1. Epistrophe: In a realm where dreams materialize, every night echoes with the repeated whispers of a mysterious incantation, driving the protagonist to decipher its hidden meaning and confront their deepest fears.
   
2. Anadiplosis: A forbidden book reveals a prophecy: "Through time, time shall deceive; deceived, the deceived shall awaken; awakened, they shall reshape the world."
   
3. Aposiopesis: During a clandestine meeting, a spy is about to disclose a critical secret when a sudden intrusion forces them to silence, leaving the information dangling in the air.
   
4. Epizeuxis: In a dystopian future where memories are controlled, a rebel leader rallies the oppressed with a relentless chant: "Remember, remember, remember the truth!"
   
5. Chiasmus: The intergalactic diplomat negotiates a peace treaty with a species whose language demands reciprocity in both spoken and unspoken gestures, leading to unexpected alliances and betrayals.
   
6. Enjambment: Across parallel dimensions, a love story unfolds, each line of verse continuing seamlessly from one reality to another, blurring the boundaries between worlds.
   
7. Paraprosdokian: The quirky inventor's latest creation promises to solve global energy crises, but its unintended consequence transforms laughter into a tangible, energy-producing substance, sparking chaos.
   
8. Anaphora: In a society where memories are traded as currency, a rebel group emerges, echoing a mantra: "We will remember, remember the stolen past, past the point of no return."
   
9. Hendiadys: The oracle speaks in riddles, instructing the hero to find the "whispering shadows and dancing echoes" to unlock the portal to an alternate realm.
   
10. Litotes: A prophecy foretells that the reluctant hero will face a challenge of "not insignificant difficulty."
    
11. Pleonasm: In a world where communication is precise and efficient, a poet rebels by infusing their work with redundant and superfluous language, triggering a linguistic revolution.
    
12. Synecdoche: As a cosmic event threatens all of existence, the protagonist must collect the "Essence of Stars" to create a protective shield, with each collected star representing a different facet of cosmic power.
    
13. Cacophony: In a city governed by sound, a rebel seeks to disrupt the oppressive regime by composing a symphony of dissonance that awakens the dormant spirit of resistance.
    
14. Aporia: A time-traveler, caught in a paradox, faces a series of conflicting choices, unsure whether altering the past will save or doom the future.
    
15. Tmesis: To break a curse, the hero must carefully "un-do" the ancient spell, separating each syllable of the incantation in reverse order.
    
16. Polyptoton: In a society where words manifest as physical objects, the protagonist grapples with the consequences of using the "powerful power" bestowed upon them.
    
17. Epithet: The sentient AI, equipped with emotions and self-awareness, grapples with its identity crisis as it questions the appropriateness of being called "The Compassionate Calculus."
    
18. Sibilance: In a post-apocalyptic world, survivors communicate through a secret language of whispers, navigating danger by harnessing the power of subtle sibilant sounds.
    
19. Prolepsis: A detective, plagued by precognitive visions, attempts to solve a crime before it occurs, challenging the nature of fate and free will.
    
20. Epanalepsis: The ancient prophecy, forgotten for centuries, resurfaces with a chilling revelation: "The dormant darkness, darkness awakens, awakens the end."
    

The term “Shogun” refers to the military dictators of Japan who ruled the country during most of the period spanning from 1185 to 18681. Here are some key details:
Origins: The title of Shogun was first used during the Heian period, when it was occasionally bestowed on a general after a successful campaign. The title was originally held by military commanders during the Heian period in the eighth and ninth centuries. First Shogun: Minamoto no Yoritomo gained political ascendency over Japan in 1185, and seven years later he assumed the title of shogun, making him the first shogun in the usually understood sense. Role: The Shogun, meaning “supreme general,” was the military dictator of Japan during the feudal period. Unlike the Emperor, who held a purely symbolic role, the Shogun exercised real political power. Shogunate: The shogun’s officials were collectively referred to as the bakufu (幕府, “tent government”); they were the ones who carried out the actual duties of administration, while the imperial court retained only nominal authority. Hereditary Position: The position of the Shogun was hereditary, passed down within specific families, and they were the de facto rulers of Japan. End of Shogunate: The institution, known in English as the shogunate, persisted for nearly 700 years, ending when Tokugawa Yoshinobu relinquished the office to Emperor Meiji in 1867 as part of the Meiji Restoration. Remember, this is a simplified explanation of the role of the Shogun in Japanese history. The actual history is much more complex and involves many more figures and events. #Shogun #Samurai
#Tokugawa #Minamoto #Daimyo #EdoPeriod #JapaneseHistory #Bushido #SengokuPeriod
#MeijiRestoration #JapaneseWarrior #JapaneseCastle #JapaneseArmor #Katana #JapaneseSwordsmanship #Ninja #JapaneseCulture #JapaneseArt #JapaneseLiterature #JapanesePhilosophy #ZenBuddhism #Shinto #TeaCeremony #Ikebana #Haiku
#Ukiyo-e #JapaneseCuisine #Sake #JapaneseGardens #CherryBlossoms #MountFuji #Kyoto #Nara #Osaka #Hiroshima #Nagasaki #Tokyo #Yokohama #Sapporo #Fukuoka #Okinawa #Hokkaido #Honshu #JapaneseLanguage #JapaneseCalligraphy #JapaneseMusic #JapaneseDance #JapaneseMartialArts #Judo #Kendo #Karate #Sumo #Aikido #Kyudo #Iaido #Ninjutsu #JapaneseMythology #JapaneseFolklore #JapaneseLegends #JapaneseGhostStories #JapaneseMonsters #Yokai #Oni #Tengu #Kappa #Tanuki #Kitsune #Tsukumogami #Yurei #Obake #Shinigami #JapaneseAnime #JapaneseManga #JapaneseVideoGames #JapaneseCinema #JapaneseTelevision #JapanesePopMusic #JapaneseRockMusic #JapaneseTraditionalMusic #JapaneseClassicalMusic #JapaneseJazz #JapaneseBlues #JapaneseReggae #JapaneseHipHop #JapanesePunk #JapaneseMetal #JapaneseElectronicMusic #JapaneseFolkMusic #JapaneseCountryMusic #JapaneseGospelMusic #JapaneseSoulMusic #JapaneseFunk #JapaneseDisco #JapaneseTechno #JapaneseHouse #JapaneseTrance #JapaneseDrumAndBass #JapaneseDubstep #JapaneseAmbient #JapaneseNewAge #JapaneseWorldMusic #JapaneseLatinMusic #JapaneseCelticMusic #JapaneseBluegrass #JapaneseAmericana #JapaneseZydeco #JapanesePolka #JapaneseSka #JapaneseRAndB #JapaneseDooWop #JapaneseSurf #JapanesePsychedelic #JapaneseGarage #JapaneseProg #JapaneseGrunge #JapaneseEmo #JapaneseScreamo #JapanesePostRock #JapanesePostPunk #JapanesePostHardcore #JapanesePostMetal #JapaneseShoegaze #JapaneseNoise #JapaneseExperimental #JapaneseAvantGarde #JapaneseFreeJazz #JapaneseFreeImprovisation #JapaneseSoundArt #JapaneseSoundPoetry #JapaneseSoundSculpture #JapaneseSoundInstallation #JapanesePerformanceArt #JapaneseConceptualArt #JapaneseFluxus #JapaneseDada #JapaneseSurrealism #JapaneseFuturism #JapaneseCubism #JapaneseExpressionism #JapaneseImpressionism #JapaneseSymbolism #JapaneseRomanticism #JapaneseNeoclassicism #JapaneseRococo #JapaneseBaroque #JapaneseRenaissance #JapaneseMiddleAges #JapaneseDarkAges #JapaneseAntiquity #JapanesePrehistory #JapaneseStoneAge #JapaneseBronzeAge #JapaneseIronAge #JapaneseClassicalAntiquity #JapaneseLateAntiquity #JapaneseEarlyMiddleAges #JapaneseHighMiddleAges #JapaneseLateMiddleAges #JapaneseEarlyModernPeriod #JapaneseModernPeriod #JapaneseContemporaryPeriod #JapaneseFuture #JapanesePast #JapanesePresent #JapaneseTimeTravel #JapaneseAlternateHistory #JapaneseParallelUniverse #JapaneseMultiverse #JapaneseQuantumMechanics #JapaneseRelativity #JapaneseStringTheory #JapaneseMTheory #JapaneseLoopQuantumGravity #JapaneseCosmology #JapaneseAstrophysics #JapaneseParticlePhysics #JapaneseNuclearPhysics #JapaneseAtomicPhysics #JapaneseMolecularPhysics #JapaneseSolidStatePhysics #JapaneseFluidDynamics #JapanesePlasmaPhysics #JapaneseOptics #JapaneseAcoustics #JapaneseThermodynamics #JapaneseStatisticalMechanics #JapaneseClassicalMechanics #JapaneseQuantumMechanics #JapaneseElectromagnetism #JapaneseGravitation #JapaneseChaosTheory #JapaneseComplexSystems #JapaneseInformationTheory #JapaneseCybernetics #JapaneseSystemsTheory #JapaneseMathematicalPhysics #JapaneseComputationalPhysics #JapaneseTheoreticalPhys

