134 replies to this topic

[Alex Libman]

The short-term purpose of this thread is to export multiple Anarcho-Capitalism-related debates (that I've gotten myself into) into one place, so as to not "hijack" any more threads with this issue. This does not mean that I wouldn't ever bring up my political / economic / philosophical opinions on any other thread on this forum, but, when debate gets too theoretical, forking the conversation does help keep the rest of the topic accessible to everybody else. (The ideal solution for the "thread hijacking" problem would probably be somewhat more technical, involving a forum plug-in that allows readers to tag posts as "off-topic", suggesting an alternative new / existing thread name, and those posts could then be moved there with the poster or moderator simply clicking one button to confirm - no hard feelings, no harm done.)

The longer-term purpose of this thread -- or so I hope, once we leave behind the initial "freedom shock" and elementary questions like "who would build the roads" -- would be to relate Anarcho-Capitalism to the specific goals of the Immortality Institute. It is my firm belief that the interests of human longevity, transhumanism, AI / brain virtualization, and eventually "immortality" are inseparably intertwined with the philosophy of free market capitalism and individual self-ownership [SWF].

Violent monopolies (i.e. governments) can certainly market themselves as being friends of those endeavors, promising safety, stability, and even funding for scientific research, but, as I've already started to point out on a number of other threads and will clarify on this thread, in reality those monopolies are inefficient, untrustworthy, and incentivized to only get in our way.

The more socialist governments (ex. Democrats in USA, and most parties in the rest of the world) are inherently resistant to inequality, which is a natural and inevitable consequence of progress in a free society. Giving people trapped in poverty a hand up is a good thing, and that is best done through the free market and reputation-driven charity programs, but to government bureaucrats those poor people are a means to an end, and they're systemically more interested in perpetuating their dependency rather than solving it. The governments' collectivist featha-teathn' health-care schemes stifle the incentive to work hard and save / invest money for one's future longevity, which is how the technological breakthroughs are most effectively financed. The people who selflessly work hard under an unfair system (ex. my parents) are suckers who get (and possibly deserve) nothing but contempt! Governmental pension schemes are subject to sticky rules (ex. retirement age), which subconsciously disincentivizes the governments from interest in human longevity, as does the recent trend of using baseless environmentalist propaganda as a rallying cause, and the fact that most people become more fiscally conservative as they gain a better understanding of basic economics through longer life experience, etc. Transhumanism is most likely to gain momentum in a society where enough people recognize that their brothers are not their keepers, and that individual human beings have the Right and perhaps even the moral duty to live for their own sake!

The more traditionalist governments (ex. Republicans in USA, Conservatives in UK, the rulers of United Arab Emirates, etc) are additionally resistant to social change, which makes them likely to limit our efforts toward medical innovation through well-intended but progress-stifling regulations. Those governments will see the ethical concerns of genetically engineered babies, for example, but they will fail to see (or will find it politically inconvenient to recognize) the ethical problems of prohibiting this innovation, and thus destroying the potential to rid the future generations from the many health problems that plague humanity today! Traditions usually must be at least somewhat rational to stand the test of time, but the people that follow them don't have to be, and that creates an irrational bias for things that were more important millennia ago then they are today, including: "traditional family" / natalism (which would obviously have to change as people spend less of their lives raising babies), ethnocentrism (which can mutate into intolerance of people who look different due to genetic or cybernetic enhancements), and a warrior culture where people are psychologically conditioned to live and die for their tribe!

Even a relatively libertarian Minarchist government, which currently doesn't exist anywhere in the world but is exemplified by philosophies like Objectivism and Constitutionalism, would be a ticking time-bomb of inevitable encroachment toward as much power as it can get away with having, which is exactly what happened in the history of these United States. This encroachment may take multiple generations or even centuries to play out, but a person entering cryonic suspension under the watchful eye of Ayn Rand's ideal government may have his plug pulled by a government auto-piloting planes into buildings to justify a war of aggression - something that is far less likely to happen without any excuse for a centralized monopoly on force!

I welcome everyone here to challenge those assertions, but to prevent repetition I would ask you to please skim through my past posts on this forum (some of which are more serious than others), and familiarize yourself with the basics of Anarcho-Capitalist philosophy in general, for which you will find plenty of Web-sites, books (ex), audio-books, podcasts, and videos to help get you started.

[rwac]

... destroying the potential to rid the future generations from the many health problems that plague humanity today!

Lets go one step further. What if the government was *responsible* for many of the health problems that plague humanity today, by means of promoting a bad diet.

[Alex Libman]

Importing some replies from the "Large Hadron Collider Poll" thread, where I commented that the free market would be more objective and efficient in choosing projects for R&D capital allocation, and managing those projects for optimal practical returns:

Alex, you lived in the Soviet Union back in the day, right? I can see where your opinion of government has been colored, but I have to say that all governments are not identical. This is making me wonder if libertarianism isn't some sort of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder...

Maybe there is some psychological truth to that, but that wouldn't automatically make it wrong. People who were abused by priests (sexually or otherwise) in centuries past were the ones most likely to lose their faith, and atheism has often been seen as reactionary extremism in response. Tribes that practice human sacrifice are usually content unless it's you or someone you like that's chosen to be scarified. Experiencing the worst negative consequences of a system firsthand is likely to make you a more passionate and vocal critic of the system that you believe to have caused that failure, but that fact neither confirms nor denies those claims in of itself - the substance of all claims must be examined logically.

I only lived in the Soviet Union as a child (born Oct 19th 1981, left June 19th 1992), I didn't become a libertarian until well into my 20s, and I was mostly a "left-winger" in between, so you can hardly call my Anarcho-Capitalism a knee-jerk reaction. I've actually experienced the most perceived government harm in the New Jersey public school system, but I still voted for Gore when I was 19, and the Green Party when I was 23. My transition toward libertarianism might have involved a speeding ticket or two in that multi-year span, but speeding tickets would still exist on private highways as well - if anything they would be more difficult to avoid because there'd be more monitoring (ex. RFID toll gates) and more competence to use them to track your speed automatically. (Though more direct accountability to local interests and competition would likely cause highway owners to have more reasonable and flexible rules.) I am also particularly skilled at gaming the system and legal tax avoidance through LLC's and offshore bank accounts, so my "illegal" tax resistance is not a consequence of narrow-minded greed either.

