Francisco Ferrer

I wrote, "I suggested not that Moralist had called for society's killing of sinners' children, but rather that such would be the logical consequence of his defense of the 'justice' of the Tenth Plague. I was quick to admit that I did not know this for certain because Moralist, like any good wrestler, had refused to be pinned down." This describes a stage in the debate before Moralist had answered "Of course not!" to your question about whether society should execute children at all. Now the only remaining mystery is why Moralist should consider the deaths of the Egyptians children "just" and "deserved." The fact that God of the Old Testament, in the view of His believers, is omnipotent hardly leads to the conclusion that he is "just" or metes out "deserved" consequences, which is what Moralist suggested in his first response to me. But perhaps what you mean is that a supposed omnipotent being would have the power to turn the deaths of little children who did nothing into "just" and "deserved" actions; that because of His powers, God can make an innocent being guilty and yet still innocent. Moreover, omnipotence could mean that God can cause the children to be deserving and yet undeserving of life in the same sense, in the same place, and at the same time. All things are possible, even a thing being simultaneously A and non-A. Perhaps, you are more fundamentally asking why I am troubling Moralist with matters of logic when the very belief in a god defies all logic.

I see. When society kills an evil person's baby, the baby does not deserve it. When God kills kills an evil person's baby, the baby does deserve it because of the "personal moral responsibility for the consequences of your own actions." Presumably, the baby's "own actions" would collectively include any actions by his parents. Sort of like babies being born sinners because and Adam and Eve's disobedience.

Francisco, I have a question and it's just a question. No hostility intended. Do you equate God with society? If not, I'm confused. From what I have seen, Greg makes statements premised on belief in God, who can do what He pleases when He pleases. Within this context, according to the stories, GOD destroyed civilizations (including children) at times because the people were wicked in His eyes. You translated this into Greg claiming SOCIETY can execute the children of criminal parents. I missed the logic or any kind of statement to indicate the crossover from God to society. How did you arrive at that? Michael In Post #29, in response to my suggestion that the God of the Old Testament was homicidal, Moralist wrote, "The first assumption you made is that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got." One could infer from that statement that Moralist must think that the Egyptian children killed by the Tenth Plague did something wrong and deserved what they got. I do not see how one can infer anything else. I later brought up the hypothetical example of a judge ordering the execution of a child whose mother committed a crime to illustrate the disconnect between the sins of the parent and the supposed "just" and "deserved" death of the child. I suggested not that Moralist had called for society's killing of sinners' children, but rather that such would be the logical consequence of his defense of the "justice" of the Tenth Plague. I was quick to admit that I did not know this for certain because Moralist, like any good wrestler, had refused to be pinned down. On the other hand, we have Moralist who argues that “people who do evil inflict the consequences of their immoral actions on their own offspring.” By this statement I take Moralist to mean that it is appropriate to punish a criminal by executing his son. However, it is hard to know Moralist’s exact position because instead of directly addressing question 2), Moralist keeps clinging to 1), which is quite a non-controversial opinion. The essential question, then, is not whether Moralist thinks that it's good for society to execute the babies of bad parents, but how he can treat such an action as "just" and "deserved" when it is ordered by God? To answer your first question last: society exists, God does not. I do not equate the real with the imaginary.

Of course not! Splendid. Killing a child, especially one who did nothing wrong, would be unjust and undeserved. Therefore, we should conclude that the killing of any children in Egypt on the first Passover, even those in dwellings without lamb's blood over the door, would be unjust and undeserved. Debate concluded. As you exit, make sure to gather all of your belongings.

The Icelandic Commonwealth was founded in 970, and the tithe was introduced around 1100. It lasted about 130 years at most. The Icelandic Commonwealth, under which justice was privately contracted, lasted from 930 to 1262. The breakdown of polycentric, private law in Iceland began with the institution of compulsory church tithes. Are people powerless under tyrants? Absolutely. Right up to the moment when they wrest the power away from the tyrant. For example the slaves of Haiti had no political power. None. And this continued for years until the day when they did have power. The lesson is, "If the people that hold all the power in a society don't want to change the state, then the state won't change, even if the vast majority of people want it to." So if you're a slave in Haiti, you'll always be a slave until the power-holders decide otherwise. And one thing that might lead them to such a decision is "pillage, rape, torture, mutilation, and death". As for Switzerland, I said that the military power (not the leadership) is decentralized. And it is. Its weapons and the manpower are for the most part not on military bases but in the civilian communities. If you think this is true of the U.S. military, talk to a soldier. Laissez-faire is the best form of government because it is the only one that respects man's nature and the rights that are derived from that nature. Philosophy is a discipline that studies the nature and meaning of man's life on earth. If it is faithful to reality, it will provide for a system of ethics that allow men to live in a free and prosperous community. It is good to know that there are non-laissez-faire alternatives to crony capitalism. Some folks may like those arrangements. There is also the laissez-faire alternative. The fact that there is no present day equivalent to, say, the U.S. under the Articles of Confederation is no more an insuperable barrier to freedom than the absence of women's suffrage in 1880 was to winning the right to vote in the 20th century.

