Quit Yer Bickerin'

Have you found yourself on Facebook constantly fighting with someone who posts something you disagree with or when someone disagrees with one of your posts? Have you found yourself debating, yelling, and bickering non-stop with the same person over and over again? Have you come to the realization that nothing has changed since the time you have spent rambling on about your position? I would be a liar if I said I had not realized that for some time. But I have come to the realization that although healthy debate is useful , for those of us that approach a debate in good faith of opposing views,it gets us no where. We can bicker for ages over if the state should exist, or if there should be a limited government, or a bigger government in certain areas.

As anarchists, liberals, conservatives, libertarians or whatever you call yourself it should be apparent that politicians are not doing much to help society progress. Be it for the poor, the middle class, equality, healthcare and so many other essential areas of concern for people. So what are we doing as people to help each other because arguing helps no one other than our intellectual egos.

We all have many friends that we disagree whole heartedly on many subjects, but we are still friends. A good friend of mine, and one that challenges me intellectually, is a left leaning anarchist. I have another good friend who is a constitutional libertarian and we can bicker for years on end over the existence of the state. I have good friends who are typical republicans and typical democrats. What do we all have in common though? We all typically want to help everyone else. None of us like people being poor, lacking healthcare, or being unable to pay for life's necessities. We all have different ways to help provide people with these things but we all want to help them.

So what can we do with one another to further help society? Legislation is hard to get passed for all the things people want so that probably is not the best way. What path has the most efficacy?

I think our best bet is to start locally in our own communities.

Have a liberal friend who is disgusted that the poor have such a hard time getting food? Grab that liberal friend and do something about it. Donate to local food banks, if money is hard to come by go volunteer your own time. Help people grow gardens so as to help them become more self sufficient, because not even liberals want people to be dependent on government.

Have a conservative friend who is disgusted over our failing public school system? Grab that conservative friend and go volunteer at tutoring centers for the subject which bests suits you. There are kids out there that need help and who are looking for it, I would know private tutoring paid for many of my hobbies throughout high school and college. Parents know that schools can't physically help each individual student so help them out. Make your community smarter by helping kids think through physics or algebra problems.

You have an "other side of the road" anarchist friend who you disagree with fundamentally on many issues as I do? So what, shake their hand, and go out and help your community in whichever way you best can.

Lastly, live a life of kindness and humbleness. Live your life to help each other because none of us can depend on anything but each other to promote the advancement of society. Whatever your ideology is, or your friends, go out and make a difference in this world because sitting behind a keyboard just arguing will get us nowhere.

The Issue of Equality

The recent discussion caused by the SCOTUS's review of Proposition 8 is most frequent among Facebook status' including my own. People are coming out with their belief over same sex marriage and its legality. This topic has made me think about equality in general.

It should go without saying that people should be able to marry whomever they wish, whatever marriage might mean between consenting adults. This is because their choice to enter this agreement has no bearing over your life and you must initiate force to deter such an agreement. This is true if that "marriage" is between two adults of the same sex, different sexes, different races, or a multiple of these sexes and races. It should also go without saying that no one should be forced into any type of marriage to which they do not agree to.

Many people go and say that allowing, specifically, gay and polygamous marriage, which goes against their religion or beliefs, they would be forced into recognizing such agreements. This is not true in the slightest and should not be allowed to be true. You do not have the right to not be offended by people's choices like marriage, just like you do not have the right to not be offended by stupidity. It stands to reason that not everyone is like you and because of that their differences have no concern to you. But what cannot be defended is forced association. If people, and by extension companies, do not wish to associate with people different than them that IS their right. It is NOT your right to force people to associate with you if they do not wish to, even it is because of your choice on marriage. It is up to individuals how they want to live their lives and whom they want to associate with.

But to extend this issue of equality even further I urge you to question if equality can ever exist under our current system of governance or any governance for that matter.

I hold that true equality is IMPOSSIBLE when the State exists and we can't be equal people until the State is dissolved. This is because for the State to exist it must perform actions that are illegal for citizens to perform otherwise. If it is wrong for citizens to murder, steal, and kidnap it should be illegal for the State to murder, steal, and kidnap. If it is wrong for citizens to dictate how others should live it should be wrong for the State to dictate how others should live. For true equality to exist all individuals should be subject to the same actions and the consequence of said actions.

Without the State comes freedom, with freedom comes equality, and with equality comes the advancement of the human people in all aspects of life.

In Response to Christopher on Logic

This is in response to a post by an anarchist without adjectives about the logic concerned with those that believe in Anarcho-Capitalism. I believe his post has a lot of merit and a lot to add to the discussion of a stateless society. The post can be found here. I hope a lively discussion can continue from all of this.

His argument starts from giving a little tutorial on logical constructs, something he is correct about and I have no problem with. His tutorial is over sufficiency and necessity and how they are used. His examples for necessity are that for "john is a bachelor" to be true he must be a male, married, and an adult, these are NECESSARY conditions in order for the first statement to be true. As for sufficiency one can say that "john is a bachelor" and by saying that it is a SUFFICIENT condition to say that john is a man. He also makes this statement.

Now let's evaluate how these two concepts work together. A condition can be either necessary or sufficient without being the other. For instance, being a mammal (Q) is necessary but not sufficient to being human (P). A condition can also be both necessary and sufficient.

A good lesson over what he is about to lay out.

We must remember that all attacks on the definition of some term is always stemmed from ones own belief of what that word really means. Many people identify themselves as libertarians but we don't all agree on what libertarian means and many of us with the general same goal stick our nose up at other "not really libertarians". Christopher's attack is based off his (and others) definition of what anarchism is based off history and their own subjective beliefs. AnCaps do not fit the definition he has for anarchism therefore they are not anarchists.

Christopher does not go bashing on AnCaps and their beliefs he merely asserts that they are not the anarchists they claim to be by his standards. From his article it seems that he defines anarchism as both the opposition of state authority and capitalist hierarchy. He claims that since AnCaps only oppose state authority they only have a necessary but not sufficient condition to call themselves anarchists.

With his definition of anarchism you cannot disagree with him that AnCaps aren't anarchists as he defines it. But I question the logical consistency of any form of anarchism even from the left leaning side. Christopher quite brilliantly balks at the logic behind how AnCaps oppose the State and not private property or as he says

to turn the bad ("ultimate decision-making power over a given area" The State ) into the good ("ultimate decision-making power over a given area" A private individual).

Bold added by me

It is something I have never thought of in terms of logical consistency and I truly believe this point alone is engaging and is the purpose of me wanting to respond because it truly made me think about my position. But do not worry fellow voluntarists I have not stepped away from my beliefs as I am still a market anarchist! I think there is much merit to that point but I also think it can be used to attack left leaning anarchists logically.

That is because at its core if the "ultimate decision-making power over a given area" where that area is my body and the land my feet lay upon is not given to me to whom can claim it? If not the person whose mind has total control it must be either someone else or a group others. Rothbard lays this out in many of his books starting from an island populated only by Crusoe and then going to Crusoe and Friday. If Crusoe does not have the ownership over his body then it must belong to Friday or a group of unknown people. As left leaning anarchism is typically defined as common ownership of scarce resources then it follows that every person on Earth "owns" all the scarce resources. This now holds that every person on Earth has "the ultimate decision-making power over a given area" where that given area is Earth itself. Every person on Earth has power over every other person on Earth therefore IT also fails to be sufficient to his definition of anarchy since there really would be no opposition to power.

The question then becomes whom should have the "ultimate decision-making power over a given area"? The individual whom has the control over his own body or a group of individuals, be it a State or whole group of individuals?

I'm sure you know my answer.