Life as a Service

I've made up my own law of selfish libertarianism - if you'll indulge me:<p>&#62; <i>It's only a liability or an entitlement until you yourself need it - then it's a fucking right.</i><p>For example being a young white male born into a middle class western family affords you the ability to state "all I need is contract law - everything else is just impinging on my rights and forcing me to take on obligations I don't appear to benefit from - I deserve what I earn."<p>No health problems + family and state support + faulty logic + short sightedness + sex/race advantages = libertarianism.<p>Contract law is no more a right than free health care is. But one definitely serves your self interests better. Rights should be based on the veil of ignorance principle - the weak should be protected and the strong should pay for they are one car crash away from welfare.<p>The lense people should be looking through is that of the weakest in society - not having a geek hissy fit and fantasizing of going Galt because you feel others are holding you back.<p>If you don't like it - leave. Somalia is lovely this time of year I hear.

<i>"Even so, I’d be a lot happier paying taxes if there had been a moment where I was given the choice: pay taxes and have these benefits or be left to your own devices."</i><p>Except that there's no (current, easy) way of excluding you from various public goods that are paid by taxes. Examples include national defense, public spaces like parks, public highways, fire protection (if you live in shared housing or simply close enough to others such that we can't take the risk of letting your house burn down), etc...<p>That's why these goods are called "non-excludable." See:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excludability</a>

Life is not a service. You did not sign a contract. Not everything is a business agreement. Individualism is not the ultimate value.<p>I guess that is what bugs me the most about this article: the idea that seems to underlie it that humans are all rational beings that are somehow unconnected to society. Or at least the idea that it is morally desirable for this to be the case.<p>I do not agree with this. It is individualism taken too far, beyond where the idea of individualism is meaningful. Human beings need social conditioning as much as they need food and drink to survive. Anarchism is a nice theory (much like pure communism or capitalism) but it disregards the nature of human beings, who need to be embedded in society with all its rules, norms and conditioning mechanisms to function.<p>If you want a different society, go into politics, change things for the better. Don't sit on the couch complaining that the "service" is not as good as you like.<p>p.s. Life is life (nanananana)

The essence of the (flawed) argument Jacques is making is in his passport section<p><pre><code> I need permission from my government if I want to leave the country. </code></pre> Oddly, that's not true. A passport is necessary to get <i>into</i> a country, not leave one. The distinction is subtle but important. You can if you wish as an adult, leave the country you are in, and if they will let you in, enter another with a different set of obligations. At worst you can just bob around the Atlantic in a bath tub for a bit.<p>The whole set of complaints boil down to, are there other countries which have a better setup than the country I am in? Can I go now?<p>The answer for anyone in the West is of course, not such that you would notice. And yes, no-one is stopping you. (But I would not recommend the bathtub option)<p>Edit: I just realised that it could read as "well if you dont like it F off." It honestly was not meant like that - but its hard to reword the whole comment now.

I had the good fortune of being born Australian. Through sheer dumb luck I'm entitled to:<p>- Free healthcare - Free education - Free roads and parks - Free safety and security (i.e. a relatively well functioning police force that will protect me from violence)<p>These entitlements are far from perfect, and come with the caveat that if and when I start earning money, some of it will be taken from me (by threat of force, if necessary) to go into a communal fund to provide other Australians with these benefits.<p>That sucks a bit, but on the other hand I have a legal right to decide, along with other citizens, on the proportion of my income that is taken, as well as on the people in charge of managing these communal funds.<p>Perhaps more importantly, I get to live in a society where other people get these things too. I'm not saying this from a touchy-feely standpoint - there are huge benefits to the individual living in such a system.<p>Because virtually everyone in my country has food in their stomach, a roof over their head, and a shot at improving their situation through hard work, I rarely feel unsafe. From a purely selfish standpoint, I am extremely grateful that most of the people in my country feel they have more to gain by defending 'the system' than by attacking it.<p>As a business owner, I also have access to a large pool of highly educated people to work with and millions of (relatively) wealthy people to sell my products and services to.<p>I'm not sure where I'm going with this. I quite liked the article and often think about how silly and arbitrary things like nationalism and citizenship are.<p>And yet...<p>Sure it sucks that I never really had the opportunity to opt out of the system, but on the other hand - boy am I lucky that it was opt in by default.

While some of the complaints are fair, the conclusion is absurd. The rights already clearly outweigh the obligations, which the author confirms himself by stating that "given the option I probably would/should have signed it [the contract".<p>It seems to me the author takes many benefits of having the "Life as a Service" subscription for granted, and thus believes they are not part of the service - that they would persist even if there was no overseeing organization. Just to provide an example, the right to own property is only enforced by the service - without it, you only have the 'right' to own whatever you can defend yourself (or convince someone to defend for you).<p>Thus in the 'LaaS' you have to pay taxes, or your property will be confiscated. Without 'LaaS' you have to be ready to fight for whatever you own, or your property will be confiscated. Seems like a win for me.

