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#21 |
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Little Chief Hare
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Subjective legitimacy is fine and can be balanced for. 100% popular support would effectively accomplish this. In order for this to be achieved, the market would have to determine things like leadership and sovereignty. This has already been more or less worked out in Rothbard's Magnum opus.
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#22 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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I just don't think that one candidate being supported by 100% of the people is necessary to consitute a legitimate authority. I mean, even if you're willing to discount the apathetic and the ignorant from factoring into that 100%, I mostly just deny that any one government -can- possibly get support from 100% of the educated voting public, simply because there are too many dichotomus positions that people base their electoral choices on.
You can't be pro- and con- the same thing at the same time, so you will never be able to fully satisfy everyone, so no matter what system controls who is in charge of your state, 100% popular support is impossible, so what you're basically saying is "There's no such thing as legitimate authority" |
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#23 |
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Little Chief Hare
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Don't mistake given politicians for a government. It doesn't matter if 0% of a group of people support a given policy, if they all gave initial consent to be subjected to the system that resulted in that outcome then the governance is legitimate. Short of breach of contract, anyways.
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#24 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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So explain to me how the governments of say, Canada or Great Britain aren't legitimate then? Or are you appealing to the fact that many people don't bother taking part in the government, and thus claiming that the government isn't legitimate.
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#25 |
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Little Chief Hare
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There are indigenous peoples in Canada who were there before the British or French, correct? What of frontiersmen? In the settlement of the US at least, people were living in areas before the law came to them. Is there any particular reason a government should have a claim on, effectively, all bordering land?
England was ruled for most of history by self-declared royalty. Not even under any sort of consistent pretenses either, as William of Normandy demonstrates. The system gradually became simply aristocratic, in step with the Magna Carta, and eventually developed into a Constitutional Republic, with a parliament rather than a congress of course. So, where on earth do you see full consent happening, ever, in either of these countries? |
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#26 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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I'm sorry if this sounds politically incorrect, and if it might shock some people who see me as more of a bleeding-heart style liberal, but when you're conquered, you're conquered.
The legitimacy comes from having made the choice of "Consent or be killed" and choosing to not be killed. The Nation of Canada as it exists, founded first as New France, taken over during the conquest, and eventually gaining its soveriegnty from Britain in 1867 is an entity unto itself. That it was founded by displacing existing people from their land doesn't factor into the distinction. A Canadian is a quite clearly defined status, and for all the people who are classified as Canadian, consent exists. |
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#27 | ||
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Little Chief Hare
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Very Grave Indeed
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At this point, you are forcing a choice on the people in the town, they can choose to leave and go somewhere where the rules aremore palatable, or they can choose to stay and follow these rules. Presumably the laws of the land as they stand suggest that what you are doing is not legitimate by their rules, for which there are presumably consequences. (IE. You're committing treason against the legitimate authority) and that legitimate authority is faced with a choice as well: Oppose your treason against authority, or leave, and allow you to take over. Whether you fight and win, or they withdraw and you gain control, you take with you a sphere of influence. If you set up in the town and say "Now, we are the Kilroyans, and this town is called New Kilroy, here's our legal system, here's our economic plan, here's our foreign policy etc etc, we'll give everyone a month to decide, and if they want to leave they can leave freely and go back to the original system elsewhere, or they can stay here and become Kilroyans, with all the rights and responsibilities involved in that." Once that month is up, and you have your town full of people who made the choice to stay when the army arrived, and made the choice to stay when the army took over, and made the choice to stay when shown what the laws would be there, they are granting consent to be ruled in that way by those people, and within the bounds of "New Kilroy" the Kilroyans have been granted legitimate consensual authority. Quote:
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#29 | ||||
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So, revise the scenario to this. I come into your house with a gun, and say "This house now belongs to me. You can live here, but you have to follow my rules". If you choose to live there, anything I do to you is completely legal and moral, and if you leave I still keep legitimate control over the house. Nope, still absurd. Quote:
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There isn't a single thing coherent about what you've just laid out. Effectively, any claim to property under this system is legitimate to the extent it can be enforced, and any law made is legitimate as long as a given systems sphere of influence is finite. A world run according to these concepts would be one filled solely with tyranny. How convenient then that this sort of drunken rationalization actually is quite common. If you want to know the extent of your foolishness, simply look at any atrocity in history and see that it bears perfect approval given the conditions you laid out. |
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#30 |
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Very Grave Indeed
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I'm still not seeing that you coming into my house, which is part of the state, and saying that you're taking over my house (and not the state) is the same thing as my state taking over your whole state.
