This is a blog post rendition of my 1-hr presentation at The 21 Convention in Austin, TX in August, right after I gave a 20-minute abbreviated version of same at the Ancestral Health Symposium, 2012, in Boston, at Harvard University School of Law.
Perhaps the most frequent challenge I get contra my anarchist ideas goes something like this: “OK, what do you propose? How ought things be organized so it’s better than what we have now?”
OK, so I’ll tell you. Here’s my comprehensive plan for how everything ought to work for everybody:
This has been my enduring issue with not just anarchy, but all political and economic systems proposed by anyone, everyone: they all imply some degree of State-like imposition, and in the case of anarchy uniquely, it’s simply a contradiction-in-terms if it involves the State. Sure, life in the social milieu is always going to imply some form of “compulsion,” “imposition”…strong motivation. But in anarchy, such can never be institutional, governmental, State…or it’s just not anarchy, and I’m blogging about, and advocate, a stateless society. Impositions can only come from voluntary association of the form: do this, or our relationship is over (contractual, business, familial, affairs of the heart, employment, etc.). …To draw an analogy, having an “anarchist State” impose anarchy is like getting God to proclaim he doesn’t exist and to not believe in him.
More specifically, even anarchist or typical social relationships—but I repeat myself—really don’t involve imposition or compulsion at all. You have an out. By definition, a voluntary association is just that, and either party can walk at any time, unlike something as simple as a marriage, now—adjudication of which ought never to have been ceded to the State.
When a typical voluntary association goes wrong, it is at most or ought be: inconvenience, disappointment, dejection, rejection. It’s not force and at the end of the day, if you’re not forced, you’re just not…forced. How often people conflate a limitation in their available options in choice of action with being “forced.” I hear it all the time. It’s moronic and makes me want to vomit. It’s an epidemic of stupid.
It might also involve a breach of agreement, a contract. Well, then, you have another decision to make: is it worth trying to recover from a perceived breach, or better to walk away? And such potential eventualities ought to go into the process of judging who you wish to form agreeements with or marry, and what the terms are to be…instead of leaving it up to the State to bail you out when things go sour. Are you too big to fail?
At root, having an agent of enforcement in the State gives people an incentive to not worry too much about fucking up their one and only lives; and for those who are never seriously touched by the potential brutality of the State in their lifetimes, it’s still bad enough. They could have done far better for themselves.
The other common form objections take on is that of “what will happen?” What will happen in a society where no institution possesses rights that don’t pertain to any and all individuals?
Here’s what will happen:
Everything happens. Same shit, different day. There will be love & hate, justice & injustice…marriages and murders and children and grandchildren. Graduations, accolades, certifications and drop outs. Accidents. Tragedies. Exhilaration. Despair. Good fortune and bad. Satisfaction and disappointment. Success and failure. Life and death.
The only difference is that everyone is either on their own or they’ve fostered the voluntary social relationships that enhance the human life of a social animal. But no perceived “guarantees;” those where, by being on the right side of the 51-to-49% mob, a “majority” gets to impose its will on the rest—and have them pay for it in blood, incarceration, and money in the bargain. “Morality:” by math & counting.
Everything already happens. Nothing new, just new in the way pieces of a life get put together for splendor, picked up when things go awry, and in the way that everyone moves on as they ultimately must do.
The revolution will not be televised. There will be no explicit revolution, or we’re toast, again. There will be, merely, an evolution. A social evolution. You can start now! You’re already an anarchist—everyone is—in the same way so many only proclaim religious belief, but act like atheists, watching out for themselves as if he didn’t exist. It’s merely a matter of ridding yourself of the 5-10% of your life you’ve been fooled into taking as more important than the other 90%.
You know it already. Most of the things you do to manage a life don’t involve the state forcing you to do so, or require that you seek permission from others.
You can promote it. At root, it’s only a matter of promoting better behavior, behavior on a voluntary rather than compelled scale. It is really that simple. Voluntary vs. compulsory. Domination as a relic. It makes all the difference in a humane world.
Observe.
Alternatively, get politically active. Agitate. Watch lots of cable news. Agitate. Get aggravated…get stressed out over things you can’t control. Agitate. The choice is yours. …That foolishness that dies with you…or that wisdom that makes you immortal in the lives of your children, grandchildren, and beyond.
