill, a wanton misappropriation of resources squandered on fulfilling the expansionist political and economic wet-dreams of the monied few. If a contemporary lesson is to be drawn from Paine it is not that government, or taxation, is an evil in itself, but that instituted systems of government which encourage and promote dynastic cronyism among the monied few invariably impoverish society, entrenching division, inequality, fear, and resentment, the manifestations of which are then given in justification for the forceful repression of an increasingly malcontent majority.

Paine's principled justification for change in The Rights Of Man was not merely a plea for republicanism (and certainly not Republicanism in the contemporary US sense) as much as it was a call for liberalism and social-welfare. In that regard he was 200 years ahead of his time, and though Western society has in the main mollified and placated the hereditary lusts and corruptions of monarchical governance he surely would acknowledge that a small government with limited or restricted powers is not a solution in itself if, where and when the monied few are granted free reign to dictate the economic and social well-being of the vast majority of citizens.

Part of the problem I have with US-style, big 'L' Libertarians is that that they seem so quick to assume that a small, out-of-the-way government will magically salve all ills and produce a kind of utopian society, but without acknowledging the decidedly in-the-way role government must invariably play in limiting the socially detrimental excesses of self-focused, self-serving economic elites.

[Hermit]

Going from "no man is an island" to "government must be involved in every aspect of your personal life" is a bit of a stretch.

Indeed, it is, and the Amish communities are examples of the latter. Their Ordnung (which translates to "order" in English, meaning both command and regulation) regulates the social as well as private lives of its members in fine detail, and the written manifestations of Ordnung are only a minor part of the total. If an adult, male member replied "Not me, thanks. Not my problem, not my property." when it comes to a communal barn raising, he'd find himself shunned - basically cast out - pretty soon. There is nothing voluntary about it. Being a member of an Amish community is contingent on "volunteering" when called on. That's why I don't regard Amish communities in general and their communal barn raisings in particular as examples of libertarianism.

[Seth]

I think many Libertarians -- accepting that it's a term most often applied to a predominantly US-type of proto-anarchism - often confuse 'wealth' with 'income' and view taxation wholly in the negative; as a theft of personal resources rather than a social obligation that contributes to the wealth (health and well-being) of the societies in which we are all unavoidably embedded.

This is true of only the Randian absolutists.

I've pointed out many times that rational Libertarianism doesn't eschew taxation completely, it merely despises one particular form of taxation: taxation as a method of redistribution of wealth from one person to another usually imposed to achieve some government mandated social goal, and it prefers that other forms of taxation, such as those imposed to pay for the operations, infrastructure and amenities provided by government be voluntary in nature rather than compulsory. This means that if one chooses to opt out of the tax to pay for the public pool, one does not get to use the public pool, or park, or highway, or library.

But rational Libertarianism also recognizes that the utopian ideal of completely voluntary taxation is somewhat impractical from the operational perspective...or at least it used to be. Nowadays, with computers, cell phones and credit cards setting up a system of "user pays" for public amenities is far easier and more likely to be possible. This is demonstrated by license plate or transponder tolling on E-470 east of Denver. You use the road and sometime later they send you a bill for your trip using your license plate as your identification. With the transponder you simply set up an account, keep some money in it, and your tolls are automatically deducted as you drive past the sensors.

The impediments to using this form of user pays to fund infrastructure and amenities are quickly vanishing as the technology for remote sensing and identification improves.

If you check out a library book, your card debits your account. If you spend the afternoon at the park, your card is read and debited at the entrance. If you call the police, they run your card and charge you a fee for that service. And so on and so forth.

This has two immediate benefits: First, only those programs, infrastructure and amenities that are in demand will be provided. If nobody uses some remote back road and no one is willing to voluntarily donate to maintain it, then it goes to ruin and becomes unusable, as it should. If people don't like the service at the public pool, then they don't pay and the pool closes...unless some group is willing to altruistically donate sufficient funds to provide it free to everyone.

Second, the free-market competition for tax money ensures that government programs are run efficiently and properly enough to persuade taxpayers to patronize and therefore pay for the programs. If consumers don't want to pay for a baseball stadium, then there will be no baseball stadium. If consumers don't think that the risk of a house fire is high enough to warrant paying a voluntary tax for fire protection, then their houses burn to the ground, which attitude is not consistent with rational self interest.

This doesn't mean that you can be a free rider on the benefits of society provided by group contribution, and you can and will be excluded from such uses and punished for using them fraudulently by refusing to contribute to them.

To sum up, Libertarianism believes that compulsory redistributive taxation intended to achieve some social goal by the forcible extraction of wealth from one person for the individual benefit of any other person is utterly and irredeemably immoral and wrong.

But it also believes that people have an obligation to pay for what they use...but only what they use, not some arbitrary "fair share" of the costs that some bureaucrat decides they "owe" to the community.