[revelation]

People seem to forget this is just the internet. It's a communications medium. Anonymity in communications are certainly not a unique feature of the internet, you can hide your caller id, and a letter will still arrive without a return address. The basic idea being that you can't shoot someone in the face by merely communicating, and I'm pretty sure you can still not commit a violent crime over the internet alone. Communication mediums are the safest thing in the whole wide world.

Your whole intellectual stance from which you approach this topic is off. History is very clear on this: the biggest enemies of justice have been governments and state sponsored entities, every single time. The concept of "natural rights" is motivated by protection against the government.

[VladRussian2]

>The concept of "natural rights" is motivated by protection against the government.

yes, there is no natural rights in Nature, except may be the right to run as fast as one able to away from the next up in the food chain.

The current stage of human society is akin to a situation when a pack of predators and a herd of prey make an agreement that the prey willn't be hunted as long as it stays withing specified bounds. The pack will also protect the herd there from other predators. It is a win-win for both parties - the prey get relaxed and spend all its energy grazing and procreating and thus becomes fatter and the herd's headcount grows tremendously (the bounds were extended several times and now it is a pretty complicated patchwork), while predators hunt smaller percentage (the ones who can't keep themselves inside the bounds) of the much bigger herd of much fatter/slower/tastier prey with total amount of meat consumed by predators being higher than before the agreement.

The herd with time starts to believe that not being hunted down while inside the bounds is the natural right.

The predators sometimes can't resist and snatch some very tasty prey from inside the bounds - as long as such transgressions are kept below some low percentage, the herd wouldn't make big fuss of it to avoid risk of destabilizing of the agreement that works so great for the herd (true story, some members of the herd even have time and energy now to develop various theories about the thing they call Universe and why a prey and a predator got created(or evolved?)) .

[rayiner]

I think your predator/herd dichotomy creates a needless dichotomy, and also goes outside the bounds of its own analogy (predators and prey obviously don't agree in the state of nature, and in the presence of a fat herd the predators would multiply out of control until the herd thinned). I don't think it captures the relevant dynamics.

How I tend to view things is that humans are inherently pack animals. We are individually pretty weak and prone to being victimized, but organized together in a pack under leadership we can pretty much run the show. While, acting as a mob, we can always kill the leaders, the natural state of our existence is a very bloody anarchy so we avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary.

See, e.g., the French Revolution.

[VladRussian2]

>predator/herd dichotomy creates a needless dichotomy

"predator" is a role, it is the one who uses force/violence as a tool.

>predators and prey obviously don't agree in the state of nature

exactly. It took about million years of evolution for humans to get to the state where they became able to produce current agreement between predators and prey (i.e. some kind of government and society). Once they did, the humans took over the planet.

>the natural state of our existence is a very bloody anarchy

nope. At least during last hundred thousand of years (and well before), humans (the Cro-Magnon we're as well as other humans) have pretty much always had tribal organization. As you said yourself: "How I tend to view things is that humans are inherently pack animals. " Pack/tribe isn't anarchy. It is first and explicit step away from it.

>See, e.g., the French Revolution.

that isn't natural state. That is exactly what happens when predators transgress beyond the patience limit of the herd and the herd gets angry enough to throw out the agreement. It is also shows that such unnatural for humans situation wouldn't go for long, and the new pack would naturally emerge and the herd would rush into new agreement.

[pak]

Both of your points are hyperbolic claims with no warrant.

> Communication mediums are the safest thing in the whole wide world.

Even though this is a strawman, since my arguing to the contrary does nothing to support that anonymity is or isn't a natural right, you're still completely wrong. Perhaps I can't literally shoot someone with a computer, but all kinds of violence is inflicted by communication. You can harass, threaten, and blackmail simply by communicating. The internet has been used to inflict sexual abuse, aid hate crime, and transmit child pornography. It can also be used to steal, commit fraud, and induce an unsafe panic (think of shouting fire in a crowded theater). These are all non-physical but violent acts; incidentally, anonymity aids in perpetrating every one of them. Saying that the internet is inherently safe, much less the safest thing in the whole wide world, is patently false.

> History is very clear on this: the biggest enemies of justice have been governments and state sponsored entities, every single time.

Perhaps you can add up the numbers and claim that more suffering has been inflicted in total by governments (in the course of wars, or whatever, some of which were more justifiable than others) rather than isolated individuals. You'd have a serious sampling bias, though, because we generally owe recorded history to the presence of a government, and people seem to have preferred throughout recorded history to form governments rather than live as individuals. So while this is a nice setup for an anarchistic manifesto, unless you are seriously willing to give up government and then move to Antarctica (which has pretty bad Internet, I'm told), it doesn't really make sense for this discussion.

[etherael]

> Perhaps you can add up the numbers and claim that more suffering has been inflicted in total by governments (in the course of wars, or whatever, some of which were more justifiable than others) rather than isolated individuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democide

His research shows that the death toll from democide is far greater than the death toll from war. After studying over 8,000 reports of government-caused deaths, Rummel estimates that there have been 262 million victims of democide in the last century. According to his figures, six times as many people have died from the actions of people working for governments than have died in battle.

[malandrew]

So what you're saying is that the internet is a tool, and like all tools they can be used for both good and evil. That being said, how is it different from a knife that can be used as easily to cut food to murder someone? We don't regulate knives despite the danger they occasionally present. We value the convenience and utility of being able to acquires knives whenever, wherever and for whatever we want more than the safety afforded by regulating knives to prevent stabbings. The internet is an even more versatile tool than knives and regulating it will do more harm than good.

[jellicle]

> History is very clear on this: the biggest enemies of justice have been governments and state sponsored entities, every single time.

If that were true, which it isn't, why did humanity create governments?

[smokeyj]

> why did humanity create governments?

The same reason "humanity" created mafias and gangs -- which is to use violence as a means of economic control.

[quadrangle]

It's as or more reasonable to say that governments evolved out of the need to mediate conflicts between people living in groups.

[manicbovine]

This is also a more reasonable explanation for organized crime, seeing as how criminals cannot rely on the government to mediate criminal disputes.

[quadrangle]

Organized crime has its own internal governance, hence "organized". So that's no different.

[ardeay]

We have a HIVE mentality, as much as we try to hide it with personalization. It is the truth. We work together. WE WORK TOGETHER.

[gboudrias]

Is that a quote or are you yelling at your monitor?

[clarkmoody]

  That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted
  among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent 
  of the governed,

[jessaustin]

"Humanity" doesn't do anything. Humans do all sorts of things. Why do wolves form packs?

[mahyarm]

Because violence exists.

[saraid216]

> The concept of "natural rights" is motivated by protection against the government.

That's why natural rights are so difficult to defend. Their entire basis is anti-change.

[samolang]

Their basis is against coercion. There are other ways to effect change beside coercion.

[saraid216]

Yes, there are. Fires, earthquakes, and tornadoes.