What worries me is that minority are the true rulers, rather than the majority. They have access to power through wealth and they game the system. We don’t have any checks on them because they are private citizens.
I thought about that while I was writing the "majority rules" part. It is so much more complicated than that simplistic formulation, and yes, it all ends up empowering a new oligarchy.
I had to do it this way for this brief vignette, but in point of fact, you are absolutely right.
I agree with Rousseau that we have a social contract. I think we trade certain freedoms, like not harming each other, for security. However, some people enter into an alternate and competing social contract. They trade being able to hurt others to gain security (wealth, power, prestige).
The people in the first contract have ways to weeds out the criminals who do cause physical harm, but it doesn’t weed out the sociopaths who lead large corporations or governments. We have no mechanisms for the second type of danger outside voting.
What’s worse is that for many people, they refuse to use the mechanism of voting. They are indifferent or find this decadent system so pleasant, they are unaware of the danger. Then there are people who use voting to rob their neighbors of security. They buy into the second social contract promised by the sociopaths.
Which leaves a smaller and smaller field of people willing to use voting to place checks on the sociopaths. The non-voters and the thief-voters grow to an unmanageable size and the people relying on the first type of social contract are now unable to stave off a coming apocalyptic tyranny. The other two voters will never discover that their votes no longer matter. In fact, they may be glad to never vote again--as long as they feel fat and well fed. The restricting voters will face the true consequences of the tyranny. They represent an existential threat to the tyrants who are also busy eating each other for dominance.
Voting isn’t powerless. Abstention is a type of power that many people use currently. Voting to steal is another power. Voting to restrict tyranny is the least used power in a wealthily Republic. It is not that the Republic is a terrible concept. It is that the people in a Republic become fat, bloated, and putrefied.
I suspect that you and I both agree on a great deal. Philosophically conservative, anti-leftist, etc. We come from the same "side," if you will.
That being said, I have come, over years of reflection and research, to disagree with much of what you just said.
First, if I were to pick a vision of the social contract, it would be that of Locke and the natural lawyers, not Rousseau. But even their social contract is fundamentally problematic: it is not actually consensual.
I am no longer taken in by their workaround that one's consent is "implicit" and "tacit." In every other area of human life, consent must be explicit, transparent, and ongoing. Only in the social contract, and in one's acquiescence to forced governance, are we supposed to accept something to which we did not actually consent. I understand that they were products of their time and I do not fault them. But we've had another couple of centuries to think this through, and the "tacit" social contract is a philosophical copout. We can do better.
Voting does not solve this problem, either. You can vote and still be subjected, by force, to things to which you did not consent.
It IS possible to have order, and even social contracts, without violating the moral requirement of consent. It has been done (albeit not much on a large scale). And there is a huge literature on how it can be done.
I understand, based on what you said, roughly where you are on the spectrum of the right. I spent the bulk of my adult life there. And so I know that what I am saying might sound nutty, and maybe even potentially angering. I had those responses myself for the longest time. But after more than 15 years toiling away in the philosophy mines, I saw some things I cannot unsee, and I am permanently changed.
I hope you will stick around and give me the chance to show you some of those things!
" In every other area of human life, consent must be explicit, transparent, and ongoing." You have to viably be free to decline in order for it be be true consent, too! <3
Not angered at all. I am pragmatic in my approach. Show me a solution that could work better than voting and I will hear you out. I see your points. I don’t see how to go from voting in a true Republic to giving them consent, permission, to govern me. We may have inherited the system, but it doesn’t mean we can’t choose our participation. One could always leave it behind and live on a homestead with little interference. The more we interact, the more we give consent to be governed. It is a paradox that can only be explained because of the tyrannical nature in the heart of every person. We want to govern others while at the same time we want to be governed. We are the problem with the system. We can also be the solution. If we stand for transcendent morality and teach others to do the same. My solution is to teach people to subjugate their hearts to the highest authority so they no longer want to bring tyranny to themselves or their neighbors. Only a truly Christian nation can operate as free as humanly possible this side of Heaven. Only the fear of God can teach us respect for God’s creation: our neighbors. Only a love of God can teach us not to seek our neighbors as our rulers.
That is a terrific statement. "We are the problem with the system. We can also be the solution." Well said.
If you would be interested in really diving in (and hopefully becoming a convert 🤣), I can share with you a reading list. In fact, I can just copy and paste what I said to someone last night, and you can see if you are interested in taking a few more steps down that road.
(It was written in response to another comment, but it gets the basic point across):
Your concern is not unreasonable, but please trust me when I tell you that there are answers. It takes some reading and research into the field to get it, but once you see it, you are changed forever. The only reason it is so obscure is that nothing poses a greater threat to those who would enslave and exploit us than anarcho-libertarian ideas.
In the absence of involuntary governance, you would still have many of the same mechanisms. Law, protective force, punishment of bad actors, etc. would all still exist. It's just that instead of a single involuntary monopoly on the use of "legitimate" force in a given territory, you would have a variety of choices.
In such a condition, two main options would unfold:
Market anarchism: individuals remaining on their own property and choosing from among competing private providers of security, justice, law codes, infrastructure, etc. and
Anarcho-phylarchy: private-law enclaves, each employing its own system (some of which may even be illiberal in nature, but participation in which is fully consensual and exit is always allowed).
I know that hearing this is like being tossed into a pond of freezing water. But like I say, if you put in the time to understand it, it will click eventually, and then you'll wonder why you never saw it before.
He is a bit intense for a first go, but if you're ready for the plunge, do it. Hoppe splits the difference—describing how both market anarchism and phylarchic possibilities would work. His depiction of "private-law jurisdictions" creates a very plausible picture.
Nozick's classic "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" and its discussion of the "Framework" is one of the early forays into the anarcho-phylarchic (or really, in Nozick's case, minarchist-phylarchic) end of things. But ASU is really hard to read. (I dislike confusing prose—so unnecessary.)
Also, believe it or not, two works of fiction by Neal Stephenson are really helpful (and enjoyable) ways of getting a picture in your head: "Snow Crash" and then "The Diamond Age." I think I like the latter more, but they go together and I think that is the best order.
I will look at your resources over the next few days. I think the first sounds like laissez faire capitalism which I have always supported. The second sounds like the true intention of states rights. I think power should be localized and our regulated and centralized power is corrupt and evil. Again, a viewpoint I have held for a long time. I think Foucault was right that we give our power away to dictators. (Wrong on almost everything else though). Hate quoting men who abuse children--but a broken clock...
I don’t think we are that far apart. I just don’t see a solution that isn’t impossible to implement without a Revolution. And the revolutionaries rarely make us free. The only reason the American Revolution worked was because we had God-fearing leaders. I don’t see many of those types of leaders anymore who will set down power once taken up.
The first time I fired a handgun, it was my friend's .45. "Shouldn't I start with something smaller?" I asked. But he told me to just go the biggest first.
Hoppe is the .45 of those choices. They are all good, but starting with Hoppe is really just going for it. At first, you'll wonder why he's going on about time preferences, but then it all starts to make sense.
Agreed re: Foucault. Yuck. But broken clocks…
You are right about revolutions. They are a problem.
And yes, our Revolution did work…kind of. They were operating with the right philosophical principles. The system they gave us does not properly actuate those principles, however. It is better than most, but its demise was baked into its cake from the start. (Read Hoppe and you'll see what I mean.) The Articles of Confederation would have been closer to the mark in terms of actuating those principles. Unfortunately, the Constitution got rammed through in an ugly and shady process. And ten years later, we got the Sedition Acts.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions have animated much important work in the study of American politics.
My son and I use EFT (tapping) and one of the things that ways heavily on him is power in the hands of the few. I am not at all a righty - I believe we in an abundance/symbiotic sovereignty model rather than a "my rights, fuck you" kind of approach - we need to be in awareness of the needs of the whole and have it organically arise from Source consciousness and Gaia consciousness - from above and below, resonating a freedom that also wants to bless all life.
I do not believe that most people on the right are taking a "my rights, fuck you" kind of approach. That has long struck me as something of a strawman (albeit a common one). Rather, I think their (our) approach is "my rights, AND IF YOU INTEND TO VIOLATE THEM, fuck you."
Classical liberalism does not say, "I want to be a lonely, bitter, atomized individual interacting with no one, helping no one, and living in a remote cabin."
Rather, it is speaking to the first rule of human interaction: that each person is a sovereign, rights-holding being whose consent must not be violated and who must not be subjected to the initiation of coercive force.
The reason that people who hold this view also become curmudgeonly is because collectivists, statists, and narcissistic virtue-signalers won't leave us alone:
"We HAVE TO violate your sovereignty and force you to do things…"
"Because no man is an island."
"Because we have to find ways to live together."
"Because…don't you care about people?"
Classical liberals end up backing away into a corner and becoming misanthropic because of this endless assault. Because it's never voluntary. Because their sovereignty is endlessly violated by the tribe.
There has to be a better way.
And one of the first steps in that direction is to put to bed these misperceptions about the right. The right is filled with people who love togetherness and want to help. We're just sick of the nonconsensual and sovereignty-violating way it's done in our "society."
"What worries me is that minority are the true rulers, rather than the majority."
Democracy is a system where the minority or rulers act on behalf of those who voted for them, as their 'elected representatives'. So whatever activities they get up to (extortion, theft, wars, bailouts, forced injection programs etc) the blame - and accountability - should rest on the shoulders of those who voted for them AKA the 'voters'.
Of course if this was the case nobody would dare to 'vote' for any politician or party, because they'd understand the high probability of being faced with criminal charges within a year or two, and losing their homes and livelihoods to pay for all the damage caused by their 'elected representatives'.
At the very least they'd look for some kind of liability insurance before voting. But no insurance company would offer it because they'd also know the inevitable huge payouts would bankrupt them.
This thought experiment proves, not only that democracy is a destructive and criminal system, but that everybody knows it. The only reason people 'vote' is because they know they will never be held personally liable for the damage caused by their elected representatives - the people acting on their behalf.
Anarchy is (let's say) a form of democracy where everybody gets to vote AND they are held personally accountable for the consequences of that vote at all times. Instead of 'politicians' and 'political parties' you simply pay for service providers to perform the tasks you want performed. This is really no different to 'government' except those service providers are bound by the law, just as you are. If you pay them to commit theft, extortion, start a war etc that will be clear in the contract you drew up and agreed on. This would make you both liable for such crimes.
This is why war, extortion theft etc are never part of the contracts we negotiate and agree to with existing service providers. We all understand not to do those things - if only to avoid being held accountable for such behaviour.
Going back to democracy, we can see that the relationship between 'voter' and 'elected representative' involves no contract at all. The only thing which is involved is vague 'pledges' by politicians while campaigning.
A few years ago a British politician running for office created a 'contract' which he displayed on a giant white board, probably in giant comic sans font, where he listed all the things he was going to do if elected. This marketing device was obviously not a real contract (legally binding), it was just a gimmick. But it exposed just how ridiculous democracy is.
We'd never accept any other service provider using a 'make believe' contract instead of a real legally binding one. Yet somehow we think that's how things should be done when it comes to the group of service providers called 'government'.
Anarchy just means government (and their voters) are held to the same legal framework and laws as everyone else. Anarchy is just consistency of moral rules - encoded into laws - throughout society. Consistency of laws = no one is exempt from the law = no rulers allowed = an (without) archy (rulers).
This is brilliant. I had thought about the moral ramifications of voting, and one's moral liability, but you go to the next level and make the liability much more real. And then framing it against market anarchism where everybody is actually liable…good stuff!
I think you'd really like it here at the Freedom Scale, and I know I would benefit if you stick around!
“People consent when they buy shoes. People consent when they choose a home and a career. People consent to their relationships and their loves. Consent is the rule in everything EXCEPT government.”
I’d disagree with this - consent isn’t given with career. You can just about live as a single person or without any shoes but people are forced to do an increasingly narrow range of jobs. And it seems the demands of the employer are much more onerous than the demands of the government, and office environment being not far away from 1984.
I'm thinking that's pretty limited thinking. One may have innate talents and gifts that need to be nurtured, which might enable one to create an income far beyond what one might earn as an employee, or at least provide a greater degree of freedom.
The demands of the employer are accepted by choice, or not, but most employers will not be breaking out the firearms or the prisons if one does not do things their way. Which government will NOT respond in that way?
Yes! The thought experiment is to ask oneself what power corporations have over us in the absence of government. They cannot force us to buy things. But they need our money if they are going to work whatever evil plans they have. They can still do bad things, but they have less power to do so.
Of course that argument works less well on someone who is convinced that government is a benevolent force and the only thing standing between us and evil business.
And yet, even if circumstances are causing a narrowing of choices or allowing employers to behave differently, one still is not *forced* to work at a particular place. You do have a choice. (Related, though not perfectly so: I think @shagbark does a really nice job of getting one to think outside of the mainstream career paradigm.)
I am not downplaying the concerns of employees, but when it comes to consent, government and career are still in different categories.
I love this bunch of thinkers. Once you have a preponderance of evidence it is time to take action. Everyone here keeps overthinking it. Democracy is Mob Rule. That is what they have in the United States of District of Columbia Inc. As it was designed. It is a total scam. We among the several States are guaranteed Article IV Section 4 and have had martial law since March 1861. The bell curve 62.5% will do as they are told. They have been told it is a Democracy and they do their MKUltra bit. When our 3% correct the situation to a Constitutional republican form of government the survivors of the VAX et al. will continue to do as they are told.
Nothing can make up for the people that this madness has taken from us…Relationships ended…Friends and family lost, both figuratively and literally. But we can and should make new connections, here and elsewhere, and build new communities.
What worries me is that minority are the true rulers, rather than the majority. They have access to power through wealth and they game the system. We don’t have any checks on them because they are private citizens.
I thought about that while I was writing the "majority rules" part. It is so much more complicated than that simplistic formulation, and yes, it all ends up empowering a new oligarchy.
I had to do it this way for this brief vignette, but in point of fact, you are absolutely right.
I agree with Rousseau that we have a social contract. I think we trade certain freedoms, like not harming each other, for security. However, some people enter into an alternate and competing social contract. They trade being able to hurt others to gain security (wealth, power, prestige).
The people in the first contract have ways to weeds out the criminals who do cause physical harm, but it doesn’t weed out the sociopaths who lead large corporations or governments. We have no mechanisms for the second type of danger outside voting.
What’s worse is that for many people, they refuse to use the mechanism of voting. They are indifferent or find this decadent system so pleasant, they are unaware of the danger. Then there are people who use voting to rob their neighbors of security. They buy into the second social contract promised by the sociopaths.
Which leaves a smaller and smaller field of people willing to use voting to place checks on the sociopaths. The non-voters and the thief-voters grow to an unmanageable size and the people relying on the first type of social contract are now unable to stave off a coming apocalyptic tyranny. The other two voters will never discover that their votes no longer matter. In fact, they may be glad to never vote again--as long as they feel fat and well fed. The restricting voters will face the true consequences of the tyranny. They represent an existential threat to the tyrants who are also busy eating each other for dominance.
Voting isn’t powerless. Abstention is a type of power that many people use currently. Voting to steal is another power. Voting to restrict tyranny is the least used power in a wealthily Republic. It is not that the Republic is a terrible concept. It is that the people in a Republic become fat, bloated, and putrefied.
I suspect that you and I both agree on a great deal. Philosophically conservative, anti-leftist, etc. We come from the same "side," if you will.
That being said, I have come, over years of reflection and research, to disagree with much of what you just said.
First, if I were to pick a vision of the social contract, it would be that of Locke and the natural lawyers, not Rousseau. But even their social contract is fundamentally problematic: it is not actually consensual.
I am no longer taken in by their workaround that one's consent is "implicit" and "tacit." In every other area of human life, consent must be explicit, transparent, and ongoing. Only in the social contract, and in one's acquiescence to forced governance, are we supposed to accept something to which we did not actually consent. I understand that they were products of their time and I do not fault them. But we've had another couple of centuries to think this through, and the "tacit" social contract is a philosophical copout. We can do better.
Voting does not solve this problem, either. You can vote and still be subjected, by force, to things to which you did not consent.
It IS possible to have order, and even social contracts, without violating the moral requirement of consent. It has been done (albeit not much on a large scale). And there is a huge literature on how it can be done.
I understand, based on what you said, roughly where you are on the spectrum of the right. I spent the bulk of my adult life there. And so I know that what I am saying might sound nutty, and maybe even potentially angering. I had those responses myself for the longest time. But after more than 15 years toiling away in the philosophy mines, I saw some things I cannot unsee, and I am permanently changed.
I hope you will stick around and give me the chance to show you some of those things!
" In every other area of human life, consent must be explicit, transparent, and ongoing." You have to viably be free to decline in order for it be be true consent, too! <3
Not angered at all. I am pragmatic in my approach. Show me a solution that could work better than voting and I will hear you out. I see your points. I don’t see how to go from voting in a true Republic to giving them consent, permission, to govern me. We may have inherited the system, but it doesn’t mean we can’t choose our participation. One could always leave it behind and live on a homestead with little interference. The more we interact, the more we give consent to be governed. It is a paradox that can only be explained because of the tyrannical nature in the heart of every person. We want to govern others while at the same time we want to be governed. We are the problem with the system. We can also be the solution. If we stand for transcendent morality and teach others to do the same. My solution is to teach people to subjugate their hearts to the highest authority so they no longer want to bring tyranny to themselves or their neighbors. Only a truly Christian nation can operate as free as humanly possible this side of Heaven. Only the fear of God can teach us respect for God’s creation: our neighbors. Only a love of God can teach us not to seek our neighbors as our rulers.
That is a terrific statement. "We are the problem with the system. We can also be the solution." Well said.
If you would be interested in really diving in (and hopefully becoming a convert 🤣), I can share with you a reading list. In fact, I can just copy and paste what I said to someone last night, and you can see if you are interested in taking a few more steps down that road.
(It was written in response to another comment, but it gets the basic point across):
Your concern is not unreasonable, but please trust me when I tell you that there are answers. It takes some reading and research into the field to get it, but once you see it, you are changed forever. The only reason it is so obscure is that nothing poses a greater threat to those who would enslave and exploit us than anarcho-libertarian ideas.
In the absence of involuntary governance, you would still have many of the same mechanisms. Law, protective force, punishment of bad actors, etc. would all still exist. It's just that instead of a single involuntary monopoly on the use of "legitimate" force in a given territory, you would have a variety of choices.
In such a condition, two main options would unfold:
Market anarchism: individuals remaining on their own property and choosing from among competing private providers of security, justice, law codes, infrastructure, etc. and
Anarcho-phylarchy: private-law enclaves, each employing its own system (some of which may even be illiberal in nature, but participation in which is fully consensual and exit is always allowed).
I know that hearing this is like being tossed into a pond of freezing water. But like I say, if you put in the time to understand it, it will click eventually, and then you'll wonder why you never saw it before.
As far as literature…
Personally, I think Hoppe is the best: https://ia804707.us.archive.org/21/items/HoppeDemocracyTheGodThatFailed/Hoppe_Democracy_The_God_That_Failed.pdf
He is a bit intense for a first go, but if you're ready for the plunge, do it. Hoppe splits the difference—describing how both market anarchism and phylarchic possibilities would work. His depiction of "private-law jurisdictions" creates a very plausible picture.
For a focus on market anarchism, some might recommend the breezier Tannehills "https://archive.org/details/TheMarketForLiberty2" or David Friedman: https://archive.org/details/TheMachineryOfFreedom
Nozick's classic "Anarchy, State, and Utopia" and its discussion of the "Framework" is one of the early forays into the anarcho-phylarchic (or really, in Nozick's case, minarchist-phylarchic) end of things. But ASU is really hard to read. (I dislike confusing prose—so unnecessary.)
I would also take a look at the quick essay "Panarchy": https://panarchy.org/depuydt/1860.eng.html by Paul-Émile de Puydt. He was a visionary.
This essay by Rothbard hits some important points, especially on real-world examples of private law: https://mises.org/library/society-without-state
Also, believe it or not, two works of fiction by Neal Stephenson are really helpful (and enjoyable) ways of getting a picture in your head: "Snow Crash" and then "The Diamond Age." I think I like the latter more, but they go together and I think that is the best order.
And then there is my writing. My focus is less on how it could work as the writers above. Mine is more on why it is the moral choice. My #freepill and #Step1 sections are good for that: https://christophercook.substack.com/t/freepill and https://christophercook.substack.com/t/step1
Please keep asking questions!
I will look at your resources over the next few days. I think the first sounds like laissez faire capitalism which I have always supported. The second sounds like the true intention of states rights. I think power should be localized and our regulated and centralized power is corrupt and evil. Again, a viewpoint I have held for a long time. I think Foucault was right that we give our power away to dictators. (Wrong on almost everything else though). Hate quoting men who abuse children--but a broken clock...
I don’t think we are that far apart. I just don’t see a solution that isn’t impossible to implement without a Revolution. And the revolutionaries rarely make us free. The only reason the American Revolution worked was because we had God-fearing leaders. I don’t see many of those types of leaders anymore who will set down power once taken up.
The first time I fired a handgun, it was my friend's .45. "Shouldn't I start with something smaller?" I asked. But he told me to just go the biggest first.
Hoppe is the .45 of those choices. They are all good, but starting with Hoppe is really just going for it. At first, you'll wonder why he's going on about time preferences, but then it all starts to make sense.
Agreed re: Foucault. Yuck. But broken clocks…
You are right about revolutions. They are a problem.
And yes, our Revolution did work…kind of. They were operating with the right philosophical principles. The system they gave us does not properly actuate those principles, however. It is better than most, but its demise was baked into its cake from the start. (Read Hoppe and you'll see what I mean.) The Articles of Confederation would have been closer to the mark in terms of actuating those principles. Unfortunately, the Constitution got rammed through in an ugly and shady process. And ten years later, we got the Sedition Acts.
There's another way!
Oligosaccharides are healthy; oligarchy, no thank you <3 <3
🤣
I am going to go eat three pieces of bacon. Maybe I can throw in some oligosaccharides too.
https://www.vedantu.com/chemistry/oligosaccharide
^ For your bacon
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism. Who governs? Who really rules? To what extent is the broad body of U.S. citizens sovereign, semi-sovereign, or largely powerless? These questions have animated much important work in the study of American politics.
^For the democracy that's facon bacon
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
On the former, will it be good for someone with A+ blood?
On the latter, I have no doubt that we live with far more Economic-Elite Domination than anything else.
Lol, I don't know about blood type, but oligosaccharides help your probiotics be happy is my understanding. They probably do other stuff too.
My son and I use EFT (tapping) and one of the things that ways heavily on him is power in the hands of the few. I am not at all a righty - I believe we in an abundance/symbiotic sovereignty model rather than a "my rights, fuck you" kind of approach - we need to be in awareness of the needs of the whole and have it organically arise from Source consciousness and Gaia consciousness - from above and below, resonating a freedom that also wants to bless all life.
I do not believe that most people on the right are taking a "my rights, fuck you" kind of approach. That has long struck me as something of a strawman (albeit a common one). Rather, I think their (our) approach is "my rights, AND IF YOU INTEND TO VIOLATE THEM, fuck you."
Classical liberalism does not say, "I want to be a lonely, bitter, atomized individual interacting with no one, helping no one, and living in a remote cabin."
Rather, it is speaking to the first rule of human interaction: that each person is a sovereign, rights-holding being whose consent must not be violated and who must not be subjected to the initiation of coercive force.
The reason that people who hold this view also become curmudgeonly is because collectivists, statists, and narcissistic virtue-signalers won't leave us alone:
"We HAVE TO violate your sovereignty and force you to do things…"
"Because no man is an island."
"Because we have to find ways to live together."
"Because…don't you care about people?"
Classical liberals end up backing away into a corner and becoming misanthropic because of this endless assault. Because it's never voluntary. Because their sovereignty is endlessly violated by the tribe.
There has to be a better way.
And one of the first steps in that direction is to put to bed these misperceptions about the right. The right is filled with people who love togetherness and want to help. We're just sick of the nonconsensual and sovereignty-violating way it's done in our "society."
PS: Please tell me more about EFT.
"What worries me is that minority are the true rulers, rather than the majority."
Democracy is a system where the minority or rulers act on behalf of those who voted for them, as their 'elected representatives'. So whatever activities they get up to (extortion, theft, wars, bailouts, forced injection programs etc) the blame - and accountability - should rest on the shoulders of those who voted for them AKA the 'voters'.
Of course if this was the case nobody would dare to 'vote' for any politician or party, because they'd understand the high probability of being faced with criminal charges within a year or two, and losing their homes and livelihoods to pay for all the damage caused by their 'elected representatives'.
At the very least they'd look for some kind of liability insurance before voting. But no insurance company would offer it because they'd also know the inevitable huge payouts would bankrupt them.
This thought experiment proves, not only that democracy is a destructive and criminal system, but that everybody knows it. The only reason people 'vote' is because they know they will never be held personally liable for the damage caused by their elected representatives - the people acting on their behalf.
Anarchy is (let's say) a form of democracy where everybody gets to vote AND they are held personally accountable for the consequences of that vote at all times. Instead of 'politicians' and 'political parties' you simply pay for service providers to perform the tasks you want performed. This is really no different to 'government' except those service providers are bound by the law, just as you are. If you pay them to commit theft, extortion, start a war etc that will be clear in the contract you drew up and agreed on. This would make you both liable for such crimes.
This is why war, extortion theft etc are never part of the contracts we negotiate and agree to with existing service providers. We all understand not to do those things - if only to avoid being held accountable for such behaviour.
Going back to democracy, we can see that the relationship between 'voter' and 'elected representative' involves no contract at all. The only thing which is involved is vague 'pledges' by politicians while campaigning.
A few years ago a British politician running for office created a 'contract' which he displayed on a giant white board, probably in giant comic sans font, where he listed all the things he was going to do if elected. This marketing device was obviously not a real contract (legally binding), it was just a gimmick. But it exposed just how ridiculous democracy is.
We'd never accept any other service provider using a 'make believe' contract instead of a real legally binding one. Yet somehow we think that's how things should be done when it comes to the group of service providers called 'government'.
Anarchy just means government (and their voters) are held to the same legal framework and laws as everyone else. Anarchy is just consistency of moral rules - encoded into laws - throughout society. Consistency of laws = no one is exempt from the law = no rulers allowed = an (without) archy (rulers).
This is brilliant. I had thought about the moral ramifications of voting, and one's moral liability, but you go to the next level and make the liability much more real. And then framing it against market anarchism where everybody is actually liable…good stuff!
I think you'd really like it here at the Freedom Scale, and I know I would benefit if you stick around!
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
Even after just having read a bit of it, it is horrifying…and yet also not at all surprising to me.
Good interview! Although you forgot to imagine a producer, who would have cut off the interview before the halfway point. ;-p
Or someone from the Ministry of Compliance, who would have checked the whole thing ahead of time.
“People consent when they buy shoes. People consent when they choose a home and a career. People consent to their relationships and their loves. Consent is the rule in everything EXCEPT government.”
I’d disagree with this - consent isn’t given with career. You can just about live as a single person or without any shoes but people are forced to do an increasingly narrow range of jobs. And it seems the demands of the employer are much more onerous than the demands of the government, and office environment being not far away from 1984.
I'm thinking that's pretty limited thinking. One may have innate talents and gifts that need to be nurtured, which might enable one to create an income far beyond what one might earn as an employee, or at least provide a greater degree of freedom.
The demands of the employer are accepted by choice, or not, but most employers will not be breaking out the firearms or the prisons if one does not do things their way. Which government will NOT respond in that way?
Yes! The thought experiment is to ask oneself what power corporations have over us in the absence of government. They cannot force us to buy things. But they need our money if they are going to work whatever evil plans they have. They can still do bad things, but they have less power to do so.
Of course that argument works less well on someone who is convinced that government is a benevolent force and the only thing standing between us and evil business.
I hear you.
And yet, even if circumstances are causing a narrowing of choices or allowing employers to behave differently, one still is not *forced* to work at a particular place. You do have a choice. (Related, though not perfectly so: I think @shagbark does a really nice job of getting one to think outside of the mainstream career paradigm.)
I am not downplaying the concerns of employees, but when it comes to consent, government and career are still in different categories.
Unless there is something I am missing…?
It's a great Dialogue, Chris!
Thanks! It all came out of my brain (or wherever it ultimately came from) at once.
Beautiful! I love that! <3
"the approved viewpoint and the approved opposition"
A synergy of the heart and soul
Won't be co-opted by a troll
Love and sovereignty are the goal
Not left
Not right
Not center
Not this or that
Something we create together beyond tit for tat
Grace and abundance
Impeccability and Respons-ability
Sovereignty Divine
Truth
Freedom
Right on Time
I love this bunch of thinkers. Once you have a preponderance of evidence it is time to take action. Everyone here keeps overthinking it. Democracy is Mob Rule. That is what they have in the United States of District of Columbia Inc. As it was designed. It is a total scam. We among the several States are guaranteed Article IV Section 4 and have had martial law since March 1861. The bell curve 62.5% will do as they are told. They have been told it is a Democracy and they do their MKUltra bit. When our 3% correct the situation to a Constitutional republican form of government the survivors of the VAX et al. will continue to do as they are told.
I have no knowledge of this. Do you have a link to a clip?
You tried; thank you.
Frankly, I don't trust much of what I see these days anyway.
And I don't trust anything that is in the mainstream. If they tell me it's raining, I assume they are spitting in my face.
Nothing can make up for the people that this madness has taken from us…Relationships ended…Friends and family lost, both figuratively and literally. But we can and should make new connections, here and elsewhere, and build new communities.