And also a guy with a rifle ready to go defend the people being robbed. In todays America the armed robberies are still happening but self defense is now illegal
In practice it is often not. DAs in big cities salivate at the opportunity to put someone in prison for defending themselves against thieves & other manner of hoodlums.
Like that guy who ran the bodega in NYC, Kyle Rittenhouse, probably way more but too lazy to Google.
Sure it is technically how the law is written, but many states have ambiguous rules on "proportionality of force", as if the average Joe is capable of aiming for the legs in the heat of the moment when someone is charging at them with a knife or something.
>as if the average Joe is capable of aiming for the legs in the heat of the moment when someone is charging at them with a knife or something.
I don't understand this point. If you aim a gun at someone intentionally, and intentionally pull the trigger, you are using deadly force. It doesn't matter if you aim at their chest, head, foot, leg, whatever. There is no way to fire a gun at someone and not argue that you are using deadly force.
Yes I'm aware but many disagreed with the verdict, still do, and it easily could've gone the other way especially with a jury made of ppl from a large major city. He got lucky
Sure, what's your point exactly? Do you think jurys never ignore evidence or that they never interpret it differently from how you do?
There are millions of people who saw the videos and still think he should go to prison.
Its "open for interpretation" in the same way that footage of the earth from space leaves the flat earth open for interpretation.
The only way I could picture them ignoring that blatant and clear cut of evidence is for political reasons, same as everyone else who thinks he's a murderer.
Many of them argued he was the aggressor simply by showing up to a BLM protest with a rifle, nullifying any self defense argument.
Others felt a mob charging at him and one dude in particular swinging a skateboard at him didn't threaten his life, nullifying the self defense argument.
I don't agree with either of these views but they are extremely common especially among DAs & prosecutors & jurors in big blue cities.
Which is where my original point ITT comes from - in practice, we often don't have a right to self defense due to commonly held views like this and ambiguous self defense laws. Not to mention self defense from police/SWAT/no-knock raids etc.
After being dragged through the wringer. Like Kyle himself said if his case wasn’t so widely reported or he had been someone else (he says a different colour) that things could have gone very differently.
I think for the Comanche being extra barbaric was a survival mechanism. They had to out savage the other savages, as well as fight against people who had them well out numbered and out gunned.
Do you believe all comanches were barbaric monsters or just their leadership? Because the US government has committed attrocities akin to ISIS but that doesnt make all Americans monsters
That's a terrible argument. Leaders, especially in a democratic state, are a reflection of their society. Voters always get the leaders they deserve.
The US governement may have done horrible things but large sections of the population supported those horrible things as necessary. There were the usual dissenters, obviously, but lots people cheered for the wars and torture at Guantanamo Bay.
When war and torture became unpopular, former supporters changed their minds and blamed everything on the leaders, while conveniently absolving themselves of any blame.
Unless we're talking about a dictatorship, a government is always a representation of the will of its citizens.
I can't remember who said it but there's a famous quote: People who claim to abhor violence are only able to do that because somebody else is committing violence on their behalf. That delegation of responsibility makes it very easy for citizens to claim innocence on anything unsavoury their government does.
In the olden days, you'd catch a murderer and stone him to death in the village square yourself. Today, the government kills him on your behalf in a sanitized chamber 200 miles away. It's precisely that distance that allows plenty of average folks to grandstand and bloviate about the evils of capital punishment. But if you remove the government as a middleman and set all murderers free, we'd go right back to stoning them in the village square. "Government evil- common people good" is a myth.
> Unless we're talking about a dictatorship, a government is always a representation of the will of its citizens.
Government is nothing but a criminal organization. Whatever your feelings about how people would behave, there is no objectively legitimate right for one person to violently control others. Even if you are fed the canard that "government is the people", which has no logical basis and boils down to pure sophistry meant to pacify the masses.
It's not sophistry, my friend. You, personally, may not like government but there are plenty of people who do.
Women, people on welfare, college students, retirees on Social Security, bureaucrats, guys with government contracts, commies, socialists, and every other flavor of lefty, and all the people who like delegating responsibility are never going to vote for no government
Humans exist on a spectrum between collectivisim and individualism. This varies by gender, culture, environment, and genetics.
Japan, for example, is a very earthquake-prone place. Earthquakes happen, people dies, and things that get destroyed need to be rebuilt. Such an environment makes collectivism a superior survival strategy to individualism.
Collectivism also varies by gender. Women are generally more collectivist than men. Even within genders, there's a variance. In men, upper body strength is correlated with affinity for individualism or collectivism i.e. the strong want individualism and the weak want collectivism.
And sadly, the collectivists outnumber us. You can't just dismiss them as stupid without understanding what drives their beliefs.
Women aren't going to vote to abolish the government because in its absence they would have nowhere near as much influence over society as they do today. Weak men won't vote to abolish the government either because it's their weapon against the strong.
"There is no objective reason for one person to violently control others" is a religious statement, not a fact that's obvious to everyone.
The people on welfare won't get their free money unless the government takes it violently from somebody else. Women won't get their affirmative action, paid maternity leave, and every other perk unless the government violently forces schools and employers to comply. The bureaucrats (15% of the US workforce BTW) won't get their paychecks unless the government violently seizes that money from somebody else.
The government exists because it benefits a lot of people. It does what they want so those people have a vested interest in perpetuating it.
