Maybe Dragons

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Greetings all ye awesome readers and statists as well. Here's hoping this letter finds you well. That goes for the readers especially; everyone else, sure but less heartily.

I see the Dutch have been busy showing the Land of the Free how to stand up for liberty. That has to be embarrassing, but thankfully, not as bad as when the Canadians did it.

Here, things continue much the same. The base village is pretty established. I'll have to give you some kind of a tour of it some day. I am really impressed with what we build. However, I am concerned. In short, most realms have dragons. Now, I know. I know. Yours doesn't seem to (anymore at least), but I am uneasy in a new world until I know their haunts and habits. And that's just the wing'ed lizards, we just haven't explored the local area near as much as would be wise. The previous owners (local elves) were helpful, but somethings need verified and others were unclear. We need an expedition, and since we don't have a Thomas Jefferson to finance one by taxes (I know right?), we will have to manage it on our own.

Also, my reading of Casey's book continues, but I want to wait a bit before responding further. Maybe next time I'll touch upon a bigger swath. The tidbitery is fun, but maybe not to some. Casey does say that annoyance doesn't count as aggression, but I'd like to avoid it anyway.

To many brews and funner news,

-Pen
53 Fi 7380

Liberty > Statery

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Statery is a criminal and elective development. That’s where this book (the same Libertarian Anarchy book) is going right now. Sounds fun. Let's ride.

On the development bit, Casey takes a deep dive into Terran history. He borrows from your Adam Smith supposing various phases of society, phases from hunter-gatherer to pastoral to agricultural to commerce. While Casey’s work both informs and entertains, it is clear he has never enjoyed the hunter-gather lifestyle. Casey seems to think leisure was advanced by progressing from hunter-gatherer life to agriculture. If a farmer works longer than the day's sun, well I had much more free-time stalking prey. Then again, it was just me and the rest of the pack. (But still, right? Anyway.)

I did like this observation in particular. Apparently terran creation, trade, and robbery all progressed through those phases together. Statery advanced with opportunity, so as terra got farmed, terrans did too. I'm pretty sure he didn't say it quite like that, but that's what I gathered.

This Rothbard quote from the book says it well:

“If you attempted to do to your neighbours what a democratic government does to its citizens, let us say, tax them, fix their hours of work, force them to send their children to schools of your choice, or accept the money you have printed, you would very likely end up in jail. No democracy allows you to do such things. Nor does it allow you to undertake these activities in conspiracy with others. But it does allow you to have someone else do them in your name and on your behalf!”

Well, I have to cut it short this week. I still have to meet up with the bard to talk old stories. (He needs material.) Then, it's time for the weekend.

Fare well.

-Pen

Greetings, Congrats, and Bullseyes

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Hey, greetings Terrans. And Americans, congratulations on: the awesome SCOTUS wins, the Babylon Bee being freed on twitter, and on Texas securing its sovereignty. Wait. Well, on the first thing then. By the way, if Texans really did secede, would they still be Americans? I mean Canadians, at least sometimes, refer to the U.S. as the Americans. Why don't Canadians count? Is it Trudeau? It's probably Trudeau right? (And, what do you do with Mexico? If all of South America gets included but not Mexico, I'd have to wonder why.)

Really I am stranger to your world, so please do not take offense. I sometimes forget that the unnatural situation of states and rulers via impersonal entities is common place in your world. I imagine, it is as strange to me as a fuppy would be to you.

You know, all of this “What is an American?” talk and the state talk too, they remind me of some reading I was doing today in that ol' Libertarian Anarchy book. (God bless you Terra; there are some real good thought gems in the rough of your internet.)

Anyway the book was talking about the definition to be used for a state. The author is very humble about said definition, saying that his is not beyond dispute but that it is also not idiosyncratic. I was impressed there. But I think he also managed a good definition, and maybe I'm hard to please on that score. Here's what it is and why:

that group of people or that organization which wields a monopoly of allegedly legitimate force over the inhabitants of a determinate territory financed by a compulsory levy imposed on those inhabitants.
Gerard Casey, Libertarian Anarchy

I especially liked it because he used a that-definition. I've noticed that, sometimes, defining work is done more by trying to exhaust everything that a kind is essentially and then… it is very involved. Lots of room for error and exhausting. That-definitions may not tell us much about the thing, but they do successfully point it out among a bunch of other things. Easier to get the bull's eye when aiming at something rather than writing a book on just the definition. And it seems like Gerard Casey nailed it.

Well for me I am going to have to crash. I had a full day. (I've been working on a fun surprise for the locals. Think of it as a HUGE Easter egg.) Anyway, I wish you well.

-Pen

P.S. Congrats to Mr. and Mrs. Tom Woods. God bless.

Good books and Friday’s are friends.

