There's no rule that says you get a choice, either. In fact you don't get a choice; you live in an anarchy and people set up governments and mafias everywhere. And they will do it on Mars too as soon as two or three are gathered together there, because that's just the kind of arseholes we are. — unenlightened

Alas, tis true.

And if you think Musk is something other than a wannabe Mafia Godfather and divine emperor of Mars, you must be already living on the dark side of the moon. — unenlightened

I don’t think Musk wants anything in particular. He just wants. And it’s the far side of the moon, not the dark side.

I explained why 'worked' is question begging. You either mean by 'worked' - achieves justice - in which case by hypothesis it does work, or you have some other goal in mind, in which case you're simply not addressing my case and your point is irrelevant.

I explained why 'worked' is question begging. You either mean by 'worked' - achieves justice - in which case by hypothesis it does work, or you have some other goal in mind, in which case you're simply not addressing my case and your point is irrelevant. — Clearbury

We've clearly taken this as far as it makes sense to go.

Yes, though I don't think you took it anywhere at all.

1. There is no such thing as entitlement, the universe does not have an inherent karmic system. No one is entitled to anything.
2. The concept of "rights" only makes sense in the context of a governing body which can establish and protect those rights against negative actors. Otherwise its simply a value you hold, which has no bearing on anyone else but yourself. — Ourora Aureis

Those seem like indefensible claims.

First, to think people are entitled to things is not equivalent to thinking the universe operates karmically. A person can be entitled to something and never receive it.

Second, the claim that people are not entitled to anything is obviously false.

As for the concept of a right, what you say there is again just plainly false. By your logic, the Nazis did not violate the rights of Jews, but instead made it the case that they had none. And thus by your logic the Nazis - and indeed, any and all governments that are in power - are incapable of violating the rights of those whom they govern, as they are the arbiters of rights.

These are indefensible views.

In your conception, what does it mean to be entitled to something? and why should anyone care for if your entitled to certain "rights"? Also, how do you differentiate rights from values?

As for the concept of a right, what you say there is again just plainly false. By your logic, the Nazis did not violate the rights of Jews, but instead made it the case that they had none. And thus by your logic the Nazis - and indeed, any and all governments that are in power - are incapable of violating the rights of those whom they govern, as they are the arbiters of rights. — Clearbury

They didn't have rights, hence the violence against them. A rights violation occurs in comparison to a legal code. A state or individual can violate anothers rights when an act is illegal under the laws of that nation. However, it seemingly makes no sense outside of that definition. If you wished to say that someone *should* have rights, then why not just say that?

Anarchy is ephemeral because humans are social animals and inevitably people will band together and power structures will emerge. In this modern era there are too many of us and we're all too interconnected. Government is a necessary evil.

It just isn’t clear why you’d give this group the right to create and defend rights while denying it of everyone else. After all it’s just a value in your mind. Perhaps they have different values in their minds.

History shows there is no right that governments have not violated, so it is odd that you’d choose this group and not any other to help protect them. If they should choose to violate your rights, you are left with no one else to fight for them.

In physical reality, all you have done is granted power and authority to some men, while diminishing your own and others.

How is that possible before there was a government to rule those medieval gangs and city-states?

City-states had governments. Many of them were republics, modelled on the Roman one, much like the governments of today. So of course they warred with each other. That is also true of the Italian republic which set about warring with other nations.

Yes, though I don't think you took it anywhere at all. — Clearbury

OK, let's say you're granted a wish and you wish all the governments away. It's anarchy. You're living on your own in your cabin in the woods and Humungus and his road warriors discover you living your idyllic life and want to kill you and steal all your stuff. Now what?

No, they did have rights and those rights were not respected. I am not sure I can argue with someone who thinks a person has a right if and only if the government of any community of which they are a member says they do. That view is so plainly false to me that I am at a loss to know how to argue with someone who is willing to embrace its implications.

I do not understand your question. My defence of anarchism is not an expression of personal preference. I would prefer to live in a society in which everyone is made to do serve my every need. But that would not be a morally just set-up.