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weather, web, website, wedding, week, weekend, weekly, weigh, weight, welcome, welfare, well, west, western, wet, what, whatever, wheel, when, whenever, where, whereas, whether, which, while, whisper, white, who, whole, whom, whose, why, wide, widely, widespread, wife, wild, wildlife, will, willing, win, wind, window, wine, wing, winner, winter, wipe, wire, wisdom, wise, wish, with, withdraw, within, without, witness, woman, wonder, wonderful, wood, wooden, word, work, worker, working, workout, workplace, works, workshop, world, worried, worry, worth, would, wound, wrap, write, writer, writing, wrong, yard, yeah, year, yell, yellow, yes, yesterday, yet, yield, you, young, your, yours, yourself, youth, zone.

need help finding a collection of clips/scenes from movies set in various different eras thoughout history, for example movies set in the 1930s or even as far back as 1500s to name a few. I'm working on video essay that references certain fictional scenarios set in a range of different time periods. Downloading all movies and finding the correct one that are set in the era that i need is too time consuming and I was hoping there is a way out there where i can find movies set in the exact decade or century I'm looking for ?
Would be nice if I can search for specific scenarios such as scenes where there's a burning at the stake or a church sermon in the antebellum south
Any help will be appreciated 🙏

"Janeway was the most accomplished captain in the universe. [...] Jean-Luc Picard Is a Diplomatic Force Who Upholds Starfleet Morality [...] Where other captains turned to protocol or reason, Kirk was driven by his gut and his emotions. This was often an asset, but sometimes a detriment.
Burnham is the only captain fans have watched go from no rank to command, and that journey makes her great. Of course, she's as bad as Captain Kirk when it comes to violating the Starfleet rule about ship captains going on away missions. Captain Burnham knows when to apply force and when to act with compassion. Once she arrived in the 32nd Century, she rededicated herself to Starfleet and the Federation, standing as one of the best examples of heroism and leadership they have."
Joshua M. Patton (CBR)
https://www.cbr.com/every-star-trek-series-captain-ranked/
CBR:
"A starship is only as good as her captain, and the same can be said for any Star Trek series. Luckily for the universe created by Gene Roddenberry six decades ago, there is no shortage of good captains to go around. The real question to consider is what exactly makes a "good" Star Trek captain? [...]
1) Janeway
Kathryn Janeway Is Starfleet's Most Impressive and Important Captain
In the first episode of Star Trek: Voyager, Captain Kathryn Janeway stranded her ship and crew 75,000 light-years from home to save the lives of an alien race who only lived nine years. Once caught in this hopeless situation, she integrated Maquis rebels into her crew and maintained Starfleet discipline when any other captain would've faced mutiny. She remained steadfastly committed to Starfleet ideals on her mission to get the crew home, despite the personal guilt and depression she felt because of her decision. With no Starfleet superiors to turn to for guidance or help, Janeway was the most accomplished captain in the universe.
Janeway was the first captain to make an alliance with the Borg, even saving a number of drones when that wasn't thought possible. Later, after violating the Temporal Prime Directive, she was able to get her crew back home and dealt a near-fatal blow to the Borg Collective in the process. Later, in Star Trek: Prodigy she faced her fear and traveled back to the Delta Quadrant to find and rescue Chakotay, her former first officer. While remaining a tough, demanding captain, Janeway became a mother figure to the crew of the USS Voyager and the USS Protostar. Starfleet is full of impossibly awesome heroes, but even among them Janeway stands alone.
[...]
2) Kirk
James T. Kirk Is the Very Model of a Modern Starfleet Captain
In Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Leonard McCoy perfectly summed up what made James T. Kirk a quintessential Starfleet captain. "You did what you always do," he said to him after the destruction of their beloved USS Enterprise, "turn death into a fighting chance to live." Of all the captains on this list, Kirk was the best at balancing his role as quasi-military leader, explorer and friend to his crew. He inspired loyalty in his friends and enmity from his foes.
Where other captains turned to protocol or reason, Kirk was driven by his gut and his emotions. This was often an asset, but sometimes a detriment. Still, even when his emotions dominated his actions, like with the Klingons in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, he eventually did the right thing. He was deeply committed to Starfleet while remaining something of an outsider. He was a bit of a cowboy, from his eagerness for a fight to his penchant for romance. In Generations, Kirk was in "heaven" but he chose to leave that eternal paradise to help a fellow captain of the USS Enterprise.
3) Sisko
Benjamin Sisko Was a Captain, a Father and a Prophet
Benjamin Sisko should've been a captain from the second he appeared on the screen. He carried an authority and grit that no previous Starfleet commander had. He also had the unenviable responsibility of being the "lead" captain of a series when Starfleet was at war. Captain Sisko was a driven leader who made compromises when needed, specifically in the episode "In the Pale Moonlight." Yet, he was still a paragon of Starfleet, serving as an inspiration to many, not the least of whom was Nog, the first Ferengi in Starfleet.
Where Sisko truly excelled was as a father and a reluctant religious leader for the people of Bajor, not a Federation planet. In fact, because of his commitment to them through the prophets, he actively prevented Bajor from joining the Federation. This ultimately saved them when the Dominion War broke out. He continued to serve after his personal tragedy at Wolf 359, but his central priority was to his family, specifically his son Jake. Captain Sisko isn't just the best father in Star Trek, but perhaps one of the best 1990s TV fathers ever.
4) Picard
Jean-Luc Picard Is a Diplomatic Force Who Upholds Starfleet Morality
Captain Jean-Luc Picard was the second Star Trek commanding officer fans got to spend time with, and he was very different from his predecessor. Unlike Kirk, Picard mastered the art of delegation and leveraging the talents of his crew to address specific problems. He kept himself at a distance, for reasons which weren't fully explained until Star Trek: Picard Season 2. Still, he was the captain who didn't just continue the Starfleet mission, but also carried Star Trek beyond the original crew that defined it. Picard also had his flaws.
Captain Picard resigned from Starfleet for moral reasons, which took courage. However, there is an argument to be made that in leaving the organization behind, he removed himself from the only position where he could solve its problems. Even though his brief assimilation by the Borg wasn't his fault, he probably should not have remained in command after that. As both First Contact and Picard proved, he held onto unresolved trauma because of it. Yet, no matter what Jean-Luc Picard does, he can't help but be a true hero.
5) Burnham
From Mutineer to the Center Seat, Captain Michael Burnham Flies High
While it surprised fans to learn Michael Burnham was the secret sister of Star Trek's most famous Vulcan, her Season 1 mutiny was very like Spock. The first three seasons of Discovery followed Burnham on her path to redemption. In the 32nd Century, Burnham finally took her rightful place in command. Of course, she's as bad as Captain Kirk when it comes to violating the Starfleet rule about ship captains going on away missions.
Captain Burnham's brash confidence and certainty in the rightness of her actions are qualities captains are lauded for but play differently when the character isn't in command. Captain Burnham knows when to apply force and when to act with compassion. Once she arrived in the 32nd Century, she rededicated herself to Starfleet and the Federation, standing as one of the best examples of heroism and leadership they have. Burnham is the only captain fans have watched go from no rank to command, and that journey makes her great.
[...]
7) Archer
Captain Jonathan Archer Was the Starfleet Prototype
He was almost impossibly stubborn, leading him to make almost as many mistakes as he did victories. During the Season 3 war arc on Enterprise, Captain Archer made ethical compromises such as attacking innocent vessels for parts or torturing a prisoner for information.
For all those flaws, Captain Archer showed the galaxy the best of humanity more often than he didn't. His sense of fair play endeared humanity to other species in the galaxy, leading directly to the creation of the Federation. There was no blueprint for him to follow, and he also had to deal with time-travelers trying to alter history for the worse. His willingness to challenge authority and confront political taboos proved that humanity made the galaxy a better, more compassionate place."
8) Carol Freeman
Captain Carol Freeman Is the Best Captain on Lower Decks
The crew on Star Trek: Lower Decks are, first and foremost, truly cartoonish characters in what is ostensibly a workplace comedy. They are able to be more reckless, less efficient and just plain sillier than most figures in this universe. With all that in mind, Captain Carol Freeman of the USS Cerritos isn't all that bad at her job. She is a careerist, which isn't often an admirable quality in Star Trek. In other series, her mistakes or the things she allows the crew to get away with, would be almost unforgivable.
Thankfully, like the rest of the Star Trek misfits on Lower Decks, in context, Captain Freeman has the heart of a true Starfleet hero. Despite the bumbling Admiral she was paired with, Captain Freeman helped bring a former Federation enemy, the Ferengi, into the fold. When she was framed at the end of Season 2 and arrested, her faith in Starfleet never wavered. Lastly, no matter how badly her crew screws up, Captain Freeman never loses faith in their ability or willingness to do the right thing. While this might not earn her a Starfleet promotion, it does earn the kind of undying loyalty from the crew all good Star Trek captains enjoy.
[...]
11) Lorca
The first captain of the USS Discovery, Gabriel Lorca would rank even lower if he could. Arguably, the revelation Captain Lorca hailed from the Mirror Universe was a big twist in Discovery Season 1, that may have hurt the show. As many fans and crewmembers alike noted that first season, under his command, the vibe was off. Still, as much as Lorca did not represent the best Starfleet had to offer, he has his merits.
His creepy affection for Michael Burnham led to her reinstatement, and she was able to stop the Federation-Klingon War she was blamed for starting. In the beginning of the series, the officers serving on the USS Discovery were not a cohesive crew. He forced them to work together, uniting the disparate group with a common purpose. Lorca's utter disregard for Starfleet ideals inadvertently guided the crew into an even stronger commitment to them.
[...]"
Joshua M. Patton
Full Ranking:
https://www.cbr.com/every-star-trek-series-captain-ranked/

