Thanks for the thoughtful comment. Here's why I disagree:

> Many people get their ethics through intuition; therefore, you're not going to be able to convince a leftist out of taxing for the sake of the poor by "proving" taxation is immoral.

The fact that people get their ethics from intuition doesn't mean that they can't be persuaded that taxation is immoral. Most people intuitively agree that theft is generally immoral, so the only task left is showing them that taxation is theft. In his book The Problem of Political Authority Michael Huemer does exactly this. He argues that taxation is immoral using "common sense" moral intuitions that nearly everyone agrees with, including leftists, as a basis for his argument. So I disagree. (EDIT: Note that people have political intuitions too, such as the intuition that having a government that imposes some taxes is good. Peoples moral intuitions and political intuitions often conflict. Michael Huemer provides three reasons in his book why people should trust their moral intuitions rather than their political intuitions. See the last paragraph of section 1.6 of Chapter 1, or just do a search of the webpage for "political intuitions" and read from there.)

Also note that in my own case, I had the same moral intuitions before I believed that taxation is theft as I do now. It wasn't my moral intuitions that changed, but rather was my understanding of the nature of taxation that changed. Before I didn't realize that there was a threat of punishment and no consent involved, but now I realize that that is the case, and understand that the nature of taxation is such that it fits the definition of theft.

> They're never going to agree with you on those terms. Where you might get their support is by showing that states only provide token support for the poor, but that a stateless society cares for its poor more and in a more functional way.

I agree that educating people about the consequences of various things can be an effective way to help change their political views. However, in my experience most people aren't willing to take the time and effort to learn about the likely outcomes of an anarcho-capitalist or free market system unless they feel they have a moral obligation to do so.

For example, someone commented:

> the problem is I have heard nothing that has made me think twice about anarchism. I don't want to have to read a book if there is not one single idea that you can boil down to a few sentences that would make me stop and think how certain I am about what I consider true.

To most statists, including the person quoted above and my former self, the claim that we would be better off in an anarchic society seems so absurd that merely hearing the claim and a brief argument for it won't be enough for them to find it worth the time and effort to learn about how an anarchist society might function to provide law and order, help the poor, etc.

Perhaps if you're only arguing against a single government policy then people will take the time to hear your arguments about the fact that the consequences of the policy are worse than the free market policy. But I find that any time I speak of eliminating a substantial government program (e.g. abolishing the government school system) people find the idea that the consequences would be better so absurd that they don't take the time to read about it and see if I'm right.

On the other hand, when one is motivated by the belief that there is a presumption against taxation (since taxation is extortion), then they feel obligated to either prove the consequences of not having the extortion are so bad that the extortion is justified. They then take the time and effort to learn about free market alternatives to current practices, find out that the consequences are not likely to be sufficiently bad (and perhaps learn that they are likely to better, as is often the case) to justify the extortion, and then stop supporting the tax-funded government program.

The above is the path I took to anarcho-capitalism. I didn't care about politics at all. Then I was presented with arguments that governments are immoral since taxation is theft, etc. At first I said taxation is not theft. Then I realized I was wrong. Then I attempted to find reasons to believe that it's okay for governments to commit theft, etc. The only reasonable possible reason I came up with was that it was justified in the name of consequences. Since I still didn't want to give up my support of governments, I thus made these arguments that a bunch of government programs were necessary due to the consequences. I was met with counterarguments, learned about them (learned about how a free market anarchist society could do a bunch of stuff), realized I was wrong, and acknowledged that I was now an anarchist libertarian. Note that when I first became an anarchist libertarian I was not yet convinced that the consequences of an anarcho-capitalist society would be better than our current society. Rather, I just realized that the consequences weren't likely to be so bad that extortion was justified.

I never would have taken the time to learn about economics and how things would be if we had a free market or an anarcho-capitalist society unless I was motivated by the the moral arguments against the state. The possibility that things might be better with a free market wasn't a sufficient reason for me to care to learn about free market economics.

Hence why the moral arguments are important.

One last point: It's important to make the moral arguments for the sake of being fully honest. I am not an anarcho-capitalist because I think the consequences of anarcho-capitalism are likely to be better than any government system. That is, even if I thought the consequences would likely be not quite as good as the current system of democratic representative government, I would still be an anarcho-capitalist due to the fact that governments are morally illegitimate. If I only try to persuade people to support free market policies by pointing out that the consequences of those policies are better then I imply to whomever I am talking with that I think they should change their minds to support free market policies because the consequences of those policies are better. But this is not true. In order to be fully honest, I must state the true reasons why I believe they should change their views and support free market policies: because the policies are immoral and it's immoral not to stop supporting them.

If I was going to provide someone with a list of books that best expressed my current thinking on the Political Economy these would be my top ones:

1. The Law - While over a century old this books stands as the perfect intro to the ideas of Classical Liberalism. When you understand the core message of this book you understand why people oppose so many aspects of government action.
   
2. Seeing Like A State - The idea that society can be rebuilt from the top down is well demolished in this dense but important read. The concept of Legibility was a game changer for my brain.
   
3. Stubborn Attachments - This books presents a compelling philosophical argument for the importance of economic growth. It's hard to overstate how important getting the balance of economic growth vs other considerations actually is.
   
4. The Breakdown of Nations - A classic text on why the trend toward "bigger" isn't a good thing. While various nits can be picked with this book I think its general thesis is holding up well in our increasingly bifurcated age.
   
5. The Joy of Freedom - Lots of books, many objectively better, could have gone here but this book was my personal pivot point which sent me away from Socialism and towards capitalism. This introduction to "Libertarian Capitalism" is a bit dated now but it was powerful.
   
   There are, of course many more books that could go on this list. But the above list is a good sampling of my personal philosophy of political economy. It is not meant as a list of books to change your mind but simply as a list of books that are descriptive of my current belief that we should be orientated towards high (sustainable) economic growth & more decentralization.
   
   Some honorable mentions:
   
   As a self proclaimed "Libertarian Crunchy Con" I have to add The Quest for Community & Crunchy Cons
   
   The book The Fourth Economy fundamentally changed my professional direction in life.
   
   Anti-Fragile was another book full of mind blowing ideas and shifted my approach to many things.
   
   The End of Jobs is a great combination of The Fourth Economy & Anti-Fragile (among other concepts) into a more real-world useful set of ideas.
   
   Markets Not Capitalism is a powerful reminder that it is not Capitalism per se that is important but the transformational power of markets that need be unleashed.
   
   You will note that I left out pure economic books, this was on purpose. There are tons of good intro to econ type books and any non-trained economist should read a bunch from a bunch of different perspectives. With that said I am currently working my way through the book Choice and if it stays as good as it has started that will probably get added to my core list.
   
   So many more I could I list like The Left, The Right, & The State or The Problem of Political Authority and on it goes...
   I am still looking for a "manifesto" of sorts for the broad movement towards decentralization (I have a few possibilities on my 'to read list') so if you know of any that might fit that description let me know.

Conservative Republican Ideology:

• Faith in supposedly God-ordained tribal customs, rituals and the ability of prejudicial common sense to emotionally recognize truth without the need of critical thought.
  
  • Fundamental to conservatives is NOT philosophy and science, but dogmatics - a system of principles laid down by tradition and religion as incontrovertibly true.
    
  • Natural intuitions and "common sense" prejudice - combined with strong will power and charisma - are what is essential to perform one's duties in life.
    
• Conviction in a transcendent order based on natural law, tradition, and religion: That society requires hierarchy - the naturally inherited orders and classes of authority, obedience and wealth.
  
  • The proliferation of liberal, democratic values necessarily undermines competition and the “cultural” distinction of the worlds superior elites.
    
• Commitment to keeping innovation constrained by these convictions in the familiar, with skepticism of the puzzlingly rational, mathematically calculating theorizers.
  
• Belief that conservatives are victims of a modernity in need of a literal “revolution” - a return to an ideal, natural way.
  
  • Lead by the media and universities, the modern condemnation of certain ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ - viz. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. - is an onslaught against the “traditional categories and natural way of describing things…” and a witch-hunt against the conservatives who defend as much (Scruton, 128-129).
    
• A disposition to fight for their communities faith.
  
  • A “gut-response” mentality of bivalent absolutes (e.g. good/evil, yes/no, true/false, us/them etc.) with a large set of non-negotiable traditional faiths and a skepticism of rationality leaves the conservative with little but aggression and hostility when challenged.
    
    Conservatism seeks a neo-feudal society with a "natural" hierarchy of authority determined by the inheritance of wealth amongst those "proven" to be strong (not theoretical ideals guaranteeing everyone equal rights), along with a small government with a fierce military power to maintain the order and protect the property of the wealthy, superior class. It is the epitome of a pessimistic mentality formed by peoples faithful, anti-rational commitment to traditional institutions and their hierarchy of authority and obedience.
    
    Conservatism emphasizes authority over individual liberty or equality, and duty over rights. It is pessimistic in its philosophy of human nature, believing it is unalterably ignorant, weak, corruptible and selfish. Hence, acting according to this assumption is not a vice but the virtue of being a “realist”; contrarily, vice is held to exist in those “idealist” who hold an optimistic philosophy and believe the world can be improved and that such human qualities can be checked. Correspondingly, a nearly universal quality of conservatives is an instinctive fear of change and a disposition for habitual (not creative or thoughtful) action. And from this conjunction follows a harsh skepticism of abstract, intellectual reasoning.
    
    Truth is believed to exist solely within the revelations they inherit from their traditions. Beyond that, the world is understood to be mysteriously complex and beyond any individuals further understanding. Thus, says conservatism, it is not possible that anyone could rationally produce any principles that would improve upon tradition and the operation of societies “natural” order. Any attempt to do so by the radical intellectual is rebuked as arrogant and regarded as offensively corrosive to our very existence.
    
    ​
    
    Once one understands this, the actions of Trump and the Republican party make much more sense. And so does the need to openly combat their political blitzkrieg on Western liberal democracy.
    
    ​
    
    Sources:
    
    
• https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
  
• Scruton, Roger "Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition"
  
• Heywood, Andrew "Political Ideologies: An Introduction"

Yeah sure.

So right off the bat a good place to start (summary text if you want something simple with break down of the old arguments but written in Modern English and offering analysis) I would suggest Michael Sandel's Justice: A Reader, what's the right thing to do you can also watch the videos/discussions Dr Sandel has at Harvard's Justice Symposium Course (it's actually a great lecture series to just put on while you're doing something... http://justiceharvard.org/justicecourse/)

If you want a concise list of good books, I would suggest the following:

• The Republic (Plato)‡;
  
  
• The Prince (Machiavelli)‡;
  
  
• Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Nozick);
  
  
• Utopia (Thomas Moore)‡;
  
  
• The Social Contract (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)‡;
  
  
• Leviathan (Thomas Hobbes)‡;
  
  
• Politics (Aristotle)‡;
  
  
• Two Treatises on Government (John Locke)‡;
  
  
• Treatise on Property (John Locke)‡;
  
  
• On Liberty (John Stuart Mill)‡;
  
  
• The Communist Manifesto (Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels)‡;
  
  
• Reflexions sur la Revolution Francaise (Edmund Burke);
  
  
• Capital (Karl Marx)‡;
  
  
• Spirit of Laws (Montesquieu)‡;
  
  
• Natural Right and History (Leo Strauss);
  
  
• Modern Liberty: and the Limits of Government (Charles Fried);
  
  
• Concept Political (Carl Schmitt);
  
  
• The Constitution of Liberty (F. A. Hayek);
  
  
• The Wealth of Nations (Adam Smith)‡;
  
  
• The Road to Serfdom (F. A. Hayek);
  
  
• Freakonomics ();
  
  
• The Law (Frédéric Bastiat)‡;
  
  
• Economy and Society (Max Weber);
  
  
• The Protestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism (Max Weber);
  
  
• Politics as a Vocation/Politik als Beruf (Max Weber)‡;
  
  The stuff with a double dagger (‡) are some critical ones I would recommend beginning with. The list is a lot longer than this because if there's one thing people can do it's write about issues of their times, but they are good nonetheless.
  
  Good luck!!

Conservative Republican Ideology:

• Faith in supposedly God-ordained tribal customs, rituals and the ability of prejudicial common sense to emotionally recognize truth without the need of critical thought.
  
  
  • Fundamental to conservatives is NOT philosophy and science, but dogmatics - a system of principles laid down by tradition and religion as incontrovertibly true.
    
    
  • Natural intuitions and "common sense" prejudice - combined with strong will power and charisma - are what is essential to perform one's duties in life.
    
    
• Conviction in a transcendent order based on natural law, tradition, and religion: That society requires hierarchy - the naturally inherited orders and classes of authority, obedience and wealth.
  
  
  • The proliferation of liberal, democratic values necessarily undermines competition and the “cultural” distinction of the worlds superior elites.
    
    
• Commitment to keeping innovation constrained by these convictions in the familiar, with skepticism of the puzzlingly rational, mathematically calculating theorizers.
  