You can, instead, teach them to have the smallest life possible. Teach them that the greatest thing they’ll ever “accomplish” in their life is to vote for a “President.” Bonus if he’s black, she’s female…or, hallelujah!, a black female!. That will just fix everything. Everyone will feel comfortable because, after all, feeling shit is what made this world we live in pretty damn fine.
Nobody almost, except me, says “Nobody should be President.” That means: no human being should dominate or rule another; no human being ought seek to dominate others and those who attempt such ought to be laughed off the planet as Pip Squeaks and Clowns. It doesn’t turn that way, yet, because everyone loves their favorite Pip Squeak; fav Clown. Instead, now, we imagine that we absolutely need another pip squeak and clown…one with different genitals, perhaps. Or, we “need” many skin colors in succession. We need ones who prefer like genitals over opposite genitals. This, supposedly, will right all wrong…when the wrong we’re talking about is so wrong that such a superficial “fix” is an insult to morality, propriety, and good sense. …Nothing says shallow like a collective State.
We’re only great as a species because we’re so capable of both such enormous evil and such amazing splendor, all in a single species of animal and the greatness is in choosing the good over the evil. But the evil is there, eons & counting. It’s un-healable. It’s irreconcilable. Banality is the only place for it. It’s best left to history lessons. None of it will ever be rectified, made to the right: even if we elect a green Martian lesbian President. So? Don’t do it again? Yep. Just don’t do it again.
Is it not yet enough to set aside the whole notion of King, euphemistically called “President” in America? Dumb road to go down. Teach your children better than that. Please?
The essence of this made the world you know. I was just treated to a bunch of adverse comments about me at another place, along the lines that I ought to be on my knees about government and all it has done for me. Really? Cadres of elites wielding life & death force, and not entrepreneurs who created the things making it possible for the State to skim off the top so effectively, in order to run their scam on everyone?
I salute the entrepreneurial passion. I condemn the thievery. It’s simple.
It’s a process. You’ll likely never be entirely successful in your whole life on that score, but you can always keep it in mind. We’re social animals and all of us, in our lifetimes, will fortunately encounter some we love who, in inexplicable and complex ways, drag us down for a time because they can’t seem to change, and we can’t seem to leave them. It’s our Real Angel at work, there—no fictitious God required—and it’s arguarbly what it is that makes us human and humane animals.
This is the end of the series. Nine parts. I believe it’s a series on a stateless society unlike any other ever, really. It contemplates the individual animal, his mind, his potential for greatness. Nothing more. Never anything more. There are no proscriptions or prescriptions. Just suggestions for each individual to consider, choose, or reject on their own. It’s about realizing what’s already inside you.
There is no such thing as a better system, systems being imposed by elites on the less well organized. There’s no such thing as a non-evil system in the context of a dominating State. There are only individuals. Some are awesome. Some are fucking evil. Most others fall in-between.
In the whole scope of it throughout this series, the theme has been pretty simple. Is there any real argument that Paleoman didn’t have better quality of knowledge of reality in observing animal tracks, his environment, sunsets…than Neolithic people reading Bibles and bowing to priests? I didn’t get one. Is there a real argument that your authority over yourself is inferior to that of a cloistered intellectual clothed in influence and dominion over you? I didn’t get one. Is there any real argument in opposition to my assertion that entrepreneurs, engineers and creators deal with reality, while cloistered intellectuals in various levels of institution deal in fear, illusion and force by comparison? I didn’t get one.
…Is there any argument that massive societal problems are more caused by those “greedy” who create the jobs and things you buy, than by an elite Nomenklatura who, rather than engineer, start-up, employ, manufacture, market and distribute, deal in fear, alarm, caution…anything that will serve to get you to give them the time of day? I didn’t get one.
Is there an argument that Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Ford, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, James J. Hill, et al, killed one 10 millionth of the people that States have been responsible for killing in the last couple of hundreds of years? I didn’t get one.
Has there been an argument that it’s so much manifestly better to collectivize on a scale into the billions and get a 1-in-millions or billions of a say in our own affairs, over the social power we evolved to project in small social groups? I didn’t get one.
And so now, now you know that some weird, sure-to-fail revolution is the last thing on my mind; imposing anything is the last thing on my mind; domination of others is the last thing on my mind; that, in the end, this is merely a call for awareness, doing better, managing your own life, ministering to those you love. Above all, love and teach those children and grandchildren yourselves. Trust no one else to do it.
There’s no better way to be an example.
Update: I began Part 1 of this series with a quote by Jeffrey Tucker.