What persuaded me to shift my political views toward libertarianism / Anarcho-Capitalism over the years were deductive reasoning and economic facts, and, though I'm not a humorless textbook, those are the things that I try to base all of my arguments upon. It is possible to be quite content in spite of the economic inefficiencies created through government force, at least during the best of times (i.e. the United States), but even in the best of times those problems nonetheless cause tremendous harm to the human civilization, discouraging virtue, slowing down economic (and thus scientific) growth, keeping millions in poverty, and reducing the potential life expectancy of everyone affected by them.

If it requires government funding, then it isn't worth doing, and the resources spent on doing it by force are harming more valuable and timely scientific research that will not be undertaken as the result.

Yeah, because both DARPA and NASA produced useless pieces of junk in the sixties that had absolutely nothing to do with Internet and space exploration. You're more than a libertarian, you're a libertarian gospel preacher, Alex.

Imagine that you're planning to buy a new pickup truck sometime in the future, perhaps when your current one breaks down, and your local mafia boss finds out and rushes in to "help". He forbids you to go to any dealers or test-drive any cars, and delivers a slightly lemony Toyota Corolla that you could have bought yourself for $15,000, charges you $80,000, tells you that you're only allowed to buy fuel from his friend's gas station across town, and warns you that he'll throw you in prison if you ever look under the hood without his permission. Oh, and if you don't kiss his butt with gratitude he'll get upset and call you a traitor or a mental case, etc. That is a perfect analogy for how government works, with R&D as well as everything else!

If your analogy was to be applied to the 2 of my examples then the big bad mafia boss would actually be the first man to ever build anything like a pick up truck, and a couple of decades later it is available for wholesome citizens to build up on the initial gansta project and create whatever crazy trucks they imagined ( think of space tourism for bored Russian millionairies, Internet speaks for itself I guess ).

Um, no, I'm pretty sure trucks were invented before the governments got in the habit of jumping in front of every industrial parade and claiming credit for every invention. Government actually held back the invention of cell phones and other consumer electronics (and thus the Internet) by decades through regulatory red tape (ex. the FCC).

Private ventures are actually better at scaling to millions of investors / consumers while maintaining accountability, so if the LHC project was worth doing at this time then the private sector would have done it just as well or better through energy companies that aren't too closely married to oil or coal, or an alliance of private universities, or perhaps even micro-funding by 500 million environmentally concerned people each donating an average of $20 to get a "certified authentic" bumper sticker or whatnot.

Voters and politicians don't know jack squat about science or economics, and the corrupt governmental science bureaucracies are legendary for their political bias, corruption, and incompetence! Governments love to build impressive pyramids and land their flags on the moon, but what isn't seen are the things that would have been accomplished with those funds if they were spent voluntarily instead. The average consumer knows more about science than the average voter (disposable income inequality), and, more importantly, he can look at consequences of scientific endeavor in their final easily-understood form - Product A, Product B, or Product Z, comparing them on personalized criteria including effectiveness (ex. feedback from other customers), quality, safety (ex. insurance adjustment estimates) and especially price. Consumer decisions can be anticipated, not just by companies making those products but also by banks or investors lending them capital, which all creates the most effective system of accountability ever conceived by the mind of man!

The price mechanism and other market signals are crucial to deciding, for example, whether you spend money to fly a multi-ton mainframe computer to the moon, or allocate that money to consumer electronics and fly with a more powerful cellphone-sized computer a few decades later, and if instead of going to the moon you first fly to a near-earth asteroid, drill baby drill, and parachute back a few tons of platinum, making it cheap enough to use for more beneficial industrial purposes (ex. more cost-effective fuel-cells and solar panels), and so on - furthering the positive feedback cycle of economic and scientific growth! Only voluntary human action can assure that funds are being spent morally and efficiently, forced collective action cannot!

[AdamSummerfield]

Alex, what is your opinion on sweatshops in third world countries? What allows them to exist?

[JLL]

The question was not directed at me, but still, what do you mean by "allows"? Sweatshops exist because it's much better to work in a sweatshop than to take the alternative. But little by little, the countries of cheap labor pull themselves up from poverty.

[Putz]

The question was not directed at me, but still, what do you mean by "allows"? Sweatshops exist because it's much better to work in a sweatshop than to take the alternative. But little by little, the countries of cheap labor pull themselves up from poverty.

I agree, every inefficient agrarian country has to go through a period of efficient mass labor and liberalization before developing the capital base required to form a developed economy. Western Europe, America, Japan went through it a century ago and currently India, China, bits of South America, and Southeast Asia are going through the process. By the time the world runs out of "cheap labor", in that all economies have synergistically become a developed network (given relative political and social harmony and efficiency), we will have robots and AI that can do much of the lower level work. The problem is raising educational efficacy as skill-set needs advance, and public education is clearly failing at that and producing unskilled, uneducated labor for the most part.

Edited by Putz, 13 May 2010 - 12:17 AM.

[AdamSummerfield]

The question was not directed at me, but still, what do you mean by "allows"? Sweatshops exist because it's much better to work in a sweatshop than to take the alternative. But little by little, the countries of cheap labor pull themselves up from poverty.

I mean a lack of laws prohibiting the existence of sweatshops. Shouldn't these people have a minimum wage instead of the fruits of their labour moving overseas over here?

[Alex Libman]

Lets go one step further. What if the government was *responsible* for many of the health problems that plague humanity today, by means of promoting a bad diet.

Bingo - especially the meat subsidies and the "Mommy Government didn't outlaw it so it must be good for you" mentality. I've recently discovered just how ignorant I was about the nutritional properties of certain foods because I was looking at the FDA label, which only lists a couple vitamins and minerals. If that label didn't exist, more people would look stuff up online, where they would find a lot more details, and the technology to streamline this process (i.e. smart-phone bar-code readers you can use in a supermarket to get tons of unbiased information about any product) would be a lot more widely spread.

The governments' greatest impact on longevity comes from their stifling of economic and scientific growth. Awful food and even pollution don't seem to affect health and life expectancy as badly - Hong Kong has one of the greatest life expectancies in the world, even though they eat insects and deep-fried animals you won't even find in a zoo! Hong Kong is no libertarian utopia, but if the rest of Asia was as free economically their life expectancy would be as high or higher. They say "smoking kills" because it takes a few years off your life expectancy, so by that criteria it would be valid to say that governments kill billions - and smoking is a personal choice, government is not!

Alex, what is your opinion on sweatshops in third world countries? What allows them to exist?