  
• Belief that conservatives are victims of a modernity in need of a literal “revolution” - a return to an ideal, natural way.
  
  
  • Lead by the media and universities, the modern condemnation of certain ‘isms’ and ‘phobias’ - viz. racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. - is an onslaught against the “traditional categories and natural way of describing things…” and a witch-hunt against the conservatives who defend as much (Scruton, 128-129).
    
    
• A disposition to fight for their communities faith.
  
  
  • A “gut-response” mentality of bivalent absolutes (e.g. good/evil, yes/no, true/false, us/them etc.) with a large set of non-negotiable traditional faiths and a skepticism of rationality leaves the conservative with little but aggression and hostility when challenged.
    
    Conservatism seeks a neo-feudal society with a "natural" hierarchy of authority determined by the inheritance of wealth amongst those "proven" to be strong (not theoretical ideals guaranteeing everyone equal rights), along with a small government with a fierce military power to maintain the order and protect the property of the wealthy, superior class. It is the epitome of a pessimistic mentality formed by peoples faithful, anti-rational commitment to traditional institutions and their hierarchy of authority and obedience.
    
    Conservatism emphasizes authority over individual liberty or equality, and duty over rights. It is pessimistic in its philosophy of human nature, believing it is unalterably ignorant, weak, corruptible and selfish. Hence, acting according to this assumption is not a vice but the virtue of being a “realist”; contrarily, vice is held to exist in those “idealist” who hold an optimistic philosophy and believe the world can be improved and that such human qualities can be checked. Correspondingly, a nearly universal quality of conservatives is an instinctive fear of change and a disposition for habitual (not creative or thoughtful) action. And from this conjunction follows a harsh skepticism of abstract, intellectual reasoning.
    
    Truth is believed to exist solely within the revelations they inherit from their traditions. Beyond that, the world is understood to be mysteriously complex and beyond any individuals further understanding. Thus, says conservatism, it is not possible that anyone could rationally produce any principles that would improve upon tradition and the operation of societies “natural” order. Any attempt to do so by the radical intellectual is rebuked as arrogant and regarded as offensively corrosive to our very existence.
    
    ​
    
    Once one understands this, the actions of Trump and the Republican party make much more sense. And so does the need to openly combat their political blitzkrieg on Western liberal democracy.
    
    ​
    
    Sources:
    
    https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/conservatism/
    
    Scruton, Roger "Conservatism: An Introduction to the Great Tradition"
    
    Heywood, Andrew "Political Ideologies: An Introduction"
    
    Conservatism by nature is an obsolete ideology.

Well you've come to the right place, then!

For a cursory treatment of these ideas, like with many ideas, wikipedia is a good starting point.

History of capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_capitalism#Origins_of_capitalism

Enclosure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure

History of modern policing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police#Early_modern_policing

Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread is kind of the go to introduction to classical anarchism. Its a good book, and it details the relationship between capitalism, the owner class, the working class, and police, as well as discussing alternatives to the our current social configuration: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23428/23428-h/23428-h.htm

The Conquest of Bread is also available as a free audiobook: https://librivox.org/search?title=The+Conquest+of+Bread&author=Kropotkin&reader=&keywords=&genre_id=0&status=all&project_type=either&recorded_language=&sort_order=catalog_date&search_page=1&search_form=advanced

The concepts of biopower and the spectacle are developed by the writers Michel Foucault and Guy Debord respectively. Their writing can be a little dense, but these concepts and their authors have wikipedia pages which make these ideas a little more accessible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopower

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectacle_%28critical_theory%29

Also, this is a reading of Debord's Society of the Spectacle laid over a collage of contemporary footage which conveys the concepts discussed. This is a sort of remake of a film Debord himself made in the '70s. Very very cool: https://vimeo.com/60328678

Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) also happens to be an historian and has produced an excellent documentary about medieval Europe. In the first episode he discusses the lives of the peasantry which is somewhat relevant to this discussion. There are certainly aspects of medieval living that I'm not keen to revive. But there is a nugget of gold in that form of life that we've lost in our contemporary context. Anarchists want a return to that sense of autonomy and deep social bonds within communities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTWsUvT8nsw

An Anarchist FAQ is a very thorough, contemporary, and systematized introduction to anarchist ideas: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/afaq/index.html

Noam Chomsky's On Anarchism is an accessible introduction to anarchism that focuses on a modern, large-scale, industrial anarchist society that existed in Spain in the 1930s, to illustrate the concepts underpinning anarchist thought. It's a bit of hokey in parts, especially in the little chapter introductions which are just quotes from Q&A sessions with Dr. Chomsky. But if you can get past that, its good: https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Noam-Chomsky/dp/1595589104

Chomsky also wrote Manufacturing Consent and Profit Over People, which are much less shallow than On Anarchism, and document how the state maintains a facade of legitimacy and some of the things that the contemporary state (circa 1999... its a little out of date, but not terrible in that respect) does to sophisticate the relationship between owner and worker. Chomsky is probably best known publicly for those two texts, but he has a lot of work in a lot of different fields. He's a pretty prolific intellectual with numerous contributions to political theory, linguistics, cognitive theory, philosophy, and computer science.

Richard Wolff is an economist who has taught at Yale, UMass, City College NY, and is currently teaching at New School. He does a monthly update on global capitalism where he kind of tries to give a bird's eye view of how our global economy shifts and develops from month to month. He also does weekly updates too, but I can never manage to stay up to date on those: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdMCTlHl5RQ&t=1836s

Anthropologist David Harvey's book 17 Contradictions and the End of Capitalism details many of the ways in which capitalism appears to be constantly fighting against itself for survival, all the while heightening the conditions which cause capitalism to become precarious in the first place: https://www.amazon.com/Seventeen-Contradictions-Capitalism-David-Harvey/dp/0190230851

This is a film about where capitalism is headed, and what it will look like in 2030: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vApEgrLf7S4

Encirclement: Neoliberalism Ensnares Democracy is a documentary which discusses some of the ways that capitalism post-1968 has shifted so as to wrest more power away from communities. Its very similar to Noam Chomsky's Power Over People, and Chomsky is featured prominently alongside several other intellectuals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uh44qlii6X4

We Are All Very Anxious is a really cool and short text by anonymous writers about how the different stages of capitalism impact the psychiatric health of the individual. Its availible as a free text, or as a short audiobook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP_5NlY-4mI

This is Albert Einstien's short introductory essay on socialism called Why Socialism. Its not an advocacy of Anarchism per se, and I'm skeptical about the (admitedly vague) path to socialism that he lays out. But some of the concerns he raises at the end of the essay are problems that Anarchism aims to directly address: https://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/

George Orwell (author of 1984 and Animal Farm) spent time living in and fighting for the Spanish Anarchist society that Chomsky focuses on in On Anarchism, and he documents his experiences in his memoir, Homage to Catalonia: https://www.amazon.com/Homage-Catalonia-George-Orwell/dp/0156421178

The Take, by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis is a film that documents a growth of anarchist factories, offices, and communities following the 2001 financial collapse in Argentina. Today these communities still exist and control hundreds of workplaces: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOCsfEYqsYs

This is a short film about the anarchist nation of Rojava (northern syria, western kurdistan) which formed in 2013 in the midsts of the Syrian civil war, and is currently the primary boots on the ground in the fight against ISIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1p40M1WSwNk&t=8s

Since the early-mid '90s most of Chiapas, Mexico has operated as an anarchist society in direct defiance of the Mexican government and NAFTA. In addition to providing for their own communities, Chiapas is also the 8th largest producer of coffee in the world. This is a short documentary about that society: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HAw8vqczJw&t=2s

This is a children's film about the same people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDNuzFQW3uI&t=463s

Resistencia is a documentary about anarchist communities emerging in Honduras in the wake of the 2009 US-backed coup: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/resistencia

Marx' Capital is a foundational text in modern socialist thought. It lacks some of the cool ideas of the 20th century (a genealogy of morality, the spectacle, and biopower as examples) but is very thorough in providing an economic critique of capitalism. Capital is dense, massive (three volumes long), and incomplete, but David Harvey has a great series of lectures which go along with the texts: http://davidharvey.org/2008/06/marxs-capital-class-01/

This is another pretty dense one, but if you watch that lecture series and/or read Capital, Kevin Carson's Studies in Mutualist Political Economy is an interesting follow up text. Carson looks at the plethora of arguments that have developed since the publication of capital which try to recuperate economics to before Marx' critique. In it he discusses and critiques subjective value theory, marginalism, and time preference, which all ultimately argue in different ways that the the prices of goods are determined primarily by demand, rather than the cost of production, a rejection of an important conjecture in classical economics which Marx' critique incorporates. Carson's overarching critique of these responses to Marx and the Marxian approach isn't that these demand-focused understandings of value are entirely wrong or useless, but that as critiques of classical cost theory of value they kind of lose sight of what Marx and the classicals were actually saying. While demand is an important aspect of production, Smith, Ricardo, Marx, etc... are looking at the case where supply and demand have reached equilibrium. While demand may be a determining factor of price where this isn't the case, we know that competitive commodity markets tend towards a supply/demand equilibrium, so an analysis of the equilibrium case is useful for analyzing the form that markets take in the long-term. You can justify small gains through market arbitrage for example, or the way we value art and other unique works by looking at demand, but its not as useful for understanding how someone can see consistent long-term gains through investment: https://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/MPE.pdf

In this post I provide a summary of some of the ideas that Carson discusses thats not anywhere nearly as thorough as Carson, but isn't quite as condensed as the above paragraph (If you look closely, you'll notice I recycled some of my earlier post from this one): https://www.reddit.com/r/CapitalismVSocialism/comments/53e0e8/socialists_from_ltv_to_exploitation/d7scmya/

(cont...)

Awesome, let me hook you up:

Murray N. Rothbard's Ethics of Liberty, the indepth treatise on liberty in a society without the State. And the audiobook.

Chaos Theory by Robert P. Murphy (Audio). Shorter work on the principles of liberty and expands on the economic aspects.

Anarcho-capitalism Primer videos playlist. There are about 4 or 5 shorter than 10 minutes for you to chill. And there are the in-depth, one-hour lectures for when you are in between the books.

Rothbard's For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto. Rothbard poured a lifetime of research and all his intellectual energy to makes an overwhelming case on most matters of social concerns to explain society without the Nation-state (Audiobook).

The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman (e-book) and (audiobook). Friedman uses economics and utilitarian concerns to discuss how society would improve with liberty and without the State.

The Market for Liberty by Morris and Linda Tannehill (audiobook.) Excellent and very argumentative, with many interesting illustrations and discussions on several topics of society and economics.

Huemer's Problem of Political Authority. It is a work on political and moral philosophy, with some treatment of psychology.

Leeson's Anarchy Unbound. Peter Leeson is a legal scholar and his work documents historical and contemporary legal practices and teachings and how they apply to a society of liberty.

Christopher Chase Rachels' A Spontaneous Order. Inspired by the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe on argumentation ethics as an ultimate foundation for liberty. First five chapters available as audio.

For a more complete list see Anarcho-Capitalism: An Annotated Bibliography by Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

When you read one of them, I suggest for you to write up a short post on your favourite subjects. It is a great way way to have productive discussions. Don't forget to tag me ( /u/anon338 ) so that I can enjoy it also.

There are a lot of very simplistic points made for and against the positions presented by the libertarian/anarchistic intellectual traditions, and internet comments especially can devolve very quickly. Some people who've taken the time to research the arguments related their own questions or opinions about anarchy have sophisticated responses against steel-manned positions, but the majority are radically oversimplified and woefully short of awareness just like this. It's disheartening to spend so much effort to find out where exactly you stand in a political sense, and find that there appear to be legions of people continuously washing up against you who, though they might claim rationality, are perfectly content to drop an opinion as a decisive conclusion into a soundbyte space with no real argument. And this applies to the person you're speaking to above, not just you. It's just a really poor exchange. I'll see what I can do to help in this case, and maybe something interesting will happen.

To be very up-front, I would also describe myself as an anarchist. I came to that conclusion first by exposure to powerful moral arguments that required no acceptance of any special moral theories, but simply pitted my own morality against my belief in the political authority of the State and exposed total conflict. However, half the anarchists I've met didn't come by this approach, but by pragmatism instead. I would say that approach occupies most of the anarchist literature out there, being things like legal theory, game theory, economics, solutions to public goods problems, market failures, basically a consequentialist's playground. The reason for this is probably that a lot of folks demand quite a complete and detailed explanation for most facets of a theorized anarchist society where today they can only imagine coercive (State) solutions to the same problems. Since both of the above comments appear to be approaching from a pragmatic perspective, that's the kind of resource I'll be providing.

The claim in question is one of the most common refrains first uttered in response to the idea of a stateless society. "Without government, warlords would take over." Luckily for anyone interested in that claim here, it is also addressed in most places where people bother to ask about it. I'll present some of the shorter resources, and one or two longer ones, and then at the end I'll even contribute a tidbit of my own thoughts on the matter, which take a little bit of a different angle.