Similarly, there are many decisions I have made that, looking back, were rather silly and didn't maximally benefit me. I could now be much richer and healthier if I hadn't made them, and so would prefer that someone had overridden my freedom of choice on those occasions. But that too would be unjust.

In arguing that anarchism is the only form of just government (or, which is the same thing, arguing that no government is a just government), I am not describing what I think will maximally benefit me or you or anyone else, or expressing any desire of mine.

But then you're making a trivial point. Would you rather live in Heaven or Hell? Which is a more moral state of affairs? Heaven, on both counts, of course. But Heaven (and anarchy) is impossible, so what are you going to do?

I would love to live in anarchy if I could maintain my current lifestyle and not have to worry about people murdering me and taking my stuff, but that's not an option, so now what?

I am not sure I can argue with someone who thinks a person has a right if and only if the government of any community of which they are a member says they do. That view is so plainly false to me that I am at a loss to know how to argue with someone who is willing to embrace its implications. — Clearbury

Try demonstrating, or showing with logic, that what you believe is actually true. It's called justifying your belief. If you strongly belief that "a right" is more than just something which a community of human beings bestows upon you, then you ought to be able to provide support for this belief. Otherwise your belief is nothing other than a desire, you believe it because you want it to be true. And if that's the case you need to consider what RogueAI is saying, perhaps you want something which is impossible.

I am making the point that anarchy is just and all governments are unjust. I don't think that's a trivial point. That seems highly significant, if true.

I have justified my belief. Perhaps you missed it. Here it is again: if governments determine what rights people have then the Jews had no rights under the Nazis (and thus in exterminating millions of Jews, the Nazis violated no one's rights, certianly not the Jews they exterminated).
The Nazis violated the rights of the millions of Jews they exterminated
Therefore, governments do not determine what rights people have.

That is a case. It is an argument and its conclusion follows from its premises and its premises are obviously true.

When it comes to making a case what one must do is appeal to premises that have some degree of self-evidence to them, otherwise one is merely reporting one's own views and not giving others any reason to think your views may be true.

I think someone who just blankly states that governments confer rights on people is the person who is making no case and is just expressing a patently false view of theirs.

Governments can and regularly do - and if I am right, are doing so all the time by just existing - violate people's rights.

Insofar as one can justify a government, one needs to show how the existence of a government respects - or does not disrespect, if that is different - people's rights.

Note, I am talking about moral rights here, not legal ones.

City-states had governments. — NOS4A2

Sure, but those were states and governments on a different level of description. You can call a family-home a state, and the parents its government. All the same, there's nothing magic in the words 'state' and 'government' that makes arbitrary rule and never-ending wars become fixtures of governments and statism.

The proto-italian population had to endure centuries of wars until a more powerful alliance could unite the different special interests that fought each other. Partly by being more powerful than any of them, partly by offering a more stable society in which trade between the cities and elsewhere could thrive. The stability enabled long-term planning, and the united diversity enabled cultural growth, accumulation of knowledge etc.

When governments fight each other, multinational alliances emerge for the same or similar reasons, because societies plagued by constant rivalry and wars are not good societies.

What's the point of being on a philosophy forum if you're just going to deny positions which disagree with you? It seems completely irrational.



Rights *arent* just values. It seems you havent understood my post. Rights are values instantiated in the world through physical force. I can value anything I wish, but I do not have the power to enforce my own values in the world.

Rights *arent* just values. It seems you havent understood my post. Rights are values instantiated in the world through physical force. I can value anything I wish, but I do not have the power to enforce my own values in the world.

Why do they need to be instantiated by force? Why do you need to enforce your values on the world? They only need to be instantiated by your own thoughts, speech, and actions. You can confer anyone else any number of negative or positive rights you wish. You can confer someone the right to free speech, for example, and simply refuse to censor him. You can confer someone the right to housing and give him a place to live. It’s a superstition that only man in his official form can confer rights. Rather, like any man, you can confer anyone else any rights you wish.

:

run with the anarchist idea, see where it goes. — Nov 3, 2024

Show implications/consequences. (Footwork missing. It's everyone's lives.)

