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Originally Posted by simplistic2
Firstly by examining the people that want to live in a society without government; they are people who typically hate violence or aggression of any kind. Even right now in your community, look around, who are the people that are going to group together to enslave us?
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I'm pretty sure that there's nobody in my community that wants to enslave anyone (using the objective definition of "slavery", as opposed to your self-serving definition).
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Economically, what is the incentive for somebody to try and install a new government? How do you suppose a group of murderers and thieves are going to get the funding to build a new state in a society where people despise statism? It would be easier for a Muslim to try to convert a scientific community.
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You'll find it pretty hard to bring anyone around to your way of thinking by describing people who disagree with your worldview as "murderers and thieves".
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Taxation is needed for modern war; no individual will voluntarily fund a war. War is the health of state not the individual, there will be no war in a free society.
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Leaving aside the fact that this is yet another example of magical thinking (and almost indistinguishable from communist rhetoric about workers' paradises), how exactly is this "free society" going to come about?
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Yes. The government not only enables reckless investing by coercing the markets into accepting a single currency...
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The markets have a single currency? When did this happen?
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...but also actively encourages it by rewarding bankers with bailouts for mal-investments.
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I agree that governments were complicit in the creation of the financial crisis through their encouragement of moral hazard. However, I disagree that the solution is to remove government and trust that Wall Street firms are incapable of greed and stupidity in the absence of government.
One of the common factors in the recent credit bubbles is the absence of firm regulation. It seems naive in the extreme to me to claim that the problem would not have arisen in the total absence of regulation.
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It is completely and utterly, 100% the fault of the government and would never even conceivably happen in a free society.
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That's nothing but more magical thinking. You're claiming that in a "free" society, there would be no incentive for banks to create investment vehicles and sell them with hyped-up credit ratings to gullible customers. On the contrary, in a society without government, there would be nothing whatsoever to prevent such actions.
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Since poor is a relative term, it is difficult to define? Are there poor people in Ireland? Compared to what? Essentially the question is “will people wealthier if they keep 100% of their earnings or have half of it used to fund parasitical politicians and endless quangos?” It is simple to deduce the better option.
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It's certainly an attractive option, when looked at from a middle- or upper-class perspective.
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The free market eliminates poverty by giving people the opportunity to work their way out not grab their way out. When two people make a voluntary exchange; they are both agreeing that they are now better off than they were before the exchange. This multiplied repeatedly is how wealth is generated and thus how poverty is eliminated.
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What happens to people who can't work as hard as others, or at all? What happens to orphans, or people with learning disabilities? Where's their opportunity to work their way out of poverty?
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In the government model wealth is stolen from one individual, firstly to pay the wage of the person doing the stealing and then it is handed to another individual for doing nothing. This has many negative effects for society. Firstly, by punishing an individual for creating wealth; you dis incentivise him to produce. Secondly, the wealth stolen to fund the politician is not needed in this area and could be spent by the individual, creating jobs. Thirdly, dishing out wealth creates an underclass of dependants as they choose to take free money rather that participating in the production of wealth.
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Nobody steals tax from me. I operate in the framework of a society, where I pay tax in return for the services provided by society. I feel that those services could be provided more efficiently, thereby reducing the cost to me in the form of taxes, but the answer is to lobby for greater efficiency in the provision of services, not the destruction of society.
My house isn't as well insulated as it could be, which means I spend more on heating it that I should have to. My answer is to improve the insulation of the house. Yours is to demolish the house, and wear more clothes.
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It is a mistake to think that the government helps the poor. They encourage and create poverty. By removing the government “poverty” will be become an ancient term associated with government intervention.
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Magical thinking. I believe you're utterly wrong in that assertion. I think your "free" society would have much sharper and deeper divides between haves and have-nots, and until you convince me otherwise (by explaining
how a world without government makes poverty impossible, rather than just asserting it) I'll be working very hard to make sure your vision never becomes a reality.
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The creation of a law doesn’t create safe food it actually disrupts the market by adding extra costs to producers and stifling innovation in private food safety measures.
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Therefore, food is now less safe than it was before governments introduced food safety legislation? Got any evidence for that?
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You are also assuming that the government’s standards are valid for everybody. This is not true, for instance in Asia I regularly ate food from street vendors, by Irish government standards they would be shut down and the vendor would lose his lively hood.
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Nope. I've eaten food from street vendors in Denmark. Those street vendors are required to prepare their food to the same standards as Danish restaurants. They were still doing business.
Also, you do realise that people quite frequently get seriously ill by eating food from unregulated street vendors in Asian and other countries?
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I also had the choice to walk into a supermarket and buy an internationally known, reliable brand. The reason the vendor doesn’t have an international brand is because the consumer is not willing to accept his low standard. It is the consumer that sets the standard, the government is not needed.
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You do realise that one of the reasons the international brand is "reliable" is because it's produced under stringent conditions enforced by governments, right?
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I knew I would not be able to sue the vendor if I fell ill, so I paid a lower price. I chose my own standard based on the risk, it is entirely irrational to think that an external third party is able to choose what standard is best for me and not only that but since you’re so worried about poverty it also destroys the poor vendors opportunity to rise out of destitution.
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Yeah, like all those poor vendors starving on the side of the road in Denmark because the evil government has put them out of government with its stupid and unnecessary safety standards.
I mean, who cares whether kids' toys have lead in them? If enough kids die, the manufacturer will go out of business, and that way the problem is self-correcting. Right?
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