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A man and elf looked across a field got to talking. Then they disagreed about something they saw. Why weren’t they seeing eye to eye? Probably, they weren’t actually looking at the same thing, that or they literally saw it differently.

Definition-talk seems much the same way. Some defs. point across the field at “that thing over there” and probably some do that more precisely than others. Anyway, I was just reading that Libertarian Anarchy book, and that’s pretty much what I saw Dr. Gerard Casey doing with this gem: “Anarchy is the position in which the members of a society naturally find themselves when they are not subject to the power of a state.” With “anarchy” he means statelessness, with anarchism: a-statism.

After positively saying what he means, Casey gets more precise, winnowing away what he doesn’t. He reminds us of how liberals and conservatives often use the state as a tool, and he explicitly disassociates his subject from that. (It also seems to me that those conservative and liberal types depart from their true dispositions when using statist means, but that’s beside the point.) Then, he also winnows away the idea that statelessness approves of an activity (morally) just because it disapproves of its being illegal. A person may well believe the state is in the way and making matters worse.

Next Casey does something very different. He uses examples of how libertar*ians* typically view things to elaborate on libertarian*ism*, itself. My first thought was that people can be inconsistent, and libertarians are kinda infamous for leveling the charge at each other. So, libertarian principles speak to positions, but the positions don’t necessarily speak back. That said, I have to admit that such examples can be suggestive of the guiding principles in play, and it helps in introducing statelessness to the new and averse. Ultimately, it all seems to work.

Finally, and wrapping this little review of the book's beginning, I like how Casey points out that anarchy gets weighed in two ways, principles and pragmatics, and that he’s focusing on principle. Fine by me. I'm looking forward to it. (I'm also interested in the relation of those two considerations, and I touch upon it briefly in “I Will Do Mine!” in the resources.)

Well, it is time for my Friday salute on the twitter, and then who knows. Wherever thee fareth, terrans, fareth thee well.

Pen

Analogous thoughts…

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Hey, terrans. How goes it? I hope the week treated you well. I mean terra often seems like a beautiful ball on fire, but if you're reading this, I hope the week treated you well. Around here, well, I just heard the bard do another one of my bits, and I kinda had words with him. “Listen you could just let people know where you get all that stuff from right? I mean you don't have to say, ‘here's another one by…' or anything. You could just give my stuff a name that refers to me. Call 'em p-ditties. Ok not that. Something else. But ya know?!?!” I must be upset. After I pen this letter, I may go burn off some steam slaying monsters in the forest, but first, I wanted to say hi and follow up on things in my last letter.

Last time, I talked analogy arguments. Well, apparently Plato was not a fan of them. “Arguments that make their point by means of similarities are impostors, and, unless you are on your guard against them, will quite readily deceive you.” Plato, calm down. You're taking it too far. (And since you're criticizing them by saying they are analogous to imposters, I will be on my guard lest you deceive me, you sneaky little rascal, you.)

Maybe it'd be helpful to see the working parts of these arguments, how the arguments work, and where things can go awry. I'm just thinking out loud here of course, but in the “Nuh uhn, that's like saying…” example from before, two things get compared, an initial claim and a counter-example. They are said to be similar in some significant way that ruins the original claim. Ok. So far, so good. Now, I can imagine two responses to that challenge: “No, that example's different because…” or “So? what's your point?” No or so. In other words, to challenge the either truth of similarity or its significance. Hmm. That's something. What else? Maybe an example will help.

Initial claim: “I'm a protester with freedom of speech, so you have no right to do anything about this, officer.”

meets:

Counter-example: “Nuh uhn! That's like saying I have no right to do anything about you yelling fire in a crowded theater!”

Other issues aside, is the counter-example similar in a mutually-falsifying way? Sure both cases involve speech, but that similarity is lame lame lame. The trouble with “Fire!” is not the speech but the spark of physical harm or (hopefully) just the disruption of a private event. Protesting isn't necessarily like that, but megaphoning someone to deaf is. The megaphoning, that has a potent similarity with yelling “Fire!”: aggression. So, because doing something about aggression is called for, the idea that nothing can be done gets defeated in both cases. Those cases are analogous with each other, but not with the protest one.

But I want to break it down more to really look at it in order to find the faulty bits. How….

More precisely, an initial claim is said to be like a given counter-example such that the counter's being faulty (false/absurd/incoherent/commie/Chubacha/whatever) means the original is too. Now, that much seems right. However, it also means this kind of argument is pretty IF'y . IF the original claim is like the counter-example in the given way and IF that is a potent (potentially disconfirming) way and IF the counter-example is faulty, THEN the original claim is also faulty. Hey that first IF goes with the No response above. And the others go with the So? response. That's something, too. It breaks down the No and So? a little bit.

Well, I've been thinking about this so long that I've missed my hunt! Maybe a quick critter on the way? We'll see.

Later.

– Pen