Also, you'd have to prove that removing the justice system of any (transparent) democratic majority, i.e. no justice system, increases justice. (Universal statements like "all politicians / people in charge bad" also need proof.)

I think that anarchy is misunderstood in the political context, or at the very least there is no consensus of opinion or definition. From the philosophical perspective, the spirit of anarchy is certainly possible as part of ones own life, but I think the problem emerges when it applies to the world at large. The best ideas seem to be syndicalism and voluntaryism. If I belong to some kind of cooperative, if I have made a contract, then my anarchistic tendency to do as I please is -for the term of the contract - bound over to the common good or to the demands of the paymaster! However, this can have problems of it's own, for example, there is no clause that enables you to end the contract. Anarchy is exciting and liberating, but it also means that our problems begin all over again. If the current system of governance is completely broken and beyond repair - and I often feel that it is - then what have we got to replace it? Anarcho-capitalism is one approach, but there is no inherent means of making a level playing field and all the money would end up in too few hands in a very short time! So much can be said in this discussion, but there needs to be a lot of research to devise a plan that could work for everyone.

I am not sure I can argue with someone who thinks a person has a right if and only if the government of any community of which they are a member says they do. That view is so plainly false to me that I am at a loss to know how to argue with someone who is willing to embrace its implications. — Clearbury

If you’re only going to argue with people who agree with you, you probably don’t belong on the forum. I think you’ll find that many, perhaps most, people understand that rights don’t really have any meaning except in the context of someone or something that can protect them.

Good post. Welcome to the forum.

Anyone can value whatever they want, but if one lives inside a system which cannot provide that value to them, then having the value is meaningless. I can act to maximise my own values, but unfortunately I can do less when I only have access to myself, and this is the case for most humans.

Collaboration within society allows an individual to maximise their values more, with specialisation and collective advancement of technology. Rights are meaningful because they provide certain values as a baseline for members of a society, where humans who wish to go against the established law are punished so that the system can be maintained. Without a governing body to instantiate rights with force, they will be left unfufilled.

For example, the right to own property is a prerequisite for a successful capitalist system. Without a governing body to enforce rules, people would have to provide their own protection (this would inevitably increase costs to run a business, and would provide a massive drain on the economy as a whole).

Regardless, the biggest issue with anarchy is that it inevitably collapses into another type of state, as power vaccums are ripe with opportunistic and violent actors who strive for control.

I am making the point that anarchy is just and all governments are unjust. I don't think that's a trivial point. That seems highly significant, if true. — Clearbury

I'm a consequentalist. I don't think anarchy is just. It's one of the worst states of affairs, which is why it never lasts long.

If you’re only going to argue with people who agree with you, you probably don’t belong on the forum. — T Clark

Willful misunderstanding. Did I say I can't argue with people I disagree with? No. I said I can't argue with someone who thinks the Nazis didn't violate the rights of the Jews they exterminated. Why? Because that person isn't worth arguing with.

I also can't be bothered arguing with people like you, who misrepresent positions. Life's too short.

I think conseqentialism is false (consequences are clearly not the only things that matter morally speaking). But even if it is true, it's not at all clear to me that anarchism has the worst consequential profile.

When most people entertain the idea of anarchy they think of the first weeks. But as a consequentialist you must think of the longer-term consequences.

Governments are terrible at everything they do (apart from waging wars - they're extremely good at doing that).

Imagine shoes were government issued. Everyone needs shoes....so it's too important to let individuals sort the matter out for themselves....no, some people who like being in charge and spending other pepole's money on things to make themselves feel good need to take charge of shoe production.

What would shoes be like? Would there be lots of choice of cheap shoes? Er, no. The government would produce shoes very inefficiently (contracts given to friends, no free market to drive down costs or improve the product). And the shoes would be terrible.

That's going to be the same for everything else. It's going to be the same for security and justice systems, for example. You think the police do a good job anywhere? I don't. Why would they?

So, as a consequentialist I think you need radically to rethink what things would be like with anarchy.