The most direct address is an article by Dr. Robert P. Murphy (economist) which you can find in written form here, or as a 12-minute narrated audio upload which someone has posted here. It doesn't take long to get through, and I don't need to reproduce its arguments here. I'm interested to hear what you think of it.

Edit: I also realize that in the article above, Murphy mentions some concepts which are common to discussions of polycentric (stateless) legal systems, but not common outside it. Things like private defense and arbitration agencies. While these too are discussed in the link below, to help provide context for anyone who feels a little confused with the above, there are some great youtube videos that give a quick introduction to these as well. The Machinery of Freedom: Illustrated Summary and Law Without Government. Hopefully this doesn't muddy the discussion, but provides some useful context if something was missed in the above article.

Further resources that cover the "warlord" question, though with the greater context of a detailed surrounding system, would include the freely available 2nd edition or Amazon-purchasable 3rd edition of The Machinery of Freedom by economist David Friedman (Milton Friedman's son). I would consider his discussions of stability questions certainly related to that, though he presents things in terms of a Mafia-like setup, and the concerns given his particular premises are not exactly the same.

I think you'd also find Chase Rachels' chapters about Law & Order and Defense & Security from A Spontaneous Order relevant as well -- you might even skip the rather boring and rigorous argumentation ethics the book leads with to get to that spot.

And I think that's more than good for a starter. Now my own tidbit. Please read/listen to the first article I linked before moving on here.

Something I think all of these guys miss even in their own objections is the public's idea of the belief in political authority. Were we to assume that a given -- let's say "Western" -- society actually opted for a truly stateless existence (whether an existing one "transitioned" or a new one was created, like a seastead community), it stands to reason that the people comprising it would have given up any belief in the legitimacy of political authority. If they hadn't, there's no reason they would've gone anarchist in the first place instead of just replacing one government with another. And if they did actually go through all the trouble to rid themselves of a State, and they indeed did not tolerate claims of political authority on that scale, there's no reason to assume they will turn right around and tolerate it on the local scale either. "Warlords" here, like kings and barons, need people to actually believe they have a right to do what they do in order to maintain any kind of power base. It's unclear why a people who disbelieve in this right of rulership would listen to them in the first place, much less tolerate them when they would not tolerate a modern State. This is my same argument against another common question: "If you eliminated the state, wouldn't a new one simply rise in its place?" or "Wouldn't a corporation just turn into a state?", etc.

If you assume a simple disbelief in political authority, a necessary precursor, for a people who were not already degenerating into moral barbarism (in which case a state comprised of those people doesn't help anyway, as Somalia had before it ripped itself apart), then the re-emergence of States on any scale doesn't seem likely to me, including that of the local warlord.

Well...I agree History is key...but...

You really need to read Political Theory first for a foundation. Every modern day political ideology is based off of these books in one way or another.

• John Locke - Two Treatises of Government
  
• Kant - Political Writings
  
  -Jean-Jacques Rousseau - The Basic Political Writings
  
  Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Introduction to the Philosophy of History
  
  And....
  
  Bentham and Mill - The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill
  
  Karl Marx, Freidrich Engels -The Marx-Engels Reader -Second Edition Don't worry, it still contains the Communist Manifesto.
  
  Machiavelli couldn't hurt to know either.
  
  For some basis on International Organizations - whether it be trade theory, regimes, etc.... this book is top of its class.
  
  Friedrich Kratochwil, Edward D Mansfield - International Organization and Global Governance: A Reader
  
  You also should really read into and understand the Treaty of Westphalia
  
  Then from there
  
  You can look into History, Economic Theory, and/or whatever specific part of the political spectrum you have interest in.
  
  If you are a student try to take advantage of JSTOR...if you aren't a student...you can always purchase access if you are genuinely interested in this stuff.
  
  AFTER you atleast have a foundation under your belt.
  
  You can then use Think Tanks most of what I will link are Internationally known and used and are unbiased, non partisaned.
  
  

• Atlantic Community (This is a german think tank *In english)
  
  
• DIW Berlin - A Economic Think Tank
  
  *Think tank for Action on Social Change - Based out of Ireland
  
  
• Ecologic Foundation - NZ Based, it focuses on Environmental Policy, used world wide.
  
  All of these are widely used, widely respected. Whether you agree with their stances or not. Each of them have had their fair share of Criticism.
  
  I firmly believe that Think Tanks provide the best source of political information, and that they allow one to mold their own political views on grounds of academia and not propaganda and misinformation. (I'm looking at you MSN and Fox news)
  
  Conservative
  
  Acton Institute
  
  American Civil Rights Union
  
  American Enterprise Institute
  
  Bradley Foundation
  
  Center for Security Policy
  
  Claremont Institute
  
  Employment Policies Institute (Fiscal)
  
  Goldwater Institute
  
  The Heritage Foundation
  
  Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
  
  National Center for Policy Analysis
  
  Libertarian
  
  Ludwig von Mises Institute
  
  Cascade Policy Institute
  
  Cato Institute
  
  Competitive Enterprise Institute
  
  Foundation for Economic Education
  
  The Heartland Institute
  
  The Independent Institute
  
  Reason Foundation
  
  Progressive
  
  Center for American Progress
  
  Center for Economic and Policy Research
  
  The Century Foundation
  
  Drum Major Institute
  
  Institute for Policy Studies
  
  New Democrat Network
  
  Third Way (Independent - Dem leaning)
  
  World Policy Institute
  
  
  Liberal
  
  Economic Policy Institute
  
  Economic
  
  American Institute for Economic Research
  
  Analysis Group
  
  Committee for Economic Development
  
  Global Financial Integrity
  
  James Madison Institute (Free Market)
  
  Milken Institute
  
  National Bureau of Economic Research
  
  Peterson Institute for International Economics
  
  Political and Economic Research Council
  
  Tax Foundation
  
  National
  
  Center for a New American Security
  
  Center for Defense Information
  
  Discovery Institute This one has a religious agenda. It's a good use...but beware they are attacking Religion
  
  
  International
  
  American Foreign Policy Council
  
  Aspen Institute
  
  Atlantic Council
  
  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
  
  Center for Global Development
  
  Council on Foreign Relations
  
  EastWest Institute
  
  Foreign Policy Research Institute
  
  Inter-American Dialogue
  
  Migration Policy Institute
  
  RAND Corporation VERY good Think-Tank
  
  Washington Institute for Near East Policy
  
  Non-Partison Public Policy
  
  Brookings Institution
  
  Center for Ethical Solutions
  
  Center for Governmental Studies
  
  Center for Immigration Studies
  
  Center for International Policy
  
  Center for Media and Democracy
  
  Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
  
  Foundation for Excellence in Education
  
  Global Development and Environment Institute
  
  Hoover Institution
  
  Hudson Institute
  
  Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
  
  James Baker Institute
  
  New America Foundation
  
  Pew Research Center (I love Pew)
  
  Urban Institute
  
  
  
  Bi-Partison
  
  Center for Strategic and International Studies
  
  Constitution Project
  
  
  Most Universities around the World have think tanks also
  
  The only one I care about and rely on is the Think Tank at the University of Virginia.
  
  The University of Virginia's Miller Center
  
  Think Tank Directory
  
  Elections, Candidates
  
  Vote Smart
  
  On The Issues
  
  
  Sorry in advance if the Format is shit

>We can govern ourselves quite effectively.

That's a pretty bold assertion. Do you have any examples of places larger than a town who function well via strictly direct democracy?

>We don't need the middleman of the politician. Only the rich want politicians to push their selfish agenda.

I think that everyone wants "politicians to push their selfish agenda", but most wouldn't class their agenda as "selfish" in their own eyes. "the rich" do have more resources to work the system though, but a direct democracy would likely make that advantage even worse. In a system where we just make all collective decisions directly, the ability to shape public opinion is paramount, and it's people with resources who can take advantage of that best.

>Why don't you give us some examples where these referendums haven't worked out well.
Hmm, In recent months Brexit leaps to mind as does Columbia's referendum on a peace deal with FARC to end their 50 year insurgency. Heck, I suspect that were a referendum held in the US as to whether to leave the UN, that it'd possibly pass...though it'd be a objectively terrible idea.

Anyway, more generally, there's a reasonable bit of research as into how voters make decisions and it's not really all that rosy. For instance, on a quick search, here's a study of AUS voters and how referendums on constitutional matters were considered

This highlights some core issues with voting in general that have gotten notice of late. A decent book on how it appears that people actually vote and the issues with prevailing theories is "Democracy for Realists". I've found it enlightening, though somewhat depressing, reading.

People collectively aren't the rational, informed electorate that we'd like to have and "more democracy" isn't always a good answer to political problems. Many policy issues are nuanced and require delicate balancing of interests and aren't easily broken down into simply digested bullet points. Referendums can be useful on clear, straightforward decisions where the details are fairly simple and the costs/benefits are fairly clear.

People have day jobs and generally aren't inclined to spend the resources necessary to really get properly informed on matters of policy well enough to make solid decisions. Presumably simplifying this to voting on representatives/parties who support policy slates to make the detail decisions should make that cost less, and voters don't even do that well per the evidence that we have.

edit clean up and I added some direct responses to a couple of other questions/assertions.

Excellent list. I'd add:

Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America, where for simplification the author generally used "KGB" for the organization that started out as the Cheka and was the NKVD for a good part of what the book covers. He's an ex-counterintelligence officer, and uses analysis techniques from that field to go from the known operative Willi Münzenberg to known or likely "Willing Accomplices" his effort recruited before he was (inevitably) liquidated by Stalin (the effort was of course restarted later, but the lethal payload had already been delivered, in the US especially after the #1 goal of diplomatic recognition of the USSR was achieved early in FDR's administration).

I'd like to emphasize that anything relevant written or edited by Samuel Francis is going to be great, but you'll likely want to read some of his freely available or cheaper works before buying his $48 magnum opus Leviathan and Its Enemies. He's the guy who came up with the critical concept of anarcho-tyranny, which in classic Wikipedia fashion has been purged from his page, but they forgot to remove the redirect of that to it. (In short, it's a new version of the ancient pattern of top and bottom classes conspiring against the middle, criminals in particular are enabled to prey on us, rules and laws are enforced against us but not them and e.g. immigrants in California, native farmer Victor Davis Hansen has a lot of first hand observations about this.)

For a laser focused analysis of the current SJW phenomena and how to deal with them, you can't beat Vox Day's SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police, the genesis of which started with an unremitting out of the blue attack a decade and a half ago by some SF SJWs for really mild and unrelated to their domain badthink. He's a fighter, so it has a lot of good advice as to how to attack and counterattack them. /u/sciencemile recommends Mill's On Liberty, and per Vox Day, Mill would be relevant if for no other reason than his "defining [a] new idea of justice in a form that is still recognizable in the demands of today's SJWs" in his Utilitarianism. (On the other hand, view anything Vox Day writes about economics with extreme skepticism, and I note he's not fundamentally honest, he's quite willing to lie for tactical reasons.)

To get a taste of it, he's written a short SJW_Attack_Survival_Guide PDF that's [currently being discussed on KiA]
(https://www.reddit.com/r/KotakuInAction/comments/6gx2tl/in_light_of_recent_events_sjw_attack_survival/).

If you want to fight and are not equally adept at rhetoric as well as dialectic and know when to use each, he highly recommend's Aristotle's On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse (that seems to be the best English translation, but I've not read it yet, for better or worse my upbringing made me good at both).

Martin van Creveld's recent Equality: The Impossible Quest ought to be very important as well, but I've not read anything by him.

If you're really brave, check out The Culture of Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual and Political Movements, although I only sampled that before starting with the two previous books in his trilogy, in the middle of the third now.

Thanks so much!

As for what to read, it really depends on what you're interested in but I always recommend the classics when it comes to anything to do with the left first.

However, if you'd like something more modern and lighter here are some of my recent favorites:

• Why Marx Was Right - Terry Eagleton is a fantastic author and this book has sold more than one friend of mine on the concept of Marxism. A great resource to learn more about the socialist left and hear the other side of the story if you've been sold the mainstream narrative on Marx.
  
  
• A Cure for Capitalism - An elegant roadmap for ethically dismantling capitalism by the most prominant Marxist economist alive today, Richard D. Wolff. Very utility-based and pretty ideologically pure to Marx while still taking into account modern economic circumstances.
  
  
• No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy - this one is a great take-down of how modern NGO organizations (especially the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) are the premium outlet for soft imperialism for the US.
  
  
• Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair - added this because it was a very impactful, recent read for me. A lot of left-of-republican people support some kind of prison reform but we usually view it through the lens of helping "non-violent offenders". This book digs into that distinction and how we, as a society, can't seriously try to broach meaningful prison reform before we confront the notion of helping those who have done violent things in their past.
  
  
• [Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women] (https://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-Women/dp/0307345424/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1550926471&sr=1-4&keywords=backlash) - probably my favorite book on modern feminism and why it is, in fact, not obsolete and how saying/believing as much is key to the ideology behind the attacks from the patriarchal ruling class. Can't recommend it enough if you're on the fence about feminism.
  