I in my house am a Canadian citizen, protected by the laws of the Canadian legal system. It is unlawful for you to come into my home, and simply say that you're taking it over. However, if Canada the nation were to be invaded, and I choose to simply stand by and surrender, and allow the invaders to take over, and take control, instead of fighting, I'm giving tacit approval to their power. If I didn't approve I could/should fight until I get to a point where I've chosen to balance what cost is worth maintaining the status quo. Once again, we come back to your insistance that non-action is in no way an action, and that by selecting non-action out of all possible responses, you bear no responsibility for the consequences of that action, and thus can still claim to be the wronged victim when you didn't choose to act. Since we didn't resolve that particular debate, I somehow fail to see how we'll solve this one. |
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#31 | ||||
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Little Chief Hare
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I think you're becoming incapable of debate, because you've learned the most effective way to protect your beliefs; to never bother formulating them in the first place. Right now, you're engaging in victim blaming, equivocation, and general unsubstantive blather. Socrates would be ashamed to see someone behaving as you are, especially given your claim to be a philosopher. Last edited by Kilroy_x; 12-7-2007 at 09:10 PM.. |
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#32 | ||||||
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Very Grave Indeed
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I'd say a reasonably large percentage of my posts in this forum have been in apparant support of things I don't actually believe myself, or in apparant opposition to things I personally support. I do this because the debate is more important than some ill-concieved need of mine to "win" the debate. Someone could post something I am in almost complete agreement with, and I would still point out any percived flaws in their reasoning, question how they came to those conclusions, and basically to all visible effects, show myself to be quite strongly against their position. I do this both because as a philosopher, critical analysis is just as important to me to be for those I'm interacting with as for myself, and as a moderator, I owe it to this forum to try and keep debate flourishing and proceeding in a reasonable manner. I don't give myself the luxery of only arguing the point I support. My purpose in this forum isn't for -me- to debate -my- beliefs with other users. My purpose in this forum is for -me- to encourage lively and active debate and discussion as much as possible between all users of the forum. At any time, any user of this forum who is confused by my apparant support of a position is perfectly able to send me a private message and ask for a clarification of what my actual position is. Even when I agree with you, Kilroy, I'll still get into these drawn out back and forths of trying to point out where I have issues with your conclusions and how you drew them, as well as trying to point out what some at least reasonably valid objections might be. Seeing how -you- handle objections to something I already agree with teaches me as much as waiting until we wholly disagree on something and then debating you directly on it does, and is a lot more instructive to other readers than "Yup, I agree" would be. Last edited by devonin; 12-7-2007 at 10:58 PM.. |
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Little Chief Hare
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Since the antecedent here is not just action, but effective action, the statement boils down to one that might makes right. The bit about belief is superfluous junk. It isn't relevant to the argument. It's also very poorly thought out. Quote:
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*You don't find anything in the world objectionable *You don't have any problem with taking partial responsibility for the state of the world *You are a hypocrite *You are a coward *You think your current actions are optimal None of those reflect particularly well on you, except for the last one, which conveniently enough requires a rather severe amount of elaboration. So then, can you explain to me why you think moderating a forum on FFR is superior for the world to, say, signing up with the peace corp? Or the Canadian armed forces for that matter? Or even to just dedicating your time to a career with which to earn money to donate to needy children in third world countries? Quote:
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Very Grave Indeed
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But again, keeping a thread open and moving, as long as new things are being discussed in it, and new concepts are being brought up and debated, the thread retains value as both a debate on the subject at hand, and as a lesson about debating in general. Believe me, I'm well aware when I make some of my posts that I'm taking a very difficult stance to defend, occasionally one that I personally think is total hogwash, though I know many people who support it. Again, setting up a bad argument (that is commonly held in the world) for you to knock down is a valuable tool for other readers of the thread. In teh same way that in batting practice you get nice easy pitches to learn the right way to swing, I'm willing to look a little stupid to -you- in order to present commonly held beliefs in order for them to get knocked out of the park. Like I keep trying to say: If I were here to win debates, or prove my personal opinions correct, my body of posting would look quite different. My purpose here is to encourage everyone to think more critically about things in the world. Quote:
