>"In general, there is no difficulty in defining consent. Any dictionary definition will do. How about “permit, approve, or agree”?"

Oh please! After pages of pedantry, that's the best you can come up with?

What if something is "agreed to" under duress? Or false pretences? What in the case where one party doesn't ascertain consent? Can it be assumed or must it be proven? When is someone unable to give consent? When severely intoxicated? Mentally impaired? Too young to understand what they are doing? And where are the lines in that?

Id a wife's consent to her husband assumed? If not, is it taken into consideration? Is a five-year-old able to consent? Is consent assumed because of lack of physical or verbal resistance or must it be affirmed in some way? Is it the burden of the person accused of rape to prove consent or the person making the accusation to prove non-consent?

I could go on, but I won't. Please give a better definition.

>"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..."

I'm not quite clear on what you're advocating for then. Are you suggesting that individual citizens should have the right to assault the state's organs in order to enforce their individual morality?

>"Every child having undergone at least 10 years compulsory indoctrination"

So are you advocating that we abolish mandatory education?

>"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?"

That is an extremely flawed assertion. Taxation revenues are collected universally and in theory, they are spent to everyone's benefit. People who pay taxes all use the healthcare, education, transport, energy and other benefits that the taxation is used for.

Don't get me wrong, I think that our government is far too big at the moment and I am, in principle, strongly against the government imposing morality on its citizenry. But to a point - which is the key thing here. Even you have admitted once or twice during this lengthy debate that complete anarchy is not desirable and there needs to be some form of organised society. The question is, where is the line drawn?

And my problem with your reasoning comes here. We have *gasp* an inconsistency.

>"Your argument, in summary, is that democratic states are ethically and pragmatically better than the alternative...""

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

The question "How could we do it better?" does not necessarily require that we dismantle it and start again. History shows that whenever there is a severely radical change by someone (i.e. yourself) who claims that their system of beliefs has every answer to every problem, they end-up being wrong, disastrously wrong.

As sad and frustrating as the process is, incremental reform through democratic governance is the best system that we have and, due to its nature, is constantly getting better. You're right about the inherent flaw in democratic representation, however there is no conceivable way to facilitate a situation where no one is harmed. The system you are advocating would lead to a far worse outcome - the tyranny of a strong minority, rather than the majority.

For instance, even with five men and seven women, if all four men unanimously wanted sex and none of the women wanted it, absent a democratic system, the four men would prevail. The same could go for two strong men and two women versus two weaker men and five women.

You are taking for granted the mentality of our society without really paying respects to where it comes from. Comparing us with Somalia is perfectly valid - Somalia is an example of a society that is not conditioned to respect the law above all else but mistrust authority, as ours is. It's actually an incredible mentality really - the result of 1,000 years of four-way struggles between the British people, the monarchy, the aristocracy and the Church.

I guarantee that without all of the institutions at which you cry foul, you would be screaming for more governance, not less.

“The question is, where is the line drawn?”

As I said, *in general* - i.e. between competent adults - there is no issue as to consent. But where someone’s ability to consent is impaired – because of young age, old age, developmental delay, dementia, intoxication, or whatever – there are real difficulties in principle and in practice; and I don’t pretend to know the answers in the abstract.

However these very real issues with consent will inhere in any society. But just because society needs to draw a line, doesn’t mean it’s best drawn by a monopoly of coercion. These problems are *not* presumptively better solved by way of centralized legislature, or by majority vote for that matter.

Since, as I will show, the devil’s in the detail, even better solutions might and probably would be, by way of decentralized adjudication among freely competing systems of judicature, rather than by way of a centralized, one-size-fits-all, general decision in the abstract by a coercive monopoly.

Details? http://mises.org/books/private_production_of_defense.pdf

Duress?
Negates consent. My argument on this is consistent both with sexual and with civil relations. Yours isn’t. You think duress amounts to rape in cases of sex, but forms the necessary basis of social co-operation in the case of the state.

False pretences?
Depends what’s being falsely pretended. Wearing make-up? No. Saying you don’t have an STI when you know you do? HIV? Yes. But the devil’s in the detail. What about not saying you have thrush when you know you do?