Anarchy is all around us. Without it, our world would fall apart. All progress is due to it. All order extends from it. All blessed things that rise above the state of nature are owed to it. The human race thrives only because of the lack of control, not because of it. I’m saying that we need ever more absence of control to make the world a more beautiful place. It is a paradox that we must forever explain.
As it turns out, I just learned, he has a new book out: A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age
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A Beautiful Anarchy: How to Create Your Own Civilization in the Digital Age is Jeffrey Tucker’s rhapsodic hymn to the digital age, and a call to use the tools it has granted us to enhance human freedom, and to reduce and end intellectual dependency on the state. It shows that every truly valuable aspect of our lives extends not from politics and the regime but from our own voluntary choices.
Choice has created the marvels of the digital age that bestows its benevolence on us every day. Its greatest contribution has been to link the people of the world in communication.
The critical fact about communication is its creative power. It is a form of exchange. The goods exchanged are not property but ideas, and this exchange results in new ideas, new intellectual wealth, the precondition for changing the world.
Unscripted, uncontrolled, uncensored communication illustrates the productive power of anarchy. The more this communicative anarchy has advanced, the more it has served to build civilization.
This is a triumph for human liberty, Tucker argues, and with liberty comes flourishing and the cultivation of civilized life. Philosophers of all ages have dreamed of a world without power, despots, and bullies — a world built by people and for people. The market in the digital age is delivering that to us.
And it’s not only about us. It’s about everyone. Wherever the state is not standing in the way, prosperity comes flooding in. We are in the midst of the longest and most-dramatic period of poverty reduction the world has ever known. In the last ten years, some 70 million people have been lifted from destitution. Fewer than half the people who were so 25 years ago still qualify today.
The reason is technology, communication, entrepreneurship, and that wonderful trajectory away from gatekeepers toward personal empowerment the world over. This is the gift of the digital age, the most spectacular and revolutionary period of change the world has ever known.
The aims of A Beautiful Anarchy are (1) to draw attention to the reality that surrounds us but we hardly ever bother to notice, much less celebrate; (2) to urge a willingness to embrace this new world as a means of improving our lives regardless of what the anachronistic institutions of power wish us to do; (3) to elucidate the causes and effects that have created this new world; and (4) to urge more of the good institutions that have created this beautiful anarchy.
This books covers the uses of social media, the blessed end of the nation-state, the way the government is destroying the physical world, the role of commerce in saving humanity, the depredations of nation-state monetary policy, the evil of war and the lie of national security, and private societies as agents of liberation. And it offers a hopeful prognosis for a creative and productive world without central control. The book is topical, pithy, and anecdotal, yet points to the big ideas and the larger picture to help frame the great economic and political debates of our time.
Here’s a Reason.TV interview with Jeffrey about the book and these ideas. He has quite the personal style.
~~~
- Part 1: The Quality of Paleolithic Knowledge
- Part 2: The Quality of Neolithic Knowledge
- Part 3: The Problem With Authority
- Part 4: Having One’s Cake and Eating It Too
- Part 5: The Real Hobgoblins
- Part 6: Democide
- Part 7: The Quality of Paleolithic Social Power
- Part 8: The Quality of Neolithic Social Power
- Part 9: Conclusion; How to Fix Everything
Thank you for sharing spirit and rationale.
Encourages me in thinking that statelessness is inescapable for the moral human.
It’s very simple but not easy nor failsafe.
It’s individual, each in their ‘own way’.
Brought this to mind :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rb1rse0fKs
I almost emailed you last weekend to ask if you intended to finish this series with a positive theory of what to do with all this. I”m glad to see that’s materialized.
I”m sincerely curious as to why you take money and/or barter as givens.
Not that you need to address these points specifically, but here is some of my underlying thinking:
As the use of money begins to pervade particular cultures, humans across history exhibit a consistent pattern of debt peonage followed by either revolution or regime changes that cancel the debt. It seems that the only thing money consistently buys is sex and the emergence of wage slavery.
Despite the prevailing cosmological economic narrative, and despite global searching, anthropologists have yet to find a single culture that consistently uses barter. One modified exception is when cultures with money temporarily have no access to coins or paper money. On the other hand, hundreds of cultures exhibit economies based on informal and “voluntary” credit systems. As the latter scenario is well suited to local economies, it seems that the method(s) of exchange you propose might carry the unintentional consequence of replacing social interactions with abstract notions of value.
