The Sunset of the State

What needs to change to save the world.

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• Category

  Education

[john galt]

Stefan thank you so much for making this video. I was a staunch libertarian when I came across this and it made me realize that anarchy is the answer. Thats pretty brief but if you see this I just want you to know that you helped me on the final step of my journey that led me to the philosophical place I am today. Thank you.

[MorbusCQ]

I think Stefan's whole point was that the non-aggression principle SHOULD be the central tenant of all morality.

[mengelmoesNL]

Paid for by The State... either via taxation (direct theft), deficit financing (stealing form unborn) or the most commonly used of them all: fiat money inflation (theft that hurts the poorest the most).

[homersparents]

War is only profitable becasue of the state. Without the power to tax how could it be profitable.

[DrunkenJedi4]

You seem confused.

You point out that getting exact numbers for utility is impossible. That's correct, but doesn't invalidate utilitarianism. In the absence of precise data, you can still estimate.

Then you say something about rich people. Who or what are you arguing against here? It's also terribly ironic that you're using a utilitarian argument against utilitarianism.

And whether someone is a criminal is a matter of law, not morality.

[Hashishin13]

You simply cannot do calculus with numbers pulled directly from your ass and assume you are doing good. There is no measurable objective way to define utility.

Maybe the rich person would spend half of his million dollar income on investments that would snowball and eventually employ millions like Walmart does instead of just handing over $500 to 1000 people which would make no lasting impact on any western person's life.

If you violently coerce innocent people you are a criminal.

[DrunkenJedi4]

Any individual has a utility that can be expressed as a real number. Then you simply add those numbers for every individual you want to consider (possibly modified with weight factors) and then you have everyone's collective utility, without the need for any collectivism.

Also in the post you replied to, I was actually arguing that war DECREASES utility and is therefore not justifiable with utilitarianism either.

[pipem4n]

"consider the utility of everyone" - no such thing, maybe in collectivist doctrine but it's all bs excuse for state violence. You just can't logically increase everyones utility by violating someone. I'm not the best logician, but it seems pretty obious to me.

[John Cochran]

Six months ago this video change my life forever

[DrunkenJedi4]

You don't seem to understand what utilitarianism is.

Certain specific groups may benefit from war, but if you consider the utility of everyone involved, starting a war is practically always going to lower utility considerably. All the lives lost, all the people wounded, all the equipment destroyed, all the damages to infrastructure, the lost income from disrupting normal economy, etc. has to be included in the calculation.

[Gaerteuth]

You don't see how much profit is made off of war, then.