Francisco, Are you serious? I am astonished by this conclusion. I read your post carefully and I still have no idea how you arrived at it. On the surface, it looks like to me you are misrepresenting Greg's ideas on purpose. Like a smear. However, I believe in your good will, so I have a suggestion. Rather than telling Greg what he thinks, why don't you ask him? And I don't mean ask him leading questions. Here's a suggested question for a start: What do you think about society executing the children of anyone? I don't speak for Greg, but I already know the answer to that. I think anybody who has read him but you does, too. Since you declared categorically to the world that Greg believes society should execute children in order to punish their parents, it's reasonable to ask if he agrees whether society should execute children at all. It's a conceptual hierarchy thing. Michael MSK, if you don't think my summary is fair, here is a word-for-word transcript of the debate, leaving out only comments addressed to other forum contributors. Francisco, Post #23: " . . . I had decided that if God of the Old Testament existed, with his destruction of millions by the flood and the fire and brimstone in Genesis and by the Angel of Death in Exodus, he must be a homicidal maniac." Moralist, Post #29: "The first assumption you made is that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got. That assumption naturally begets another in that you believe that there is no such thing as moral justice. For if God isn't just, certainly no one else could be either." Francisco, Post #31: "Okay, what evil little tricks did the first born babies of the Egyptians play to 'deserve' the 'moral justice' of the death penalty?" Moralist, Post #43: "People who do evil inflict the consequences of their immoral actions upon their own offspring." Francisco, Post #45: "In Post #29, you wrote, 'The first assumption you made is that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got.' So what the first born babies 'did' to 'deserve what they got' was to choose evil parents to be born to?" Moralist, Post #48: "Let's start at the beginning: Do you have any children? Please answer the question." Francisco, Post #56: "Just as I thought: the evil action that the first born Egyptian babies committed was choosing wicked people as parents. Perhaps in the millennia since then the Tenth Plague has served as a good lesson for other babies: the selection of parents is not to be taken lightly. A little research ahead of time can save you a truckload of headaches later on. I sometimes wonder why so many kids today pick drug addicts, criminals and child abusers for moms and dads. Well, let's hope it's just a passing fad. And imagine all the controversy Obama could have saved himself if he hadn't picked a father from Kenya." Moralist, Post #57: "I'm impressed. You're an excellent spokesman for evil, Frank. I don't believe anyone else could have made it's case any better than you just did. Most notably, you've succeeded in completely ignoring the existence of any personal moral responsibility for the evil that rotten parents inflict upon their own offspring. You believe there is a complete disconnect between the immoral behavior of parents and the consequences which affect their children. I hope you don't have any kids because you'd really f**k 'em up with that attitude of total abdication of personal moral responsibility." I then presented a recap of the debate to make sure that were talking about the same issue. However, the response I got from Moralist was about my failure to "acknowledge that children experience the consequences of their parents actions." This is where we're stuck now. Nevertheless, MSK, I will follow your suggestion. Moralist, What do you think about society executing the children of anyone?

