Can a voluntaristic society succeed?
- Thread starter dmnEPC
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We make decisions without rulers every day (anarchy), we come together with others in a voluntary peaceful manner without threats and coercion all the time. We're 90% there. Once people see the elephant in the room, that reveals himself every April 15th, that'll be the final %'s we need to reach a voluntary society.
The elephant is elusive though. He looks really good in stars and stripes, he's serenaded us our entire life with this amazing song, and he has these really catchy phrases that make us feel good 'land of the free, home of the brave, the greatest country on the earth.' People just need to realize he doesn't exist..
He's just a bunch of these guys with great marketing skills..
The elephant is elusive though. He looks really good in stars and stripes, he's serenaded us our entire life with this amazing song, and he has these really catchy phrases that make us feel good 'land of the free, home of the brave, the greatest country on the earth.' People just need to realize he doesn't exist..
He's just a bunch of these guys with great marketing skills..
I really, really, really used to believe this.
I don't anymore. Stefan Molyneux had a really good explanation of the costs,the pain of ending the state. If someone can't see that, then they haven't thought a lot about it.
What happens to the old people? All of the people in the bureaucracy? The military? What happens to people on student loans? Or government subsidized healthcare?
One thing I have learned from my adventures in digital anarchism is that these systems takes years and years and years to build in a marketplace. If I took you, and dropped you naked in a jungle, with the mandate to produce a calculator, you couldn't do it in a lifetime (maybe if you were MacGuyver). Even if you knew how, you wouldn't be able to do it without all of the infrastructure necessary to do so. Same thing with society.
Our social infrastructure is designed for the state. It can change, it may change but it will be gradual. We're talking, generations and generations gradual.
The libertarian wants to believe everyone is asleep, a sheeple, waiting to be awakened with the magical power of the word of liberty. That is an error. They are not asleep, but rather acting in their own rational self interest. Ethics/morals are expensive to afford in a system which rewards their absence.
Your enemy isn't the state. The state is an idea. A delusion. A fantasy. When a man puts on a uniform to be a cop, does he transform into a different kind of being called a statist? No, he's still the same man, but we PERCEIVE his authority to be derived from some power independent of himself.
So there is no state. At all. What you have is billions of people participating in a mass delusion that benefits many of them, and is perceived to benefit the remainder if compliance = safety/security.
Your enemy, as a libertarian, are the people around you, who apply horizontal tyranny (social pressure) to keep the delusion going. Not Obama. Not Boehner. Not Vladimir Putin. Not "the Chinese" or "the Muslims". The people who would be embarrassed if you stop paying your taxes, or drove your car without a license. The sort of people who observe laws they have never read, and may not even exist in the form they believe that they do (herd signalling).
Your family members. Your neighbors. Your customers. The guys in your gaming clan. They are the state because they give form and power to the delusion with their belief in it.
Why hate people who believe in religion, but not hate people who believe in the state? Why blame the worshiper in the first instance, but the deity in the second? (I don't blame either anymore, I just laugh at how silly it all is)
I have seen the enemy and he is us.
Welcome to being lonely.
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwTvr0qophQ]Theme From MacGyver - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwxgpIvQfXE]My Blues - YouTube[/ame]
I think you're explicitly anti-intellectual. You're also non-skeptical. Nothing you believe is rigorous, and you probably can't even give a rudimentary explanation of why you believe any of the things you claim to believe.
You attach yourself to something you perceive to have momentum and abstract righteousness to it, and then you cheerlead that movement, without ever considering the merits or deficits of such an ideology.
You're the sort of libertarian that makes other libertarians hope people don't identify you as being part of the same thought movement as them.
In two years, you haven't shown any better knowledge of economics, which is crucial to understanding libertarianism, which in itself isn't a sin, because there are maybe 10 guys on this forum who do understand any economics.
It's that you make the error Rothbard pointed out. It's no sin not to understand economics (although it makes you sort of a bullshit artist libertarian) but those who don't understand economics, should STFU on matters of economy (human trade, interaction, decision making).
I suppose you probably could have redeemed yourself by being a political philosopher which would allow you to sidestep being an ignoramus about economics, but you haven't bothered to do even the most basic work there either.
Also, you're a poopypants.
Classic hellblazer. Er, I mean guerilla.
-You simply insult without answering the question. What part of that was an answer to the single question I posed?
If you were honest with yourself, you'd realize that I understand proper economics better than 99% of the people on this board, and yet you don't insult them for having a lack of mastery in economics. FFS, you asked me what I thought Rothbard had to say on a particular subject the other day, and I quoted his exact response on said subject with the sourced text provided...
To which your reply was "WRONG!"
I feel sorry for you, G, I really do. Seek mental help.
-You simply insult without answering the question. What part of that was an answer to the single question I posed?
If you were honest with yourself, you'd realize that I understand proper economics better than 99% of the people on this board, and yet you don't insult them for having a lack of mastery in economics. FFS, you asked me what I thought Rothbard had to say on a particular subject the other day, and I quoted his exact response on said subject with the sourced text provided...
To which your reply was "WRONG!"
