I’ve been here for a week or so now and my experience here has quickly shown me that there are a lot of very shallow-minded leftists here (I’m not a Republican/conservative) and a lot of people really quick to just sling profanities and slurs around if they don’t agree with something you have to say.
I would argue that you’re thinking about contracts wrong. I’m not talking about a piece of paper. The piece of paper is just a way for us to write down something that at least two consenting parties agreed with.
“Same bullshit argument like with terms of service.”
How it that a bullshit argument? I will reject a service based on its terms of service. Do you just agree to every terms of service provided to you? You’re not entitled to any services. None of them. I would go as far as to say that if a company is writing out a terms of service that’s too long, too complicated, or too one-sided, then that should be an immediate red flag that you shouldn’t be giving your money to that business.
Apple. I don’t buy Apple products because I don’t like the way that company does business. I worked consulting for years in large companies where part of what I did was consult surrounding cellular devices. I used to advise clients not to use Apple products - that’s how far I went.
You can’t control the world and chances are your vote on anything is insignificant - and so be it - but if you have principles, you should follow them. Don’t complain because of your own weakness on your own principles.
And remember: Any business committing fraud isn’t acceptable.
And another thing: One of the big problems we have with businesses in the US (and most places) is that we don’t hold the actual owners of businesses personally accountable for the actions of a business. If some company poisons a river and a little girl dies because of it, our government fines the company. What SHOULD happen is the CEO and everyone else at that business who knew the company was committed to actions of which they knew might end up taking the life of a child should be thrown in prison for life as murderers. The fact that we do not do this is a failure of our government and transforms the entire paradigm of how companies DO business in the first place.
Why can’t you bundle any number of things into a single contract? If my neighbor and I want to bundle 300 things into a single contract we both agree to, who are you, as a third party, to tell us we can’t?
This is the problem. You have to let adults make their own choices. There’s no such thing as the wiser of two people. To say there is implies that someone has answers about the universe that the other does not. Even human life holds no objective value. All value is relative to the subject.
If you don’t like how a contract is written out, you just don’t consent to it.
What do you mean, why? What is moral is fundamentally just what isn’t immoral and what is immoral are just those actions we shouldn’t take. The only way to know that and not have that be entirely arbitrary is to utilize logic. Logic would mandate that since you would not desire the violation of your will, you cannot choose to violate the will of another.
But all human conflict creates will violation, so this means you just need to decide which will is actually initiating the violation of the other will and then side with the individual who’s will is being violated by the other’s.
For example, let’s say you own a car. It is your will to own that car (hold exclusive authority over it) and for me not to take it from you. If it is my will to also hold exclusive authority over that car I will need to take it from you. If I try to do this, my will is such that it desires the violation of your will which already existed prior to my desire to rob you.
This is actually what murder, rape, theft, fraud, etc. all are. Rape for example is only rape when there’s no consent. In order for the idea of rape to be made manifest, at least one “participant” must have not desired to be violated in such ways while another’s will must have been made manifest after the fact to do the violating. If this does not occur than the output is simply a consensual sexual act.
The same goes here. If a landlord asks you to consent to an idea where they can enter the place you rent anytime they like and watch you under any circumstances, then he isn’t violating your will because you consented to it. If the government (which is simply a third party utilizing violence) tells either party that they cannot engage in this consent then that is just the thuggery of the state telling people how they can or cannot consent.
What you’ve just said is entirely nonsensical. All you’ve said here is we can’t have roads unless we’re robbed.
There is nothing the current governments of the world provide that we cannot have sans those governments. Nothing.
Which makes the law immoral.
If your renters signed something like that they deserve no privacy.
Agreed that things like governments and corporations are made up ideas, but ideas need to be properly defined so we know what we’re communicating.
You asked if a government in your society doesn’t exist what is the agreed upon legal code?
You’re asking the wrong question. When I say that I’m against government, what I mean is I am against the idea that I can be born into an agreement and made to suffer that system. I was born and continue to live in the US, but I did not agree to give the government tens of thousands of dollars annually, which they take without my consent. I argue that all government is, fundamentally, is a relative force monopoly. If say, the drug cartels in Mexico can simply do what they wish and the Mexican government can’t stop them, then the actual government in Mexico are the drug cartels, not the Mexican government. Saying it’s not is just not properly defining what government is.