As I pointed out in that post, once upon a time, there was no taxation anywhere, including Iceland. However, this doesn't disprove my point, because in only a very short amount of time, the emergence of a state is quickly followed by the introduction of taxes. The private provision of justice in Iceland lasted nearly 300 years. As Roderick T. Long has said, "We should be cautious in labeling as a failure a political experiment that flourished longer than the United States has even existed." I did not say that "majorities did not matter". I only said that, if the people that hold all the power in a society don't want to change the state, then the state won't change, even if the vast majority of people want it to. It is sometimes possible for even a small group of "commoners" to rally together and seize control of the state, and I never claimed otherwise. When they do so, however, they acquire power and become the new ruling elite. This is pretty much exactly what happened in the Bolshevik revolution. This was in response to your claim that a state will collapse if only a majority of people want it to. This claim is obviously falsified by the numerous examples throughout history of oppressive regimes that are hated by the people they rule but that have not been overthrown. A regime cannot last without at least the acquiescence of the majority of the public. This has been proven time and again, from Louis XVI to Nicholas II to General Jaruzelski. The Bolshevik Revolution succeeded and lasted in large part because its propaganda machine convinced the public that the alternatives to Communist Party control were worse. They managed this trick rather well until the 1980's. "No ruler who lacks the gift of persuasion can stay in office long; it is the indispensable condition of government. It would be an idle illusion to assume that any government, no matter how good, could lastingly do without public consent." --Ludwig von Mises No, they will put up with it because there's nothing they can really do about it. Warren Buffet is exactly the kind of parasite B is and is widely reviled in this country, yet he somehow managed to escape being hung on a hook in a public square. (which is not to even mention the parasites who are currently getting away with everything) I am not aware that Warren Buffet is widely hated or even widely known by the American public. If a discontented population has no power to effect political change, then all regimes currently in power will remain so and history will be forever locked into a holding pattern. Yet there is no reason to believe that this will be the case. Ballots and bullets have caused upheavals in the past. Why shouldn't they work in the future? Switzerland's military is certainly not decentralized. It might be minimally staffed, but it sure as hell isn't decentralized. Then you are misinformed. The overwhelming majority of Switzerland's army personnel sleep not on bases but in their own homes. The overwhelming majority of Switzerland's arms are stored not in government arsenals but in private closets. Read Target Switzerland: Swiss Armed Neutrality in World War II by my friend Stephen Halbrook. You yourself have said that "Many people are as much motivated by seeing a wealthy man brought low as by increasing their own income." (your own words). If you'll notice that this is exactly what I was asked to model, and I believe I have succeeded in doing so. I believe it's your turn now. Suppose that, all of a sudden, everyone in America and their mother only wants to see you dead for no particular reason. How exactly will the constitution save you? It can't. As I've said often on this website and as Ayn Rand has written, the philosophical must precede the political. Rand said, "The power that determines the establishment, the changes, the evolution, and the destruction of social systems is philosophy." A U.S. Constitution that was closer to its original version, that kept government tightly reined in by allowing for the countervailing power of state nullification, and that fully respected the sovereignty of each citizen, could only exist in a society that extensively honored individualism. In other words, the same society that gives us such a document would not also give us trials by mob. You don't have to look at the future, you only have to look around. Each country that exists today represents a set of political institutions which actually exists, and not all of them are crony capitalist, but not one of them is laissez-faire capitalist either. In the middle of the 19th century no Western country allowed women to vote. By the end of the century that ban would rapidly disappear. Therefore, pronouncements about the "foreseeable" or "feasible" based on what is observable at present are no more reliable than the laughable 1957 prediction of Lee De Forest, the inventor of the vacuum tube, that space travel is impossible.

The post is to address previous comments by Michael Stuart Kelly, Brant Gaede and Moralist. Moralist has written, “Small kids are completely subject to the consequences set in motion by their parents.” If he means that foolish or wrongful actions by adults can harm kids, he will get no argument from me. For example, suppose a woman goes to meet her lover in a bar and leaves her two-year old son strapped in a car in the parking lot with the windows rolled up on a 90-degree day. Tragically and quickly, the boy dies. Who would disagree that in this case a child was completely subject to the consequences set in motion by his parent? Who would disagree that the mother is morally and legally responsible for her son’s death? Now let’s consider an alternate history. Suppose a woman kidnaps someone else’s baby girl and raises that child to serve as a slave in the woman’s household. Encouraged by regular beatings, the slave girl must daily scrub floors, tubs, toilets, and sinks, do laundry for a family of four, perform duties as a seamstress, and cultivate a two-acre garden. This bondage continues for 15 years until one day the slave escapes and reports her captivity to the police. Now suppose that the jury in this case finds the accused woman guilty and that the judge (stay with me now) decrees that punishment should be the execution of the kidnapper-slaveholder’s first born son, who is now six. This is basically where we find ourselves now in this discussion. On the one hand, I argue that if the children of kidnappers and slaveholders are infants or toddlers and play no role in their parents’ criminal actions, executing the kids but not the parents would be an act of murder and a complete miscarriage of justice. The case against punishing people for their parents' actions is derived from individualism, which "regards man—every man—as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being." (Ayn Rand) Thus there is no such thing as collective guilt, the moral or legal transfer of individual responsibility for the crimes of one or a few men to a whole family or tribe or nation. There is no justice in the story of the Flood, or in treating all of Jewry as responsible for the death of Jesus, or in executing all men over 15 in the village of Lidice, Czechoslovakia in reprisal for the assassination of Nazi Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich. It is one thing to say 1) that evil or negligent actions by parents will likely harm their children. It is quite a different matter to say 2) that if an adult commits a serious transgression against another person, the moral and legal consequence should be the death of the criminal’s child. One of the key differences is that in 2) the death of the child is performed by a third party who acts with the full intent of ending the child’s life and considers it an act of justice. On the other hand, we have Moralist who argues that “people who do evil inflict the consequences of their immoral actions on their own offspring.” By this statement I take Moralist to mean that it is appropriate to punish a criminal by executing his son. However, it is hard to know Moralist’s exact position because instead of directly addressing question 2), Moralist keeps clinging to 1), which is quite a non-controversial opinion. This is my attempt to summarize the debate in the most objective terms. I hope it does not amount to mere haggling over words.

You might also try Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. It's a fictionalized account of the last days of the last person to be executed in Iceland. There's a great deal of historical accuracy to the extent that details are available, and it's a beautifully written depiction of Icelandic culture in the early 1800s. What a coincidence that you should mention Burial Rites. I ordered it from Amazon earlier this year.