The fact that god(s) didn't create this universe with magical properties so that simply wishing for a pair of sneakers or a computer keyboard made it appear out of thin air with no thought or labor involved. The real question is why are some people and nations wealthier than others, and some part of that answer does have to do with historical injustice (slavery, feudalism, violent colonialism, etc), but that's only a small and ever-shrinking cause of current inequality.

Everyone's ancestors were equally poor for millions of years as we evolved from rodents to monkeys to modern humans, and that relative poverty remained. The agricultural revolution brought many benefits, but people remained quite miserable by our modern standards - women continued to pop out up to a dozen kids each, but much of the time population wasn't growing, which means most of them didn't make it to adulthood. What made some nations and individuals rich over the past few hundred years is free market capitalism, which has been the driving force of science and industry ever since. Take a look at this graph:



If that graph went all the way back to the middle ages it would show Europe being poorer than the Middle East, China, and possibly India. (More data here [XLS].) The Renaissance triggered European growth, and the "discovery" of the Americas (which the Muslim sailors probably visited first) helped quite a bit, but it's the industrial revolution that really made the difference. It's no accident that it happened in the more capitalist England, BeNeLux, Scandinavia, and USA first - and it wasn't just the "protestant work ethic", it was simple enlightened human self-interest, otherwise known as "greed".

By the end of the 19th century on the above graph you see the more capitalist parts of the world growing exponentially faster, and after WW2 you see the parts of the world we've bombed into open markets (ex. Japan) growing rapidly as well, with all of the world benefiting from greater globalization and trade.

It took "sweatshop workers" in England and the Netherlands several generations to work their way up from poverty, but they chose to do it because that was a better alternative than agricultural poverty, where one bad harvest could lead to famine. The industrial revolution vastly reduced infant mortality rates, resulting in a population boom that temporarily strained the resources of those countries, but, hey - any kind of life is better than dying as an infant. The "sweatshop workers" in the East Asian tigers were able to lift themselves from rags to riches in just one generation, and a person working in a sweatshop today can save his pennies to buy a $10 MP3 player and listen to English lessons or MIT lectures while he performs his repetitive task, or a $200 netbook to learn something like Web design and compete with me on sites like freelancer.com!

By the time the world runs out of "cheap labor", in that all economies have synergistically become a developed network (given relative political and social harmony and efficiency), we will have robots and AI that can do much of the lower level work. The problem is raising educational efficacy as skill-set needs advance, and public education is clearly failing at that and producing unskilled, uneducated labor for the most part.

That is yet another example of government failure. You can find in-depth libertarian criticism of the education system in the "Complete Liberty" Podcast (episodes 46 - 51) and the "School Sucks" Podcast, etc. I've wasted some time in college, but 95% of my programming skills are self-taught, and I would have been a much more educated, qualified, and well-rounded person if I was just left alone with my computer and the Internet instead. People only need to be taught to teach themselves, which is a life-long process.

If you don't spend at least an hour a day on practical self-education, then you simply don't deserve to have a decent job a few years from now!

(Unless of course you're a hot young woman, if you know what I mean.)

I mean a lack of laws prohibiting the existence of sweatshops. Shouldn't these people have a minimum wage instead of the fruits of their labour moving overseas over here?

Such economically retarded laws are the main reason why poverty still exists in the world today!

Edited by Alex Libman, 13 May 2010 - 05:14 PM.

[rwac]

The question was not directed at me, but still, what do you mean by "allows"? Sweatshops exist because it's much better to work in a sweatshop than to take the alternative. But little by little, the countries of cheap labor pull themselves up from poverty.

I mean a lack of laws prohibiting the existence of sweatshops. Shouldn't these people have a minimum wage instead of the fruits of their labour moving overseas over here?

test test test, edited by Matthias because problems editing this post with firefox were reported

Edited by Matthias, 13 May 2010 - 11:38 PM.

[rwac]

I mean a lack of laws prohibiting the existence of sweatshops. Shouldn't these people have a minimum wage instead of the fruits of their labour moving overseas over here?

These people who work in "sweatshops" are actually paid better than other jobs in the neighborhood. How is that a bad thing ?

[rwac]

Bingo - especially the meat subsidies and the "Mommy Government didn't outlaw it so it must be good for you" mentality.

Don't forget grain subsidies which subsidize the existence of CAFOs.

Also don't neglect to mention governments thumb on the scientific scale, by selectively funding dietary research.

You do realize that there is unsubsidized meat (grass-fed), that you should be able to eat ? Oh, and it's also healthier for you.

[AdamSummerfield]

Hmmm I'll take your word for it. The only thing that really convinced me was the Tiger economy reference.

Such economically retarded laws are the main reason why poverty still exists in the world today!

I disagree. After the minimum wage was enforced over here life has become better, I've been told. The average citizen has more money in his pocket and so has more to spend on what he needs. That is, economic inequality has decreased. And people generally became more able to afford their basic necessities. Instead, that money would probably be spent on buying a yacht or a penthouse or something, while the worker struggles to find enough to eat or keep himself warm. The mobile worker argument doesn't convince me at all. If I'm not paid "enough" I can just look for a better employer? I think about what the U.K. would look like without the minimum wage and think "Yikes, the abuse, the poverty!".

[JLL]

How many people have really thought what a minimum wage means?

A minimum wage of X dollars always means that the jobs that are worth less than X become unavailable. Those who are lucky enough to have jobs may be better off, but those who aren't lucky enough are much worse off. I doubt your average citizen hypothesis is correct.

If raising the minimum wage brings such benefits, why don't we increase it even further? Why not set X = $1,000 / hour?

If minimum wage keeps us out of poverty, why are there jobs that pay much more than the minimum wage? Why don't all employers just pay the minimum wage and save money for their yachts and penthouses?

[bobdrake12]

If you don't spend at least an hour a day on practical self-education, then you simply don't deserve to have a decent job a few years from now!

Well said, Alex!

And allow me to add investing at least 1/2 hour each day studying investment stratigies.

The objective is not just to "make a living" but to become wealthy.

Meanwhile, some in the U.S. thought Big Daddy government was going to live up to their commitment regarding Social Security and Medicare.

Medicare funding is now being cut by 1/3 through the "Health Care Bill" and Social Security "reform" is now being discussed in the U.S.

[AdamSummerfield]

If raising the minimum wage brings such benefits, why don't we increase it even further? Why not set X = $1,000 / hour?

Because employers wouldn't be able to afford that.