In a government where there’s freedom for all there would be two systems in place to define what is legal. One would be logic. It’s simply immoral to murder (not kill, murder), steal, rape, defraud, or assault. You cannot do those things and free people understand that even if a relative force monopoly makes a “law” saying you can, that doesn’t legitimize it, and you are well within your right, as given by nobody at all, to seek out and use violence against those who would commit those acts, regardless of what the “law” said.
If it were legal in the US to rape, would you rape? Would you allow another to rape if you had the power to stop them? Would you stop someone who tried to rape your child? Who cares what the law says?
We already realize that law does not correlate to right and wrong.
The second aspect of law would be that in which is consented to, but that depends entirely on who owns what, and I don’t mean arbitrarily owns what, but objectively (logically) owns what.
You can logically work out what is owned and what is stolen. It isn’t difficult.
And to own a thing means you hold exclusive authority over it. If I hold exclusive authority over my house for instance, then it doesn’t matter what other people agree to, or turn into “law”, you never hold authority over my house. If you do, then you are stealing my authority over my house from me, which is theft. If you use theft, I am authorized to use violence against you to stop your theft.
So it doesn’t matter how many people you have who agree to something if it pertains to violating my consent over my property. A million people can all vote and agree to kick me out of my house, and you’ll succeed if you use violence against me, but both logically and philosophically, I would be well within my right to use even deadly force to stop any thugs you send to me to do so.
A “just” law is only one where you are protecting the will of others within a logical order of operations.
Now that being said! You CAN hold agreements between owners of property. Maybe 50 people in a region all agree to buy all of the neighboring roads, and they each agree to put fourth 5% of their income per year to do so. Maybe they all agree this will be a “law”, and they agree upon a punishment that can be enacted if someone doesn’t do this. NOW what you have is a situation where you CAN use violence against someone who goes against the agreement because we’re not talking about the group violating the consent of the individual, we’re talking about the individual engaging in an action of which violated a preexisting will of the group.
Another question you had:
“Can you guarantee everyone in your society, which you’ve argued can be over 250 people, will agree on a singular legal code without some kind of government with a legislative branch?”
You don’t need to. If everyone in my “society” want to make a rule saying you can remove Joe from his home, all you’re doing is banding together to do a sinister deed. That is a corrupt society to begin with, and an authoritarian one.
You don’t and can’t agree to do something with someone else’s property, because it isn’t yours. This is like saying that your neighbor, Tony, has some kind of right to your car because he lives next door. That’s absurd. You and only you can decide what happens to your car unless what you want to do directly violates Tony’s rights over his will. For example, I can’t drive it into his house and set it on fire because I would need to have initiated an action of which violated Tony’s will, so I can’t do that.
Now if Tony and I both got together and CONSENTED to go 50/50 on a new car, it’s up to us and us alone to set the “law” on who can make utility of that car, or who can destroy it, sell it, who gets what if we agree to sell it, who maintains it, puts gas in it, etc.
You don’t get to come along and make demands of Tony and I regarding our car. It’s ours, nor yours. Leave us alone and stop trying to dictate the choices of others.
The problem with your line of questioning - and I mean with with respect, truly - is that you’re thinking about all of this in this scope of the concept of “public property”. There is no such thing. There is property, full stop. The idea of “public property” is a blatant misnomer. Think of it like this:
Menards owns a lawn mower and they agree to sell it to me. It’s my lawn mower. It’s mine because Menards did not steal anything from anyone else to make it, my will was aligned to own it and the will of those who consented to the system that is Menards hold a will to accept selling it to me, and because what I traded for it was mine as I did not steal the money I traded for it.
But if Tony next door again comes to my home with a baseball bat and tells me I am now going to give him $500 towards a lawn mower, and it will be in the best interest of the neighborhood because 9 other people all got together and agreed it was, and thus, it isn’t theft what Tony is doing, Tony is just lying - it’s just theft.
