RIOTS THREAD MERGED

[Game_Over]

You are Dave Starky, and I claim my Five pounds.

As you probably know David Starkey was on Newsnight last night and explained the root of the problem.

Of course no one wants to hear the real cause.

As a result the same failed policies that caused and exacerbated the problem in the first place will be tried yet again with inevitable consequences.

The riots will not change our society

Our society has already changed, the riots are just the inevitable consequence of that change.

[Injin]

Saying we don't need a state is like saying we don't need religion

We don't need either.

As long as we are humans there will always be a state and there will always be some form of religion

Nah, behave.

As long as we are human there will always be slavery and child labour. As long as we are humans there will always be paedophiles and rape.

But theres a big difference between having those things reluctantly, against popular opinion and making them the centrepiece of social interaction and universally condoned.

[Game_Over]

The only lesson you are teaching here is that brutal authoritatianism is a virtue.

No thanks.

As for taxpayer holidays etc - have you ever asked if they work to change reoffending rates?

Because punishments do not now, never have and never will reduce crime levels.

You either have the rule of law enforced by the state who are ideally democratically accountable

Or you have mob rule where the strongest prey on the weakest

Humans will not tolerate anarchy - we have been genetically programmed over millions of years to form groupings for mutual security.

When the police abdicated their responsibility for protecting people, within a matter of days people began to organise and came out on the streets to defend themselves and their own communities.

Make your choice - the rule of law enforced by the state or mob rule, where gangs and warlords become the state

As long as we are human - there is NO OTHER CHOICE

[Game_Over]

I agree completely, it's a huge negative.

Perhaps people who agree with these policies will answer?

They won't answer - because there is no answer.

This is a ticking time bomb - and not just here either

It's happening everywhere

and the consequences are going to be horrendous IMO

The road to Hell is paved with liberal / socialist good intentions

And they NEVER EVER learn

[Injin]

You either have the rule of law enforced by the state who are ideally democratically accountable

Or you have mob rule where the strongest prey on the weakest

Humans will not tolerate anarchy - we have been genetically programmed over millions of years to form groupings for mutual security.

When the police abdicated their responsibility for protecting people, within a matter of days people began to organise and came out on the streets to defend themselves and their own communities.

Make your choice - the rule of law enforced by the state or mob rule, where gangs and warlords become the state

As long as we are human - there is NO OTHER CHOICE

Yes, there is.

All you have to do is never attack anyone else. Easy. Are you saying you can't live your life without attacking others?

Oh and p.s. the police have no responsibility for protecting anyone. Try and sue them for not turning up when your house is being burgaled and you'll soon find that out.

[Injin]

I agree completely, it's a huge negative.

Perhaps people who agree with these policies will answer?

I don't think the top 1% of earners who are the only ones to benefit from this sort of thing post on HPC much.

Never met anyone else who is in favour, nor read anything on a forum from them, never seen a manifesto saying it'll happen after an election, nor a potential future PM stand and debate it. Funny that.

[Game_Over]

We don't need either.

Nah, behave.

As long as we are human there will always be slavery and child labour. As long as we are humans there will always be paedophiles and rape.

But theres a big difference between having those things reluctantly, against popular opinion and making them the centrepiece of social interaction and universally condoned.

These things can only be limited - never eradicated

and your argument seems to be that without a state there would be less human suffering

my argument is that there will always be a state

the genuine, meaningful debate is exactly what form this state should take

Even socialist states, which dehumanise and heap untold msiery and suffering on people are better than anarchy

Although admitedly - only just

[Injin]

Injin,

If you went through basic training (which you obviously haven't) you could then reflect upon the kind of person you were and then how it (generally), does you good in making you more reliant, self sufficient, and have a greater understanding of right and wrong.

I've done that sort of training.

And that wasn't the issue - the issue was forcing people to do things that will cause them physical pain is torture. And you don't learn right and wrong either - yopu learn to obey a nutter or you will be injured. Theres no morality in that.

