Announcement
Collapse
Civics 101 Guidelines
Want to argue about politics? Healthcare reform? Taxes? Governments? You've come to the right place!
Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
Try to keep it civil though. The rules still apply here.
See more
See less
Is the State inevitable? Where Libertarians and Communists join hands
Collapse
X
-
If there are few readers, no more than 5, anyone of you moderators has my permission to shut this thread down.
-
Originally posted by Darth Executor View PostWhat do you mean by working? The USA is a functional first world country so evidently it is working, and working fairly well by worldwide standards. It's nowhere near what I wanted to be but regardless of whether one approves of what it does it's clearly a functional State (for now anyway).
Of course I do. Not only is the Non-aggression Precept idiotic as general philosophy, it's laughable to claim it has anything to do with Christian theology which is decidedly authoritarian in nature. God Himself breaches it countless times.
It's not impossible to answer, it's quite easy to answer actually. Libertardians would institute open borders and with Singapore being a prosperous nation-state in a sea of third world savages it would get reduced to ruins in no time. One need only look at how much damage illegal immigration has done to the US to see what libertarian policy would do to Singapore.
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Epoetker View PostAsk Darth if he thinks so.
even the governments bequeathed the best genetics
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Truthseeker View Post1) Much of what you wrote seems to be off topic.
2) Other parts of what you wrote are hard to understand.
I do not have the patience to decipher what may only turn to be off topic as well.
3) But you did quote this: "power of low taxes." Let's be clear, established government everywhere is decivilizing and impoverishing, Singapore not excepted.
Now first question is: what the hell is the feudal lord of an obscure tax haven in the Alps doing talking to the Heritage Foundation? He’s presenting his book. A book? What about? How I built an awesome country and made a fortune by taking money from your countries? He would know something about that. Alas no, Hans may have power but he doesn’t have a sense of humor. He wrote a book called The State in the Third Millenium.
Yes, this billionaire feudal lord, this medieval aristocrat who owes his fortune to his tax evasion racket, has written a political treatise! Well he does own a state, a very different state to the liberal democratic nation-states we are used to. He surely must have some reactionary insight. Maybe he’s talking about bank secrecy? About zero tax rates? How modern states are evil and totalitarian?
No, he’s written a book about his idea that the state must serve the people. Now to be fair to the man, he’s not parroting communist nonsense. He gives it a classical liberal twist, the state must give good services in a limited way, focusing on law and order, equality of opportunity, local autonomy, etc. Not bad stuff prima-facie. The man has given some thought to his politics, and his great idea (so great he just had to write a book about it), is that the monarchy he leads doesn’t derive his legitimacy from God or tradition, but he has democratic legitimacy through the awesome services he gives to his people.
Well, duh, good luck with that. A big problem with European political thought is that they’re still using the same old arguments all over. The old Keynes vs Hayek fight. No HBD, social psychology, religion theory. Politics is about policy, if we just think of a good management system and we will it strong enough, everything will be alright. Which is the thinking process of a bureaucrat, who only understand adjustments.
I don’t blame most of European intellectuals, most of whom are bureaucrats or are related to them, for thinking like that. But the Sovereign Monarch of Liechtenstein? This guy is not a bureaucrat. He’s a landowner. He could just hire a manager and go to live in Monaco. But he doesn’t. He enjoys managing his “country”, he gave them democracy, wrote a book, and goes to an American plutocratic think tank to sing the praises of low taxes. He must feel like a rockstar being interviewed like a great thinker in Washington DC.
The Prince of Liechtenstein is the closest thing there is to Fnargl in the West. And what does he do with his power? Write a lame book about how holy he is because he serves his people.
Also do remember that devolution, decivilizing, impoverishing and corruption are almost always evolutionary processes, that occur when you're asleep, i.e., running on autopilot. Stay awake, stay alive, increase your numbers of opportunities for understanding, and see where the evolution of your thinking means to take you, and you may just take action to prevent it.Last edited by Epoetker; 08-31-2014, 07:28 PM.
