Democracy: Do you support it?

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What is wrong with the values of the radically religious? Technically, what makes a belief more or less valid?

*sigh* Oh yes, I am ever so terrible at math. I know nothing about partial differentiation, Laplace transforms, or multiple integrals. Um... dude, this is not a formal logic class, we aren't using mathematical constructs. If we were then more work would have to be done in defining terms.


Um.... the validity and meaning we see within sight, sound and our senses still goes back to theory.

Only if you uphold the validity of logic is 1+1=2. We can claim that logic must be upheld for us to make sense of the world, but technically, the only force upholding logic is logical necessity and a device cannot prove itself.

Um... no. I understand the concepts just fine. I actually deny the ability to assert any absolute truth.


Um... not really. I did not present very much of a positive model with all things worked out. If I were to do so then I would be referencing a few works by Bryan Caplan, and David Friedman on the nature of law and on how economic logic relates to that.

Technically, your arguments to discredit my model are based upon a different model of human behavior, as you did not refer to the same theoretical understandings that I came from, but rather referred to different conceptualizations by adding or withholding assumptions I already made.


No, you make models. Trust me, you assert too many positive comments to merely be a destroyer of models.


No, you are irrational. You have assumed consequentialism, whereas I have rejected it. If I am not a consequentialist then things can be good without any regard to their consequences.

Oh, yes, of course. I have *no* understanding at all. Yes, I misunderstand math and logic *entirely*. Woe is me, for I do not know these subjects. I have no understanding of them at all and thus I live my life in complete sadness.

Umm..... that has nothing to do with my criticism. My criticism is that your 'if' was not likely to happen.

Yes, they are.

Um... yeah, sure...


Look, either you are complete moron or you did have malicious intent. Communicating as you do is hardly acceptable and at the very least is obnoxious.


No, I am not approaching the debate mathematically. There is a difference. I am rejecting strict formalism. Yeah, trust me, your logic really is a leaky ship. Frankly, I am glad for you not elaborating as one of us does not know how to communicate and it certainly is not me.

Methinks you two are shouting past each other...

I'd be surprised if we weren't.

We are going to be delving into a realm of essentially The blame game, now are we?

Fine, might as well touch on the points here, since they are few, and really have nothing seemingly involved with the original argument.

Proof. And there a a few different methods to do this. One of these is logical deduction. One is Math. One is Science. etc.

The belief that coincides best with the data, is the most valid.

Radically religious, I am using a more popular description for. So this one I did not define myself, but rather used a popular definition. It is not an endearing term. The radically religious tend to be the term you would assosciate with abusive religious parents, or worse, things like suicide bombers who do it under the guise of religion.



I am using math as one of several constructs, because it is a BETTER form of debate. It results in answers, and not gray material. Hence the reason I use it.

If we were to define every term, than yes we would need more work. However, the point was to attack the foundations of a proposed idea logically. If the foundation fails, the rest does as well. It doesnt matter what is above it, if the foundation doesn't work it can't work.

Now you could take the variables you have above them, and propose a new foundation. However, you had in this scenario stuck to anarchy. As a result, The arguments were spent on elaboration and repetition(equally annoying to both of us).

I don't have a problem if you want to take the capitalism argument that was in this thread, economically and attach it to another foundation. Anarchy, as a whole, however, has logical failings in the foundation. I was not the only person in this thread who told you that.



Firstly, I am not going to say a device cannot prove itself, because that assumes to much. If I made a device to recognize itself, your claim would not matter. But regardless.

In either case, who said a device NEEDED to prove that it itself, was a device? It can work perfectly fine without doing so. As long as the elements in the device work(which math and science clearly do), than it is fine.



It doesn't matter if you deny your ability to assert absolute truth. It wouldn't change the fact of there being, or not being any.

And there are two scenarios...1) there is absolute truth.. 2) there is no truth

If there is absolute truth, we can define things, and we should be able to tell people reasons for things and what should happen and be determined.

If there is no absolute truth, than why are you arguing in the first place? Nothing you say could be right, nothing I say could be right.

Your sense of self would be wrong as would mine. As a result, attempting to claim that what matters to the individual is what should be accepted, is incorrect.

Doing so, means that you are claiming there is absolute truth.

So which is it? The argument you present is inconsistent.



However, you did present a model of anarchy, specifically anarcho-capitalism. You still presented it.



And now I am saying your model is one that goes against the very foundations of logic.



Name me one model I have made and Asserted here in this thread? Present it to me.

I have been arguing against the model of anarchy among all of our conversations.

1+1=2 for example would not be my model. It is one of the simplest systems of logic known to man, and has been repeated many times in nature, before any of us were even born.

The concept itself, though not written on paper, existed even more the advent of humans ourselves.



One does not need to be a consequentialist, for the passage I wrote to make sense.
It was a logical summation.



Actually it was this:



Notice, how there is more in that passage than simply "if was not likely to happen" criticism. And I don't only mean literally "it was not likely to happen.

Yeah, and *if* you don't have absolutes then what is the point?

Is another idea entirely.

