Paul Eres ([info]rinku) wrote,
@ 2008-05-05 05:02:00
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Entry tags:politics

i do not own other people. i have no right to "vote" to run their lives. i may not inflict myself on anyone. voluntary interaction is a wonderful thing; when i see people lining up to buy ice cream from a neighborhood entrepreneur, i smile. my smile doesn't lessen just because the company gets bigger.

the state is evil. its members prohibit and crush voluntary human cooperation in the name of humanity. they are a lie. those who link themselves to the state are evil. those who worship and tie their happiness and livelihood to it enable most of life's misery. most people are brainwashed by the state through constant exposure and are unable to see liberty as anything good. to get around this problem in america, the state — official crime syndicate — merely changes the definition of liberty, raping the word's meaning while wringing from it the last part of positive association. "liberty" in america now means control by violence monopolists — the mafia with a twist (piety and flags).

any proposal that involves one man inflicting himself on another, taking his property, or otherwise demonstrating through aggression that his life is more important, must be opposed. to neglect that fight is to succumb to hate and surrender to inferiors. there are men who mean to be your masters. what does that make you if they succeed? a patriot? -saltypig


I have been reading his blog for awhile, he's great. I have the feeling that his blog may become one of the classics of anarchism, going down in history with Max Stirner and Bakunin and the rest. If there even are people who are allowed to read anarchist writings in the future, that is.


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two things
[info]jsangspar
2008-05-05 09:54 am UTC (link)
1. I don't believe in anarchists anymore.

2. Your journal used to be teeming with comments! What happened?

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 09:58 am UTC (link)
1. You don't believe in anything anymore, though.

2. Mainly because the people who commented the most often left LJ.

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Re: two things
[info]novahero
2008-05-05 06:39 pm UTC (link)
I also noticed that the amount of comments that you used to get has shrunk. Any idea how popular LJ is still? I get the impression that not many people actively use it anymore, at least compared to the other forms of "blogging" available.

Considering LJ's recent purchase by a Russian media empire and all, I can understand how much that might interfere with people's interest in using the service.

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 10:00 am UTC (link)
Although strictly speaking he's not an anarchist because he doesn't believe it's possible to maintain a stable society without at least some form of government, he just thinks that even a limited, small, minarchist government is evil, even though it's still necessary.

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Re: two things
[info]jsangspar
2008-05-05 10:15 am UTC (link)
I believe in lots of things! Sheesh.

We're in agreement, then. I can't conceive of ungoverned alternatives and yet I hate government.

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 10:17 am UTC (link)
Name 10 things you believe in then.

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Re: two things
[info]jsangspar
2008-05-05 10:42 am UTC (link)
Space, time, matter, energy, quantum physics, consciousness, atheism, whole numbers, dark matter, and myself.

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 10:49 am UTC (link)
hm, fair enough, although you cheated by putting like 7 physics ones in one when you could just have said 'physics'.

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Re: two things
[info]jsangspar
2008-05-05 11:24 am UTC (link)
You can believe in any one of those without necessarily believing in any of the others (with perhaps a couple of exceptions).

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 11:31 am UTC (link)
Also, all of those things are "believe in the existence of" rather than "have faith in / loyalty to", except for #10.

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 11:31 am UTC (link)
And possibly #7

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Re: two things
[info]jsangspar
2008-05-05 11:25 am UTC (link)
also, use AIM more!

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Re: two things
[info]rinku
2008-05-05 11:30 am UTC (link)
I can't until I finish ID v1.1 and the Tanzania assignment.

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[info]gwillen
2008-05-05 01:53 pm UTC (link)
You know, I think this post is interesting in light of your next one (I tend to read my friendspage in reverse chronological order out of laziness.) It seems to me that this post displays a severe case of one extreme of #5 from your next post: living in abstraction. Of course, I would accuse almost all serious libertarians of this.

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[info]rinku
2008-05-05 05:13 pm UTC (link)
I'm not sure, he's fairly practical too, he makes posts about how to live out of your car, how to cook food using parts of the car engine, tips on avoiding police, etc. Recently he described complaining to the manager of a supermarket about support-the-troops-cookie-selling-girls. So he does seem to live by his principles; I think that one can be principled without living in abstraction. Living in abstraction would be more like if he let it dominate his life so much that all of his time was spent trying to convince others of his ideas rather than practically applying them.

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[info]cwoxviii
2008-05-06 12:50 am UTC (link)
Then who can use force?

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[info]rinku
2008-05-06 05:13 am UTC (link)
My guess is that the idea is that anybody *can* use force, but anybody who *does* use force, such as a government, is evil.

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[info]cwoxviii
2008-05-06 02:15 pm UTC (link)
Well okay, but without a theory of who can legitimately use force, there is nothing to stop everyone from using force.

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