We have governments that are fighting for a given territory, too; we also have violent gangs and mobs which use force within a government territory.
Edit: My whole point is that we really need an attitude change more than anything; as long as there are enough individuals who think they have the right to steal money to fund art museums, we are going to have people stealing money to fund art museums.
There is a difference between believing something and acting it out. That difference is the cost. Under democratic law-making the cost of imposing one’s will on a minority is externalized, therefore promoting the belief. If this externality does not exist, certainly one may feel they deserve free art museums, but one does not have the means to execute it without fighting, which then makes it not free at all.
Whatever one may think his rights are, his real rights are what others will defend him for. That is what the law defines, and that is why the law is our objective.
True, but if enough people believe stealing money to fund art museums is ok, they will create organizations (government) that will allow them to do so, or at least oppose dismantling said organizations.
That’s certainly a truism. What it comes down to is how much cost they have to bear to succeed.
And when things get really messy, as William Lind points out, nobody’s going to fight and die for the UN or the EU or the USA.
Having said that, it would surely take a broad economic collapse and breakdown of the State’s inorganic social order for people to turn to competing entities for so-called “public” services. I really don’t see how such a state of affairs could come about by activism.
They don’t have to do that. Only we have to do that.
It can’t, and activism directed to that end is wasteful, dangerous, and counterproductive. The best purpose activism can be put to now is to chip away at the margins, take what freedom you can defend for yourself now, and establish a foundation that is already in place when TSHTF and the masses begin to look at alternatives. This is important both because at that point it will be too late to start from scratch, and because it will allow those with foresight, courage, and the willingness to act to profit from the rest.
I agree. Activism attempts to influence leaders in a clumsy, indirect and ineffective manner. It makes much more sense to simply capture the leadership positions and directly carry out your objectives (e.g. establishing a commodity currency, pardoning non-violent “criminals”, non-aggressive foreign policy, etc.). That’s an approach that’s elegant, direct and effective.
Influencing the ruling class is essential, although it is the kind of influence that compels them to do something they might not want to do. When Martin Luther King was agitating for civil rights, he was in it to pressure the political class to give him what he demanded, and he did it by making trouble.
I don’t think that influencing the ruling class in a way that furthers making them irrelevant or stripping them of their power is possible. MLK didn’t try to do that, he merely sought to redirect their power towards his goals, which is perfectly compatible with their aim of preserving and expanding that power. He just had to nudge the rulers into understanding that.
That’s exactly what took place in 1989 and 1848.
What happened in 1989 ? Are you talking about Russia ?
The key word in there is “revolutions”. No, the government wasn’t violently overthrown, but enough people made it clear enough that they were going to act with or without government acquiesence that there was little choice. Plus, the Soviet governments had essentially run out of the resources required to hold a country together.
And, importantly, the Soviets were in a way far less competent at what they did than other governments. Innovation is in the American DNA, and now that American ingenuity is being more and more turned toward keeping people under government’s thumb, we may find that the rules are changing at a fundamental level.
What is 1948 in reference to?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848
And I don’t believe you can claim that the creators of the dreaded KGB were incompetent at wielding power.
I said incompetent in a certain sense. Specifically, I meant that they were not competent enough to wield that kind of power and still allow a productive economy that they could siphon resources from indefinitely. The only way they knew to wield power also caused their country to be a net consumer instead of a net producer. It took 70 years to drain even the modest wealth and resources Russia had accumulated prior to the Bolsheviks, plus the wealth and resources of the countries they consumed - it was only their expansionism, that allowed them to go on as long as they did - but drain it they did.
Besides, where are they now? Some of them learned to be somewhat more competent, and still effectively rule Russia. Others didn’t, and are no more.