I answered in response to the whole passage.(and we know there was more presented than seen in that latest quote of what I wrote).

If you only want to say "If was not likely to happen" than state that idea alone, or seperate the ideas into paragraphs.

I at least try to respect whole paragraphs people type, assuming that the whole thought requires the whole paragraph. Otherwise you could claim I am TWISTING the paragraph around by cutting it up.

So I keep them whole.



Do I need to throw out more dictionary definitions? Do I?

I said, I had no intention to insult you. Whether or not someone gets insulted, has nothing to do with intention. A person can overthink something and be insulted. A person can misconstrue something and be insulted.

I had intention to prove your arguments wrong. Not to insult you. You did not give that same service to me. As evidenced by even this new comment.

It is my belief that your form of communication is less acceptable and more obnoxious. Notice How I can state that as well.

I at least tried to elaborate, and make things simple. Communication is never perfect. However, saying such a comment you can see is pointless.



Keeping things in a mathematical flow(among other things), is a great way to debate, because you can do it with absolutes.

As I said before, being that we are two individuals. Communication is between us. Either we are both successful or both failed.

In a manner.

Math is logical deduction, Science is a method of induction. Science, as you mentioned cannot prove anything but seeks to disprove things and is only valid as much as its theories. Proof

That is an assertion. We assume induction allows for something to be closer to truth, unless of course you are referring to some universal all data, which is pointless to bring up as you cannot prove who then has greater validity.

No, it really isn't. Math pisses people off and very few people enjoy math. Not only that, but you aren't even talking about math, you are talking about logic, specifically the use of rigid logical structures. Most of us got enough rigid logical structures in our studies if not then in our current reading.


Actually the last person used empiricism, not logic.

No, it really cannot. You cannot determine whether the device works or not unless it can be proven, and if it cannot be proven, then it loses validity.


Depending on the nature of this truth or lack thereof. Note, I said "assert" truth, not anything about whether or not truth exists. Basically, I took the skeptical stance, one that you aren't accounting for.

Skepticism, truth exists but we don't know what it is.

Not very much of one as there was no attention to detail and even a stated lack of attention to detail.

Now that is BS. You've hardly pointed out inconsistencies but rather have pointed out assumptions you've disagreed with.

Drug dealers, defense markets, hierarchicalism, history of government, theory of the conception of government. Every attack you make against me is technically another model as you explicitly go against my assumptions and framework.

No, it really wasn't. You said that the judging factor of something is by its consequences relatively explicitly.

Yeah, I was more mocking you than anything else.


I keep most of your paragraphs whole as well.


Yeah, first statement there was obnoxious. The second part of that, well, your intention doesn't matter, it isn't a matter of me overthinking but rather of your condescension. Trust me, I have no problems insulting people if they are jerks or too anal or have any other major problem and do not seem open to understanding. We could argue that I am less acceptable and more obnoxious, but you start off with inscrutable writings that stretch out for way too long, and combine that with hyper-rationalism and condescension and I would think that most people would prefer my typings which are shorter, better-phrased, less anal, and although certainly insulting more thoughtfully so.


No, it is a terrible way to debate. A horror to read, a terror to construct, more prone to nitpicking, and heck, you are even doing it wrong as you aren't creating good syllogisms while still holding to anal methods of defining things.

Either that, or I could propose communication as a matter of role-playing, and that failure is where a person plays their role poorly. This means, that one side can communicate well and the other poorly and that this can be the problem. After all, your idea does not account for willful failures by one party in communication.

I am not quite so extreme a Rothbardian as Awesomelyglorious, but pbcoll and Hero, it should be noted that you have yet to actually point out a formal logical fallacy in AG's reasoning. You simply disagree with one of his arguments and then state that it is a fallacy. You have no basis to do this as you are not in the privileged position of defining logic, and as you seem so fond of absolutes you should at least respect those that have been established.

Also, the strongest objection you have yet brought against anarcho-capitalism is that a monopoly could occur and impose its will on others, presenting this as the obvious worst-case scenario. Could you please explain to me how this is different from or worse then the current state monopoly? By your own arguments, the worst-case scenario under anarchy would simply be a return to the status quo. So why do you argue so fiercely against it, if the worst that could happen is for things to return to their previous condition? Given the assumptions and assertions you have made, it would seem to me that we certainly do not stand to lose anything by attempting an anarcho-capitalist system. Actually, I have found your posts to be among the strongest arguments for anarchism that I have yet seen, as all of your objections are completely baseless.

I would hardly call myself Rothbardian, I think I draw my anarchism more from Friedman with some relatively Rothbardian ethical premises, however, Friedman really does not go much into ethics and if he did those ethics would explicitly be utilitarian(with some libertarianism of course).

I assume you mean David Friedman and not Milton? I had not heard too much about David before, I will have to go look up more on him sometime. Well, to be more clear, I do not share your anarchist views, but I considered many of the attacks against them to be unjustified. I would prefer to keep the state around for very limited purposes such as maintaining police, military, and courts, but keeping them out of all other matters.

