You will have to demonstrate a contradiction, because I feel I am pointing one out.
Okay, you said "[x] created [y]" and then "[x] creates nothing," where
x is the government and
y is the infrastructure for the internet. Of course, you said it created it by
stealing it from the private sector, by which you mean, I guess, they "stole" the resources (money, in this case) to pay some computer scientists to build the thing. It hadn't been built yet, so obviously they couldn't steal the thing itself.
Free market value theory understands the profit is psychological, not monetary. All human action is driven by profit, or the desire to improve a situation/impact the world.
A lot of political/philosophical arguments break down to bickering about differences in definitions. I was using the common or business definition of profit, which is monetary (or at least material), not a philosophical definition.
I stand by my assertion that the profit motive tends to lead to bad outcomes.
No one is claiming that a monetary profit is required for anything. What I am saying is that government steals what it supposedly "creates" with. It doesn't provide services in the market, it doesn't compete.
Well... "provide?" I don't know. There's a lot of people that have access to services and other things that they otherwise wouldn't if it weren't for the government "providing" them. I guess though, your argument is that it's stealing from one group to provide for another group. So it's both then, isn't it? Stealing and providing?
Is it moral to steal a little of a rich man's wealth to feed a poor man who cannot feed himself, or to teach him to feed himself if he can be taught? I think it is. Obviously, the scope of what a government does cannot be captured by a simple metaphor, but that represents at least a part of the role government plays.
If you do not do as the government says, they put you in jail, and if you resist sufficiently, they will indeed kill you.
Well... we have laws, yes. They have to be enforced or they're not worth the paper they're written on. Ostensibly, those laws were enacted democratically. Realistically, that is often not the case. No system is perfect. This one certainly isn't, but it may be the best we've got. Perhaps more importantly, it is the one we have currently. IMHO, we have to work with what we've got.
You're an ideological anarcho-capitalist, I know that. Your ideology may well be logically consistent, but frankly, it's pretty much impossible to get there from here without some major upheaval. There are too many entrenched structures riding on the current system for it to happen any other way.
As fun as it might be to pound that 'taxation = violent theft' argument, I think the reality of living in a world without a well funded public sector is not something most people are prepared for. I would no more want to live in a world where all resources are public than I would in world where everything is privatized. I think both extremes lead to bad outcomes and loss of freedom for the majority of people.
And continuing on...
How could you have a monopoly in an unregulated market where anyone could compete? Regulation creates monopolies by creating barriers to entry.
I think you're being disingenuous if you think monopolies won't happen without regulation. If you were a dominant player in a market, wouldn't you be employing every tool at your disposal to eliminate the competition? Startups typically have limited capital compared to established players, for a large enough company it would be trivial to undercut, buy out, or bleed out a small competitor.
Yes, government regulation is often used to advance the interest of corporations. But if there's enough public outcry, at least it has the muscle and legal standing to crackdown on corporate abuse. Government is, at least ostensibly, accountable to the public. In practice? Not enough, but better than nothing.
Who would own the spectrum rights in the first place? Again, government created the cable/telco monopolies by rationing access.
As an an-cap, I thought you believed in property rights? I have to admit to not being well-versed on its tenets - is radio spectrum not property?
Another point: if the spectrum isn't licensed, won't it be rendered effectively useless if everyone and their mother is using it?
Chips can be reprogrammed. Check out Tomato wireless.
Chips can be designed to damn near impossible to reprogram/crack. Check out DirecTV. Besides which, it's easy enough to triangulate rogue transmitters and shut them down.
Here is a novel for you. Massive government conducts non stop robot bombing attacks outside the accept democratic safe zone against peasant goat farmers, while it steals trillions of dollars, feeding that wealth to the uber rich and global corporations. Politicians are elected, and immediately abandon their mandate to serve generational banking interests and the social values of the elite, while further consuming every resource in the system which isn't nailed down.
The average man is tasered for questioning authority, and watches helplessly as his 15 year old daughter is sexually molested at a transportation hub by some greasy, quasi-retarded government pedophile, under the guise of making everyone safer.
Dystopian enough for you? Or do you actually need a boot stamping on your face in order to see through the lie?
No, I'm pretty well against those things to. I think most reasonable people are.
Look, those things could just as easily happen without any government. The difference is, they'd be private militaries securing land and resources for power-hungry warlords. They'd be private security personnel probing and frisking you at whatever transportation service/private property entry point you might happen to need to use or traverse to go somewhere. And unlike the government, those private militaries/security aren't accountable to anyone but their owners.
BTW, you really have a penchant for fear-inducing hyperbole... ever thought of going into politics?