Long term, virtually everyone would be better off under an anarchy. Apart from criminals and power-hungry war mongers.

My case for anarchy is based on moral evidence. The issue is much simpler than people think. It is almost always wrong to use violence or the threat of it against another person. No one - no one worth arguing with, anyway - seriously disputes that. Yes, it can be justified under some circumstances - when one is in immediate danger or someone else is - but not otherwise. (There's of course room for a bit of debate over when one can legitimately use violence against another, but not much....every reaonable person is going to agree that the boundaries are pretty tight, even if there's no consensus on precisely where they lie).

It is also obvious that having more power than someone else doesn't make one more entitled to use violence against another. I am much stronger than Susan - does that mean I can use violence against her? No, obviously not. Might does not make right.

From those simple and uncontroversial moral axioms, we can derive the verdict that no one in power is entitled to use their power - their ability to use violence and the threat of it - against others in ways that we ourselves would not be entitled to.

And in one fell swoop, that reveals the injustice of the vast bulk of what the government does.

But that leaves those exceptions - the cases where we are entitled to use violence against another, such as self-defence or the defence of another's life. If someone is attacking you, I am entitled to defend you against that attack, with violence if necessary. So, aren't those in power entitled to do the same?

Yes, of course, for that is just an application of the same basic 'might does not make right' principle. If I am entitled to protect you from attack, then so too is someone else.

The problem is that though I am entitled to protect you from attack, I am not entitled subsequently extract some payment from you for having done so and use violence against you if you fail to pay. And I am certainly not morally permitted to announce that I will defend you from attacks (whether you wish me to or not) and then insist you start paying me for that service (and threaten you with violence if you do not pay me).

I take that to be obvious. Yet that is what the government does. So, if we imagine - for the sake of illustration - that government to be a person, then it is behaving immorally, for though some of what it undertakes to do it is perfectly entitled to do - as is any person - its insistence that we pay for its services or face violent consequences is clearly unjust.

And now we have arrived at anarchy. Nothing the government does is just. For if the government sticks only to interfering in our lives in ways that we would be entitled to interfere with each other, and sticks as well to inviting payment for such justified interference rather than extracting it with menaces, then it ceases to be a government at all and is just a bunch of individuals touting for business.

I explicitly addressed concerns about consequences in my opening post!

As for 'proving' things - I don't have to 'prove' anything. That's a ludicrous standard. In my opening post I made an 'case' for anarchism - I showed how it is implied by some moral claims that are not seriously in dispute. What you need to do is show that my conclusion is not implied by those premises, or that those premises are false.

Yes, I am sympathetic to your view in relation to the use of violence and power. The state has the power to threaten,to sanction, and where it deems it necessar,y to enforce compliance through violence. It is certainly far from the ideal utopia. I am in agreement with much of what you have to say. However, the bigger picture has to be based on more than just trust. We trust that others will respect us and not use violence against us because they must surely share the same understanding of values and principles!! Some of the other comments allude to this problem as well.

There are tyrants in this world who feel entitled to take from others what they want. They seek to rule by fear and intimidation. You could argue that the worst of government does precisely this in certain parts of the world - history also shows this to be true. However, imagine a world of totally unrestrained anarchy in all of it's diverse anarchistic interpretation, all of these anarchists competing for the same wealth and resources - surely the nicer and more liberal anarchists are going to be the poorer and the more selfish and brutal anarchists would be the stronger and the wealthier. As we see in nature, there is a tendency for the stronger to dominate and to exploit the weaker - the hunter and the hunted! This itself is a moral argument, but it is only with agreed restraint and government authority that the weak stand any chance at all, when threatened by tyranny.

The virtue of anarchy is a very difficult topic to debate. It's exciting, fresh and full of unknown potential, but I think it's possibly too idealistic to work in practice. There is a lack of consensus on what anarchy actually is and how it would/should be applied. This problem is compounded by human nature; human need and greed, would certainly create enormous problems and I'm not sure anyone would really know how to find a solution - it would be a period of trial and error. A sort of wild west!!