The great depression of the late 19th century or of the early 20th?
Also, I really couldn’t care less about British history. You know the results. Did the state die off? Did your precious Peel repeal the government? No, so it was a failure, like all reformist, roundabout endeavours.
You and your kind are the monetarists of social progress!
Then you agree, the compromise of politics is an inherently evil thing.
That hasn’t stopped you in the past.
There’s a far better chance that this conversation will change the world more than Saint R. Paul will.
I call myself both an anarcho-capitalist and a market anarchist, mainly because by capitalism I mean no more than an economy based on the exchange of private property and a degree of division of capital and labour. Regarding agorism, I haven’t read Konkin’s text yet, but I will given the time.
The policy analysist, John Lott (author of Freedomnomics, etc), identified the cause of the sudden growth in government in the 20th Century in the US (and elsewhere) by, amoungst other things, doing an analysis of the progress of government in all 50 states of the union (in order to eliminate extraneous factors). The result of the analysis is irrrefutable. The cause of the massive growth of government was: Giving women the vote.
Young women vote well to the left of men. When they marry they become more conservative and make up about half the distance to men. When they have children they move about half that distance again. But if they divorce they become more leftist than they were when young. Men’s voting pattern pretty much stays constant through their lives. (That’s me!).
Are you still working with a pre-Rothbardian political spectrum where “far right” = less government and anarchism and the further left you go the more state control you favor? Are contemporary “conservatives” really in favor of less government then the left? In many cases, I beg to differ. I’m anti-government primarily. Anti-leftism is only one possible facet of that.
No, I’m using the meaning used throughout the US (and much of the west) in general discourse. “Leftist”: wanting more government control, and “Conservative”: wanting more responsibility retained by the individual. (One case where I do not bow to the pattern of common (in the US) useage is that I refuse to use the word “liberal” to describe Democrats etc.)
However, if I am using a word in some local tribal sense I’ll let you know.
I do plan to vote for Paul, because voting is easy and he’s certainly the lesser of the available evils. I do also hope to contribute more, yes, in form of a business venture I am currenty writing code for.
I understand what you are saying, and I cannot criticize your position. But I hate the meme of the state, the legitimization of violence, not most of the individuals involved in it. I do think cooperation is possible. Most probably don’t really understand things as simplistic as comparative advantage. If they can be shown that cooperation more beneficial than domination, they will likely cooperate. Would it be nice if people hated the state on purely ethical grounds? Sure. But I don’t think ethics are why most people tend to have libertarian ethics in their voluntary associations; I think its because of the enormous and obvious benefits of cooperation.
Yes, a lot of “privatization” has been corporatism, but markets are being more widely allowed in many parts of the world (I view the shift from communism to corporatism in other parts as basically being coercion-neutral). If you hope to get rid of the state, first you need to have institutions which will replace the many critical functions it provides, right? I’d see the following sorts of business aiding in that greatly: Prediction markets, peer-to-peer lending markets (which are on the rise!), private currencies, truly competitive schools, private roads, and others.
I don’t see how political action which results in the legalization of the market provision of critical servies is at all a waste of time. Sure you can skirt around legality in a lot of cases, but other times it is much, much harder to do, and certain laws may render parts of the counter-economy nigh-impossible to implement. As long as the state has a monopoly on many critical services, I think peole will always point to it and say “See, we need the government to supply X”. I guess what I’m saying is that I cannot see a counter-economy developing without some political reform as well.
So the sins of the State are so egregious that you’re willing to risk your own life and the lives of others to rectifiy it? Also, you believe this ‘movement’ has enough power to seriously challenge the United States?
Revolution might be warranted in years to come, but at this particular time I don’t see the CLEAR moral grounds to do so and I especially don’t see the logistical plausability
I think it’s very interesting trying to formulate the point at which revolution is called for, considering the nearly imponderable costs and benefits, and especially as it relates to the valuation of ethics and morality. I think the only way to recruit the necessary masses is by venturing outside your comfort zone and meeting your target audience where they are. I like the idea of an inspired, alternative media campaign that uses as it’s mouthpiece a disarmingly charming caricature that iconically encapsulates your ideals. It must be simple, dogmatic and to the point. Get enough talent in one place and things can happen.
The first you, I personally believe, are just wasting valuable time in.
The second, I am glad to hear that. Please, keep us updated on your ventures.
Don’t you see this is the same old argument of, “Well we need more people,” though?
We may need more people to be more successful, but how do we get more people? We appear strong. It’s the psychology of human beings looking for a father figure to turn to. Now, they look towards the state. Let’s make them look to us.
The belief that there can be cooperation, to me, is a very naive one - when you watch men drag your father off to prison maybe you’ll understand that.
No. You still don’t get it. Any “privatization” is corrupt, because it implies a government doing it. You acknowledge the state as an institution of evil, you understand that it is an organization working within the constructs of its own evil interests, yet you still hold on to this belief that it can act altruistically.
I can only guess from a Freudian perspective why that is.
