Would it answer your question if I told you that when I read Snow Crash, I didn’t see the “burbclaves” as dystopic but utopic?
Yep, it means I understand the concept.
Law is agreed upon by BOTH PARTIES in LIEU of physical force. That’s what it’s there for. It’s a way to resolve disputes without bloodshed. In fact, in Ancient Greece (law has been around for a while as an idea), arbitration was used to settle disputes between states so that internal wars wouldn’t break out in the greater empire and thus weaken it.
You really have this problem with people telling you what to do. This is a serious question, are you still living with your parents or something? Because the fact is, the law isn’t there to just tell you what to do. (Which you are waaaaay too focused on.) It’s there to help provide boundaries, resolve disputes, write contracts, and more. It’s designed to help a society with differing social goals function more smoothly, and also levelly deal with crime within that society when it occurs.
You may not realize this, but by living in a community, you agree to adhere to that community’s laws. (Like living in a family, you have to adhere to the household rules.) Punishment for crimes may involve force, but not necessarily - in fact, some crimes result in only a warning. You have a really twisted view of what “law” as a concept is, and I have no idea where it comes from. All I can tell you is that it’s really, really wrong.
I did try to hunt down a source for your “quote”, and there doesn’t seem to be one. I’m not surprised. What you’re actually talking about when you say,
is that you oppose democracy, not law.
I have not agreed to most of the laws that I am held accountable to. Your basic assertion is in error.
I have neither agreed to those laws, heck, nor have I consented to the system of government which allows others to (claim to) make decisions on my behalf. But, I was born into this slavery, and there is no easy way to declare myself actually “free” of some state “owning” me.
No, I do not.
I was born into this “community” you speak of, and was given no choice in the matter but to adhere to its rules. There is not, in point of fact, any place a person could presently go (easily) where one can be free of other people “telling them what to do”, because the statists have grabbed all the land with any resources on it.
It’s also not just a question of whether or not someone wants a person to operate in a certain place. As I already explained, in cities, city planners have the job of figuring out how many of each type of business their community can support. City planning laws restrict those numbers because of economic issues.
It’s not a question of whether or not they like the guy, it’s a question of whether or not a business can succeed. Banks won’t loan for purchase, rent or renovation if there’s too much competition for the same type of business in a small area. So, that’s why all those McDonald’s are so neatly spaced in cities. They aren’t allowed to be placed in such a way that they compete with one another.
You need to learn more about how businesses are developed before you keep arguing this point.
I gather that Somalia is operating essentially as a Libertarian utopia. I’m sure I speak for more than just myself in saying, good luck with your move!
You should stop acting so condescending. I know full well how businesses are developed.
And as I explained, I think that businesses can decide for themselves if they think they can make a profit in a given area. If they do so at the expense of the existing businesses, then those businesses can try to improve themselves to regain the market share they lose. If the community can support “N” of a business and there are now “N+1” then the weakest of them will go out of business, and this is a good thing, yielding stronger more competitive, more profitable businesses.
Ah, yes, the “why don’t you go to Somalia” trope. I think I speak more than just myself when I say “plonk”.
You have just proven that you have absolutely no concept of the reality of life.
“Utopia” as written by Thomas More, is an unattainable concept. In fact, the idea is satiric - mocking the very attempt to achieve that goal.
The “burbclaves” also had their own internal by-laws. They just separated from culture as a whole. They even had a police force. They weren’t lawless.
No, it isn’t. You’ve no doubt said the Pledge of Allegiance. If you’ve agreed to honor the flag, you’ve agreed to honor the Constitution and all laws derived from it.
That sentence is flatly insulting to people who have ever truly lived in slavery.
People cross into the U.S. with feet bloodied and under fear of death and realizing they might just be sent back across the border to the South - if you’re truly this offended by U.S. law, you should be able to pack a bag, get a visa, and buy a plane ticket. (I’m totally serious.)
You clearly don’t. I really doubt you’ve ever started or run one.
And yet when enough people hate someone’s skin color or sexual orientation, you think the latter should find a new place to live, if they can manage it. You’re complaining about a safeguard preventing a majority from imposing its will on people.
I don’t know. You’re actually talking about what people should be able to do with their property in the absence of laws, as if what people can own and how others interact with it isn’t entirely defined by our agreed laws. And you’ve made this fictional conception absolute and insisted on viewing all life in terms of it.
So we see anti-discrimination laws don’t harm anyone by your own standards, and have made life better for a great many people. But it doesn’t matter; they don’t put property first, so they are not just bad but abominations, even as much so as the Jim Crow laws.
How much more rejoinder than “why would anyone want to follow this philosophy when trying to apply it gives horrible outcomes in practice” is needed?