This hits very close and I guess you only realize it if at some point of your life you live where you'd rather not but have no way to get out.<p><pre><code> I need permission from my government if I want to leave the country. Being given a passport is apparently not a right. Oh and they cost quite a bit of money and are valid only 5 years. That works out to a certain amount of money per day just to be able to exist outside the borders of the country I was born in. Good thing it doubles as an ID card, I can save a bit there. Now I’ve never done anything from the list of offenses that would stop me from receiving a passport but I really wonder who gave who the right to stop anybody from going where they wanted to go. It makes very little sense to me, all these countries each with their own set of laws, borders, border guards to keep people out of one place, border guards to keep people in another place and so on. It feels as though they’re all prisons, just large enough that you can’t see the fences on the edge. But the fences are definitely there. And you can only buy your way out. Never mind that to go somewhere else you are also going to have to buy your way in.</code></pre>

Furthermore, why must I live inside this sack of greasy skin, with all these disgusting organs?

Ah Jacques. You've posted some brilliant articles, Three Roads to the Top of the Mountain[1] is among the best articles I've read on starting a business. In fact, I will go and read it again after posting this. And seek out some other good startup/business related articles you have written.<p>But this Life as a Service article is just incomprehensible to me coming from you. How selfish! How can the same person who posted the Top of the Mountain post write this? Not sure how life in the Netherlands is so much different from here in Canada, but the article is full of things that are either not true, or overblown. It's depressing to read, and a sad attempt to tear up the social contract we all must be a part of.<p>"I have no problem paying taxes, but I wish I had a choice about it."<p>You can't give people a choice about it. You can't have a society supported by some people with loads of people refusing to support it. (Too poor to support it is different.) And how can you complain about that AND complain that the rich and royalty are above the law? You're arguing both sides!<p>Maybe you want to go find a remote outpost in the Northern tip of your country that you truly get no government services provided to you - no roads, no police, no hospitals, no ID required, no electricity, no internet, or phone service... go do that. But if you are part of society, you must be part of the social contract. Better to accept that and go on to do (or write) something productive that adds value..<p>[1]<a href="http://jacquesmattheij.com/three+roads+to+the+top+of+the+mountain" rel="nofollow">http://jacquesmattheij.com/three+roads+to+the+top+of+the+mou...</a>

Given how often libertarianism comes up around and here and some of the attitudes that are repeated demonstrated, it's pretty clear that a large segment of HN's population has never been in a disadvantaged situation in life, either in economics, geography, or race.

A few of these points are interesting, because things don't have to be that way (e.g. various government-granted monopolies).<p>But most of these points are uninteresting, in the sense that I cannot easily imagine alternatives. Public goods are a simple example - there's an economic reason it is not possible to let people opt-out of public goods: you can't <i>not</i> protect some people, so it is in their interest to opt-out and receive protection anyway. So everyone will opt-out.<p>I have a lot of respect for jacquesmattheij, and I love posts that make us reconsider basic assumptions of our society and decide whether they're good or not. Even as a philsophical exercise and without a practical angle, it's interesting. But most of the complaints here don't come with an alternative, so what are we supposed to do with them?

Some thoughts on this:<p>You have no obligation to conform to these laws at all. You are not born into a contract. A contract is a piece of paper which you can use to wipe your bum with if you wish.<p>You can in theory do what the hell you like. People regularly do. You can kill people, not pay tax, walk over the border of any country and urinate anywhere you like.<p>The only downside is that someone who does subscribe to the rules will probably throw you in jail or kill you without respecting your choice.<p>Fear of the above is the only reason that the law works at all.<p>When the law becomes bad for the population, which it really is under many common ethical principles these days and it is getting worse, we need to have a revolution to reset the badness.<p>There is no happy solution to adding legislation other than resetting it completely occasionally.<p>Dying and emigrating just bring their own legal problems.

There's a serious discussion here which seems ignored. It is: "what are the pros and cons of government forced 'terms of life'". Without that discussion, it seems to me that most of the complaints in the article remain a curiosity.

This is a rather poor attempt at philosophy that basically rides on yesterday's blog (the pendulum one) remark about Life-as-a-Service.<p>If anything it should teach people about how to keep the blog audience interested.<p>I was pretty sure I could down-vote by now but apparently I can't downvote articles. I guess I should just upvote everything else on the page...

This article leaves me uneasy. We need to separate the process that societies use to determine laws and customs from the outcomes themselves. I'm also against many of the outcomes described in the article but the process used to get there in the countries where Jacques and I live in it's the best process we know of. OK, maybe the least worst is more appropriate but I can't really think anything else I would like to replace Democracy with.

The unordered list is an overused and inadequate replacement for properly structured prose.

Well, it sounds like a really consumerist way to interpret things.<p>While it is true that some countries will not let you leave your country and will impose obligations even if you don't live in the country, in most western democracies (and in particular the author's country): * You can leave freely * As soon as you're not resident, you pretty much have no obligation toward your origin country - hell, you can even get a citizenship from a different country and be done with it.<p>I think among western democracies, only US imposes taxes on non-residents citizens.<p>Most of the complains are irrelevant - of course they are rules you have to follow, and you didn't decide at some point to "agree" with them. The rules are usually for the benefit of the group, i.e. not being able to use a land you buy for anything you want prevent you to build a chemistry factory in the middle of a residential area.

