Announcements

There are a number of ways to make blog traffic statistics more impressive. On a slow day I often logout of my WordPress account, access the Liberty Forum homepage and click “refresh” over and over again to beef up the numbers.

I didn’t have to do that today. My post Trolling For Statism: How Not To Argue With Libertarians was featured on strike-the-root.com. Also featured on that excellent website were the posts Which Party Causes All The Wars? and False and True Connections Between Libertarianism and Conservatism.

I’m also happy to announce that the Irish Liberty Forum passed 20,000 blog views today. Keep it up guys!

Trolling for Statism: How not to argue with Libertarians

I can’t be everywhere at once. This means I can’t refute every fallacious argument out there in cyberspace. But once in a while, one person manages to collate several spurious arguments and create a video out of them. Consider amhemsley‘s “Don’t want to pay taxes? Then stop stealing from those who do”.

The video is little more than a tissue of trite arguments; tax resisters are thieves, the government provides us with services, if you don’t love it you can leave it, and so on. Here’s a brief discussion of why the guy in the video is wrong.

State = Society?

One common tool used by the anti-capitalists is the equivocation of fairly distinct and unambiguous terms. State, society, law, order, protection and peace are all mixed together. In amhemsley’s mind, anyone who is against the State is against society, and subsequetly for lawlessness, poverty and chaos.

It is important to challenge this simpleminded view. Stateless socities have existed in the past, even for centuries. Parallel to the history of State-made legislation runs the history of private law provision. Society is nothing more than the lose web of interaction among people who share a common heritage. The State is a territorial monopolist of lawmaking and taxation. Society typically uses ostracism and exclusion to punish those who engage in unlawful or distasteful activities. But society will find it difficult to legitimately use force against you, which is precisely the point of the State.