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> it's also entirely inconsistent with natural law

You're equating your subjective ideas with natural law? Seem a bit over-confident to say the least.

> There are righteous forms of hierarchy

Yes, a parent towards a their child. What other forms of righteous hierarchies are you thinking about?

> think Lenin and Stalin vs the starving masses

That would be the tyrannical form and completely illegitimate.




> What other forms of righteous hierarchies are you thinking about?

Head surgeon and other surgeons. CTO and other engineers. VP of sales and sales people, etc.

Other forms of hierarchy would be upper and lower courts.

Whether or not these are righteous is dependent on if, for example, the head surgeon is actually experienced and talented and a good leader. If he's just some shmuck they pulled off the street or if he's only in that position because he's friends with the hospital president then that would be a tyrannical or dysfunctional hierarchy.

>That would be the tyrannical form and completely illegitimate.

That's my point. But hierarchy itself is not illegitimate. That hierarchy itself is legitimate is a reflection of natural law. That was my assertion.


There seem to be some mixing of hierarchies and authority here, but even anarchists aren't as dogmatically opposed to all kinds of authority that you seem to imply?

"Does it follow that I reject all authority? Perish the thought. In the matter of boots, I defer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult the architect or the engineer For such special knowledge I apply to such a "savant." But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the "savant" to impose his authority on me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure."

Mikhail Bakunin


I was talking about Marxism and other revolutionary movements that spring from the French Revolution.

VP and CTO are actual titles that confer authority. What Bakunin is describing are hierarchies of competence in a particular art (techne) but what would he say about parent-child relationships?

I had never heard of Bakunin until now. I'm not an expert on the schools of anarchist thought by any measure so I won't pretend to really be able to hold a discussion you want to get into analysis of various schools of anarchist thought.


> VP and CTO are actual titles that confer authority.

Those are considered illegitimate since they are undemocratic. A top-down vanguard too.

> but what would he say about parent-child relationships?

The same competence argument applies to child rearing.


> Those are considered illegitimate since they are undemocratic.

But these are voluntary structures? That's kind of the beauty of the free market. You have these little monarchal structures that go out and create something in the world. If people want to join they can. If and when these structures become too dysfunctional they go away due to market forces.


> But these are voluntary structures?

They're not. No free person would voluntary accept all kinds of shit jobs that's out there unless indirectly coerced.


By "indirectly coerced" you mean that they need food and shelter and they don't have slaves to grow their food and build their house for them?


> By "indirectly coerced" you mean that they need food and shelter

Yes, and more.

> and they don't have slaves to grow their food and build their house for them?

Is this the level you sink to as soon as Capitalist dogma is questioned? It's not the poor and workers that have servants in modern society.


It's not dogma to suggest that people want to be compensated for building houses and growing food and won't do that for free unless a gun is put to their head.


Of course it is. Assuming that the only other option to Capitalism is slavery is dogma.


You're using the word Capitalism as though it's representative of an ideology. "Capitalism" is a term created by Marxists to describe a system that allows people to freely exchange with one another without force. No one is going to grow your food or build you a house without compensation. That's why Marxism requires slavery (public slavery).


You're clearly ignorant of left-wing theory. You actually think that the huge sympathy that socialism had and still have is based on people not understanding that it's actually slavery? A no compensation society? Come on.


I mean there's a reason these sorts of programs always end with mass murder and suffering. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn't make it legitimate. Lots of people followed the Soviet and Nazi programs and it created human suffering on a level never seen before in human history.

You really should read Human Action by Mises. It lays out on a philosophical level why all this stuff is fundamentally irrational and necessarily leads to mass human suffering.


Sigh. 99% of socialist want to expand democracy, not establish another dictatorship. Yet, people like yourself dogmatically focus on that other 1% that are authoritarian and paint every socialist as such.

71k people die every year in the US due to lack of healthcare. You need to open both eyes.

I should read a book by the some libertarian god that unsurprisingly dismisses socialism, while your own knowledge about socialism is obviously paperthin? If it's so clear and obvious then you should be able to explain it in a paragraph or two?


> 99% of socialist want to expand democracy

Yes I know they do. This is a bad thing. The Founding Fathers were famously skeptical of democracy as were many, many thinkers and societies before them.

