Who Were the Sea Peoples?

We often find people saying something like, "If Americans can serve in the military at age 18, it is contradictory not to let them drink at 18 as well." ( An example  of this sort of accusation.) But these complaints rest on a confusion. When we want to build up a system of mathematics, such as geometry, we state propositions (theorems, axioms, lemmas, etc.) and work out their consequences. We should worry about the consistency of our propositions, because if two of them are contradictory, anything at all can be proven in our system. But the law does not consist of propositions with logical consequences, from which we try to prove something further. It consists of rules of conduct, with consequences for the breaking thereof, which serve to help guide and improve our practical life. In general, the only important sort of proposition that laws contain is that X is illegal and Y is legal.* Therefore, in general, laws can be contradictory only in declaring X to be both l...

In Jonathan Catalan's comment section, Robert Roddis writes about "a system of voluntarily but strictly enforced property rights." If everyone has "voluntarily" accepted this system of property rights, why in the world would it need to be "strictly enforced"?! Well, it would need to be strictly enforced against those who had never voluntarily agreed to it . Just like every "statist" law is voluntary, if you agree with it, and coercive, if you don't. No difference at all.

Here : "Under ordinary circumstances, if we’re planning an evening out and discussing what movie to see, it’s understood that if we cannot reach agreement on a particular film there is always the possibility of cancelling our plans and heading off to separate movies. The possibility that, in the event that consensus is not achieved, one of us might simply compel the other, by force or the threat thereof, to go to a particular movie is simply not contemplated. Discourse and persuasion in the legislative arena, by contrast, take place under the shadow of the truncheon and the gun; these conversations have a winner, and the losers are conscripted into the winners’ projects. The whole process of discussion has as its aim and presuppositon the externalisation of the costs, and internalisation of the benefits, winners’ favoured schemes. Legislation – at least the kind of legislation practised by states – is not an alternative to violence but is rather a mode of violence." OK...