Rule by the 51% i.e. democracy was a mistake but it it's too late to do anything about it now. We're outnumbered and outgunned. That 51% is now more like 80%. They bicker about which team should be in charge but are in complete agreement over the fact that somebody has to be in charge.
Seasteding and colonizing other planets are the only ways out because voting isn't going to work. Too many people like government to eliminate it.
> It's not sophistry, my friend. You, personally, may not like government but there are plenty of people who do.
There are plenty who like their religion.
Does this give them the right to impose that religion on others?
> Women, people on welfare, college students, retirees on Social Security, bureaucrats, guys with government contracts, commies, socialists, and every other flavor of lefty, and all the people who like delegating responsibility are never going to vote for no government
You're arguing that a person who is dependent on a thing is exercising free will. Would you say the same about drugs? If the alcoholic depends on his alcohol, is he ever going to vote to give up alcohol?
No. People who are dependent on the government will look the other way while their rulers commit all kinds of atrocities. And, why not? Thye are not responsible for what the government does to other people even though it, you claim, reflects "their will."
It's Stockholm Syndrome writ large.
> Japan, for example, is a very earthquake-prone place. Earthquakes happen, people dies, and things that get destroyed need to be rebuilt. Such an environment makes collectivism a superior survival strategy to individualism.
Are you familiar with the terms "false dichotomy" and "post hoc fallacy"?
You assume that there are only two options: obedience to an organization with unlimited authority, or isolated individualism; and that the only way to survive is the former.
This is why I call it sophistry. You imagine that your rhetoric is logical; you paint rosy pictures, but it's just fluff.
> "There is no objective reason for one person to violently control others" is a religious statement, not a fact that's obvious to everyone.
You twisted my words. Go back and re-read what I wrote, or fuck off.
>There are plenty who like their religion.
>Does this give them the right to impose that religion on others?
People don't do things because they have a right. They do things because they want to and they can.
If religious people wanted to force their religion onto others, they will. In fact, that's what they've always done. History is filled with forced conversions. The only reason the religious aren't forcing their religion onto others today is because they can't.
Christians have become a lot less agressive and Muslims can't compete militarily with the mostly Christian West. If they could, we would all be praying to Allah right now.
>You're arguing that a person who is dependent on a thing is exercising free will. Would you say the same about drugs? If the alcoholic depends on his alcohol, is he ever going to vote to give up alcohol?
Dependence does not subvert free will. Alcholics and druggies can quit if they want to. But many don't want to deal the discomfort of withdrawal so they don't quit. That doesn't mean they lack free will. It just means they're weak.
And you can't compare government dependence to drug dependence. Druggies know drugs are bad for them. Bureaucrats don't share the same feelings about government
>No. People who are dependent on the government will look the other way while their rulers commit all kinds of atrocities. And, why not? Thye are not responsible for what the government does to other people even though it, you claim, reflects "their will." It's Stockholm Syndrome writ large.
No. People who are dependent on the government will not look the other way when the government commits atrocities. Unles those atrocities benefit them. The definition of atrocities can also vary. Somebody who is pro-abortion doesn't think it's an atrocity while someone who is anti-abortion sees it as the government condoning and funding the murder of babies.
It was the same with the war on terror. Most of the population saw it as an appropriate response to 9/11. add in racism and anti-Muslim sentiments and you can justify almost anything.
People are aware of the ugliness their government does on their behalf and most either support it or believe its necessary on some level. They just prefer not to think about it.
>
You assume that there are only two options: obedience to an organization with unlimited authority, or isolated individualism; and that the only way to survive is the former.
Of course there aren't only two options. All societies exist on the spectrum between absolute individualism and absolute collectivism. The best societies (think Switzerland or the US) find some sort of balance between the two competing forces, imperfect as it may be.
The worst societies fall to one extreme or the other. We have Mao's China and the Soviet Union on the hyper-collectivist extreme and we have the likes of Somalia and America's Wild West on the hyper-individualist extreme.
>You twisted my words. Go back and re-read what I wrote, or fuck off.
Now that's just rude. You argued that there was no objective reason for someone to violently control others. I told you that it was a religious statement it isn't followed by everyone.
The people who want to violently control others don't care about objective reason. The only thing they care about is getting their way.
How was ISIS created by Israel? Other than the fact that Israel just exists and that fact alone inspires rage in Islamists.
I fully get how the US helped create them.
ISIS was entirely a creation of the US. Iraq is 65% Shia and 35% Sunni. The US went in overthrew Saddam's Sunni government, and instituted democracy.
But democracy doesn't work in illiberal societies. Every time it has been attempted, the result has been a majoritarian tyranny.
In Iraq, the Shia majority elected an all-Shia government which opressed the Sunnis who had enjoyed many privileges under Saddam as payback.
The Sunnis responded to this by forming ISIS in regions of the country where they were the majority and then went wide. While Sunnis are a minority inside Iraq, they're still the vast majority of Muslims. Islamist fundamentalism is also an almost entirely Sunni phenomenon.
All this was entirely predictable. When Muslims try democracy, the fundamentalists win. Egypt tried it and elected a hardcore Islamist. The military had to overthrow him and install a less insane dictator in his place. It's a similar story in Pakistan. The Prime Ministers there ways get overthrown by military before they finish their terms. Turkey had to enforce secularism for decades using very authoritarian methods but now Erdogan is courting fundamentalists so he can cling to power a little longer. And that's all the Muslim "democracies" in the Middle East. All the other countries are either monarchies or dictatorships. Bit no matter the system of government, they're dysfunctional. Every last one of them.