A minimum wage of X dollars always means that the jobs that are worth less than X become unavailable.

Does it? I think it means that all jobs have a minimum wage. Over 21 year-olds who were previously paid, say, £4.53, are now paid £5.93 (this is the U.K. minimum wage). It shifts money downstream towards the worker so that s/he can more easily get by.

If minimum wage keeps us out of poverty, why are there jobs that pay much more than the minimum wage?

Because I might have spent years earning an education and therefore expect to keep a greater fraction of the resources I produce. If I earn myself a degree in Biochemistry and look for a job in pharmaceuticals, and the employer offers me minimum wage, I'm going to look elsewhere. Employers compete for employees, that's why, right?

[AdamSummerfield]

I concede my argument for the minimum wage. As Alex says, it is an economically retarded law.
The Free Market is the victor.

[Alex Libman]

Importing reply from the " Michael Specter: The danger of science denial" thread...

Please, spread your raving libertarianism even on the non-politics forum. I don't care.

You cannot segregate politics from all other aspects of human experience. This forum is about things that occasionally touch upon government-related topics, and it would be an act of Orwellian crimethink to pretend that government action doesn't affect those topics in a very direct and relevant way.

But I beg you don't lose grip on reality. The FDA, the government et al. may offer sub-optimal services but it is beyond madness to assert that they offer no value whatsoever.

A claim that the FDA has "no value whatsoever" would be tremendously more favorable of the FDA than the claim that I'm making: the FDA causes immeasurable harm to the quality of life and life expectancy of every man, woman, and child in America. It kills tends of thousands of people a year directly, and pushes millions into an early grave indirectly.

(btw: 'ignorance and arrogance' are correlated. AFAIK this concept is known as the Dunning–Kruger effect. Illiterate individuals do not know their limitations in part because they are illiterate)

All self-owning adults must be expected to take responsibility for the control they have over their lives - that is the inevitable price of liberty. Children and cases of mental illness must remain in the custody of their parents / guardians until they can qualify for emancipation, and for borderline cases some sort of a contractual compromise can be reached where an individual may have some limited freedoms but have a guardian intervene in important decisions if/when necessary. But an adult who is capable of taking responsibility for his actions must be allowed the freedom to act however he sees fit, ignorant / arrogant or not, as long as he doesn't violate the Rights of others. Most people learn from their mistakes, some will not - c'est la vie. Having violent power monopolies treat everyone as children / cattle does not make the world a better place!

And on a friendly, related note. If you want to be taken seriously never Godwin yourself.

You have been brainwashed to automatically shut off your mind whenever someone compares the existing government with some of the governments in history that are universally recognized as bad (even though the differences between Hitler's Germany and FDR's USA are merely cultural and circumstantial).

I think it is obvious that one should not compare benevolent neglect with the systematic and deliberate genocide of millions of people.

All tyrants are "benevolent", and Germany's genocide was not "deliberate" right off the bat. (And much of it wasn't even done by the Germans - I know for certain that all Holocaust victims in my family were killed by Ukrainians.) Your knowledge of WW2 (the second stage of the 30 year unnecessary war) was written by FDR and especially Stalin. If USA was in the same circumstances (same fraction of population in Japanese interment camps, same economic collapse, losing a war from both sides, shortages, etc) then FDR would have acted precisely the same way Hitler did.

[Alex Libman]

And allow me to add investing at least 1/2 hour each day studying investment stratigies.

That's a good idea also, but that doesn't mean everyone should become day traders. I also think an Anarcho-Capitalist society would have a slight bias for smaller and more local businesses, because huge Fortune 500 companies wouldn't receive the corporate welfare, competition protection, liability protection, same degree of IP protection, and all other benefits they're getting from governments today.

• Pay off all your debts first,

• invest in your family / home / health second (security, peace of mind, solar panels, greenhouse for fresh veggies, consider having more kids, land, neighborhood wifi, beans, bullets, etc),

• invest in your low-risk nest egg third (diversified between precious metals, low-risk mutual funds, and other securities),

• invest in local businesses / microcredit fourth...

• and then play a Wall Street hot shot if you have some money left over.

[Ghostrider]

If you don't spend at least an hour a day on practical self-education, then you simply don't deserve to have a decent job a few years from now!

I definitely agree with that quote. People basically expect to be employed and expect to make more each year for delivering the same work. It's pathetic how many TVs I see on when I go for walks at night. People just want to go home and turn off their minds.

And allow me to add investing at least 1/2 hour each day studying investment stratigies.

That's a good idea also, but that doesn't mean everyone should become day traders. I also think an Anarcho-Capitalist society would have a slight bias for smaller and more local businesses, because huge Fortune 500 companies wouldn't receive the corporate welfare, competition protection, liability protection, same degree of IP protection, and all other benefits they're getting from governments today.

• Pay off all your debts first,

• invest in your family / home / health second (security, peace of mind, solar panels, greenhouse for fresh veggies, consider having more kids, land, neighborhood wifi, beans, bullets, etc),

• invest in your low-risk nest egg third (diversified between precious metals, low-risk mutual funds, and other securities),

• invest in local businesses / microcredit fourth...

• and then play a Wall Street hot shot if you have some money left over.

What do you consider good investments for the current market? If you don't mind sharing, where are you personally investing your money right now.

[medicineman]

Hey Alex. Did you have time to read that article yet?

[bobdrake12]

A claim that the FDA has "no value whatsoever" would be tremendously more favorable of the FDA than the claim that I'm making: the FDA causes immeasurable harm to the quality of life and life expectancy of every man, woman, and child in America. It kills tends of thousands of people a year directly, and pushes millions into an early grave indirectly.

Well said, Alex!

It is a fact that the FDA has a cozy, revolving door relationship with Big Pharma.

http://www.goodhealt...elationship.htm



Except:

Relationships between the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry have led to a “revolving door,” in which pharmaceutical executives go to work for the FDA, making regulatory decisions on matters affecting their industry and sometimes even their own former companies. When their time at the FDA is over, they go back to higher-paying jobs in the industry.

A web search for “FDA revolving door” turns up numerous examples, but it’s no longer necessary even to go to the trouble. The revolving door was formalized in 2001, with the creation of the Food and Drug Administration Alumni Association (FDAAA).

http://www.naturalnews.com/021635.html

Prescription drug deaths skyrocket 68 percent over five years as Americans swallow more pills (excerpts)

(NaturalNews) Poisoning from prescription drugs has risen to become the second-largest cause of unintentional deaths in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, researchers found that deaths from prescription drugs rose from 4.4 per 100,000 people in 1999 to 7.1 per 100,000 in 2004.

