[118928] in Cypherpunks
Re: concision (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Marcel Popescu)
Sun Oct 10 18:07:38 1999
Date: Sun, 10 Oct 1999 17:54:12 -0400
Message-Id: <00fe01bf1371$a66c2280$0200a8c0@marcu>
From: "Marcel Popescu" <mdpopescu@geocities.com>
To: Multiple recipients of list <cypherpunks@openpgp.net>
Reply-To: "Marcel Popescu" <mdpopescu@geocities.com>
X-Loop: openpgp.net
From: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>
> Firstly, your statement is ambigous. Statist believe in the freedom of the
> state to do as it sees fit.
That's not how anarchists / libertarians use the word. When we say freedom,
we mean "freedom from aggression", not "freedom to kill anybody".
Equivocation.
> This may or may not be in opposition to personal
> freedom. Depends on the particular form of nationalism that is being sold.
All statism is by definition opposed to personal freedom, if only in a tiny
degree. A voluntary state is no longer a state, but a private organization.
> Simply believing in nations doesn't imply any reference to freedom. If
> anything it recognizes that people bonded together are more powerful and
> better able to defend themselves than when alone.
Non-sequitur. A group is not a nation - the concept of nation implies a
state [which, as stated above, can only be compulsory], or otherwise we're
just calling it anarchy. I know of no anarchist who uses the term "anarchist
nations".
> If the particular statist
> believes that management of resources is best accomplished by centralized
> control then one can argue, with proviso, that they are oppossed to
> individual freedom.
This is socialism. A statist can be a minarchist - see Ayn Rand - claiming
that law and defense are to be administered by a monopoly. It still implies
coercion, it still implies lack of one's freedom to refuse the state's
monopoly.
> Statism may in fact be more liberating, consider the recent discussion
about
> the seperatist movement in Canada. Clearly the French speaking peoples
want
> their own seperate state. This is without a doubt in their best interest
if
> we are talking about their expressing their desired life style in contrast
> to that being imposed by the English constituent.
"Their"? Who is "they"? Clearly those who want "their OWN state" want to be
in power, and because they can't get into the oligarchy on the larger scale,
they believe they have a greater chance of success in a smaller area - and
thus want to secede. While the result might be better than the status quo, I
question their motives, and their knowledge.
> One could even argue (and I do) that rampant centralism (the belief in
> global economies and political systems) are more dangerous than statist.
A bigger evil doesn't make the lesser evil "good".
Mark