You can’t “legitimize” theft by wearing a badge or saying you come from some official sounding group name. Other people agreeing to rape you doesn’t legitimize rape any more than other people agreeing to rob you legitimizes theft. Is this making sense?
But again, if Tony and I both consent to buy a lawn mower together, then we are both consensual property owners of that lawn mower and nobody else can tell us what to do with it.
So your other two questions here aren’t the right questions to ask either:
“How do they even go about figuring out the legal code without some organization?” - and - “If they do agree on a legal code, who are the people spending time on maintaining and updating the code and how are they paid?”
Nobody ever said there wouldn’t be organization, or even violence. There could still be police, firefighters, teachers, engineers, and everything else that governments tend to monopolize or “provide”.
Who sets the laws for the roads? Well, which roads? Who owns the roads? Do I own the road leading to my home? Do Tony and I own it? Did all 50 of us who live in that area get together and consent to all go in and buy the roads? Then the owners of those roads set the laws for those roads.
Maybe Tony and I own a little piece of road and the only law is we don’t want you to go more than 40MPH while driving on it. Well there you go! And if you don’t like our ruling about our property, key words there, OUR PROPERTY, then you don’t need to use it.
I make the laws in my own home. If you don’t like it, you’re free to leave. In fact, if I asked you to leave and you flat out refused, I would just be warranted to use violence against you. If I couldn’t get you to leave with violence even, then deadly force would be warranted. And yes, that would be warranted if it got to that serious of a situation.
But that’s already how governments generally work today. If you come into my home and I ask you to leave and you refuse, I call the police and the police will use violence against you. What on earth do you think they do if you resist that violence? Play nice?
Your next question:
“How do you adjudicate this issue in your society? There’s no judicial branch of government.”
However the property owners who have been faulted want. Maybe in my area we’ve set up a system for this. What is most likely is as a “formal”, current government waned, this would open up avenues in the free market for people to offer these kinds of services. In fact, many judicial systems are already handled by courts not run by the government. Many kinds of issues even in the US are resolved by these kinds of courts because it’s better than utilizing the government to do so, as governments tend to be more corrupt, very slow, and very poor quality in basically everything they do.
Maybe you have Amazon Justice, Microsoft Courts, and Elon Musk’s Justice-X to choose from, and maybe the people in your area all consent to use a specific one so they agree to all go in and pay for those services. Maybe those small groups of people also get together with other small groups of people and form larger organizations who also agree on certain things. You can still have society without authoritarianism. The notion of, “whatever would we do if we don’t let other people rob us and our neighbors to do things” is so absurd it makes my head spin.
I’m not saying no organization. I’m not saying no schools, no security, no military, no roads, etc. I’m saying NO MORE AUTHORITARIANISM. No more theft on a grand scale. No more telling me when I turned 18 that I had to sign up for a draft where if some old man decided I had to die oversees then I either did so or I’d be locked away. No more forcing me to days of being a juror without my consent, where the state would pay me pennies a day and I lost precious time with my family, my job, and my entire life.
There is no such thing as a social contract - not within the constrains of what it’s depicted at as of current. That’s all just authoritarian propaganda.
But you don’t need government in its current form in order to protect people from groups who mean to poison. I don’t need a cop to protect me from a home invader, for example. In fact, the cop isn’t going to get there until the invader has done whatever they sought out to do, so maybe just to try to find them after myself and my entire family are murdered.
OR I can protect my family myself.
The act of poisoning someone is in itself objectively immoral. No good people who accept responsibility for the innocent in this world should be made to suffer the will of those who seek to do that kind of harm. In fact I would argue that the government likely was deficient in what they SHOULD have done to combat the poisoning done at that time.
In my view, if 5 people are producing food (simplifying things here) and they choose to poison that food and I and some of my goodly companions find out about it, we are completely within our right to use immediate and, if necessary, deadly force against those individuals. The idea should be simple: If you want to attempt to kill people, we will find and kill you.
The good must not suffer the evil to exist, and I say that as both an staunch atheist and someone not even in favor of the death penalty (but only because I do not want even a single person killed who wasn’t guilty.)