And yes it's always democratic in the beginning but democracy is not a panacea (as the Founding Fathers understood) and quickly things devolve into despotism. Just because someone exists doesn't mean they should have a say in how a society is run. Existence is a pretty low bar compared to how developed and complex the structures of a well organized society are.

> 71k people die every year in the US due to lack of healthcare.

Millions are born each year due to abundance and millions more don't die for want of food and other essential services and that is because there's a functioning market clearing mechanism (price).

Again I think you should read Human Action, even so you can just understand your 'enemy'.


> This is a bad thing.

It's refreshing to see that this anti-democratic sentiment is said so bluntly, usually it's covered up in weasel words.

> And yes it's always democratic in the beginning

Please let me know which of the communist regimes of the 20th century that started out democratic.

> Millions are born each year due to abundance and millions more don't die for want of food and other essential services and that is because there's a functioning market clearing mechanism (price).

That's a sociopathic response to why on earth 71k people should die every year in a country of abundance simply because they don't have any money.


> It's refreshing to see that this anti-democratic sentiment is said so bluntly, usually it's covered up in weasel words.

This sentiment is at the core of America. It's not a secret at all.

Pure democracy is necessarily predicated on a rejection of human rights. We have a Constitution because individuals have human rights that cannot be violated no matter how many people vote on it.

Pure democracy is evil.

> Please let me know which of the communist regimes of the 20th century that started out democratic.

What do you think the word "soviet" means in Soviet Union?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_democracy

> That's a sociopathic response to why on earth 71k people should die every year in a country of abundance simply because they don't have any money.

This is a utopian response which is actually indicative of sociopathy.

"There are three questions which will destroy most of the arguments on the left: 1. Compared to what? 2. At what cost? 3. What hard evidence do you have?" – Thomas Sowell


> We have a Constitution because individuals have human rights that cannot be violated no matter how many people vote on it.

That's implausible, since sufficient people voting on it can change the Constitution.

> What do you think the word "soviet" means in Soviet Union?

It means “council”. Leninism was vanguardist, not democratic; vanguardism is a top-down paternalistic elite-led structure based on the idea that the masses aren't ready to lead themselves, and would lead to bad outcomes if allowed to do so without guidance from their more sophisticated betters to direct them to observe proper ideological constraints. Basically, the same position your espousing, but differing only in what the right-thought is that it is feared the masses would depart from if not constrained.


> This sentiment is at the core of America. It's not a secret at all.

It's not a secret no, but it's certainly not part of the propaganda.

> Pure democracy is necessarily predicated on a rejection of human rights.

Why is that? Maybe you should be blunt here too and just say private-property enforcement instead of human rights?

> What do you think the word "soviet" means in Soviet Union?

Are you really going argue that it was a democracy because of the name? Why are you doubling down on your own ignorance? Even the link you yourself posted contains this:

"After Lenin's party, the Bolsheviks, only got a minority of the votes in the election to the Russian Constituent Assembly, he disbanded it by force after its first meeting".

The Bolsheviks took power in a coup for themselves and never let go of it.

> This is a utopian response which is actually indicative of sociopathy.

What? There's nothing utopian about universal healthcare and that's firmly established by now. That also sounds like a means to an end argument which is sociopathic if anything is.


> There's nothing utopian about universal healthcare and that's firmly established by now

Universal healthcare necessarily means rationing of healthcare resources. Universal healthcare does not mean that every person who has an ailment gets treated. A market naturally matches supply (healthcare infrastructure) and demand (sick people). When you remove the market it's up to government to do this matching process which means rationing.


> A market naturally matches supply (healthcare infrastructure) and demand (sick people).

Even ignoring that healthcare lacks the factors that approximate the rational choice model’s information requirements well enough for it decisions in that space in a market to even reflect average net utility well, a market matches supply with money; it matches to need only to the extent that willingness to pay is driven only by expected personal utility, which it's not (because money also experiences declining marginal utility) when financial resources of each potential customer vary wildly.


> it matches to need only to the extent that willingness to pay is driven only by expected personal utility

How else would you define need? The alternative involves some third party that determines need aka rationing.


Sorry, but if you ignore existing facts and reality around the western world just too parrot some libertarian free market bullshit you're clearly far too deep into dogma.


It's not dogma it's just logic. Finite resource, no market, means rationing. Why is that dogmatic? This has nothing to do with libertarian ideals, it's just a logical almost tautological statement.

Not every person under a universal healthcare system gets the treatment they want when they want it. Are you disputing that?




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