Recent comments

I suspect even in tribal societies, there was some specialization. Anyway, we have to deal with what is, not with what was. Also, I don't buy your argument that specialization implies hierarchy. One can over-specialize, that's true. And one can also live in nature and make one's own clothing, weapons and shelter. Most people would probably prefer to stay somewhere between the two extremes, and who's to say they are wrong? How are you going to stop them doing that?

Paul, Why not look to the justice system as observed in existent non-state societies? Max Gluckman referred to the complex system observed amongst African and South American tribal groups as "Peace in the Feud" -http://past.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/1/1.extract The concept is similar to von Notten's observations of contemporary rural Somalia in "Law of the Somali's". This system also doubtless predates the written system of Wer and Bot in early Anglo-saxon England-where, by the way, redress of grievance through feud was acceptable, even officially despite a rudimentary government. I believe that I've read examples of this sort of organization in rural India, and certainly Pakistan, as well-though at the moment I can't recall the source. I would suggest in your example that this man "who was respected by all for his wisdom and fairness." is such in part at least because he is part of the Raj. Also, while Corbet certainly has a point about red-tape bleeding all involved white(by intent, by the way if we look to history), I wonder if he saw, or was aware of cases where that "fairness and wisdom" failed and the parties involved disagreed with the outcome? The biggest question, it seems to me, in evaluating a system of redressing grievance is who has the ability to bring overwhelming force to the table-in this case, as in "red tape" justice, it is the Raj without question. At least officially. Without that central authority, everything becomes much more fluid, and much more interesting. Without a central adjudicator able to muster such force, then it is the balance of force between the two parties and their protective groups(families, friends, and potentially others depending upon local custom) to ensure that the matter is resolved-depending of course on local custom as well, there is little predictability in this system. I recommend Gluckman's work highly, along with Sahlins(referenced frequently by someone else here) if you want to really explore the interaction of humans without "red-tape". I enjoyed the article, thanks!

Playing Soviet Political Officer? Da, comrade, Suverans doesn't like the information presented.

I'd just like to say that I'm thoroughly enjoying watching these epic debates between proponents of anarcho-primitivism and market anarchism, and I hope they continue indefinitely. I think such dialogue is particularly appropriate for a site with Thoreau in the masthead.

"...you're well part of it too, whether you want to be or not..." ~ WhiteIndian Why because you say I am? Who the f**k are you to say what I am a "part of"? I am no more a "part of" your "agricultural city-Statism" than is a man who happens to be caught in the middle of riot is a "part of" that riot. Yes, the riot very likely will affect him, but the fact that it affects him in no way makes him a "part of" the riot; and anyone who accuses him of being a "part of" that riot, without a shred of evidence, is a false accuser, i.e. a goddamned liar.

There is no voluntaryist agriculture. It's well-established in the field of anthropology and archeology that domestication (proto-agriculture) greatly increases violence. Richard Manning sums it up accurately: "Agriculture creates government." The very first sentence in anthropologists Stanley Diamond's book In search of the primitive: a critique of civilization is: "Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home." A voluntaryist agricultural civilization is as realistic as a voluntaryist Soviet communism. In fact, much of what you believe is rather like the Marxists, as is noted in Marxism of the Right by Robert Locke. I think you're as capable of inventing a voluntary civilization as the communists, who promised much the same, and ignored much of the same evidence against such ever happening. - "...not really having to worry about starving, freezing, or being eaten by a tiger..." Still parroting the Hobbesian mythology that is an apology for Statism? Really, that makes you a blatant liar. It's untrue. It's been debunked by the empirical data gleaned from anthropology, ethnology, evolutionary biology, archeology. The agricultural revolution shortened man's life by half. Now there are a multitude of Diseases of Civilization never seen before agricutural city-Statism. I'd say there is something to be said for not really having to worry about being sick or dying from famine. (Yeah, foragers rarely have famine, agriculturalists frequently so.) The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race Jared Diamond, UCLA School of Medicine Discover Magazine, May 1, 1987. Pages 64-66. http://www.mnforsustain.org/food_ag_worst_mistake_diamond_j.htm - "...live together in large societies without government..." So unlikely, I say Impossible. Never has been done, and it's as likely as conjuring an animated corpse. You know why too: span-of-control and Dunbar's Number, as covered in attorney Jeff Well's book "A Theory of Power." http://www.jeffvail.net/2005/03/theory-of-power-online.html - "...their lack of existence, present or past, is irrelevant." Sure. Just like the absence of animated corpses is irrelevant in your Wishing for a Zombie. Maybe you can do it with enough Cargo-Cult techno-fetishism! Right after power too cheap to meter. - "Elevating non-humans to human status..." You can congratulate yourself for sounding exactly like a Freeper Fundamentalist. (or an Austrian economist; the differences in agricultural city-Statist political flavors is greatly exaggerated amongst them.) You still swallow, at least in part, the monotheistic hierarchy myth civilization invented (even if a secularized version) as an apologetic for domination. GOD MAN WOMAN (submits to husband) ANIMALS (submits to husbandry) NATURE (valuable only if used by the hierarchy) Fact: humans are animals. Fact: other animals also demonstrate morality. See "Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals" by Frans B. M. de Waal, Harvard University Press.