Your glib statements show little engagement, you also never reference any of your statements, you are (as others are now finding out), are an irritation to this website.

Projection.

However, if you are housebound and it stops you from committing suicide because of your personal predicament then I suppose your 'engagement' does some good. But please (one last time), I'm keeping you on ignore as you are a waste of my precious time.

Denial.

[Game_Over]

Yes, there is.

All you have to do is never attack anyone else. Easy. Are you saying you can't live your life without attacking others?

Oh and p.s. the police have no responsibility for protecting anyone. Try and sue them for not turning up when your house is being burgaled and you'll soon find that out.

Injin - humans have never and will never behave in this way - nor any other form of intelligent life - even insects.

Your only hope is to be the new messiah and try and use humans innate need to believe in some form of God to try and persuade them to behave in this way

But then you see religion as another form of 'state' repression.

If you really want an end to all human suffering, then the only way to achieve this would be if all humans agreed not to procreate and the entire human race died out within a generation.

In fact there is probably a religion somewhere that advocates this.

[Injin]

Injin - humans have never and will never behave in this way - nor any other form of intelligent life - even insects.

Your only hope is to be the new messiah and try and use humans innate need to believe in some form of God to try and persuade them to behave in this way

But then you see religion as another form of 'state' repression.

If you really want an end to all human suffering, then the only way to achieve this would be if all humans agreed not to procreate and the entire human race died out within a generation.

In fact there is probably a religion somewhere that advocates this.

I did't ask for a general comment about humanity. I asked you a very direct question - are you saying it's impossible for you to live your life without attacking other people?

it's a yes or no answer.

[Game_Over]

See why you are talking shite yet?

Injin you are cutting and pasting my comments having changed the contents - AGAIN!!!!!

This is completely UNACCEPTABLE

Either edit this post or I will report it.

You cannot debate with people in this way

[Game_Over]

I did't ask for a general comment about humanity. I asked you a very direct question - are you saying it's impossible for you to live your life without attacking other people?

it's a yes or no answer.

No and neither can anyone else.

Because I am human - and so is everyone else

[Injin]

No and neither can anyone else.

Because I am human - and so is everyone else

Oh ok.

Who are you planning on attacking this week?

[Injin]

Injin you are cutting and pasting my comments having changed the contents - AGAIN!!!!!

This is completely UNACCEPTABLE

Either edit this post or I will report it.

You cannot debate with people in this way

Oh I am terribly sorry, I didn't realise.

But

Do you see why you are talking shite yet?

[Game_Over]

Oh I am terribly sorry, I didn't realise.

But

Do you see why you are talking shite yet?

Yes well I have now reported your post.

You cannot cut and paste peoples comments having edited the contents

Anyone reading your post without referring back to my original comments will assume that I typed what you changed my post to say.

Every time you do this, you change what I have said to include references to sexual abuse in one form or another

I suggest you have a serious think about why you do this.

[Injin]

As a moderator I find it totally unacceptable to change a quoted post in this way. If a poster annoys you --use the ignore button .

He doesn't annoy me, the change was deliberate to show how ludicrous he was being.

If it's against the forum rules, np.

he's still being ludicrous - and using this tactic to avoid the point is pathetic.

[SHERWICK]

He doesn't annoy me, the change was deliberate to show how ludicrous he was being.

If it's against the forum rules, np.

he's still being ludicrous - and using this tactic to avoid the point is pathetic.

Yeah, but you've been ludicrous for about 4 years on this forum. The latest example is that you 'dunno' whether children should be allowed to have guns.

[Injin]

Yeah, but you've been ludicrous for about 4 years on this forum. The latest example is that you 'dunno' whether children should be allowed to have guns.

I don't have any data for that.

Do you?

[Traktion]

Saying we don't need a state is like saying we don't need religion

As long as we are humans there will always be a state and there will always be some form of religion

because humans are social creatures and are genetically pre-programmed to believe in something

There will always be a state and anyone who claims to be an anarchist is just hiding from reality and avoiding having to take a coherent position on any of the genuine social and moral questions that face humanity.