And you talk of businesses as if they are real people, and they’re not. A business is just this made-up human idea, and an extremely broad one at that, where we’re explaining swaths of people all working together to produce some kind of goods/services under the idea of generating wealth for everyone. The idea that a company can own property for example is nonsensical. A company can own property like my car can own property, or like a sidewalk can owe me money.
When a business I work for does something nefarious, I guarantee you that I didn’t lift a finger to see that come to fruition. I was duped by others who made those choices who defrauded me by not detailing what was going on. THOSE people who did those things are criminals and should be dealt with. The notion that a company for example can do something that say, results in the murder of 10 kids isn’t an “oopsies” where the state fines that business. The mere fact that this is how we deal with these things “collectively” is seriously messed up. The people responsible for making choices they knew were risky for people’s health that then resulted in the death of those kids should be tried and convicted of murder and locked away forever, and I don’t need a huge, overarching government that I didn’t consent to in order to make that happen.
And I agree with you - governments like what we have here in the US are a hell of a lot better than they’ve been in the past. I’m not saying I want to live in Stalin’s Russia, or under the iron fist of Genghis Khan here. What I’m saying is both logically and philosophically, the next direction we as human beings should be guiding the world to is a place where there is no such thing as victimless crimes; where everyone can live their lives the way they choose and where the only time a relative force monopoly flexes its power is to prevent things like murder, rape, theft, and fraud.
You build a coalition who needs some money from me and will protect me better than police and I’ll gladly pay for that, but do you know what that would be? A business, not a government. You could argue that it’d be a government if it were a force monopoly, but so what? So long as it’s consensual and works, I’m all for it.
When I say I’m anti-government what I’m talking about is being against people using violence against us against our will and not in defense of the innocent.
Like what, exactly?
Like roads? Police? Schools? How’s about grocery stores?
Let’s talk about grocery stores. Government in the US does not “do” grocery stories. The free market does (I say free with a bit of a grain of salt, of course.)
And there are no problems with food in this country. In fact, we live in a country of such overabundance of food that we have foodstuffs coming in the world over, and throw away roughly 65 billion tons - TONS, annually and have a weight epidemic.
The market is SO GOOD at food that it creates overabundance issues. Everywhere you look, food is available. I have like 20 grocery stores near me. I can get most of them to deliver right to my door. There are restaurants, fast food chains, diners, food in gas stations and rest stops, at kiosks, airports, on flights, at hotels, parks, on mobile trucks, and so much more.
Any argument you might propose could fundamentally be explained, at least at a high-level, by showcasing this concept. The government COULD have done food and then we would be having this same conversation, but you might say, “if there is no government, then we will all starve! Who will do food?”
But the government does not do food and I bet you if they did, we would have fewer options, food would be of lower quality, and food would cost more than it does today. Everything, and I will reiterate that - EVERYTHING the government does it does worse than the market can do.
Shipping? The U.S. Postal Service typically hemorrhages between 6.5 and 9.5 billion annually, and it has a MONOPOLY on certain aspects of shipping. FedEx and UPS on the other hand? They generate collectively over 180 billion in annual revenue. BOTH are on the fortune 500 list.
And how could we ever get all of these Amazon shipments without the government? Oh, wait, they don’t ship those either. Amazon sends shipments more accurately, with less waste, quicker, AND CHEAPER than USPS does, hands down, and it isn’t even a primary shipping company!
Or what about police? Security? Do rich people use police, or private security? Well of course they buy private security, but you and I can’t afford private security, so we rely on the police showing up after we’ve already been robbed, whereas the rich - in their gated communities - have mobile security keeping a constant watch for them.
But why is private security so expensive? Well, because the government regulates it so firmly. They want to be a monopoly on policing and security.
Same goes for education. Where do the rich send their kids? Public school? No? Private? Well of course they do!
Obama went to Punahou, a private college-prep school in Honolulu, and Biden too, went to a private Catholic high school - Archmere Academy. So why can’t we send our kids to these better schools? Oh that’s right, cost.
So why can’t Jeff Bezos just create Amazon Academics, and provide higher quality education at a lower cost than the governmental-run public schools? Well, because of government regulation, of course!
