Hi, Bill Calcutt.

The western world was crazy to listen to Egalitarians like you, and naively import a terrorist advocating religion like Islam. And you are right, our democracy is now in danger of collapse from ethnic and religious separatism. As a matter of fact, it is already happening. On my way through Parramatta recently, there was a tall building with only the racist "aboriginal" flag on it. The only "utilitarian" way of controlling Islamic terrorism is now to increase the state security police and make changes to our cherished civil liberties.(like freedom of speech)

But us "racists" told you that decades ago, why didn't you listen to us?

You got the unstable multicultural country that you wanted, so what are you complaining about? If we had kept the White Australia Policy, we would now not be in this mess. This present shambles is what people like yourself got us into, and it was both predictable and avoidable.

If I said what I really thought about this rubbish, I would be banned for life. Shame on him!

This article is a peculiar mix of appeasement and psychobabble. True, though, about the imposition of global surveillance. The theocratic Fifth Column was imported in order to supply just enough terrorist incidents to enable the empowerment of a massive secret political police and surveillance industry over the whole population (e.g. ASIO) with the legislation and funding to support it. The same creeping surveillance state is engulfing the entire Western world by the same mechanism. Between the march of Islam and the march of political police totalitarianism the public are being seriously screwed until enough voices are raised to call a halt to it. The first step is to challenge the conflation of race and religion wherever that conflation is bandied about (e.g.by ABC) and to recognise that culture ennobles and unites whereas "cultures" stultify and divide.

Alienated youth? And that's justification for terrorism and attacking the innocent? Alienation? What, like when Mum says no, I won't support your self imposed smoking/drug/ice habit! Nor accept the antisocial behavior that it and being spoiled rotten engenders?

Kids aren't born bad to the bone but learn it as learned inculcated behavior! From parents and their example initially, then so called peer pressure! Some of it acceptable in a society that not only sets itself apart, but seeks to replace the dominant culture, via patently invented issues!?

I could take my kids anywhere an be repeatedly complemented on their good manners and behavior!

As for states reserving force for themselves? Well why not?

After all if ordinary folk had the right to effectively defend themselves? Time and again, break and enter merchants would be prevented from entering with intent and recently in the news, killing one woman and leaving a sister in law bound and gagged!

Entirely reactive law enforcement limited to getting a description of the offenders and the vehicle they could be driving posted!

I guess you need to be an over privileged pollie to enjoy/warrant proactive policing?
Alan B.

Bill, your entire argument collapses at this point, before you even get to square one:
“The social contract encapsulates the complex, evolving and sometimes conflicting nature of the relationship between the citizen and the state, and its ultimate purpose is to mediate a peaceful, orderly and humane society.”

The reason is because there is no social contract.

Where is it? Show me a copy. Where did I sign?

You know you can’t and I didn’t.

There are numerous fatal flaws in the theory of social contract, which are set out in this short article “No Social Contract”:
http://economics.org.au/2010/08/no-social-contract/

It is inexcusable to conflate society with the State, since
- human society has existed for untold hundreds of thousands of years, while the State as we know it is relatively recent.
- neither the inputs nor the outputs of the State - tax and legislation - are voluntary – a complete intellectual and moral fail on your part

Human society does not come about by a “contract” between the State and its subjects. This means you have demonstrated a complete failure to understand the ontology, as you would say, of human society.

Society is not the State, and the State is not society. Okay? Got that?

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserted the principles of equality, mutual respect, non-violence, freedom of speech and democracy as the foundations for a peaceful, just, harmonious and inclusive society. “

This presupposes the legitimacy of the State as a moral preceptor, which is perfectly laughable since the State has by far been the worst violator of human rights, of which the last 100 years provide more than enough examples.

“Diverse forms of media stream an unremitting and overwhelming torrent of often superficial and undifferentiated information "noise" at the citizen.”

We have just established that you are part of the noise, not part of the nuanced evidence-based discourse, else where is your EVIDENCE of the existence of the social contract?

Post it now.

“Terrorism”

All States satisfy the definition but for their own self-exempting double standard. Go ahead, look it up.

All you need to know about the phenomenon of Western terrorism from earlier times and in the now-time of the 21st century.:
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/Western_Terror.html

And people do more or less enter into an invisible social contract just by living in any modern nation state, wherein, they quite rightly expect the state to provide at least some degree of prosperity, safety and stability.
These three factors were of course always tentative and we are now entering a potentially very unstable period of history when even these three factors are becoming less and less likely even for the relative few that have, up till now benefited from them.