We don't need religion either.

Voluntary groupings will always exist, but forcing people to do stuff through violence is not a requirement. Elders may be respected in a tribe, for instance, but that doesn't mean he has the ability to force others to do as he says.

As for examples, look no further away than Ireland, and no further back than a few hundred years:

http://shaneleavy.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-ancient-ireland-socialist-or.html

And this was also a society where not only the courts and the law were largely libertarian, but where they operated within a purely state-less and libertarian society. This was ancient Ireland — an Ireland which persisted in this libertarian path for roughly a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century....

For a thousand years, then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no State or anything like it. As the leading authority on ancient Irish law has written: "There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice . . . . There was no trace of State-administered justice...."

There were occasional "wars," to be sure, in the thousand years of Celtic Ireland, but they were minor brawls, negligible compared to the devastating wars that racked the rest of Europe. As Professor Peden points out, "without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish were unable to sustain any large scale military force in the field for any length of time. Irish wars . . . were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards."

For 1000 years this existed. Maybe you should think on that.

As regards what you believe.

Where do you stand on the death penalty and abortion?

An eye for an eye seems reasonable and in lue of written law. I don't think I would murder an unborn child, but then I would say it is up to the individual to decide this.

Where do you stand on nature vs nurture?

Both have an impact of the actions of people.

Where do you stand on intelligence being an inherited genetic characteristic?

I read the other day that IQ levels tend to around 100, regardless of whether their parents were well above or below this. However, inheriting some intelligence would seem logical from a layman's perspective. In terms of knowledge learned, that would very much depend on nurture regardless though.

Where do you stand on a propensity for violence being an inherited genetic characteristic?

As with intelligence. Testosterone surely plays a role in this, as well as one's build. However, parents can teach their children what is right from wrong... even the state can attempt to teach these values. Even aggressive people can be aware of their propensity towards violence and take actions to restrain themselves (playing sports, taking exercise etc).

If your view of right wing is one of the free market guiding people, asking a government to apply theft/force to get results is a contradiction. It seems the modern, authoritarian, centre-right pick and choose which aspects of the market they wish to use, but are happy to ignore it and use violence to get results instead. A true free marketeer wants interactions free of force at all times, not just when it suits.

Perhaps if you defined what your view of left and right wing is, we could have a better understanding of one another's views?

[Traktion]

Murray N. Rothbard looks like he did a lot of research into ancient Ireland. He has quoted a fair bit of Professor Peden's work too. This URL is very interesting: http://www.barrancogalt.com/libertarian-ireland.html

For those who think that the sovereign state is the only way people can organise themselves, take a look at a few of the gems below:

For a New Liberty p. 64:

“For the libertarian, the most interesting and certainly the most poignant example of the creation of a State through conquest was the destruction of the libertarian society of ancient Ireland by England in the seventeenth century, a conquest which established an imperial State and ejected numerous Irish from their cherished land. The libertarian society of Ireland, which lasted for a thousand years –and which will be described further below- was able to resist English conquest for hundreds of years because of the absence of a State which could be conquered easily and then used by the conquerors to rule over the native population.”

For a New Liberty pp. 231-233:

“The most remarkable historical example of a society of libertarian law and courts, however, has been neglected by historians until very recently. And this was also a society where not only the courts and the law were largely libertarian, but where they operated within a purely state-less and libertarian society. This was ancient Ireland –an Ireland which persisted in this libertarian path for roughly a thousand years until its brutal conquest by England in the seventeenth century. And, in contrast to many similarly functioning primitive tribes (such as the Ibos in West Africa, and many European tribes), pre-conquest Ireland was not in any sense a “primitive” society: it was a highly complex society that was, for centuries, the most advanced, most scholarly, and most civilized in all of Western Europe.

