Bay 12 Games Forum

Collectively owned land doesn't really work on a larger scale, where it becomes subject to abuse by assholes.

It works fine if there is plenty of land, and only a handful of close-knit people to divvy it up. Even then, it doesn't always work great either. In OP's example it looked like the elders owned the land and simply granted permission to use it however they deemed, which isn't true collectivism either..

Collectivism would be impartial and use of land would be determined by law. It would be more like "what's mine is mine and what is your's is mine too" to apply to everyone.

Also, collectvism has been tried many many times in different places and has failed time and time again. I'm astounded that people still think it is a good idea after history has shown it to be utterly destructive and ruinious to the people who live under it.

Quote from: Montague on September 10, 2011, 12:42:45 am

Radical, Utopian, crazy-people political philosophy is supposed to be inviolably logically consistent, its why its oddly convincing if you don't scrutinize the realities or underlying ideas of it too much.

I don't know why this seems like such an amazing statement to me, but that's a succinct way of putting it.  The more fine detail you add to your governance, the less logically consistent it becomes, which I've been trying to point out to people for years, but never really knew how to put it.

Our current system certainly produces some bizarre inconsistency. The federal government bailed out several huge banks by loaning out billions of dollars, which many have repaid and now the gov't is suing these same firms for starting the financial crisis it bailed them out of in the first place.

Well, the standard alternative to incorporation is proprietorship/partnership. The obvious legal solution is everyone involved with the company is liable in proportion to their involvement with whatever went wrong.

Suddenly, crime looks a lot less appealing.

I assume most contracts would be made between, you know, two actual people involved with the company, rather than a pretend person who can disappear and bail on all their contracts with no repercussions.

As for legal framework setting liability and all, the "corporations are people too" law is really just there to simplify the legal proceedings and to make trials and civil suits shorter. Otherwise imagine trying to track down and drag in 5000 defendants from the CEO down to the warehouse clerk to determine their degree of responsibility if their crappy firm was sued for selling poison dog food to people or whatever. The government would take forever to settle claims without a good legal framework.

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when it came time to sue, file patents, make copyrights, pay bills, create enforceable contracts or anything else.

Woah, woah, hey now. Where does a "minarchist" government get off pulling most of that shit, anyway? I thought we wanted a free market here, and handing out government enforced monopolies like candy doesn't sound like a free market at all. I mean, you can probably pull out contracts as obviously supportable, and lawsuits as questionably supportable, but getting involved in patents/copyrights/bill payments? That's not the government's job in any minarchist system I've ever heard of, as government enforced monopolies seem rather contrary to the entire point.

The government's job is to protect property! Intellectual property included, which is where patents and copyrights must be enforced to maintain a free market. Intellectual property has to be protected from theft too. Can't just have innovative firms have their ideas stolen by crappy firms, otherwise there would be no market incentive to develop anything new and every firm would just copy off each other like they do in China.

Quote from: Montague on September 09, 2011, 11:58:33 pm

Anyways, rivers catching fire in a minarchist society would just be an insurance issue, since they'd be burning on private property, of course.

That's actually shocking well-contained political philosophy there.  I can remember a time when I thought it was attractive; if you make the river someone's private property, they'd have an incentive to keep it clean, right?  Yeah, that'd work.

Radical, Utopian, crazy-people political philosophy is supposed to be inviolably logically consistent, its why its oddly convincing if you don't scrutinize the realities or underlying ideas of it too much. How do you suppose communism in its various interpretations managed to bring people together to predictably bring oppression and imploded economies to half the damn world?

Far as I know, industries and polluters really do not lose much money by pollution regulations in most cases. With the health hazards of pollution well known to damn near everyone alive these days it really is in their best interests not to take short-cuts if they want to avoid crippling litigation.

Ok, instead of "rule of law" which has sort of an ambiguous meaning, it might be better to just say the government has a monopoly on violence, meaning there is not anarchy or unnumbered tiny warring factions, because the government is the only authority able to legitimately control the use of violence within whatever borders it is in and powerful enough to squash any competition.

A minarchist government would basically just exist to protect property and basic human rights.

So "Rule of Law" is say something Germany has that Afghanistan or Somalia doesn't have so much.

As for outsourcing corruption, only the government has the legitimate use of violence in its favor to maintain and fund it's existence. Other organizations have to stay popular and legitimate enough to exist because people can chose not to give them funding.

The point is, apart from ethics concerns about sports, and preventing drug use at school, the school administration (in my opinion) doesn't have any business trying to control a student's drug use, either morally (it really isn't their business, unless it is so severe that the student is in danger of failing, in which case:), or legally, in which case it should be the police taking care of it, rather than the schools. Random drug testing doesn't do anything but generate hostility. If they really, really want to do it, then they should make it mandatory, possibly as part of a wider health and fitness exam, rather than this sort of half-assed thing that pisses students off just by being vaguely threatening.

I'm just going to point out that ultimately the same folks that run public schools run the police. So it sort of is their business.

Its one of the downsides of having government run an institution. Policy from one end of the government can effect another end. Its why taxes on cigarettes, fatty foods, salt and alcohol would sky-rocket if there was universal health-care. Because all of the sudden the crap people shovel in their mouths becomes the concern of the government, much like the chemical make-up of high school student pee becomes the interest of school administration.

Anyways, I agree that it probably won't help anything, but the government is basically obligated to do crap like this if it is going to efficiently work toward the goals set out for it.

Well, I'm sure its probably occurred to you before, but going to local pubs and bars is one way to meet people. Or at least have antagonistic debates, play pool and inane conversations with drunk strangers, it can actually be a lot of fun and its nearly as awful as it sounds.

It might also be a non-option if you have to drive or take a taxi to a pub though.

I think dress codes/ uniforms are really just intended to stifle sub-cultures, cliques and keep the rich kids from feeling too superior to everybody else. Sorta cultural-Marxist vibe to it, but it probably has the effect it's intended. Gang members don't really have trouble identifying each other, but I think making them wear uniforms would probably dis-embolden (spell check says its a real word) them a bit.

It sounds to me like this boils down to the parent's responsibility. Public schools are not a right and the government that runs them is perfectly within it's power to establish all sorts of silly conditions for students attending them. The parents must consent to the student's drug tests and they could always (theoretically) send their kids to private school if the kid absolutely must smoke pot and belong to a chess club.

Anyways, isn't schooling only compulsory until the 9th grade? (might be mistaken here) Potheads are expected to drop out anyways, this policy is probably just intended as a tool to encourage losers to drop-out and reduce classroom sizes and number of teachers they must hire.