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Truthseeker View PostWhat do you mean, it can't work? Is the U.S.A. federal government working? If you say yes, you may not be answering the question I am rather interested in.
Hmm . . . how about this: the number of people who practices Christian virtues, especially, do not steal and do not murder. Actually the Libertarian defining principle, the Non-aggression Precept, is derivable from Christian theology. You object to that?
Yes, that is possible. But you assumed . . . what? Something must have caused the vanishing. For the sake of argument please allow Singapore to become suddenly libertarian and remained so for an indefinite period. I ask now: is the world therefore better, other things being more or less equal? That is impossible to answer. For one thing we can only use probabilistic thinking based on assumptions about what the world is really like. Do you believe you do grok the entire world?
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Epoetker View PostOr worse, be replaced by a ruler or rulers who values the imported population over the hard experience of life and his nation's traditions:
Be advised, despite Lee Kuan Yew's non-rotten fruit of authoritarianism, that "replaced by a ruler or rulers who values the imported population" can happen even over a single lifetime, to the very same person. It may be happening to Lee Kuan Yew, but it also happened to King Solomon.
In any case, Mr. Spandrell is really excellent reading on this issue all around:
Needless to say, we're mostly white* people here, so I'm quite admitting of our particular genetic and cultural exceptions, and also willing to say that just as the State is inevitable, the decay of that state into corruption or the circumscription of that state into an ordered liberal-tarianish republic is inevitable...based on the morals and religion of its people. What seems to fash most liberaltarians here is the inability to see problems and describe solutions, much less effect them. Most of this is due to their unbroken worship of the words of the Cathedral, the Great God-Substitute Manifested in The Media, The Professoriate, and The Totally Non-Governmental Non-Partisan Advocacy Organizations That Only Take Government Money To Use For Their Own Ends. You will need to renounce them as personal gods if you want to get anywhere in making a better world for yourself or anybody, which means not leaning on their understanding, not feeling vindication when they seem to support you and disappointment when they don't, for they have nothing to do with you or your people.
Break your addiction to the useless words of the Cathedral and take up your sword when people commit crimes against their people and their societies, and you will find this basic understanding of near-universal human governance much easier.
*Though our black people can give themselves funny names like "Mickiel" or "Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho" for our own amusement.
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Spartacus View Post
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Darth Executor View PostWe can know with a solid degree of certainty a number of things. For example, we can be fairly certain that libertarianism can't work.
Are you a moral relativist?
If not I fail to see what the number of people who aren't Christian has to do with anything.
If Singapore's government suddenly vanished it would be swiftly replaced by another that's pretty much identical in form and function to the previous one.
Leave a comment:
-
If Singapore's government suddenly vanished it would be swiftly replaced by another that's pretty much identical in form and function to the previous one.
Originally posted by spandrellLee had just got into college when Japan invades Singapore in 1942. The invasion was a shock for everyone, Singapore supposedly being an impregnable fortress, symbol of mighty Britain and whatnot. Well the Japanese Army got hold of it in just over a week, and lost no time in making themselves the lords of the place. Lee tells in his memories how after the British Army lost, the colonial population was shocked, but also sort of excited. See, whitey has been defeated. Whites were the epitome of authority, they were so awesome that they seemed to create order semi-magically. But now they lost, and to those Japanese which kinda look like us. What followed was that the most uppity and thuggish of the Chinese, Malay and Indian youths starting looting and wreaking havoc in the place. The Japanese were too busy torturing British soldiers to pay attention to the situation on the streets, but they soon noticed, and didn’t like. Lee Kuan Yew tells how patrols of Japanese soldiers went to the streets, and arrested the strongest, most proud looking youths they saw on the streets. No questions asked. They just singled out the young males who looked like trouble. They took them to a close beach, killed them, decapitated some and put their heads on pikes on the main streets of Singapore.
No more lootings or any kind of disorder.
