Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

Whatever. Being a statist is its own punishment. The institution of the state has too much popular support, even if the particular criminals who get "elected" sometimes lose their popularity after a few years. They get "replaced" by "new" more popular criminals and so the cycle repeats itself. Nothing will likely stop it, regardless of the nation, be it Israel, the U.S., or elsewhere... Except perhaps the economic collapse. So the good always comes with the bad and vice versa. Probably best to get out of the way as things fall apart. At least you can say there's drama constantly. Never boring.

And as someone has said about being a contrarian:
"Following the herd is a sure-fire way to mediocrity."



@newtboy writes: "well thought out complaints with follow through often DO get results, and even if they don't you'll know you tried the right thing first."

Yeah, "the right thing," eh? According to whom? You?

Even if you replace the cop (even if it happens which often doesn't), so what? Another one takes his place. It's the whole police system, these are not just "isolated" individuals who are out of control. A lot of people insist that these are just "bad apples." Then those people become victims themselves. Poetic justice.

>> ^marbles:

Social contract theories have no relevance to the philosophy of liberty. As I pointed out from the beginning, your references have no context. Liberty exists outside of any relationship to an external authority.

This is your premise, it is also your conclusion. You have failed to demonstrate it at all. You have not made an argument. You have simply made a flurry of self contradicting statements, and insisted that they are true, and that any counter argument is false by definition. Do you really expect anybody to take you seriously?

>> ^marbles:

I guess you’re right. Marxism is actually based on a small group’s right to the individual. Not even Marx was naïve enough to believe that a utopian classless society was achievable, let alone sustainable.


Marx advocated only the abolition of capital, not of workers rights to what they produce, he believed that capitalism had already destroyed that right:

>> ^Karl_Marx:

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing
the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a
man's own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork
of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the
property of the petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of
property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to
abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent
already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.


>> ^marbles:

the creation of value; the producing of articles having exchange value.
So where does production come from again?



To restate: where does the producing of articles having exchange value. come from

Lets see, how many ways can I interpret this?

1) Where do produced items come from : They are made of other things + energy, conservation of M/E
2) Where does the idea of production come from : The social contract of market societies
3) Where does the exchange value of objects come from : Somewhat arbitrary cultural valuation
4) ??? : what you secretly mean probably goes here, how about cluing us in?

>> ^marbles:

I did just clearly demonstrate it.

Where?

>> ^marbles:

Care to prove it false?

State your case and I'll give it a whirl.

>> ^marbles:
Sorry but self-ownership is a hyphenated word not found in the dictionary. The implications in of itself are clearly not literal: My self owns myself? So why exactly are you trying to make a literal argument?

Because the logical consistency of your ideology depends on the ability to bootstrap a property system with the ownership (as in what they word usually means) of self. Dispensing with that when it gets inconvenient makes the whole thing fall apart.

Without actual self ownership, you have no logically necessary ownership claim to the value produced by self, and so you can not build you system on property only. You must start adding more first principles in order to get there. If libertarians have been purposely obfuscating their ideology as you claim, then they have been hiding the weakness in their argument, and making a false case.

I take most libertarians at there word that they actually meant what they said. Your position now significantly diverges from that put forth in the video, and requires you to make a different argument to bootstrap your personal libertarian-derived view.

What new first principle are you introducing to bootstrap ownership from only figurative ownership of self?

>> ^marbles:

I’m sorry, was I supposed to give a damn about your hypothetical social contract?

You used its existence as an argument. You want to back peddle and say you didn't mean it? Then do so.

>> ^marbles:

I didn’t use your property arrangement for anything; I rejected your claims outright.

And then, as an example, argued that I was wrong because what I suggested would not work in my property arrangement, read the transcript.

>> ^marbles:

And yet you recognized property for Nomadic humans. Wonder what all those hunter-gatherers were doing? So does physical life also need a social contract to exist?

possession ≠ fee-simple

Possession is fact, who has current physical control of a thing is not an issue for philosophy, but only of physicality. If I hold a pen in my hand I possess it, irrespective of any ownership claims on the pen. To take the pen from me without my consent requires the initiation of actual physical force against me, based on the physics.

If you own the pen, I don't have to interact with you in any way to use it, or take it home with me. There is no way to know if you own the pen, or if anybody does.

There is no demonstrable physical consequence of fee-simple property, possession, on the other hand in a matter of facts. My acceptance of both the fact and historical relevance of possession, does not get you within miles of fee-simple.

* slapstick - kurt vonnegut
* bridge to terabithia - katherine peterson
* portrait of dorian gray - oscar wilde
* junkie - william s burroughs
* the captured - scott zesch
* mutant message downunder - marlo morgan
* all my friends are going to be strangers - larry mcmurtry
* beasts of no nation - uzodinma eweala
* a day in the life of ivan denisovich - alexander solzhenitsyn
* things fall apart - chinua achebe

To be honest, I like this least of all The Roots singles - but as they're so good, it's still a great track! (Things Fall Apart will always be their best album, not Phrenology in my opinion).

Wow.

I love this Country. But I have no love for the people running it.

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;"

Prophetic. In fact, I think I'll post the whole poem.


Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of "Spiritus Mundi"
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-- William Butler Yeats, "The Second Coming"