I am flattered that you are taking the time to read my posts, but the quotation above is misattributed. Here it is in its original context: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14223&p=206003

Wow... now I know you don't have any children. You can't even acknowledge that children experience the consequences of their parents actions. Also, you never refer to the evil that adults do, nor to the evil consequences set into motion by their own evil actions. Heck, you never even refer to adults as being personally responsible for the lives of their children. Whether or not I acknowledge "that children experience the consequences of their parents action," you still haven't said what the Egyptian babies themselves did to deserve death penalty. All you've done is switch the subject. Instead of showing why my "assumption . . . that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got" is wrong, you are focusing on something unrelated: my inability to raise children. But as you may know, under Objectivism something does not cease to exist just because you refuse to think about it. Very well then. I will stop blaming God, if you will simply state which of the babies' "own evil actions" brought on "the just and deserved consequences" of their deaths on the first Passover night.

The existence of slavery proves that not everyone was a thingmenn, which is the actual claim I was defending. More importantly, I also said that even the thingmenn had to pay a tax by the 1100's which supports my argument rather than yours. My argument is that states will tax the populace for political reasons (which I've explained before). Just because the state might be funded through entirely non-coercive means does not mean that it will be. States are not the same thing as shoe stores. The Iceland example supports my theory perfectly because, although a proto-state could be funded through entirely voluntary means, once the ball of statism starts rolling, it doesn't stop. We see this same scenario played out in the emergence of the first civilizations. Before the first city-states emerged in Mesopotamia, society was organized into chiefdoms and lineages that did not have the power to tax (as far as anyone knows anyway). When the first states were organized, however, pretty much immediately afterward, taxes and social stratification showed up as well. Obviously, you and I are using different systems of logic. The fact that a small fraction of the Icelandic population was unfree does not in the least change the fact that the system of justice and defense that existed there was freely and contractually financed. To illustrate: in 2011 the number of U.S. murder victims was 12,664. Thus, those 12,664 were effectively denied the right to vote in 2012. But only someone dysfunctionally concerned with non-essentials would claim that the statistic proves that the U.S. does not allow its citizens to vote. It was not until the late 12th century that an Icelandic state with its attendant taxation emerged. But under my system of logic, which I admit is quaintly Hellenistic, a later event does not have the power to remove an earlier event from its place on history's timeline. Iceland once had no taxation. The arrival of taxation later on does not and cannot alter that fact. In 1984, the government of Oceania is able to delete from the historical record (in the form of newspaper articles) its earlier promise of no reduction in chocolate rations. But the power to delete records in the present does not mean the power to delete events from the past. Can you go into more detail here? I don't see how that works. If majorities did not matter, communists authorities in Poland in 1988 could have ignored the wishes of the masses and merrily gone on with business as usual. They might have found it difficult to move around, however. Anti-government unions had shut down nearly every major industry and the streets were jammed with angry protestors. Perhaps I should have been more clear. I did indeed say that there are no inherently "productive" or "parasitic" people. This means that any talk of what "productive" people might do is meaningless. For some purposes, we might make an assumption that this or that person is always productive or some other person is always parasitic. But in this case, such an assumption would be an over-simplification, because people choose to be productive and/or parasitic depending on their circumstances (which, in the real world, are highly variable). So, for example, let's say that A and B are two owners of two companies in a country with a high tax burden. Suppose that A has good lobbyists and friends in the government, and derives many benefits from the state, whereas B does not and must mainly rely on his own productivity. Additionally, B has the opportunity to move his business to one of two countries. One with a lower tax rate, where he can't influence the government, and another with the same lower tax rate but where he can influence the government. B will obviously choose the latter, and, therefore, that country, rather than attracting a "producer", just gets another "parasite". So we see that, just because B was productive under one set of circumstances, does not mean that he will remain that way under another set. Okay so B will prey upon more productive people in his new homeland. And the victims of his parasitism will either put up with it because they believe that parasitism (like slavery or child marriages or non-suffrage for women or bleeding sick people to cure them) is an "unfortunate reality." Or they will treat B to the Ceaușescu special. Or they will follow the unmistakable flow of the brain drain. Why would I say that? I can't come up with one good reason. Therefore we must agree that an effective military force for national defense can be decentralized. Alright. Let's say that everyone except A is envious and derive just as much utility from having A lose $1 as they do from gaining an additional $1. What this means is that, all else being equal, they like having more money rather than less, but they also like it more when A has 1 of his dollars taken away. Their payoff, Vp, from a tax bill with tax rate r is then given by: Vp = (r(1 - l) * 1,000,000) / N + 500,000 - (1 - r)(1 - l)1,000,000, where N is the number of people in the society and l is A's leisure choice as defined in the OP. Things might seem hopeless for A here, because if the tax rate is set to 100%, all the envious parasites will receive a payoff of $500,000 and A will have no money with which to bribe them. And A can never produce more than $500,000 so it seems like he will never be able to get out of this jam. But we have to dig a bit deeper. It turns out that the envious parasites can get a payoff higher than $500,000 while A retains some of his money with a tax rate that is less than 100%. It seems impossible, but it's actually quite interesting how it all works out. If we maximize the payoff function of the envious parasites, we get that the payoff maximizing tax rate is given by r = (2 + 2N - Sqrt(N^2 + 3N + 2)) / (N + 1). (note that this rate approaches but is never equal to 100% regardless of how high N is) Let's go back to the original example with just A, B, and C. Here, there are only 3 people, so N = 3. Here, the tax rate that B and C would like the most is 88.2%, according to the above equation. We can get A's leisure choice for that tax rate which turns out to be l = 1/(2 - r) = 1/(2 - 0.882) = 0.894. Plugging l, r, and N into the envious parasites' payoff function we see that their payoff with a tax rate of 88.2% is: Vp (0.882) = (0.882(1-0.894)*1,000,000)/3 + 500,000 - (1-0.882)(1-0.894)*1,000,000 = $518,576. You might ask, where is all this extra money coming from? There is no extra money. This function is merely a payoff function. When A loses $1 to taxes, the envious parasite interprets this as an increase in utility form gaining $1/N but also as an increase in utility of A losing $1 to taxes, i.e. he gains $1/N + $1. Now we need to look at how much money each person would actually hold if the bill were to pass. Using the equations from the OP, A would have only $43,499.70, while each parasite would have $31,038.50. Now, all A has to do is make the following offer, "If anyone proposes a tax bill, and the bill succeeds, then I will give an additional dollar to the one who didn't propose it." Since each of the envious parasites would like to be the one to get the additional dollar, neither of them wants to be the one to propose the bill. Therefore, the bill is never proposed, and A never has to pay anyone anything. This is a beautiful scheme, because, as we know, in the real world, although hate is a powerful force, every person would rather make an extra dollar than see someone he hates be harmed or thwarted in his ambitions. Just ask anyone on this forum if he wouldn't rather have an extra buck from Soros than see Hillary defeated in the next election. It's not that there are no feasible alternatives to crony capitalism (though, none of them are any better). It's that laissez-faire isn't one of them. But if you are certain that "there can be no fundamental change in crony capitalism in the foreseeable future," how would you know that a non-laissez-faire alternative would be feasible? Do you see into the future beyond the part of it that's not foreseeable? Again, we must be using different systems of logic.

