Threaded Mode | Linear Mode

zonsb · (This post was last modified: 10-19-2011 05:33 AM by zonsb.)

[Editor's note: Sorry folks, a software glitch deleted the prior thread when I clicked the delete button for my last reply at the bottom of that thread.Thus a few other members posts were also deleted.]

[Image: hearye.gif]

WorBlux asked for a closed discussion between himself and RealSkinny. I'll be updating this carbon copy by addenda as often as I see one of them has posted a reply over yonder in their "private little club." [Image: appl.gif]

Please post your commentary regards their discussion here.

(09-23-2011 10:57 AM)WorBlux Wrote: Just for RealSkinny and I, everyone else please place comments in a separate thread.
(I'll link to it here if anyone cares enough to make it) http://marcstevens.net/board/showthread.php?tid=2743

To get us started...

What is law? How does id operate? What makes something law and another thing not law? Whence comes the obligation, if any? What subject matter ideally should be law and what ought not be law? Does what law ought to be influence what law is?

(09-30-2011 03:55 AM)RealSkinny Wrote:
(09-23-2011 10:57 AM)WorBlux Wrote: Just for RealSkinny and I, everyone else please place comments in a separate thread.
(I'll link to it here if anyone cares enough to make it)

To get us started...

What is law? How does id operate? What makes something law and another thing not law? Whence comes the obligation, if any? What subject matter ideally should be law and what ought not be law? Does what law ought to be influence what law is?

I would love to have a conversation with you about law, but you should keep in mind that you've asked fairly general questions about the concept of law, and not any questions about specific laws. I usually only discuss more objective topics when I'm on this forum, like the state's requirements to prove standing or the meaning of corpus delicti. For the questions you've asked, I can only give my personal, subjective opinions, just like anybody else. As I've stated before, I'm very open with opinions on law, so I'm not as likely to disagree with you on these topics the way I might if we were attempting to come up with the state's definition of law. Anyway, here goes...

1. What is law?
I would say at its simplest, law is a rule that's meant to encourage or discourage action.

2. How does it operate?
Law operates by the will of the community. When a law exists that the community no longer supports, it loses its effect.

3. What makes something law and another thing not law?
Once again, I would say it depends entirely on the community. When a community comes to an agreement that some action should be encouraged or discouraged, it tends to be put into law. Historically, you had situations where a single monarch might create law, but these laws were still subject to the will of the community. If no one will agree enough with the law to enforce it, it does not carry the effect of law.

4. Whence comes the obligation, if any?
There's no clear line, but you will likely find yourself under the obligation to follow a law if you're within a region where a community is willing to enforce it against you.

5. What subject matter ideally should be law and what ought not be law?
That's going to vary dramatically depending on the community. Even within a community these subjects may be fiercely debated. Some examples within our own community would be subjects like Abortion, Gay Marriage, or Capital Punishment.

6. Does what law ought to be influence what law is?
Sometimes, but again, what law ought to be can vary greatly from person to person. However, when there is a wide consensus on what law ought to be, it tends to influence what the law is, even if the law is clearly defined and deeply rooted in the community's history. An example from our own community might be battered wife syndrome and its relation to self-defense. Traditionally, you had to be in imminent danger of being killed or seriously injured to claim self-defense for a murder, but recently the community has been granting some leeway with the rule for situations where there has been a history of frequent abuse. One situation where this occurs has been with women suffering from battered wife syndrome. When a wife is frequently abused by her husband, she may feel completely powerless to stop it by facing her husband in direct confrontation during the abuse. Instead, when a battered wife kills her husband, she often does it while he's sleeping. This makes it difficult to claim you were under threat of imminent danger required by the self-defense rule. Recently, states have been relaxing the rules for self-defense for these situations, an example of the law being influenced by what the community believes it should be.

(09-30-2011 01:48 PM)WorBlux Wrote:
RealSkinny Wrote:I would love to have a conversation with you about law, but you should keep in mind that you've asked fairly general questions about the concept of law, and not any questions about specific laws. I usually only discuss more objective topics when I'm on this forum, like the state's requirements to prove standing or the meaning of corpus delicti. For the questions you've asked, I can only give my personal, subjective opinions, just like anybody else. As I've stated before, I'm very open with opinions on law, so I'm not as likely to disagree with you on these topics the way I might if we were attempting to come up with the state's definition of law. Anyway, here goes...