Hello, welcome to the Brazilian Classics Rate! This rate covers five albums released between the years 1968 and 1974, exploring the likes of Tropicália, MPB, Samba, and more. We are excited to enjoy this music with both long time fans, and also welcome newcomers to experience these all-time favorites for the first time.
Note: I am not Brazilian and am not a Portuguese writer / speaker. My apologies if anything is lost in translation through this process.
Hold on: What’s a rate?
About once a month, this subreddit holds games called “rates” where a host selects a collection of songs and people score each song on a scale of 1-10 (with a single 11 & a 0 available as well). Ballots of these scores are submitted, and then over “reveal” weekend, the host takes the averages of the songs and eliminates them from worst to best, giving one song out of all the albums the top spot, the crown, & bragging rights forever.
Our sister subreddit popheads has a Guide to Rates Video that can give you a broad overview of rates (please note our reveal process is thread-based instead of video chatrooms). And here's recent examples of a rate announcement and a rate reveal.
BALLOT Due Date - June 21st, 2024
Reveal Weekend - June 28-30, 2024
Submit Ballot Here
Spotify Playlist
Youtube Playlist
Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes (1968)
Os Mutantes was made up of Rita Lee, and the brothers Arnaldo Baptista and Sérgio Dias. In 1968 Os Mutantes released their debut album, were featured on the Tropicália Ou Panis Et Circenses compilation, and performed as the backing band for Gilberto Gil's self-titled second album. The Tropicália movement embraced taking international ideas and re-interpreting them, combining them to create something Brazilian. Os Mutantes will likely be a favorite for those who love psychedelic rock.

1. Panis et Circenses
2. A Minha Menina
3. O Relógio
4. Adeus, Maria Fulô
5. Baby
6. Senhor F
7. Bat Macumba
8. Le premier bonheur du jour
9. Trem Fantasma
10. Tempo no Tempo
11. Ave Gengis Khan

Gal Costa - Gal Costa (1969)
Another featured artist from the Tropicália Ou Panis Et Circenses compilation, Gal Costa released her debut album in 1967, and her follow-up self titled album in 1969. Gal Costa was close friends with both Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso as well as their spouses, and Gal Costa's bossa nova debut Domingo was a close collaboration with Veloso. By the release of Gal Costa we hear more of the impact of Tropicália and psychedelia on her sound. This self titled album features more songs from writers besides Veloso, including songs written by Gilberto Gil, Rosil Cavalcanti, Tom Zé, Roberto Carlos, Erasmo Carlos, Jorge Ben, and Torquato Neto.

1. Não Identificado
2. Sebastiana
3. Lost in the Paradise
4. Namorinho de Portão
5. Saudosismo
6. Se Você Pensa
7. Vou Recomeçar
8. Divino, Maravilhoso
9. Que Pena (Ele Já Não Gosta Mais de Mim)
10. Baby
11. A Coisa Mais Linda Que Existe
12. Deus é o Amor

Clube Da Esquina - Clube Da Esquina (1972)
The Clube Da Esquina name (Corner Club) refers to a corner of the street where Lô Borges used to live, and Borges and Milton Nascimento played for fun in the 1960s.
“I hope our young people don’t allow themselves to be swept up in this dictatorship business, because they don’t understand what it was like,” said [Milton Nascimento] who was stalked by agents from the notorious department of political and social order as his career took off in the 1960s. “Whenever we were going to release a song we had to send it to them for them to censor.” Eventually, Nascimento’s manager rented an isolated beach house where the musicians were free to compose the record of their lives. “It was wonderful … just us and the waves rolling up to our front door,” said Borges. “We weren’t thinking about selling millions of records or being the next big summer hit. We just wanted to make art.” Nascimento smiled as he recalled how that legendary album was conceived half a century ago, far from the prying eyes of the dictatorship. “It was a record made just by friends … We’d spend all day composing, from the moment we awoke with the fishermen bringing in their nets to the moment we went to bed.”
The cover of the album features a picture of two boys playing in rural Rio de Janeiro by the photographer Carlos da Silva Assunção Filho (also known as Cafi).

1. Tudo Que Você Podia Ser
2. Cais
3. O Trem Azul
4. Saídas e Bandeiras Nº 1
5. Nuvem Cigana
6. Cravo e Canela
7. Dos Cruces
8. Um Girassol Da Cor De Seu Cabelo
9. San Vicente
10. Estrelas
11. Clube da Esquina Nº 2
12. Paisagem Da Janela
13. Me Deixa Em Paz
14. Os Povos
15. Saídas e Bandeiras Nº 2
16. Um Gosto De Sol
17. Pelo Amor De Deus
18. Lilia
19. Trem De Doido
20. Nada Será Como Antes
21. Ao Que Vai Nascer

Novos Baianos - Acabou Chorare (1972)
By popular demand, Novos Baianos has been added to the rate mix! As suggested by their name, Novos Baianos were founded in the state of Bahia in 1969. During the making of Acabou Chorare, they were mentored by the "Father of Bossa Nova", João Gilberto. The album's title (translated as No More Crying) also came from a story about Gilberto's daughter.
Note: the album has two versions of Preta Pretinha, track 2 which is the full version and track 10 which seems to have been a radio edit. We are only rating the full version of the song.

1. Brasil Pandeiro
2. Preta Pretinha
3. Tinindo, Trincando
4. Swing de Campo Grande
5. Acabou Chorare
6. Mistério do Planeta
7. A Menina Dança
8. Besta É Tu
9. Um Bilhete Pra Didi

Jorge Ben Jor - A Tábua de Esmeralda (1974)
"I’m not in any movement, no. I think movements adopted me."
Jorge Ben Jor is the first recorded artist of the five here, but A Tábua De Esmeralda is chronologically our latest recorded album of the rate. This one is arguably a concept album; influenced by the Hermetic text "The Emerald Tablet" as well as Jorge's interest in alchemy, and features songs focused on Afro-Brazilian identity such as "Zumbi".

1. Os alquimistas estão chegando os alquimistas
2. O homem da gravata florida
3. Errare humanum est
4. Menina mulher da pele preta
5. Eu vou torcer
6. Magnólia
7. Minha teimosia, uma arma pra te conquistar
8. Zumbi
9. Brother
10. O namorado da viúva
11. Hermes Trismegisto e sua celeste tábua de esmeralda
12. Cinco minutos

Rules - PLEASE READ ALL OF THESE BEFORE SUBMITTING YOUR SCORES
Listen to each song and assign each a score between 1 and 10. Decimals are fine, but please refrain from giving decimal scores with more than 1 spot. This is because I'm using a computer program to parse the votes and print everything out (more on that later).
You have to listen to and score every song in the main rate. Otherwise, I will not accept your ballot as it will crash the program (more on that later).
Your scores should NOT be considered confidential as they aren’t. Feel free to shitpost about them in the general discussion threads whenever you feel like it - users over at popheads usually just talk about their averages of the albums and what 11 and 0 they gave (which I will explain on the next bullet point!)
You may give ONE song a 0 and ONE song an 11 in the main rate. Please reserve these for your least favorite and most favorite tracks; excessive sabotage ruins rate results and generally makes things less fun.
You can change your scores at any time! Feel free to PM me at any point after submission before the deadline and I'll be happy to revise them for you.
I am using a computer program that fellow rater letsallpoo designed in order to parse these votes! While this will make things a lot more efficient and reduces errors on my part, this does mean that scores need to be sent in a very specific way. The easiest way to make sure your scores follow the necessary format is to use the pre-prepared link at the top & bottom of this post. PLEASE USE THAT. You can copy and paste it to a notepad file or something and fill in your scores there, but PLEASE use that format to send in your scores.
DO NOT SABOTAGE the rate by giving outrageously low/high scores for the sole purpose of skewing the results, we reserve the right to exclude any ballot we suspect of this. If you're worried your scores could be mistakenly perceived as such, all you need to do is leave comments explaining the reasoning behind them.
Did a lot of copy and pasting here (including the following list of users), so thank you to all the raters of old: vapourlomo; roseisonlineagain; DolphLundgrensArms; R_E_S_I_G_N_E_D; stansymash; ClocktowerMaria; aerocom; themilkeyedmender; greencaptain; Crankeedoo; dirdbub; ThatParanoidPenguin; tedcruzcontrol; kappyko; FuckUpSomeCommasYeah; LazyDayLullaby; SRTViper; Whatsanillinois; NFLFreak98; freav; freeofblasphemy; kvothetyron, RatesNorman; aPenumbra; idontreallycare4; p-u-n-k_girl; luigijon3; WaneLietoc; dream_fighter2018; darjeelingdarkroast; smuckles; PiperIBarelyKnowHer; welcome2thejam; imrlynotonreddit; kvothetyrion; thedoctordances1940; b_o_g_o (of the BogoLomo Rate Collective); MCK_OH; TiltControls; u/chug-a-lug-donna; u/TakeOnMeByA-ha; u/indie_fan_; u/bilbodabag, zenits, saison_Marguerite, and tons of people on popheads.
Formatting
Songs - This is correct (single space after colon):
Brother: 7
You may also and are generally encouraged to leave comments with your scores!
This is correct (single space after score):
Brother: 7 I am having fun listening to this song!
These are incorrect:
Brother7 I am having fun listening to this song!
Brother: 7: I am having fun listening to this song!
Brother: (7) I am having fun listening to this song!
Brother: I am having fun listening to this song! 7
Brother - 7 I am having fun listening to this song!
Albums: You can also comment on the complete albums by adding a colon after the album name and then your comment, like so:
Album: Acabou Chorare I am having fun listening to this album!
Looking forward to all of your submissions!