And it seems to me that many of those on the right-side of the culture wars shouting match are almost gleefully promoting and celebrating this disintegration.

"And people do more or less enter into an invisible social contract just by living in any modern nation state, wherein, they quite rightly expect the state to provide at least some degree of prosperity, safety and stability."

No they don't.

When Daffy says "invisible" social contract, what he means is "non-existent".

Contract requires offer, acceptance and consideration. Where is the offer, where is the acceptance? Prove it, Daffy.

That's like me saying you "invisibly" accept the moral guardianship of the Catholic church just by being born in a society where the Catholic church presumes and pretends such moral guardianship. It's non-factual, non-logical, circular, craven, nonsense.

Social contract theory always attempts to ascribe a legitimacy to the State *after the fact*, as it were, always ignoring the history and facts about how states originate.

But the very fact that you have to resort to fictions and circularities disproves your own argument.

The fact is, no State, anywhere, ever, at any time, has ever originated from a social contract.

The State is that group in society claiming a legal monopoly over the initiation of force and threats, and over property expropriation. States originate from conquest, plunder, exploitation and serfdom; or by succession from a pre-existing State.

ISIS is an incipient state. That's what States are, and where they come from.

States have a permanent need of legitimation, without which the protection racket will collapse. So the State forms a symbiosis with the intellectual class, whose services are typically valued low in the market. The intellectuals preach to the masses that Pharaoh is not just a king, but a God, he makes the rivers to flow, and so on, and in return, the State gives the intellectual class a comfortable living at above market rates, protected from having to provide a service that anyone voluntarily pays for.

The modern version, is state-sponsored intellectuals preaching that the State is all-knowing, all-powerful and benevolent - in fact a God, who can cure the sick ('health policy'), fine-tune the weather ('climate change'), balance the species of nature ('sustainability'), make wealth by special rituals ('monetary policy'), justify aggressive war by lies ('defence policy'), and make 'rights' based on aggressive violence by mere declaration.

The question is not whether you want your fictions to be true; the question is whether they are true, and they are not.

Social contract theory is simply nonsense, and *always* relies on by Bill's and Daffy's methodology: baldly assume and assert it without proof, expect everyone else to share your beliefs, and then when challenged, fall back to mere circular insistance.

Bill, Daffy
EVIDENCE the contract.

Prove it. Go on. If you can't, SAY SO, don't wriggle and evade and equivocate and fictionalise.

If it's not in writing
a) admit it
b) admit it's in breach of the Statute of Frauds legislation
c) explain why writing is required to evidence the contract for a car, but not for your life and property and freedom, and
d) explain how you know what the terms are. Don't tell me, let me guess - unlimited obedience and submission to government, right?

Daffy
Can you imagine how stupid it would be if someone alleged a "side" of politics that supposedly includes people who believe in the maximum of personal liberty, classified in with Stalin and Mao? That's how stupid it is to talk of an alleged "right" side of politics.

Jardine has already stolen much of my response, regarding the obvious fact that there is no such "social contract".

But overall I still liked this article.

Orwell's "1984" describes a situation where the citizens are told that the presumably-good state, is presumably fighting a bitter war with two other formidable (but unseen) powers - of which one, is an "ally" while the other is "evil". Yet the "war" is dynamic and as the roles of those two other powers interchange nearly daily at short notice, we are left to wonder whether they actually ever existed.

In my childhood when I was shamefully naive to the extreme, I was similarly exploited by a boy who "enlisted" me in a secret group. Since the group was so secretive, I was only allowed to know one other member - him, my commander. We were the goodies of course and there was supposed to be another, sinister, group which we were "combating". I couldn't of course really know anything about the other evil group because everything was so top-secret. Rumours were passing that such-and-such was in that other enemy group, but nobody could tell for sure. The bottom line, to cut it short, is that I had to give away all my pocket-money as taxes to support the war-effort.

The way to stop this bigger-than-life terrorism, is to turn off the projector. Even in Israel's worst years with wars and Palestinian uprising at the max, when Israelis were blown up in restaurants and buses, looking at the summaries at the end of each year, road-accident casualties always exceeded the casualties of war and terror taken together. If states truly wanted to stop terrorism, all they needed was to stop reporting it. But of course, that would go against their interests - they need terror to survive. The media of course is no-less responsible as their business-model relies on sensationalism.