I'm impressed. You're an excellent spokesman for evil, Frank. I don't believe anyone else could have made it's case any better than you just did. Most notably, you've succeeded in completely ignoring the existence of any personal moral responsibility for the evil that rotten parents inflict upon their own offspring. You believe there is a complete disconnect between the immoral behavior of parents and the consequences which affect their children. Let's recap. In Post #29 you wrote, "The first assumption you made is that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got." From that statement it follows that the children destroyed during the Tenth Plague were not "actually good people" but rather "did" something evil to deserve what they got. In Post #43, you responded, "People who do evil inflict the consequences of their immoral actions upon their own offspring." Now since it was the first born children who were destroyed by the Tenth Plague, not the parents of the first born, we are still left to wonder just what those little ones "did" to deserve what they got. The babies must have done something evil, right? Otherwise, my assumption that they "did nothing to deserve what they got" would have been right all along. So, if what the babies did wrong wasn't the choice of bad parents, what exactly was it? I know several people who have turned out to be decent, normal and healthy despite having evil parents. Now why would God allow that to happen? Doesn't that show a "complete disconnect between the immoral behavior of parents and the consequences which affect their children"? Not at all a good example to set for the rest of the children in the world with evil parents.

Thank you. Yes, one of this days I would like to spend a serious amount of time with The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.

