Now, reasonable people can all agree that Bill O’Reilly is an obnoxious twit. But even twits shouldn’t be bothered at their homes

There’s an obvious typo in that sentence, and it appears twice..

One Small Voice, One Mighty Roar

It is true that the elements you speak of can be formulated, through binary to broad agreements, outside of traditional/formal governments. My point was that humans started out just rambling around in the commons, in the state of nature. We didn’t have properties and claims to “get off the ground with.” We now recognize claims to resources, to organizational identity, to media of exchange, etc. based on what people did productively yet also stole, that is now glossed over – but the crucial issue is, “we” don’t have to do that for free. IOW, we can expect a quid pro quo about limitations of powers and specified rights or not, for private estate/corporation/capital resource holders, just like we do for our governments. That can include the traditional demands and rules of liberal democracies contra presumed libertarian idealism and minarchism, about wages, safety, taxation of wealth, eminent domain etc. (although I find the Kelo decision abominable, since ED should only be used to establish literal public property and right of way.)

If you are more interested in how debate goes about this issue, I suggest perusing the massive thread I started in the political NGs in 2001. It was called “The foundational problem of libertarian theory.” It got as much froth going as my “New quantum measurement paradox” elsewhere, and went to around 600 posts, IIRC. Note the discussions about the land tax ideas of Henry George. Easy to look up.

Do you like ELP or did you just use them to start a brutal prog video war?

Unless someone posts an entire performance of Tales From Topographic Oceans or A Passion Play, we must bow to down to our new blog overlord, Sean.

I don’t think so. Its pretty clear that property ownership, money supply do exist without governments and they are very natural backgrounds. Corporations I am not so sure about. Property ownership is recognized in informal markets where there is no formal legal title and in Somalia where there is no government. In most Third World countries there is very widespread property ownership without any government support. Money is the same. It was invented way before government. It exists in places like prisons (in the form of cigarettes), Second Life, Xbox Live, remote islands ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rai_stones) without any government support.

Corporations also existed before governments and outside of government (e.g. Sea Pirates, mafia).

Obviously the center of the universe for a few days.

Elliot

Of course, when they went to the biggest science blogger to host the science part, and he declined, they somehow skipped over the *second* biggest science blogger… not that I’m bitter. And I have a neckbone! But anyway, I’m goign to try to make it next year.

There also seems to be a tendency for “intellectuals” to sympathize with nature and the poor and downtrodden more than do those aligned with making money as such. I wonder why more in academe (outside of economics and philosophy departments) aren’t interested in libertarianism instead, but I suspect that the latter isn’t really as rational as it’s proponents claim. They indulge the utopian ideal of some way of doing things or attitude adjustment just liberating all the right inherent tendencies in things (despite wrongly calling liberals “utopians.”) They also don’t realize that most of their premise is wrong: the economy, property ownership, corporations, money supply etc. aren’t natural backgrounds that “no government interference” could even leave alone in principle. I don’t have time or space to elaborate, but that is “the foundational problem of libertarian theory.”