Karl

That's what concepts are for. A single tree is easy, but a million trees cannot be comprehended as individual objects and so we have the concept of forests. Imagine trying to imagine billions of grains of sand, but a beach is easy.

Moderation is fine if we are talking about individual consumption. If the state only applied to you personally this would most definitely be acceptable, but it doesn't, it applies to everyone. In other words you are imposing your beliefs of state moderation on other people because you believe it is acceptable. There is a logical fallacy that fits this argument calle the false middle, I hadn't known it before I studied logic, but I implicitly knew it, there is no middle way. There is no acceptable amount of force beyond that of your own defence. Evil lies in wait for those that are prepared to compromise. This is something that can only be decided individually, it only works that way, by fully conscious voluntary acceptance. That's what I believe it means to accept and embrace reality fully. It has to be that choice and no other will do. To let go of fear completely not by some act of ignorant sacrifice but it full knowledge.

He doesn't inspire when it comes to the economics of China. The Yuan was pegged to the dollar and floated down on market demand and not Chinese action. They have been attempting to prop up their currency in recent months.

I would rather have you as an ally than an enemy. If you are part way down this road, then its a bonus. I don't want to go upsetting the apple cart in order to try and force the adoption of a more radical position than you are prepared to take. It took me a few years to accept that I couldnt have it both ways and it isn't an easy stance to take. Some libertarians think that accepting a pension, medical care, using the roads means that this is acceptance of the state. It's rather like Buddhists who can't kill an insect, but wash their hands and destroy billions of microscopic creatures anyway. The government is a fact in our lives. Those of us who have worked all our lives have paid many thousands in tax and we are stuck with monopolistic state services and monetary system. We have to live with it, but that doesn't mean we have to support it. I would say that- it's only a suggestion- that if you examine certain aspects of your beliefs such as infrastructure and population control, that these beliefs lead to a tacit support of force. It's the feeling that somebody should force others to comply in some way which you deem necessary for whatever good reason. It's here that change can occur if you are willing to accept it and decide that nobody should be forced to do anything regardless of what you believe the outcome would be. I'm not talking about defending your property, family and person here either- that is your right not to be harmed ( rights are always negative unlike privileges which are always positive).

All of them.

No, he just can't make up his mind about making up his mind because it implies he has made up his mind and he definitely hasn't, unless he has in which case all bets are off.

Not a bleedin' chance in five leagues of hell. I know when I'm beaten, he is a consummate political animal.

Yes, the obvious solution to all the problems the government creates is ......ta da. More Government. $15 an hour. The stingy sod. Why not $100. If we had only known that raising the minimum wage produces instant wealth we could have solved the entire issue with the African continent. Blimey, why didn't anyone think to do that ? so obvious.

As the lure said to the fish. :-)

Nah, I'm not playing. You are like a very squidgy cake where the cream slides out the side when you go to take a bite :-)

What else would it be composed of ? Change starts and ends with the self regardless of ideals. If you support the state and political structure whilst claiming to be an anarchist you are being hypocritical. I can't end the state, I can only withdraw my support fir the state and then act in a responsible way that accords with my values. In other words I withdraw any demands for further privileges for myself and anyone else. I don't want whatever they are selling just as I don't support people who fence stolen property.

That's exactly my point.

I don't think I will ever come remotely close to understanding you. I don't think it was ever your intention to allow that to occur. You like being a mystic and being careful not to reveal too much. It's a very political stance of never being pushed into a corner you can't easily escape from.

That's as good an demonstration of the fallacy of the false alternate as Ive come across. We can have civilisation without big government, states or taxes. What's becoming blindingly obvious is it won't be long until we don't have civilisation because of big governments and taxes. I have no intention of 'living off the grid' the state did not invent anything, a group of men just took a buggy ride on the back of the productive and then proceeded to sell the idea that they were the horse and not the burden. A necessity and not an expensive and dangerous cost to the rest of us. You fell for it. I didn't.