  
• How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic - Written in the 70's by a couple of Marxists during the communist purge in Chile, this book does a fantastic job of unwrapping how ideology baked into pop culture can very effectively influence the masses. Though I can only recommend this one if you're already hard sold on Socialism because you might not even agree with some of the core premises if you're on the fence and will likely get little out of it.
  
  
• Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? - Mark Fisher's seminal work deconstructing how capitalism infects everything in modern life. He killed himself a few years after publishing it. My most recommended book, probably.

> I think capitalism is deeply flawed but it's the best option we have available.

Unfortunately, so much of this sentiment stems from our inability to choose something else. Capitalism's supporters love to sing the praises of "consumer choice," but we're never given the choice to accept or decline capitalism itself. It's a contradiction; if it's true that more choices improve the product or the quality of our lives, shouldn't we also be given the choice to opt out of capitalism?

It's said that it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism. And I believe that. You can't just switch away from capitalism the same way you'd switch from iPhone to Android.

I recommend the book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher. It's a great in-depth examination of how all-encompassing the idea of capitalism has become and what we might be able to do about it. It gave me a lot to think about. (And if you can't buy it, get it from your local library!)

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-There-Alternative-Books/dp/1846943175/

I'd start by questioning the notion of political authority. There is a range of activities which the state does that we'd condemn a private agent or entity if they did those things. So the question is: what accounts of this authority are there, and do they actually justify our holding governments to different ethical standards as non-governmental entities? (These accounts will typically be appeals to things like social contracts and democracy.) The anarcho-capitalist answer is oftentimes: these accounts fail to justify political authority.

This alone doesn't get you to anarcho-capitalism. You'll need a couple more things. Firstly, you'll need some sort of account of how an anarcho-capitalist society will provide the services or features that seem necessary for any acceptably functioning society. These are typically things like settling disputes (courts?), including tricky disputes regarding certain kinds of externalities, rights protection (police? military?), and, if you are so inclined, perhaps some kind of social justice. Secondly, since anarcho-capitalism is capitalistic, then one will probably need some sort of defense of private property rights as well. (If you already accept private property, then this might not be necessary. But those who are suspicious of it will probably want some sort of account of it, probably for similar reasons that we desire an account of political authority from the state.)

If each of these notions hold up (1 - political authority doesn't exist; 2 - private institutions can provide the services and features required for an acceptably decent society; 3 - private property is just), then you have a pretty good general case for anarcho-capitalism.

As for suggested reading regarding each of these points...

• The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer. This one attempts to debunk political authority and provides a rough account of how an anarcho-capitalist society might provide for things like dispute resolution and the defense of individual rights.
  
• The Machinery of Freedom, by David Friedman. While this provides an account of private property, I think the real virtue of this book is its ability to showcase capitalistic solutions to what we typically consider the domain of government action. (Again, things like providing law -- resolving disputes --, providing defense, education, etc.)
  
• Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick. While Nozick is no anarchist, he is a libertarian, and he developed an account of property entitlement that has been fairly influential, called The Entitlement Theory. While I'm not a strict adherent of this theory, it does seem to capture and explain a very wide variety of basic ethical intuitions regarding property rights.
  
  On the other hand, a good argument against anarcho-capitalism will probably hit on the negations of these points. It will attempt to establish political authority, or show anarcho-capitalist solutions to be highly impractical and improbable, or debunk private property, or something of this sort. Hopefully that helps lay out a sort of structure with which to analyze anarcho-capitalism with.

>I am the first to say that libertarian authors have frequently relied upon controversial philosophical assumptions in deriving their political conclusions. Ayn Rand, for example, thought that capitalism could only be successfully defended by appeal to ethical egoism, the theory according to which the right action for anyone in any circumstance is always the most selfish action. Robert Nozick is widely read as basing his libertarianism on an absolutist conception of individual rights, according to which an individual's property rights and rights to be free from coercion can never be outweighed by any social consequences. Jan Narveson relies on a metaethical theory according to which the correct moral principles are determined by a hypothetical social contract. Because of the controversial nature of these ethical or metaethical theories, most readers find the libertarian arguments based on them easy to reject.

>It is important to observe, then, that I have appealed to nothing so controversial in my own reasoning. In fact, I reject all three of the foundations for libertarianism mentioned in the preceding paragraph. I reject egoism, since I believe that individuals have substantial obligations to take into account the interests of others. I reject ethical absolutism, since I believe an individual's rights may be overridden by sufficiently important needs of others. And I reject all forms of social contract theory, since I believe the social contract is a myth with no moral relevance for us...

~ Huemer from Problem of Political Authority. (The book argues in favor of anarcho-capitalism, but will also give you a strong foundation for minarchism)

His moral philosophy is intuitionism. I also highly suggest his other book Ethical Intuitionism - it's a great intro to metaethics and spurred my interest in philosophy to begin with.

If you can't afford either, he has some chapters over at his faculty page.

It asserts a moral realist position (objective moral facts) on the basis of our intuitions - essentially common sense morality (see: GE Moore, and WD Ross). It is a respectable academic philosophy (as opposed to Objectivism) and has recently seen a resurgence.

Here is a good summary of what Huemer's approach lends itself to

I would recommend one of three books to persuade your friend (you can read more about them to choose what you think may be the best). Hope you find a decent gift among the list:

• Democracy, The God that Failed, by Hoppe is an excellent read that shows how the state always slides into failure. Primarily a western critique, it can apply to Marxism easily as a whole. More historical, rather than an ethical critique, however.
  
  
• The Ethics of Liberty, again by Hoppe demonstrates how free associate is the most ethical way to organize society, even if Marxism could work.
  
  
• Mixing it up a little, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, this time by Rothbard explains an Anarcho-Capitalist's perspective on ethics. While it does not explicitly show the downfalls of collectivism, it would be good for her to help understand our view of society.

I'll take number 4.

My favorite intro book on media and politics is Media Politics: A Citizen's Guide by Shanto Iyengar. It's a great textbook for teaching undergrads and covers pretty much everything.

For general theories of how political elites interact with the media, I would recommend Cook's Governing with the News, Patterson's Out of Order, and Zaller's A Theory of Media Politics (It's an unpublished manuscript, so just Google it and it'll come up.)

There's a ton of great work on the concept of media bias, but I'll give you two older works that I think capture the intersection of journalistic norms and coverage really well. Check out Gans's Deciding What's News and Schudson's Discovering the News. There's also work that looks at how economic forces lead to bias. See Hamilton's All the News That's Fit to Sell for an intro to that.

On media effects on behavior, start with Iyengar and Kinder's News that Matters. Beyond that, I'm partial to Graber's Processing the News, Soroka's Negativity in Democratic Politics, and Ladd's Why Americans Hate the Media and How it Matters.

If you're interested in how recent changes to the media environment (cable TV, internet, etc.) have affected things, I would recommend Prior's Post-Broadcast Democracy, Arceneaux and Johnson's Changing Minds or Changing Channels, Levendusky's How Partisan Media Polarize America, and Hindman's The Myth of Digital Democracy.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend some Lippmann or some Edelman. Those are for more high-minded/theory-driven thinking about how the media constructs our realities.

I know that's a lot, but there's a ton of stuff I'm cutting out as is (nothing about selective exposure or motivated reasoning, barely touching on the framing literature). If you have any more specific questions about American media, I can probably narrow it down some more.

Oh, and a couple quick recommendations on the other questions (which aren't really my specialty). I really liked Democracy for Realists by Achen and Bartels. Frances Lee's new book on political messaging in Congress is pretty interesting. And I'm a subscriber to the legislative subsidy school of thought on interest groups.

Note: I'm not recommending that people donate to this, but am just sharing it because it's relevant.

Criticism of Rose's arguments:

Honestly I'd be somewhat embarrassed to ask a professor I knew to debate Larken on this due to the fact that I think Larken's arguments against political authority are rather weak / lacking in philosophical rigor. (Note: Huemer does much better at this.) I wouldn't expect Larken's arguments to change any professors minds and not because I think the professors are irrational, but rather because the arguments simply aren't good enough.

Larken's arguments against political authority wouldn't have convinced me before I was a libertarian. Before I finally accepted the view that governments shouldn't be granted political authority I spent hundreds of hours coming up with dozens of arguments to the contrary--far more than the handful that Huemer considers and rejects in the first half of The Problem of Political Authority.

And I was right to consider these arguments for political authority. I don't think that one should just go from (1) observing that they hold conflicting moral intuitions and political intuitions and (2) the moral intuitions seem stronger to (3) rejecting the political intuitions. Rather, one should consider all of the reasons why governments really should be given that special moral status, and should only conclude that they shouldn't be granted the special moral status if none of those reasons seems satisfactory.

As Huemer writes in Ch 1 section 1.6 A Comment on Methodolgy:

> Those who begin with an intuition that some states possess authority may be brought to give up that intuition if it turns out, as I aim to show, that the belief in political authority is incompatible with common sense moral beliefs. There are three reasons for preferring to adhere to common sense morality rather than common sense political philosophy: first, as I have suggested, common sense political philosophy is more controversial than common sense morality. Second, even those who accept orthodox political views are usually more strongly convinced of common sense morality than they are of common sense political philosophy. Third, even those who intuitively accept authority may at the same time have the sense that this authority is puzzling–that some explanation is required for why some people should have this special moral status–in a way that it is not puzzling, for example, that it should be wrong to attack others without provocation. The failure to find any satisfactory account of political authority may therefore lead one to give up the belief in authority, rather than to give up common sense moral beliefs.

When it was first pointed at to me by a friend in 2010 that taxation is like extortion, imprisonment for victimless crimes is like kidnapping, etc, my reaction was that there must be some good explanation for this. I came up with dozens of plausible explanations and it took a while for me to reject them.

I don't think it took me more than five minutes to reject lines of argument like "the citizens delegated the right to Taxpayer Bob's money to the government, therefore it's not extortion for the government to demand that he give them money." If Larken had made his traditional one-line arguments against political authority to me before I became a libertarian, he'd thus be attacking a straw-man.

The intellectual challenge is not (as Larken says) to recognize that if individuals own their money then there is no process by which a collective of others can gain the right to take that person's money from them against their will. This is a straw man. Very few people actually believe that the government has the right to tax because other people delegated them this right. Very few people say this, and most of those who do say this don't even actually believe it. Instead, what's motivating them to say it is that they have an intuition that the governments should be able to do most of what they do--that they have political authority.

The real challenge that held me back for weeks or months before I finally rejected political authority is to figure out if there is some good reason for governments to be granted the special moral status that is political authority. It wasn't an obvious no. There are lots of psychological factors motivating me to think the answer was yes. It took dozens of hours over the course of several weeks at least before I concluded that none of my explanations (for why government should have this special moral status) were satisfactory.

The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer. It's a book that looks at the validity of the government coercion. It's probably the best philosophical book in defense of libertarian Anarcho Capitalism out there.

A little outside the usual as far as political philosophy goes, but if you were ever to read a book written by a libertarian it is this one.

The book is expensive, so if you don't want to buy it these two books while not as good are a great replacement.

The Machinery of Freedom PDF by David D. Friedman, son of Milton Friedman.

For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by Murray Rothbard.

I'd recommend Friedman over Rothbard in this case. It's shorter and I think better.

The "freedom from Vs Freedom to" interpretation of the distinction between negative and positive liberty has been known to be nonsense since the late 60s. The absence of obstacles logically entails the accessibility of an alternative and vice versa. The interpretation here has been widely influential, for example it was accepted by Rawls in the ToJ.

The understanding of negative and positive liberty as distinct concepts can be maintained (rightly, in my view) under their interpretation as two incommensurable opportunity and excercise concepts of liberty. The first and best statement of this view can be found in the first few pages of Charles Taylor's "What's wrong with negative liberty" in philosophical papers vol. 2 (these two volumes are generally worth reading) and is also well stated in the first five pages of Skinner's A third concept of liberty (even though it should be noted that Skinner focuses on a particular subset of positive liberty as rational self-determination)

Three things should be noted:

1. This interpretation of the two concepts of liberty is what I.Berlin actually had in mind in his Two Concepts of Liberty (and is also closer to what Fromm had in mind when he first made the distinction), as it becomes apparent in the way he responds to MacCallum and in the way he rephrases (a lot more clearly) the distinction in the introduction to his Liberty (Incorporating Four Essays) and in his very brief "Final Retrospect" collected in the same volume.
   
   
2. Under this interpretation of the distinction between negative liberty as non-interference and positive liberty as self-determination (and as Berlin himself explicitly states in the aforementioned texts) the two values are not conflicting and may in fact even be understood as overlapping and entailing one another, or requiring a certain conception of each other to be excercised.
   
