NOS4A2

I’ll pass. I am by now we’ll aware that you will not afford anybody a right to their own garden. What do you say to the Amazonian, then, given that th...

We have not agreed to anything. No social contract. Just you coming upon my garden and deciding what to do next: destroy it, steal from it, or leave i...

Rights come from men. That’s why I’m asking you and not God. Will you destroy my garden, should there be no “social contract”? Is this why you need to...

You’d destroy my food, then, and any food-bearing plants I created, because you are a superior gardener. I still fail to see how one justifies the oth...

Do you not believe that a man has a right, as a matter of dignity and survival, to put effort into a place of nature for his own living?

There we go. You believe you are entitled to the figurative and literal fruits of another’s labor because you think you can do a better job. The corol...

I would say the State itself was a violation of sorts insofar as it was the organized means of exploitation imposed on others, but only that the preex...

Nor should they be. It’s a brute fact that such abstract terms are without a referent. As intimated, the collectivism in Hobbes or Rousseau, statism i...

It was a question, actually, as evident by the question mark. Your efforts to skirt around it are obvious, because no one is stupid enough to act like...

Like Rousseau says, family is the first society. I suppose kinship could be considered natural, but then again to say “state of nature” is redundant, ...

Do you really disagree, though? Would you actually lay claim to a garden someone else has built and cultivated, and upon disagreeing, physically take ...

Deliberation.

A state prohibits rule of the people. It’s very function is the rule of some people.

That is my justification. Now we weigh that against your justification, which I suppose is coming any moment now.

It’s true. And history does not look kindly on them.

I created it and nurtured it. It wouldn’t exist had I not done so. How does your superior gardening abilities justify your claims to it?

It’s true. I would assume, perhaps wrongly, that you have a conscience, and some modicum of respect for the livelihood of others, their labors, and so...

Someone you do not know nor have ever dealt with. Another bogieman. How do your gardening abilities justify you having another person’s garden?

My garden? Not because I say so, but because I can justify it. I built it, planted it, and tilled it. If you can justify why it is yours, perhaps you ...

You and your desire to steal and appropriate another’s things is not unlike the State’s. It’s always someone else.

Note how no one can answer why they themselves need to be governed. I expected as much. It’s always someone else who needs to be governed, like the mu...

I wouldn’t do anything like a state. I’ve only claimed that there are ways to organize without the state, on grounds of voluntary rather than involunt...

I’m quite certain that you and I could come to some sort of agreement, neighbor to neighbor, and abide by that agreement without including a third par...

If it is not an explicit agreement then it is not a contract. Since a condition is not a contract, it is a poor analogy on Rousseau’s part. Perhaps “s...

It’s the State. They formed when one group of predatory men sought to exploit the rest. There is nothing public about the State except that they do it...

I use “private” in this sense to mean something doesn’t have any official standing nor is it owned and controlled by any government. I see no nefariou...

My own view is that states form through conquest and appropriation. They are imposed. Not one man agreed to any contract. This is because no such cont...

I didn’t advocate for any of those, nor anarchism. I’m speaking against the state, not for or against other forms of organization. They were examples ...

But the government can?

Very true, Paine. Both Rousseau and Hobbes believed in the social contract. Perhaps this belief, despite its lack of evidence, persists as the undercu...

I’m not so sure of that. History is replete with state violence and democide. There is not one human right that the state has not violated. They can a...

Sure you can. Private schools, private roads, private insurance, private firefighting, private healthcare, private charity, private armies, ….the mode...

I appreciate the effort it took to write that down, and find little to disagree with. But I’m just asking why you yourself must be governed. Rather, I...

The authoritarian statist barks but cannot provide an answer.

Quid Pro Joe is at it again. According to the Saudis he was asking them to postpone their OPEC decision to cut oil production for another month, until...

Life and chess are incomparable. The fact that one can move on from a game like chess is another reason why it is a false analogy.

Minority or majority rule is not the rule of the people, but the rule of some people over other people. And so long as democracy remains collectivist ...

Stop thinking in statist terms is a good start.

The utility of the state is a part of the problem. People think they can just set the great machine in motion and reach their desired goals, so they c...

Very true. States are essentially the organized means of exploitation imposed by the conquering class upon the vanquished, and it has been that way fr...

It’s odd reasoning, if there is any reasoning in it at all. Solidarity with the working class will never result from raising someone’s taxes. It’s pur...

The idiom “one cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” serves well to explain that it isn’t so much a hijacking but the inevitable result...

The forceful transfer of wealth from private to state hands is one of the less talked about tyrannies in human history. A little math might explain th...

The term was once a socialist bugaboo but has become familiar with overuse. In the mouths of critics and defenders alike “capitalism” confounds more t...

The referendums in eastern Ukraine went swimmingly for Russia. Annexation is next.

It doesn’t take much to assume dysphoria and contempt for one’s own body must be harrowing. Dysphoria is the antonym to euphoria, after-all. It’s igno...

The contextomy was quite obvious. You even removed the last half of one sentence in order to give weight to the first half. Sorry, pal, but this is di...

It is meaningless. Remove the make-up, the clothes, the act, and we’ll see the reality of it all, and whether one’s identity conforms with it or not. ...

Here’s the real quote before you had your way with it.

And everyone with anti-Trump, pro-Biden points get a huge pass.