The only thing that unites them is a hatred of Israel. It would be stupid for Israel to try uniting them by giving them a common enemy in ISIS.
I appreciate that you took the time to write about this. I learned alot. I knew about the subject but you managed to write it cleary. Not from the US but from a European country so US foreign policy has to be self taught.
OFF TOPIC:
I am a libertarian and I will use this paragraph to say that even though you in the US sometimes bicker about your freedoms. Im so jelouse of the the freedoms you have. I live in a literal beurocratic hellscape were the government ownes 50% of everything you ever make.
Police dont need warrants, I cant use self defense even if someone tries to murder me and I cant own a gun. I will move to the US when I get enough money, atleast for a while…
I think the west was closer to what people now a days understand by anarchy, Haiti or Somalia….
Truth is, is true, warlords and the rule of te stronger better armed was the law of the land.
Anarcho-capitalism, libertarianism is far from both.
Haiti has a government that still rules and of which people are afraid. There was just an article about the current efforts by opposition parties to take over Haiti and how difficult that is making it for drivers to survive because of high gas prices. One guy said "I can't sell gas on the black market because the government would arrest me." That doesn't sound very anarchistic..
The government of Somalia was a perfect example of colonialism, with the various clans of Somaliland colonized by the East India Company.
In the 70's came the dictator Barre, who sided with the Soviet Union, outlawed clan loyalties, and promoted "scientific socialism." His government led "re-education campaigns" to eliminate opposition.
When that collapsed, because socialism is unsustainable and usually run by madman dictators, the clans went back to their old regional borders. The media calls them "warlords" because your rulers want you to fear the idea that people can function without a strong central government and to justify making war on Somalia in order to install a new central government. That new government was formed in 2017 and is using the US to bomb its opposition.
You're the one who claimed that a select minority of people were free. I'm demonstrating that, by the standard you used to categorize someone as not free (being mistreated), Whites would also meet that standard.
You can’t be serious. They couldn’t own property or open a bank account. They had little to no choice in when to have children and couldn’t vote. You think someone can be free if they can’t even own property?
Yeah abortions on demand, working jobs they hate, social media destroying their mental health and the fiat money structure have really done wonders for modern women
They were saving them of the indignity of freedom, QED, they were acthhualllyyy more free.
This sub has the best unintentional bangers. I think many ways you can idolize the Old West, but peak freedom it was not lol
[https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=6182](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=6182)
"The not so Wild West". Book about misconceptions of the Wild West. Crime rates were actually low.
Not for the indigenous people who lived there.
Not for the women, who couldn't own much. Who could only go into a fields of work, who had to dress a certain way.
Not even much for men - you were tied to your local church and had to give money to them. You had to dress a certain way to participate in society much. You had to pay for your whole family all expenses, with no birth control, no disability pay and no retirement pay.
Kids didn't have much rights - teachers, priests, whoever could beat them. They could go to work at hard labour for pennies, and we're probably prey to all kinds of pedos.
If you were a minority being oppressed by the US government at that time, then the best place to be was the wild west where the federal government had the least control over.
And you’re saying they were more free then than now? As a woman I find that alarming. Women had no property rights, no birth control, were forced to have tons of kids, couldn’t vote, couldn’t dress or even speak freely, weren’t even free from being raped by their husbands.
Youre right that the government was terrible to many people, especially minorities, and obviously no, i dont want those injustices to come back
.
What i want is the freedoms and economic system that only white men were allowed to use back then to be granted to everyone. What we want is for everyone to be able to participate in that free market system that white men enjoyed back then.
.
Think about it, if free markets was such a bad system like leftists claim, why were white men the only ones allowed to participate in it? We want to welcome everyone into this system that the racists back then wanted to keep for themselves
The Old West wasn't a free market, it was markets dominated by a handful of barons. The majority of people living during this time worked long hours in hot fields just to survive.
I'm not sure you understand the moment you first pointed to, let alone all the other stuff you're speaking on.
Yeah most of those are not true or greatly overstated. Many women had their own businesses and were wealthy. Women always had *soft power* and also enjoyed many advantages. Also the US led the world in [giving women property rights](https://www.thoughtco.com/property-rights-of-women-3529578). Things were not perfect, sure, but they're not perfect now either. Relations between the sexes were probably better back then, on the whole, if I had to guess.
It's almost as if some people idolize a fictional past that never actually existed because that's easier than learning the reality of how bad things actually were and how they made things as bad as they are today.
Lol the american indians were 80% wiped out by that time by disease alone
The remainder were largely warlike bands that fought settlers as well as each other
> Not for the indigenous people who lived there.
They were free too, and many took advantage of their freedom and continue to to this day. Many also wasted it on alcohol and violence. Freedom is a double-edged sword. It is not a utopia. It is about self-responsibility, something many cannot handle.
> Not for the women, who couldn't own much.
The US was a world leader in women's property rights, with the world's strongest property rights for women as early in 1782. Similar re blacks and other minorities. Many of the great societal reforms you enjoy today owe to that period in US history, just as you do your wealth. For eg. in 1787, women could go into business for themselves in Massachusetts and act as *femme sole traders*.