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#35 | ||||||||||||||||
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Little Chief Hare
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My rules start and end at my doorstep. What's wrong with this? There's even a word or ten for informal social rules. What does displacement have to do with anything. Quote:
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Look, if it is the case that: 1. You hold some level of responsibility for something in the world 2. That something is bad Then you should be actively doing something about it. Quote:
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Last edited by Kilroy_x; 12-8-2007 at 01:09 PM.. |
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Very Grave Indeed
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I'm perfectly willing to admit that there are more optimal ways I could be living from a "make the world a better place" standpoint, but as I'm just as flawed as everyone else, no, my actions are not entirely optimal. Quote:
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Little Chief Hare
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Maybe the plain vanilla terms are preventing this from sinking in. You are saying that you consider yourself personally responsible, in some measure, for every preventable death, rape, and theft in the world. You are saying that you know of a way that would result in some finite amount less of these things, but choose not to follow this way. You are saying that whatever is not prevented by you, can be blamed on you. So, how on earth do you claim to have a clean moral slate? Quote:
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#38 |
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sunshine and rainbows
Join Date: Feb 2006
Age: 38
Posts: 1,987
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Going back a few posts to the Native American discussion about being conquered, there is a point I'd like to make, which is sorta an aside the what the main discussion is. The people who were conquered in the past are no longer alive. At some point over generations, familial and cultural claims to property shouldn't be valid. (Just look at Israel and Palestine; if people would stop laying claim to land they personally never owned, and would quit identifiying with 'their people' of the past, it seems that the conflict could be all but over.)
So, whether the way a current government was formed was ethical or not should have very little bearing on how ethical it currently is, and as such, the current discussion is moot from a 'here and now' standpoint. (Although I see that the 'here and now' is not what's being discussed, at least not anymore.) Last edited by Cavernio; 12-9-2007 at 11:55 AM.. |
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#39 | ||
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Little Chief Hare
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This is a minor break I have from Rothbard by the way. |
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#40 |
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sunshine and rainbows
Join Date: Feb 2006
Age: 38
Posts: 1,987
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"At what point? Even if this were so, the issue is over whether current claims to property are valid on the part of, specifically, government. It's certainly possible for land to be unowned."
If such a point were easily identifiable, then there wouldn't ever be any problems, now would there be. It is possible for land to be unowned, however, if this is the case, then there's no problem with a government taking it. "It has plenty of bearing. A legitimate claim to property is a requisite for any justification for many actions taken routinely by the government, ranging from taxation to the death penalty." If you want to get picky, I believe originally, aboriginals didn't claim any land. In their opinion, land was not to be owned. So technically, they had no legitimate claim to property, under, what I guess we can consider standard western law, that they did not agree with. However, re-iterating my point, even if they did, it still does not mean that 4 generations or something of the like, down the line, 'us' who're now people who never took the land, should not have to give back land to 'them', whose land was never actually taken. Furthermore, a question of nationality is not just a question of land. As far as aboriginal rights to land are concerned, it's totally up to whether or not you consider them canadian or not. That aboriginals were treated terribly at one point, that land was immorally taken away from them, is generations past, and really isn't the issue. Currently, aboriginals follow canadian law and benefit from canada's tax dollars through countless public programs, while not having to pay taxes. Also, does it make sense that someone should be able to have access to resources that other canadians don't have access to, considering that that someone follows other canadian regulations, simply because of their ancestry? Not to me. Should there be special government intervention for these essentially fully canadian people where help is desperately needed? Yes. (well, as long as it's actually helpful.) Keep in mind this would all be different if all aboriginals stood up and made some sort of formal, unified claim that they're officially independent. "This is a minor break I have from Rothbard by the way." Uh oh, hope your relationship with Rothbard's still OK...if not just say you were wrong and have makeup sex. |
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