Rad Geek People's Daily

This week — specifically, FRIDAY, October 3 — I will be speaking at the Alabama Philosophical Society’s annual conference in Orange Beach, Alabama. The talk will be a presentation of a short paper, Can Anyone Ever Consent to the State? (If you’ve been reading here for a while, it will be similar, but not identical to, something you’ve already read here.) Here’s the abstract:

I defend a strong incompatibility claim that anything which could count as a state is conceptually incompatible with any possible consent of the governed. Not only do states necessarily operate without the unanimous consent of all the governed, but in fact, as territorial monopolies on the use of force, states preclude any subject from consenting – even those who want it, and actively try to give consent to government. If government authority is legitimate, it must derive from an account of legitimate command and subordination; any principled requirement for consent and political equality entails anarchism.

WHAT: Can Anyone Ever Consent to the State? paper and Q&A with Charles Johnson.

WHEN: Friday, October 2, 1:00pm-1:40pm.

WHERE: Alabama Philosophical Society annual conference, Hilton Beachfront Garden Inn, 23092 Perdido Beach Blvd, Orange Beach, AL. (The talk will be in the Island Bay II room, for what that’s worth.)

If you happen to be at the beach already, you might also be interested to know that Roderick Long is also giving a paper in the same room at 3:30:

Left-Libertarianism, Class Conflict, and Historical Theories of Distributive Justice

Roderick T. Long (Auburn University)

A frequent objection to the "historical" (in Nozick's sense) approach to distributive justice is that it serves to legitimate existing massive inequalities of wealth. I argue that, on the contrary, the historical approach, thanks to its fit with the libertarian theory of class conflict, represents a far more effective tool for challenging these inequalities than do relatively end-oriented approaches such as utilitarianism and Rawlsianism.

Hope to see you at the beach!

• Too Hot. Daily Brickbats (2009-08-31). Western Australia Coroner Alastair Hope ruled an aboriginal elder basically cooked to death in the back of a jail van he was being transported in one hot day. The man, identified only as Mr. Ward, had been picked up for drunk driving the previous day. The coroner said the man… (Linked Monday 2009-09-28.)

• So What If Mackenzie Phillips Has a Book Deal? Cara, The Curvature (2009-09-28). My post about Mackenzie Phillips and the public reaction to her recent revelation that her father John Phillips raped her has been linked pretty widely at this point, and as a result I have received some rather obnoxious and outright disgusting comments (and emails). That's not a complaint, at all… (Linked Tuesday 2009-09-29.)

• Because Sassy Patterns And Floral Prints Make Men's Eyeballs Bleed... lisa at Sociological Images, Contexts Blogs: All Blogs (2009-09-11). ...there's Kleenex for men: In case you don't know that brown, black, and gray = men, it says so right on the box! Apparently these are on sale in the U.K.  I haven't seen them in the U.S. In looking this up, I discovered that gendered Kleenex marketing is nothing… (Linked Monday 2009-09-28.)

Every Sunday we gather together for the sake of Shamelessness.

What have you been up to this week? Write anything? Leave a link and a short description for your post in the comments. Or fire away about anything else you might want to talk about.

• Can We Pull This Off? Brad Spangler, Center for a Stateless Society (2009-09-23). Dear Supporters of the Center for a Stateless Society, I have some good news and a request for help with the challenges ahead. On Monday, September 14th, I asked you to help us reach a partial goal of raising $2,450 by a week from that day. Just barely, you did… (Linked Monday 2009-09-28.)