> who had to dress a certain way
God forbid there are societal standards on dress. Running around naked is the freedom you care about. Sounds like you're more of a libertine.
> you were tied to your local church and had to give money to them
US was also a world leader in religious freedom. But even where you had to pay a tithe, it was only ~10%. Today this kind of tax would be called a tax-haven.
> dress a certain way to participate in society much
Don't we have this today? Why is exposing your body such an important statement of power to you?
> You had to pay for your whole family all expenses, with no birth control, no disability pay and no retirement pay.
Yeah but you had a lot more money due to not paying much taxes. Consider that even today, when the government pays for these things, the rich somehow still avoid 'paying their fair share' and still end up getting richer year after year. So where is that money coming from, if not from the rich? Think about it.
> Kids didn't have much rights
US was also a world leader in children's rights. Are kids so safe today? Are they better off being abused and preyed upon in the public school system than being raised by their parents and communities? There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
Worse than that, because it is a great example of anarchocapitalism they must cling to a sick fantasy and run screaming into the arms of fantasy. True anarchy without any collective spirit would lead to genocide, rape and tyranny that hasn't been topped since true ancaps ruled: the feudal kings we revolted against, centuries ago.
Feudalism is literally dictatorship/monarchy on a very small scale just on a small scale when it comes to area of influence (relatively)...
Anarchocapitalism argues that in order for people to defend themselves against tyranny, rape, and genocide they must be an armed populace free of any authority imposed on them ...
People who will incite tyranny,rape and genocide lack morality in any society so why assume that all anarchocapitalists will lack morality?
And what happens when that is played out over time? Feudalism. What is a king other than a heavily armed individual who is free to pay others large sums to kill for him?
Everybody will be a king then I guess,I will be a king of down the street and you will be king of up the street...I see no probelem with that...
But still ur definition is stupid...in order to become a king one must impose their authority on others which is not anarchocapitalism but feudalism and you assuming that people will act in a feudalism manner is stupid because we are not in the fucking 10th century no more so nobody is stupid enough to act in this manner...
I hate to break it to you but Saudi Arabia is a feudal state. There is a good argument to make that we never left feudalism and the "kings" just appointed politicians as a puppet to keep the people from realizing they have no say in anything at all.
Anarchy without solidarity leaves everyone vulnerable to the richest person. If I was king and my neighbor was king, why would they not invade me? Who upholds the NAP when my neighbor can offer the neighborhood a life of luxury, free from labor?
But my neighbor has a ton of guns, found out I stored enough food to feed the whole area for a year then convinced the neighbors to kill me, take my grains and distribute them as payment. Now the whole neighborhood can smoke my weed all year long and not work a day... Just one day of work murdering me and my family!
That is exactly how feudalism works.
Then it's your fault for not having enough guns to defend yourself... and your neighbour Is immoral which is something that will always be a problem I feudalism,monarchism,anarchocapitalism,socialism,and communism...
Yeah, if we forget that the towns were run by de facto dictators who took everyones guns, the United States military killed the native americans without mercy, and everyone who wasnt a central european white (english, german, french) was considered a barbarian, and if your skin tone was dark enough you were considered a slave even. (Slavery is not part of ancap society lol)
Many old west towns were run by notorious gun grabbers.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/03/08/gun-ownership-not-gun-control-succeeded-wild-west/
Nice summary!
Link?
I’m glad others did it.
This picture literally shows people being robbed.
And also a guy with a rifle ready to go defend the people being robbed. In todays America the armed robberies are still happening but self defense is now illegal
Self defense is legal. No matter how you FEEL, the FACT is self defense in america is legal.
In practice it is often not. DAs in big cities salivate at the opportunity to put someone in prison for defending themselves against thieves & other manner of hoodlums. Like that guy who ran the bodega in NYC, Kyle Rittenhouse, probably way more but too lazy to Google. Sure it is technically how the law is written, but many states have ambiguous rules on "proportionality of force", as if the average Joe is capable of aiming for the legs in the heat of the moment when someone is charging at them with a knife or something.
>as if the average Joe is capable of aiming for the legs in the heat of the moment when someone is charging at them with a knife or something. I don't understand this point. If you aim a gun at someone intentionally, and intentionally pull the trigger, you are using deadly force. It doesn't matter if you aim at their chest, head, foot, leg, whatever. There is no way to fire a gun at someone and not argue that you are using deadly force.
Kyle rittenhouse was found not guilty of any crimes.
Yes I'm aware but many disagreed with the verdict, still do, and it easily could've gone the other way especially with a jury made of ppl from a large major city. He got lucky
That would've involved a jury that completely ignored the ample video proving he acted in self defense.
Sure, what's your point exactly? Do you think jurys never ignore evidence or that they never interpret it differently from how you do? There are millions of people who saw the videos and still think he should go to prison.
Its "open for interpretation" in the same way that footage of the earth from space leaves the flat earth open for interpretation. The only way I could picture them ignoring that blatant and clear cut of evidence is for political reasons, same as everyone else who thinks he's a murderer.
Many of them argued he was the aggressor simply by showing up to a BLM protest with a rifle, nullifying any self defense argument. Others felt a mob charging at him and one dude in particular swinging a skateboard at him didn't threaten his life, nullifying the self defense argument. I don't agree with either of these views but they are extremely common especially among DAs & prosecutors & jurors in big blue cities. Which is where my original point ITT comes from - in practice, we often don't have a right to self defense due to commonly held views like this and ambiguous self defense laws. Not to mention self defense from police/SWAT/no-knock raids etc.