“For a thousand years, then, ancient Celtic Ireland had no State or anything like it. As the leading authority in ancient Irish law has written: “There was no legislature, no bailiffs, no police, no public enforcement of justice... There was no trace of State-administered justice.” (A)

“How then was justice secured? The basic political unit of ancient Ireland was the tuath. All “freemen” who owned land, all professionals, and all craftsmen, were entitled to become members of a tuath. Each tuath’s members formed an annual assembly which decided all common policies, declared war or peace on other tuatha, and elected or deposed their “kings.” An important point is that, in contrast to primitive tribes, no one was stuck or bound to a given tuath, either because of kingship or of geographical location. Individual members were free to, and often did, secede from a tuath and join a competing tuath. Often, two or more tuatha decided to merge into a single, more efficient unit. As Professor Peden states, “the tuath is thus a body of persons voluntarily united for socially beneficial purposes and the sum total of the landed properties of its members constituted its territorial dimension.” ( In short, they did not have the modern State with its claim to sovereignty over a given (usually expanding) territorial area, divorced from the landed property rights of its subjects; on the contrary, tuatha were voluntary associations which only comprised the landed properties of its voluntary members. Historically, about 80 to 100 tuatha coexisted at any time throughout Ireland.

“But what of the elected “king”? Did he constitute a form of State ruler? Chiefly, the king functioned as a religious high priest, presiding over the worship rites of the tuath, which functioned as a voluntary religious, as well as a social and political, organization. As in pagan, pre-Christian, priesthoods, the kingly function was hereditary, this practice carrying over to Christian times. The king was elected by the tuath from within a royal kin-group (the derbfine), which carried the hereditary priestly function. Politically, however, the king had strictly limited functions: he was the military leader of the tuath, and he presided over the tuath assemblies. But he could only conduct war or peace negotiations as agent of the assemblies; and he was in no sense sovereign and had no rights of administering justice over tuath members. He could not legislate, and when he himself was party to a lawsuit, he had to submit his case to an independent judicial arbiter.

“Again, how, then, was law developed and justice maintained? In the first place, the law itself was based on a body of ancient and immemorial custom, passed down as oral and then written tradition through a class of professional jurists called brehons. The brehons were in no sense public, or governmental, officials; they were simply selected by parties to disputes on the basis of their reputations for wisdom, knowledge of the customary law, and the integrity of their decisions. As Professor Peden states:

“... the professional jurists were consulted by parties to disputes for advice as to what the law was in particular cases, and these same men often acted as arbitrators between suitors. They remained at all times private persons, not public officials; their functioning depended upon their knowledge of the law and the integrity of their judicial reputations.” ©

“Furthermore, the brehons had no connection whatsoever with the individual tuatha or with their kings. They were completely private, national in scope, and were used by disputants throughout Ireland. Moreover, and this is a vital point, in contrast to the system of private Roman lawyers, the brehon was all there was; there were no other judges, no “public” judges of any kind, in ancient Ireland.

“It was the brehons who were schooled in the law, and who added glosses and applications to the law to fit changing conditions. Furthermore, there was no monopoly, in any sense, of the brehon jurists; instead, several competing schools of jurisprudence existed and competed for the custom of the Irish people.

“How were the decisions of the brehons enforced? Through an elaborate, voluntarily developed system of “insurance,” or sureties. Men were linked together by a variety of surety relationships by which they guaranteed one another for the righting of wrongs, and for the enforcement of justice and the decisions of the brehons. In short, the brehons themselves were not involved in the enforcement of decisions, which rested again with private individuals linked through sureties. There were various types of surety. For example, the surety would guarantee with his own property the payment of a debt, and then join the plaintiff in enforcing a debt judgment if the debtor refused to pay. In that case, the debtor would have to pay double damages: one to the original creditor, and another as compensation to his surety. And this system applied to all offences, aggressions and assaults as well as commercial contracts; in short, it applied to all cases of what we would call “civil” and “criminal” law. All criminals were considered to be “debtors” who owed restitution and compensation to their victims, who thus became their “creditors.” The victim would gather his sureties around him and proceed to apprehend the criminal or to proclaim his suit publicly and demand that the defendant submit to adjudication of their dispute with the brehons. The criminal might then send his own sureties to negotiate a settlement or agree to submit the dispute to the brehons. If he did not do so, he was considered an “outlaw” by the entire community; he could no longer enforce any claim of his own in the courts, and he was treated to the opprobium of the entire community. (D).