This, along with other targeted massacres of local donors to the resistance movement in China and other enemy civilians are together called the Sook Ching massacres (meaning Purge in the local dialect). The official narrative is that the Japanese massacres of Singapore civilians gave the locals a sense of nationhood, as they were targeted as a political entity separate from their British rulers. The British inability to protect the civilians made them lose legitimacy to govern them ever again, which paved the way to the independence of Singapore. Kinda sounds like the Mandate of Heaven.
But that’s a load of rationalisation crap, of course. Lee Kuan Yew is so ******* awesome that he had the balls to be honest in his memoirs. He says that the Japanese massacres in Singapore told him a lesson that he would find very useful in his future political life: violence works. And overwhelming violence works faster. The Japanese were harsh, cruel devils. But damn did they impose order. Not a leaf dared to move without permission in occupied Singapore. The young Lee must have felt some admiration for the Japanese way of administration because he spent the rest of the occupation learning Japanese to serve as a translation for his new masters. He later was outspoken in his defence for Deng Xiaoping’s actions in Tiananmen square 1989.
I recalled this episode when reading the Japanese news a while ago. Japan today is fortunately a different place from 1942, but it would be false to say that all has changed. Behind the facade of polite, honest, pleasant people you see, there’s a very unpleasant world of bullying, harassment and unreasonable rules.
A 66 year old man in Osaka was arrested after stealing a 10 yen coin from a nearby temple’s offering box. He was taken to court, and sentenced to 1 year in prison. The judge said that yes, 10 yen is a pittance, but it’s money nonetheless, and theft is a crime, so to jail you go. He had been sentenced in first instance to 20 months, which the appeal reduced to 1 year. The news went viral and netizens all around the country were amused. The most common comment was “1 year for 10 yen, that’s some cheap hotel he found”. Indeed.
Law in Japan can thus be very draconian. Don’t think it’s harsh but fair: there’s plenty of stories of policemen raping underage girls and not even being expelled from the force. Corruption is pervasive, if quite petty (it’s a scandal if you steal 1 million yen), and the yakuza are present to an almost comical extent. Still the argument can be made that compared to law in modern western countries, where muggers, robbers and thugs of every kind aren’t even taken to court because there’s no enough prisons to hold them, Japan is in comparison a more just place. It certainly is more orderly and pleasant, if perhaps not more happy and fun. That’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.
In any case, Mr. Spandrell is really excellent reading on this issue all around:
If Singapore is the darling of us Law and Order types, Hong Kong is the darling of libertarians. A hot and smelly piece of rock in the fringe of China, a poor fishing village whose wretched people weren’t allowed to step on the ground, thanks to the power of laissez-faire and low taxes become a cultural and economic powerhouse.
As different as Singapore and Hong Kong are, they both are an excellent example of the power of low taxes. They basically live off the money that people deposit there to avoid taxes elsewhere. So they need banks. Lots of banks. Not surprisingly banks in Hong Kong are pretty efficient. They also give you credit without asking many questions. Of course it helps that they have a healthy Triad ecosystem to collect outstanding debts when necessary.
Anyway, I sent an email to my bank in Hong Kong, for some minor matter. They replied very promptly, and solved the problem. Very nice. Then I saw the signature of the clerk who processed my question.
Best regards,
Chanel Lau.
Yes, that’s right. Her name was ‘Chanel’. Chinese people often take English names, which in many cases they choose themselves. This chick (I hope she is female) chose for her the name ‘Chanel’. Soon enough we’ll see little Pradas and Guccis.
Break your addiction to the useless words of the Cathedral and take up your sword when people commit crimes against their people and their societies, and you will find this basic understanding of near-universal human governance much easier.
*Though our black people can give themselves funny names like "Mickiel" or "Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho" for our own amusement.
