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I got into the habit of lurking a few of these forums as part of my evening news binge.
I've become intrigued by some of the ideas and interactions..thus I joined the mix.
The only time I ever felt my liberty was impinged upon was when I enlisted in the Navy, but I was not forced to sign up, and I already knew it would happen.
I've always worked doing my own thing. I've worked in my own shop, worked for someone else's paycheck, and have worked in the middle, where I was independent but continued to do work for former employers.
If I didn't like my wages, I just looked for a way to improve them while on the job. Every single job provided me with new skills, new knowledge, and new abilities I didn't have earlier.
If the wages were not forthcoming, I would simply quit, but I always took care to never burn any bridges behind me when I left.
And once on my own again, I always spent a lot of time in further improving the skills I developed when I left. I learned very early in life what I was good at and was not, and simply concentrated on the stuff I was good at doing.
That meant I had to be adaptable, and open to brand new brand new things I knew nothing about, but fit in with what I knew I was good at doing. If the challenge was radical, then it was just a challenge and a goal that had to be met. If it was difficult, all the better, because that meant I would have more and better opportunities wherever I went and whatever my job was.
Some times, my life was very hard. But no matter; in every period of my life, things always got better overall incrementally, because one of the things I'm good at is responding to new challenges, which always developed new skills and a wider variety of skill sets. But they all were stuff I was initially good at. All that happened was I grew better at doing them, and doing more of them.
And since my government helped me out in many ways, I never felt cheated paying taxes. Nothing much in my life ever came for free, after all, so I never expected to get free stuff from anyone, including the government.
But I certainly reaped some benefits i would never had had without my government. My education was a big one, but there are many others that we all enjoy, and have improved everyone's lot in life here.
Nowadays, at age 72, a lot of old skills that served me very well are obsolete now in the workplace, but that doesn't mean they are obsolete. I've found there are still many places to put them to use. Only some of the most physical are beyond my abilities now.
At the same time, though, I have other, more recent skills that often replace those physical skills, so I'm still good.
And I don't feel any of my liberties have been threatened at all. Indeed, I cherish them more than when I was young, because my hitch in the Navy showed me what loss of liberty REALLY means in other countries. I saw loss of liberty on the ground, up close and for real in some of the places the Navy sent me.
We all have very little understanding of just how free we really are. And I never got anything but a small taste of how oppressive life is for most of the people on earth actually is.
All the gripes I've read here are chicken feed compared to the real deal. While things in the United States could be better, in our thoughts as Americans who have lived here for all our lives or for a very long time, in comparison, things could be very, very much worse.
The greatest part of our society is our mutual determination to stay as free as possible, right from the beginning of our nation, and our deep shared commitment to that ideal. Freedom and liberty are so ingrained in us all we take far to much of it for granted ever since we threw off the tyrant's lash 240 years ago.
We are the best self-correcting society in the world. There will never be a tyrant who rules us unless we allow it, and even if we do allow it, none will ever be able to persevere for very long.
It's part of our cultural nature to be sensitive to tyranny, even when our emotions briefly overcome some of us to temporarily accept a tyrant's disguise. We always find them out very quickly for who they are, no matter how skillful their disguise may be.
There are always those who see real tyranny for what it is, and they are half of us every time one arises. In this, one half of us is always on guard for us all. Which half is on guard only depends on the brief moment, always. But that's plenty enough, as we have always come to a united stand against them all, coming from all directions.
Last edited by banjomike; 08-14-2016 at 02:51 PM..
Giving this some thought...I guess I would parse it down to the right to free movement and privacy. It seems fair enough..but how would it translate in a world of 4 billion?
Those vast, almost infinite number of interactions, would argue against a perfect application of this "right".
I guess a definition of "force" would be important. If I build a dam that cuts off your water, is that force?
If I burn my grass fields, do you have a gripe about the quality of air I've imposed on you?
Where does the public weal come in..or does it?
Seems to be more of a code of conduct...and a good one.
I guess, if I'm cutting to the heart of it..is that I think Anarchy is a process, not a place.
Excellent post & ideas.
If we ever decide to be adults and discuss what freedom and force are...and how they interact with each...then we can learn from our neighbors instead of using the State as our attack dogs on them.
The State has brainwashed many believing one should use an arbitrary set of rules never agreed upon and enforced by an involuntary 3rd party instead of contract law and voluntary dispute resolution councils.
Anarchy is a process because it's a principle not a defined "good" or "bad", "legal" or "illegal" within a forced collectivist system of exploitation.
One question (of many) no statist has ever answered me is this:
How can an individual not have the right to rob, tax, cage, or use any other kind of force (except defensive) on his neighbor yet a group of individuals can give these rights to a larger group to do to his neighbor on his behalf?
The sum is the whole of the parts. If I dump a box on a table consisting of 5 screws, a clock, a tv, and an iPhone and tell you to build me an airplane using only these parts then you come back to me with a completed 747 I know you didn't use only those parts.
