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RE: Trump: Not the Real Problem
Anarchism doesn't mean an absence of rules or authority, it means recognizing the distinction between legitimate authority and illegitimate usurpation. Governments operate entirely by usurpation, and society only exists because of people recognizing legitimate authority.
Anarchism doesn’t recognize any authority. Anarchy is the absence of authority. If there’s a recognized authority (whether it’s a moral or immoral one) there’s a state
Anarchy means the absence of rulers, the people who usurp illegitimate authority. It doesn't mean chaos, destruction, or violence. Those are small scale examples of usurping authority. They are just more manifestations of statism, whether people imagine it legitimate or not.
It means that there is NO authority. If there’s no authority, the only thing that determines whether or not a group or individual can wield force (rightly or wrongly) without consequence (which there must be for wielding it wrongly) is whether or not they have the might instead of whether or not they have the right.
If you stop your blind and knee jerk defense of it and think about what I’m saying you’ll come to see that it’s true.
I think we are talking at cross purposes. What is the nature and source of authority? How does government acquire authority over individuals within its territorial claim? If might or numbers makes right, you have no rational basis for your argument, and you are merely appealing to the status quo.
Authority means having the final say/action. There’s proper authority (when the final say is inline with protecting rights) & improper authority (when the final say isn’t)
There can be no proper authority when everyone is sovereign unto himself because the only thing determining whether an individual has the final say when wielding force is whether or not he has the might, rather than whether or not he is right.
(If you want to continue the convo you can find me on minds.com under the same handle. Steemit sucks for discourse because of the whole running out of Steem power thing)
You contradict yourself. Rights are an individual's sphere of authority over their life, liberty, and property. These are reciprocal and universal standards for all individuals. Each individual has the final say within their respective spheres. Reason, not some outside individual's arbitrary opinion, is the limiting factor. How do governments get the authority they claim?
You’re the one contradicting yourself. You have final say over yourself, not others, which is why an unbiased, objective third party is needed to intervene if and when individuals overstep their bounds. You speak of reason and yet you ignore it, choosing to support the irrational. (This probably won’t post because of the stupid Steem power limitations and if does I probably won’t be able to respond for a long time.)
What is the source of the authority claimed by governments?
Yes, we need a third party to resolve disputes where people come into conflict, but government is not an unbiased, objective third party. A government is by definition a territorial monopoly in violence, and government programs are funded by taxation, which is extortion under color of law. Any disputes between a government and its subjects results in a transparent conflict of interest where government claims the power to act as both prosecution and judge. It cannot be a neutral party.
Opposition to tax-funded government monopoly provision of a given service is not opposition to the service in principle. We already have examples of decentralized arbitration systems, and we have examples every day of the abuses committed by the government police and courts in blatant violation of individual authority.