This increase represents a jump from 11,000 people to almost 20,000 in the span of five years.

Among the 20,000 that died, more than 8,500 – double the number from 1999 -- were from "other and unspecified drugs."

Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies, said that the drug industry is freely killing Americans.

"The entire drug industry, including the monopolistic drug giants and their FDA co-conspirator, has clearly become the single greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people," Adams said. "And yet the FDA continues to push more drugs onto more Americans than ever before, all while pretending these drugs are safe and effective when, in reality, they are neither. Today's pharmaceutical industry is a massive fraud being perpetrated against the American people, propped up by illegal trade practices, monopolistic behavior and outright criminal behavior on the part of the FDA."

[niner]

I concede my argument for the minimum wage. As Alex says, it is an economically retarded law.
The Free Market is the victor.

Adam, did you read that Wikipedia page? It talks about the hypothetical effects of a minimum wage based on simplistic economic theory, but it also talks about the effects of a minimum wage that have actually been observed in the real world. It would appear that the positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences, and that they are a net good. This is probably why 90% of countries have minimum wage laws. Maybe such laws are "retarded" to the hypothetical economist, but they seem to work pretty well in the real world.

[niner]

Mike Adams, a consumer health advocate and outspoken critic of pharmaceutical companies, said that the drug industry is freely killing Americans.

"The entire drug industry, including the monopolistic drug giants and their FDA co-conspirator, has clearly become the single greatest threat to the health and safety of the American people," Adams said. "And yet the FDA continues to push more drugs onto more Americans than ever before, all while pretending these drugs are safe and effective when, in reality, they are neither. Today's pharmaceutical industry is a massive fraud being perpetrated against the American people, propped up by illegal trade practices, monopolistic behavior and outright criminal behavior on the part of the FDA."

I won't say this is completely wrong, but "freely killing" is a bit hyperbolic. We might want to look at the number of lives saved or improved, and compare that to the number who die or are injured. The same FDA that is blamed for "killing" Americans because they don't approve potentially life-saving medications is accused of "killing" because of the dangers of the drugs that they did approve. When we get up in arms over the dangers of the drugs that have been approved, we are ratcheting up the risk aversion at the FDA. That's a real phenomenon; I've watched it happen. We can't have it both ways.

[chris w]

You have been brainwashed to automatically shut off your mind whenever someone compares the existing government with some of the governments in history that are universally recognized as bad (even though the differences between Hitler's Germany and FDR's USA are merely cultural and circumstantial).

I don't think it helps the discussion to call anyone brainwashed because he perceives differences between FDR and Hitler as a little more than cultural and circumstantial.

All tyrants are "benevolent", and Germany's genocide was not "deliberate" right off the bat.

Ahm, no. The benevolent Hitler as early as in 1923 attempted to overthrow Bavarian government to put his hands on both free nationalist militias and the army and take it to Berlin resembling actions of Mussolini from the year before. While in prison he wrote Mein Kampf and no one reading this book could have been unsure about what his intentions were and what he would do if in charge. The first concentration camp was established already in 1933 (Dachau) altough untill 1940 there were no death camps yet, but the mentally ill were dealt with earlier. The slaughter of SA regiments during Long Knifes Night the next year confirmed the direction blatantly, he was influenced by industrial tycoons who fretted about Strasser brothers' of SA pro - Soviet and anti - capitalistic stance. I don't exactly recall FDR doing this sort of things to his adversaries and I'm almost sure he wasn't a psychopat either, you should have a really big gun behind you when stating that there were no genuine differences between the two, not just a libertarian hunch.

(And much of it wasn't even done by the Germans - I know for certain that all Holocaust victims in my family were killed by Ukrainians.)

The Banderans from Nachtigall and other such units did not fart outside of SS command, they were mere triger pullers, this is irrelevant.

Your knowledge of WW2 (the second stage of the 30 year [url="http://en.wikipedia.org was written by FDR and especially Stalin.

Yes, let's turn to Mr. Pat Buchanan who surely knows what %5Bu%5Dreally%5B/u%5D went down there.

If USA was in the same circumstances (same fraction of population in Japanese interment camps, same economic collapse, losing a war from both sides, shortages, etc) then FDR would have acted precisely the same way Hitler did.

You really spread your wings now.
In my language there's a saying : "If grandma had a moustache, she would be the grandpa", that's about the level of reality - check that's presented here. Wait, I have a crystall ball too : Maybe if FDR got the chance to he would have become a stand up comedian and not the president, maybe he would have assasinated the pope together with a secret society of satanist magicians and maybe he would have done all sorts of things that did not happen nevertheless.

Edited by chris w, 15 May 2010 - 08:08 PM.

[bobdrake12]

I won't say this is completely wrong, but "freely killing" is a bit hyperbolic. We might want to look at the number of lives saved or improved, and compare that to the number who die or are injured. The same FDA that is blamed for "killing" Americans because they don't approve potentially life-saving medications is accused of "killing" because of the dangers of the drugs that they did approve. When we get up in arms over the dangers of the drugs that have been approved, we are ratcheting up the risk aversion at the FDA. That's a real phenomenon; I've watched it happen. We can't have it both ways.

Hi Niner,

The "Prescription drug deaths skyrocket 68 percent over five years as Americans swallow more pills" article had nothing to do with the FDA *not* approving potentially "life-saving" drugs. Not approving potentially "life-saving" drugs might be your's and other's issues.

It is a fact that the FDA is a revolving door for Big Pharma.

Big Pharma is Big Business with lots of advertising dollars + campaign contributions.

http://www.washingto...9010800559.html

Big Pharma's Political Contributions

In 2008, for the first time in 18 years, the pharmaceutical industry's donations to Democrats were on par with the money it gave to Republicans.

Big Pharma products normally have side effects.

Perhaps, we need to change the way the FDA does business.

And perhaps, we need to go outside the box and seek other ways of curing diseases.

Edited by bobdrake12, 15 May 2010 - 07:35 PM.

[bobdrake12]

Here is a point of view on Big Pharma not usually covered by the Corporate Media:

[Alex Libman]

I definitely agree with that quote. People basically expect to be employed and expect to make more each year for delivering the same work. It's pathetic how many TVs I see on when I go for walks at night. People just want to go home and turn off their minds.