"Egalitarianism simply means equal socio-political power. No government, no bosses, no "lording-over." Only in egalitarian Non-State societies can one be a sovereign individual." Such a simple truth you state here. But then you complicate things by insisting that I, along with dozens or hundreds or thousands of others cannot implement this simple idea in WHATEVER MANNER we wish. Even if we choose to plant seeds in the ground and keep animals for food and labor. And build houses. And learn particular trades. And develop a trading system based on exchanging commodities. And any of a great number of VOLUNTARY means of organizing society. You criticize voluntary behavior and interactions, which makes your arguments opinion and nothing more. Opinions noted. The sentence I quoted above is my foundational premise, and I parrot no other agriculturist city-Statist errors. I attach zero baggage to the statement, as it stands quite nicely all by itself. You insist on stapling on caveats and criticizing the efforts of people who simply want to live according to this premise. I am not Mises, Rothbard, or Rand, so critiquing their flaws and attributing them to me is unwarranted. You seem to fall into the trap of believing that a city of 1,000,000 people is really a single coherent entity. There's that old statist-speak and ideology leaking in. Let me assure you that I interact with way fewer than Dunbar's number of human beings, as do most folks. All these little egalitarian groups overlap and interact with each other, and from the outside this set of clumps, numbering 1,000,000, seems to be an unwieldy large group of humans called a city. But it is not. Your insistence that each group of 150 people must be physically separated from each and every other such group in order to form a bunch of egalitarian societies doesn't compute with me. The fact that you ignore the thousands and thousands and thousands of very real benefits (aids to human comfort and survival) that are the result of the division of labor and voluntary hierarchical systems in large cooperative societies is also a bit strange. I get the "untroubled life of the free man in nature" thing, but there is something to be said for not really having to worry about starving, freezing, or being eaten by a tiger. I am perhaps naive enough to believe that human societies are in the process of evolving toward the time when we can actually live together in large societies without government, and arguments about their lack of existence, present or past, is irrelevant. And if most of the current ideas about land ownership are flawed or downright unjust—and I agree with you that this is probably the case—why do you insist that there is no possible solution? The moment a man decides to harvest seeds from a plant and place them into the Earth to create more plants, all is lost? Stop yourself. If you reject the idea of "enslaving" plants and animals and "raping" the Earth by purposely putting seeds in the ground in an orderly fashion instead of letting them fall naturally, then that's fine. Elevating non-humans to human status, as if they were moral agents, is not much of an argument IMO. Yer gonna eat 'em one way or another, so consistency cannot be part of your position here.