One reason I think the question of money (and entrepreneurialism by extension) is interesting is that there are good reasons to believe that monetizing things you love diminishes their intrinsic value.
Your reference to Ford, Carnegie, Rockefeller, et al is an appropriate analogy in pointing out the killing potential of the state. But for those of us who already find all iterations of the state problematic, it’s hard to recognize much, if anything, about those captains of industry that resembles anything approximating anarchy. At some point, “just be thankful you’re not dead” loses its selling power.
It’s not clear why you’re against revolution. Is that because the state as you/we currently experience it is sufficiently benign? It’s difficult to imagine there wouldn’t be some forms of state power under which you’d change that recommendation. If there is such a point, the point would certainly rely on subjective value judgments made by individuals, and would vary by one’s particular situation within said state. That would make it difficult to make a decision based on your estimation, which springs from a unique context.
And knowing that our entire economic (and money) system is predicated on infinite growth, do you account for the process in which things that were once free, and are privatized and sold back to us to generate growth, has already largely enveloped most human interactions? If sufficient growth potential has already been tapped, and we enter a steady-state economic period, economic revolution will happen without a single revolutionary. It wouldn’t be novel for me to say the expansion in credit over the last two or three decades represents a de facto signal that growth is failing, and the credit paradigm only remains valid to the extent that this economy is able to benefit from the growth of other economies. Since those other economies are largely modeled after the U.S. economy, it’s reasonable to at least consider that, while providing illusory growth, such growth is merely temporary.
I can’t find a single place where Richard mentioned money, and barter was mentioned briefly with caveats. I personally think that some kind of money is inevitable (probably precious metals). In this age of information, 100% barter might be possible though.
You say that our economic system is predicated on infinite growth. I think you have too much faith in TOP MEN knowing what the hell they’re talking about. Whatever our economic success is predicated on, the Ben Bernanks of the world have no idea how it actually works.
For me, the robber barons referenced just reinforced the idea that the absolute “worst” that free enterprise has produced has paled in comparison to the evils of the state. Then again I would attribute their worst excesses TO the state’s enablement.
As for revolution, has there ever been a revolution where the revolutionaries didn’t immediately attempt to put their version of a state into power, often with disastrous consequences? For a fun fictional example, I recommend Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. In real life, it seems to me that French people would have been better off doing just about anything OTHER than that revolution.
Don’t be silly. The definition of “income stream” is “flow of money.”
Your second paragraph demonstrates significant confusion, and a splash of petulance. Understanding how money is created both historically, and currently via the Federal Reserve System, requires zero “faith” in Ben Bernanke. Magicians generally understand the mechanics behind their illusions. The job of the magician is to convince the audience that the magic is real. The fact that the conjured illusion isn’t real doesn’t imply the mechanics underpinning the magic are also illusory. There is a real system of money creation underpinning Bernanke’s role as Economic Magician In-Chief. Interestingly, that system doesn’t require that the money is real. In any case, that system is based on debt, and requires infinite growth for the debt obligations to be met.
“I”m sincerely curious as to why you take money and/or barter as givens.”
Actually, those are merely tools for what is really going on: value exchange. We all exchange values on many levels—even purely emotional ones—all of our lives. Like much else, money or some form of barter are merely tools.
Moreover, there’s a pretty long history dealing in private currencies and private banking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_currency
“Today, there are over four-thousand privately issued currencies in more than 35 countries. These include commercial trade exchanges that use barter credits as units of exchange, private gold and silver exchanges, local paper money, computerized systems of credits and debits, and electronic currencies in circulation, such as digital gold currency.”
I try not to make proscriptions or prescriptions for anyone, but I’m pretty sure the cat is already out of the bag on money in terms of “commonly accepted medium of exchange.” I suspect that more such private experiments in such would foster the sorts of innovations that might eventually make fiat money obsolete. Long road, to be sure.
“As the latter scenario is well suited to local economies, it seems that the method(s) of exchange you propose might carry the unintentional consequence of replacing social interactions with abstract notions of value.”
Sure. Let’s face the fact that short of apocalypse, we’re not going back to primitive groups of 30-50 HGs. I think, however, that even now there are signs of pushback in terms of digital tools that allow people to have 2,000 “friends.” Sometimes, the disease itself is its own cure. I cut my own _personal_ FB account from around 100 to the ~30 fiends and family I know best, almost all in real space. FB then became a far better value.
