I would very much like to see an anarchist society in my lifetime, but what are the prospects of freedom in our time? How long do you predict it will be till there is an anarchist society? I think that will be an easier feat than a minarchist society. Agree? Also, what do you think the prospects of secession are?
Good, actually. I think we’ll see, within our lifetimes, a region of the world where free market anarchism is allowed to exist to a rather uninhibited degree.
Call it a hunch.
What size of region do you have in mind? What locations do you think would be most likely?
Libertarian memes are circulating through the general public much more so than they used to; there’s one reason for optimism.
Imo, I see it playing out like this: world government. Dissolution of all states into one - tyranny reigns supreme.
With the collapse of this system, which I hope is inevitable…
Out of the ashes, nothing will rise to replace it.
No more states. And thus Freedom…
Will all people groups join in a world federation? What about Montana and Alaska?
If we get to one world government, it’s game over.
Yes & No, in the same way that the future cannot ansolutley be predicted.
If we’re lucky as hell, it wouldn’t be game over, but I don’t think uncertainty is enough of a rationale to think of one world government as a “necessary” evolutionary step towards no-government, or no state. If that were the case, we might as well invalidate the intellectual & ideological struggle on the basis of “not really knowing”.
A lot more people should be complete pessimists, though, I agree. I can see why many would find comfort in thinking that the state as an institution will eventually crumble on itself & it’s flaws finally become visible to even the most ardent believers.
I see it this way.
One world government => genocide => complete reset on knowledge and history
I don’t think we will find much libertarian philosophy in a society that has no conception of history or alternative theories of knowledge.
You don’t think we’re already here?
I think we’ve been at a de facto world government stage for a while, but we just haven’t been able to admit it to ourselves. Granted, I think the current world government we have is very decentralized, at present, but I wouldn’t say that it’s nonexistant. We’ve already got the UN legislating domestic policies, we’ve got the UN+NATO sending their own military troops into various regions of the world to suppress conflict, we’ve already got an international court system, and the central bankers of the world are all obviously working together.
I think the difference between the world government we have today and the clearly-defined Orwellian state many of us imagine is just a matter of degree, not essence.
Who knows? If I had to guess, I’d say that Hoppe’s “free cities” theory is most likely. A given state would put up much less of a fight if a region the size of a city or so were to secede. Then, of course, once other entrepreneurs see the profit opportunity in such a move, more free cities will likely pop up until perhaps whole geographic swaths break off from their respective states. If I were a betting man, I’d say the first free cities would pop up in Africa and Eastern Asia, since that’s where states seem to be losing their grip on their power and might be more willing to let a little bit of land go in exchange for some big juicy bribes.
Of course, this is all conjecture. I have no idea. Just a hunch.
Freiheit, I actually see this too. I also think the quality of life in places is something a lot of people, including myself, have not woke up to as of yet. I think the damage has been done and more to come, but the damage that has been done is already here. It’s just that people are waking up from a fantasy of lies that played with our perspective. For instance, money is coming into the household, but when I point out that day care is on the rise and both parents are working more (has been growing this way for decades) I encounter people that say this is reality. It is a matter of perspective on what reality we as people ought to be living. History shows different variations of how societies, including the family, live. I find it difficult to swallow that families are to live their lives separated increasingly. I think the economy has been hard hit for decades and the market opens up to cope with these changes (day care). Grandparents used to fill this role or a parent staying at home. I think crime is huge indicator too. It has increased and the number of prisons are becoming not enough to keep up with this so called government need. Cities especially are in increasingly dire straits. The country is not shielded either. Society has fallen apart in ways the information flows in daily on what is actually happening around us. TV is one of the biggest la-la land distraction. People feel something is going on in their gut and can’t quite put their finger on it and the TV is the biggest deceptive tool that hides what’s really happening. That’s what economic bubbles do. They sweep the facts under the rug and the festering sores of society are kept hidden as long as society is able to hide it. I think hindsight is actually what provides us with answers to what has happened and then we are trying to keep up with these events that have already been set into motion.