Timely, consistent, and properly directed investment of time in one's education usually leads to higher working productivity, and thus to a higher wage and the ability to allocate more time to leisure if one chooses. There's nothing wrong with people "turning their minds off" to relax, just as long as they turn them on once in a while and use them properly. Most people unfortunately don't do that - they follow the path of least resistance, from government-directed education into the workforce, where they also expect the government to do their thinking for them...

What do you consider good investments for the current market? If you don't mind sharing, where are you personally investing your money right now.

Market and technological trends can be rather deceptively obvious... You remember when the "one word" used to be "plastics"? It then shifted to "computers", now "robotics", and will soon shift to "space", but are people following the obvious trends making money? Not consistently, because there's too much uncertainly, especially with how those industries will be affected by government regulations. Don't gamble - take care of the certainties first. The best investment you can make is to move to the freest spot you can find on Earth, and, like I've said, buy yourself a good home there with plenty of land and other essentials, and invest in local business. Then, if you have some money left over, invest in whatever company will be best positioned to start drilling the asteroids first.

Hey Alex. Did you have time to read that article yet?

I'm sorry, which article? Is it about Hume again?

Adam, did you read that Wikipedia page? It talks about the hypothetical effects of a minimum wage based on simplistic economic theory, but it also talks about the effects of a minimum wage that have actually been observed in the real world. It would appear that the positive consequences outweigh the negative consequences, and that they are a net good. This is probably why 90% of countries have minimum wage laws. Maybe such laws are "retarded" to the hypothetical economist, but they seem to work pretty well in the real world.

Sometimes attempts to redistribute wealth through government force do accomplish their objectives, but they nonetheless constitute an act of theft, and they have economic side-effects that make them detrimental in the long term. Some employers indeed can afford to pay more, and government force will indeed result in higher wages without an increase in unemployment, but at what cost? All you are doing is subsidizing laziness, punishing competence, and encouraging businesses to gradually leave to greener pastures if at all possible. The healthier the capitalist economy is, the more socialist parasites it can sustain without being killed by them, but it's only a matter of time. Hamburger flipping jobs will stay around a while longer (at least until it becomes cheaper to fly in ready-made hamburgers from India fast enough), but other manufacturing jobs are leaving never to return.

I won't say this is completely wrong, but "freely killing" is a bit hyperbolic. We might want to look at the number of lives saved or improved, and compare that to the number who die or are injured.

Violent monopolies don't "save lives", because the beneficial functions they carry out would be even better accomplished by the free market. It's like a rapist who abducted a woman claiming to have "saved her life" because he fed her gruel while she was in captivity - her diet wouldn't have been any worse if she was free!

The same FDA that is blamed for "killing" Americans because they don't approve potentially life-saving medications is accused of "killing" because of the dangers of the drugs that they did approve. When we get up in arms over the dangers of the drugs that have been approved, we are ratcheting up the risk aversion at the FDA. That's a real phenomenon; I've watched it happen. We can't have it both ways.

Preventing someone from taking a drug that would save their life is no different than preventing someone from breathing in air (strangulation). I don't blame the FDA for approving bad drugs, I blame it for monopolizing the quality assurance market and creating a "Mommy Government didn't ban it so it must be good" mentality. In the pure free market, drugs would be ranked for their safety, effectiveness, and other criteria by multiple authorities that compete on the basis of merit: thoroughness as well as impartiality. Some patients would be best advised by their doctors to risk more side-effects than others, but when government turns drug approval into a black-and-white bureaucracy it does in effect lead to murder!

I don't think it helps the discussion to call anyone brainwashed because he perceives differences between FDR and Hitler as a little more than cultural and circumstantial.

And, pray tell us, what are those intransient differences? Both men were figureheads in the hands of much more powerful industrial and banking interests, both were very popular with the masses, both claimed benevolence, both violated individual rights in the name of collectivism, both claimed that their nations were under an external threat, etc. They spoke different languages and followed different political traditions, and one was a lot more of a self-made man than the other, but their historical roles were the same. If Germany had won the war and you were a German, then you would be learning in school about all the atrocities committed by the Anglo-American and Soviet Empires and how men like Hitler liberated the world from their tyranny. The Japanese equivalent of Steven Spielberg would have made a black and white movie about Japanese prisoners in American camps being worked to death or downright exterminated as the war turned ugly. The Jews would have been resettled somewhere outside Germany, which has been the plan up to the point where Anglo-American intervention made it impossible. Etc.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of the Anglo-American civilization, and I even find some of its foreign policy to be justifiable, but what I like about it has nothing to do with its governments and everything to do with the relative economic freedom those cultures have historically accomplished, making them the driving engine of science, technology, and culture over the past several centuries.

[bobdrake12]

Preventing someone from taking a drug that would save their life is no different than preventing someone from breathing in air (strangulation). I don't blame the FDA for approving bad drugs, I blame it for monopolizing the quality assurance market and creating a "Mommy Government didn't ban it so it must be good" mentality. In the pure free market, drugs would be ranked for their safety, effectiveness, and other criteria by multiple authorities that compete on the basis of merit: thoroughness as well as impartiality. Some patients would be best advised by their doctors to risk more side-effects than others, but when government turns drug approval into a black-and-white bureaucracy it does in effect lead to murder!

Alex, I presume that common sense approach would also include vitamins, herbs, etc.

That way, we could get Big Phama politics out of our healthcare.

http://www.icarizona...regulation.html

Monday, March 8, 2010

McCain Now Opposes Vitamin Regulation Bill HE Introduced With Democrat Just Weeks Ago (excerpts)

PHOENIX, ARIZONA. MARCH 8, 2010. This was quick even by John McCain election year flip-flopping standards. Just weeks after introducing legislation with Democrat Senator Byron Dorgan to regulate vitamins and punish small businesses, 24-yearincumbent John McCain has apparently withdrawn his support for his own legislation.

The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010 (S. 3002) has faced withering opposition across the country and from his conservative primary challenger J.D. Hayworth since introduced. Hayworth held a Tucson press conference opposing the legislation on March 2nd.

Edited by bobdrake12, 15 May 2010 - 11:29 PM.

[Alex Libman]

Another reply moved from the "Michael Specter: The danger of science denial" thread:

The only "regulation" that should exist in a free society is the Non-Aggression Principle, with everything else emerging as the result of individual self-interest.