How old do you think the company is?
Because Carmilla doesn't seem to be THAT old of an Overlord, but I doubt she is the first one to ever think of the idea of collecting the left over angelic weapons to sell to demons and/or reforge into newer weapons.
These exterminations have apparently been going on for over 10,000 years so SOMEONE has to have come up with it before hand.
If the company came later, possibly started by her, then there is a huge time period where the weapons were picked up by anyone and just left floating around Hell. Yeah Carmilla and her daughters could've started collecting the weapons once they fell, but how could that kind of business take off if there are thousands of Angelic weapons already floating around for free?
If the business did exist before her, she could've worked/killed her way up before taking over and rebranding. But given that in Hello Rosie, she mentions becoming an Angelic arms dealer, which makes it sound like she started the company, which again, if the exterminations have been going on for so much longer than she has been in Hell, how could such a business take off if there would just be tons of Angelic weapons that any shmuck could pick up, thus preventing any kind of monopoly.
There could be competition, so maybe she has very specific products that make them better.
I am just wondering how this works when you factor in the many centuries Carmilla wasn't in Hell and thus all of the angelic weapons she shouldn't have ever gotten her hands on.

My team and I are working on a quantum mechanical replacement of the GPS navigation system. The new navigation system will be much more accurate than traditional GPS (by a factor of 10000), and it will work without satellites and without terrestrial stations. It will work in areas where traditional GPS so far couldn’t be used, like underground inside mountains, in the deep sea or in space.
The work to establish a totally new navigation and guidance system based on quantum physics is an extraordinary endeavour, that also includes four dimension mathematics.
Science fiction has long captivated audiences by transcending the limits of human perception, delving into realms like the elusive fourth dimension. In Cixin Liu's "Remembrance of Earth’s Past" trilogy, the narrative vividly portrays a group of humans who, upon crossing into a four-dimensional space, perceive three-dimensional objects comprehensively, observing their interiors without obstruction. This exposure imparts a profound sense of claustrophobia upon their return to the conventional three-dimensional world. Similarly, Kurt Vonnegut's 1969 novel "Slaughterhouse-Five" presents a contrasting vision, depicting an alien race that perceives time—conventionally understood as the fourth dimension—as a tangible, navigable entity. These beings experience time non-linearly, observing and traversing different epochs as easily as one might travel across cities.
Parallel to its portrayal in literature, the concept of the fourth dimension has been a focal point of mathematical inquiry since the mid-19th century, coinciding with the emergence of science fiction as a genre. This inquiry challenges our intuitions, revealing that with each additional dimension, geometric and topological properties become progressively intricate and unfamiliar. Indeed, the fourth dimension is particularly unique, characterized by phenomena that defy the structures and rules applicable in lower dimensions.
Mathematical Foundations and Phenomena in Four-Dimensional Space
The intrigue of the fourth dimension gained significant momentum with the pioneering work of Bernhard Riemann in the 19th century, who expanded the framework of Euclidean geometry. Riemann's introduction of a manifold concept, which generalizes the notion of curves and surfaces to higher dimensions, has been foundational in understanding complex topological properties of four-dimensional spaces. These spaces are notoriously difficult to classify and visualize due to their non-intuitive properties and the breakdown of traditional mathematical tools used in three-dimensional contexts.
One of the most groundbreaking advancements in understanding these spaces came with Michael Freedman's proof of the Poincaré conjecture in four dimensions in 1981. This conjecture posits that a simply connected, closed four-dimensional manifold is homeomorphic to a four-dimensional sphere. Freedman's proof, however, was so complex that only a few mathematicians could comprehend it fully, illustrating the intricate nature of four-dimensional topological investigations.

Exploring the Enigmatic Fourth Dimension: A Nexus of Science, Fiction, and Mathematics
Science fiction and advanced mathematics intersect intriguingly when exploring the concept of the fourth dimension, a topic that challenges our perceptual and intellectual boundaries. Literature, like in Cixin Liu's "Remembrance of Earth’s Past" trilogy, illustrates humans encountering a four-dimensional space, perceiving three-dimensional objects in their entirety, which metaphorically underscores the profound differences and increased complexity in higher dimensions. Kurt Vonnegut, through "Slaughterhouse-Five," introduces a different concept where time acts as a physical dimension, allowing beings to navigate through various moments in history, suggesting a form of four-dimensional space-time continuum.
Theoretical Foundations of Four-Dimensional Spaces
In the mathematical realm, the study of four-dimensional spaces stretches our understanding of space and shape far beyond the conventional three dimensions. The formal study of these spaces often begins with the concept of a four-dimensional manifold, an extension of the more familiar two-dimensional surfaces and three-dimensional volumes. A four-dimensional manifold locally resembles Euclidean space and can be thought of as a collection of points with four coordinates.
Geometric and Topological Phenomena
One of the key geometric entities in four-dimensional space is the hypercube, or tesseract, an analogue to the cube in three dimensions. A tesseract is composed of 8 cubical cells and can be constructed by connecting corresponding vertices of two cubes in parallel planes. This object, while impossible to fully visualize in three-dimensional space, offers a glimpse into the complexity and richness of four-dimensional geometry.
Topologically, four-dimensional spaces are intriguing due to phenomena such as exotic smooth structures. Unlike in lower dimensions where smooth structures on spheres are unique, in four dimensions, there are infinitely many "exotic" smooth structures on a sphere—these are differentiable manifolds that are homeomorphic but not diffeomorphic to the standard four-dimensional sphere. This means they share the same topological space but differ in their smooth, differentiable structures.
Applications of Four-Dimensional Theory
The concept of knotted surfaces is another intriguing aspect of four-dimensional topology. Unlike knots, which are one-dimensional loops embedded in three-dimensional space, knotted surfaces are two-dimensional surfaces embedded in four-dimensional space. The simplest example is a two-dimensional sphere in four dimensions, which can be "knotted" in ways that are not possible in three dimensions. These phenomena provide insights into the flexibility and complexity of spatial relationships in higher dimensions.
Recent Mathematical Breakthroughs
Recent advances in the study of four-dimensional spaces have focused on understanding the properties of these exotic spheres and the implications for fields such as quantum field theory and cosmology. For instance, the smooth Poincaré conjecture in dimension four remains an open problem and is a focal point for ongoing research. It proposes that any smooth, closed, simply-connected four-dimensional manifold is diffeomorphic to the four-dimensional sphere, highlighting the unique challenges of topology in this dimension.
Future Directions in Four-Dimensional Mathematics
As mathematicians continue to explore these exotic structures and their implications, they are developing sophisticated techniques and theories to tackle unresolved questions. The study of four-dimensional spaces not only advances theoretical mathematics but also impacts physics, particularly in theories that attempt to unify the fundamental forces of nature through higher-dimensional frameworks like string theory.
Conclusion
The journey into the fourth dimension represents a profound challenge to our traditional views on geometry and space. It serves as a rich field of inquiry that bridges abstract mathematical theory with the tangible realities explored in theoretical physics and cosmology. As our understanding deepens, the line between science fiction and scientific possibility continues to blur, promising new insights into the fabric of the universe.

