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RE: Dissecting the Statist Mind
@larkenrose Clearly I'm not going to make you reevaluate your life's work. But here's what I'm trying to say.
- I can buy a type of anarchy working in very small communities where everyone knows everyone else.
- I cannot buy an anarchist model working to . . . "govern" a society the size of the USA, or Britain
or RoadIsland, for that matter. - No power creates a power vaccume, and I've never ever ever read of a situation in history where a power vaccume went unfilled.
- So you create an anarchist society. I have the charisma to create a military force. We show up and literally, rather than medaforicly enslave you and your people.
4A. The Pax Rmana and now the Pax Americana prevent me and my army from doing this to either state, which is half the point of government.. - If a person knows all the facts about, to pick where I live, how the United States Government works, most people will describe government as at the worst a necisary evil, and at best a positive institution.
- Europe after Rome and before the establishment of nation states was worse by any measure you can name than it was under rome. What were, in essence, small towns fought one another for power and this went on for a thousand years.
- I've never come across a human society in all my reading of history that functioned without a government. There are many different forms of government but they all include a state monopoly on , violence, taxes, some kind of law.
- To me, this is significant.
- If you don't like this government you can move to a different society with different or less government, but I know of nowhere in the world where you can live under no government.
The "charisma to create a military force"? In a society that doesn't believe anyone has the right to rule? And for some reason, the HUNDRED MILLION armed people here now just let you?
Yes, humanity has been suffering from the insane delusion of "authority" for a very long time. Most of your argument is you demonstrating how you are incapable of imagining anything else. That's your problem, not mine.
We've also never enjoyed a society free of cancer. Its a noble goal though.
@laconicflow and @larkenrose:
In my years discussing the possibility of a free society with statists (in other words, with pretty much everybody else), they have generally defaulted to the argument that since one or another horde would always invade a free society and impose its will upon it, that's the way it is, which is to say, the ultimate defense of the state is that initiated violence will always prevail over voluntary cooperation, so, in essence, accept the state as a fact of life and go about your life as best you can under its auspices.
Nice argument, i.e.,* immorality rules.*
It's what libertarian economist David Friedman (Milton's son) called a free society's "hard problem of national defense" — http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf — which he believed was insurmountable. Yet it was only a couple of weeks ago that, here on Steemit, the solution to the hardproblem was discussed — https://steemit.com/assassinationpolitics/@dollarvigilante/world-exclusive-first-interview-with-jim-bell-of-assassination-politics-since-released-from-jail — i.e., that a free society could defend itself by resorting to the ultimate mode of *asymmetric warfare" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare
And now, 21 years after this visionary's essay was published, the technology is in place and only awaits its "execution," with the understanding that the loss of life would be infinitesimal in comparison to that inflicted by the status — as in statist — quo and that the world could be transformed accordingly.
That said, let me close by pointing laconicflow to Larken's wonderful The Tiny Dot, which is a classic, in my opinion, as your video above will hopefully be.
Meanwhile, you both might glean something from the following:
https://steemit.com/anarchy/@freeradical/the-nature-and-origin-of-the-state