Intoxication?
Being intoxicated of itself doesn’t remove the ability to consent. Being passed out does.

Young age
I think with sexually immature minors in general, the problems of undue influence, of lack of capacity, of risk of harm, and problems of evidence justify a general rule. But I do acknowledge that many societies in history didn’t think so, and I think the example I gave shows it’s simply untrue that everything caught by the general rule is necessarily factually or ethically abusive.

Assumed
That’s a hard one because most sexual relations don’t involve explicit consent, but tacit consent...

...understood by body language, eyes, voice tone etc. Are they rape therefore? No.

In law, we're talking about imprisonment for years, so the onus must be on the accuser. In morality? Devil’s in the detail.

Wife
Depends whether she has consented to such an assumption, rebuttable by her explicit refusal.

In fact the law for centuries until recently was that it was an irrebutable presumption. Your opposition to that would be consistent if you opposed forcible violation of consent as a general principle, but you don’t.

What about child support? Is his consent needed? Don’t tell me, lemme guess? – her consent is needed in what concerns her interest; but his isn’t in what concerns his?

“The question "How could we do it better?" does not necessarily require that we dismantle it and start again….”

No. But it requires that we stop affirming what we cannot justify.

Coercion is no proof of truth or morality. The majority is not, by definition, right. The state’s rulers don’t know better than everyone else put together. No-one has a moral right to force others to sacrifice their peaceable values under threat of imprisonment.

(And therefore there’s no inconsistency in my argument).

“For instance, even with [a stronger minority, the minority] would prevail [by force].”

True, but
a) that’s an argument *against* might is right, not in favour of it,
and
b) the fact that crime will probably always exist is no reason to legitimize it, is it?

So far as democracy unjustifiably violates people’s right to peaceable freedom – which it is doing *more and more, not less and less* - we should condemn it, just as much as if it were a minority!

And anyway it is pure fiction that any action of democratic rulers necessarily represents the majority. At best the electoral process provides no evidence.

“Are you suggesting that individual citizens should have the right to assault the state's organs in order to enforce their individual morality?”

No, I’m suggesting anyone has the right to defend against aggressive force by anyone. (Your apprehension this would result in chaos is ...

… unfounded. A general right to *initiate aggression* would result in chaos, and *this is exactly what states claim and exercise*. You ignore the possibility the status quo is *not* the best solution.)

> Taxation revenues are collected universally

No they’re not. Tax paid by those whose income is itself funded by tax is mere book-keeping conjuration; an illusion obscuring from the indoctrinated the fact that the productive class is expropriated under coercion to fund the unequal privileges of a ruling class who would rather live by force and fraud than *work* to produce services that society would *voluntarily* pay for.

It’s not about “universality”, it’s about coercion. If everyone is raped, that doesn’t mean it’s not rape, does it? It’s an absurd argument.

> and in theory, they are spent to everyone's benefit.

Such theory is self-serving and false, but even if it was right, imagine arguing “Let’s use slaves to provide public utilities: that means it’s not slavery.”

With respect, you’re only exemplifying the moral confusion from years of mandatory indoctrination. An intelligent and caring person, you unreflectingly condemn slavery and rape on the one hand, but support taxation and the state with the same breath, while *completely unable* to distinguish them by any moral or rational criterion except self-contradictory ones.

“I guarantee … you would be screaming for more governance, not less.”

Would you accept from me a form of argument that I “guarantee” you “would” be much unhappier not agreeing with me? Didn’t think so.

It’s not a question of abolishing the state. But we should *recognise* the unprovoked institutionalized aggression on which it is based. We should *openly withdraw* consent when it falsely claims to selflessly know what’s better for people than people; and not just uncritically propagate the moral and intellectual falsehoods of majority rule and institutionalized coercion.

And if we achieved no other result than a greater popular demand for more freedom and less government in our time, that would be a good thing.

Femaleness or democracy of themselves are no justification for initiating aggression, legalizing fraud, or claiming unequal privilege.