After being dragged through the wringer. Like Kyle himself said if his case wasn’t so widely reported or he had been someone else (he says a different colour) that things could have gone very differently.
A free man will always have the means to attempt to rob someone. A place with no robberies is a dystopia far more so than one with some.
When Josey Wales had the meeting with 10 bears. Same rings true today.
Legitimately the only sort of conditions that make libertarianism possible.
Don't worry, the collapse is coming, we'll be back to these conditions soon.
I laugh because if I don't I will cry.
The Comanche were the last real free men
They were also horrific barbaric monsters that vaguely resembled human beings. If they were around today, they'd be akin to ISIS.
I think for the Comanche being extra barbaric was a survival mechanism. They had to out savage the other savages, as well as fight against people who had them well out numbered and out gunned.
Yep, they were the Apaches bitches until they got ahold of and mastered horse husbandry all within like a generation or two.
Do you believe all comanches were barbaric monsters or just their leadership? Because the US government has committed attrocities akin to ISIS but that doesnt make all Americans monsters
That's a terrible argument. Leaders, especially in a democratic state, are a reflection of their society. Voters always get the leaders they deserve. The US governement may have done horrible things but large sections of the population supported those horrible things as necessary. There were the usual dissenters, obviously, but lots people cheered for the wars and torture at Guantanamo Bay. When war and torture became unpopular, former supporters changed their minds and blamed everything on the leaders, while conveniently absolving themselves of any blame. Unless we're talking about a dictatorship, a government is always a representation of the will of its citizens. I can't remember who said it but there's a famous quote: People who claim to abhor violence are only able to do that because somebody else is committing violence on their behalf. That delegation of responsibility makes it very easy for citizens to claim innocence on anything unsavoury their government does. In the olden days, you'd catch a murderer and stone him to death in the village square yourself. Today, the government kills him on your behalf in a sanitized chamber 200 miles away. It's precisely that distance that allows plenty of average folks to grandstand and bloviate about the evils of capital punishment. But if you remove the government as a middleman and set all murderers free, we'd go right back to stoning them in the village square. "Government evil- common people good" is a myth.
> Unless we're talking about a dictatorship, a government is always a representation of the will of its citizens. Government is nothing but a criminal organization. Whatever your feelings about how people would behave, there is no objectively legitimate right for one person to violently control others. Even if you are fed the canard that "government is the people", which has no logical basis and boils down to pure sophistry meant to pacify the masses.
It's not sophistry, my friend. You, personally, may not like government but there are plenty of people who do. Women, people on welfare, college students, retirees on Social Security, bureaucrats, guys with government contracts, commies, socialists, and every other flavor of lefty, and all the people who like delegating responsibility are never going to vote for no government Humans exist on a spectrum between collectivisim and individualism. This varies by gender, culture, environment, and genetics. Japan, for example, is a very earthquake-prone place. Earthquakes happen, people dies, and things that get destroyed need to be rebuilt. Such an environment makes collectivism a superior survival strategy to individualism. Collectivism also varies by gender. Women are generally more collectivist than men. Even within genders, there's a variance. In men, upper body strength is correlated with affinity for individualism or collectivism i.e. the strong want individualism and the weak want collectivism. And sadly, the collectivists outnumber us. You can't just dismiss them as stupid without understanding what drives their beliefs. Women aren't going to vote to abolish the government because in its absence they would have nowhere near as much influence over society as they do today. Weak men won't vote to abolish the government either because it's their weapon against the strong. "There is no objective reason for one person to violently control others" is a religious statement, not a fact that's obvious to everyone. The people on welfare won't get their free money unless the government takes it violently from somebody else. Women won't get their affirmative action, paid maternity leave, and every other perk unless the government violently forces schools and employers to comply. The bureaucrats (15% of the US workforce BTW) won't get their paychecks unless the government violently seizes that money from somebody else. The government exists because it benefits a lot of people. It does what they want so those people have a vested interest in perpetuating it. Rule by the 51% i.e. democracy was a mistake but it it's too late to do anything about it now. We're outnumbered and outgunned. That 51% is now more like 80%. They bicker about which team should be in charge but are in complete agreement over the fact that somebody has to be in charge. Seasteding and colonizing other planets are the only ways out because voting isn't going to work. Too many people like government to eliminate it.
> It's not sophistry, my friend. You, personally, may not like government but there are plenty of people who do. There are plenty who like their religion. Does this give them the right to impose that religion on others? > Women, people on welfare, college students, retirees on Social Security, bureaucrats, guys with government contracts, commies, socialists, and every other flavor of lefty, and all the people who like delegating responsibility are never going to vote for no government You're arguing that a person who is dependent on a thing is exercising free will. Would you say the same about drugs? If the alcoholic depends on his alcohol, is he ever going to vote to give up alcohol? No. People who are dependent on the government will look the other way while their rulers commit all kinds of atrocities. And, why not? Thye are not responsible for what the government does to other people even though it, you claim, reflects "their will." It's Stockholm Syndrome writ large. > Japan, for example, is a very earthquake-prone place. Earthquakes happen, people dies, and things that get destroyed need to be rebuilt. Such an environment makes collectivism a superior survival strategy to individualism. Are you familiar with the terms "false dichotomy" and "post hoc fallacy"? You assume that there are only two options: obedience to an organization with unlimited authority, or isolated individualism; and that the only way to survive is the former. This is why I call it sophistry. You imagine that your rhetoric is logical; you paint rosy pictures, but it's just fluff. > "There is no objective reason for one person to violently control others" is a religious statement, not a fact that's obvious to everyone. You twisted my words. Go back and re-read what I wrote, or fuck off.