I think what the future portends is a clearer distinction between levels of social engagement we participate in. I encourage you to watch the interview by Jeffrey Tucker I appended to the end of the post. He predicts the next gatekeeper to topple is “Nationalism” and gives some compelling reasons as to why that actually ring true to me. One level of my social engagement is international, people all over the world, in blog comments and even lots of personal email.
I don’t think we can escape abstract notions of value. I don’t think that’s bad, so long as I can employ say, one value set with my wife, another with family, another in terms of business I do.
“One reason I think the question of money (and entrepreneurialism by extension) is interesting is that there are good reasons to believe that monetizing things you love diminishes their intrinsic value.”
I don’t believe in intrinsic value. All values require a valuer and that necessarily makes all values subjective. I don’ think that’s bad. What’s important is that we are social animals and thus, there will always be enough subjective commonality such that people associate with those—in whatever level, personal, familial, business—who hold similar values.
“But for those of us who already find all iterations of the state problematic, it’s hard to recognize much, if anything, about those captains of industry that resembles anything approximating anarchy.”
I recommend this pretty quick read, actually, I’m only part way through but it’s pretty damn enlightening.
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Robber-Barons-Business-America/dp/0963020315
Vanderbilt, for example, got his start by illegally busting the NY State imposed monopoly for ferry transport. He cut prices, dramatically, and at one point cut prices to zero because he sold food on the ferries. The transportation was a loss leader.
James J. Hill built the Great Northern Railway without a penny of government money and without using Eminent Domain. Etc etc.
No, they weren’t anarchists but in many cases, they actually opposed the state, which is also why they often grew so rapidly.
“It’s not clear why you’re against revolution. Is that because the state as you/we currently experience it is sufficiently benign? It’s difficult to imagine there wouldn’t be some forms of state power under which you’d change that recommendation.”
Precisely. Yes, I think that in the democracies of the world now, simply not worth it and would probably end up being worse. In a despotic regime, what’s to lose?
Again, I refer you to that video by Jeffrey Tucker. I think his contention that we are at the very beginning of the information, non-gate-kept, decentralized digital revolution and can’t even begin to imagine the changes that will sweep through is compelling. IOW, let’s wait and see before everyone starts shooting at everyone.
As to your last paragraph, I think that over time physical resources in terms of physical property and resources will become far overshadowed by the value of information and knowledge. I understand the left-anarchist arguments concerning private property. I would prefer to see private property become less important over time. As, for example, if you purchase a condo in a high rise. Your actual sliver of real land the thing sits on is of minuscule compared to the integrated value of the whole project.
I do have specific thoughts concerning debt/credit based economies, but this is getting to long already.
Re: Tucker video
With him on nationalism. Mostly.
The rest of the interview comes off as someone so out of touch with being a human animal that the consumerism bursts out of his eyes in a shower of iridescent sparkles.
I couldn’t disagree more with his idealization of universalization and this sort of reductionsim: “our own micro-civilizations really consist mostly of the information we get, the information we give, and the things we learn on a day-to-day basis…” Do they? If they do, then why? If we know why, then how the fuck to we top it? I experience my current day-to-day information world as a hell compared to the beauty of a world without screens―screens that imply a barrier―whether it’s virtual viewport, barbed wire, no trespassing signs, or an actual gate.
Tucker has internalized the spectator role so deeply that he’s even fetishized the idea of trading-in the physical world for information. He’s positively beaming about the prospect of dissolving into a sphere of digital stimuli. It’s no surprise he’s in love with iStuff―perhaps most distinguished from previous personal I/O devices by their decreased outputs from the human (e.g., no keyboards) and increased inputs to the human (e.g., HD screens filled by 4G bandwidth).
The humans who experience the highest well-being or happiness or thriving (or whatever comparable term) are those who are participators in their own self-expression. Jeffrey Tucker’s dream is a world in which spectators consume the expression of professionals playing the role of participators. To shift it in a more blunt frame, musicians get laid because of their musicianship a lot more than record collectors get because of their record collections.
In other words, I think we might be farther apart on this now than I did after reading your response, but before watching the video. Setting Tucker aside, I think of you as more of a “free the animal to experience the physical world” than a “free the animal from the physical world” kind of guy.
See, Andrew? All values are subjective, even amongst people who spurn organized violence.