JKJ suggests a society in which there are predators and prey, with predation unchecked by any state. A bit like Lenin's advocacy of a social order based on violence untrammelled by law. Except that his bright idea resulted in an all-pervading STATE based on violence and untrammelled by law, in which "democratic centralism" dictated that every member of every ruling committee, if rolled on an issue, was obligated to defend the decision in the deliberations of lower committees. At the very top, if anyone dissented Stalin would nod and a couple of soldiers would seize the dissenter and drag him off to the Lubyanka.

But without a state I would be prey, with no protection. No thanks.

The trick is to put in charge of the state a parliament elected by the people, the vast majority of whom are not predators and therefore are potential prey. Despite the purchase of political parties (e.g. Lying Nasty Party and Another Liberal Party, LNP and ALP) by the predators, the Enlightenment-based culture of the majority is (for now) strong enough to curb outright predator control of parliament and thence the state.

This is a big improvement on anarchy, and remains so as long as cultural traditions are able to hold the predators in check. Whether or not this is called a "social contract" is mere semantics just so long as these cultural traditions hold sway.

Our cultural traditions are weakened by antidemocratic cultures such as Islam and the tribal savagery of parts of Africa, which is why the predators facilitate their importation.

Dear Julian,

Predators and prey are with us since the animal-kingdom and prehistory, so what JKJ suggests is not a society of predators and prey, but merely a society with one less predator - the state.

Your post can be summarised by: "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail".

As for me, I know that being a hammer is a quick false-solution which only makes things worse in the long term, so even being prey is better - as like-it-or-not, we already are anyway.

If truly all you care about is to avoid being a prey, with no pinch of desire to predate or impose your own cultural traditions on others, then may I suggest that there are other and better ways to protect oneself and one's family, other than by forming states, thus becoming a ruthless predator yourself.

Tough luck, I already live in Australia while having nothing to do with your "Enlightenment-based culture". I am not here to disturb you - I am here to live my life, peacefully, yet if you choose to consider me your enemy, then you cannot expect my support against the Muslim invasion: wherever there is a state and its government, I already live as a Dhimmi anyway, so nothing to lose.

Yuyutsu, if predators were unopposed by an organised state, unless it was a state they owned, your life whatever you believe and wherever you live would rapidly become unbearable and invite suicide to end it. Kumbaya in any form wouldn't stop the predators. You and I live in relative peace and freedom thanks to the state's hammer, something I am able to recognise and appreciate. While the Battle of the Coral Sea was raging we all stared down the abyss with the protection of the state swept away by predators.

EmperorJulian

"JKJ suggests a society in which there are predators and prey, with predation unchecked by any state."

No I don't. Where did I suggest that? Provide a direct quote.

What I suggest, or rather proved, was that social contract theory has no basis in reality or reason, and provides no justification of government or the State.

The fact you feel strongly about the State, doesn't justify you:
1. fantasising untrue bases for its existence
2. expecting others to share your untrue beliefs, or
3. misrepresenting me.

Social contract theory was made up in an attempt to provide some rational real-world justification for the State other than 'divine right of kings'. But nothing you, or anyone, has ever said, provides any more justification for social contract theory, than divine right of kings, as a justification of the existence of the State.

It is misrepresenting the issue to suggest that I believe there should be no protection against aggression.

But you have not given ANY reason why the problem is improved by a monopolist of aggression.

Your reference to WWII is a fight between States: you're proving my case, not yours.

In the final analysis, you have merely ASSUMED that the State reduces the amount of aggressive violence, which is all that Bill and Daffy Duck did.

But you are only able to reach this conclusion:
a) by taking it as your premise, which is illogical, and
b) by ignoring the State's mass murders, mass stealing, mass predation, which is orders of magnitude bigger and worse than anything any private parties have done, or were likely to do, in the absence of the State's hugely scaled-up abilities to commit such aggression.

Democratic states have been historically the worst for aggressive war.

So that's a total fail on your part, Emperor Julian.

Try justifying the State without recourse to fables and circular assumptions. Go ahead. Try.

Bill, Daffy
Got that evidence of the social contract there yet fellers?

A simple "No" will suffice.

Dear Julian,

«Kumbaya in any form wouldn't stop the predators»

For sure, nor even would a comb or an ear-plug, but between a totalitarian coercive state, a mega-predator that imposes itself over all the inhabitants of a large area without their consent - and Kumbaya, there are still a number of other options that are capable of stopping predators without the introduction of new ones.

Yuyutsu seems to be seeking to describe a state as a sort of tyranny by picking as an example a totalitarian state, not constrained by any culture and structure that gives the community any control of it. Thus no more than a straw man.