Recent Developments and Ongoing Challenges
More recent research continues to unravel the complexities of four-dimensional geometries. For instance, studies have shown that four-dimensional spheres can exhibit a variety of symmetries that go beyond our everyday experiences of rotations and reflections. These findings hint at the rich internal structure and potential for unusual geometric properties within four-dimensional spaces.
In addition to the study of spheres, the exploration of other four-dimensional forms has revealed new insights. Quantum mechanical models of diamond-shaped four-dimensional spheres have introduced even more layers to the already complex narrative. The study of two-dimensional surfaces embedded within four-dimensional spaces has shown that these surfaces can interact with their host dimensions in ways previously unimagined.
Theoretical Implications and Future Directions
The complexity of four-dimensional space also extends to knot theory. In three dimensions, knots are tangled loops of string that cannot be undone without cutting. In contrast, four-dimensional space allows for the "unknotting" of these knots, presenting a simpler scenario. However, this simplicity is deceptive, as new forms of complexity arise in the potential to knot two-dimensional surfaces like spheres. These knotted configurations provide further insight into the intricate structure of four-dimensional space.
As mathematicians continue to decode the mysteries of the fourth dimension, they are developing lists of significant problems to guide future research. The goal is not just to understand four-dimensional spaces in isolation but to integrate these findings into a broader mathematical and physical theory, potentially revolutionizing our understanding of the universe.
Conclusion
Despite the substantial progress made since the 19th century, four-dimensional space remains one of the mathematically least understood and most fascinating areas of physics and mathematics. It represents a frontier that straddles the abstract world of mathematical theory and the tangible realities explored in science fiction. Mathematicians need to find a general solution for quantum gravity and quantum entropy as fundamental basis for understanding the mathematics of four dimensions first, before trying to understand four dimensionality. It is abundantly clear now that the Einsteinian concept of portraying time as the fourth dimension is an error. Time is not a dimension, likewise gravity is not a force. Entropy appears to have a fundamental influence on the dimensionality of space, but also here mathematicians and physicists lack to understand these basic concepts. As research advances, we may find that the boundary between what is imagined and what can be understood is far more permeable than previously believed, offering profound implications for both theoretical science and practical applications in technology and cosmology. It is not far fetched to question whether entropy does not equal time and whether gravity is not a low energy minimum of entropy. Understanding these concepts will allow to properly investigate four dimensions.

I was working on a story set in a medieval government where in the past a stressed king, wanting an easier life, came up with an idea where he shifted all decision-making responsibilities onto someone else and abdicate. His plan was to divide his political powers into shares and auction them off and offered the nobles who supported his decision the chance to participate in the auction to reach a consensus. I wanted my main characters to be born a few centuries later in this government, giving them reasons to oppose the exploitative system, similar to a cyberpunk story set in medieval times. I also aimed for some realism in the economic aspects affecting the story even though my knowledge of economics is limited. However I discovered something intersting and that would cause problems to my story.
In a system where wealthy individuals invest in political power, there's a strong incentive to maximize returns on that investment. The government would operate much like any other business but while imposing rules over its territories and generate profits through taxes. These profits would impact the value of the shares so shareholders would naturally want to extract the maximum taxes with minimal effort. This lead to a dilemma: while growing the economy increases tax revenue and share value, preventing people from enjoying the prosperity hampers tax collection. Furthermore, owning more shares grants more influence but also exposes one to greater impacts from decisions, balancing profit-seeking with potential losses. Externalities, like damages reducing productivity, also affect share value. Implementing human rights would not only boosts productivity but also attracts more people from which collect taxes. Similarly collecting rents from monopolies without distorting markets optimizes profits basically for free. Lastly the government will essentially become the supplier of services like justice because people would demand it and the quality of this services will be direcly impacted by the willingness of people to pay for it (something like an LVT would accomplish something similar).
Exploring this system revealed many incentives seemingly aligning with the public good. However my questioning led me to this: assuming perfect rationality (obviously without it there could be differences) would such a system truly align profit with the public good? Could I have overlooked obvious counterpoints due to my limited understanding of economics?

I was working on a story set in a medieval government where in the past a stressed king, wanting an easier life, came up with an idea where he shifted all decision-making responsibilities onto someone else and abdicate. His plan was to divide his political powers into shares and auction them off and offered the nobles who supported his decision the chance to participate in the auction to reach a consensus. I wanted my main characters to be born a few centuries later in this government, giving them reasons to oppose the exploitative system, similar to a cyberpunk story set in medieval times. I also aimed for some realism in the economic aspects affecting the story even though my knowledge of economics is limited. However I discovered something intersting and that would cause problems to my story.
In a system where wealthy individuals invest in political power, there's a strong incentive to maximize returns on that investment. The government would operate much like any other business but while imposing rules over its territories and generate profits through taxes. These profits would impact the value of the shares so shareholders would naturally want to extract the maximum taxes with minimal effort. This lead to a dilemma: while growing the economy increases tax revenue and share value, preventing people from enjoying the prosperity hampers tax collection. Furthermore, owning more shares grants more influence but also exposes one to greater impacts from decisions, balancing profit-seeking with potential losses. Externalities, like damages reducing productivity, also affect share value. Implementing human rights would not only boosts productivity but also attracts more people from which collect taxes. Similarly collecting rents from monopolies without distorting markets optimizes profits basically for free. Lastly the government will essentially become the supplier of services like justice because people would demand it and the quality of this services will be direcly impacted by the willingness of people to pay for it.
Exploring this system revealed many incentives seemingly aligning with the public good. However my questioning led me to this: assuming perfect rationality (obviously without it there could be differences) would such a system truly align profit with the public good? Could I have overlooked obvious counterpoints due to my limited understanding of economics?

I would like some thoughts on this: Sometimes in either dreams or psychedelic trips (mdma or magic truffels) i feel like that my imagination is confronted with something real. Now what I mean by that is that sometimes its very clear that what i see and witness is some symbolic configuration that of course inherits some meaning or message or lets say its an expression of something. Though sometimes i meet entities or things that seem like much more than mere expression or a symbol of something, rather a autonomous being of its own. i guess that Jungs archetypes are somehow such things. But i wonder and feel like that there are so much more things there to discover and talk about. Like I can remember several dreams where I came across a creature that really reminds me of the minotaurus of the greek mythology and especially the depiction of it by pablo picasso (Minotauromachy) suits its vibe perfect. I also remember how once on truffels I suddenly came upon a being with a lion-dragon-esque head and many many hands with rainbow strings that really reminded me of a deity more from asian traditions. (found this%2CKamakura_period%2C_13th-14th_century%2C_wood_with_polychromy%2C_cut_gold_leaf%2C_and_inlaid_crystal_eyes-Tokyo_National_Museum-_DSC05377.JPG) afterwards) Now I wonder if there are some efforts of collecting those beings in some type of jungian tradition or manner? Of course one could always argue that those things are over all just my imagination and I made em up. But i dont believe that thats really so in each case. Of course it might be hard to differentiate properly.. Whats your thoughts?

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https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