For my own part, it waxes & wanes. Over the holidays I spent a whole lot of time away from the gadgets. I think I went 2 days once without even checking email, much less comments on the blog or what was going on on Twitter & Facebook. Actually, as concerns Twitter, I rarely anymore even scan through the streams of the 85 people I follow. That was all to the good.
It’s one of those things I wouldn’t really like to live without, anymore than I’d want to live without many of the other tools I use in life. That said, I almost never buy anything anymore except food. Bea has to force me to buy clothes, I am not interested in another single trinket or knick knack for the house ever, my cars are paid off (a 2003 and 2006), each have about 100K miles but they are very good quality and will be driven into the ground. Et cetera.
So I personally, am pretty ambivalent about buying and consuming shit. But I don’t project that onto others and for a large part of the world still, it does please me to see them increasingly able to enjoy some of the things I’ve been able to take for granted.
So I guess in summary, I’m on the side of growth and individual development and growing out of things, over time. I certainly don’t want to see forced austerity. I see increasing stuff here and there by people, even young people, coming to realize that material things can be an empty pursuit. I see stuff like “The 100 Things” challenge. To the good.
I didn’t build the case here, but I absolutely don’t agree that values are subjective as such. I’m closer to Sam Harris on this one. Humans are bad at choosing means that lead to the ends they desire, and science provides a better referent than the shaky future-projection machines between our ears. Worse, human brains backwards rationalize choices to make us think our choices are subjectively correct, when we’re objectively lying to ourselves. The work of Daniel Gilbert is insightful on this point. This isn’t to say that such science should impose any of these things, but simply that ignoring the insights may preclude optimizing our lives as individuals. Granted, my argument in some ways requires a refutation of Mises’ Human Action, which begs for a refutation by what we’ve learned since his pen hit paper, but that is too complex for me to lay out here. That being the case, I can’t really press the point beyond the suggestion that the picture is bigger than the paradigm Tucker springs from.
Whether growth is “good” for human well-being/happiness/thriving is an empirical question. It has been demonstrated to be false. Just as we know simple cultures tend to have healthier teeth, we know that simple cultures tend to have healthier minds. The cosmology of the dominant culture pervades more than just religion, and the economic growth narrative is part of that cosmology.
I should have stuck with what you originally wrote rather than dwell on Tucker. Since I didn’t, I’ll let a recommendion for David Graeber’s “Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Charles Eisenstein’s Sacred Economics* (you can buy the book, but it’s available free/gift in HTML/ePub) stand in place of a more lengthy diatribe. Debt is great in terms of analyzing what’s worked and what hasn’t, and details some pockets of anarchist self-non-governance within current states. Sacred Economics lays out some pieces that I think are compatible with the vision you presented in the OP. Specifically, he discusses a more localized currency and some benefits to negative interest currency… both with respect to what we know about past and present cultures.
*I have some disagreements with Charles’ invocations of evolutionary biology and selfish genes. He clarified his position to me via email, but the mentions in the book are missing some context, and don’t jive with my perspective.
“I didn’t build the case here, but I absolutely don’t agree that values are subjective as such.”
I’ll clarify. Originally, you spoke of intrinsic values and that’s what I was speaking against. In other words, without human beings to value things, there’s no such thing as “value.” It’s just one big collection of cosmic star stuff arranged in various particular ways. In other words, I’m a materialist on that score.
Within the context of humans and other biological life, there are _objective_ values: water, shelter, an environment suitable to the animal’s evolutionary milieu, food, etc. There are also objective disvalues, such as poison.
Unique to humans is also the objective value of rights, owing to our natures of having to choose and act on our values—it doesn’t come automatically as so for other animals. Accordingly, we have natural rights because by nature, we have a choice.
But largely beyond that, values are largely subjective. As I often find, the world is replete with binary thinking: values are subjective or objective. No, both, depends on what they are. Sure, there’s overlap, plenty of room to argue about any particular value or set of values.
Sam Harris. (BTW, he did an interesting, surprising piece on the whole gun rights thing: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-riddle-of-the-gun ). I don’t buy his stuff about free will, I side more with Dennett.
“This isn’t to say that such science should impose any of these things”
Yea, but that’s the “slippery slope” though, isn’t it? A bunch of elites imposing by force because it’s SCIENCE!!!
I’ll almost always side with the messy bottom-up approach over the elitist top-down every time. And messy, deadly, bottom-up is the evolutionary, natural selection way.