Here’s the recent show of world government that has been kept hidden from people, and this is just the last 6 months or so worth.
September '08 bubble burst with Paulson yelling, “Next Great Depression,” then we see:
A) World Political Leaders gather at G20 economic summits.
B) World Central Bankers had numerous meetings together during this time as well.
C) Treasury Secetaries, Economic MInisters from each country had meetings around this time too with each other (different names for these from various countries)
D) World Central Banks coordinated same day interest rate drops
E) SDR’s
F) the WHO and other countries work in coordination on Swine Flu (as small as this event was notice the global governance response was highly organized and in sequence).
G) the Pirates off Somalia saw numerous countries involved in coordinated efforts though I think France and U.S. played major roles but Italy, England, and India contributed.
H) Global response to North Korea over satellite/missle
I) Governments coordinate talks on Global Warming
J) Europe and U.S. (maybe other countries not sure yet) coordinated in same week (this past week) on going after companies (Intel, Google, others?) for supposed monopolies
K) Israel and Iran get commentated on by government leaders during same day at times depends on the news coming out of that region
The coordination on the Swine Flu and the Economic situation was very pin-pointed. The Swine Flu was an odd coordination that seemed to run like a well-oiled machine. Not much was going on with that Flu and yet the global leaders all came out in such a fashion. They are not getting their information and their reactions are not coming from the ground level at all. The Swine Flu reaction showed this tremendously. Not much on the ground level at all. Very, very small occurrences of this flu and yet the global leaders had to have been reading from a playbook for the facts on the ground showed no lock step in their march would have been necessary at all. The avian flu in China not too many years ago also had a lock step march by global leaders but this Swine flu performance was highly precise by the global government leaders coming out and speaking about it. It’s as if they all got a phone call at the same time and went out speaking immediately after. Avian flu was coordinated, but the Swine flu was on point without hardly a lag in efforts anywhere around the world to be seen.
Yeah, I agree. The world government is already here, as you say, but the degree, also as you say, will intensify monthly and weekly at times. And on certain days we might even notice there are hardly any separate States anymore like in those real-time showings I mentioned.
But what you robbed me of is my oh poor me, my liberty.
I think this song lyric (by the poet, Pete Doherty) sums up the attitude of most free marketeers and why we’ll never rid ourselves of the state.
I think you haven’t met many free marketeers then.
People who believe in liberty tend to be very optomistic, and with good reason: the state is inefficient, slow to react, stupid, and incapable of initiating creative processes. The market is efficient, adaptive, and consists of nothing less than the problem-solving capacity of the entire human race. Liberty is not a possibility, it is an eventuality. The question is only how long it will take, and whether the statists will come to their senses and join us, or insist on resisting us, and lose anyway.
I believe the only way a society that upholds the NAP principle will ever truly come into existence is if the rulers have something to be afraid of. That is only going to happen when a PDA is strong enough to defend its members against state coercion. This is a long way away if you look at it with modern warfare tactics. Fortunately for freedom, authority is not concentrated with one person, entity, or group. Unfortunately for the state, it is. Having someone who rules another without his consent be incredibly fearful of that ruling will definitely have an immense positive effect on the possibilities of achieving world freedom. Not gonna say HOW you can manage that, but it is possible.
My approach to Freedom for myself is much more similar to a floating university barge. Every person who wants to live on the barge would contractually and voluntarily agree to obey a certain set of rules/laws. It’s as simple as, you don’t agree to the laws, you don’t come aboard. I even have a whole plan on how education would occur (through debates, rather than lectures). I believe true knowledge can only be attained through thinking, and thinking is very difficult to achieve through memorization, which is what happens with modern teaching. The people that would want to stay and continue to live on the barge after ‘graduating’ would be the debate leaders/moderators/initiators, while those who chose to return to society would be trained with the knowledge to pass on their principles and ideas.