JKJ's straw man consists of a state that is "all-knowing, all-powerful and benevolent - in fact a God".

The importance of the Coral Sea battle was that a state that was treated as a god by a nation of predators sought to sweep away the state that protected us from predation born either internally or by aggression.

Another of JKJ's easily derided straw men is a written contract that we and the state voluntarily sign. Erect the straw man, strike him down - nothing shown to be true or false.

There is a state that protects us from predators because of the cultural and legal structure behind and embedded in it, a structure that has taken centuries of struggle by otherwise-prey against state and non-state predators (an ongoing process) to establish and defend.
The result can be labelled a "social contract" but the name given to it is mere semantics. Let's call it a wheelbarrow if you like. It exists with the consent of the governed and protects us from predators who would, if not confronted by the state's hammer, reduce us to prey. Most of those who most desire us to regress to being without it are likely to be frustrated wannabe predators or wishful kumbaya dreamers.

EmperorJulian

Whether the State can be justified is a different issue. The present point is, it’s not based on a social contract. It’s not a “straw man” for me to point out that your alleged social contract is unevidenced.

If you want to argue that the social contract does exist, then:
1. If it is in writing, post a copy of it and show where you and I signed
2. If it not in writing, admit it
3. Prove the parties, the offer, its terms, and the acceptance
4. If you can’t prove any of these, admit that such a contract doesn’t exist
Note: the existence of the State doesn’t ipso fact prove agreement, any more than the existence of the mafia proves its victims’ consent. It's mendacious circularity.
5. If you say that, whether or not it’s a contract, it’s based on the consent of the governed, prove the consent.

Either prove, or admit you can’t and are wrong.

Words have meanings. Contract requires offer and acceptance. By saying the State could equally "be labelled" a wheelbarrow or other non-contract, you are admitting it’s not a contract.

Tax is by definition a compulsory exaction. Obviously if people *consented* to pay tax, there’d be no need for tax. Everyone would just send in as much money to the Consolidated Revenue as they agreed to send; and the State’s total revenue would be no less. Your theory is laughably, obviously, untrue. Not even the State agrees with it!

“There is a state that protects us from predators …”

Does it protect us from statist predators? Does it protect us from having as much of our property, liberty or life violated as the state decides? Specifically answer both questions, please.

During WWI, as many as 100,000 soldiers died in one day. 20,000 people died per day for each day of WWII. The central banks steal by state-legalised filching literally trillions of dollars from the people every year.

By ignoring State predation, and tying your justification of the State to consent, you lose both the social contract and justification arguments.

Try harder.

Education is the key. Like all 'keys' the state(s) like to limit just how much we know i.e. allows us to know, thus allowing us access into knowledge on a need to know basis. Its propaganda arm (the MSM) likewise controls the information we get, but flavoured with the various herbs and spices to the taste of our masters. The 'wings' of politics also flavour the meal. Only last week KFC brought out a new pack called the LNP Pack...it's full of right wings and Parson's Noses. Last month they called it the Labor Meal... with left wings only.

What I have enjoyed in my association with OLO and other similar blogs, is the fact most posters here seem to know (or discern) that the basic soup being fed to us has these added flavours. For that reason I have not subscribed to, or payed for, news-stand papers, nor online publications which reflect the government of the day's preferred flavour for many years now. Our masters do not like the populace to be educated, because ignorant, obedient, misinformed drones are generally compliant drones.

Well before 9/11 and the War On Terror we had all sorts of wars, wars on drugs (that went well) wars against Communism etc. As Yuyutsu put it earlier: "The way to stop this bigger-than-life terrorism, is to turn off the projector."

Unfortunately, most Australians and I suspect US citizens as well, would not know anything more about the world other than what comes onto their screens at night before the football scores are given a post mortem. Even more unfortunate is the fact these people will probably cast their votes at the next elections and this reflects the dumbed down populace we live amongst. The more informed specimens would probably watch 'Sixty Minutes' or 'Q and A' to get better balanced view.

OK, call it an informed expectation if you are into semantics.

Proof of consent: The people are not held at bayonet point and state officers are not hanging from lamp-posts to the jeers of an angry populace. Of all the institutions that are the subject of protest movements in civilised countries the state isn't one of them although its failures through corruption to protect us from non-state predators are.

By how many millennia would we have to regress to get back to the time before humankind set about developing states?

EJ

Stop squirming. Either prove the social contract, or admit that it doesn’t exist.