Hopefully we can at least get a better understanding by starting at the general case. Anyway your personal subjective opinion of law in general is going to filter and colour your view of any specific law.

Thank you for the answers. First, a comment on one of them.

5. That doesn't answer quite what I was wanting to know. Do you believe there are some actions and endeavours ought be subject to law in themselves by reason of something inherent; that there are some actions and endeavours that ought not be?

You also mention this thing called community often, so I'd also like to really hammer out your conception of it,as your conception of law is so strongly rooted in it. I'll continue the numbering scheme you started for our mutual sanity later in the conversation.

7. What is a community?
8. What sort of facts do you rely upon to distinguish one from another?
9. In relation to law above are you referencing a specific type of community or just any community?
10. Are there particular perquisites* needed in order to have a community or can a community form without regard to the particular behavior on it's members.?
11. Are there particular characteristics* that can distiguish a strong vs. weak community?
12. Are there particular characteristics* than can distinguish a good vs bad community?

(10-02-2011 05:23 AM)RealSkinny Wrote: 5. Absolutely, but once again, just because I believe there should be doesn't make it so. My own views tend to run on the liberal side, and I would probably be in agreement with most changes to the law that satisfy a liberal viewpoint. I'm not sure if I could point to one specific topic that I believe should specifically be regulated by law. I tend to find there are endless circumstances that can complicate any law. Even something that seems straight forward, like Murder, might be complicated when you factor in issues like self-defense or mental capacity. What looks like cold blooded murder to one person may look like justified self defense to another.

7. I use the term community to refer to any group of two or more people. It can be as small as a family or as large are the entire world. Every group of two or more people is going to have a set of laws that govern the relationship.

I believe you can probably put laws into three different categories. First, you have laws that everyone agrees to. Second, you have laws that are compromises. Finally, you have laws where agreement cannot be reached, so the law is chosen based on some event.

I think these three areas can be demonstrated very easily in a small community of two, like a marriage. For example, we may have a rule that says every weekend the husband and wife will go out to dinner. This is a rule that the entire community agrees on, and illustrates the first category.
Next, we might need a rule to establish who cooks dinner each night. In this case, if neither individual wants to cook dinner, they may come up with a compromise. The Husband and Wife will trade off cooking each day, so no person cooks two days in a row. This illustrates the second example.

The final example is the most complicated to deal with. Let's say we have a disagreement between husband and wife over which car they should purchase. There may not be a way to compromise the situation. Generally, in these instances the community will elect a method for determining what the law should be. Maybe they'll flip a coin, or draw straws, or duke it out.
In larger communities, these issues are typically resolved by the majority, either through a direct vote, or by electing a representative to make the decision for the community.

These two methods obviously have their flaws, but as of yet, it seems no one has really come up with a better way to resolve these difficult conflicts, which tend to happen more and more as the community grows.

8. That's a difficult task. Generally you need some form of agreement to establish separateness, the States of the United States being one example. Even when communities are separate, they may still make up a larger community, not unlike the way numerous cities make up one state, and numerous states make up one nation, and numerous nations make up one planet.

9. Any community.

10. A community is just any group of people that will have some interaction with each other. In fact, a community may form despite an express intention to refrain from creating a community. A group of neighbors may agree never to interact with one another, but their actions may still effect each other unknowingly. You could even say their agreement not to interact with each other forms a community with at least one law -- do not interact.

11 & 12. I think you could always say a good, strong community is one that works well together, but you could probably pull out a bunch of factors that might contribute to a good or strong community. Perhaps an ability to compromise, or a lack of dissent.

(10-14-2011 06:58 AM)WorBlux Wrote: 5. But in the broad strokes? Sure I get that there can arise ambiguities in edge cases as behavior is a continuum. Would you expect that a given legal system would prohibit murder, even if you knew nothing about it besides the fact is existed as a formal legal system, and even though murder is an overlapping area of ideas rather than one that is perfectly precise? If yes, what are the other things that you would expect to see in this legal system, which you know nothing of, other than the fact that it exists.