   
3. The negative/positive liberty distinction has nothing to do with the negative/positive rights distinction.
   
   As far as 3. is concerned it should be noted that the traditional interpretation of negative rights as requiring the absence of government action and of positive rights as requiring government action has also been found to be untenable (as legal rights that can not be legally vindicated are not legal rights, and therefore under the aforementioned interpretation all legal rights are revealed to be positive rights). This view is best stated in Cass Sunstein's "the cost of rights". The distinction between negative and positive rights may also be maintained, under the reinterpretation of positive and negative rights as entailing correlate positive and negative agency duties respectively, and on the part of other citizens, but it's not clear that this is a useful distinction in any respect. Certainly none of the judgments that the proponents of the traditional intepretation would want to make follow from it.
   
   P.S. It's straightforwardly true that if I a) am unable to enter a house because b) someone interferes with me to stop me, I am unfree, in the negative sense, to do so (there exist interpersonal obstacles which render this alternative inaccessible to me). Whether I should or shouldn't be free to enter that house is another matter entirely.

Well, for starters I think we should discuss what it means to enforce justice. In whose eyes is justice determined? How is it that one comes to be a party to 'justice being served' on either side of the coin?

State justice systems are, as you indicated, built on something like the Rawlsian Leviathan whereby someone believes themselves aggrieved and transfers what would in prior systems have been their right of vengeance to the Leviathan to pursue. This is a method of breaking the cycle of revenge generated by handling this personally. It might also make the outcome more even-handed because the investigating and enforcing parties are presumed to be less personally invested in the outcome. These are good features of the system. They do not require that the Leviathan-entity be a monopoly (and in fact it is not a monopoly now unless you consider the US system to be the monopoly being enforced everywhere else to varying degrees of success).

There are a rather large number of books and articles on this subject, as libertarian dispute resolution is probably the most fleshed out portion of libertarian thinking. I would recommend The problem of Political Authority and For A New Liberty as good starting places which will allow you to self-guide to further sources.

What AnCaps are advocating for is that the services of the Leviathan can be provided by firms interacting through a market. In some ways this is what exists. A primary difference in what we want from what is available is that we think you ought to be free to choose the firm you go to. Now we (many of us) are advocating for a system based on restitution rather than the 'transferred right-of-vengence.'

So, since we are not advocating for any states, we are not advocating for anything like legislative law really but rather contractual terms and agreements negotiated either through something like an insurance company (the DROs mentioned elsewhere) or through communities of legal agreement, or probably any number of other methods we have not even dreamt of yet.

If you're willing to devote some serious time, Man, Economy and State is the most complete explanation that exists of the economics behind ancap ideas. It's also like 1100 pages or something so it might be more of a commitment than you're willing to make just for opposition research.

If you want to get into the philosophy behind the ideas, The Ethics of Liberty is probably the best thing you'll find. It attempts to give a step-by-step logical "proof" of libertarian philosophy.

The Problem of Political Authority is also an excellent book that takes nearly universally accepted moral premises and uses them to come to ancap conclusions in a thoroughly logical manner. I'd say if you're actually at all open to having your mind changed, it's the one most likely to do it.

If you just want a brief taste, The Law is extremely short (you can read it in an hour or two) and contains many of the important fundamental ideas. It was written like 200 years ago so doesn't really qualify as ancap, but it has the advantage of being easily digestible and also being (and I can't stress this enough) beautifully written. It's an absolute joy to read. You can also easily find it online with a simple Google search.

I know you asked for one book and I gave you four, but the four serve different purposes so pick one according to what it is you're specifically looking for.

This is the best argument I've read in support of taxation that acts as if the average an-cap isn't a lunatic.

Thank you for writing this up! You're raising the bar of discussion around here.

Since you wrote up on the idea of political authority, I wonder if you've read The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer.

I cannot summarize the whole thing here (the reviews on Amazon do it better) but I feel like he does a good line of reasoning on the topic, and it was this book that made me (reluctantly) give up the notion that a certain amount of government was required.

And I do mean "reluctantly". I'm already used to keeping my political views to myself, because even without being an an-cap, I am pretty fringe in my political views. This just pushed me even fringier.

(He specifically addresses Kant's arguments in support of political authority. It's really good reading!)

Thank you, again, for this awesome comment. You deserve far more than the six points upvotes you have right now.

Some academics think that sounds pretty good. They are called anarcho-capitalists. There aren't very many of them, and some of them are very bad thinkers. But some are very good thinkers, and have ideas worth considering. Here are my two favorites:

• The Machinery of Freedom, by David Friedman (You might be interested in chapter's like "Police, Courts, and Laws -- on the Market" and others relevant to the specific goods mentioned in your post.)
  
• The Problem of Political Authority, by Michael Huemer (This is more of an ethical case against coercing people to pay for many of the goods you are concerned about.)
  
  In my own opinion, many public goods probably would be underproduced. But underproduced doesn't mean completely absent, and I think many of the functions you are worried about can be produced to some extent on the market (in some cases, probably with great success. Others, perhaps not.)

> How am i saying things are definitive. I have on multiple occasions lamented i haven't gone after the actual papers yet.

Let me ask you something: Are academics god-like individuals with unparalleled perspectives from those of all other people on earth? If not, then chances are they are not really all that different from you or me in the sense that they are also products of the sociopolitical environment we live in. Furthermore, since they are invariably products of an institution that is all about certifying people as "knowing" what is best for society as a whole, do you not think they are also prone to overlooking their own, fascistic worldviews for this exact reason?

> Although, really the questions used in the RWA score are so on the nose

Are they? It's not really hard to imagine under what circumstances someone's response to, say, Statement 1 can go from maybe -2 or -3 to a hard 4 - all you need to do is to swap out the institution or authority that someone doesn't like for one they like.

The reason I have brought up "distribution of the sensible" is that what it seeks to point out is a group of people Jacques Ranciere refers to as the "political surplus". That is, if you are the part of "political surplus", your judgment, your moral values and your telling of your own life experience simply do not matter to the society you live in regardless of what they are. You are instead a de-politicalised object that exists only to "move along" in a system that serves to make statistics and metrics that point to no person in specific look good enough for whoever in charge to justify their own position and prestige. (It is also not hard to imagine that Ranciere is a staunch supporter of direct democracy and has written an entire book just to make a case for it.)

Given this picture, a society under "distribution of the sensible" is always authoritarian by necessity. Since, instead of an object, you are a political subject with thoughts and values, the only way to make you "move along" despite your inclination to question what you have been told is the police state - that is, a state founding itself on the operational logic of the police. Should you fail to comply with what you have been told to accept or follow - to "move along" - someone will simply come and shut you up and make you comply with the directions you have been given through whatever means necessary. Sometimes it's state-sanctioned violence, but, more often, it's just a chilling reminder to know your place and not to stick your nose where nothing concerns you (supposedly). This is also why one of the most frequent statements from your local police department is none other than this one:

"Nothing to see here. Move along."

Now, of course, since what you really are is a political animal with thoughts and values, these thoughts and values may very well align with that of the (police) state. If you are part of the "political surplus", however, the question of whether your thoughts and values align with those of the state simply does not matter. You can vote for a political candidate either willingly or begrudgingly, but, at the end of day, only what's written on your ballot counts. You can work your low-paying job either with a headful of resentiment or with an ear-to-ear smile, but, at the end of the day, only whether you have a job at all matters to employment statistics. Under the "distribution of the sensible", your approval of the state's designs and machinations is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to its own continued existence, and it is ultimately the "authoritarians" who will have an easier time getting by as the rejects and outsiders of the society they live in.

Do you see now how a systemic critique of society completely eclipses the necessity for trying to measure one's supposed, authoritarian tendencies?

>The science is also telling you that there cannot be any such answers, while philosophy claims to be the sole arbiter on such, without professing having any divine backing to its legitimacy however, the way religious authority figures used to do.

>So here is a fundamental disagreement here: philosophy claims to have the only answers, science claims there are no such possible, and explains exactly why. This disconnect will in time only grow, especially since there are ways to test such in experiments, at the very least computationally, and also in practice, by measurements on existing societies.

The only legitimacy philosophy rests on, when advancing arguments, are the value of the premises in those arguments. At some point there is an irreducible claim, but we can specify those in a clear argument and decide to accept or reject them. Science is no different, it just has a very very robust fundamental claim - that generally, what has happened before, all else held equal, will happen again.

In questions of ethics, we hold that human life has fundamental value. Some philosophers disagree, of course, and still others break down that concept into more fundamental parts. The important thing is that they argue clearly and make explicit their premises and conclusion so that others might better address their claims.

The fact of the matter is that - much like social sciences - we are forced to take up philosophical positions as a practical matter of everyday life, and the tools we have for those inquiries do not yield the confident knowledge of the sciences. Part of that is systematic, as values usually do not stem from empirical sources. Part of that comes from differences in interpretations of ambiguous concepts. Nevertheless, some questions (such as "what is the moral right?") are important enough to still benefit from organized inquiry, even if that thought does not lead us to entirely secure knowledge. We have the ability to reject and reform arguments to make them more robust, and to subject them to questioning to see if they remain.

If you want a particularly lucid exploration of the interaction between science and values in the realm of the political, I would recommend Isaiah Berlin's "Political Ideals in the Twentieth Century" from his collection "Four Essays on Liberty". It discusses some of the problems of adopting an instrumental view of reason (i.e., the idea that our inquiry can only coherently be directed toward measurable concepts, and the ethics of technocratic rule).

I would recommend reading Michael Sandel’s book Justice and at the same time getting the Justice reader (book of selected readings in political philosophy) put together by Sandel, and watching Sandel’s online lecture series entitled Justice.

Justice book:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0374532508/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0374532508

Justice reader:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0195335120/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0195335120

Justice online lecture series:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL30C13C91CFFEFEA6

Not to be a stickler, but you could easily argue that abstaining from voting is as sensible as going vegan, since it's all about supporting the status quo of a system that's based on unscientific nonsense. I've taken quiet an interest in democracy the past few years and the more I learn about it, the dumber it seems, kinda like animal agriculture.


If you're curious about the subject I'd highly recommend both Against Elections and Against Democracy. Democracy For Realists is pretty enlightening so far as well, but I'm not done with it yet.

My comment was an attempt to answer your question, but I admit I didn't make that part very clear. Of course you can't just rely on people's goodness, because people are neither inherently good or evil. They follow incentives, and in a society where people move on from rulers, there would be natural incentives for people to try and get along even if they didn't like each other, as These guys explain as their solution.

Power and authority positions, on the other hand, are inherently defined by being able to do harm and damage to one group for the benefit of another without the threat of consequence, as this video explains. This is the kind of action that the Cycle of Hatred is based upon, and is why any real discussion of peace must question the structures of power that are involved. In contrast, a action of trade that happens between two people only occurs if both people see it as benefiting them, so the things and rules that occur are only what people agree on.

People have written whole novels about these concepts, and there are a lot to choose from, like this one, but feel free to look around.

If you have doubts about why the state is so bad, and want to understand more what the state is Anatomy of the State by Murray Tothbard is a great read, got me into libertarianism in general

If you are looking for more current anarcho-capitalist theory and it’s logistics, a great read is The Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman.

Anatomy of the state is a great introduction of about ~50 or so pages while The Machinery of freedom goes into a lot more detail, ~350 pages and is the book I would choose.

Hope this helps!

For introductory purposes, it's best to read surveys of the literature and tradition, simply because there are many anarchist schools of thought and people often direct you to read books from the school to which they are sympathetic.

I recommend starting off with [Peter Kropotkin's 1909 essay for Encyclopedia Britannica on Anarchism] (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/Anarchist_Archives/kropotkin/britanniaanarchy.html).

Next, I'd recommend [Men Against the State] (http://www.amazon.com/Men-Against-State-Expositors-Individualist/dp/0879260068), a historical overview of the American Anarchist traditions, which were a kind of anarchist melting pot but admittedly skewed individualist (you could probably find a free pdf of this quickly).

These books should provide good introductions to various schools. After that, just pick up the books in whatever school suits your fancy and enjoy.

My biased recommendations are Wolff's In Defense of Anarchism and Huemer's The Problem of Political Authority. They are both works done by conteporary academic philosophers but written simply and without jargon.

edit: It would be wonderful if whoever downvoted my comment could explain why.

It was you who claimed theft is a necessary evil. It's cute you think it's my responsibility to disprove your unproved positive claim, but I have no interest not playing that game. If you're actually interested in this discussion, I would recommend you read this book. You can find it online if you like.

Good luck

I can help with a few of those.

An excellent introduction to political philosophy that takes a historical view is this one by Jonathan Wolff. One that looks at contemporary political theory only is this one by Adam Swift. I recommend reading both of them. They both have excellent suggestions for further reading. I will also recommend this book on contemporary political philosophy by Will Kymlicka, which is one of my favourite books. It's not quite as accessible as the previous two books, but Kymlicka's writing is clear and powerful.

You will likely find some useful readings on social classes and equality in this syllabus^PDF from a class taught by a Canadian sociologist.

> Basically - get into automation and learn how to be more valuable to the higher-ups. What would you do?


I'll answer your question by outlining my year goal of education in the work place.

I'm doing leadership for engineering themed courses, with the goal to influence decisions and outcome.

I'm aiming to get some more specific and hands on coaching, to help talk to upper manglement.