The page you linked has this to say about the Non-Aggression Principle:

It holds that "aggression", which is defined as the initiation of physical force, the threat of such, or fraud upon persons or their property, is inherently illegitimate. In contrast to pacifism, the non-aggression principle does not preclude defense.

If I market a supplement that is shot full of methylmercury, that would seem to fall under this definition, as "physical force" (something that harms your person) or as fraud upon your person. If Bernie Madoff or Goldman Sachs is scamming and stealing your money, that is fraud against your property. It looks like we've just justified the FDA and the SEC, and probably some other agencies, along with an enormous collection of rules and regulations.

Deceiving your customers / business partners can indeed be an act of aggression, but the possibility of fraud does not legitimize violent regulatory monopolies like the FDA or SEC. Centralization of power only creates a single point of failure and encourages corruption - who watches the watchers, as the saying goes. Decentralization into multiple competing certification agencies whose authority rests in their ability to convince businesses and public that their certification / quality assurance fees are worth paying leads to flexibility, cost-effectiveness, accountability, and innovation - given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

It is in the self-interest of all parties involved in the transaction to validate the trustworthiness of the other parties involved, and to act cautiously in situations where reputation cannot be verified. You can buy many things in a capitalist society, but you cannot erase the memory of your past misdeeds, you can only atone for them are rebuild your reputation, which can take many years. Without governments to fool the public into a false sense of security, a single breach of trust could bring the largest of corporations to their knees.

If I build a horrendously polluting factory adjacent to your home or your child's school, that would involve the injury of your person and property. Boom. We have now justified zoning laws, the EPA and another large set of rules and regulations.

Pollution externalities do constitute a liability, but, once again, that does not justify an inevitably corrupt, overreaching, and ineffective babysitter like the EPA. Many books have been written on the subject of free market environmentalism - I suggest you read them before jumping to any conclusions.

Factories don't just grow out of the ground unpredictably overnight, and people who finance those factories usually expect to profit from their investment, not end up losing their shirts to lawsuit(s) from alliance(s) of nearby property owners. This will create a need for factory builders to choose more suitable locations for their pollution externalities, and/or invest in technologies to reduce their harmful effects. Since local residential interests often also benefit from pollution-causing properties (factories that create local jobs, private highways that provide transportation, etc), that creates an incentive for all parties to negotiate a preemptive contract - a factory may be allowed a certain negligible amount of pollution, and they would have to pay the nearby property owners according to a specific price curve when they exceed those limitations.

It's true that this system isn't perfect in that the effects of pollution can extend over some very wide areas and people far away from a pollution source would suffer from it without being able to prove causality, but not having all of the victims on board will not prevent the polluter from being punished, which should encourage any rational factory owner to plan ahead (and irrational people rarely get their hands on enough funds to build factories). That inaccuracy will also diminish as technology improves.

You must remember that I am advocating a gradual emergence of Anarcho-Capitalism in the 21st century, not 19th or the 20th! We are on the verge of technological advancements like networked swarms of cheap flying / swimming censor-bots that can measure chemicals as they travel through air / water, which will make payment of pollution liabilities a lot more accurate. When it becomes cost-effective to do so, there are many ways byproducts of industry can be filtered out of air / water and disposed in a safer manner. Many future residential neighborhoods will build domes to capture solar energy, collect rain water, prevent loss of heat during winter, provide privacy and security from fly-over observers, create optimal condition for local flora and fauna, and for many other reasons in addition to ensuring optimal air quality. And, in the long run, all energy production, mining, manufacturing, and other industry will inevitably move into space, where it would be cheaper for many other reasons in addition to total absence of pollution liability costs.

I'm sorry, but the whistle-blower blogs and corporate "karma" watchdogs just aren't going to cut it. What if I get to you before they get to me?

If I "get to you" in a way that initiates aggression, then you obviously have a Right to defend yourself, and the vast majority of people in the world would be interested in protecting you, or making sure you get justice, lest the same aggression someday be initiated against them.

If I "get to you" without initiating aggression, then what is to keep you from looking up my name to decide if you can trust me or not? Children are taught from an early age to be weary of strangers, much less buy food or medicine from some faceless back alley dealer who can disappear without a trace (but if you choose to disobey common sense then the loss should be entirely your own). Why do that when you can deal with reputable retailers and other companies that find it in their best interest to maintain strict quality control standards?

Edited by Alex Libman, 16 May 2010 - 02:43 AM.

[Alex Libman]

Importing from the "UK General Elections 2010" thread:

Pushed by the state?! That proves you haven't got a clue of what you're talking about... Libertarians are among the most likely groups to be thrown in concentration camps!

I'm not sure where to start, and frankly a bit to tired to be that bothered. If you don't see the contradiction of capitalism with fundamental freedoms I'm not sure I can help you.

Whatever you want to call it society has always been one class oppressing another. Capitalism is simply a tool to do that, it's nothing more and has long become redundant in it's effectiveness to push forward society. Sure it did during the industrial revolution but it is clearly no more an effective mechanism, it's clumsy and very slow.

Capitalism, by its proper definition, is the only system that is based on recognition of individual Rights. The only alleged "freedom" it "contradicts" is the alleged "freedom" to steal and otherwise violate the freedoms of others - a logical contradiction!

And your claim that free market capitalism is "redundant", "clumsy", or "slow" are contradicted by economic evidence in the real world. Of course I'm not asking you to take my word for it - if you want to abandon all your property, live in a commune, or even sell yourself into slavery, that is your Right... but you cannot force it on others!

Concur, the only reason why Libertarianism might seem reasonable is because it has never happened anywhere in the real world, maybe in few communities counting dozens here and there like first Puritan colonies comming close ( and actually primitive hunter - gatherer groups are mostly egalitarian, if you count out the chief and his clique, there is no stratification, so it's not like free market is somehow "natural" and communism "unnatural" ), so they have only neat theories on their side and guess what ? It won't happen, no politician is that stupid to let it all go freelly and just see what happens next with the country, perhaps when we start to colonize space, then they can try everything they want and I wish them well in other solar systems, but untill then - keep dreaming your dream guys !

Pure capitalism, like pure communism / fascism / socialism, never existed, but the causality between capitalism (i.e. economic freedom, lack of regulation, etc) and success is pretty darn close to 100%.

We will see how well Somalia is doing in the next decade...

