On Sat, 23 Jan 2016 23:03:38 +0100 rysiek <rysiek@hackerspace.pl> wrote:
Dnia sobota, 23 stycznia 2016 18:23:57 juan pisze:
Are you saying criminal organisations never are (or at least start of) as voluntary ones?
The targets/victims of those organizations are not, by definition, 'voluntary'. Like you know, government subjects. Subjects. As in, being subjected to. Against their will.
The mafia is a 'voluntary organization' only if you look at the mafiosos. Their VICTIMS, who are extorted, are not 'voluntary' extorted. (...)
I did not say a single word about victims. But hey, let's play:
What game are we playing? I think I clarified what I mean by voluntary organization. Doing that requires taking into account the existence of unwilling victims of 'voluntary organizations'. As far as I'm concerned the discussion is about the highly stupid and misleading comment made by CIA capo mafioso dan geer regarding the 'private sector'. A high ranking capo of the CIA mafia is 'kindly' 'warning' 'us' about the dangers of the 'private sector'. Please. Anybody who is not a government apologist would take notice of such cosmic bullshit coming from the likes of geer. Also : "It's cute how some think that power only corrupts and brings out evil in people if it happens to have a form of a government agency; and conversely, that no good can ever come from a government agency." I am well aware that the government psychos can do some 'good' with all the resources they steal. A government can invade and destroy a country and then give some free candy to the surviving orphans. That's really touching. The overall outcome of government intervention is of course a disaster. But even if some government plan 'looks good' on some bullshit utiltiarian terms, imposing the plan by force is just ordinary crime on an industrial scale.
if a mafia outlet kills a member of this very mafia outlet (due to some internal business), does that make that (dead) mafioso a victim?
Perhaps. Maybe he wanted to quit and found out that not even the mafia is a 'voluntary' organization...
If so, does that suddenly make the mafioso a "non-voluntary" mafioso?
Maybe. Or maybe they quarrelled over the spoils. So? Why is this important to political theory? How does it affect the analysis of the criminal nature of the state?
Also, I would say that Wikipedia became a "victim" of Internet Watch Foundation's Internet censorship. I am perfectly happy to agree that Wikipedia was not a "voluntary" victim of it.
That's good because "voluntary victim" doesn't make much sense except maybe as some kind of poetic license.
However, does that make IWF suddenly not a civil society organisation?
Formally they may look like part of 'civil society' (that is, non-governmental) but their aims are typical of government. But I think there's some mutual misunderstanding caused by different definitions of 'civil society'...
Or, perhaps, we can actually have civil society organisations that (sadly) show signs of being corrupted by the power (over *something*)?
If the organizations we are talking about have coercive aims I wouldn't consider them part of 'civil society' but rather part of 'militant society'. Also I wouldn't say that this IWF thing was corrupted by power, if that means that they started as not-corrupt. IWF is a corrupt from day zero, by design. Exactly like all government.
Are you saying no voluntary organisations can ever be or become criminal?
A voluntary organization can stop being voluntary. At that point it's not voluntary anymore. It's becomes a state or state-like organization attacking people.
Shouldn't be too hard to understand eh?
Well, at what point a voluntary organisation stops being voluntary? When they commit their first crime?
It stops being voluntary when it starts coercing people...
I am confused about your usage of the word "voluntary" here. Are you not actually looking for "non-criminal"?
In this case voluntary and non-crimal point to the same idea. Sorry if you don't like my terminology. I think it's fine but you can change it if you want...As long as you retain my meaning...?
Also, I never "equated civil society with mafia/government"
Dude, your whole quote and post are there. You listed mafia and civil society in the same sentece. If your writing is sloppy it's not my fault.
If that's your standard for "equating", then I have to ask... Why are you equating civil society to mafia? After all, you just "listed civil society and mafia in the same sentence".
Here it is again, for your distinct viewing pleasure:
You listed mafia and civil society in the same sentece.
Ok, ok. Part of the problem is that our definitions of 'civil society' differ.
:)
(making such sweeping comparisons seems to be your job here). I said that even within civil society, if a given organisation has too much power, it might corrupt said organisation (or rather, people within it).
Begs the question, what kind of power do they have and how they got it?
That's actually a valid point. Your default answer will be "Teh Gubmint", and in the particular case of IWF, you'd actually be right.
Thanks...So looks like this particular example doesn't help your case, it helps mine =P
Thing is, does that mean that we have: - a civil society organisation - that *you agree* has been to some extent corrupted by power they got?
It's a "yes/no" question.
That's not how I would describe it. It's an organization with coercive aims and more or less obvious ties to government/anti-sex puritan theocrats. I don't think the IWF are libertarian voluntarists...
Might I offer an example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Watch_Foundation#Blacklist_of_web_p ages What do you think those idiots stand for? They look like a typical right winger puritan assholes to me.
And yet they are a civil society organisation. My point stands: *even* civil society can be corrupted by power. Do you not agree?
There's some misunderstanding because I'm using 'civil society' as a synonym for free society or a society based on voluntarist principles. As opposed to government which operates on the principle of obey or die. if on the other hand, by civil society you mean anything that isn't explicitly and officially part of the government, then yes, IWF is an example of a corrupt (or criminal-like) 'civil' organization. Then again, I never said that the private sector is free from corruption. You might have caught some of my rants against the baknking mafia, or the google mafia, or the pharmaceutical mafia, or... What I consider a laughable and sick insult is that a high ranking government mafioso like geer has the cheek to pretend that the private sector is a bigger threat than his employeers, the C.I.A.
/me now waits, eating popcorn, for the inevitable No True Scotsman
Sure. That coming from such a master of state logic like you. As in, power bad, but government good.
Governments are not good in and of themselves.
Of course they are not good 'in and of themselves'. And they are not morally neutral either. In and of themselves, governments are bad, despite their good deeds propaganda. Bottom line : crime can't be 'justified' (that is, proven to stick to justice principles)
But seeing *everything* that a government touches as evil/bad/criminal/your-word-here is akin to seeing everything that contains mercury
I already pointed out that gov't can do some 'good things', paid by all the resources they steal. But your 'argument' can only work if you put words in my mouth.
(the element) as toxic. If that doesn't ring a bell, let me help you with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal_controversy
So basically, yes, I am now calling your anti-Tor bullshit akin to the anti- vaccine crowd bullshit
Oh fine. That wasn't the topic of this discussion at all. But since you mention it, you can't counter anything I say about tor and you never did =) "open source" therefore "magically great" doesn't count.
Power bad always, needs to be checked, *regardless* of whether or not it (power) happens to be in the hands of a government, mafia, private sector, civil society, or pixies and unicorns.
Fine. Sort of...
Problem is, there are many, many different power structures. Governments are one kind of these. But there are many more, and they emerge on their own, all the time. Looking *only* on governments (and mafia) and missing the broader picture is just plain silly.
Not at all. Government is by far the worst problem. Focusing on things that are not as bad as government while constantly denying the criminal nature of government is...government propaganda. And is exactly what you are doing here as far as I can tell.
Still, sometimes I would love to have your simple "gummint bad, private sector good, remove gummint and the free market will cure cancer" view of the world. One can dream...
That isn't exactly my view. Part of my view is that the government has to go because of *moral* reasons, not for utilitarian reasons. Of course there are good utilitarian arguments too that statists can't counter, but I personally don't much care about them. Let me try this...Do you think encryption systems should be backdored by the US government, or perhaps the 'united nations'? Or should encryption systems be as unbreakable as possible, in practice making it impossible for government to enforce 'laws'? J.