Imagine I was a millionaire and I wanted to invest in starting a business of educating K-12 students. Maybe I have a goal of setting down in a minority, impoverished area and providing high-quality education at a low price. How do I do this if the competition school that runs on stolen funding (taxes) doesn’t close down no matter how poorly they do?
In one of Chicago’s lowest-performing high schools for instance, the dropout rate reaches 36% (3% is the average across the rest of the state.) So what if I could create an educational program there with a dropout rate of say, 13%? TWICE as superior simply based around that single statistic.
Well it wouldn’t be possible because the government self-subsidizes without producing anything of value. I, as owner of a business, would need to produce value to consumers who want to pay for my services, but the government mandates your kids go to public school (especially if you can’t afford anything better), then sets all sorts of rules and regulations on me that itself doesn’t even have to follow, and can change whenever it wants!
Imagine I had to create 10 units of value in my school to produce the output for my goals. Imagine now that this other school produces 5 units of value. Nobody would send their kids to the 5 unit school, and it would go out of business - if this were the market we’re talking about.
But the state can just continue forcing you to use their school and take your money to pay for its failure, and I’m forced to charge you too much for you to send your kids to my school because of government restrictions and the fact that their school even exists in the first place.
I PROMISE YOU that if government education was weened out across the next 50-100 years and the private sector came in to fill in the gaps, education would improve dramatically and the cost would go down, not up.
Government is fundamentally always the problem because all the government is is a big gun everyone is arguing over (which is what politics is) who gets to wield.
My proposition is that there shouldn’t even BE an argument over who gets to wield the gun. The ONLY rational purpose of the gun is to stop people from murdering, raping, robbing, and defrauding, assaulting, etc. That’s it.
Just because I didn’t type out a 30 page dissertation does not mean my ideas are inchoate. You sound like quite a pompous and arrogant person.
Everyone is getting so close to the correct answer to the correct problem with all of this illegal immigration stuff. I’ll explain the problem and solution.
The problem - people say, is that people with different ideas from our own can come into a given government and vote to change the rules. The solution then is that illegal immigration is bad.
The true problem is that there is a given government where you can vote to control other people at all. Do away with that and you did away with the problem. Then anyone can live anywhere they like so long as they do so without violating the will of others (not murdering, stealing, raping, or defrauding.)
Governments are and have always been the actual problem. This isn’t complicated.
Look, you can live next door to me so long as you bought my neighbors house with their consent. If you try to attack me or my family in any way, I will defend myself. If you think my not believing in Allah is bad and you want to kill me, I will kill you in self defense. If you think it is bad but won’t attack me and my family, we can coexist.
The problem is that if you can come here and usurp an already evil and corrupt system (all governments are this) and use that system to create a law saying that I should be killed because I do not believe in Allah, thus sending government thugs to my home to carry out that deed, that is a massive problem and the culprit is not only you for being evil, but the government for existing in a state in which an evil person can contribute to an evil act of such magnitude, through the hand of the state.
This isn’t complicated.
I’ve actually fought my entire life against the “game” of business. I don’t like the lingo, I don’t like the corporate nonsense, and I don’t like how business in general is conducted. I mostly work by myself. I’ve simply learned some skills that let me produce value for businesses so they want to give me a paycheck, but even then it’s always an ongoing challenge because anyone can be removed from a role at any time and for any reason.
I work high up in large business, so I know how it works.
Let’s say you’re correct, so what? Let’s say I have $10,000 to invest. I notice that the electronics sector is a good place to invest based upon recent trends, so I want to invest there. I do some research and conclude I will either invest in Apple, or Samsung.
If I choose Apple and they give me a 5% return on investment but Samsung gives me 8%, I will invest with Samsung. My money isn’t a charity, it’s an investment.
I am relying on the company to do the best job that they can to provide me with a return on my investment because I would actually LOSE money on my investment, and if I keep losing money, that would be quite irrational of me to keep investing, wouldn’t it?
And if Samsung ends up getting 70% of the investment and Apple only 30%, Apple is going to go out of business, and it should. This would fundamentally mean that Samsung is the superior business in that sector and Apple is doing so poorly that it should not exist.