It is one of the most communist countries in the world, so I predict it will continue to do very poorly, except perhaps when compared to some of its neighbors whose governments are less fragmented and therefore even more toxic to development of capitalism. (I usually link to the list of countries by economic freedom for reference, but that list no longer includes Somalia. In 1996 it ranked dead last!)

And while you're on this forum perhaps you should ask about dealing with memory loss, which people who keep bringing up Somalia over and over and over again clearly seem to have. I usually have to explain the issue of Somalia once or twice per forum, but this is getting ridiculous! The least you could have done is search:

That's a perfect misunderstanding of what "government" is and isn't. Somalia has one of the largest and most intrusive governments in the world! The fact that it's fragmented into multiple competing warlord fractions doesn't make it any less of a government! All governments start out as small mafia-like criminal enterprises and grow to a point where it starts being in their interest to protect and cultivate their turf, invest in public relations, let their "subjects" collectively vote on certain trivialities, and so forth. The alleged "divine right" to initiate aggression is the defining characteristic of whether something is a government or a voluntary institution: a homeowners' association, a business, a club, a church, a charity, a family, a Web-site, etc, etc, etc. If a government stops initiating aggression, then it's no longer a government! Conversely, if any of the aforementioned institutions, or simply a gang of armed street thugs, initiate aggression against you, then they become your government - their claim to power is just as legitimate!

Somalia is a failed UN mission built on top of a failed theocracy built on top of a failed Communist state built on top of a failed colonial venture. Bringing it up as an example of Anarcho-Capitalism is the height of either ignorance or malice! There are a few statistical examples of the free market in Somalia doing better than in their neighbors with less fragmented governments, but the overall state of economic freedom there is absolutely terrible. There are no good existing examples of Anarcho-Capitalism - not colonial America, not medieval Iceland, etc.

Anarcho-Capitalism is an advanced state of society that humanity as a whole has not yet reached, with instant access to information (ex. Internet, smart-phones, etc) being one of the prerequisite technologies that will help make it possible. Your smart-phone can tell you if the product you're about to buy is uncertified, if you're approaching the property line of someone with a bad reputation for being rude to unwanted guests, if there's a way to drive from point A to point B without using any roads with rules you don't agree with, etc. Having multiple competing currencies, for example, was just too difficult in the 19th century because the transaction costs were too high, but that isn't a case any longer - RFID price scanners and credit card processing technologies can do currency conversion on the fly. Most examples where centralized authority is alleged to be essential are solvable with technologies that are within our grasp - flying air quality probes / floating water quality probes will help track pollution externalities, etc, etc, etc. Less-lethal weapons, flying cars (which would have been affordable to the middle class by now if not for government red tape and trillion-dollar wars for cheaper oil), seasteads, and space travel are not strictly prerequisites of Anarcho-Capitalism, but they are other examples of technologies that will help bring it about. Real-time / archived high-definition space satellite video integrated with networks of billions of video cameras on the ground make petty crime next to impossible to get away with, which is also a great example of how tyrannical the applications of those technologies can become if we don't get rid of centralized power monopolies ASAP!

Also, you need to keep in mind that Anarcho-Capitalism isn't out to destroy the existing governments, only to be able to have the choice of leaving / seceding from them on private property to try something different, and grow organically by attracting ever-more brains and capital if we are successful. If I am wrong and we end up being as bad as Somalia, then why would anyone else move to / invest in our society?

Somalia is a warlord state imposed on top of a failed U.N. state imposed on top of a failed theocracy imposed on top of a failed communist state imposed on top of an older theocracy imposed on top of ancient tribalism. It has one of the biggest governments of any country in the world, it just happens to be fragmented, chaotic, and unrecognized by other governments. In some ways that's actually an advantage, and by some benchmarks Somalia is actually doing better than similar African countries where government tyranny is much more centralized, but it's still a big bad socialist hellhole. What I advocate is Natural Law and the Non-Aggression Principle - the very opposite of what exists in Somalia today! If Anarcho-Capitalists like me would resist a trillion-dollar superpower for violating people's Rights, don't you think we would resist some petty warlords as well?!

[...] I'm not working against you and Gordon Kahls of the world not to be able to make your fairy tale experimental communities in the middle of the ocean [...]

You defend and thereby empower the system that initiates aggression against us. If there were hundreds of millions of fingers pulling the trigger on Gordon_Kahl, that still won't change the fact that it was murder. A justice system that fails to penalize individuals for their share in a crime will be completely dysfunctional! The blood spilled by the government you support is on your hands as well.

And, for the millionth time - if you are so certain that free market capitalism is hopeless, then why are you using violence to prevent us from trying?!

What do you mean by that exactly ? I'm not working against you and Gordon Kahls of the world not to be able to make your fairy tale experimental communities in the middle of the ocean, from what I see today, it's more like I am being forced to live in a planet wide libertarian platform - each couple of years I see my state less and less willing to do things unbeneficial to big bussiness like the bank - insurance complex but beneficial financialy to citizens, why would I think that when the last man standing is the privateer and not the state, I won't have to eat grass ? The state, as weak as it is, is the only thing now between me and people who are very lousely playing on the stock market with my future retirement, with all those insurerers being involved in hand in hand price fixing ( they aren't punished with a fine as long as all of them are investing poorly ), yet can never be caught and pulled to inflict responsibility upon them, because of the sacred freedom of bussiness. So what ? When the state is abolished they all of the sudden will become responsible actors ? Sure, you can say that in libertarian future I can always move to a place with better working private services if the previous became monopolical, but I'm not very keen on becoming a life long economic nomad just because someone happened to be greedy.

There is no such thing as an "old happy socialist" - all of them invariably die ranting about how the wrong kinds of socialists ended up being in power and screwed everything up... When socialists build "a cannon against capitalists" (government) and that cannon backfires against them, I'm actually tempted to call that... "poetic justice"!

Of course it isn't justice, it's just trying to make the best of a bad situation - real justice would mean no involuntary government to unfairly benefit anyone through force, neither the socialists nor the corporations. Under an Anarcho-Capitalist system anyone would be free to live in a commune, wave red flags, and all that - just as long as it is done on justly acquired land, no one is being "taxed" / stolen from, all adults are there by choice, and the Emancipation Rights of minors is not being violated. Justice isn't a utopia, it's a state of being where no individual has anyone to blame for his problems other than himself.

I am not looking to "abolish the state", just to make it possible to escape it on your own private property. You can't force people to be free.

Edited by Alex Libman, 21 May 2010 - 02:57 AM.