At this time I decline to continue the discussion. I would like to, but I think it would be counter productive. I'm going to end up arguing points about maximum and minimum levels taxation and the Laffer curve, when I don't even support taxation. It's that kind of gig. I dont agree with you that 'people' are the problem, only that governments and states are the problem and people are just the unwitting pawns in games of power. If you stick ten thousand people in a tiny field from which there is no escape, then you can hardly escape the reality of the damage done to the field. It's for these reason that I cannot continue.

Not according to you.

Each of your points requires a small book in itself. I cannot do justice to it in a few lines of reply. Literally everything you have said is pure bunkum and I really don't mean that as an insult. It's not like our arguments on more esoteric subjects, here I am talking about concretes and I don't think you have a sufficient basic understanding of economics to progress things. It isn't that there is false data ( all though there is certainly selective data such as CPI and GDP), it's your interpretation of the data. If say we privatised all health care, schools and pensions then, would the cost of these things be zero ? Would we then say that x amount of money was being spent privately on the provision of these services in support of the non productive if it was privately funded directly ? Do you think when you buy at the local supermarket that you are supporting the non productive by paying over money for food ? The median taxation rate does not apply equally because it is a progressive tax. The higher earners pay more as the tax rate reduces. This has always been the case, it just isn't a popular notion amongst governments and their supporters. It's an inconvenient truth. It should be too difficult to spot why this is true and the corollary from that truth. The fact is that everything is about production and that's it. Money is a convenient method of trading by making goods and services effectively fluid. It should be obvious that if you steal from one guy to give to another, then you deprive that guy of spending that money on goods and services of another person. You cannot create production this way, but you can create poverty by dis incentivising production and the employment it brings.

Yet they don't always reflect reality. I'm quite open on this subject and its definition. It's kind of an inductive reasoning. A triangle that has sides x and angles y is said to have certain measurements. Yet no triangle exists with these perfect features.mwe can certainly utilise the propositions to build something of immense accuracy, but it won't conform to the exacting numbers of the original maths. Hence, on all mechanical drawings we have dimensional tolerances. It's the same with every facet of maths. Say we count a number of apples. The apples counted do not represent the total of all apples and neither could they, the number is constantly changing as apples are appearing and being consumed all the time. We can of course count apples in a bowl accurately. Look at gravity and we give Earths gravity as a constant, but it isn't a constant, it varies across the globe and it's exact number can never be known. Looking at grammar in comparison and we see that, in fact, maths has to be described grammatically and isn't independent from language. Nine represents the number 9 for instance and so we end up back where we started. If maths describes reality then so by inclusion grammar is the master of all concepts. As such we have to go back to the definition of concepts once again. I'm just starting here with thoughts, it's not a clear analysis by any means, just a stream of consciousness. I don't have a rigid comprehension, it just seems this way. We cannot hold the concept of zero or negative numbers. We never witness them in reality. We use them only in the sense of creating an opposition within calculation just as there is force and reaction, then we view some part of the equation from the negative viewpoint, but it isn't a negative reality.

Tell you what. Find me some examples, not hearsay, but actual real life examples of what you are talking about and I will show you how and why it happened. We can look at each example and discuss it, otherwise it turns into gross generalisations which don't help discussion. Your tax argument is flawed. Partially you have it right, but for the wrong reasons. It's a classic example of post hoc ergo propter hoc. Big government and the welfare state has created its own demand. This is what happens when you just steal money from one group of producers and give it to another whilst taking a healthy slice of the pie for doing so. However, your 45% argument is just nuts, it is a non sequitur and a bad generalisation to boot. Corporation tax is ridiculous, it shouldn't even exist. That's going to be a ton of effort to explain why judging by the previous generalisation. Suffice to say that corporations never pay tax, but their employees and customers do.

