rich1.0GrumpyRabbit (npub1xp…gahuc)https://nostr.now/npub1xp560vk8fzeaxxhq4yy9qp9p0nt3kecc65ddnxqf8p77z9srkyyq5gahucnjumphttps://nostr.nowre: "Life is about using what you have to get what you need." Exactly. I don't know of any AnCaps, Voluntaryists or libertarians who won't use state-maintained roads, or courts, or police, or public libraries, or just about any other public service, just because the (very illegitimate!) state operates and/or subsidizes them. The correct solution to the Trolley Problem depends on what the stakes--and holistically-relevant consequences of the chosen action--happen to be. To conflate actions that are intended as tactical with ones that are intended as strategic is a category error. It's logically fallacious to wrongfully equate voting for a candidate or policy for the tactical purpose of defending against encroaching tyranny with strategic (deontological) support for the state simply because, in general, support for a democratic republic is ethically equivalent to supporting the validity/rightfulness of having a monopoly provider of justice and security. Those are distinct categories. The strategic/deontological position is about the intrinsic validity of the institution itself: the claim that a territorial monopoly on the legitimate use of force is not merely a contingent historical accident or a pragmatic necessity, but a rightful, principled feature of social order. Conflating the two collapses the distinction between: * "I will use this lever despite its flawed design, because the alternative lever is worse in the short run," and * "This lever's design is the correct one; the monopoly it embodies is ethically proper." Those two stances belong to entirely different logical types. One is a judgment about outcomes in a non-ideal world; the other is a judgment about the ideal itself. Treating participation in the former as evidence of endorsement of the latter is like saying that a prisoner who files an appeal within the warden's rules thereby affirms the warden's right to imprison him. The categories don't touch.