7. A large community isn't just linearly more complicated, in fact it is even more than exponentially more complicated, it's factorially more complicated. A wife may have a pretty good idea when her husband is free to go out to diner and vice versa. In a group on 100 people, not so much.(93326215443944152681699238856266700490715968264381621468592963895217599993229915608941463976156518286253697920827223758251185210916864000000000000000000000000 possible relationships instead of 2)
Thus it is expected that most of the purported law will express generalization and principles rather than specifics; yes?

You also hit upon the primary aim of law as conflict resolution. This has some interesting tie-ins to #5 and #6, don't you think?

8. So succession with disagreement from the super-group? Right if you get away with it, wrong if you don't? (might makes right)

10. So interaction...

11-12. Without some dissent a community won't ever change so I'm not sure that is a criteria. Perhaps a separation of healthy and unhealthy dissent is in order?

Working well together, since you've defined community as interaction this does seem poignant, though vague. Breaking it down into specifics would be even more helpful. A comparison to #5 would be interesting as well.

Ability to compromise, because compromise is valuable in itself, or because it can provide more to more people than constantly fighting?

(09-30-2011 03:55 AM)RealSkinny Wrote: 6. Does what law ought to be influence what law is?
Sometimes, but again, what law ought to be can vary greatly from person to person. However, when there is a wide consensus on what law ought to be, it tends to influence what the law is, even if the law is clearly defined and deeply rooted in the community's history. An example from our own community might be battered wife syndrome and its relation to self-defense. Traditionally, you had to be in imminent danger of being killed or seriously injured to claim self-defense for a murder, but recently the community has been granting some leeway with the rule for situations where there has been a history of frequent abuse. One situation where this occurs has been with women suffering from battered wife syndrome. When a wife is frequently abused by her husband, she may feel completely powerless to stop it by facing her husband in direct confrontation during the abuse. Instead, when a battered wife kills her husband, she often does it while he's sleeping. This makes it difficult to claim you were under threat of imminent danger required by the self-defense rule. Recently, states have been relaxing the rules for self-defense for these situations, an example of the law being influenced by what the community believes it should be.

I think there better explanation for this other than the expansion of what is considered self defense of which it is simply not. (which is fairly consistent in it's elements of opportunity, ability and jeopordy)

First it is a crime of passion where the passion is considered forgivable or empathizable, a past example is where a man shoots another man he found in flagrante delicto with his wife. Basically anything where a jury will admit to themselves that they would be likely to do the same thing in that situation, generally it involves those passions for which the trigger is itself considered a fairly serious violation of social norms which is at the same time rare that few have direct experience of it, but common enough that they would be worried about it.

Second it is a long-term environment of high fear and extreme stress, neither of which are not particularly known for sharpening the rational faculty /*understatement*/.

It's not that what murdur is has changed. What changed was the judgment of facts and the weight given to them in a class of cases.

There are a lot of places were such considerations battle out, and hence the fuzzy and irregular lines at time.

(10-19-2011 03:06 AM)RealSkinny Wrote: 5. I would expect to see laws prohibiting murder, stealing, and other basics. Depending on how long the society has been around, I would expect to see laws dealing with other issues, like contractual relationships, labor, and common property.

6. Crimes of passion, like self-defense, must occur quickly. The longer a person waits between the incident that inflamed the passions and the actual murder, the more it looks like first degree premeditated murder. If a woman has been battered for five years before she finally acts to kill her husband, that's far different from the typical passion crime where a husband finds his wife with another man and immediately kills them both.

So it seems that the scenario does not fit either our typical definition of passion crime or our typical definition of self-defense. If we don't want it to be defined as 1st or 2nd degree murder, and it appears as a society we don't, then it needs another definition, or one of the pre-existing defenses must be altered to include a battered wife. Either way, the law is being influenced by what society believes it should be.