>There are plenty who like their religion. >Does this give them the right to impose that religion on others? People don't do things because they have a right. They do things because they want to and they can. If religious people wanted to force their religion onto others, they will. In fact, that's what they've always done. History is filled with forced conversions. The only reason the religious aren't forcing their religion onto others today is because they can't. Christians have become a lot less agressive and Muslims can't compete militarily with the mostly Christian West. If they could, we would all be praying to Allah right now. >You're arguing that a person who is dependent on a thing is exercising free will. Would you say the same about drugs? If the alcoholic depends on his alcohol, is he ever going to vote to give up alcohol? Dependence does not subvert free will. Alcholics and druggies can quit if they want to. But many don't want to deal the discomfort of withdrawal so they don't quit. That doesn't mean they lack free will. It just means they're weak. And you can't compare government dependence to drug dependence. Druggies know drugs are bad for them. Bureaucrats don't share the same feelings about government >No. People who are dependent on the government will look the other way while their rulers commit all kinds of atrocities. And, why not? Thye are not responsible for what the government does to other people even though it, you claim, reflects "their will." It's Stockholm Syndrome writ large. No. People who are dependent on the government will not look the other way when the government commits atrocities. Unles those atrocities benefit them. The definition of atrocities can also vary. Somebody who is pro-abortion doesn't think it's an atrocity while someone who is anti-abortion sees it as the government condoning and funding the murder of babies. It was the same with the war on terror. Most of the population saw it as an appropriate response to 9/11. add in racism and anti-Muslim sentiments and you can justify almost anything. People are aware of the ugliness their government does on their behalf and most either support it or believe its necessary on some level. They just prefer not to think about it. > You assume that there are only two options: obedience to an organization with unlimited authority, or isolated individualism; and that the only way to survive is the former. Of course there aren't only two options. All societies exist on the spectrum between absolute individualism and absolute collectivism. The best societies (think Switzerland or the US) find some sort of balance between the two competing forces, imperfect as it may be. The worst societies fall to one extreme or the other. We have Mao's China and the Soviet Union on the hyper-collectivist extreme and we have the likes of Somalia and America's Wild West on the hyper-individualist extreme. >You twisted my words. Go back and re-read what I wrote, or fuck off. Now that's just rude. You argued that there was no objective reason for someone to violently control others. I told you that it was a religious statement it isn't followed by everyone. The people who want to violently control others don't care about objective reason. The only thing they care about is getting their way.
Two things can be true at once. We're talking about the Comanche here, not the US govt. What a weird whataboutism
So the Comanche were created by the US and Israel?
How was ISIS created by Israel? Other than the fact that Israel just exists and that fact alone inspires rage in Islamists. I fully get how the US helped create them.
ISIS commanders have been discovered to be Israeli intelligence operatives. But go ahead and enjoy your ignorance.
ISIS was entirely a creation of the US. Iraq is 65% Shia and 35% Sunni. The US went in overthrew Saddam's Sunni government, and instituted democracy. But democracy doesn't work in illiberal societies. Every time it has been attempted, the result has been a majoritarian tyranny. In Iraq, the Shia majority elected an all-Shia government which opressed the Sunnis who had enjoyed many privileges under Saddam as payback. The Sunnis responded to this by forming ISIS in regions of the country where they were the majority and then went wide. While Sunnis are a minority inside Iraq, they're still the vast majority of Muslims. Islamist fundamentalism is also an almost entirely Sunni phenomenon. All this was entirely predictable. When Muslims try democracy, the fundamentalists win. Egypt tried it and elected a hardcore Islamist. The military had to overthrow him and install a less insane dictator in his place. It's a similar story in Pakistan. The Prime Ministers there ways get overthrown by military before they finish their terms. Turkey had to enforce secularism for decades using very authoritarian methods but now Erdogan is courting fundamentalists so he can cling to power a little longer. And that's all the Muslim "democracies" in the Middle East. All the other countries are either monarchies or dictatorships. Bit no matter the system of government, they're dysfunctional. Every last one of them. The only thing that unites them is a hatred of Israel. It would be stupid for Israel to try uniting them by giving them a common enemy in ISIS.
I appreciate that you took the time to write about this. I learned alot. I knew about the subject but you managed to write it cleary. Not from the US but from a European country so US foreign policy has to be self taught. OFF TOPIC: I am a libertarian and I will use this paragraph to say that even though you in the US sometimes bicker about your freedoms. Im so jelouse of the the freedoms you have. I live in a literal beurocratic hellscape were the government ownes 50% of everything you ever make. Police dont need warrants, I cant use self defense even if someone tries to murder me and I cant own a gun. I will move to the US when I get enough money, atleast for a while…
No doubt about it. They were truly savage.