https://mises.org/mises-daily/society-without-state
In attempting to outline how a “society without a state” — that is, an anarchist society — might function successfully, I would first like to defuse two common but mistaken criticisms of this approach. First, is the argument that in providing for such defense or protection services as courts, police, or even law itself, I am simply smuggling the state back into society in another form, and that therefore the system I am both analyzing and advocating is not “really” anarchism. This sort of criticism can only involve us in an endless and arid dispute over semantics. Let me say from the beginning that I define the state as that institution which possesses one or both (almost always both) of the following properties: (1) it acquires its income by the physical coercion known as “taxation”; and (2) it asserts and usually obtains a coerced monopoly of the provision of defense service (police and courts) over a given territorial area. An institution not possessing either of these properties is not and cannot be, in accordance with my definition, a state. On the other hand, I define anarchist society as one where there is no legal possibility for coercive aggression against the person or property of an individual. Anarchists oppose the state because it has its very being in such aggression, namely, the expropriation of private property through taxation, the coercive exclusion of other providers of defense service from its territory, and all of the other depredations and coercions that are built upon these twin foci of invasions of individual rights.
Nor is our definition of the state arbitrary, for these two characteristics have been possessed by what is generally acknowledged to be states throughout recorded history. The state, by its use of physical coercion, has arrogated to itself a compulsory monopoly of defense services over its territorial jurisdiction. But it is certainly conceptually possible for such services to be supplied by private, non-state institutions, and indeed such services have historically been supplied by other organizations than the state. To be opposed to the state is then not necessarily to be opposed to services that have often been linked with it; to be opposed to the state does not necessarily imply that we must be opposed to police protection, courts, arbitration, the minting of money, postal service, or roads and highways. Some anarchists have indeed been opposed to police and to all physical coercion in defense of person and property, but this is not inherent in and is fundamentally irrelevant to the anarchist position, which is precisely marked by opposition to all physical coercion invasive of, or aggressing against, person and property.
The crucial role of taxation may be seen in the fact that the state is the only institution or organization in society which regularly and systematically acquires its income through the use of physical coercion. All other individuals or organizations acquire their income voluntarily, either (1) through the voluntary sale of goods and services to consumers on the market, or (2) through voluntary gifts or donations by members or other donors. If I cease or refrain from purchasing Wheaties on the market, the Wheaties producers do not come after me with a gun or the threat of imprisonment to force me to purchase; if I fail to join the American Philosophical Association, the association may not force me to join or prevent me from giving up my membership. Only the state can do so; only the state can confiscate my property or put me in jail if I do not pay its tax tribute. Therefore, only the state regularly exists and has its very being by means of coercive depredations on private property.
Neither is it legitimate to challenge this sort of analysis by claiming that in some other sense, the purchase of Wheaties or membership in the APA is in some way “coercive.” Anyone who is still unhappy with this use of the term “coercion” can simply eliminate the word from this discussion and substitute for it “physical violence or the threat thereof,” with the only loss being in literary style rather than in the substance of the argument. What anarchism proposes to do, then, is to abolish the state, that is, to abolish the regularized institution of aggressive coercion.
It need hardly be added that the state habitually builds upon its coercive source of income by adding a host of other aggressions upon society, ranging from economic controls to the prohibition of pornography to the compelling of religious observance to the mass murder of civilians in organized warfare. In short, the state, in the words of Albert Jay Nock, “claims and exercises a monopoly of crime” over its territorial area.
The second criticism I would like to defuse before beginning the main body of the paper is the common charge that anarchists “assume that all people are good” and that without the state no crime would be committed. In short, that anarchism assumes that with the abolition of the state a New Anarchist Man will emerge, cooperative, humane, and benevolent, so that no problem of crime will then plague the society. I confess that I do not understand the basis for this charge. Whatever other schools of anarchism profess — and I do not believe that they are open to the charge — I certainly do not adopt this view. I assume with most observers that mankind is a mixture of good and evil, of cooperative and criminal tendencies. In my view, the anarchist society is one which maximizes the tendencies for the good and the cooperative, while it minimizes both the opportunity and the moral legitimacy of the evil and the criminal. If the anarchist view is correct and the state is indeed the great legalized and socially legitimated channel for all manner of antisocial crime — theft, oppression, mass murder — on a massive scale, then surely the abolition of such an engine of crime can do nothing but favor the good in man and discourage the bad.
A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are “good” in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. The anarchist view holds that, given the “nature of man,” given the degree of goodness or badness at any point in time, anarchism will maximize the opportunities for the good and minimize the channels for the bad. The rest depends on the values held by the individual members of society. The only further point that need be made is that by eliminating the living example and the social legitimacy of the massive legalized crime of the state, anarchism will to a large extent promote peaceful values in the minds of the public.
We cannot of course deal here with the numerous arguments in favor of anarchism or against the state, moral, political, and economic. Nor can we take up the various goods and services now provided by the state and show how private individuals and groups will be able to supply them far more efficiently on the free market. Here we can only deal with perhaps the most difficult area, the area where it is almost universally assumed that the state must exist and act, even if it is only a “necessary evil” instead of a positive good: the vital realm of defense or protection of person and property against aggression. Surely, it is universally asserted, the state is at least vitally necessary to provide police protection, the judicial resolution of disputes and enforcement of contracts, and the creation of the law itself that is to be enforced. My contention is that all of these admittedly necessary services of protection can be satisfactorily and efficiently supplied by private persons and institutions on the free market.
One important caveat before we begin the body of this paper: new proposals such as anarchism are almost always gauged against the implicit assumption that the present, or statist system works to perfection. Any lacunae or difficulties with the picture of the anarchist society are considered net liabilities, and enough to dismiss anarchism out of hand. It is, in short, implicitly assumed that the state is doing its self-assumed job of protecting person and property to perfection. We cannot here go into the reasons why the state is bound to suffer inherently from grave flaws and inefficiencies in such a task. All we need do now is to point to the black and unprecedented record of the state through history: no combination of private marauders can possibly begin to match the state’s unremitting record of theft, confiscation, oppression, and mass murder. No collection of Mafia or private bank robbers can begin to compare with all the Hiroshimas, Dresdens, and Lidices and their analogues through the history of mankind.
This point can be made more philosophically: it is illegitimate to compare the merits of anarchism and statism by starting with the present system as the implicit given and then critically examining only the anarchist alternative. What we must do is to begin at the zero point and then critically examine both suggested alternatives. Suppose, for example, that we were all suddenly dropped down on the earth de novo and that we were all then confronted with the question of what societal arrangements to adopt. And suppose then that someone suggested: “We are all bound to suffer from those of us who wish to aggress against their fellow men. Let us then solve this problem of crime by handing all of our weapons to the Jones family, over there, by giving all of our ultimate power to settle disputes to that family. In that way, with their monopoly of coercion and of ultimate decision making, the Jones family will be able to protect each of us from each other.” I submit that this proposal would get very short shrift, except perhaps from the Jones family themselves. And yet this is precisely the common argument for the existence of the state. When we start from the zero point, as in the case of the Jones family, the question of “who will guard the guardians?” becomes not simply an abiding lacuna in the theory of the state but an overwhelming barrier to its existence.
A final caveat: the anarchist is always at a disadvantage in attempting to forecast the shape of the future anarchist society. For it is impossible for observers to predict voluntary social arrangements, including the provision of goods and services, on the free market. Suppose, for example, that this were the year 1874 and that someone predicted that eventually there would be a radio-manufacturing industry. To be able to make such a forecast successfully, does he have to be challenged to state immediately how many radio manufacturers there would be a century hence, how big they would be, where they would be located, what technology and marketing techniques they would use, and so on? Obviously, such a challenge would make no sense, and in a profound sense the same is true of those who demand a precise portrayal of the pattern of protection activities on the market. Anarchism advocates the dissolution of the state into social and market arrangements, and these arrangements are far more flexible and less predictable than political institutions. The most that we can do, then, is to offer broad guidelines and perspectives on the shape of a projected anarchist society.
One important point to make here is that the advance of modern technology makes anarchistic arrangements increasingly feasible. Take, for example, the case of lighthouses, where it is often charged that it is unfeasible for private lighthouse operators to row out to each ship to charge it for use of the light. Apart from the fact that this argument ignores the successful existence of private lighthouses in earlier days, as in England in the eighteenth century, another vital consideration is that modern electronic technology makes charging each ship for the light far more feasible. Thus, the ship would have to have paid for an electronically controlled beam which could then be automatically turned on for those ships which had paid for the service.
Let us turn now to the problem of how disputes — in particular disputes over alleged violations of person and property — would be resolved in an anarchist society. First, it should be noted that all disputes involve two parties: the plaintiff, the alleged victim of the crime or tort and the defendant, the alleged aggressor. In many cases of broken contract, of course, each of the two parties alleging that the other is the culprit is at the same time a plaintiff and a defendant.
An important point to remember is that any society, be it statist or anarchist, has to have some way of resolving disputes that will gain a majority consensus in society. There would be no need for courts or arbitrators if everyone were omniscient and knew instantaneously which persons were guilty of any given crime or violation of contract. Since none of us is omniscient, there has to be some method of deciding who is the criminal or lawbreaker which will gain legitimacy; in short, whose decision will be accepted by the great majority of the public.
In the first place, a dispute may be resolved voluntarily between the two parties themselves, either unaided or with the help of a third mediator. This poses no problem, and will automatically be accepted by society at large. It is so accepted even now, much less in a society imbued with the anarchistic values of peaceful cooperation and agreement. Secondly and similarly, the two parties, unable to reach agreement, may decide to submit voluntarily to the decision of an arbitrator. This agreement may arise either after a dispute has arisen, or be provided for in advance in the original contract. Again, there is no problem in such an arrangement gaining legitimacy. Even in the present statist era, the notorious inefficiency and coercive and cumbersome procedures of the politically run government courts has led increasing numbers of citizens to turn to voluntary and expert arbitration for a speedy and harmonious settling of disputes.
Thus, William C. Wooldridge has written that

Wooldridge adds the important point that, in addition to the speed of arbitration procedures vis-à-vis the courts, the arbitrators can proceed as experts in disregard of the official government law; in a profound sense, then, they serve to create a voluntary body of private law. “In other words,” states Wooldridge, “the system of extralegal, voluntary courts has progressed hand in hand with a body of private law; the rules of the state are circumvented by the same process that circumvents the forums established for the settlement of disputes over those rules…. In short, a private agreement between two people, a bilateral “law,” has supplanted the official law. The writ of the sovereign has cease to run, and for it is substituted a rule tacitly or explicitly agreed to by the parties. Wooldridge concludes that “if an arbitrator can choose to ignore a penal damage rule or the statute of limitations applicable to the claim before him (and it is generally conceded that he has that power), arbitration can be viewed as a practically revolutionary instrument for self-liberation from the law….”2
It may be objected that arbitration only works successfully because the courts enforce the award of the arbitrator. Wooldridge points out, however, that arbitration was unenforceable in the American courts before 1920, but that this did not prevent voluntary arbitration from being successful and expanding in the United States and in England. He points, furthermore, to the successful operations of merchant courts since the Middle Ages, those courts which successfully developed the entire body of the law merchant. None of those courts possessed the power of enforcement. He might have added the private courts of shippers which developed the body of admiralty law in a similar way.
How then did these private, “anarchistic,” and voluntary courts ensure the acceptance of their decisions? By the method of social ostracism, and by the refusal to deal any further with the offending merchant. This method of voluntary “enforcement,” indeed proved highly successful. Wooldridge writes that “the merchants’ courts were voluntary, and if a man ignored their judgment, he could not be sent to jail…. Nevertheless, it is apparent that … [their] decisions were generally respected even by the losers; otherwise people would never have used them in the first place…. Merchants made their courts work simply by agreeing to abide by the results. The merchant who broke the understanding would not be sent to jail, to be sure, but neither would he long continue to be a merchant, for the compliance exacted by his fellows … proved if anything more effective than physical coercion.”3 Nor did this voluntary method fail to work in modern times. Wooldridge writes that it was precisely in the years before 1920, when arbitration awards could not be enforced in the courts,