I feel sorry for you, G, I really do. Seek mental help.
I have put a fair amount of thought and research into this because I really would like to help create a free society that is voluntary (hence my sig).
I think it is possible, for the most part. Just because I think it is possible doesn't mean I think we will have it in this lifetime, or even any time soon. But I think a free society, a society built around self-governance as opposed to group-governance, is the result of evolution. So I think we are slowly taking steps there and will at some point get there.
Society comes down to people. If you have bad people you generally have a bad society. If you have good people you generally have a good society. Obviously certain types of societies shape people a bit, but it is usually people shaping society rather than society shaping people.
I think the main reason why people fail creating a free society is because they try to convince everyone. It's stupid. Most people don't want to be free. Most people want government and they want control. And that's fine. Let them have it. Leave them be.
People need to treat it like a business and start a new society that only has people who want it. If Libertarians are so into a society without statists then they should create a society and set the example (what I'm trying to do). You can't blame statists if they are acting in their own rational, self-interest as pointed out in this thread. They are doing what is best for them. Libertarians should do what is best for themselves and stop trying to convince people to change their mind and instead just focus their efforts on creating what it is they desire. There is no reason non-statists can't get together and assemble a free society. You can't convince everyone to follow you and you don't need to.
I think another thing people should at least consider is that you don't need just 1 society that is free that everyone is a part of. We don't have just 1 restaurant serving one type of food. People like variety and people like choice. Why not have 10 free societies in different parts of the world that are all a little different that all have different people with different goals. Each society can act like a business serving up society for the type of people that want to be a part of it. But isn't that what we already have? Somewhat, except we don't have any new businesses popping up. And we have all the same business owners creating new brands but we never change ownership. We need a new group of owners to get in there and create some new brands with better products. The standard in society is so weak right now.
But yeah, I could go on and on about this topic as I am slowly building closer and closer to really turning something into a reality. I'm so sick of hearing people talk about it and never do anything about it. I have already taken the first step and I really want to do something about it.
I think it is possible, for the most part. Just because I think it is possible doesn't mean I think we will have it in this lifetime, or even any time soon. But I think a free society, a society built around self-governance as opposed to group-governance, is the result of evolution. So I think we are slowly taking steps there and will at some point get there.
Society comes down to people. If you have bad people you generally have a bad society. If you have good people you generally have a good society. Obviously certain types of societies shape people a bit, but it is usually people shaping society rather than society shaping people.
I think the main reason why people fail creating a free society is because they try to convince everyone. It's stupid. Most people don't want to be free. Most people want government and they want control. And that's fine. Let them have it. Leave them be.
People need to treat it like a business and start a new society that only has people who want it. If Libertarians are so into a society without statists then they should create a society and set the example (what I'm trying to do). You can't blame statists if they are acting in their own rational, self-interest as pointed out in this thread. They are doing what is best for them. Libertarians should do what is best for themselves and stop trying to convince people to change their mind and instead just focus their efforts on creating what it is they desire. There is no reason non-statists can't get together and assemble a free society. You can't convince everyone to follow you and you don't need to.
I think another thing people should at least consider is that you don't need just 1 society that is free that everyone is a part of. We don't have just 1 restaurant serving one type of food. People like variety and people like choice. Why not have 10 free societies in different parts of the world that are all a little different that all have different people with different goals. Each society can act like a business serving up society for the type of people that want to be a part of it. But isn't that what we already have? Somewhat, except we don't have any new businesses popping up. And we have all the same business owners creating new brands but we never change ownership. We need a new group of owners to get in there and create some new brands with better products. The standard in society is so weak right now.
But yeah, I could go on and on about this topic as I am slowly building closer and closer to really turning something into a reality. I'm so sick of hearing people talk about it and never do anything about it. I have already taken the first step and I really want to do something about it.
I may not be the most studied on economics here, but I've read quite a few books now on making a free society work.
Bob Murphy wrote the best one on Private Law and Private Defense that I've read so far. Here it is free from mises:
http://mises.org/books/chaostheory.pdf
Stefbot wrote one of them I read that answers many more of your questions quite nicely. Also free from his library:
http://www.freedomainradio.com/free/books/FDR_5_PDF_Practical_Anarchy_Audiobook.pdf
But keep in mind whenever imagining a free society, one that is stable, you must imagine one where almost all participants in that society follow the NAP. Otherwise it'll devolve back into statism again in one way or another.
The boxes 4-7 of this strip are extremely relevant:
The book that this strip was taken from by the way, dove deeply into displaying such a free society, answering all your questions and more. It's sold on amazon and coindl right now.
WEll, Peoples like the !Kung of the Kalahari used to practice the Horde model. Small bands of people moved around to hunt. They would simply split if major conflicts occured. Unless interplanetary colonization is introduced, this is no option on earth with it's 6 Billion inhabitants.
I still think that anarchy is possible but requires a massive cultural change. There needs to be a OBVIOUS reason for people to see the benefits of a partnership society. It must be powerful enough to overthrow most methods of manipulation which are employed by our boss (the state) and the many department heads (big business, media).