Not everyone was a "thingmenn". In fact, many people were slaves. Every feudal society had "free-men" who lived in towns, but they also had serfs who owed tithes to their lords. Additionally, even the thingmenn had to pay a tithe by the 1100's. First of all, as evil as slavery is, it did not figure prominently in Icelandic society. In Viking Age Iceland, Jesse Byock points out that slavery was simply not economical in the higher latitudes: "In Iceland with its mixed economy of coastal hunting, gathering and fishing, and inland livestock farming, the efficient use of slave labor was not possible." More importantly, the existence of slavery in Iceland is completely irrelevant to the point I made in Post #15l: the non-coercive creation and enforcement of law in that country. The Icelandic people were able to develop and live under a legal system that did not require forcible financing. Slavery had nothing to do with that system. A state will continue to exist so long as the people who hold the "keys to the kingdom" think no alternative state could do better, regardless of what the majority of the people think or want. That's the whole point of having power, you can do things even if everybody else doesn't want you to. If majorities did not matter, the Communist Party would still be in power in Poland, Hungary and East Germany. I agree and on that basis call for abolishing all U.S. taxes and financing our less than frugal federal government entirely from credit. So? That doesn't contradict my claim that there are no states that don't tax. Just because some states tax less than others, doesn't mean that there will be any states that don't tax at all. Try to keep up with the thread, or else don't comment. In response to your suggestion that people will seek the state that gives the most loot, I wrote Post #151, "Will some non-productive people shop around for the state that gives them the most benefits? Sure. We see that now in certain Western democracies. On the other hand, productive people will undoubtedly shop for a state that robs them the least. In this context, I have hope for the free nation movement. Will the moochers be stronger than the producers? In the long run, no, due to what's called a 'brain drain.'" Your non sequitur was, "There are no inherently 'productive' or 'non-productive' people. A person is productive or unproductive to the extent that he chooses to be. A person could be a producer one day and a looter the next and then go back to being a producer the day after that. Anyone can produce with one hand and steal with the other. In fact, most people do." I then pointed out that your observation about inherent productivity is of no relevance to my point that productive people will move to where they are less looted. It is fruitless for a state to attract thousands of new parasites if the productive people there flee the tax burden in large numbers. I never made the claim that there has to be a no tax state for overtaxed people to escape to. Consider carefully what I said. I said that "a well-armed citizenry... cannot devote all of their time to preparing for war". By contrast, then, that implies that an army can but nowhere did I say that they necessarily will. An army might or might not call upon all of its resources to prepare for war, but a citizenry couldn't even if it wanted to, unless it became an army first. They have to spend a great deal of their time just doing their civilian jobs. I suppose your point is that Switzerland's national defense does not work. Yet you have several hundred years of historical fact contradicting you. I can come up with a winning strategy for the producer even if everyone wants to see him burn and where the ballot is secret, if you like. The producer can overcome any obstacle you put in his way by being just a bit more clever than you give him credit for. Then go to it. The ballot is secret, and a more plausible strategy would be one that starts with present realities. *ahem*... Ok, I may have overstated that a bit. What I meant to say is that the largest and wealthiest corporations are pretty much always in cahoots with the state. And if they weren't, then the others would be. Then the solution is, as I have said, to de-fang and de-claw the state so that it is not a weapon of special interests. It's not that I'm "disturbed" by corporate power. It's that corporate power is one of those unfortunate realities that isn't going away any time soon and that we can't just ignore. So if you want to, as you say, "de-fang and de-claw" the state, you do have to accept that this is a nearly hopeless endeavor due to the enormous power that corporations wield and their vested interests in the state. Let me see if I have this right. Corporate (political) power is an unfortunate reality that isn't going away any time soon. How do you know this? Where is the expiration date written on corporate power's label? What crystal ball are you looking into? People in Eastern Europe in the late 1970's had no inkling that the Berlin Wall would come down within ten years. Not even the CIA predicted it. Yet you write with apparent certainty that there can be no fundamental change in crony capitalism in the foreseeable future. How would you know?

Just as I thought: the evil action that the first born Egyptian babies committed was choosing wicked people as parents. Perhaps in the millennia since then the Tenth Plague has served as a good lesson for other babies: the selection of parents is not to be taken lightly. A little research ahead of time can save you a truckload of headaches later on. I sometimes wonder why so many kids today pick drug addicts, criminals and child abusers for moms and dads. Well, let's hope it's just a passing fad. And imagine all the controversy Obama could have saved himself if he hadn't picked a father from Kenya.

People who do evil inflict the consequences of their immoral actions upon their own offspring. Greg In Post #29, you wrote, "The first assumption you made is that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got." So what the first born babies "did" to "deserve what they got" was to choose evil parents to be born to?