A market is nto a market unless it is a free market. Illusions being more pervasive does not mean that substance continues to thrive. Communism and Fascism are no different in their results or motives, merely in the flare they choose to emit.
Because it is a malinvestment of the precious capital. It’s an issue of allocative inefficiency; moreover, the simple fact that it doesn’t exist in the light of virtue and ethics that you think it does.
Then it is because you reject your perceptions, you reject the knowledge you possess, the principles you tell yourself you uphold, but only fall short of acting on.
Also, it’s not just a question of whether revolutionary means can succeed, but can they actually make success harder to achieve? Premature revolution can actually strengthen the opposition. What if the net effect of these revolutionary tactics is to postpone liberation? How culpable are the incompetent tacticians?
The same could be asked of reformist tactics and tacticians. The more they try to slow the growth of statism, with a little reform here or there as the state continues to grow ever larger and more oppressive on the whole, the more they try to keep the irrational faith in politics alive, this insane belief that liberty can be got so easily as by the casting of a ballot every so often, the more difficult the abolition of the state becomes. There is an important ethical difference between failed reformists and failed revolutionaries, however. Failed reformists use the state, an inherently criminally violent institution, as their means. Failed revolutionaries fight against that criminal enterprise. The former, by making use of criminal means to achieve their ends (which often fall short of the abolition of the state anyway), make themselves criminals by doing so. The latter, by making use of only just means to achieve their ends, do not. Reformists, were they to succeed, might be able to claim that the ends justify the means, and given that they’re generally psuedolibertarians, inconsistent in their ethics, they might get away with it, but as failures they can’t even fall back on that hollow excuse. Revolutionaries, whether met with success or failure, have no need of such excuses.
"(I)f it were in my power to pull down its whole structure overnight and set up another of my own devising — to abolish the State out of hand, and replace it by an organization of the economic means — I would not do it, for the minds of Americans are far from fitted to any such great change as this, and the effect would be only to lay open the way for the worse enormities of usurpation — possibly, who knows! with myself as the usurper! After the French Revolution, Napoleon!
Great and salutary social transformations, such as in the end do not cost more than they come to, are not effected by political shifts, by movements, by programs and platforms, least of all by violent revolutions, but by sound and disinterested thinking."
To put it in my own words: As long as the prevailing attitude of the majority is that government is desirable and beneficial, or at least necessary, no revolution or reform can succeed in abolishing The State as an institution, only demolishing one incarnation of it to clear the way for another.
Where do you get the idea that revolution can not be incremental? Where do you get the idea that “demolishing” one head of the hydra will not merely mean seven others will grow in its place?
I think it’s rather foolish to assume you have the power to take on one head of the beast while seven hundred other heads continually snap at you as you do it. Quit trying to take leviathan down with one quick swoop of the knife, it won’t work and your get liberty quick schemes are only further shattering the factions of the Libertarian movement farther and farther apart. If you want real, substantial change, then you need to be in this for the long hall - not just until December 2008.
My experience with the whole violence thing is that it’s all or nothing. Once the bullets (or bombs) start flying then there is no half measures or incremental escalations – you either win or lose everything.
If you aren’t prepared for this you should rethink your total (incremental) overthrow of the State.
Granted, I haven’t viewed the video due to the slowness of my internet connection, but in reading the posts in this thread, it seems that you advocate violent revolution to overthrow the State. Is that impression correct? If not, feel free to correct my error.
If so, I would submit that that strategy itself is merely attacking heads of the beast. The body of the beast, the reason the State is able to exist and perpetuate itself, is the prevailing belief among the population that it is necessary for the survival of peaceful, just, and orderly society. False though it is, that belief is not going to be shaken by physically attacking the structures or people of the governing power. If anything, violent mayhem is going to strengthen the convictions of the masses that they need the State to protect them from violent elements. Since they do not view the State as an aggressor, those who attack it, no matter how justified, will bear that guilt in the eyes of the majority. Violence does not change minds, and changing minds is precisely what is necessary for a libertarian society to become established and to endure. It may seem a hopeless proposition, and frustration and outrage may make violence seem an attractive alternative, but I can’t envision a scenario in which violent revolution of a small minority can bring about a lasting stateless society.
After hanging around his message board for a while and listening to many his podcasts, I can tell you that this is precisely Molyneux’s view. It’s very similiar to La Boetie. Molyneux’s position is basically that the state is a consequence of the ideological enabling of abuse within the family and personal relationships. Therefore, in order to eventually bring down the state, we have to work on our personal lives and reject unchosen positive obligations. People have to stop believing in the state, and as a pretext they have to stop attacking eachother and enabling behavior in their personal lives that leads to and allows the state to exist on a macro scale. So, in his view, the best way to get freedom now has nothing to do with the state really at all. It’s a matter of creating our own little stateless society in our personal lives. And convincing slaves (all of us) to stop enabling and rationalizing their own slavery.
Note: sorry, I got the threads mixed up, thinking that this was the thread where Niccolo linked to a Stefan Molyneux video.