Kind of a useless reminder. Not a single source given for 'real armed obedient guys on the border'. On what border? Where? Besides, his revoked passport is not virtual. It is quite real.
What do you think is stopping Google from non-complying with an order to install a fedbox in their datacenter? Armed guys who would go in and confiscate equipment, or even put some managers in jail for "aiding the enemy". "Court order" is just a paperwork to justify concrete violence.
What stops you from not paying your taxes (when you dislike war, spying or whatever gov is doing)? It is armed people who would come in and extract your property from you. And they will always be slightly more violent than amount of self-defense you'd try to apply.
Your argument is silly. "Armed people" are just a tool to enforce policies enforced by governments. It is them, not the soldiers, we should be worried about.
The whole point of my comments is that what is generally considered immoral (threatening and killing) becomes 180 degrees different when some man in a nice costume says so. Don't you think someone was bullshitting us?
In my view, murder is never justified. Even in self-defense. However, in case of self-defense, you don't have much choice (and people around might understand you), while guys in the airport don't have any kind of attack and everyone can be peaceful and nice to each other and walk their way.
At least we have some mechanisms to influence the armed guys we have now.
As scientifically established by hollywood movies. Brilliant.
Even if we assume that ALL people who can no longer be employed because government disappeared cannot find jobs, it would only demonstrate that they can't work on jobs no one wants to pay for voluntarily. That is, if people wouldn't need cops anymore, because (let's imagine) there was no crime - no one would pay to private protection agencies and they would have to find something else to do. "Jobs" are not the desirable result, it's "doing something valuable" that's important.
You missed my point, anyway, which is that your comfortable notions of a safe, orderly society will go right out the window once the economy breaks down, which it would if you removed the framework in which it operates, which is basically indistinguishable from government.
"Any society is only three square meals away from revolution"
The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them. If they don't want protection or don't like specific laws, they stop paying or switch. The monopoly we have now extracts money from taxpayers at gunpoint and provides a rather crappy service.
To demonopolize it is to remove it. The monopoly is the essence of the framework.
> We currently have a government framework of law, but nothing (except people not realizing it's even possible) prevents us from having multiple frameworks, each operating on its own client base (even when those clients physically live on the same territory) and negotiating with each other when disputes between clients of two different agencies arise.
This kind of patron/client system is not novel, and most people do, in fact, recognize that it is possible.
> The major difference in this situation would be that clients of such firms would voluntarily pay money to be protected by them.
Unless there is some supervisory entity that does have a monopoly enforcing it (in which case, this remains a monopoly system with low-level enforcement farmed out, not a demonopolized system), voluntariness seems, well, dubious. You've just invented a system competing warlords (well, invented is too strong a term, its the basic model of primitive feudalism.)
It is probably due to my education, and the time I was born, but I can't imagine a society working without "safeguards". Maybe it is because of lack of imagination, but I would like to see a working example, before making the jump. Which is a kind of chicken egg problem, because if no one tries, you can't know it works. Maybe it will seem obvious retrospectively in 500 or 1000 years, but currently it is not.
I think one of the big injustices of our time we will look back to with disgust (like slavery 200 years ago) is not allowing people to go wherever they want to go. What gives us any right to deny people to live anywhere on the planet they want to?
It’s just that I absolutely do not believe that abolishing (all or large parts of) government is any kind of solution to this.
(And, yes, this would have often dire economic consequences for some. Just as abolishing slavery had dire economic consequences for some. Doing the right thing isn’t free.)
"A general reminder whenever budget issues are discussed: the U.S. government is — this isn’t original — best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. When you talk about federal spending, you’re overwhelmingly talking about Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense. And the bulk of the insurance — all of Social Security and Medicare, about 2/3 of Medicaid — is for the elderly and disabled."
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/an-insurance-com...
So: the decisions of the armed dude are real, but "legal statement" is just a virtual abstraction invented to hide the fact that some violence will be applied.
So lets simply pray that gunned men are educated well and let them do their thing. E.g. killing innocent people overseas.
In that case you'll have to consider all kind of perspectives, because what's considered right or wrong varies greatly by who is doing the consideration.
I'm not the one who teaches you what's good and what's bad. I'm just pointing out grave contradictions in other people's justifications that lead to all sorts of things that many consider "evil".
In other words: I'm not the one who will violently oppose your lifestyle, nor will I support those who will violently intervene in your life. Believe in what you want, live with people you like. I'd only like the same respect from you towards me. And in case we have some conflict, I'm all for peaceful non-violent solution. E.g. dialog, public debate, "defamation", boycott, economic ostracism etc. But no guns and ass-kicking (unless someone pulls out knifes and forks, in which case I'd have to run away and/or fight back, but I still don't justify violence).