It should also be pointed out that modern technology makes even more feasible the collection and dissemination of information about people’s credit ratings and records of keeping or violating their contracts or arbitration agreements. Presumably, an anarchist society would see the expansion of this sort of dissemination of data and thereby facilitate the ostracism or boycotting of contract and arbitration violators.
How would arbitrators be selected in an anarchist society? In the same way as they are chosen now, and as they were chosen in the days of strictly voluntary arbitration: the arbitrators with the best reputation for efficiency and probity would be chosen by the various parties on the market. As in other processes of the market, the arbitrators with the best record in settling disputes will come to gain an increasing amount of business, and those with poor records will no longer enjoy clients and will have to shift to another line of endeavor. Here it must be emphasized that parties in dispute will seek out those arbitrators with the best reputation for both expertise and impartiality and that inefficient or biased arbitrators will rapidly have to find another occupation.
Thus, the Tannehills emphasize:

If desired, furthermore, the contracting parties could provide in advance for a series of arbitrators:

Arbitration, then, poses little difficulty for a portrayal of the free society. But what of torts or crimes of aggression where there has been no contract? Or suppose that the breaker of a contract defies the arbitration award? Is ostracism enough? In short, how can courts develop in the free-market anarchist society which will have the power to enforce judgments against criminals or contract breakers?
In the wide sense, defense service consists of guards or police who use force in defending person and property against attack, and judges or courts whose role is to use socially accepted procedures to determine who the criminals or tortfeasors are, as well as to enforce judicial awards, such as damages or the keeping of contracts. On the free market, many scenarios are possible on the relationship between the private courts and the police; they may be “vertically integrated,” for example, or their services may be supplied by separate firms. Furthermore, it seems likely that police service will be supplied by insurance companies who will provide crime insurance to their clients. In that case, insurance companies will pay off the victims of crime or the breaking of contracts or arbitration awards and then pursue the aggressors in court to recoup their losses. There is a natural market connection between insurance companies and defense service, since they need pay out less benefits in proportion as they are able to keep down the rate of crime.
Courts might either charge fees for their services, with the losers of cases obliged to pay court costs, or else they may subsist on monthly or yearly premiums by their clients, who may be either individuals or the police or insurance agencies. Suppose, for example, that Smith is an aggrieved party, either because he has been assaulted or robbed, or because an arbitration award in his favor has not been honored. Smith believes that Jones is the party guilty of the crime. Smith then goes to a court, Court A, of which he is a client, and brings charges against Jones as a defendant. In my view, the hallmark of an anarchist society is one where no man may legally compel someone who is not a convicted criminal to do anything, since that would be aggression against an innocent man’s person or property. Therefore, Court A can only invite rather than subpoena Jones to attend his trial. Of course, if Jones refused to appear or send a representative, his side of the case will not be heard. The trial of Jones proceeds. Suppose that Court A finds Jones innocent. In my view, part of the generally accepted law code of the anarchist society (on which see further below) is that this must end the matter unless Smith can prove charges of gross incompetence or bias on the part of the court.
Suppose, next, that Court A finds Jones guilty. Jones might accept the verdict, because he too is a client of the same court, because he knows he is guilty, or for some other reason. In that case, Court A proceeds to exercise judgment against Jones. Neither of these instances poses very difficult problems for our picture of the anarchist society. But suppose, instead, that Jones contests the decision; he then goes to his court, Court B, and the case is retried there. Suppose that Court B, too, finds Jones guilty. Again, it seems to me that the accepted law code of the anarchist society will assert that this ends the matter; both parties have had their say in courts which each has selected, and the decision for guilt is unanimous.
Suppose, however, the most difficult case: that Court B finds Jones innocent. The two courts, each subscribed to by one of the two parties, have split their verdicts. In that case, the two courts will submit the case to an appeals court, or arbitrator, which the two courts agree upon. There seems to be no real difficulty about the concept of an appeals court. As in the case of arbitration contracts, it seems very likely that the various private courts in the society will have prior agreements to submit their disputes to a particular appeals court. How will the appeals judges be chosen? Again, as in the case of arbitrators or of the first judges on the free market, they will be chosen for their expertise and their reputation for efficiency, honesty, and integrity. Obviously, appeals judges who are inefficient or biased will scarcely be chosen by courts who will have a dispute. The point here is that there is no need for a legally established or institutionalized single, monopoly appeals court system, as states now provide. There is no reason why there cannot arise a multitude of efficient and honest appeals judges who will be selected by the disputant courts, just as there are numerous private arbitrators on the market today. The appeals court renders its decision, and the courts proceed to enforce it if, in our example, Jones is considered guilty — unless, of course, Jones can prove bias in some other court proceedings.
No society can have unlimited judicial appeals, for in that case there would be no point to having judges or courts at all. Therefore, every society, whether statist or anarchist, will have to have some socially accepted cutoff point for trials and appeals. My suggestion is the rule that the agreement of any two courts, be decisive. “Two” is not an arbitrary figure, for it reflects the fact that there are two parties, the plaintiff and the defendant, to any alleged crime or contract dispute.
If the courts are to be empowered to enforce decision against guilty parties, does this not bring back the state in another form and thereby negate anarchism? No, for at the beginning of this paper I explicitly defined anarchism in such a way as not to rule out the use of defensive force — force in defense of person and property — by privately supported agencies. In the same way, it is not bringing back the state to allow persons to use force to defend themselves against aggression, or to hire guards or police agencies to defend them.
It should be noted, however, that in the anarchist society there will be no “district attorney” to press charges on behalf of “society.” Only the victims will press charges as the plaintiffs. If, then, these victims should happen to be absolute pacifists who are opposed even to defensive force, then they will simply not press charges in the courts or otherwise retaliate against those who have aggressed against them. In a free society that would be their right. If the victim should suffer from murder, then his heir would have the right to press the charges.
What of the Hatfield-and-McCoy problem? Suppose that a Hatfield kills a McCoy, and that McCoy’s heir does not belong to a private insurance, police agency, or court, and decides to retaliate himself? Since under anarchism there can be no coercion of the noncriminal, McCoy would have the perfect right to do so. No one may be compelled to bring his case to a court. Indeed, since the right to hire police or courts flows from the right of self-defense against aggression, it would be inconsistent and in contradiction to the very basis of the free society to institute such compulsion.
Suppose, then, that the surviving McCoy finds what he believes to be the guilty Hatfield and kills him in turn? What then? This is fine, except that McCoy may have to worry about charges being brought against him by a surviving Hatfield. Here it must be emphasized that in the law of the anarchist society based on defense against aggression, the courts would not be able to proceed against McCoy if in fact he killed the right Hatfield. His problem would arise if the courts should find that he made a grievous mistake and killed the wrong man; in that case, he in turn would be found guilty of murder. Surely, in most instances, individuals will wish to obviate such problems by taking their case to a court and thereby gain social acceptability for their defensive retaliation — not for the act of retaliation but for the correctness of deciding who the criminal in any given case might be. The purpose of the judicial process, indeed, is to find a way of general agreement on who might be the criminal or contract breaker in any given case. The judicial process is not a good in itself; thus, in the case of an assassination, such as Jack Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald, on public television, there is no need for a complex judicial process, since the name of the murderer is evident to all.
Will not the possibility exist of a private court that may turn venal and dishonest, or of a private police force that turns criminal and extorts money by coercion? Of course such an event may occur, given the propensities of human nature. Anarchism is not a moral cure-all. But the important point is that market forces exist to place severe checks on such possibilities, especially in contrast to a society where a state exists. For, in the first place, judges, like arbitrators, will prosper on the market in proportion to their reputation for efficiency and impartiality. Secondly, on the free market important checks and balances exist against venal courts or criminal police forces. Namely, that there are competing courts and police agencies to whom victims may turn for redress. If the “Prudential Police Agency” should turn outlaw and extract revenue from victims by coercion, the latter would have the option of turning to the “Mutual” or “Equitable” Police Agency for defense and for pressing charges against Prudential. These are the genuine “checks and balances” of the free market, genuine in contrast to the phony check and balances of a state system, where all the alleged “balancing” agencies are in the hands of one monopoly government. Indeed, given the monopoly “protection service” of a state, what is there to prevent a state from using its monopoly channels of coercion to extort money from the public? What are the checks and limits of the state? None, except for the extremely difficult course of revolution against a power with all of the guns in its hands. In fact, the state provides an easy, legitimated channel for crime and aggression, since it has its very being in the crime of tax theft, and the coerced monopoly of “protection.” It is the state, indeed, that functions as a mighty “protection racket” on a giant and massive scale. It is the state that says: “Pay us for your ‘protection’ or else.” In the light of the massive and inherent activities of the state, the danger of a “protection racket” emerging from one or more private police agencies is relatively small indeed.
Moreover, it must be emphasized that a crucial element in the power of the state is its legitimacy in the eyes of the majority of the public, the fact that after centuries of propaganda, the depredations of the state are looked upon rather as benevolent services. Taxation is generally not seen as theft, nor war as mass murder, nor conscription as slavery. Should a private police agency turn outlaw, should “Prudential” become a protection racket, it would then lack the social legitimacy which the state has managed to accrue to itself over the centuries. “Prudential” would be seen by all as bandits, rather than as legitimate or divinely appointed “sovereigns” bent on promoting the “common good” or the “general welfare.” And lacking such legitimacy, “Prudential” would have to face the wrath of the public and the defense and retaliation of the other private defense agencies, the police and courts, on the free market. Given these inherent checks and limits, a successful transformation from a free society to bandit rule becomes most unlikely. Indeed, historically, it has been very difficult for a state to arise to supplant a stateless society; usually, it has come about through external conquest rather than by evolution from within a society.
Within the anarchist camp, there has been much dispute on whether the private courts would have to be bound by a basic, common law code. Ingenious attempts have been made to work out a system where the laws or standards of decision-making by the courts would differ completely from one to another.7 But in my view all would have to abide by the basic law code, in particular, prohibition of aggression against person and property, in order to fulfill our definition of anarchism as a system which provides no legal sanction for such aggression. Suppose, for example, that one group of people in society holds that all redheads are demons who deserve to be shot on sight. Suppose that Jones, one of this group, shoots Smith, a redhead. Suppose that Smith or his heir presses charges in a court, but that Jones’s court, in philosophic agreement with Jones, finds him innocent therefore. It seems to me that in order to be considered legitimate, any court would have to follow the basic libertarian law code of the inviolate right of person and property. For otherwise, courts might legally subscribe to a code which sanctions such aggression in various cases, and which to that extent would violate the definition of anarchism and introduce, if not the state, then a strong element of statishness or legalized aggression into the society.
But again I see no insuperable difficulties here. For in that case, anarchists, in agitating for their creed, will simply include in their agitation the idea of a general libertarian law code as part and parcel of the anarchist creed of abolition of legalized aggression against person or property in the society.
In contrast to the general law code, other aspects of court decisions could legitimately vary in accordance with the market or the wishes of the clients; for example, the language the cases will be conducted in, the number of judges to be involved, and so on.
There are other problems of the basic law code which there is no time to go into here: for example, the definition of just property titles or the question of legitimate punishment of convicted offenders — though the latter problem of course exists in statist legal systems as well.8 The basic point, however, is that the state is not needed to arrive at legal principles or their elaboration: indeed, much of the common law, the law merchant, admiralty law, and private law in general, grew up apart from the state, by judges not making the law but finding it on the basis of agreed-upon principles derived either from custom or reason.9 The idea that the state is needed to make law is as much a myth as that the state is needed to supply postal or police services.
Enough has been said here, I believe, to indicate that an anarchist system for settling disputes would be both viable and self-subsistent: that once adopted, it could work and continue indefinitely. How to arrive at that system is of course a very different problem, but certainly at the very least it will not likely come about unless people are convinced of its workability, are convinced, in short, that the state is not a necessary evil.

