VJ LIVE! Ep.45: Voluntaryism: The Most Enlightened Philosophy There Is
Join me in the LIVE chat talking Transcendentalism, David Lynch, the search for meaning, peace, and happiness, and why, although it may not be as "mystical" or flamboyant as hanging with the Maharishi, Voluntaryism is the most enlightening view of reality there is, because instead of trying to change reality, it embraces it fully and works within it. Instead of prescribing a certain "guru" or behavior, you are the "guru," and your behavior is what drives the course of your life.
My live stream is at DLive
~KafkA
Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DLive and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)
Good to see you back on the airwaves!
arg, was trying to join up, DLive is being a butthole, not working :(
I know steemit was having issues last night, witnesses had to restart nodes, I wonder if there are other gremlins today
Good stuff, hope your PC made it out alive. I have a question on how the micro solves the macro. I have interacted with some folks on the micro with 'needs' based outlook. Much as you say that you would help the starving person down the hallway. The problem with 'needs' based people is that it is like trying to fill a endless void. I quickly found I can not fill all the needs of these types of people because they are endless.
The problem i see is that scales up into the macro. Stefan Molyneux describes this in how it works with the state and how 'needs' based people tend to vote themselves social goods. Part of the power of the state focuses around 'providing' for a significant portion of the population.
So bringing this back into the framework of reality, how does voluntaryism handle that?
Well, The thing is that it doesn’t take you helping everyone, and thanks to the market, you wouldn’t need to to affect macro level change. First, nobody has a right to force you to help, and second, without the crappy state services disincentizing quality services via force-backed monopolies, there would be a huge market vacuum for assistance services, and much more capital available for charity.
To address your first point more specifically, though, of course you cannot help everyone. That's how it already stands today. State included. The “services” are miserable ones. As I said, there would be huge market incentive for these services, and much more capital to flow into them and out of them. And, they would actually (unlike government services) be accountable to the market.
As it stands, the state is pretty damn terrible at helping people, and actually has murdered over 262 million in the last century alone, across the globe. This is a pretty good indicator of a failed “business” that is incompetent, incapable, and immoral. If that’s the standard we’re competing against, pretty much anything would be better!
Whatever the case, anything other than voluntary interaction is unethical. So it’s kind of like we are arguing whether abolishing slavery is practical or not because “the cotton needs to be picked.”
I agree with what you have there. The issue i see is that as you say ' nobody has a right to force you to help' i may agree with this but the reality of it is that there is a violent government forcing the condition.
The macro is aggressing due to the micro of needs. It's a percentage of the population. Ayn Rand refered to them as moochers. I wouldn't go that far, and it sounds derogatory, but there does exist a faction that want the state to provide infinite services and resources.
I think it becomes a important awareness that a relatively large portion of the population has no interest in free market and a voluntary system, and have no problem aggressing the few that are productive to provide.
I don't see how your addressing that issue. I mean we could be talking 30- 60% of the population.
Let me add that I completely understand if voluntaryism doesn't address the current reality. I just want there to be awareness that there is this area of reality unaddressed by the model.
Where do you get this figure?
Here in the states, I use the blue red maps that showed up in the last presidential election. Population centers tend to be blue everything else tends to be red.
Population centers typically have a economically depressed inner core then a liberal belt, then the suburbs.
The liberal belt is where I typically see the 'needs' based ideology take hold. It typically doesn't survive outside the liberal population belt.
Since the population centers are where a significant portion of the population resides I am running rough estimates. The inner core and the suburbs typically doesn't have enough red population to turn the population centers purple.