7. Correct. This is why I would say that as a society grows, its laws tend to become more complex. A single law suddenly becomes a single law with a dozen interpretations and even more exceptions.

8. What is right and wrong but what the majority believes it to be? A person was free to keep slaves until the majority no longer believed this was moral conduct. Even if you believe in some form of natural law that would have made slavery wrong for all of time, right and wrong carry no consequences until someone is willing to apply those consequences. A law without enforcement is really no law at all.

11 & 12. That's possible, but with regard to the quality of a community, if you have a group of people that agree with each other 100% of the time, that would probably be the ideal community. In fact, I believe this would be what many posters on this board would refer to as the "voluntary society." As soon as you have even one dissenter, the community ceases to be voluntary and it becomes a "compulsory society."

"Working well together, since you've defined community as interaction this does seem poignant, though vague. Breaking it down into specifics would be even more helpful. A comparison to #5 would be interesting as well.

Ability to compromise, because compromise is valuable in itself, or because it can provide more to more people than constantly fighting?"

Realistically, you can never have a community agree 100% of the time. An ability to compromise when absolute agreement cannot be reached would help reduce conflict. Apart from compromise, we might be able to say communities that work well together would be those that can sustain themselves and encourage growth. Common goals would probably be helpful. We could probably come up with a long list of factors.

zonsb · (This post was last modified: 10-20-2011 07:55 PM by zonsb.)

I thought while RealSkinny and WorBlux are philosophizing law, it might be useful to envision/speculate what it would be like to experience living in a voluntary society. To go there in your mind’s eye and experience in anticipation of what you’d be seeing, hearing, feeling (touch and emotion) tasting and smelling as though you were already immersed in a voluntary society. You might look around and see if you can identify law.

Start with a clean slate. For instance, there would be no bankster cabal. No centralized control of information (propaganda) via mainstream media. No control of vital resources by external authorities – especially human resources (I.e., human energy/labor.) Free market would flow with advanced technologies in food, energy, medicine and health. Some are already known yet suppressed by external “authority” centralized control. No public education/indoctrination camps.

Think Swords to Plow Shares. That’s where advanced technologies in the Pentagon are transferred to a free market to benefit people rather than used for value destruction. For example, the directed energy weapon (“free” energy) used to destroy the World Trade Center towers would be put to benevolent uses. Another example is, cannabis/marijuana would be freed from the war on drugs/people and used for over a hundred different things. Especially as a "cure all" medicine. Lot's of time and energy that is now counter constructive in the health care and especially pharmaceutical industry would go to constructive purposes. The prison industrial complex would no longer be as would the military industrial complex be history. Some parts would remain. But maybe not. No need to split hairs. Just do a thumbnail sketch of what is wiped off the slate to make it clean.

If there was even a government it would be voluntary and out of site out of mind.

What becomes of money and free-market currencies? My favorite is the Digital Coin System.

To start with a clean slate is to realize the vast amount of human energy that is wasted on counter-constructive activates and endeavors in the anti-civilization. I speculate the small amount of time/labor required to obtain a high standard of basic necessities for a family of four would be less than ten hours a week – and falling. Your job or business would be more like play than work. Know that today’s suppressed geniuses will have the freedom to substantially raise everyone’s standard of living. [Image: appl.gif]

Divorced from the irrationality, criminality and mysticism of the anticivilization with all it's collectivism "external authority" trappings, what would a pure freedom, self-governed voluntary society experience be? What will fill the ever-so-brief voids left by the elimination of counter-constructive human time and energy?

Man driven by his creative essence to create values for himself via all manner of activities and relationships. Secondly, creating values for the benefit of others in all manner of activities and relationships; albeit, most prominent in business.

How would a person know when he or she has arrived if they don't have a vision of what the environment and experience will be?
When you’re there in your mind’s eye, look around your environment and see if you detect or identify law, and if so, what it is. Share here whatever you want that you found. Relationships, activities, experiences and etc.

I found a world of unlimited opportunities to grow and experience life in ways that aren't generally available today. Plus, massive abundance of good stuff. People were vibrant and happy and inspiring like-minds were everywhere as people were living the lives they were meant to live.