Legalistic spell casting, "word magic," or legalistic spell casting. Membership in the zoo of agricultural city-Statism (civilization) isn't voluntary, you're well part of it too, whether you want to be or not; it's enforced by aggression. If you earn enough money, or travel enough public roads, I think you have a good chance of learning the hard way of how convincing your "withdrawal" is to law enforcement. "Officer, am I free to gambol*" isn't begging, it's a literary device for teaching libertarian types who say , "officer, am I free to go?" how Non-State foragers would view our Gambol Lockdown society. P.S. , If you haven't caught onto that yet, I'm against agriculturalism. Tilling the soil is THE primary problem. The Original Affluent Society didn't do back-breaking toil; work is a curse (as recognized in the Genesis mythology of the "Fall of Man," i.e., the "Agricultural Revolution.") __________________________ * Regarding the word "gambol:" Why agriculture? In retrospect, it seems odd that it has taken archaeologists and paleontologists so long to begin answering this essential question of human history. What we are today—civilized, city-bound, overpopulated, literate, organized, wealthy, poor, diseased, conquered, and conquerors—is all rooted in the domestication of plants and animals. The advent of farming re-formed humanity. In fact, the question "Why agriculture?" is so vital, lies so close to the core of our being that it probably cannot be asked or answered with complete honesty. Better to settle for calming explanations of the sort Stephen Jay Gould calls "just-so stories." In this case, the core of such stories is the assumption that agriculture was better for us. Its surplus of food allowed the leisure and specialization that made civilization. Its bounty settled, refined, and educated us, freed us from the nasty, mean, brutish, and short existence that was the state of nature, freed us from hunting and gathering. Yet when we think about agriculture, and some people have thought intently about it, the pat story glosses over a fundamental point. This just-so story had to have sprung from the imagination of someone who never hoed a row of corn or rose with the sun for a lifetime of milking cows. GAMBOLING ABOUT PLAIN AND FOREST, HUNTING AND LIVING OFF THE LAND IS FUN. That's all one needs to know to begin a rethinking of the issue. The fundamental question was properly phrased by Colin Tudge of the London School of Economics: “The real problem, then, is not to explain why some people were slow to adopt agriculture but why anybody took it up at all.” ~Richard Manning, Against the Grain, p. 24

It's difficult for you to stay on topic, isn't it? I made no mention of "fake bills, bogus property liens and bizarre court papers". There's no *word magic* in withdrawing from membership in your "agricultural city-Statism", unless you deem the American declaration of independence, *word magic*. And, the *just* right doesn't require "a pinch of shrew spleen"; it does require your being what you say you are, something, of course, that you can't do, because the evil "agricultural city-Statists" won't let you, no matter how much, or how often, you beg them with your own *word magic*, "Officer, am I free to gambol about plain and forest?" Sheeeeesh! Get up off your knees, WhiteIndian, it doesn't become a man to act that way. Here's a definition for you. "Agriculturalism, also known as the School of Agrarianism, the School of Agronomists, the School of Tillers, and in Chinese as the Nongjia, was an early agrarian Chinese philosophy that advocated peasant utopian communalism and egalitarianism."

The People who support division of labor — specialization in violence was one of the first instances — and hierarchy (both are gushingly rhapsodized in Austrian religio-economic literature) are getting exactly what they asked for.

"Nobody can know everything there is to know in the world." Actually, people once knew by 13 or 14 everything they needed to know in the world to get along just fine; they were sovereign individuals. "Historically, people in non-state societies are relatively autonomous and sovereign. They generate their own subsistence with little or no assistance from outside sources. They bow to no external political leaders." ~Elman Service * NON-STATE AND STATE SOCIETIES http://faculty.smu.edu/rkemper/cf_3333/Non_State_and_State_Societies.pdf "So, to compensate..." Being that there was nothing for which to compensate, this is city-Statist "just-so" make-believe story, promulgated by agricultural city-Statist worldwide, from Marx to Mises. "...we specialize. We have created a division of labor..." Indeed, we have. Specialization and division of labor is one of 5 defining primary characteristics of agricultural city-Statism (civilization.) "...which is a good thing." A good thing if you're high on the hierarchy, because it benefits hierarchy. Libertarians should keep in mind that one of the first specializations after the plowboy was the soldier. In fact, sword and plowshare are both really the same -- catastrophic destruction of Mother Nature and her children. Division of labor means specialization in violence. Which suits the purposes of hierarchy just fine. Thesis #11: Hierarchy is an unnecessary evil. by Jason Godesky | 21 October 2005 http://rewild.info/anthropik/thirty/

Hocus pocus legalistic "word magic." You have to get it *just* right, with a pinch of shrew spleen and always, always Black's Law Dictionary. It always works -- until it doesn't. 'Paper terrorist' headed to prison Anti-government radical gets 5 years for filing bogus liens, paperwork By Adam Bosch, Middletown Times Herald-Record December 12, 2011 http://www.timesunion.com/local/article/Paper-terrorist-headed-to-prison... The only sovereign individuals on the planet are those who live in egalitarian Non-State sociopolitical typologies, bands and tribes. If you live in a hierarchical chiefdom or agricultural city-Statism (civilization,) you're just another brick in the wall.

Filing an income tax return is not consent. You are threatened with violence if you do not, just as you are threatened with violence (under PENALTY of perjury) if you file it inaccurately. It is well established in law and reason that consent given under duress is non-binding; i.e., not consent. Really, this is so simple it's astounding to me that people make this claim. Read Spooner's "No Treason" for a thorough demolishing of this nonsense. "Have you ever tried it?" Yes, and my bank account was emptied by the IRS completely without my involvement. I have friends and know of people who are either currently languishing in a cage, or have in the past for the "crime" of saying "no thank you" to the demands of the IRS. This isn't some intellectual fantasy, real people have their lives ruined by the IRS all the time. Paul is completely correct. No, it is not always immediate. But eventually, those who refuse to comply come face to face with the iron fist, the violence, that is the State.

Which seven of your fine senators voted nay on this? We have the answer. Nay IA Harkin, Thomas [D] Nay KY Paul, Rand [R] Nay OK Coburn, Thomas [R] Nay OR Merkley, Jeff [D] Nay OR Wyden, Ron [D] Nay UT Lee, Mike [R] Nay VT Sanders, Bernard [I] http://www.govtrack.us/congress/vote.xpd?vote=s2011-218

Ending "city-Statism" may be "simple", but it is most certainly not "easy"? easy adjective▸not difficult to do, or not needing much work ~ MacMillan Dictionary

Fine business on the Sahlins tome, especially the chapter "The Original Affluent Society." I think it is much like "On the Origin of Species." Humans have indeed built culture. Perhaps it is historically inevitable. We also have developed the Sixth Great Extinction. Is suicide inevitable? We are the Gods about which we created myths. And we'll either suicide ourselves via nuclear weapons or other Collapse, or learn to attenuate our lust to dominate the planet. Frankly, I think it'll go nuclear, and our specie will be like bacteria in a wine barrel. Catabolic collapse, blip in time. 22 generations from now, Stone Age, and my children's children will be hunting the genetics I'm preserving/"improving" (basically, re-wilding, as best one can do besieged by a Monsanto wasteland and its city-lyzed hoards) after I (or somebody) cuts the fences on "my" land.

I kindly addressed your points, so go fly a kite. You don't meet my needs for a fair intellectual fight. Hint: tipping over the chess board isn't "winning." At this point, you seem to rushed, and too immature, and very likely, too enslaved, too addicted, to techo-salvationism. You said good-bye once; when can you make it stick?

I've already written here. But thanks for the invitation, that was a kindness after our non-lethal intellectual "mano y mano" sparring the last couple days, (matching the generally non-lethal "conflict" -- or "counting coup" -- of most paleolithic societies; I trust you take that a compliment.) I've got lots of land. By your temporary city-lyzed rules. I've converted (and am still converting much of) it to paleolithic oak savannah. Oak savannah and Amazon Rainforest were both human-created gardens. Did you know that? Read Mann. Here: "Before it became the New World, the Western Hemisphere was vastly more populous and sophisticated than has been thought—an altogether more salubrious place to live at the time than, say, Europe. New evidence of both the extent of the population and its agricultural advancement leads to a remarkable conjecture: the Amazon rain forest may be largely a human artifact" March 2002 ATLANTIC MAGAZINE http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2002/03/1491/2445/ I'm ready to cut the fences in 5 or 500 years (it won't be 500) keeping the close-to-paleolithic genetics I've nurtured. I am White. I understand the Greek (actually pre-Greek) mythology of agriculture=Rape of Demeter (and her daughter Persephone,) goddess of agriculture and grain. Of agriculture I have repented. I once was an ignorant agriculturalist. I've repented acres and acres back to natural fertility. Farmers, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN. Farming is like fiat money. Of temporary boom, then the Four Horsemen, century after century (even in NA; Apocolypto.) I am Indian. I communicate, literally (it's scientifically possible, see Frans B. M. de Waal) to Mr. Crow and Mrs. Squirrel and their spirit is mine, in the same evolutionary biological tree of life. http://TOLweb.org/tree/ I have fallen under "The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World." (Abrams, 1997) I am White Indian. The White Indians of Colonial America Author(s): James Axtell Source: The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Jan., 1975), pp. 55-88 Published by: Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, VA www.shsu.edu/~jll004/colonial_summer09/whiteindians.pdf

I can't dispute your points here on a logical or linguistic basis. But I think you mistake my aim here. People (including myself) are not perfectly logical or consistent, and I don't expect them to be, either. I prefer to work with them as they are, not as I wish they would be. They may be feeling more like a prisoner these days. I'm hoping they see where this feeling comes from. Making no other changes than letting anarchists go is a way for them to restore their liberty. I don't care if they think through the implications. I don't care what label they stick on themselves, and I certainly do not want to go to the effort of convincing them they are really anarchists even if you or I might think they really are so. There is no profit in it. All I want is a trade: tolerance for a small number of people who consider themselves anarchists, in return for restoring that feeling of liberty. It's not my job to improve people or to make them logical; it's their job. It's my job to get liberty for myself if I can manage it. If they want they can observe what happens in a really free society, and profit from that knowledge. Or not. It's entirely up to them. Actually, to correct you on one point, I am not assuming that letting anarchists go is necessarily accompanied by putting down the government cudgel entirely. In fact I am assuming that most likely liberals and conservatives still will continue to battle over the election process, only leaving anarchists out of it. I'm not suggesting a very large change for them, but a very small one. Just tolerance, that's all.

WhiteIndian. I will parse out what you have outlined in this post, and I believe you have claimed far too much for your view as will be shown. If you wish to dialog and address these points just as I am now addressing them in the sequence you raised them, I will be happy to continue. If you cannot address each point as I did and either concede to me or correct me, it will not meet my need for a two-way conversation. Our disagreement comes from a lack of checking your premises. I'm arguing primarily from empirical data. • WhiteIndian, a non-combative, inoffensive way to make this statement (and more accurate) would be to say: “We both operate from different premises, and we each weigh more heavily different sets of empirical data.” You offend when you accuse others of not checking premises and of not using empirical data. ______________________________________ The concept of private property developed culturally after humans began to control and contain nature, that is, "domestication." (Domestication is the proto-agricultural domination of plants and animals.) • A historian would say that there is very little evidence to determine either the existence of private property or its meaning in a pre-historical world. Perhaps a more accurate way of saying this would be as follows: “Some but not all anthropologists hypothesize that …, but it is open to refutation.” • Further, one could say that the concept of private property could exist before domestication. If I catch a rabbit while hunter-gathering, I would consider that it was mine to roast if I caught it and thus my property. No domestication required, yet we have property. _______________________________________ As John Zerzan, whose work is referenced with scholarly references almost to a fault, states so succinctly in his Twilight of the Machines: "Domestication erects the rigid boundaries of surplus and private property. with concomitant possessiveness. enmity, and struggle for ownership." • Zersan’s tatements about “rigid boundaries” are polemical and political, not scientific. Let us keep to description. First, it is a non sequitur to make that statement followed by the claim (not proven) that having something put away for a rainy day creates a rigid boundary. But it is true that enmity (caused by envy and high time preference) can follow among those who do not store up for a rainy day. Is Zerzan claiming that unless one lives on the razor-edge of starvation, conflict results? Is starvation preferable to the possibility of envy? And I am not suggesting that people necessarily starved in a primitive world. I know that in the Middle Ages, taxes on peasant were certainly lower than they are now, so I am willing to posit good health and plenty in a primitive society, but such a state of existence absolutely precludes specialization beyond a minimal amount, don’t you agree? _____________________________________ To rephrase Carl von Clausewitz, formal property rights are resource wars by other means. • This is a claim, not a proof. I cannot address non sequiturs without inventing an argument that was not made. ______________________________________ Several anthropological studies show that egalitarian Non-State foraging societies had little or no concept of property. If they did have a concept of property, the property was only those very few things a person would need for his own use for survival. • Property used for survival is still property. You contradict yourself here. _______________________________________ They didn't view themselves as property, and would consider you batshit crazy for feeling the need to. • You are playing upon the equivocal use of the term “property” to draw anger from the reader here. I’ll ignore the insult and try to stick with the topic. I believe that the mere act of either considering or not considering oneself as property is proof that such a being believed he had control over his body. Since this is a pre-historical state of being, you have no basis on which to project your thoughts into his mind (crossing boundaries and claiming to know for him/her). ___________________________________ For the last 8000 years in the agricultural city-State, property has become increasingly abstract, and one may "own" property well beyond any survival needs or even the ability to enjoy. • Many people who wish to impose structures have expanded the concept of property into realms where no scarcity exists – as in the case of intellectual property (IP). I believe with Stephan Kinsella that this is unnecessary, creates scarcity where none existed, a form of monopoly, and unjustified. Similarly patent and copyright. I will assume you are aware of his summary of the thought on this. ____________________________________ I don't have any special knowledge about this; I've just checked my own premises, studied the scholarly literature in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, evolutionary biology, and archeology. • No comment needed. _____________________________________ The conclusion that humans lived in an Original Affluent Society (Sahlins 1972) is as paradigm-shaking to the controlling hierarchy as Darwin's Origin of the Species. (Darwin 1859) Daniel Quinn calls it the Great Remembering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B#The_Great_Remembering Quite a few of us are catching on, which is nice to see. This family did, and made a movie about it: What a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/watch-the-movie/ • I have to assume the Sahlins thesis is one that assumes a world of plenty, which may or may not be true. _____________________________________________________ Now that I have addressed your comments, I will make a few of my own -- not nearly as many. I hope you will first address the points I raised to continue the conversation. I also would like to take up where you ended. I do not know if the authors you cite are familiar with the methodology of the Annales school of history, but it would be useful to consider not just the discipline of anthropology, but other aspects of culture, demographics, science, technology, literature, law, economics, art, religious belief, philosophy, and social organization – just to begin -- when examining a culture. But much of the evidence is lacking in pre-history, so it is a shaky foundation no matter what is posited. Too many academic problems come out of mono-causally based theories and theories based on scant evidence, and this occurs within every discipline that seeks to base a theory on a thin foundation. Anyway, after you have re-addressed the very points you raised, you might want to continue, but please try not to impute insanity, etc. to others -- difficult as it is to resist. Nobody wants that, and it doesn’t meet my needs for mutual respect.

Our disagreement comes from a lack of checking your premises. I'm arguing primarily from empirical data. The concept of private property developed culturally after humans began to control and contain nature, that is, "domestication." (Domestication is the proto-agricultural domination of plants and animals.) As John Zerzan, whose work is referenced with scholarly references almost to a fault, states so succinctly in his Twilight of the Machines: "Domestication erects the rigid boundaries of surplus and private property. with concomitant possessiveness. enmity, and struggle for ownership." To rephrase Carl von Clausewitz, formal property rights are resource wars by other means. Several anthropological studies show that egalitarian Non-State foraging societies had little or no concept of property. If they did have a concept of property, the property was only those very few things a person would need for his own use for survival. They didn't view themselves as property, and would consider you batshit crazy for feeling the need to. For the last 8000 years in the agricultural city-State, property has become increasingly abstract, and one may "own" property well beyond any survival needs or even the ability to enjoy. I don't have any special knowledge about this; I've just checked my own premises, studied the scholarly literature in the fields of anthropology, ethnology, evolutionary biology, and archeology. The conclusion that humans lived in an Original Affluent Society (Sahlins 1972) is as paradigm-shaking to the controlling hierarchy as Darwin's Origin of the Species. (Darwin 1859) Daniel Quinn calls it the Great Remembering. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_B#The_Great_Remembering Quite a few of us are catching on, which is nice to see. This family did, and made a movie about it: What a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com/watch-the-movie/

A good friend of mine has taken note of the threads on this post and had this to add vis-a-vis WhiteIndian. He's much better at using NVC than I am -- especially in the "typing" mode (as opposed to person to person). It will be interesting to see the ripple effects of a good NVC approach, so here goes... "It seems the impasse in dialogue here primarily stemmed from the disagreement with words (and thus concepts) such as "ownership" and "property" which, as WhiteIndian has noted, have been employed by domination structures to rule over people, while people in such structures forward a PR scheme that pretends to be protectors of our persons and property. Observe how many minarchists (from pro-"Constitution" Ron Paul types to Libertarians and Objectivists) believe that government is an organization essential to protecting our individual rights. Without government, no one would respect property!...they contend. I'm guessing that WhiteIndian is feeling dismayed and a bit suspicious, because he wants some reassurance that no domination of people will exist in a society of complete liberty that upholds the sanctity of individual rights (i.e., the freedom to act justly in a social context). As noted, the words "ownership" and "property" seem to trigger a lot of revulsion in him, given their misusage by present and past domination structures. Perhaps he (like all of us, as well) never got his needs for sovereignty, or autonomy, choice, and respect fully met as a child. After all, "property," when it's not considered in the rights-respecting context of freedom, can be a way for individuals within the paradigm of statism to try to gain security in a world of increasingly coerced scarcity. Just look at the sundry controlled markets involving so-called "intellectual property," in which our economy is being stifled in myriad ways (copyright, patent, and trademark litigation galore). Property (your own self being the most personal of property) is definitely a concept that many in our culture are either ambivalent about or outright fear, typically on account of not trusting people's ability to use and/or dispose of said property in the way they want (i.e., in a way that's safe for them and their environment). The part of our conscious mind that makes choices, i.e., selects things from a range of known options, is the root of sovereignty, or self-ownership. Reason and by extension volition (the processes of identifying and integrating information and making decisions) are indeed irrefutable absolutes--any statements to the contrary can't be made without using them. Naturally, as Trevor Gamble has articulated in his new book, when people fully respect this process in themselves and others, they'll have a society of real freedom. Respect for self-ownership and property rights is simply a useful way to convey how we can use our minds in reality to benefit ourselves and others, to bring values into the marketplace without conflict. In other words, nonviolent prosperity."

Drupal dropped off, so I hit publish again, and got a double post. I apologize.

I've read all of Rand's works, and have most of them on my library shelf. I'm well aware of her minarchist diatribe against anarchist "libertarians." I'm well aware of the continued fundamentalist-like infighting between objectivists and libertarians. Still, most political scholars generally lump objectivists, anarcho-capitalists, minarchists, and several other similar political views under the rubric of libertarian, just for the sake of simplicity, because "Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism has been and continues to be a major influence towards the libertarian movement. Many libertarians justify their political views upon aspects of Objectivism," [wiki: Libertarianism and Objectivism] even while understanding the differences between the fundamentalist religio-economic sects. Keep straining at gnats if you must; it doesn't quite prove what you so desperately hope it does. And you never have addressed what brought this all up, so I'll remind you: Why do you suppose you can taunt me with "autistic," yet, when I retort with a scholarly study linking autism and libertarianism, you equate that to Soviet "medicalized" tyranny with...(ahem)..."gas chambers?" Care to explain yourself?