I don't have to answer your numbered questions, because I don't remember saying that I agree with the way our age of consent laws are implemented. This is an example of your straw man tactics - you made an assumption about my stance and then spent an incredible four posts picking that assumption apart.

Irrespective of that, you are using a rational method of argument supported by anecdotal evidence. For all you know, that baby in Indonesia could have been horribly abused for years after your brief encounter and what you saw was only the start.

But again, I did not intend on spending any time defending age of consent laws. I was more focussed on a completely different line of discussion, which you dismissed in one sentence:

> "Rape is already illegal, so there is no issue here of non-consensual sex."

So I will accept everything you said about the age of consent being arbitrary. What you have said there indicates that you do support the banning of "non-consensual sex". Please define this - when is a sexual act "non-consensual" so as to require intervention by "aggression and violence", as you say, and when is it not?

The other point that I will argue is this:

> There is an alternative that you don’t seem to have considered, to your assumption that officials are categorically superior to humanity in general, and that truth or morality are properly decided at the point of a gun.

They are superior in some ways. For better or for worse, we have entrusted our officials with certain responsibilities over certain aspects of our lives, giving them powers that the rest of us don't have. Of course, when I say "us", you are going to start talking about the tyranny of the majority again - which is a valid point, but I don't see a way that you could possibly maintain any large, organised society absent such officials.

And these are not responsibilities that I deem to be "artitrary". To the contrary, each one of them is the result of thousands of years of societal development. Could society have developed differently? Sure, but I look at all of the societies in the world and I don't see a better system.

Again, you're arguing on the basis of "if it's not good for everyone then it's good for no one" whereas I am arguing that we should be aiming for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.

> This is that other people’s non-coercive and non-abusive relations are none of your business; and that people aren’t being “harmed” for no other reason than that they disagree with the irrational ignorance., and intolerant moral arrogance, of conservative thugs.

But who's to say their relations are non-coercive and non-abusive? You obviously disagree with the way this is currently determined, but do you disagree with it in principle? If you believe that when they are coercive and abusive, then there is a mandate to intervene, ultimately there has to be someone making that call and someone with the power to get in the middle of their private relationship using - yes - violence.

If, on the other hand, you believe that there should never be any form of law enforcement by the state, all I can really do is point you in the direction of Somalia and ask how pleasant you think living there would be.

It is possible (not necessarily probable) that democracy will be accompanied by a slow process of liberation for women. It was several centuries after we in the west embraced democracy (though not so long after we embraced liberal democracy) that we began unravelling the many layers of sexism and misogyny in our society. Whether that unravelling is complete or not is another debate. It wasn't so long ago that women in the west belonged first to their fathers and later to their husbands; it wasn't so long ago that they could carry out the same jobs for less pay; nor was it long ago that they were not allowed to vote. Men gave up all of these special privileges.

Perhaps when the men of the Muslim world get used to thinking and acting for themselves, and voicing their opinions rather than having their thoughts, acts and words dictated to them, they will open up to the idea that women can be their equals.

1.
“when is a sexual act "non-consensual" so as to require intervention by "aggression and violence" … and when … not?”

In general, there is no difficulty in defining consent. Any dictionary definition will do. How about “permit, approve, or agree”? http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/consent

>”But who's to say their relations are non-coercive and non-abusive?”

We don’t start by presuming all interactions are coercive and abusive but that, if you can prove consent, the state can grant permission.

It’s the other way around. People should be free to do what they want so long as they are not initiating aggression against others.

“You obviously disagree with the way this is currently determined, but do you disagree with it in principle?”

I don’t disagree with the use of force to repel aggression. I’ve done it for others. I’ve had others do it for me.

I do reject on ethical and pragmatic grounds the state’s claim of a monopoly on aggression, but it’s also worse on ‘greatest good for greater number’ grounds. The entire institution of government is founded on this ethical double standard: “I’m allowed to aggress against you, but you’re not allowed to aggress against me”. We only have to reflect on the uncountable massive deaths in the wars of aggression now and in the last century to see what this licence for large-scale armed aggression can and must lead to.

But the state’s depredations and crimes as against its own citizens are also enormous, although unnoticed, for the same reason that the criminality of slavery was invisible to so many societies which had slavery for so many centuries. It was normal to them: they couldn’t see it; just as we don’t see forcing some to labour under coercion for the privilege of others as being immoral. One day the scales will fall from our eyes and we will refuse to join in, and denounce those who do it.

2.
Everything that you say from “They are superior in some ways” to “greatest good for the greatest number of people” assumes what’s in issue.

I don’t agree that we “entrust” to the state its claimed monopoly of initiating aggression. The state was around for many centuries before people ever got the vote. It is a complete fiction that it presumptively represents “us”, “the greater good”, “society”, “the public interest”, “the social contract” and so on.

Every child having undergone at least 10 years compulsory indoctrination, is it any wonder people in general were never taught, and never learnt, to critique the sheer falsehoods propagated to legitimise as selfless and indispensable an organization that institutionalizes aggression and legalizes fraud?

Democratic states are the successors of pre-existing monarchic states, and all monarchic states are descended from pre-existing protection rackets. A state is just a protection racket that made it.

If 12 men and one woman vote whether to have sex, and the men vote for, and the woman votes against, that doesn’t mean it’s okay to use force, and if they do, it doesn’t mean it’s not rape. Democratic government is incapable of providing an improvement on exactly this ethical problem; on the contrary, it institutionalizes it.

Political states including democracies *consist of* claming for their functionaries a monopoly of what is crime for everyone else. So we get this cognitive dissonance, this double standard by which we call the same act by one name if a mundane does it, versus what it’s called if the state does it:
Murder/execution
Mass murder/defence policy
Demanding money with menaces/taxation
Counterfeiting/legal tender
Fraud /monetary policy
People trafficking/immigration policy
Kidnapping/removing into care
Discrimination/affirmative action
Drug trafficking/pharmaceutical benefits
Collusion/co-operation
Monopoly/public service
and so on.

Your argument, in summary, is that democratic states are ethically and pragmatically better than the alternative. But as with the abolition of slavery, the proper way of thinking about it is not to say “It’s necessary to supply public utilities. It’s sanctioned by the majority. It’s sanctioned by law. It’s beneficial for its victims. And you must be joking to suggest we could or should do without it."

Yet the arguments for taxation are exactly the same as those for slavery, because what is taxation but the coerced taking of the fruits of someone’s labour? If the tax rate were 100 percent, that would be indistinguishable from slavery, right?

A better way to think of it is: How could we do better?

The first principle is obvious. Once we recognize that aggression is not ethically better, we should reject it, simple as that.

It is also *no truer* that government is pragmatically superior as a basis for social co-operation, than that slavery is pragmatically superior to free labour.

The complexity of large society is an argument *against* central planning, not *in favour of* it.

As for Somalia, we have to compare apples with apples: Somalia with and Somalia without government. It’s not at all clear that Somalia is more lawless, disorderly, unjust, or poorer without government than with. Interesting article here: http://mises.org/daily/2066

Once we recognize the immorality and inexpedience of democratic government at doing the things it claims are for the greater good, we should denounce it, not say “Ah well this is as good as it gets, so let’s join the scramble for mutual plunder, and talk up our own claims and privileges, or those of our tribe or party or victim status, as against everyone else.”