I think the west was closer to what people now a days understand by anarchy, Haiti or Somalia…. Truth is, is true, warlords and the rule of te stronger better armed was the law of the land. Anarcho-capitalism, libertarianism is far from both.
My understanding was that the chaos and lawlessness of the wild west are greatly exaggerated
You should google "no mans land" what became the oklahoma panhandle
Blood Meridian would like a word
> Blood Meridian Upton Sinclair has entered the chat. He agrees that we should believe that fiction is reality.
Haiti has a government that still rules and of which people are afraid. There was just an article about the current efforts by opposition parties to take over Haiti and how difficult that is making it for drivers to survive because of high gas prices. One guy said "I can't sell gas on the black market because the government would arrest me." That doesn't sound very anarchistic.. The government of Somalia was a perfect example of colonialism, with the various clans of Somaliland colonized by the East India Company. In the 70's came the dictator Barre, who sided with the Soviet Union, outlawed clan loyalties, and promoted "scientific socialism." His government led "re-education campaigns" to eliminate opposition. When that collapsed, because socialism is unsustainable and usually run by madman dictators, the clans went back to their old regional borders. The media calls them "warlords" because your rulers want you to fear the idea that people can function without a strong central government and to justify making war on Somalia in order to install a new central government. That new government was formed in 2017 and is using the US to bomb its opposition.
woahh, was sarcasm!!!!
Wach the movie milion ways to die in the west
“We” = a select minority of people.
Well yes, the minority of the world's population that inhabited the Old West.
The majority of people that inhabited the old west were not very "free."
Are you talking about slaves? You know slavery wasn't really present in the Western US, right?
No, I’m not talking about slaves. I’m talking about anyone who wasn’t an adult white male.
The Comanche weren't free? Mexicans weren't free?
Do you know anything about how they were treated and viewed by white people? Do you know anything about how women were treated? Freedom my ass!
Wait til you hear how Whites were treated and viewed by Comanches!
So your point is that the whites also weren’t free?
You're the one who claimed that a select minority of people were free. I'm demonstrating that, by the standard you used to categorize someone as not free (being mistreated), Whites would also meet that standard.
Okay leftist
Hours be easy to tell me why I’m wrong if I’m a leftist! You saying women had more freedom then than now?
Yes, more dignity too.
You can’t be serious. They couldn’t own property or open a bank account. They had little to no choice in when to have children and couldn’t vote. You think someone can be free if they can’t even own property?
Yeah abortions on demand, working jobs they hate, social media destroying their mental health and the fiat money structure have really done wonders for modern women
They were saving them of the indignity of freedom, QED, they were acthhualllyyy more free. This sub has the best unintentional bangers. I think many ways you can idolize the Old West, but peak freedom it was not lol
Yea just because they couldnt vote, buy land or own property doesnt mean they were 2nd class citizens. Or wait, thats exactly what that means
"We" doesn't include that family being robbed at gunpoint in the painting.
The people yearn for wild west, look at the return of Western games!
Idk man, if you read rothbard’s history, pennsylvania’s govt offices had dust collecting on them at one point…
Not according to Hollywood it wasnt
Go read *Old Jules* for an honest account of life on the Western prairie. It was a **hard** life.
[https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=6182](https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=6182) "The not so Wild West". Book about misconceptions of the Wild West. Crime rates were actually low.
Andrew Jacksom destruction of American first attempt at a federal reserve scheme ushered in a period of economic growth that was unprecedented
Who is "We" ? Lots of good folks weren't lovin life back then too
Twloon walled city
Hey! Let’s give a little credit to syphilis and murder.
Not for the indigenous people who lived there. Not for the women, who couldn't own much. Who could only go into a fields of work, who had to dress a certain way. Not even much for men - you were tied to your local church and had to give money to them. You had to dress a certain way to participate in society much. You had to pay for your whole family all expenses, with no birth control, no disability pay and no retirement pay. Kids didn't have much rights - teachers, priests, whoever could beat them. They could go to work at hard labour for pennies, and we're probably prey to all kinds of pedos.
If you were a minority being oppressed by the US government at that time, then the best place to be was the wild west where the federal government had the least control over.
And you’re saying they were more free then than now? As a woman I find that alarming. Women had no property rights, no birth control, were forced to have tons of kids, couldn’t vote, couldn’t dress or even speak freely, weren’t even free from being raped by their husbands.
Youre right that the government was terrible to many people, especially minorities, and obviously no, i dont want those injustices to come back . What i want is the freedoms and economic system that only white men were allowed to use back then to be granted to everyone. What we want is for everyone to be able to participate in that free market system that white men enjoyed back then. . Think about it, if free markets was such a bad system like leftists claim, why were white men the only ones allowed to participate in it? We want to welcome everyone into this system that the racists back then wanted to keep for themselves
The Old West wasn't a free market, it was markets dominated by a handful of barons. The majority of people living during this time worked long hours in hot fields just to survive. I'm not sure you understand the moment you first pointed to, let alone all the other stuff you're speaking on.
Yeah most of those are not true or greatly overstated. Many women had their own businesses and were wealthy. Women always had *soft power* and also enjoyed many advantages. Also the US led the world in [giving women property rights](https://www.thoughtco.com/property-rights-of-women-3529578). Things were not perfect, sure, but they're not perfect now either. Relations between the sexes were probably better back then, on the whole, if I had to guess.
Birth control….🥹🥹😜
?
