Voluntaryism vs. Statism: It's not a debate.
Statism is a death threat.
If you've ever pointed out that taxation is theft, or that "acts and statutes" are a euphemism for "comply or die", you've probably heard something to the effect of the following in response:
"Explain to me how things I don't even understand now will work absent a group of men and women who have a monopoly on plunder and violence, and I'll think about changing my mind about wanting you thrown in a rape cage or murdered for following your conscience and resisting the theft of taxation."
Perhaps I'm not sugar coating it as much as a statist would, but this is essentially what statists are saying whenever they challenge the INSANE notion put forth by voluntaryists that all interactions should be based on consent. And in fact, it's worse than that. Not only are they tacitly acknowledging that you don't want force initiated against you by disagreeing with you and entering into discussion instead of immediately initiating force, they're TAUNTING you with their own willingness to either initiate force against you or demand that someone else do so on their behalf.
That means they're fully aware of the non-consensual implications of what they advocate, and they don't care.
That's why the question of whether or not some people should be able to rule over other people isn't a debate. There can never be an honest debate with anyone who resorts to coercion and death threats instead of arguments.
Death threats aren't arguments.
Ad baculum is a fallacy; not an argument. If theft, murder, assault, rape, kidnapping, enslavement and torture are immoral, what's there to debate? Stealing and murdering to prevent theft and murder is a performative contradiction, therefore the claim of all statists is:
"Some people should be able to get away with doing immoral things for no other reason than that they call themselves 'government'."
The burden of proof for this claim is insurmountable. There is no way to put forth a logically consistent, evidence-based argument for it. Any attempt to do so would lead to contradiction and logical fallacy, not the least of which would be ad baculum, or appeal to force, as previously discussed.
To reiterate, this means there never was a debate to begin with. It's not a debate. In the words of Jeff Deist, president of the Mises Institute, it's a fight. In the words of Marc Stevens of the No State Project, it's damage control. Statism is always the wrong answer. No amount of special pleading can morally justify the means by which its ends are attained.
About the Author
I'm Jared Howe! I'm a Voluntaryist hip hop artist and professional technical editor/writer with a passion for Austrian economics and universal ethics. You can catch my podcast every Friday on the Seeds of Liberty Podcast Network.
@jaredhowe
I agree with he basic premises you are bringing forward but you have to consider two basic truths.
Statists believe that what we have right now is consent. A large group of people on the face of this earth, bounded by imaginary borders agrees to a given set of ethos. Morality is subjective. We need to accept this. They accept violence as part of morality. In the same way you would accept violence as moraliuty in case you are defending yourself. The only difference is that some people, eg statists, are trigger happy with their safety.
Lets say goverments fall. Then what? Groups of people will still clumb together and fight over resources. Have you ever been hungry. I mean 3-4 days hungry. I have. You have no idea what it does to you until you experience it. Most people on this earth engaging in conflict have morality shaped from these conditions. Wars exist because some group of people say they defend some other group of people.
Imagine you belong to an anarchist group in a post apocalyptic no-goverment era. You are called to defend another group of people who got attacked because kids are killed and women raped. What do you do? Do you engage in war? Do you stay there doing nothing? What if you engage in war and people die as collateral?
These questions are not easy nor can be answered unless you have been through some tough situations. Being a couch anarchist from a comfy western culture, philosophysing about the world, does't change anything.
It's pretty amazing how often those that comment on your post @jaredhowe engage in the very same fallacies described within.
They're doing me a favor lol. I needed a good case study. This is the perfect response.
I can't point out where you're wrong, so I'll paint you as the wrong person to be right.
Upvoted and following
You have some great writing skills @jaredhowe. You should share a post telling about people your writing style.
hi,
I wrote a cute little story about a baby dolphin and all the posts he read on steemit
and your post is in it
have a look, I hope you like it
thanks
Mark Passio has a great, common sense definition of "violence" that I think everyone should adopt, because it makes things much more linguistically clear. To commit violence is to "violate" someone's natural rights. That is, the person who initiates force is violating the victim's right to go about unmolested. If the victim then uses force to defend themselves, they are not violating anyone, therefore, they are NOT using viol-ence. Self defense and violence are polar opposite versions of Force, with initiation as the distinction. In summary, you cannot use violence in self defense, because you are not the one violating anyone.
it is not a debate when one of the augmenters has a gun pointed at the other.
lovely short and to the point. how come you kids are so hip these days
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