This article is brilliant. Each and every point Jacques makes is spot-on. I'm sure many will disagree with his stance, but he makes an excellent point. Irrespective of our personal preference, we are effectively locked in to and subordinate of our government and its policies. Any self-respecting human who has contemplated this should be sick to their stomach.<p>Realize this: <i>we're floating in space.</i> Not one soul on this planet knows why we're here, where we're going, or how we should conduct ourselves. In essence we've been handed our own "Gary's Mod" and yet we've resolved to have infinite and mostly useless structure. I'm not praising anarchy, but like what was mentioned in this piece, I should have a <i>choice.</i>

"I spent some time researching the emigration options. A lot of time actually. And I’ve found out that the place where I live is in spite of all of the above probably one of the best places on earth to be living at the moment. It’s shocking! Half the world or more of it would be more than happy just to trade with me, and they’d be absolutely right."<p>If you can earn a first-world nation without having to live there, something quite possible in tech, there are a number of countries where many folks can be quite happy and more free. And remember you don't have to just stay in one country, you can travel around a bit and sample countries also.<p>I made the move and it was the right decision to me, imho.

&#62; But it could be so much better if we really tried.<p>For anyone interested in alternative ways to improve government, check out:<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_city</a><p>"A charter city is a city in which the governing system is defined by the city's own charter document rather than by state, provincial, regional or national laws."<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seasteading</a><p>"Seasteading is the concept of creating permanent dwellings at sea, called seasteads, outside the territory claimed by the government of any standing nation."

Great analogy, it seems like you live right next door :)

I think the OP's point that we are surrounded by established monopolies is very noticeable nowadays. Copyright agency, Lawyers, Medical practitioners, etc.

My gist of that: society and economy are weird. (Although a few points are, well, a bit silly)<p>Welcome to the human condition, <i>geworfenheit</i> etc.

Shop around for a country to live in. I wish countries were more accommodating about this.<p>In my dream world like minded people live in the same country. Just think of how great it would be if you didn't have to compromise because everyone in the country were on the same side of (for example) the liberal/conservative divide.

The author has not really gone beyond stating that we are subject to the social contract (no shit sherlock) and that we should try harder to make this contract much better (ditto.) Go read the Wikipedia article on social contract, it has a much better value per seconds of your attention.

&#62; And if a substantial number of them would opt-out that would be a much clearer sign than any elections ever could give that that society was on the wrong track.<p>I think this is a pretty interesting comment. It sparked the idea of a 'tax-free' zone in each country in my head. Like a area of each country with no government infrastructure or intervention. The proportion of population living in these zones would really give a good indicator of how the countries are treating it's citizens. People would be free to cross this fence whenever they wanted.<p>But in reality I don't think any country would want to give up land for such means.

The worst part is: if you're a US citizen you're still "opted in" to paying taxes even after you don't live there and no longer use any of the services. In some cases, even if you've never lived there at all or even speak the language (hint: you can get american citizenship from being born on the soil or having a single biological parent who was).

I'm not seeing anyone complain about the lack of competition for The State. If nothing else why would anyone defend the monopoly of the state? I don't see anyone defending any other monopoly.<p>Why should I be forced to move elsewhere for better service?<p>I understand that for now we don't have a better solution but stop defending the fucking monopoly.

According to Henry Sumner Maine, the development of law in the west was one of movement from status to contract. According to Mr. Mattheij, it hasn't gone far enough, I gather.

Can't you simply renounce your citizenship at 18?

Holland right? Is that the place he is talking about? I wonder how he feels about Switzerland, or say Canada?

If this guy isn't Dutch, I'm the pope.<p>These are quite literally exactly the reasons why I'm emigrating.

I think "Life as a Slave" would have been more suitable.

I've thought about this some times, it's a hard thing to wrap logic around, definitely...<p>but here's two things that are a bit unsettling to me on this topic:<p>- life is paid, you can't just go to some abandoned place, raise chicken and plants and live off of it and if you can't pay for your life you either turn yourself into a slave(living to pay to be alive) or you're made into the worst thing possible, with all your dignity taken from you(be a bum and face everything that's left when you can't pay for a life, even the ones created by the system itself)<p>- why can't there be competition? it made me remember this article: <a href="http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678720/former-seasteaders-come-ashore-to-start-libertarian-utopias-in-honduran-jungle" rel="nofollow">http://www.fastcoexist.com/1678720/former-seasteaders-come-a...</a> what would happen if different state models were allowed to exist and they proved to be less corrupt, safer, fairer, happier and people just started migrating to this better states(from what I took they'd still live in capitalism)? I'm almost sure other governments wouldn't let it happen, and this takes me to another unsettling thought that is how, as much as people wan't freedom and dignity, governments want the power, they're barely ever accountable and they don't have competition, they own the game.<p>Well, just thoughts..