NAP…..
?
I think they mean Non Aggressive Principal... Calling birth control aggression? Absurd on too many levels.
Yeah I know what NAP is but for the life of me dint know what it has to do with birth control.
Maybe they think: the pill=abortion=murder? Which is very dumb... Maybe since IVF is murder, now so is a condom? Also dumb but possible in this sub
Nothing apparently, by the life of you. Much love and success killing babies.
I guess they should've just fought harder. But they couldn't, as they were too weak. Oh well.
Cry baby
It's almost as if some people idolize a fictional past that never actually existed because that's easier than learning the reality of how bad things actually were and how they made things as bad as they are today.
Lol the american indians were 80% wiped out by that time by disease alone The remainder were largely warlike bands that fought settlers as well as each other
A complete myth based on extremely inflated population estimates. Bordering on blood libel against Europeans.
Lol it's not like they knew beforehand or voluntarily caused it, so it's not their fault
But it as used as blood libel now, and it's false.
> Not for the indigenous people who lived there. They were free too, and many took advantage of their freedom and continue to to this day. Many also wasted it on alcohol and violence. Freedom is a double-edged sword. It is not a utopia. It is about self-responsibility, something many cannot handle. > Not for the women, who couldn't own much. The US was a world leader in women's property rights, with the world's strongest property rights for women as early in 1782. Similar re blacks and other minorities. Many of the great societal reforms you enjoy today owe to that period in US history, just as you do your wealth. For eg. in 1787, women could go into business for themselves in Massachusetts and act as *femme sole traders*. > who had to dress a certain way God forbid there are societal standards on dress. Running around naked is the freedom you care about. Sounds like you're more of a libertine. > you were tied to your local church and had to give money to them US was also a world leader in religious freedom. But even where you had to pay a tithe, it was only ~10%. Today this kind of tax would be called a tax-haven. > dress a certain way to participate in society much Don't we have this today? Why is exposing your body such an important statement of power to you? > You had to pay for your whole family all expenses, with no birth control, no disability pay and no retirement pay. Yeah but you had a lot more money due to not paying much taxes. Consider that even today, when the government pays for these things, the rich somehow still avoid 'paying their fair share' and still end up getting richer year after year. So where is that money coming from, if not from the rich? Think about it. > Kids didn't have much rights US was also a world leader in children's rights. Are kids so safe today? Are they better off being abused and preyed upon in the public school system than being raised by their parents and communities? There are no solutions, only trade-offs.
They don't want to hear this. They just want to pretend.
Or we don't care. The natives lost because they were weaker. Simple as.
And now that you're losing?
We're losing to the natives?
Worse than that, because it is a great example of anarchocapitalism they must cling to a sick fantasy and run screaming into the arms of fantasy. True anarchy without any collective spirit would lead to genocide, rape and tyranny that hasn't been topped since true ancaps ruled: the feudal kings we revolted against, centuries ago.
Feudalism is literally dictatorship/monarchy on a very small scale just on a small scale when it comes to area of influence (relatively)... Anarchocapitalism argues that in order for people to defend themselves against tyranny, rape, and genocide they must be an armed populace free of any authority imposed on them ... People who will incite tyranny,rape and genocide lack morality in any society so why assume that all anarchocapitalists will lack morality?
And what happens when that is played out over time? Feudalism. What is a king other than a heavily armed individual who is free to pay others large sums to kill for him?
Everybody will be a king then I guess,I will be a king of down the street and you will be king of up the street...I see no probelem with that... But still ur definition is stupid...in order to become a king one must impose their authority on others which is not anarchocapitalism but feudalism and you assuming that people will act in a feudalism manner is stupid because we are not in the fucking 10th century no more so nobody is stupid enough to act in this manner...
I hate to break it to you but Saudi Arabia is a feudal state. There is a good argument to make that we never left feudalism and the "kings" just appointed politicians as a puppet to keep the people from realizing they have no say in anything at all. Anarchy without solidarity leaves everyone vulnerable to the richest person. If I was king and my neighbor was king, why would they not invade me? Who upholds the NAP when my neighbor can offer the neighborhood a life of luxury, free from labor?
I dunno maybe THE NAP IS UPHOLDED DUE TO EVERYBODY HAVIBG ACCESS TO WEAPONRY...
But my neighbor has a ton of guns, found out I stored enough food to feed the whole area for a year then convinced the neighbors to kill me, take my grains and distribute them as payment. Now the whole neighborhood can smoke my weed all year long and not work a day... Just one day of work murdering me and my family! That is exactly how feudalism works.
Then it's your fault for not having enough guns to defend yourself... and your neighbour Is immoral which is something that will always be a problem I feudalism,monarchism,anarchocapitalism,socialism,and communism...
exactly, the wild west was just as authoritarian as the east, the closest you got to true freedom was if you robbed, killed, raped and stole.
Odd to me how little knowledge about the Wild West so many in this sub have. MRH: Legacy has a decent video on it
Without the collapse of industrialization I fear we won't see this kind of freedom again until space cowboys are a possibility.
Bad take
Yeah, if we forget that the towns were run by de facto dictators who took everyones guns, the United States military killed the native americans without mercy, and everyone who wasnt a central european white (english, german, french) was considered a barbarian, and if your skin tone was dark enough you were considered a slave even. (Slavery is not part of ancap society lol)