Another take on it is this. If I was going back to the very start of my career and had 0 knowledge in my head (And it was present day). I'd target a few things:

• Focus heavily on BGP, BGP TE and internet routing architectures (link)
  
• Focus on a strongly typed programming language. Not scripting, full on Java or similar.
  
• Focus on learning 1 hardware architecture in great depth (link)
  
• Read the prince, how to win friends and influence people and top off the hat trick with the rational manager

You, Laura Southern, are a bright northern light casting a warm glow on all our shoulders. Thank you for being you. :) Congratulations on your "Barbarians" book I hope it sells like pancakes with bacon and maple syrup.


Did you idolize anybody in the news business growing up?

The book itself came out in April 19, 2016 https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691169446

However, the Vox interview was last month. So, the readers of /r/EverythingScience would be better off either reading the book or at least the synopsis/reviews? Sociologists/political scientists are scientists. This book won the

>Winner of the 2017 PROSE Award in Government & Politics, Association of American Publishers

>One of Bloomberg's Best Books of 2016

>One of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2016

Whatever that means.

Let's get it started then. What would you be interested in reading? I have some options on my reading list, maybe you are interested. If not, you can also suggest some titles and then we can decide.

• On China, Henry Kissinger I read his book on world order a couple of weeks ago and I enjoyed it a lot. He played a major role in reestablishing diplomatic relations with China, so I think this might turn out to be an interesting read.
  
• The Glorious Cause, Robert Middlekauff This US history book spans the period prior to the independence up to it's aftermath (1763-1789). Chronologically speaking, it is the first book in the Oxford series on the history of the United States. I have heard great things about this series, in particular McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. I plan to read the whole series little by little.
  
• The Global Minotaur, Yanis Varoufakis I learned about this book by reading his more recent book And the Weak Suffer What They Must?. This is more of a history of political economy, and covers the period from the end of WWII to the 2008 crisis. As far as I know, Global Minotaur covers the same period as the book I read but focuses more on the US than Europe. I'm not an economist, so there are some things I wasn't able to understand, but for the most part I had no problem at all and enjoyed it quite a bit.
  
  
• Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell I learned about this book reading a collection of essays by Chomsky entitled on Anarchism. Here, Chomsky talks about some rare "truly socialist" movement that appeared in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War. This movement was crushed by both Franco's military coup and the Soviet army. Orwell fought there and this book narrates his experience. Given the great experience I had reading 1984, I think this could be a very interesting read.
  
  
• The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand I have hear many things for and against this author, but I have never read it. I have also heard that this book is better from a literary standpoint than Atlas Shrugged, and also was written earlier, so this could be a good starting point.

There's a lot of reasons, for one I would recommend you read Chomsky's Requiem for the American Dream, which is summarised quite well here: https://billmoyers.com/story/noam-chomskys-requiem-american-dream/

There's a lot there, but the essential takeaway is that power tends to concentrate itself via both hard and soft influences. Democratic states, by their nature, are open to these influences, and eventually money and power become concentrated to the point that those democratic institutions will become infiltrated and coopted by capitalism. In fact he makes the point that usually the adoption of regulation is either initiated or supported by big industry, because they know they can use regulation to stifle competition. Once you know that, then the case for regulated capital becomes weaker.

Capitalism by its nature tends to infiltrate every avenue for influence and money making eventually. Look at social media for example, with people's opinions, personal photos, lifestyle choices, all being infiltrated by capitalism and given a price. What's the cost to us? Well, it can be impossible to know when someone makes a post whether it's a genuine personal expression or whether they've been paid for it. You see this in the huge number of comments calling "fake" on just about everything. There are a lot of false positives, but on some level they know they're being lied to constantly.

So I don't condone a regulated capitalist market, and I don't condone unrestrained capitalism. What do? Well, Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist. I personally don't know enough to say where I stand on this stuff, but all the proposed solutions fall broadly under the term "leftism". It's worth mentioning that liberal democratic capitalism is pretty much in the centre in this way of viewing politics, so most corporate democrats would be considered centre or even centre-right from this perspective.

Also if you look at Manufacturing Consent by Chomsky, it makes a very good case for why all your ideas on socialism are going to be heavily influenced by capitalist propaganda. An example of capitalist propaganda in action is to look at the way mainstream media are covering Bernie Sanders - they are clamouring to cast him as a non-serious candidate, even if they're not aware of it. There's an interview of Chomsky where he makes this point about the media operating through a filter, and the interviewer asks if he's suggesting that they are self-censoring right now. Chomsky's response is, "No, I'm suggesting that if you didn't hold views favourable to the establishment, then you wouldn't be sitting here interviewing me," or words to that effect.

If you want to know more, I'd recommend this video on Why Criticise Capitalism? Also these playlists on Why Capitalism Sucks and How Anarchism Works. But it's important not to get all your education from youtube, so a book I'm currently reading that comes well-recommended is Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? by Mark Fisher. I'll warn you though - most leftist reading is dense and heavy and kind of difficult. That's why I think /r/BreadTube is a good intro to the whole anti-capitalist perspective.

David Friedman's new, 3rd edition of The Machinery of Freedom just came out. That seems like the perfect gift to me. Not only is it the best book on anarcho-capitalism ever written... it's the new updated edition. Perfect timing.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1507785607/

1. On the Social Contract and The Discourses - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
   
2. 9/10
   
3. Philosophy
   
4. Questions some of the fundamental beliefs of our society and reaches interesting conclusions. Helps immensely in understanding the history of the 18th century but is still relevant in today's society. Fairly challenging but definitely worth it if you are interested in philosophy. It's good to take a break from fiction once in a while.
   
5. Amazon.com
   

@ninja Definitely read Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority. It is one of the best books you will ever read. http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Political-Authority-Examination/dp/1137281650

> how a free market could actually work, how justice could be dealt in a stateless society etc.

The entire second half of the book describes a stateless society with probably 10x more clarity than you will find anywhere else.

> that address common objections like who will build the roads

I've made my little contribution to this here:

http://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/who-will-build-the-roads-part-1-the-problems-with-government-roads/
http://chrispacia.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/who-will-build-the-roads-part-2-how-private-roads-would-work/

No, I don't think it is. When you start reading any academic discussions about different voting systems then very, very rarely does one see a particular system being described as 'more democratic'. This is because when you start digging into the mathematical mechanics of voting theory, you find that there are paradoxes and inconsistencies within all of them which can lead to perverse results, as documented in arrows' impossibility theorem. Hence, most discussions tend to revolve around the particular political dynamics generated by different systems and whether they encourage stability, deliberation, direct accountability, entrenchment of parties and so on. There are compromises and trade-offs and no one system is inherently better. Fundamentally the discussion we're having around our voting system in this country (and especially on reddit) is pretty facile, as it never gets beyond looking at numer of and distribution of votes to thinking about what sort of dynamics different systems would introduce.

They're going through a bout of electoral reform anxiety in Canda right now, and there's some interesting [commentary] (http://induecourse.ca/trump-and-electoral-reform-connecting-the-dots/) coming from various academics and commentators.

To be honest the weight placed on elections is probably too much anyway. There's minimal evidence that any one type produces significantly better policy, and there's mountains of evidence that people are terrible at voting in the way that most democratic theories (including the one which implicitly underlies the idea that PR is some kind of ideal) need them to. The evidence for that claim is in this book, which is excellent reading if you're an insomniac. Review and summary here.

I haven't read this yet, but I'm getting ready to buy Lauren Southern's new book Barbarians - from what I can tell, it looks like it'll be pretty good.

An-caps don't believe the government should run the military either (or the justice system).

If you want to get familiar with their ideal proposed system, you probably want to read something like The Machinery of Freedom which lays out how a non-state could work, including justice systems and defense.

Less extreme libertarians frequently leave the government in charge of providing public goods (problems that markets can't usually solve because you can't exclude people from the service once it's provided) and wish to keep it out of everything that isn't a public good.

A great companion piece is Democracy for Realists by Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels.

They demonstrate that voters―even those who are well informed and politically engaged―mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly.

Good post, only have time to read the 13 points and opening paragraph right now but will finish later. Reminds me of when I read Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition, it's good to hear it straight from the horse's mouth.

Came here to second Sir Roger Scruton.

Watch Why Beauty Matters (BBC special, on YouTube I believe) to get an idea of Scruton's general flavour.

Conservatism: An Invitation to The Great Tradition

Culture Counts (rereleased Sept 2018)

Both the above books are very worthwhile reads.

> So most an-caps would agree that the societies would be run with natural rights as the rule of the land, how though does one prove that humans even have rights?

Not all an-caps derive their beliefs from natural rights, and there are different understandings of the term 'natural rights.' In any case, here are what I think are some good resources:

• [Ethical Intuitionism][1]
  
• [The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey][2]
  
• A Positive Account of Property Rights
  
  [1]: https://www.amazon.com/Ethical-Intuitionism-M-Huemer/dp/0230573746
  [2]: https://www.amazon.com/Problem-Political-Authority-Examination-Coerce/dp/1137281650
  

This is a really good book by a conservative about their ideology on their own terms. I suggest you read it to get a better understanding of their thought process.

Conservatism: An Invitation to the Great Tradition

Another good read is The Reactionary Mind

For works reflecting traditionalist conservative attitudes, I'd recommend "Ideas Have Consequences" by Richard Weaver and "The Abolition of Man" by C.S. Lewis. Also, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is a pretty good critique of utopian ideology and in my opinion it's far more applicable to current society than Orwell's 1984 in its criticism of mindless consumerism and social conditioning.

For far-right perspectives I'd recommend anything by Julius Evola, especially Revolt Against the Modern World. A lot of the modern right's rhetoric about the decline of western society and to some extent its nihilism can be traced back to Evola's work, so he is essential reading if you really want to know more about the modern far right or alt right. As a warning, though, his extreme traditionalism will probably be off-putting.

As for U.K. relevant...hmm...I can at least recommend a great British conservative in Sir Roger Scruton. His "How to Be a Conservative" offers an outline of true conservative ideology and its applications as well as criticism of materialism, which is in my opinion essential to conservatism.

If you guys want an example that will really bring out the importance of philosophy in relation to politics (especially in light of this US election season), please take a look at this brand new book by Prof. Jason Brennan (political philosophy prof at Georgetown). It's very accessible even to lay readers, so no worries if you haven't studied philosophy before!

Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton University Press: 2016). Read the first chapter here for free to see if you like it: http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10843.pdf

It will really challenge your assumptions about democracy and a lot of other political institutions and structures you may take for granted.

If you want a general introduction to political philosophy, see this really easy short video series (super engaging) with Brennan, starting here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE5HCB5kdRg

____

Some other book suggestions:

1. Michael Huemer, The Problem of Political Authority (Palgrave: 2013). Huemer is professor of philosophy at University of Colorado, Boulder. Here, he defends anarchism.
   
   
2. You can read G.A. Cohen's Why Not Socialism? and then Jason Brennan's Why Not Capitalism?. This is on the moral argument for socialism vs. capitalism.
   
   
3. Will Kymlicka, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Introduction for a survey of all the major academic political philosophies today. This is a kind of undergraduate intro book that goes over theories like left-liberalism (Rawls), Marxism (G.A. Cohen), libertarianism (Nozick), communitarianism, and so on!

I recommended it as an example of how to use data when discussing policy not that the OP agree to the politics of the podcast.

Politicians in general speak in platitudes, some like Yang cite data as part of their stump speech so it would be useful to look at.

Everyone gets to have their own opinion but not their own facts.

Other authors/books to check out if you want a more quantitative approach to politics:

1. Jonathan Haidt - The Righteous Mind, Happiness Hypothesis, Coddling of the American Mind
   
   
2. Phil Tetlock - Superforecasting <- very important book on what it takes to make actual accurate predictions.
   
   
3. Democracy for Realists - quantitative approach to political science, getting away from the "folk lore of democracy" to what happens in reality - https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240

This isn't modern, but I'd recommend this book I read for the Philosophy of International Order class I took awhile back, it covers the history of western political philosophy in a pretty objective way, for the most part. I think seeing the development of political philosophy might be more helpful than just jumping into modern times.

[book in question]
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/019929609X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1456905875&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=intro+to+political+philosophy&dpPl=1&dpID=41g5XpBgoSL&ref=plSrch)

The best book for debating with statists is The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey by Michael Huemer. He recommends to ask questions and put the burden of proof on your interlocutor. Would it be fine if I taxed you for leaving on your property? Why then the IRS allowed to do so? The conversation goes like that:

• Why obey?
  
  
• Because social contract.
  
  
• How to exit?
  
  
• Leave it or love it.
  
  
• Why they can claim land?
  
  
• Because social contract. (oops. logic circuit. Somebody tries to justify the implicit application of the social contract in certain land by the contract itself)
  

A few books

Reflections on the Revolution in France by Burke

The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirke

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek

The Righteous Mind by Haidt, not a conservative and not really a conservative book but interesting research by a social psychologist researching morality and it's impact on political opinions.

