Quote from: Shannon on July 29, 2012, 04:58 amQuote from: pine on July 29, 2012, 04:54 amEssentially the TLDR; version of what everybody else is saying kmf/shannon, is that you don't have a popular mandate. Without that you're sunk, you don't have the market behind you. Unconventional warfare only works when there's an enormous groundswell of support. The force with the largest amount of control over GDP inside the territory being fought over wins every single time, that's what history says.i accept that other people may have an stockholm syndrome-esque relationship with the state and will disapprove of violence against it, usually with some useless platitude like "we are the government!" that doesn't mean that i won't resist violence against me with violence of my ownBut Shannon, I am not arguing against violence as a tool. Although sympathetic to the anarcho-capitalists like anaracho54, I think there is a limit to the NAP concept. There are exceptions that prove (as in test) the rule.Violence is legitimate when you are being physically and directly attacked. Hardly anybody would disagree to that, since natural selection, well...Violence is also legitimate when you have a mandate from the market/people (don't see a distinction between those two things). Violence is also completely legitimate for the state to use in certain situations. For example, picture this in your mind's eye:You are alone in your house, possibly on SRF. You hear somebody knocking on the door quietly and run down to investigate the source of the noise. There is a little girl, only 7 or 8, carrying a small baby. Her clothes are stained with blood and she trembles constantly as she tells you that her Father has attacked her Mother in a intoxicated rage and caved in her head with a tinned can in the kitchen. She waited until he began to sleep in a drunken stupor and then took her smaller sibling and ran as fast as she could from her house to yours where she is now appealing for you to help.Your options:1. Take on this degenerate yourself.2. Call the police.3. Do nothing.4. Call your friends and take this guy on.Out of these, No.2 is clearly the best option in the vast majority of situations. The state will use violence here, but so it should. You could argue that because he employed coercion on another human being that he loses the right to expect his civil liberties to be respected. But then there is the thorny subject of the alcohol, which he consumes as a free choice. Should that free choice be allowed to this man, who repeatedly becomes violent when drunk?Obviously I am not for Drug Prohibition, which is a naive 'first glance' way to tackle this situation IMHO. It is just that unless you are a -> responsible <- drug taker, you are impinging on other people's liberties, at which point you ought to lose your own. Most people choose the police to achieve that end for practical reasons.Now, if we are talking about the responsible use of drugs, and the police are putting the boot in, then yes, this is an illegitimate use of coercion. The central problem is that a lot of people think you are all irresponsible and impinge on other people's liberties. They may be wrong. Indeed, this is very frequently the case. But the police still have a mandate to enforce the will of the majority because of the first situation, and so we have this dreadful trap we are in.We are gradually wining the war on drugs because it is an injustice to penalize functional, responsible users of drugs for the behavior of a much smaller group of people. If you start to commit violence yourself in a preemptive strike against the state, then you jeopardize that trend. Indirect violence that you referred to before, is not the same thing as direct violence. Yes, prohibition makes drugs impure and costs lives. Undoubtedly. The trouble is that this logic leads you to other conclusions that are insupportable positions. Like, why not murder all the non-functional drug users who are clearly disenfranchising the majority of us? What about killing all those salespeople who sold property at inflated values during the housing bubble? Did they not hurt people? Seems like you're assuming a great deal of prescience and authority without telling me where you got all this power from.I think the market is partly a mechanism that exercises a optimal harm reduction algorithm, and I don't mean harm reduction as in drugs, but in the sense that it dispenses the least pain for the greatest gain. e.g. people lose jobs in one industry, but growth overall is a net positive. There will always be winners and losers. The issue is whether it's a positive sum game or not. If the police start engaging in a negative sum game by generalizing and begin executing us all, then do you think we'll sit back and take it? Hardly. Don't worry on that score, pine is quite capable of fighting back.Right now, you are committing the same moral sin that permits the hardliners in the DEA to exercise their unjust war of mass generalization. It is the same sin that allowed Osama Bin Laden and his ilk to bomb civilians, the majority of whom don't even support the inane activities of the US Government that caused him to plot the 9/11 attacks. And the same that allowed G.Bush to 'free' Iraq and Afghanistan. It is legitimate for an Iraqi affected by the war to murder the Bush or Blair. It is not legitimate for him to bomb a typical American household because they live in the same geographical region.This is not complex. This is Prisoner's Dilemma, and I pay Tit for Tat. I cooperate first, but if the other entity continually defects, then I will play the same card straight back to him. This is the most optimal algorithm for determining net positive economic, social and political progress, however simple minded it sounds.--TLDR; The logic of preemptive strike and the greater good is not a scientific determination, but arrogant thinking. If participating in indirect harm, or making mistakes is punishable by death, then society will eat itself up.