Investors by the way do not obtain a fixed percentage of profit from a company’s income statement. What they receive depends on a myriad of things like earnings through dividends, equity appreciation, interest rates, type of investments, etc.
Publicly traded companies have benefits over private. They for instance, can produce large amounts of money through selling stock or bond issuing, and shareholders being able to easily buy/sell shares gives good data on company value. Private businesses on the other hand often have more limit on raising funds, so it can make it very challenging, if not impossible, for private companies in some sectors to compete with publicly traded ones. Keep in mind it’s also more complicated than that.
I can give you an example from my business life as well. About 5 years ago a mid-market business (let’s just say around 5 billion in annual revenue) was bought by a private equity firm. The reason was the business was failing. If not for private equity, the business likely would have died.
Through private equity and their investor base, the business is still afloat and doing even better. Private equity was able to invest in the business to make it more profitable, but they don’t want to do that with nothing to gain. The goal in that investment is they make enough of a return in the future that they made a profit off the endeavor. It’s a risk - the firm could have invested billions only to see nothing but a loss. Do that too often and the entire firm would fail and thus, close.
A lot of terminations were done too, but new people were also brought in and a lot of changes were made.
But without giving to that investment, the business would have failed and 100% of its employees would have been without a job. This business currently employs over 10,000 people, mind you.
This isn’t quite how it works. Generally in medium to large businesses - meaning at least a billion a year in annual revenue - oftentimes how it works is a given business unit (BU) will be given a budget. This is usually based on analysis and projections based on the previous fiscal years as well as projections on growth goals.
The VP of that BU will need to spread that budget across their unit as best they can. This will include everything from promotions to new hires. Keep in mind that it could cost a business $160 an hour to hire one full time employee who only makes $50 an hour, all things depending. In many roles, it can take a year or more to get a new hire up to speed in their new role. At $160 an hour, that’s $332,800 against your budget and that first year will not recoup 100% of the potential output of that new hire who will likely not be putting out their fullest until around a year or more, so you’re looking at what more or less accounts to over a quarter of a million just to train a new employee for one year so they can start putting out the same level of work as someone of their level should be.
Then consider if you’re an international company. The business I work for for example is in 60 different countries. All of those countries have different regulatory practices that require a lot out of the HR business unit(s). Some countries have regulatory requirements that force the business to utilize software that can account for those regulations that cost millions annually and aren’t even very good, but there isn’t a good alternative, so it’s either pay that or fall out of compliance, which is not really a viable strategy.
If you have 100 employees in your unit and you want to give them all a 3% annual raise but you’re not given a larger budget unless you grow that side of the business (in other words, you self fund), then where are you getting that revenue stream from?
In many cases you have to set up projects yourself from the top-down, such as requesting from your directors that they begin brainstorming ways to generate revenue. This could be through efficiencies, for example. If you were a director in HR for example, maybe you want to take a look at your team’s processes and see what could be automated. That project alone requires expertise, and those kinds of analysts aren’t cheap. Then you need engineers to perform the automation, which are also not cheap, and you need a surefire return on investment there because the end goal might be to free up 25% of your team’s labor through automation of their current processes, but you may not see a return on investment for 2 years, then by the third year the return isn’t even enough to hire an additional 3 people, let alone give an entire team of 100 a 3% raise.
So you might argue then, “well why can’t the business just give that BU a larger budget?” And there are a few answers. I won’t list them all here, but some examples would be is there something your team could be doing to increase their value to warrant taking budget from elsewhere to funnel into your team? Or every year is it just expected that 3% of the budget go into the employees without an ounce of those employees providing any additional value? To seriously simplify, if the business makes $100 and they pay $50 to their employees and $30 to their shareholders and $20 is reinvested in the company, why should the business pay the employees 60%? HOW do they pay them 60%? They have to take it from the shareholders or the reinvestment, and take too much from the reinvestment and your competition will put you out of business, and take too much from the shareholders and they will invest with your competitors - see the problem?
Many employees don’t understand that they have to increase their perceived value to warrant more, and few do.
Never. I literally never use cheats. I do not even use mods.