For websites, magazines, blogs

National Review not quite as good nor as influential as it once was in decades past but still worthwhile.

Instapundit blog by libertarian law professor Glenn Reynolds. Usually links to articles posted elsewhere with a bit of commentary.

I like the The American Interest. Walter Russell Mead is a self declared liberal editing a self declared centrist publication. But much of his writing consists of a critique of what he calls the "blue social model". At this point I think he's well on his way down the road to becoming a (moderate) conservative but just can't bring himself to call himself one.

Let me start us off with 2 book gems and 2 important essays. Of course the whole point of this is to have a Red Pill Right discussion so the most important thing is /r/theredpill sidebar books and essays.

Books

1. The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith explains Capitalism.
   
   
2. Atlas Shrugged- no explanation should be needed. Ian Rand hits it out of the park.
   
   Essays
   
   
3. Dictatorships and Double Standards in which Reagan UN Secretary Jean Kirkpatrick identifies an "America First" foreign policy.
   
   
4. I Pencil: where Leonard Read explains just how complicated the market really is and how the Invisible Hand really does guide it. They can't fix the health care system. They can't even make a pencil.
   
   Also what about Milo's books?
   
   Forbidden Thoughts and SJW's Always lie

I think you will learn the most by reading five textbooks, such as A History of Philosophy, volumes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5; or something like Metaphysics: The Fundamentals, The Fundamentals of Ethics, Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, and An Introduction to Political Philosophy.

If what you have in mind is more of a "Great Books" program to get your feet wet with some classic works that are not too difficult, you could do a lot worse than:

• Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo, often published together under the title The Trial and Death of Socrates. Socrates is so important that we lump together all Greek philosophers before him as "the Presocratics," and this cycle of dialogues is a great window on who he was and what he is famous for.
  
• The Basic Works of Aristotle. "The philosopher of common sense" is not a particularly easy read. Cicero compared his writing style to "a flowing river of gold," but all the works he prepared for publication are gone, and what we have is an unauthorised collection of lecture notes written in a terse, cramped style that admits of multiple interpretations. Even so, one can find in Aristotle a very attractive system of metaphysics and ethics which played a major role in the history of philosophy, and holds up well even today.
  
• René Descartes, Discourse on the Method and Meditations on First Philosophy. Descartes is called the father of modern philosophy, not so much because modern philosophers have widely followed his particular positions (they haven't) but because he set the agenda, in a way, with his introduction of methodological scepticism.
  
• David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I think Elizabeth Anscombe had it right in judging Hume a "mere brilliant sophist", in that his arguments are ultimately flawed, but there is great insight to be derived from teasing out why they are wrong.
  
• If I can cheat just a little more, I will lump together three short, important treatises on ethics: Immanuel Kant's Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and Anscombe's paper "Modern Moral Philosophy".

> Immigrants are a net gain to the country

To the rich, yes.

> But yeah sure, blame the immigrant.

https://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Thought-Justice-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4

> As easy as it would be to cover their backsides and do legally, why on earth would they bung this up?

Well, there's a theory around about SJWs being attracted to HR, infesting it, and then hiring other SJWs until the corporation is about 'social justice' rather than whatever the corporation is supposed to do -- the process is called 'convergence' and illustrated in these two books -- given what we're seeing out of the tech industry, it may be that this theory of convergence has some truth to it.

I just bought this book for kindle. It seems alright, I'll check out "taking sides" as well. Thanks for the help. :)

I started to make one a while back but didn't get too far. There are just too many great books to choose from.

Classics 1950-1970

What is Conservatism?

The Conservative Mind

The Road to Serfdom

The Constitution of Liberty

Ideas Have Consequences

The Quest for Community

Economics in One Lesson

Capitalism and Freedom

In Defense of Freedom


Age of Reagan 1970-1990

The Conservative Intellectual Movement Since 1945

Modern Times

Knowledge and Decisions

A Conflict of Visions

Anarchy, State, and Utopia

Roots Of American Order


Modern Must Reads 1990-Today

The Clash of Civilizations

A History of the American People

The Vision of the Annointed

Intellectuals and Society

Illiberal Reformers

Restoring the Lost Constitution

How To Be A Conservative

Good catch. I really meant to say “moving beyond our current form of liberal democracy” because the issue is not so much democracy, which as I mentioned I believe has benefits beyond merely producing a decision. I edited.

I highly recommend Jacque Ranciere’s short book Hatred Of Democracy. He presents a pointed and responsible critique of liberal democracy, and fleshes out an impressive an argument for this line of thought.

For Conservatism at its best, you'll want to check out The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. Another book you may want to check out is Reflections on the Revolution in France by Edmund Burke. Edmund Burke was the founder of modern conservatism, and Russell Kirk helped to revive conservatism in the United States.

Absolutely not. Why would you think that?

I'm pretty sure we passed peak-Marxism recently. The alt-right is going mainstream, or rather the mainstream right is going alt. We are busy building new infrastructure. We are retiring our cucks and noble losers in favor of less-than-noble winners.

We've studied the left and are starting to fight back in big ways.

As Vox Day puts it:

• Social Justice Warriors always lie
  
• Social Justice Warriors always double down
  
• Social Justice Warriors always project

>Did I just read a fascist manifesto?

There is nothing in there that is not in or implied in Friedrich Hayek and Roger Scruton. If your head is so anarchistic you think a burkean Liberal and a liberal Burkean are fascist I won't be able to persuade you otherwise.

That said I think every thinking person can get something out of Scrution's How to be a Conservative. Even if the chapter 'the truth in nationalism' from which the above was partly drawn is not your cup of tea, it is still good to hear it, and chapters like 'the truth in capitalism', 'truth in socialism', 'the truth in environmentalism' or the 'truth in multiculturalism' might suit you better.

https://www.amazon.com/Conservatism-Invitation-Tradition-Roger-Scruton/dp/1250170567

This came out pretty recently. It's an overview of the history. It's not nearly as comprehensive as a class would be but it's pretty interesting.

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is always a good source/jumping off point. A more recent book is Scruton's How To Be a Conservative. There's also Oakeshott's On Being Conservative and Rationalism in Politics essays. Modern american conservatism imports some libertarianism, for that I would read some Hayek, econlib has a number of his essays and there's this essay that goes over his thoughts, and relates it to traditionalism. Hope that helps.

https://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4?ie=UTF8&ref_=dp_kinw_strp_1

Anyone read this book? This seems popular and probably written by a goblin. Honestly this is pseudo philosophy. Might as well just pick up "On Bullshit" to actually be a more critical thinker. This book smells like goblin piss.

>this book seems to have been written by an angry little boy that hates practically everyone simply because they don't hate everyone too. in his opinion, no one else should have an opinion unless you agree with him. if you want insight on what it must be like inside the twisted brain of a trump supporting xenophobic moron, this book is for you. if you listen to sarah palin and think she's not retarded, you'll love this book, but you may have to have your mom read it to you. if you're the sort of person that runs for president because god called you on the phone and told you to run, you'll appreciate this work. this book belongs on the shelf at the 700 club, your local kkk branch, and comes highly recommended by those westboro freaks.

Amazon reviews. Seems like the goblins had really came out FULL FORCE. Everybody we must mobilized or the battle of helms deep will come.

Here are all the local Amazon links I could find:


amazon.co.uk

amazon.ca

amazon.com.au

amazon.in

amazon.com.mx

amazon.de

amazon.it

amazon.es

amazon.com.br

Beep bloop. I'm a bot to convert Amazon ebook links to local Amazon sites.
I currently look here: amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, amazon.ca, amazon.com.au, amazon.in, amazon.com.mx, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.es, amazon.com.br, if you would like your local version of Amazon adding please contact my creator.

You need the two most definitive books that outline GamerGate, the lead up to today's problems, how to crush the SJW and how to win.

Vox Day, SJWs always lie.

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police (The Laws of Social Justice Book 1) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B014GMBUR4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_vUaQBb1J635SS

Then

SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police (The Laws of Social Justice Book 2) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075BGGKLG/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_WUaQBb5CMGKYP

I like this order too. In addition, he recently put out a short book that is meant to be an invitation to conservatism in general. Here are links for convenience.

• How To Be A Conservative
  
• The Meaning Of Conservatism
  
• Conservatism: An Invitation To The Great Tradition

I have a fantastic book for you! Unfortunately it only comes through an academic publisher, so the price is high... but it's an amazing read.

This is a good empirical look at how anarcho-capitalism could work.

Huemer fully admits that getting there is problematic because it doesn't lever with human instincts and our natural tendencies. He proposes thousands of years of social engineering to get us there...good luck with that.

> we are doing something that some aspect of society sees as bigotry

If you are triggered by someone calling you names, all that does is encourage them to control you even more by calling you even more names.

No organization has ever gotten a liberal to stop calling them a bigot by doing things to make the liberals happy (there are whole books devoted to how this fails as a PR tactic) All that happens is once liberals learn they can control leadership by calling them names, they call leadership those same names even more loudly and more often to control the organization even more.

Because liberals love controlling people. They are sure of their answers, don't bother them with facts or pointing out the failures of their policies, this only makes them double down on failure even harder.

On Anarchism by Noam Chomsky might be a good place to start. You can even get the audiobook for free off Amazon if you don’t have an account with Audible yet.


https://www.amazon.com/Anarchism-Noam-Chomsky/dp/1595589104/ref=nodl_

Lauren Southern's book is super short and easy to read:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1541136942/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1485339740&sr=1-1&refinements=p_27%3ALauren+Southern&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&dpPl=1&dpID=51UjKwyaOhL&ref=plSrch

> "because you believe that is right". I don't see a big difference.

That is a lot of presumptions there, you don't see it because you hardly know me, a random redditor on the internet. However, I'm an utilitarian when it comes to decision making.

Regardless, there are reason why some actions are perceived to be right. You would see why had you put a little more thoughts into it. Reading books/wikipedia/standford philosophy encyclopedia would help too.

An Introduction to Political Philosophy by Jonathan Wolff is a great book to start in my opinion.

Socialism/Communism

A People's History of the World

Main Currents of Marxism

The Socialist System

The Age of... (1, 2, 3, 4)

Marx for our Times

Essential Works of Socialism

Soviet Century

Self-Governing Socialism (Vols 1-2)

The Meaning of Marxism

The "S" Word (not that good in my opinion)

Of the People, by the People

Why Not Socialism

Socialism Betrayed

Democracy at Work

Imagine: Living in a Socialist USA (again didn't like it very much)

The Socialist Party of America (absolute must read)

The American Socialist Movement

Socialism: Past and Future (very good book)

It Didn't Happen Here

Eugene V. Debs

The Enigma of Capital

Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism

A Companion to Marx's Capital (great book)

After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action

Capitalism

The Conservative Nanny State

The United States Since 1980

The End of Loser Liberalism

Capitalism and it's Economics (must read)

Economics: A New Introduction (must read)

U.S. Capitalist Development Since 1776 (must read)

Kicking Away the Ladder

23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism

Traders, Guns and Money

Corporation Nation

Debunking Economics

How Rich Countries Got Rich

Super Imperialism

The Bubble and Beyond

Finance Capitalism and it's Discontents

Trade, Development and Foreign Debt

America's Protectionist Takeoff

How the Economy was Lost

Labor and Monopoly Capital

We Are Better Than This

Ancap/Libertarian

Spontaneous Order (disagree with it but found it interesting)

Man, State and Economy

The Machinery of Freedom

Currently Reading

This is the Zodiac Speaking (highly recommend)

> Government regulation and taxation is the result of a voluntary social contract that you have made with the government that, if you agree to live within this territory, you must follow these particular rules.

I would HIGHLY encourage you to read this book:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Political-Authority-Examination/dp/1137281650

Two books that you should read:

The Super-rich Shall Inherit the Earth

and

Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?

After eading both books, there is very little chance you will still hold those opinions if you are a logical person. You will enjoy them both anyway, very good books.

DROs.

David Friedman, the brilliant son of Milton Friedman, head of the Chicago school of economics, can explain it better than I.

https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/1507785607

>
>
>Anybody who claims to have the winning formula for winning moderate, independent or undecided voters is making things up. Perhaps more centrist policies will appeal to some voters in each of these categories — but so will more extreme policies.12
>
>And come election day, these potential swing voters may not ultimately care all that much about policy. They don’t tend to identify themselves based on ideology, and they don’t follow politics all that closely. They’re more likely to decide based on whatever random events happen at the last minute (like, say, a letter from the FBI director). These are even harder to measure and generalize about. (The good news for pundits and campaigns is that they leave even more room for open speculation and political fortune-telling.)
>
>But OK, one final point needs clarification here — maybe we’re being too literal: Maybe what pundits are really getting at when they talk about appealing to “moderates,” “independents” or undecided voters is the “middle-est” middle of the electorate — in terms of vote choice, partisanship and ideology. Maybe they’re talking about people who identify as moderate, independent and are still undecided on 2020 — the part of the Venn diagram above where all three circles overlap.
>
>First, this is a really small group — only 2.4 percent of the electorate falls in all three buckets. And even this super small middle of the middle is … you guessed it … all over the ideological map. Rare as these voters are, anybody who talks about winning over undecided, independent, moderate voters should first address the question: which undecided, independent, moderate voters?