It tells me you have next to no fantasy when you can not imagine some quite catastrophic scenarios. Try to combine that with what already happened, e.g. the behavior of pre-breakup Standard Oil. Add some kind of debt or similar way that ties you down and limits your mobility - that factor can be even that your area owner also owns pretty much all the areas wide and far, and the other choices aren’t any better. You may start with a little plot of your land, and then lose it when things get a bit tough - the new owner was better off in the beginning, had enough reserves to weather the crisis, and then buys your estate for pennies on a dollar. And you meanwhile accrued debt in order to just survive (remember, tough times… and you can lose it all with just one such event, while the big buyer can wait while you are weathering a crisis after crisis until you hit the one you won’t get through), and the contractual obligations prevent you from leaving the 'clave, even if there would be a better one within 3000 miles.
With Big Money in the game, things get dystopic pretty fast.
And they were all privately owned by corporations, and people chose which corporation’s rules (and citizenship) they wanted, with those corporations competing for citizens, and it being trivial to change citizenship from one burbclave to another.
Oaths made under duress in school by uneducated minors are not binding in any way.
And go where? Some other nation-state that believes it has the authority to tell individuals what to do? Like I said… the statists grabbed all the good land with natural resources.
You mean the corporation that also wielded enormous political power to use the State as an instrument in furthering its rise?
We’ve got that mobility limitation now, it’s called “statehood”. I can’t simply pack up and move to another country and live there without begging some company over there to vouch for me, and sponsor my getting residency there, and – even after all that – it’s still the same ol’ statist rule, just with a different set of rules and a different flag waving overhead.
So, you weren’t 18 when you graduated high school? More than likely you have repeated that oath as an adult, either at a sports event or at a school or elsewhere. I’d be really surprised if you haven’t.
That’s up to you. You make a point about the fact that people within burbclaves could:
So start researching other places - or don’t - because what you clearly want to do is just sit here and gripe about the fact that every law isn’t going to be catering to your wishes. Well, guess what? In a fair society, they won’t. Not every law caters to me. In fact, a lot of them don’t, but I’m OK with that for a lot of them. The ones I see as important, I work on changing. That’s how to be a responsible citizen.
You can have your own enclave here in the U.S., but you need to realize that you’re spoiled.
You want it both ways, you want to have every rule written to cater to you, AND you want to not have to live as a hermit. You don’t get both. You have to choose.
I have an uncle who is a curmudgeon, and has a place in New Mexico that can go off-grid at any time if he so chooses. He has a well, solar, and greenhouses - so he can grow food year-round. You are just full of excuses, and they really have no basis in reality. If you truly were so opposed to the reality of U.S. law, you’d already be on a piece of land, working it for yourself.
There are many failed states now, where the centralized government no longer holds any significant power over vast part of the state territory. May be as close to your version of paradise as it could get on this rock. Or may not, your call.
Why? Maybe because it shown that it beats the alternative?
Ol’ Rock used the resources he had at his disposal. Sometimes it is about buying a senator or three, sometimes about hiring a private army, sometimes about buying enough railroads to deny goods to competitors and starve them out. Resources used depend on the sociopolitical landscape.
Now, for the sake of argument, imagine your burbclaves are now almost all bought up, one group by Standard Oil, the other one by Comcast; the two corporations hold a merger talk, and the few standalone places that hold their own are cut from both telecommunication grid and shipments of fuel, until they “freely decide” to join and subject themselves under the Benevolent Corporate Rules.
Which, while annoying, is not all that bad in context of the US (which is big enough for quite some roamin’) and the EU (which is also fairly big). And the options are even wider if you are willing to go a little low-profile extra-legal.
All of which is subject to the “authority” of the US or the EU.
So you violate another nation-state’s “laws” and risk them exercising force to get thrown in a prison for a decade or three.
Three felonies a day. You are already violating a number that you aren’t even aware of. Don’t step on other people’s toes and you will get away with a lot.
Some time ago, on an eBay far away, I saw an aircraft carrier for sale. You can have your own rules in international waters, it’s all within reach.
So only if you’re super-rich and can afford an aircraft carrier can you escape the control of statists? Wooooooonderful.
You will need a lot of crew. Crowdsource the money.
You started this thread by saying people who find themselves ostracized by property owners should move someplace better, as if that were something everyone could find or afford to do. Now you’re complaining the world hasn’t offered you an affordable place that is what you want. I assume you’re ignoring the irony?
Well why don’t you? They’re not going to prevent you. If you feel people should move if they don’t like how they’re treated where they live, what’s keeping you here?
Or do you like having roads, a functioning banking system backed by government insurance, a food safety inspection system, and a system more sophisticated than “he who has the guns/gold makes the rules”?
You are no longer dependent on your parents, so where you were born no longer controls you. Have you no gumption? Go, fly, find your place in the world, far from the oppressive privileges of living in this country.