This would be an immediate step for freedom for all who want to avoid the involuntary state. It would also be a great step towards liberating the entire world. The amount of brain power and debates occuring would undoubtedly lead to some awe inspiring ideas to defeat the aggression of the involuntary state.
An interesting twist would be that the barge could adopt street kids/orphans from around the world and teach them to be the greatest libertarian thinkers on Earth. A child that is raised with the massive amount of knowledge surrounding him, and after coming from homelessness, would have a massive amount of respect for the ability to raise standards of living. The children would also put the barge in the eyes of every single person on Earth. People would hear about it and the word would spread rapidly, and the ideas of NAP along with it. This alone would be a cramp in the involuntary state, but it would also be a GREAT deterent from any nation attacking you, as well as a great way to raise donations.
Funding such a venture would require a lot of immediate capital, but, done correctly, the barge could produce all sorts of goods, research, technology, etc.
I know it sounds like a bit of a dream (which it is), but I believe it is one of the only feasible ways to avoid the state NOW, as the ocean is still not state owned.
There’s a clause in the Constitution which allows for treaties to become the supreme law of the land.
Essentially, there will be people who won’t want to. A growing number in my opinion due to the Liberty movement. But I believe it was said:
“… when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.” H. G. Wells, in his book entitled The New World Order (1939)
/sigh. This is essentially what I think. Although I don’t really want to, the future isn’t set in stone. And the Soviet Union collapsed. Books like This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, Equilibrium (movie), 1984, Brave New World, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Atlas Shrugged.. come to mind though.. and if it ever gets like that, it essentially will have to take a go within the system type of struggle - but that never works. Only in fiction. Rothbard’s strategy that has been outlined, is the way of the middle class, go outside the ivory towers, show the people they are being robbed etc. This is going to be immeasurably harder, if the source of income is on a rfid chip. In a cashless society. (NBC program piece). And if you dissent, you get your chip turned off.
But Nazism was defeated by an outside source, which makes me think. If there is no outside source, if they are cracking down on dissenters and there is no place to go.. it doesn’t bode too well.
I’m optimistic though. As I don’t think you can ever really dampen the human spirit of freedom in some people. I don’t think you can ever keep the remnant down.
You do not know, and will never know, more than two things about them. You can be sure of those – dead sure, as our phrase is – but you will never be able to make even a respectable guess at anything else. You do not know, and will never know, who the Remnant are, nor what they are doing or will do. Two things you do know, and no more: First, that they exist; second, that they will find you.
Yeah. The problem with the USSR collapsing, was that it was in a world that had room for it to collapse. The idea of a nation state was normal.
Books are great, but they are fiction. I like Rothbard on ideas, not so much on action.
One world government essentially means socialism. However, socialism can’t calculate. Unfortunately, that means that millions, if not billions, will starve to death. Fortunately, it means that the state will also die as it has died everywhere else and whenever else. And I don’t mean to get mystical here, but the next US presidential election will be on 2012, when the world issuppose to end. Although, 2012 is also when God is suppose to save all believers, although I would suspect that means that the vast majority of us are sc-to-the-rewed.
I’m so tempted to go all Alex Jones in this thread.
The elites are not oblivious to austrian econ, libertarianism, capitalism. This has been a well orchestrated and deliberate march to one world government. This isn’t going to end with calculation problems from not being able to feed everyone. Our masters are not foolish clowns.
Yeah I feel ya.
I often can’t help but think the whole move from Monarchy to Democracy was that they realised they would have to do so, it was the only way to increase the size of the State, to grow their power. The bankers are behind the scenes, they don’t care who governs the countries laws - only that they control the countries money supply - which is everything.
And soon they will have the Keyesian dream of a one world bank, with a one world currency, fiat - where they can print and re-distribute wealth to where ever they want. [:@]
What don’t you agree with Rothbard on in terms of action?