Mutual Aid Societies

[Chronos]

I reject the idea that having hurt no one, where no individual can make a claim of damages against me, that I may be subject to the violent coercive aggression of a state or government.

So you support drunk drivers, as long as they don't hurt anyone? I think that taking risks with other people's lives is undesirable for society.

[Xeldal]

I reject the idea that I have given consent to be governed simply by being born in a geographical location. 
I reject the idea that by using public goods, like roads, that I am agreeing to be subject to that publics authority.  It would be like saying a prisoner consents to being imprisoned because he eats the tax-payer funded prison food.
I reject the idea that any group or 'authority' can be given rights that no individual has themselves. (legalized kidnapping, theft, murder etc)
I reject the idea that having hurt no one, where no individual can make a claim of damages against me, that I may be subject to the violent coercive aggression of a state or government.

The very premise of the State and all its laws rest on an injustice and moral depravity.

Its the moral obligation of every self respecting person to disobey unjust laws.   

“If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law”  -Henry David Thoreau

"An unjust law, is no law at all"  -St. Augustine

"one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws"  -Martin Luther King Jr.

“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”  -Mahatma Gandhi

[Pheonike]

You incentive people to pay. What if you could earn 1% back for buying or watching something legally vs pirating? You can do that with simplier now crypto.

[pc]

If you drive the speed limit while all the traffic around you is going 10 over, then you are the one who is endangering everyone else.  In this case, the person following the law is increasing the risk of everyone else.

I think this is a fallacy. Even if I was going 10 over like everyone else, the overall risk of accidents would be higher compared to the situation where everyone is going exactly at the speed limit. So even if the situation where everyone but me is going 10 over is more risky than the situation where everyone including me is going 10 over, this only means that everyone else is endangering everyone by going 10 over, not me by going at the speed limit.

(Reminds me of an argument for liberal gun laws: if everyone but me has a gun I need to have the right to buy one too - when in fact the risk of being shot is much lower when nobody has a gun.)

The system proposed simply gives "society" (the people) a means of pushing back and expressing their opinion.

I'm glad to see that you have good intentions (didn't expect anything else from you ;-) ). However, I think the system will mostly be (ab)used by evil-doers (for the lack of a better word).

For example, even though drunk driving is a victimless crime (when no one is hurt), I doubt they would get many voluntary contributions from their mutual aid society even if they are a paying member.

Drunk driving (or speeding as in the previous example) are not victimless crimes, at least not in the statistical sense. Both increase the risk of injury for otherwise unrelated people who happen to be in the way of the drunkard at the wrong time. And I think almost everyone is aware of that, which is precisely the reason why drunken drivers wouldn't get many voluntary contributions.

PC's argument basically seems to revolve around every law having a stated purpose that is for the benefit of society. The real question is whether any law is worth making a new class of criminal. Is it worth locking someone up at the thread of eminent death?  You will notice through-out his analysis he never approaches that question.

If no one ever pushes back against laws, the unjust laws will continue to unjustly push society.

No! I'm fully aware that many stupid, meaningless and even unjust laws exist.

I'm arguing that you cannot break these laws and try to get away with that by creating some form of insurance. If you want to push back against laws you either have to do it on the political level within the system, or you have to start a revolution. (And no, this mutual aid society is not a revolution.)

[gamey]

In the same way, society has effectively nullified copyright law (for personal use). 

I completely disagree. Perhaps your peers have done so, but I feel confident that the majority has not. For example, ask a sampling of Americans if they think it's OK to pirate the new Star Wars movie, and watch it for free (for personal use).

If this were OK, the movie would likely not have been produced, since it would not earn nearly as much revenue.

It is not "ok" but it is also not worth imposing the laws upon it. Someone should not be put in jail for a year and likely receive a felony over avoiding a $15 movie ticket. There is gray area ... and it forces people to rely on selective enforcement. I tend to think we have to have IP, but there are other areas where government grows favoring one side.

PC's argument basically seems to revolve around every law having a stated purpose that is for the benefit of society. The real question is whether any law is worth making a new class of criminal. Is it worth locking someone up at the thread of eminent death?  You will notice through-out his analysis he never approaches that question.

If no one ever pushes back against laws, the unjust laws will continue to unjustly push society.  Pot is the generic example. If no one ever smoked pot because it was against the law, then the law would never be an issue.  Is this argument the better one !?

[TravelsAsia]

In the same way, society has effectively nullified copyright law (for personal use). 

I completely disagree. Perhaps your peers have done so, but I feel confident that the majority has not. For example, ask a sampling of Americans if they think it's OK to pirate the new Star Wars movie, and watch it for free (for personal use).

If this were OK, the movie would likely not have been produced, since it would not earn nearly as much revenue.

http://www.dailytech.com/Nearly+Half+of+Americans+Pirate+Casually+But+Pirates+Purchase+More+Legal+Content/article29702.htm

Age demographics play a big role in the likelihood of copyright.  I would expect my 19 year old sister to pirate more than my 50 year old mother.   Even with piracy, you're still not going to get the same experience as going to the theater.