Yes, David. David is not so much the center of any intellectual group such as the Austrians or the monetarists so that is probably why you haven't heard much of him. He seems a reasonably good scholar though as he got his PhD in Physics, and has acted as an economics professor and currently a law professor and has published a few books. He also has a blog that he updates a few times a month.

Now I know that I'm just an ignorant little piece of asperian crap, but direct democracy CANNOT work unless it's in a country such as MONACO with a population of 23,000 people or so. The United States Simply has way too much land and too many people to effectively have any sort of efficient government. Why do you think that Rome (The First, and arguably the best republic) collapsed? Because over time it became too large, with too many people. Why did Britain give all of the nations in it's commonwealth independence? (except for Canada which still has some british muddling about in their government) Look at The Soviet Union! They had an economic and social collapse (Like we're starting to experience now). All large and heavily populated nations inevitably fall. Our GOD FEARING, GRAND OLD country of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Or as I call it "THE BIG ONE") is no different than the hundreds of former great empires. The funny thing is, the USA is suffering from all of the different reasons of collapse; 50 years of corruption, excessive belligerence (since world War Two We've been at war nonstop with someone or another for some reason.), economic recession (which almost always leads to total collapse), A seriously screwed up import/export situation (The lack of tariffs due to FREE TRADE has caused there to be about 85 imports to each export we send out.), and finally, 300+ million PISSED OFF HOMO SAPIENT S! I'm sorry to say it but.... WE...ARE...SCREWED!! !

The Soviet Union is a bad example. They were also burdened with a problematic economic model and were suffering from economic problems that the US probably will never suffer.

Corruption has been going on for longer than 50 years. If we are arguing government expansion then it began with and before Roosevelt. If we are arguing simple dirtiness, well, we have had various scandals and human rights issues since before the Cold War.

Our military expenditures have been declining rather than increasing for a while now though. The Iraq war might upset this trend somewhat, but we really were pushing our military during the cold war.

This is recession is likely not going to be the next Great Depression though. Some economists even think that our GDP won't decline but rather merely have a slower growth rate.

Actually, if we had less free trade, I would be more worried. Autarky would probably result in relative economic decline as there would be less competition and interaction with foreign industries and I would think that then we would become more economically backwards as inefficient industries would be maintained. If you want something to blame for the import/export situation, I would go about blaming the federal deficit as it is basic international macroeconomics that when government spending exceeds tax income, that net exports decrease. This is also noted from how our trade deficit and Reagan's presidency and higher national deficits go hand in hand. Really, if we did not have this deficit then there would be less reason for our overly large trade deficit as foreigners would spend our dollars more instead of buying our deficit. That being said, a small trade deficit isn't a bad thing, it means we get more goods for less payment. Finally, given our monetary situation, tariffs really won't impact the balance of trade so much as the volume. If there were an international gold standard or some other international currency then tariffs would increase our exports and thereby GDP assuming that no trade war occurs, but we have a floating exchange rate.

Not really, most Americans are reasonably happy with the status quo. They might deride George Bush, but really we don't really see many revolutionary or anti-status quo signs. Frankly, I think that the US's decline will come further in the future and be less of a collapse and more of a slow degradation.

What you say is probably true, I was just POed when I wrote that. but really think about it, free trade=No tariffs, No Tariffs=No exports lots of imports, that=debt and loss of jobs. With free trade, foreign goods are cheaper than american goods. I'm sorry to say that free trade was the worst blunder ever made in the Clinton administration (This is in my opinion).

Trust me, I have thought about trade issues. No tariffs doesn't mean no exports, in fact, the idea of a nation that provides no services but gets them in turn makes very little sense. With free trade, we're going to find that to be true in some sectors but in the long run, it isn't likely to be all sectors though because the reason for them giving us good is for us to give them goods. Honestly I disagree with your assessments on free trade and I think that NAFTA was one of Clinton's smarter moves.

Wow, I finally have found someone on this god-forsaken planet who can understand what I'm talking about well enough to disagree/agree with what I say. But what I meant earlier is that, for the most part there are very few products made in the United states, because for the Gigantic Corporations (Like Wal-Mart for example) it's cheaper to have their products to be made by some poor Laotian or Vietnamese kid to make 250 Nikes/day at $.10 cents a week (Should they be so lucky), rather than have a unionized "American Prick" who makes 75 nikes/week for $19/hour. Now I AM NOT saying that we should tariff the mother-loving crap out people, but at least a FEW would be nice. Also what ever happened to Theodor Roosevelt's crack down on monopolies? What ever happened to the Sherman antitrust act? Whatever happened to that? Oh well, You're cool. It's been fun to debate with you. Hopefully I'll be better armed to face you next time Talk To You Later!

Ok, I agree that it is a lot cheaper to have someone in another country create our stuff. That is why we should have them do the job. It is more efficient. America should focus on something that isn't as cheap as shoes and such as technology.

The issue is one of why. I don't see a major difference between the Vietnamese kid replacing the American worker and the factory replacing the American spinstress. We are just replacing a more costly method with a less costly one. The trade distortions such as the deficit though, are caused by fiscal irresponsibility.