Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the (fwd)

[Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu>]

Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> Forwarded message:
> 
> > Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 17:36:49 -0500
> > From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com>
> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the (fwd)
> >
> > Just because you don't have a social institution that announces
> > that it has the job of killing anybody who competes with it or
> > fails to obey its proclamations of the will of the majority
> > doesn't mean you don't have social institutions.
> 
> Nobody claimed that Bill, straw-man.

Now wait a minute, which side was it that said that an "anarchistic
society" was an oxymoron?  You know, that we can't have a society
without a state?  The state is nothing but an organization which kills
anyone who doesn't obey its will (however that will is determined, or
however many orders it will give you before disobedience is fatal).  By
saying this, you *are* saying that it is necessary to "have a social
institution that announces that it has the job of killing anybody who
competes with it or fails to obey its proclamations of the will of the
majority" in order to have *any* social institutions (i.e., to have a
society).

*We* weren't the ones who raised that strawman. ;)

> Explain how it works, it's that simple (and repeated for about the umpteenth
> time).

We have, haven't you been listening?

Michael Hohensee