It is untrue that the Icelandic Free State did not have taxation. That's because, as a feudal society, people still owed tithes and military service to their lords. I did not say that states cannot survive without taxation, but that they cannot survive without their supporters. However, in order to retain those supporters better than any competing group, a state needs to tax the general population in order to buy the loyalty of those supporters. The only reason that shoe stores don't tax people is because they can't. Read the link I provided. "As in Norway (before Harald) there was nothing corresponding to a strictly feudal bond. The relationship between the Icelandic godi and his thingmen (thingmenn) was contractual, as in early feudal relationships, but it was not territorial; the godi had no claim to the thingman's land and the thingman was free to transfer his allegiance." If states cannot survive without supporters, that is a good thing. "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it." A system of wealth redistribution through taxation will work only as long as the majority of the population thinks the existing state is necessary to their well being. Once that myth crumbles, then the state collapses, just as it did during the American Revolution. Even if dissidents form less than a majority, they can bring down the state. If a third of all people stopped paying their taxes, the revenues from the remaining payers would be insufficient to impose enforcement on the outlaws. When statism reaches a critical point in America, people will pack it up or increasingly conduct their business offshore or in the underground economy. We can see signs of that already. There are no inherently "productive" or "non-productive" people. A person is productive or unproductive to the extent that he chooses to be. A person could be a producer one day and a looter the next and then go back to being a producer the day after that. Anyone can produce with one hand and steal with the other. In fact, most people do. What motivates a person to do one or the other depends on the opportunities available to him. If you took today's producers and put them in power, they would most certainly become tomorrow's looters. Meanwhile, the old looters would become liberty's new champions. That productivity or non-productivity is not an inherent characteristic of human beings is an enormously fascinating datum and is of absolutely no relevance to my point that people who are heavily looted by the state will be motivated to move to where they are less looted. That is why U.S. states with high taxes are driving residents and businesses to states with lower taxes. What claim does it disprove and how? Only a very small percentage of the military are "full-time professional soldiers" in pretty much any country. In Post #149 you wrote, "A well-armed citizenry is not an army. They cannot devote all of their time to training, preparing, and, most importantly, organizing themselves for war." The example of Switzerland disproves this. Ninety-five percent of its soldiers do not daily wear uniforms, live on bases, and march back and forth on parade grounds. Contrary to your claim, here is a successful national defense in which the defenders do not "devote all of their time to training" but have full-time non-military jobs. They are citizens who live civilian lives but who also own guns and can be called up in an emergency to serve. If you think this resembles the regular U.S. Army, then talk to an enlistee. By the way, it would help the discussion greatly if you would keep what you have written previously in mind when you post something new. Even if you can't distinguish between the parasites and the do-gooders, it's still possible to create a deal whereby a producer would always get his way, just as I showed that it is possible even when the ballot is secret in my response to one of DeanGore's posts. The parasites might not trust the rich guy, but they certainly do trust his money. Remember, we've already established that the rich guy will face severe negative consequences if he fails to hold up his end of the bargain. Your plan may work perfectly--or not. Envy plays a large role in the success of government wealth redistribution plans. Many people are as much motivated by seeing a wealthy man brought low as by increasing their own income. More importantly, what you haven't dealt with at all is the downside of removing the secret ballot. In unscrupulous hands information about how a person voted can be used to punish or even eliminate one's enemies. I'm sure Barack Obama is a swell guy, but I don't want him or the IRS knowing how I voted in the last three elections. That's only because the smaller players are kept out of the loop by the largest and wealthiest corporations. Oh, so if some corporations are kept out of the loop, then what sense does the following statement make? Economic organizations, such as corporations, are never acting solely as ordinary participants in markets. They are always, almost as if by a law of nature, "a partner with and a part of the state." Your italics. Again, keep what you have written previously in mind when you post something new. The original issue was not how to reign in corporate power. If you recall, it was whether or not they have power of their own that is independent of the state (and not state power). In Post #85, I wrote, "If our goal is to protect individual rights, then the first step should be to de-fang and de-claw the institution that is the single greatest violator of personal and property rights, the state." You responded, in #87: "That's easier said than done. The state and anybody who has an interest in maintaining the status quo, including most of the biggest corporations, (essentially, the most powerful people and organizations in the country) aren't just gonna sit back and let that happen." So I'll continue to point out that if you are disturbed by the status quo of corporate power, then you should focus your attention on what aspect of the state makes it repellent when corporations (or churches or Masons or rich white guys) take control. It is the total state itself that is the problem, not what particular angels or devils control it. Unlike some libertarians, I'm not opposed to authority per se, only to authority that is achieved through coercion. Every society benefits from leadership structures of some sort. Those hierarchies could be religious, fraternal or corporate. The key factor is that they rest ultimately on the consent of the individual members of society.