“There were occasional “wars,” to be sure, in the thousand years of Celtic Ireland, but they were minor brawls, negligible compared to the devastating wars that racked the rest of Europe. As Professor Peden points out, “without the coercive apparatus of the State which can through taxation and conscription mobilize large amounts of arms and manpower, the Irish were unable to sustain any large scale military force in the field for any length of time. Irish wars... were pitiful brawls and cattle raids by European standards.” (E)

For a New Liberty p. 240:

“And perhaps the major reason it took the English centuries to conquer ancient Ireland is that the Irish had no State, and that there was therefore no ruling governmental structure to keep treaties, transmit orders, etc. It is for this reason that the English kept denouncing the “wild” and “uncivilized” Irish as “faithless,” because they would not keep treaties with the English conquerors. The English could never understand that, lacking any sort of State, the Irish warriors who concluded treaties with the English could only speak for themselves; they could never commit any other group of the Irish population.” (F)

The Ethics of Liberty p. 87:

“The idea of primacy for restitution to the victim has great precedent in law; indeed, it is an ancient principle of law which has been allowed to wither away as the State has aggrandized and monopolized the institutions of justice. In medieval Ireland, for example, a king was not the head of State but rather a crime-insurer; if someone committed a crime, the first thing that happened was that the king paid the “insurance” benefit to the victim, and then proceeded to force the criminal to pay the king in turn (restitution to the victim’s insurance company being completely derived from the idea of restitution to the victim).”

The Ethics of Liberty p. 178:

“Moreover, in ancient Ireland, a society existing for a thousand years until the conquest by Cromwell, “there was no trace of State-administered justice”, competing schools of professional jurists interpreted and applied the common body of customary law, with enforcement undertaken by competing and voluntarily supported tuatha, or insurance agencies. Furthermore, these customary rules were not haphazard or arbitrary, but consciously rooted in natural law, discoverable by man’s reason.” (G)

The Ethics of Liberty p. 233 :

“For a thousand years ancient Ireland, until the Cromwellian conquest, enjoyed a system of numerous jurists and schools of jurists, and numerous protection agencies, which competed within geographical areas without anyone becoming dominant.”

(my bold highlights)

I just stumbled across the above, after googling to find the last link. Some of the above I had actually thought about during debates on HPC, but I had no idea that they had been used for a 1000 years, right on the land where I live! It's not taught in N. Irish history (according to my wife), with the curriculum starting at history after this period (from the potato famine era). I can't speak for ROI, but it does make you wonder why such (relatively) recent history has been ignored.

For all of those who say that you need theft and violence to organise people, I think they should have a long hard think about the above. I will certainly be reading up a lot more on Professor Pedan's work (some here) as well as Rothbard's interpretation's of it.

The ancient Irish created a complex, advanced, well educated society of people, which lasted for 1000 years, without resorting to theft and violence. It is shameful that we call our modern democracy civilised, when compared with such a peaceful and prosperous alternative.

P.S. TBH, the above probably deserves its own thread, but it's a bit OT.

[Game_Over]

We don't need religion either.

Voluntary groupings will always exist, but forcing people to do stuff through violence is not a requirement. Elders may be respected in a tribe, for instance, but that doesn't mean he has the ability to force others to do as he says.

As for examples, look no further away than Ireland, and no further back than a few hundred years:

http://shaneleavy.blogspot.com/2010/07/was-ancient-ireland-socialist-or.html

For 1000 years this existed. Maybe you should think on that.

An eye for an eye seems reasonable and in lue of written law. I don't think I would murder an unborn child, but then I would say it is up to the individual to decide this.

Both have an impact of the actions of people.

