Hypocrisy for Using Roads?

[yammyspeed13]

You would forced to pay for public services. Feel free to use them anyway you wish. If you don't your getting screwed twice. The first when they took it by force and the second when you didn't seek any value back in return.

[brennig2]

He looks like L. Trotsky

[stealthswimmer]

The quality of life for a sustenance farmer is irrelevant. The real issue is that you shouldn't have to be one. The government often uses eminent domain to get roads, and even if it does "buy" roads, it does so with stolen tax money. Therefore government property is illegitimately owned. Secondly, the government uses laws(force) to prevent or impede competition with its services.

Therefore, you might as well use government services because you're more "in the right" than they are.

[GuardofLiberty]

"But you drive on the roads!"

*facepalm*

[Chrisnoscrub047]

5 star, favorited.

[Slug99]

Sure, people in the Soviet union, they too were total hypocrites. If they really believed that what the government did was wrong they should have just gone on massive hunger strikes and starved to death in defiance of the state.

Retarded argument.

[vonPeterhof]

Slug99, I totally agree with you. Unfortunately, quite a few prominent Russian dissidents seem to have a lot of contempt for their contemporaries for not having ruined their own lives in defiance of the Soviet state. It seems like they think that if you were not a Gulag inmate then you were in effect a Gulag prison guard. This actually helps the modern Soviet apologists, who can and do argue that those dissidents are "heartless" and "out of touch with the people"

[dudemanamedud]

Wait a miniute. Your still being hypocritical, even with a violent 3rd party.

[TheBigHo111]

*****

[SBRslacker00]

Good discussion. It's basically a personal attack, a non argument.

Mr1001nights just did a video on the same topic: J70edGmDtxc

[billyjoeallen]

it's not  "sunstanance" farmer. It's "subsistence " farmer.

XOmni is taking two words- sustenance and substance- and using them when he means "subsistence".

[billyjoeallen]

however it's spelled, there is no such word as "substanance".

[wadams19]

haha. the argument does always go to the roads. as if it's the best example of gov't "services".

[fede2]

i am of the belief that a person is by nature radically free.

man is free to the last breath. even in a complicated stituation as the one you described you can still do something about it. you can create voluntary institutions that provide for services like roads to compete with the state. at a certain point you do become a hypocrite.

[WeAreDevo456]

The government hates competition. Try to create any private institution that in any way competes with the government and watch just how quickly the government either forcibly defangs or shuts it down.

[fede2]

hmm, that brings up a more important topic. if you're right, what to do about the state?

[mihaiguy]

Educate people so that they understand it was the state's fault when the state utterly crumbles and/or explodes, rather than blaming it on whatever vestiges of freedom were left in that totalitarian society that failed.

You can take "comfort" in the fact that no state is sustainable in the long run.

[fede2]

"You can take 'comfort' in the fact that no state is sustainable in the long run."

that sounds rather counter-intuitive. how do you figure?

[D34thSetX]

See USSR.. for the sake of argument.. it "downgraded" in government type.

[fede2]

it lasted for 50 years and it was replaced by a different gov't.

[D34thSetX]

it actually lasted longer than 50 years.. it was in 1917-1988.. 70+.. and like I said.. it "downgraded" from being the "utopia" government to a lowly republic.

[PickingTheScab]

The Soviet Union was founded in 1922 and collapsed in 1991.

[greenghost2008]

didnt the revolution take place 1917?

[D34thSetX]

it did, the official start date of Communist Russia is the end of it which is.. 1917

[PickingTheScab]

Yes the "October Revolution" took place in November (the Russian Empire was still using the Julian calendar at the time) 1917 but the Bolshevik government didn't control much territory during the civil war and foreign invasions that followed it and so the USSR was only founded in 1922.

[brennig2]

The soviets were set up during the February revolution which lead a collation government with the provisionals, so the soviets where set up in February, a true Marxist like the Menshaviks would believe the Soviets would seize power at their own time, but in October the Bolsheviks lead a revolution, therefore turning against Marxist views. After the revolution Soviet members were elected to rule the country, the main Soviet being the Kronshtadt in St.Petersburg, then the civil war took place.

[brennig2]

At one point in the war the USSR only controlled St. Petersburg, the Kronshtadt sailors and soviets lead by Trotsky made there final stand, they were victorious and then regained Russia. The Kronstadt soviets were true marxists and believed in all power to the soviets (workers), and therefore gained a lot of popularity, the Bolsheviks didn't like this, and declared war on them, the soviets lost there powers and the USSR (more like USR) became Totalitarianist.

[brennig2]

So The Soviet Union was founded February 1917 and ended March 1921

[sony8877]

simply, if you're forced to buy something, you may as well use it, even though you dont really want to buy it

[brainpolice2]

This more generally seems to indicate that circumstances limit options in a way that can make it extremely hard for many people to live in accordance with their principles. Given the circumstances, it may be nearly impossible to efficiently function in society or even survive without some degree of acquiescance to things that one opposes.

[TheVikingNinja]

i think its funny how libertarians talk about the violence of the state when essentially they just want to take the police out of the equation so they can use there guns to deal with crime.

[XOmniverse]

That's not the libertarian ethos at all, VikingNinja.

Do some reading.

[TheVikingNinja]

Thats just what I have found from my interactions with libertarians. Not all of them, but most of them seam to be of this mindset

[mihaiguy]

I totally agree. How do you feel about extending this example to, say, a university professor who happens to be a voluntarist/etc? Is it valid to say that he is not being hypocritical because the state has a (near) monopoly on education/research so he has no other choice but to accept tax money as his salary if that is his passion? Or do the large number of other job choices on the free(r) market invalidate this, even if in a free society he'd rather be a teacher/researcher?

[eagleeye1975]

What's funny is that as a libertarian, I believe in the use of government to provide for infrastructure... My basic premise is that government should not represent people based only on demographics. If you have to "qualify" for a government provided thing based on demographic criteria, it's wrong. The roads are open to everyone to use.

[MaikUniversum]

pretty good point.