No taxes, no legislature, no democracy -- No state

[Fife]

Not only did it work, it put pirate captains in competition with each other to attract the best crew members. If a particular pirate didn't like the rules offered on ship 'A', they could shop their services to ship 'B', 'C', or 'D' for a better deal.

Like federalism.

Still government.

It's mildly charming the way limited people project their limitations onto the rest of society.
Sure, Hanny.
Since you can't see a difference one obviously doesn't exist.
If it did, you'd see it.
The rest of us are crazy.
You have no blind spots.


(Exactly like Federalism. Ask the Southern States. You can leave when you disagree with the rules, right? Derp)

Well, DB, Hasnas did call man the "imaginative animal" after all.

I'm not positive that Hanna Cyrusarchy passes the Turing Test, but I'll go with it as a working hypothesis. There has to be some reason that people imagine that the state is essential to peaceful and productive living.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

What do you do if your weed delivery service that started out great turns into a big pain in the ass, e.g., they are late, they send the wrong thing or a fake thing, they mess up billing, and are non-responsive about the problems they create?

Petition the authorities for a redress of grievances.

If they didn't exist, we would have to ensure the smooth transaction of goods and services with threats of personal violence.

Fortunately, it doesn't come up because we live in a well ordered society where we give the monopoly of violence to the state, and my weed delivery service can operate smoothly and cheaply without passing on the overhead created by employing a private army for protection to me.

So you would do all of that, and meanwhile keep on using the same shitty skunk delivery company?

How well-ordered you are!

I suppose I could get all of my weed delivered by sovereign citizens and pirates. I'll bet the customer service would go through the roof.

[DBTrek]

Watching folks grapple with the reality that collective self-governance has existed outside of an imposed government is fascinating. I thought it was pretty amazing myself when I read into it. But I didn't expect it to be so unfathomable. People in here struggling with the idea the same way I struggled to grasp Calc II when I was stoned and didn't give a shit about math anyway.

This seems easier than Calc II tho. Maybe not. Maybe I'm just super smart in this particular arena the way Euler was super smart at combinatorics and advanced math. I'm definitely feeling about 12 IQ points smarter every time someone comes back to insist that governance is government, or that Backgammon is a government because it has rules.

I dunno.
Am I a genius, guys?

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

The virtue of settling disputes in this way was that the moot had an institutional
memory. When parties brought a dispute before the moot that was similar to ones
that had been resolved in the past, someone would remember the previous efforts at
settlement. Accommodations that had failed in the past would not be repeated; those
that had succeeded would be. Because the moot was a public forum, the repetition
of successful methods of composing disputes gave rise to expectations in the
community as to what the moot would recommend in the future, which in turn gave
the members of the community advance notice of how they must behave. As the
members of the community conformed their behavior to these expectations and took
them into consideration in the process of negotiating subsequent accommodations,
rules of behavior gradually evolved. This, in turn, allowed for the transformation
of the dispute settlement procedure from one dominated by negotiation to one
consisting primarily in the application of rules. The repetition of this process over
time eventually produced an extensive body of customary law that forms the basis
of English common law.

Uh-oh. Looks like I can be born into a system of governance whose rules I wasn't consulted on, over which I exercise no authority.

The moot decides and agrees on how to apply spontaneously generated law, and I comply - voluntarily, of course.

As relates to the portion of Hasnas you are reading, if you were gonna give me the TL;DR one-sentence most important difference between common law as used in England and America and the statutory law as used in England and America, what would it be?

Easy:

For dissenters there is no important difference between common and statutory law.

[Hanarchy Montanarchy]

Like federalism.

Still government.

It's mildly charming the way limited people project their limitations onto the rest of society.
Sure, Hanny.
Since you can't see a difference one obviously doesn't exist.
If it did, you'd see it.
The rest of us are crazy.
You have no blind spots.


(Exactly like Federalism. Ask the Southern States. You can leave when you disagree with the rules, right? Derp)

Well, DB, Hasnas did call man the "imaginative animal" after all.

I'm not positive that Hanna Cyrusarchy passes the Turing Test, but I'll go with it as a working hypothesis. There has to be some reason that people imagine that the state is essential to peaceful and productive living.

There has to be some reason peaceful and productive living has increased dramatically since we started doing nation-states.

Those pirates, tho - peaceful and productive.

[Martin Hash]

Watching folks grapple with the reality that collective self-governance has existed outside of an imposed government is fascinating. I thought it was pretty amazing myself when I read into it. But I didn't expect it to be so unfathomable. People in here struggling with the idea the same way I struggled to grasp Calc II when I was stoned and didn't give a shit about math anyway.

This seems easier than Calc II tho. Maybe not. Maybe I'm just super smart in this particular arena the way Euler was super smart at combinatorics and advanced math. I'm definitely feeling about 12 IQ points smarter every time someone comes back to insist that governance is government, or that Backgammon is a government because it has rules.

I dunno.
Am I a genius, guys?

You should write a book. It's easy; I did it 26 times.

[DBTrek]

You should write a book. It's easy; I did it 26 times.

Dang ... I've only been published in four.
And never written my own.

What should I write about?
Obviously not "There's a difference between governance and government" - because I've written all about that in this thread to no avail whatsoever.

Maybe a pirate story?

[SuburbanFarmer]

This thread is comedy gold. Glad you guys are back in form.

[Martin Hash]

You should write a book. It's easy; I did it 26 times.

Dang ... I've only been published in four.
And never written my own.

What should I write about?
Obviously not "There's a difference between governance and government" - because I've written all about that in this thread to no avail whatsoever.

Maybe a pirate story?

There’s always a market for pirate stories: apparently anarchists eat them up.