Leave a comment:
-
http://ethikapolitika.org/2014/08/26...eneen-part-ii/
Ayn Rand and Marxists both fantasize about the “withering away of the State,” one because of a society of perfectly expressed self-interest that gives rise to spontaneous order, and the other, a society in which self-interest is overcome, making the state finally superfluous at the end of history. Baloney.
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Truthseeker View PostAs I will show shortly, it's impossible to know much for sure from studying history. One must cope with historians' opinions as well as "facts," for one thing.
Yes, impossible. You've hit on one of the points I was planning to make, that, absent theory and a definite system of morals to guide us, nobody can knowingly evaluate whether any given established government is doing more good than bad. And which system of morals to use? You and I may agree it should be the Christian system, but people that live according to it constitute less than a majority of the world.
Suppose we agreed to consider Singapore. Suddenly its government vanishes (at least in our imaginations) and Singapore goes on without any established government. What would happen? In particular, would the world be slightly better than had the government of Singapore continued to "work," instead?
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Darth Executor View PostWhy? It's important to see how ideologies play out in real life.
What is "otherwise"? There are any number of options other than "our established governments" so without defining what otherwise means your request is impossible.
You may be interested to know that some time ago I gave One Bad Pig a similar challenge. So far no response. And probably several readers have seen my challenge. Again, no response.
Suppose we agreed to consider Singapore. Suddenly its government vanishes (at least in our imaginations) and Singapore goes on without any established government. What would happen? In particular, would the world be slightly better than had the government of Singapore continued to "work," instead?
Leave a comment:
-
Originally posted by Truthseeker View PostWhy don't we forget Marx and Engels, please?
We libertarians can hope for partial success, in that the world is better because of our efforts than otherwise.
I have an argument for a totally libertarian (anarchy) world that partially depends on the inability of people to show that our established governments are making the world better than otherwise. So, I suggest that we start our debate with you trying to show that our established governments ARE making the world better than otherwise.
Leave a comment:
-
Why don't we forget Marx and Engels, please?
We libertarians can hope for partial success, in that the world is better because of our efforts than otherwise.
I have an argument for a totally libertarian (anarchy) world that partially depends on the inability of people to show that our established governments are making the world better than otherwise. So, I suggest that we start our debate with you trying to show that our established governments ARE making the world better than otherwise.
Leave a comment:
-
Is the State inevitable? Where Libertarians and Communists join hands
Originally posted by Truthseeker View PostWow, Darthy and Epoety actually think that the more powerful our governments are, the better the world will be. It doesn't matter that the common folk will not be able to keep sociopaths out of powerful governments. Augusto Pinochet is a good example of a sociopath in government.Originally posted by Darth Executor View PostNo, Darthy and Epoety know that if you don't have a powerful government backing the kind of world you want to live in, you will live in the world of those who do.Originally posted by Truthseeker View PostOff topic, but if you start a thread on this, I would wade into your fray and fray your nerves.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witheri...y_of_the_state
The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished,” it withers away.
The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong–into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax.
~Friedrich Engels
Originally posted by Rational Gaze View PostI guess they must think that the last twenty dozen attempts or so being massive failures is some kind of fluke.Tags: None
Related Threads
Collapse
Topics | Statistics | Last Post | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Started by seer, Today, 01:12 PM
|
4 responses
50 views
0 likes
|
Last Post
by Sparko
Today, 02:38 PM
|
||
Started by rogue06, Yesterday, 09:33 AM
|
45 responses
340 views
1 like
|
Last Post
by Starlight
Today, 05:05 PM
|
||
Started by whag, 04-16-2024, 10:43 PM
|
60 responses
386 views
0 likes
|
Last Post
by seanD
Today, 03:09 PM
|
||
Started by rogue06, 04-16-2024, 09:38 AM
|
0 responses
27 views
1 like
|
Last Post
by rogue06
04-16-2024, 09:38 AM
|
||
Started by Hypatia_Alexandria, 04-16-2024, 06:47 AM
|
100 responses
438 views
0 likes
|
Last Post Today, 12:45 PM |
Leave a comment: