I trust private business even less than the state. But I can see why you mean that.



Hah, I'm glad you said that. Common misconception. Despite the name the NSDAP had little to do with socialism as practised by their enemies in the KPD. What they had in common was the wooing of the working class as a fighting force (through soup kitchens etc.). Their real clientèle was a frightened middle and upper class, who for various reasons joined them (agreeing with their ideology, fear of communism and lots else).
Argument against democracy? Only on the surface. It is definetly a warning that a democratic system will selfdestruct IF THERE ARE NO DEMOCRATS.

Lets examine.
For a long while we have Paul v. Hidenburg as head-of-state, who was never at home with democracy (he was from the old monarchy club). We have the KPD, several smaller communist parties, radical parts of the SPD, later the NSDAP and other brown garbage (Stahlhelm etc.)..
and somewhere between the rest of the SPD, the DDP and other small parties we have people who actually think the system is a good idea and do not want to abolish it (with or without force), as opposed to the before mentioned.

Also, the NSDAP, the KPD and even the SPD employed almost paramilitary forces (SA, roter Frontkämpfer Bund, Reichsbanner), which others didn't.

And then there were of course the fatal flaws in the constitution - which the new German Grundgesetz does not have, which is why the Grundgesetz is pretty awesome by comparison.



I agree, thats cool.

Oh, and by any means, go to Japan. I have some friends who went there and it was apparently just crazy.

I talked about capital punishment. State simply can't be trusted with an ability to deal out irreversible punishments.


We don't surrender any power. There isn't any deal or social contract. The state usurps the power by violence without asking anyone for permission.
People don't rebel and don't start again if it fails.


They just ripped off the Hammurabi's Codex.


Almost all judges are women. They can't even punish "fathers" for hiding their incomes and giving false testimonies, probably because most of "fathers" that manage to break their unions apart are expert seducers.
Also, for some weird reason kiddies almost always go to a mother even if she was a cheater that destroyed the relationship in the first place.
So, in any way, courts aren't interested in justice or good of a child.


How would they assure it?


Like the government of USA doesn't abuse its power? Citizens usually won't rise against a government, especially in individualist "societies".
Only a few individuals are able to notdiealone.
Also, nowadays armies have a huge technological advantage. Every enemy squad would not only have rifles, but also two SAWs, two grenade launchers and 1-2 RPGs. Citizens with rifles wouldn't stand a chance.
So, practically any action against a state would be done by lone desperates and in this case firearms aren't really most effective.
Explosives are much more important, and they usually aren't available to normal citizens. Oklahoma dude and the embedded(d)art dude created much higher losses with explosives than a desperado with rifle could do.
Any state that claims that it gives its citizens right to bear arms so that they could rise against the tyranny and then limits citizen's access to explosives and military-grade weapons is full of shit.
In present day, it's perfectly possible to stab high amount of government officials to death with a simple kitchen knife and the state is still unjust and corrupt, so I don't see what would change when people would be able to buy rifles.
Also, I suspect that any state that abuses its power doesn't really give a shit about lives of its individual servants, so any violent action which wouldn't be a full scale national uprising wouldn't bother them and would only be a good pretext to increase their power.

I can see why you say that. But then we can stop talking right now because we will never agree.

Hobbes says we need the state to protect us from each other. What is your alternative?

Why don't you trust private business?



Well, you surely know lot more about German history then I do, so probably I'm wrong. We've known for a long time that democratic state has to have some "brakes". For example, we run nation-wide vote about banning islam, and the result is "yes". Majority can be fearsome tyrant.

What nazis, communists and fasciscts have in common is their belief that the state can do whatever it wants to his citizens. Kill them, imprison them, force them to associate, treat some better than the others etc. Basically all people (except higher-ups) are treated like cattle, and government is farmer, caring about them.

That is totally wrong for me, because I belive each human being has right to do whatever he/she wants, if it doesn't violate other people right to do the same. State punishing me for driving without seatbelts, forcing me to change lightbulbs in my home to energy saving ones and so on, isn't right and it shouldn't be possible.

They are operated by the same people that operate the state, but are even less accountable for their actions.


But who will protect us from the state?

Wait, what? This may be the case in Poland, but (ideally) state should have nothing to do with any kind of business. And I belive that people who run private business care only about their income - which is a good thing, provided there is competition. This is one of few exceptions when state should intervene - to break monopoly, because individual people are unable to do so.

I meant the quality of the people. People who operate private businesses aren't inherently different from the people that operate the state.
They are the people who use totalitarian psychomanipulation methods to get more customers, people who lie, people who try to hide important aspects of agreements using tiny text, people who sell spoiled meat, etc.
A lot of them is anything but trustworthy. And trusting them makes things even worse.

Competition doesn't magically fix all things - competing untrustworthy businesses aren't trustworthy. There needs to be a common demand for ethical behaviour of businesses, but there isn't. When people start to believe that everything is justified by other people wanting money and by other people following only their self-interest, then it's game over. And we have reached that point some time ago.

Firstly, why would we be considering what you (the criminal ) want as a consequence of your crime?
Secondly, how about instead of killing people because the prison ain’t so good, we try and spruce that up a bit (this is of course assuming that the prison is a terrible violation of rights).



Well, what’s stopping prisoners serving life terms going medieval on the correctional officers at the moment?



By that logic, does anyone who steals lose all rights to their possessions? Also, I’m a strong advocate of punishing the actual crime, not the motive. You seemed to imply that the punishment for murdering in blind rage wouldn’t be enforced with capital punishment where as premeditated murder would warrant it. Therefore, you would have two punishments for the one crime?



One innocent person punished is too many. Given that capital punishment is, you know, irrevocable, it stands to reason that it is much more preferable to have a punishment that can, to an extent, be rectified, no? Now, our criminal court system is not infallible, and I dare say it still won’t be in the foreseeable future. Innocent people are convicted.

Here is a somewhat large study on the innocents being sentenced, it’s not too old, but not that recent, but it’s still valid (I didn't read it all, only skimmed through the body and read the conclusion , which is where the following quote is from).
http://truthinjustice.org/exonerations-in-us.pdf


"The extraordinary rate of exoneration of death-sentenced defendants also raises deep questions about the accuracy of our system for determining guilt in capital cases. Exonerations from death row are more than twenty five times more frequent than exonerations for other prisoners convicted of murder, and more than 100 times more frequent than for all imprisoned felons. This huge discrepancy must mean that false convictions are more likely for death sentences than for all murder cases, and much likely than among felony convictions generally—an unavoidable and extremely disturbing conclusion. Finally, the frequency of exonerations from death row is a chilling reminder of the consequences of these false convictions. If we managed to identify and release 75% of innocent death-row inmates before they were put to death, then we also executed twenty-five innocent defendants from 1989 through 2003. If, somehow, we have caught 90% of false capital convictions, than we only executed eight innocent defendants in that fifteen year period."