The rights we have as individuals are the rights we have to work with. That's only logical and imo moral.
The rights we have as individuals are the rights we have to work with. That's only logical and imo moral.
To treat other as we wish to be treated..to scale that up..to include our treatment of other nations--yes that would be ideal..again, not sure that it would scale up that way..but as a code of conduct and a valid starting place--it is the only truly ethical position.
The only time I ever felt my liberty was impinged upon was when I enlisted in the Navy, but I was not forced to sign up, and I already knew it would happen.
I've always worked doing my own thing. I've worked in my own shop, worked for someone else's paycheck, and have worked in the middle, where I was independent but continued to do work for former employers.
If I didn't like my wages, I just looked for a way to improve them while on the job. Every single job provided me with new skills, new knowledge, and new abilities I didn't have earlier.
If the wages were not forthcoming, I would simply quit, but I always took care to never burn any bridges behind me when I left.
And once on my own again, I always spent a lot of time in further improving the skills I developed when I left. I learned very early in life what I was good at and was not, and simply concentrated on the stuff I was good at doing.
That meant I had to be adaptable, and open to brand new brand new things I knew nothing about, but fit in with what I knew I was good at doing. If the challenge was radical, then it was just a challenge and a goal that had to be met. If it was difficult, all the better, because that meant I would have more and better opportunities wherever I went and whatever my job was.
Some times, my life was very hard. But no matter; in every period of my life, things always got better overall incrementally, because one of the things I'm good at is responding to new challenges, which always developed new skills and a wider variety of skill sets. But they all were stuff I was initially good at. All that happened was I grew better at doing them, and doing more of them.
And since my government helped me out in many ways, I never felt cheated paying taxes. Nothing much in my life ever came for free, after all, so I never expected to get free stuff from anyone, including the government.
But I certainly reaped some benefits i would never had had without my government. My education was a big one, but there are many others that we all enjoy, and have improved everyone's lot in life here.
Nowadays, at age 72, a lot of old skills that served me very well are obsolete now in the workplace, but that doesn't mean they are obsolete. I've found there are still many places to put them to use. Only some of the most physical are beyond my abilities now.
At the same time, though, I have other, more recent skills that often replace those physical skills, so I'm still good.
And I don't feel any of my liberties have been threatened at all. Indeed, I cherish them more than when I was young, because my hitch in the Navy showed me what loss of liberty REALLY means in other countries. I saw loss of liberty on the ground, up close and for real in some of the places the Navy sent me.
We all have very little understanding of just how free we really are. And I never got anything but a small taste of how oppressive life is for most of the people on earth actually is.
All the gripes I've read here are chicken feed compared to the real deal. While things in the United States could be better, in our thoughts as Americans who have lived here for all our lives or for a very long time, in comparison, things could be very, very much worse.
The greatest part of our society is our mutual determination to stay as free as possible, right from the beginning of our nation, and our deep shared commitment to that ideal. Freedom and liberty are so ingrained in us all we take far to much of it for granted ever since we threw off the tyrant's lash 240 years ago.
We are the best self-correcting society in the world. There will never be a tyrant who rules us unless we allow it, and even if we do allow it, none will ever be able to persevere for very long.
It's part of our cultural nature to be sensitive to tyranny, even when our emotions briefly overcome some of us to temporarily accept a tyrant's disguise. We always find them out very quickly for who they are, no matter how skillful their disguise may be.
There are always those who see real tyranny for what it is, and they are half of us every time one arises. In this, one half of us is always on guard for us all. Which half is on guard only depends on the brief moment, always. But that's plenty enough, as we have always come to a united stand against them all, coming from all directions.
Your first paragraph indicates you don't understand freedom.
You entered into a contract with another party volunteering to do certain things when you joined the Navy.
Most if not all statists don't understand the concept of consent. We see this in the belief of a "social contract" or using goods & services to survive because using alternatives would mean the cage or death (going along under duress).
Remember, consent is when two or more parties enter into an agreement in which...
A. Both parties have the cognitive ability to do so
B. Are free from force of the other party or a 3rd party
This is the definition of consent. There is no way around it as far as I know.
To treat other as we wish to be treated..to scale that up..to include our treatment of other nations--yes that would be ideal..again, not sure that it would scale up that way..but as a code of conduct and a valid starting place--it is the only truly ethical position.
Maybe each person could be their own nation and use contract law to organize society on a voluntary level?
I don't have the right to keep my own paycheck without half of it being stolen. to me that's the only right I care about.
You have the right to work for yourself.
By working for someone else it is your employer who deducts from your wages and pays into Social Security and other deductions.
How do you mean "half of it"??? No one is in the 50% tax bracket. Can you give us a break down of how much your employer pays you and what exact amount is deducted from your paycheck?
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The best post I've seen on the subject--I wish I could have expressed it half as well.