[Chronos]

In the same way, society has effectively nullified copyright law (for personal use). 

I completely disagree. Perhaps your peers have done so, but I feel confident that the majority has not. For example, ask a sampling of Americans if they think it's OK to pirate the new Star Wars movie, and watch it for free (for personal use).

If this were OK, the movie would likely not have been produced, since it would not earn nearly as much revenue.

[bitacer]

Drunken Society . 

[bytemaster]

For example, if you drive above the speed limit you increase the risk of injuring every other drivers/pedestrian near you, even if you don't actually harm anyone. These other people cannot immediately stop you from increasing *their* risk of being injured. That's why society comes up with speed limits.

If you drive the speed limit while all the traffic around you is going 10 over, then you are the one who is endangering everyone else.  In this case, the person following the law is increasing the risk of everyone else.  Meanwhile, everyone who is "breaking the law" is at risk of selective enforcement.  This is a case where society has a whole has nullified the law in practice, but the government still enforces the law selectively.

In the same way, society has effectively nullified copyright law (for personal use). 

Every argument @pc makes has an implicit assumption that the "laws" represent the "will of society" and that the process by which the laws came to be is fair, balanced, and well reasoned.  It is only through nullification that society has the ability to push back against unjust laws.  The system proposed simply gives "society" (the people) a means of pushing back and expressing their opinion. Causes that don't have broad support or sympathy will not get payouts.

For example, even though drunk driving is a victimless crime (when no one is hurt), I doubt they would get many voluntary contributions from their mutual aid society even if they are a paying member.   Perhaps drunks could form their own society, but the rates would be very high and there wouldn't be many who would participate.

[pc]

What is a society?  A country can have a overall layer of freedom to such an extent that we can have multiple societies and getting caught up in other societies just means you have to pay their price.

A society is any group of people interacting with each other. Note that "interact" is used in a very broad sense here. For example, you interact with every taxpayer if you use a road that was paid by the taxpayers. Or you can only "own" a piece of land by creating a general understanding that this is actually your piece of land.

Of course you can be part of multiple societies if you pay their price, that is not the point here. The point is that you are automatically part of the society of people who live near you, for some definition of near, and that you have to adhere to the rules of that society.

Disobeying laws is a calculated risk, and when there is no well defined victim of your actions then it is questionable whether state sanctioned violence is needed.

Quite the opposite: laws are needed especially when there is no well-defined victim (but victims of some form anyway).

For example, if you drive above the speed limit you increase the risk of injuring every other drivers/pedestrian near you, even if you don't actually harm anyone. These other people cannot immediately stop you from increasing *their* risk of being injured. That's why society comes up with speed limits.

For example, exposing people to radioactivity increases their likelihood of catching cancer - but you can never prove that a specific case of cancer was caused by a specific piece of material. That's why society comes up with rather strict rules on how to build nuclear power plants and how to deal with nuclear waste.

What happens when your society is ruled by some evil entity?

Ultimately, every society is responsible for choosing their leaders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Bug's_Life

[bytemaster]

The system cannot go bankrupt because returns are never promised nor guaranteed.  Even if 100% of the parties filed claims in the first week the system isn't insolvent. 

I have more information coming out about this soon.

[gamey]

BTW, there was the original Insurance DAC etc.

That part of the forum is gone or moved to parts unknown.

This idea is not new to BitShares, it was part of the discussion well over a year ago when I first became interested.

[CoinHoarder]

I think it would be more lucrative for Bitshares to insure things that are usually insured (life, health, dental, car, house, etc), not some random obscure list of things such as in the OP. Using an obscure list of things to insure means you need to educate the consumer, which is never a good proposition.

If you are going to use that obscure list of things to insure, then they should not be lumped together. Almost everyone drives, but not everyone uses drugs or hangs out with anyone that does. Some people have very little contact with prostitutes and would not want to pay for protection for such... etc..

This is a ponzi scheme.

No, it's not. From a certain angle, any kind of insurance is a ponzi scheme of sorts. You have people paying into it, and those continued payments being required so that others can get payouts. But insurance, benefit societies, and community rainy day funds have been around for thousands of years, and their models are not pponzis.

The difference between insurance and Ponzis is that insurance companies can invest and build up the money they get from premiums. Their businesses can sustain themselves based on returns from their investments and current policyholders paying premiums. If they needed to attract new pay-ins in order to have the money to pay claims, etc., then they would be Ponzis.

Good points, perhaps it is not a Ponzi scheme (although it closely resembles one.) If everyone had an incident early in the existence of the insurance plan, then it could go bankrupt and thus be ponzi-like.

[bitacer]

Or those users who might want to be covered in more than one area can join multiple circles.

[bitacer]

Cant this be done by creating "mutual saving accounts"  with multi-signature permissions ? So people with similar views can form smaller societies fitting their culture and circumstances . Lets say group of users who hate to buckle up can voluntarily create this account to save for a ticket which a member might get , or * smokers can do it to cover similar problem of their own .