I think that there are a few good reasons to accept the power of states to tax and violate property rights as a necessary fact of man's existence. While there are many states throughout history that did not allow slavery, there are no states that did not have the power to tax and violate property rights. Now, this alone does not prove my point, but it is evidence for it when you consider why no state in history did not have such power. A state requires people to support it if it is to continue to exist. People will not support a state if they think they can form a new state that gives them more benefits than the old one. If a state did not have the power to tax, and instead relied on voluntary donations, it would not be able to reward its supporters better than a state that did have the power to tax and violate property rights. Hence, if at any point in history, some head of state relinquished his power to tax, immediately his supporters would turn from him and replace (and probably kill) him with a head of state that would tax and violate the property rights of the weak. Nations without slavery are entirely a modern phenomenon. Even within the British Isles slavery existed in the form of serfs attached to the land, and slavery was common throughout the empire until 1833. As for nations without taxation, there is in fact precedent for that. See "Private Creation and Enforcement of Law: A Historical Case." Do courts and police and armies require support of the people? Of course. So do shoe stores, but somehow shoe stores manage to survive and prosper without anyone be forced to support them. Will some non-productive people shop around for the state that gives them the most benefits? Sure. We see that now in certain Western democracies. On the other hand, productive people will undoubtedly shop for a state that robs them the least. In this context, I have hope for the free nation movement. Will the moochers be stronger than the producers? In the long run, no, due to what's called a "brain drain." A well-armed citizenry is not an army. They cannot devote all of their time to training, preparing, and, most importantly, organizing themselves for war. An organized military force could easily overwhelm a well-armed citizenry by conquering them piecemeal. Unlike a unified and organized army, a well-armed citizenry faces a "Belling the Cat" problem when it comes to defending their allies. Each citizen can gain little from defending anybody who the army attacks, but faces enormous costs if he decides to help out, even if they win. Furthermore, they are all well aware of their conundrum, so any citizen that the army attacks usually cannot count on the support of other citizens, and simply surrenders. Thus, an army could conquer the citizens simply by threatening to do so. Indeed, this "belling the cat" problem perfectly explains why popular revolutions against tyranny are so rare. The example of Switzerland disproves your claim. Only about five percent of the military in that country are full-time professional soldiers. I am glad that we can agree that the plan would work perfectly in a society without any "do-gooders". However, I think that there is a way for the producer to win even when there are "do-gooders". All he has to do is make a slight modification to his offer.. Suppose that the producer make the following offer, "If a parasite proposes a tax bill, then I will give everyone an equal share of the money that would be taxed if the bill were to pass, but only if the bill fails. However, if a do-gooder proposes a tax bill, then I will give one dollar more than what they can expect to gain from the bill to any parasite that votes against the bill". Suppose that a parasite proposes a tax bill. Then, all the do-gooders vote against it, because everyone would get even more than they could with the tax bill. The producer also votes against it, breaking the tie, and failing the bill. He also gives everyone an equal share of the money. Suppose that a do-gooder proposes a tax bill. Then, all the parasites vote against it, because the producer has promised them more than they could get if the wealth was distributed over a greater number of people. The producer also votes against it, breaking the tie, and failing the bill. He gives to each parasite that voted against it the money he promised them. Thus, the parasites can get nothing if they propose the bill, and a lot if the do-gooders do. So they never propose the bill. The do-gooders get a more equal distribution of wealth, but only if a parasite proposes the bill. So they never propose the bill either. Once again, a tax bill is never proposed, and the producer gets to keep everything he produces. I think this example illustrates my original point quite well. No matter what the parasites do, because the producer starts the game with more resources and can make credible commitments about his use of those resources, he is always able to out-maneuver the parasites. I do not know how on the surface one can distinguish between a parasite and a do-gooder. Nor do I wish to do away with the secret ballot only to find, too late, that the average parasite does not trust rich guys offering bribe money. Economic organizations, such as corporations, are never acting solely as ordinary participants in markets. They are always, almost as if by a law of nature, "a partner with and a part of the state." This is true for very similar reasons to the ones I used above to explain why states necessarily interfere with markets. I do not know what you are talking about. My family has operated a successful corporation for over 40 years, and other than filing the necessary forms mandated under penalty of law, they have had nothing to do with the state. If you fear either the church or the corporation (or men or rich people or whatever) having too much state power, then the solution is to put a collar on the state, not on the church or corporation.

No, even when he was at Cato, Lindsey was writing nonsense about "the essential role of coercion in safeguarding freedom."

Irwin Schiff, 86, is still alive and still being held prisoner.

There are a couple of assumptions you made so as to arrive at your conclusion that God is a homicidal maniac. And just for clarity, I don't believe in your irrational morally depraved description of God any more than you do. The first assumption you made is that the evil people who were destroyed were actually good and did nothing to deserve what they got. That assumption naturally begets another in that you believe that there is no such thing as moral justice. For if God isn't just, certainly no one else could be either. However, you do have the consolation that Satan, also known as The Deceiver and The Accuser, is in total agreement with you. For he also accuses God of being unjust because he represents his own kind. So he also feels that evil people are only innocent helpless victims who did not deserve what they got. Greg Okay, what evil little tricks did the first born babies of the Egyptians play to "deserve" the "moral justice" of the death penalty? 4 And Moses said, Thus saith the Lord, About midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt: 5 And all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the first born of Pharaoh that sitteth upon his throne, even unto the firstborn of the maidservant that is behind the mill; and all the firstborn of beasts. 6 And there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there was none like it, nor shall be like it any more. --Exodus 11:4–6

You were right. And that is exactly why the U.S. embargo against Cuba should have ended decades ago. Great story, by the way.

Even before I came to the conclusion that a supernatural being was an illogical concept (see, for example, George H. Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God, p. 28), I had decided that if God of the Old Testament existed, with his destruction of millions by the flood and the fire and brimstone in Genesis and by the Angel of Death in Exodus, he must be a homicidal maniac.

Evidence please.