Quoth Paul Ireland:

> 1.  The lines aren't "imaginary".  They are real and tangible and paid
> for with blood.

Hmmm ... I've traveled over a number of them and have never seen them.
Furthermore, if someone paid for them, in blood or any other currency,
then it follows that they belong to the people who did the paying
and/or those people's heirs or assignees, not to the state.

> 2.  We the People gave the state control over those lines.

I don't know who this "we" you're talking about consists of. As for
myself, I was never asked to give the state control over those lines,
or over anything else, and quite likely would have declined if I _had_
been asked, and have never assigned my power of attorney to anyone who
might have complied with such a request on my behalf.

> 3.  Markets have always referred to the buying and selling of goods in
> a particular area.  This is true of any definition.

I guess we're back to Paul Ireland as Humpty Dumpty: "When I use a
word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor
less." Unfortunately for your argument, economists and political
theorists have been using the word "market" to refer to an
overarching, non-geographically, specific mechanism for many years,
and it's unlikely that the rest of the world is going to flush
everyone from Marx to Menger to Mises down the toilet just because you
 demand that they do so in order to make your arguments work.

> 4.  The government was given control of the borders and protection of
> the markets when the government was created by "We the people" and as
> long as we have a government (as long as there are people), it will
> retain control of such.
> 
> 5.  See the U.S. Constitution.

I wasn't alive, or in Philadelphia, in the 1780s when the government
and the Constitution were created by a convention and ratified by some
politicians. Nor have I received from my ancestors any compelling
instructions which would in any way make me responsible for, or
responsible to, or bound by, that convention, those politicians, or
their quackings to each other.

All of the above aside, the fact that something is "constitutional" is
irrelevant to whether or not it amounts to an initiation of force. You
claimed you had proven/would prove the latter, not just do a piss-poor
job of trying to prove the former. Care to take another stab at it?

Tom Knapp






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