Your argument is only “The State is justified because it’s justified”. Your circular argument proves only that you have nothing.

As for predation, you’ve already lost that argument here,
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=16710&page=0
remember?
You went out backwards and ran away COMPLETELY FAILING to defend your blind devotion to State predation and exploitation, just as you’ve failed to defend it now.

Stop evading now and either answer the questions or admit you are wrong:
1. In principle, according to you, there's nothing wrong with shooting people dead or threatening to cage and rape them to force them to obey and submit to anything whatsoever so long as a majority vote for it, or rather, so long as a government voted for by a majority does the predation and enslaving?
2. Please admit that's what you're arguing; but if not, why not?
3. Admit you have changed your justification for predation and slavery? You were arguing it's okay if the state does it. Now you're disowning the state per se, and confining your defence to democratic states.
4. So at what point in Australia's history did the government acquire the right to shoot people for whatever it wants, as you maintain?
5. Isn't the whole purpose of rules of just conduct to have some other principle of social relations than that the stronger will take from the weaker and attack them if they don't submit and obey?
6. You do know, don't you, that Hitler and his national socialist party were democratically elected?
7. So how is your so-called "principle" any different from 'might is right'?
8. Does the State protect us from state-authorised predators?
9. Does it protect us from having as much of our property, liberty or life violated as the state decides?
10. For the sake of intellectual honesty, please either answer my specific questions, or admit that your political and economic ideology has just been totally demolished, even according to your own terms, because it's hypocritical and wrong, because you've never thought it through properly.

Dear Julian,

«Yuyutsu seems to be seeking to describe a state as a sort of tyranny»

Any organisation which includes you in its membership without your consent, forcibly expecting you to follow its membership-rules, is a tyranny - it doesn't necessarily have to treat you badly to qualify.

Now even if I can be made personally safe and comfortable by the state, how could I be comfortable being a part of a gang of people who force themselves on others? I may perhaps be allowed to live like a king, but when even ONE(1) other person is forced to be involved with this state against their will, then cooperating with this state makes me a villain. Unlike you perhaps, I cannot feel comfortable being a villain.

As for safety, even if the state can protect my body while I am alive, how could it keep protecting me once my body falls and on the day of judgement I am faced with the thundering question: "why did you associate with these evil people? why have you aided and abetted their sinister intents?". When I was young, I could possibly respond in my defence: "sorry, I didn't know, I was an idiot, I was brainwashed, this is what they taught me in school, even in kindi", but now that I am aware of the truth, there's no way I could get away with such excuses.

«not constrained by any culture and structure that gives the community any control of it»

What a perfect straw-man: I never claimed that the community cannot control the state.
Why should I care whether or not the community can control the state when I don't even want to control the state myself - or anyone else for that matter?
Besides, what's that "community" for me anyway, as I have never even freely chose to belong to it!

Just for the "privilege" of having a spot on the surface of this planet to place one's feet on, one is currently forced to oblige to the rules of one of those tyrannies or the other. This is wrong.

All

A typical definition of terrorism is this one from Google:
“the unofficial or unauthorized use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.”

Now just think for a sec. Why say the “unofficial or unauthorized” use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims?

Because if they just said terrorism is “the use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims”, they’d be describing *every State and every government*.

Because that’s what the State *is*: a legal monopoly of violence and intimidation. That’s what explains the State and its inputs and outputs, not some fictional “social contract”. Obedience, not consent.

Statists like EmperorJulian can only defend the State by using a double standard, for example defining predation as one thing when non-State actors do it, and then exempting the State from that definition when the State does it.

For if what justifies the State is the need to protect us from predation or intimidation, that doesn’t explain why any more than defensive action would be necessary. It doesn’t explain why the State must itself claim a right to initiate force and threats - aggressive violence - not just to violate person and property, but to be by far the worst offender.

But statists don’t limit their claim to defensive action. The claim of a right of aggression, of expropriation and subjugation, is the very nature of the State.

When challenged, they can’t defend that ethically, so the statists immediately fall back to a defence of the state based on “democracy”. So they immediately concede the general issue as concerns all other, non-democratic, states, even though these have been numerically and historically the commonest.

But this only begs the question when the Australian state became “democratic”. Presumably it was not until universal adult suffrage in the 1920s. So the Constitution is not legitimate, according to the statists’ logic.

And it still begs the question whether aggressive violence and predation is made legitimate by majority vote.

Problem is, it’s nonsense on stilts, however much we might emotionally want to defend it.