My bet would be on either a second psychedelic revolution or the singularity. Perhaps both. Once machines make 99% of all humans unemployed, there is little incentive to do anything the state says because a lot of it's power lies in its ability to influence the livelihood of most people. The masses to milk and rot and a few handful to keep the elite caste moving.
I still think that anarchy is possible but requires a massive cultural change. There needs to be a OBVIOUS reason for people to see the benefits of a partnership society. It must be powerful enough to overthrow most methods of manipulation which are employed by our boss (the state) and the many department heads (big business, media).
My bet would be on either a second psychedelic revolution or the singularity. Perhaps both. Once machines make 99% of all humans unemployed, there is little incentive to do anything the state says because a lot of it's power lies in its ability to influence the livelihood of most people. The masses to milk and rot and a few handful to keep the elite caste moving.
Oh yeah, Ireland was pretty AnCap for over a thousand years, btw:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su9OqvBbSD0]Ancient Ireland's success with the free market and a stateless society - YouTube[/ame]
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su9OqvBbSD0]Ancient Ireland's success with the free market and a stateless society - YouTube[/ame]
I agree with that bit. There are real benefits to the "state" we have all created.
One example: Oxford University was founded in 1188 - and the brightest and richest people of the time attended - the so-called "great and the good". But ... of the 29 coroners reports we have for the period from 1297 to 1322, 13 murders were committed by scholars at the university (high given that the university was only a small cohort within the town, which was itself small by modern standards). The officials of the university used to organise raids on the townspeople - not just students behaving badly, but dons. Eg the ‘St Scholastic’s Day riot’ of 1355 which turned into a three day armed clash between scholars and townspeople each armed with bows and arrows complete with multiple murders, looting and arson, till the King sent people to stop it, and the 1526 riot when the Proctor of the university organised a riot and looting of the townspeople.
Does any of that happen now? No. Because "the state" won't tolerate it. Elites can no longer attack townspeople - which is why townspeople are so keen to collectively preserve "the state".
Murder rate in medieval England was 100 per 100,000, and in medieval Italy it was 140 per 100,000, and your property was vulnerable to any man who had the ability to pay for a mercenary army (the law records from the period are full of petitions to the king to force xyz baron give back land they pinched by force) - they make modern Columbia with 31.4 murders per 100,000 look good. It's now 1.2 per 100,000 in Britain. We're the same people - a recombination of the same genes. So what's the difference? The existence of "the state" in a form that didn't exist back then.
dreamache was eulogising above thread that "We make decisions without rulers every day (anarchy), we come together with others in a voluntary peaceful manner without threats and coercion all the time." - but the space to behave like that exists purely because of the presence of the state. Remove the state and people would be spending most of their time with weapons raiding each other or defending themselves from raids, just like in medieval Oxford. Brains have nothing to do with it - the brightest and the best would be at it along with everyone else.
I said 10 guys understand economics, the remainder aren't loudmouths like you about stuff they either don't understand.
Because it was wrong. Because you quoted something that wasn't relevant, and anyone who has read any Rothbard at length on money would have been able to give the relevant quote.
For all I know, you did a quick Google because as usual, you have no clue of what you're talking about.
Even if I was completely crazy, that doesn't make any of your posts or idea valid, logical or correct.
I actually tried not to be insulting except for the poopypants bit. The rest I thought was very accurate. You're not even a second rate thinker and we've got hundreds and hundreds of posts to back that up as evidence.
I like you. I think you mean well. I really do. You're a thoughtful guy who actually cares.
The problem you are trying to tackle is big. And along the way, you have to be careful to allow other people's values under anarchy to assert themselves or it's just your version of right and wrong, and that's only marginally different than some statist's version of right and wrong.
You don't need a bunch of people who respect non-aggression. All you need is to be able to enforce consequences for aggression. In a technological world, manpower isn't greater than all. In fact, that's a trend anyway. One man one vote becomes irrelevant if people aren't actually very useful or necessary except in some sentimental "tribe of mankind" sense.
Anyway, I wish you luck in whatever you try to do.
. How would that be done? Would it require the use of aggression? Who decides what those consequences are? Would that not just take us back to square one?
First, "we" haven't created a state. You and I had nothing to do with it.
Second, it's a delusion.
Third, you can't claim benefits when it's done with coercion. Because coercion is involved, there is a lack of free choice. Value is based on a comparison between alternatives. Without alternatives, there is no choice, there can be no determination of "value".
You may benefit from the state, but it will probably be at the expense of someone else. Reallocating resources is a zero sum game. It doesn't "create" wealth.
The state is a delusion. It doesn't "act" it doesn't have "feelings" or "morals". And it is definitely promoted by the elites who figured out it is better to farm people than kill them.
That was a state. Rulers = state.
This is because of the presence of law and security, both of which are market goods, and have been monopolized by the state to serve the elites.
It works so well, you actually claim ownership in a "state" you have absolutely no control, responsibility or power over. That's the power of mass delusion.
That would require you to stop making bad threads and spend some time reading up on market defense and security entrepreneurship.