They aren't starving for lack of resource, they are starving through lack of opportunity and state oppression. People are moving from areas where there is no stability. The Middle East and Africa have been systematically plundered, destabilised, bombed and brutalised for several hundred years by the West and we are still at it. Britain was once a starving nation struggling to feed a mere 6 million inhabitants. Even then there was talk of a need for population reduction, but now we have 70 million obese people getting gastric bands and taking slimming pills. A massive industry has grown up to try and persuade people to stop eating so much. That is in a boggy, rocky little Island with few natural resources, but it hasn't stopped us flourishing. The same could happen in every nation on Earth. Every consumer is a producer. There can never be too many people. As soon as a society gets wealthy the birth rate collapses. There are now serious concerns in many of the Western countries that the birth rate has sunk to a catastrophic level. It may well be that we find ourselves with too few people. It's amazing to me that many people who complain of there being 'too many people' are actually living in the highest density populations on the planet. They see the world as too crowded because they are choosing to live in cities that give them access to enormous resource and services. It is in high density cities that wealth grows quickest. In Britain, London is the envy of the sparsely inhabited North/Scotland. We have thousands of square miles of wasted space and declining wealth standards. It is not beneficial to restrict child bearing by force. It's beneficial to allow nation states to flourish by allowing them opportunity to own land and create capital. It is the lack of private ownership and capital that has blighted poor nations and meant them becoming dependent on handouts that largely go to their corrupt officials in order to sweeten the trail for western oligarchs. More people equals more production, less people equals less production. It's as simple as that. A sustainable population is one in which there are producers and consumers in balance. The myth of over population has been one of the worst lies of modern times. It has allowed genocide to be an acceptable form of culling throughout the globe.

It doesn't need to be pure anarchy. Just as I said that a family unit has governance. All that is required is for property rights to be upheld by rule of law. If warlords are going to happen, then they will happen anyway. This is what you don't understand. Government won't make it any better, it will simply make it worse. We have many classic examples of strong government. It isn't strong government that creates acceptance of government, but law abiding people going about their business being tolerant of of government. It's impossible to 'create' and it isn't a 'utopia' it's just natural. You are thinking like a statist. Somalia has improved economically since they got rid of their government. They were already tribal warlords who wouldn't accept being ruled. It was the attempt to force them all to accept western government that plunged them into civil war. However it isn't true that Somalia is complete chaos either. They have a stronger economy than their neighbours and have the best/cheapest mobile phone network in Africa. Removing Government/state is the necessary, but not sufficient cause of having a better society. People and cultures are complex. However, I maintain that the world will be a safer, more prosperous world without them. As fir Sweden et al, it's an old story, socialists like to look at those countries and hold them up as classic examples, but in fact, they are tiny, low population countries that avoided two world wars. The people are particularly law abiding and organised. The government they get only needs to be minimally oppressive in a society that could largely manage itself anyway. Government hasn't added in any sense, it created a burden on Sweden which is beginning to erupt. The reason Greeks, Germans, Italians and Spanish are taking to the streets is that there governments have become such a burden that they have found their standard of living falling. The promised utopia of state and government is an illusion.

LOL

Childbirth declines in wealthier countries. Soil erosion is the fault of states that either give subsidies for growing crops in areas that are unsuitable, preventing private ownership of land, common land misuse (tragedy of the commons), growing of subsidised crops to be turned into fuel. We have more oil than we know what to do with, we have oil tankers circulating the oceans with no buyers. Back in the 1800s there was spreading fear of oil shortages, but it never happened. Two things make it unlikely this will ever happen. The first is new techniques constantly allow new sources of fossil fuels to be found. Indeed, even the environmentalists have had to change tack on 'peak oil' because they realised its a myth. Secondly the market and the law of supply and demand mean that as resources become more scare/more costly to obtain the price rises. We have far, far less gold than oil, but we still mine it and the price has been falling, as has the oil price. If it reverses and begins to rise, then it means that new innovations become possible in alternative sources.

It already has, it's called the Government. They charge me for living in my house, they charge me for using the local roads, they charge me for having a car, motorcycle etc, they charge me for parking in my street. Then the pavements and roads are of poor quality, overcrowded and dangerous, but there is no blame to be applied to the state. I cannot choose another organisation because they have a monopoly.