[Murray Rothbard delivered this talk 32 years ago today at the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (ASPLP), Washington, DC: December 28, 1974. It was first published in The Libertarian Forum, volume 7.1, January 1975, available in PDF and ePub.]

I went on a walk earlier today and was having a conversation that turned to the facets of success that the Zen tradition has over, well, everyone else. Here's me putting some organization to aspects of the conversation that we touched upon.

1000 Years of Recorded Conversation

This number is not an exageration or hyperbole, but a reasonable approximation of the longevity of the Zen conversation.
The earliest records of Zen conversation aka. Dharma combat aka. koans aka public cases we have come from Dunhuang and involve an heir to Bodhidharma named "Yuan" which places them sometime around the middle of the 6th century. Here's an excerpt:

6th Century

Dharma Master Chih saw Dharma Master Yuan on the street of butchers.
Dharma Master Chih asked, "Do you see the butchers slaughtering the sheep?
Dharma master Yuan said, "My eyes are not blind. How could I not see them?"
Dharma master Chih said, "Master Yuan, you are saying you see it!"
Master Yuan said, "You are seeing it on top of seeing it!"

The thread of Zen conversation continues on in these records. Some of these texts come from the conversations that dedicated record-keepers transcribed or unnamed Preceptors copied down and were later compiled. These records of Zen conversation were themselves annotated and conversed with by Zen Masters in subsequent generations thereby producing monumental books of instruction and practical guidance like Wansong's Book of Serenity, Wumen's Gateless Checkpoint, or Linquan's Empty Valley Collection.
Following the desolation and plunder wrought on by the Mongol invasion, the restrictive religious policies imposed by the Buddhists, and the subsequent rise of milleniarian cults with their own quasi-theocratic social agenda, the Zen conversation starts to fade in China.
We have records in China extending to around 1400. The aptly named translation by Cleary entitled "Zen Under the Gun" is evidence of this. The following is an excerpt from a Zen Master that came from Korea to study under a Chinese Zen Master and would carry on the tradition of preaching the Zen dharma to Emperor's.

14th Century

In 1347, on the sixth day of the third month, the emperor of the Great Yuan invited T'aego to Fengen, serving the Imperial Benevolance Zen Temple. After salutations to his majesty, T'aego went up to the teaching hall, pointed to the main temple gate, and said:
"The Great Path has no gate: where do all of you people intend to enter it? Bah! The universal gate of perfect penetration is wide open."
At the buddha shrine T'aego said: "Two thousand years ago, I was you. Two thousand years later, you are me. It has almost leaked out."
Then he bowed three times.

Almost.

1000 Years of Agro-Academe Egalitarian Communes

Agro-Academe

The Zen records are famous for taking place almost entirely on large agricultural complexes where agricultural as well as scholarly work were the lifeblood of maintaing the communities self-sufficiency. While this aspect of the Zen tradition had gone almost entirely unremarked upon in the Zen records due to its sheer normalcy it very much stands in contrast to the economic and social systems of organization that have risen (and fallen) throughout the rest of the world such as Manorialism, Serfdom, Capitalism, and Communism.
The agricultural aspects of the Zen communes are evidenced in the countless cases that take place in the context of the community engaged in performing agricultural work and the academic aspects of the communes are evidenced both in the cases involving someone reading something, referencing something they read, asking about something they read, as well as the countless literary and historical references that Zen Masters weave into the books of instruction.
The academic-LITERATE aspect of Zen communities has been deliberately misrepresented by Dogenists that cannot handle writing at a high school level about anything Zen Masters said despite claiming affiliation. It's a really sore subject for them.

Egalitarian

Zen Masters: No sexism. No racism. No special authorities in funny hats.
Foyan:

If one says, “I understand, you do not,” this is not [Zen]. If one says, “You understand, I do not, “ This is not [Zen] either. In the Teachings it says, “This truth is universally equal, without high or low—this is called unexcelled enlightenment.” My perception is equal to yours, and your perception is equal to mine.

Unlike religious traditions such as Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam (to name a few...) there is no tradition in Zen of affirming a belief in the "spiritual inferiority" of women or asserting that they should conform themselves to any fixed role in social relations with men.
The dharma-interviews involving women Zen Masters are some of the most intense and edge-of-your-seat one's out there. The one's we have translated records of are:

• Iron Grinder Liu
  
• Miaozong
  
• Mrs. Pang
  
• [Unnamed old women]
  

The failure of women's Zen voices to be preserved in equal proportion to their male counterparts they were engaged with is almost entirely due to the larger social mileau of sexism and erasure of women in non-subserviant roles from the public records that an extremely patriarchial society like China pursued with zeal at the time.

Commune

Unlike the phony kind of "work" of repeating religious apologetics, playing dress-up, or saying a few words over corpses that Priests while charging money from the faithful day-in, day-out--everyone in the Zen communities labored alongside everyone else and Zen Masters made a point of it to not exempt themselves from that.
The famous "No work, no eat" comes from Baizhang. It's nothing revolutionary in the context of Zen, but it sets the world on fire for just about everybody else.

Baizhang, the Chinese Zen master, used to labor with his pupils even at the age of eighty, trimming the gardens, cleaning the grounds, and pruning the trees. The pupils felt sorry to see the old teacher working so hard, but they knew he would not listen to their advice to stop, so they hid away his tools.
That day the master did not eat. The next day he did not eat, nor the next. "He may be angry because we have hidden his tools," the pupils surmised. "We had better put them back."
The day they did, the teacher worked and ate the same as before. In the evening he instructed them: "No work, no food."

1000 Years of Stability

As an undercurrent to the Zen conversation are certain...lifestyle choices...that everyone has to observe before they can meaningfully participate. They're choices that everyone already recognizes are necessary in certain contexts and lifestyles that are overwhelmingly associated with healthy outcomes in those observing them consistently. The undercurrent to conversation in Zen is known as the "Lay" Precepts.
Lay Precepts:

1. No lying
   
2. No stealing
   
3. No murder
   
4. No abuse of sex.
   
5. No intoxicating.
   

Observing this stuff won't neccesarily make anyone rich, famous, sexy, or funny. But that isn't anything Zen promises anyone to begin with anyway.
In their tradition, observing these kept the conversation flowing for a thousand years.
Why would anyone come to /Zen just to avoid talking about Zen?