Read this:
http://www.voxday.net/mart/SJW_Attack_Survival_Guide.pdf
This is written by a guy who has the #1 best selling book on Amazon about SJWs: SJWs Always Lie.
The biggest and most important advice I can give is: NEVER APOLOGIZE

If you're new to econ, I would suggest either Basic Economics, as /u/snatchinyosigns suggested, or "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.

http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understand/dp/0517548232/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=economics+in+one+lesson&qid=1555251994&s=gateway&sr=8-1

From there, you might want to get into some of the morality-focused books, if you want a short/easy one, I suggest "Anatomy of the State" by Murray Rothbard

https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state

If you want to learn about how an anarcho-capitalist society could work, I'd read Machinery of Freedom by David Friedman

http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/1507785607/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=machinery+of+freedom&qid=1555252140&s=gateway&sr=8-1

> My ire stems chiefly from the way that this then paints us into a corner where we act like there's no better system and we've reached the end of human progress.

Have you read Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher? I imagine it'd be right up your alley.

Personal story: I used to hate this book, but not because it was anti-hereditarian. Instead, I was irked by its determinism as such, and strongly disliked its "realist" view that rendered implausible my wish that politics could will itself free of physical limitations and the struggle for survival by adopting the right rules and becoming a wealth-creating utopia. It took a long time before I could accept a world shaped by geography, and not ideas.

Books:

#ACCELERATE

Inventing the Future (Left Accelerationism)

Libidinal Economy (Lyotard)

Anti-Oedipuis: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Deleuze and Guattari)

Capitalist Realism (Fisher)

K-Punk(Fisher, a newly released anthology)

Articles:

This is the best introduction I've come across

The MAP (Manifesto for an Accelerationist Politics)

This article from The Guardian

His book is pretty good too, also on Audible.

You too. I recommend http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Political-Authority-Examination/dp/1137281650 .

I promise you I will read your book (I've been meaning to), if you promise to read mine.

Very insightful comment, thank you. I don't find a lot I can disagree with here...it certainly softens, at least, the level to which I think hypocrisy is likely taking place.

As an aside, and just because you delved in to the whole collective vs. individual rights thing, you might be interested to explore what I call the intuitionist moral philosophy of political legitimacy. I believe that it successfully finds hybrid of deontological and consequentialist positions, and it is what I largely adhere to in my personal moral code as it regards rights and political authority.

I only know of it in book form The Problem of Political Authority , so assuming you're not going to buy it, I can suggest this decent review, and also access to the first chapter

They've been friends since Gamergate.

Milo also wrote the foreword for SJWs Always Lie in 2015:

https://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Thought-Justice-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4

Which was #1 Political Philosophy for a couple years off and on. Darn good book too.

Stop what you're doing and read this.

No, don't read it later, don't think about things, or add it to your to-do list--stop what you're doing and read it now.

If you'd like more grounding, consider getting the full ebook here (which is free on Kindle Unlimited so you have no real reason not to,) but in a pinch the survival guide above will give you the basics you need to go forward.

Follow the guide. Seriously. Follow it.

• Don't panic.
  
  
• Don't try to reason with them.
  
  
• Don't apologize. Ever.
  
  
• Accept that this is going to negatively impact your life and make peace with it.
  
  
• Document the hell out of everything. Archive.is is your friend, so is Screengrab! though you will always have people claiming photoshop no matter what you do.
  
  
• Don't resign or quit any positions or jobs--make them fire you.
  
  I'd keep posting but by the time I finished I'd have done a bad job of recreating the guide I linked to. So read it. Seriously, just do it. Do it now! The information in that PDF could save your life if not your career.
  
  I sincerely hope you do take this advice seriously. Good luck and Godspeed.

I don't share your view because of the same concerns raised so far. In any way, it's and interesting topic. Have you heard about this book? I think he's making a similar suggestion to yours (epistocracy, the rule of the knowledgeable). I haven't had time yet to give it a deeper view though.

Another thing I've heard about recently and found interesting is the following implementation of direct democracy. Suppose there is a public decision coming up. Instead of letting everyone vote, 10000 people are selected randomly from the population. These people are divided into small groups and send on several weekends to workshops in the countryside, where they inform themselves about and discuss the issue. It is important that both sides (of the matter the referendum is about ) are present and able to explains their view in depth. After this process the 10000 sampled people make a vote and that's the final decision.

No the famine was not planned by Mao, but it was a direct result of his regime. You realise there was food available, but people were only able to purchase it through the black market.

Fascism is no better than communism, however I do need to correct you. Nazism revolves around racism. Not all fascism is Nazism, but all Nazism is fascism.

Capitalism is an economic system not a government system. You would have to pair Capitalism against Maxism not Communism. The argument is that Democracy is better than Communism.

Yeah, the US government sucks a lot, but the conditions of US prisons are much better than the conditions of Gulags. Yes, most of the people sent to the Gulags were guilty, but the question is should the law have been in place to begin with? Should someone be thrown in a concentration camp for speaking out against the government. If you think the Gulags were any better than concentration camps You should read the gulag archipelago. It is written by a survivor of the gulags.

This bill board doesn't even argue against marxism in the form of 1st world left wing politics. It is argueing against traditional communism.

What is your opinion on North Korea, which is the only communist regime left?

As for your last point that capitalism kills far more than communism. I think there is a difference between not saving someone and killing them. The Communism death toll is calculated by totalling the number of people that were killed via direct government action. The capitalism one just counts all the deaths. Again, that isn't even the right argument because capitalism is not a form of government, but an economic theory. (Which no nation in the world embrasses to it's full extent. Most economies are somewhere in between marxism and capitalism.) The real argument is Democracy vs Communism, that's what the cold war was about. Democracy works much better than Communism and does not kill anywhere near as many people. The reason people put capitalism up against Communism is because it's much easier to make an argument that way. Even though it's not logically consistent.

Now I know this is heading in the direction of an internet argument where people just say shit and no one really wins. I'll leave a couple book recommendations below, and I would really appreciate it if you left me some book recommendations that you think would help me learn. I believe that we should always be challenging our personal beliefs, and I have an audible credit so I'm more than willing to listen to one of your suggestions. Let's make something positive come out of this. I don't want it to just be a digital shouting match.

Battlefield America

Gulag Archipelago

For a New Liberty

I hope sharing this doesn't piss you off too much. I know political discord can easily make people, myself included, mad. I hope you have a good day, and I'm serious about leaving me some links. I'll check them out. Thanks for your imput and feel free to challenge me back. If my view is right then it should be able to take criticism, right?

https://www.amazon.com/Barbarians-Boomers-Immigrants-Screwed-Generation/dp/1541136942

gotta hand it to her, she definitely used all the buzzwords

O'Sullivan's Law

>Any institution that is not explicitly right wing will become left wing over time.

Long form SJW's target organizations for takeover, especially by doing volunteer work or other low paying undesirable tasks. Once enough get in, they rebuild it for their uses.

They are in essence parasites.

If you want to learn more try SJW's Always Lie by Vox Day. You also might enjoy his website here which has an excerpt from the book, the SJW attack survival guide free and of course as he is a strong nationalist, lots of good stuff.

Yup. The consensus is that voters pick a winning personality and then warp their views to match. Witness the flip Trump supports did on immigration.

https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Realists-Elections-Responsive-Government/dp/0691178240

Yes and no. They effectively have "special powers" because most people believe that they have special powers and act accordingly. And that's because most people still believe in the superstition called "authority."

http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Political-Authority-Examination/dp/1137281650

Good for you for dropping a nugget of knowledge.

This book is a useful tool indeed.

The Laws are:

1. SJWs always lie.
   
2. SJWs always double down.
   
3. SJWs always project.

There are lots of critiques. In fact, to some extent, they all critique each other. Occasionally you can google around for book reviews.

Maybe a relatively inexpensive textbook like this would give you the lay of the land before you hop in.

Also, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is free. So just reading the liberalism, republicanism, and libertarianism sections might suffice for an overview. Then you could read individual entries of authors. So there's Marx and Rawls and Locke, etc.

You can browse or search the encyclopedia here.

If you're actually curious how things could work, here's a good book to get started.

But again, realize that your position is that you will support immoral means and pretend they create moral ends.

>you could try treating them like human beings

That noble sounding sentiment is revealed for what it is the moment anyone looks at your comment history.

I'm asking for SJW deconversion stories, not looking for advice on how to generally interact with SJWs. There's already Books written about that.

If you haven't yet, read SJWs Always Lie by Vox Day. He goes over their tactics and mentality and what you can do to protect yourself. Really short book, <$10 ebook, and entertaining read. Highly suggest it.

>Go read a book


I'll just read For A New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto by anarchist Murray Rothbard.

This book explains the entire phenomena pretty well:

https://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4

Without a doubt The Problem of Political Authority. It's explains things so clearly and convincingly, you'll wonder how you ever tried explaining libertarianism another way.

Thank you. You might appreciate https://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4

Vox Day deserves some love: https://www.amazon.com/SJWs-Always-Lie-Taking-Thought-ebook/dp/B014GMBUR4

Moderate majority is not going to happen. The GOP's best bet would be leave the knee- jerk politics of the current right wing and return to the thoughtful conservatism of Russell Kirk.

> Link to book here, don't be thrown off by the length. Good things come in small packages ;)
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1541136942/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1482511794&sr=8-18&keywords=Lauren+Southern

IMPRESSIVE LENGTH!

Vox Day wrote an entire book on the subject:

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police

The e-book is only a few bucks, and it's not a terribly long read. But it gives some good info insight into the social justice warrior mindset and how to defend yourself and even counter-attack against them.

Vox Day does answer your question, too. If a SJW takes offense at an inoffensive remark you make and starts to name-call and shame you, there's a list of what to do in that situation. But the most important thing is don't capitulate and don't apologize.

Well then, go read The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer and The Machinery of Freedom by David Freidman.

Books won't downvote you, I promise.

Have you checked out the reviews for his book? They are amazing and /r/iamverysmart.

I also recommend looking up Michael Huemer on Youtube. You could also buy his book
>http://www.amazon.com/The-Problem-Political-Authority-Examination/dp/1137281650/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375155363&sr=8-1&keywords=the+problem+with+political+authority

although it is a bit pricey (but totally worth it).

As far as the book recommendations go, it would be good if you could qualify what kind of books you're interested in (e.g. philosophy, psychology, history, science, etc.).


Books I recommend:


Psychology (or: On Human Nature)

The Anatomy of Violence: The Biological Roots of Crime

Thinking, Fast and Slow (my personal favorite)

The Undiscovered Self

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature

History

Strategy: A History

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism

Economics

Economics in One Lesson

Basic Economics


Politics

Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government

As always, the list of books to read is too long, so I'll stop here.

I'd highly recommend you to read The Problem of Political Authority by Michael Huemer.

It's well written and based off a lot of analogies and metaphors to prove the certain legitimacy of the existence of a central government in a society in an unbiased way.

9/10.

For those curious about the root causes of government corruption and the solution, I recommend The Problem of Political Authority

This is a total mischaracterization of socialism. There are anti-authoritarian forms of socialism, which are what the vast majority of socialists advocate for. Sorry but I'm not going to debunk every point in this novel on the INFJ subreddit of all places.

EDIT: The position you're arguing from is called "Capitalist Realism," the notion that Capitalism is a natural outgrowth of human nature and the only truly viable economic model. This view is deeply ahistorical.

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalist-Realism-There-No-Alternative/dp/1846943175/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=capitalist+realism&qid=1570814527&sr=8-1

https://smile.amazon.com/Machinery-Freedom-Guide-Radical-Capitalism/dp/1507785607/

There are a myriad of solutions and literature on the matter.

Just because there exist government monopolies on the services you listed doesn't mean that it wouldn't be handled by the market.

People like order, don't they?

Huemer's book on the subject - The Problem of Political Authority - is probably the best book on anarcho-capitalism in the last 15 years. Cannot be recommended enough.

Great recommendations already. I'll throw in Anarchy, State and Utopia though it may not be the best book club read.

Also, Ideas Have Consequences and The Conservative Mind.

Against Modern Liberalism

Where I feel that modern liberalism is in compatible with Christianity is that it supports a larger government that will restrict, among other things, religion. This happens even if it isn't done directly, through biased media and education (especially at the university) that warp our population's thought.

Against Conservatism

Where I feel that conservatism is not a truly Christian philosophy is that it also restricts, among other things, people's religious freedom. Most Christians just don't notice this because the things that conservatives tend to mandate (e.g. illegal gay marriage, all drugs illegal, etc.) are similar to Christian's personal beliefs.

I highly suggest that you read about libertarianism and Christian libertarianism.
Some good books are For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto and Don't Hurt People and Don't Take Their Stuff: A Libertarian Manifesto.