I read the other day that IQ levels tend to around 100, regardless of whether their parents were well above or below this. However, inheriting some intelligence would seem logical from a layman's perspective. In terms of knowledge learned, that would very much depend on nurture regardless though.

As with intelligence. Testosterone surely plays a role in this, as well as one's build. However, parents can teach their children what is right from wrong... even the state can attempt to teach these values. Even aggressive people can be aware of their propensity towards violence and take actions to restrain themselves (playing sports, taking exercise etc).

If your view of right wing is one of the free market guiding people, asking a government to apply theft/force to get results is a contradiction. It seems the modern, authoritarian, centre-right pick and choose which aspects of the market they wish to use, but are happy to ignore it and use violence to get results instead. A true free marketeer wants interactions free of force at all times, not just when it suits.

Perhaps if you defined what your view of left and right wing is, we could have a better understanding of one another's views?

The tribe is the state or the family grouping

and for an expert on ancient Irish LAW to claim there was no state is ridiculous IMO - law implies a state

Also stating that losses in wars were trivial when compared to modern wars is misleading given the size of populations many thousands of years ago

losses in war also no doubt ignores subsequent deaths due to burining of homes or theft of livestock or destruction of crops which would no doubt have far exceeded actual deaths in combat.

As to definitions of left and right - I think these are sufficiently understood to make it unecessary for me to type a thousand word post on the subject

however, I would say that the left expect human beings to toil for the greater good usually under the threat of violence

Wheras the right would argue that if someone is too lazy to earn their bread they should be left to starve

There is a BIG difference IMO.

[Game_Over]

Game Over,

I think you are getting close to using the ignore button.

Me ignoring Injins posts will not stop him/her cutting and pasting my posts and changing the contents - unless putting someone on ignore means they can't see my posts either?

Also I can't see the point of only reading posts made by people who I agree with as this would seem an entirely pointless exercise.

[Game_Over]

Murray N. Rothbard looks like he did a lot of research into ancient Ireland. He has quoted a fair bit of Professor Peden's work too. This URL is very interesting: http://www.barrancogalt.com/libertarian-ireland.html

For those who think that the sovereign state is the only way people can organise themselves, take a look at a few of the gems below:

(my bold highlights)

I just stumbled across the above, after googling to find the last link. Some of the above I had actually thought about during debates on HPC, but I had no idea that they had been used for a 1000 years, right on the land where I live! It's not taught in N. Irish history (according to my wife), with the curriculum starting at history after this period (from the potato famine era). I can't speak for ROI, but it does make you wonder why such (relatively) recent history has been ignored.

For all of those who say that you need theft and violence to organise people, I think they should have a long hard think about the above. I will certainly be reading up a lot more on Professor Pedan's work (some here) as well as Rothbard's interpretation's of it.

The ancient Irish created a complex, advanced, well educated society of people, which lasted for 1000 years, without resorting to theft and violence. It is shameful that we call our modern democracy civilised, when compared with such a peaceful and prosperous alternative.

P.S. TBH, the above probably deserves its own thread, but it's a bit OT.

As far as I can tell what the above describes is just a de-centralised state with the same kind of imposed social norms that we all would recognise today

The fact that it was overrun by a more centralised, organised state just proves that the exsistence of such a state is inevitable

A thousand years is the blink of an eye in historical terms - some societies have lived the same way for hundreds of thousands of years.

TBH this just reads like an Irish Nationalist rant about the evil English destroying a paradise on Earth

I suspect the reality was somewhat different.

[Injin]

Me ignoring Injins posts will not stop him/her cutting and pasting my posts and changing the contents - unless putting someone on ignore means they can't see my posts either?

Also I can't see the point of only reading posts made by people who I agree with as this would seem an entirely pointless exercise.

I've already agreed to not do that any longer.

However, you ahve left some questions unanswered. Mind answering them?

[Injin]

The tribe is the state or the family grouping

No, it isn't.

You can be in a family without any members of it attacking you to get resources.

I think it's clear you don't actually understand what a state is, nor it's defining features.