sukulaku

You know laws are something written by rulers, and you know morals are not.

Punishing people for not adhering to a particular law is not necessarily morally legitimate. Smoking weed is a prime example.

You know those concepts are different, so you're intentionally conflating things, which means you're a troll/sophist.

> On aggregate, I think we're past the point of "just about right"

That's a ridiculous idea in the reality we live in.

> IMO we need to trim regulations here and there

Who's "we"?

> Sure, US democracy is badly implemented, but that doesn't mean the idea is inherently flawed.

If you believe the act of dropping a piece of paper into a box actually affects what a politician can do, I've got a bridge to sell you. That's what it would take for voting to actually affect something, otherwise you're just engaging in a pointless ritual.

Of course it's only pointless on the voter's part. People believing in the idea that subjects have a say in how they're ruled sure as hell benefits the rulers!

> I just object to libertarians pretending they can avoid it

In fact, I've avoided all non-governmental forms of coercion all my life!

I'm sure you can distinguish between contracts and rights, so what exactly are you on about?

> We don't need to; we already know how it looks like.

So you think we're now experiencing too little draconian legislation then?

> externalities are not handled well by entities that, by definition, have no incentive to care about them

Entities like rulers, perhaps? You know "campaign contributions" are an euphemism for bribes, don't you?

When the people who you think are preventing externalities get bribed, they actually have an incentive to not care about them.

> You can call them "rulers" if you like, but then you'd be ignoring the concept of democracy.

What exactly am I ignoring? The idea that you can affect something by dropping a piece of paper into a box? That belief is extremely convenient for the people who are in no way bound by that act, you know?

> Except you don't support "voluntary" anything, because you're talking about property rights.

Do you sincerely think the main reason why people don't steal from others is that they'd be punished for it?

> As long as there is scarcity, there will inevitably be coercion in the distribution of resources.

That's probably true in the sense that someone somewhere will rob someone regardless, but.. if you actually have a problem with "coercion in the distribution of resources", then you just can't sanely support the idea of an organization that coerces potentially hundreds of millions of people in how their resources are "distributed".

> And we have a name for contractual agreements with everyone in a society. We call them "laws".

Except that no one asked us if we agreed. Without mutual agreement, there is no contract. In reality, laws are commands that we're punished for disobeying.

Tell me, what's the practical difference between getting punished for disobeying a King's or Emperor's law, and getting punished for disobeying a law written by politicians or bureaucrats somewhere?

Then there's the problem that governments don't actually adhere to their own laws anyway. NSA's surveillance is unconstitutional. That's not a problem for them, but if you disobey laws, you will be punished one way or another.

Who do you think you're kidding?

> as far as I know, in the US police are never given orders to hurt protesters. In theory, they can even get in trouble for doing so. In the other countries you listed, this was official policy.

Well, they don't need orders to hurt protesters. Some of them will actively seek out opportunities for doing so, because that's what they signed up for. Those would be the psychopaths, by the way.

Yes, in theory they can get in trouble for hurting people, but in practice we all know they don't.

> The final blow was a court ruling that said they have to clear out. (The wording was a bit more subtle, but that's what Wikipedia is for.)

I have no clue if that's accurate, but it sure would have been convenient for Wall Street.

When you get downvoted on HN for arguing against freedom, you just know you've screwed up pretty bad.. :p

> Forces are always present that create instability, so we need to continually make corrections by pushing back in the right direction. Tipping to far towards any ideology can cause catastrophic failure.

By "instability" do you mean draconian legislation like SOPA / PIPA / CISPA / NDAA / TPP / TTIP and all the other nasty shit we're supposed to keep "pushing back" on, because otherwise they'll just inflict it all on us, and then it's too bad because we kind-of-sort-of asked for it by voting in the bums and not resisting.. ? :P

Let's hope we never experience whatever catastrophic failure would follow from pushing back too successfully!

With whatever parties happen to be involved. No one knows, because those circumstances don't currently exist anywhere on the planet.