Ironically, values are what transcend the whole free-will issue. It is quite obvious that humans, beyond the base objective values I’ve already addressed, seek to gain and keep a vast array of wildly divergent subjective values—like wearing a kilt, for instance :) . Perhaps even more importantly, humans will spend vastly different amounts of time, attention, energy and money on the very same subjective values. You might totally go crazy over getting some new kilt you like. Someone else might stick with the one they have.
Moreover, still on the issue of free will, I don’t think it’s an important distinction to assert that at some level of reduction it’s all chemicals, but that the atomic-level nature of which humans get which stuff, how much, and atomic level differences simulate “free will.” Our minds don’t have anywhere near that level of resolution and so, believing you have free will is in reality, tantamount to having free will.
“That being the case, I can’t really press the point beyond the suggestion that the picture is bigger than the paradigm Tucker springs from.”
I have no expectation that more mass, niche, unique information, more ideas, no gate keeping will automatically lead to vastly better ideas RIGHT NOW. I’m just asserting that for true human evolution of ideas to really work, we’re on the cusp of now doing that, finally, and it has the potential to vastly outstrip the Industrial Revolution in terms of changing life as we know it. I’m optimistic. Imagine how the whole communist experiment might have gone had there been internet and smart phones to broadcast to the world what was really happening? Instead, we got Walter Duranty and the NYT.
Regarding debt. The bigger problem is fiat currency that facilitates States acquiring increasing debt, often serviced through the tax of inflation. A commodity standard is some protection, but not a lot.
I think that finance is arguably the single biggest important innovation behind lifting people out of poverty and destitution. The cat is already out of the bag in terms of population, natural resource utilization and so on. But ironically, creative finance can just as easily be used in private capacities for good and betterment as it can by States to become bigger and bigger, more parasitic.
Because of the business I’ve run for 20 years negotiating small businesses and individuals out of massive debt burdens as an alternative to bankruptcy, I’ve seen thousands turn themselves around, learn their lesson, live within their means and use debt responsibly. It’s a tool. It can be used in good ways and bad.
It’s always instructive to contemplate what debt really is, most fundamentally. For an individual and small business, it’s simply the selling of futures. One is selling future labor, productivity, increased knowledge, talent, ability, effectiveness or even capital appreciation. But for the State, debt is the selling of futures for the ability to tax, the ability to print and inflate, or, as you have pointed out already, economic growth. Yes, I agree that’s a double edged sword. Economic growth is fine & dandy if it means clean water, decent shelter, adequate food, reasonable self-education, etc. Perhaps not as much if it means everyone uses more and more resources to buy, consume, and create landfills.
So in the end, yea, local private banks issuing their own currency, creating money, susceptible to failure where depositors lose their savings is the way to go in my view—as it used to be. No FDIC. Banks compete in terms of their conservative, sound asset management and careful lending. Moreover, private banking in this way contemplates the idea that a human “promise to repay” from a trustworthy source is a financial asset, a financial asset created out of thin air. And that’s the only basis upon which to create and deliver new money into the money supply.
There are seeds for whole new blog posts in here if you’re going to keep up the blog along with your writing. Values, money, bottoms up/top down.
“There are seeds for whole new blog posts in here”
That’s a good idea. In particular, while I’ve touched on money, debt, finance over the years in posts and comments, have owned a financial services company and traded full time in stocks and options, I don’t think I’ve ever done a series on Demystifying Money/Debt/Finance.
…Perhaps because it’s so mystifying to people. It’s actually quite simple, so I probably ought to do it. For instance, almost nobody has the slightest clue as to how new money is created. They think it’s just printed. That’s true physically (or digitally, now), but they don’t have a clue as to the underlying basis for money creation. Most of what I see is that ignorance manifest in calls for a “GOLD STANDARD,” a primitive, ignorant way to create money. Makes me laugh. All the gold ever mined in the history of the Earth fills THREE olympic sized swimming pools. That’s the basis of economies for billions?
But all you ever get is binary thinking and throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This is why I don’t read libertarian economic texts. Most are far too outdated anyway. The libertarians have most of the sound principle, but they are largely financial luddites.
So, anyway, one of the things I’ve developed my own ideas on over a couple of decades by never written much about.
This is by far the best entry in series. A great final message. It’s very Taoist you know, much as your ‘Free the Animal’ message is. Namely, we *already are x* – all we have to do is realize it and release it. Whether that is animality, or freedom (anarchy), or the Taoist original mind. The structures that harness us are varied and insidious, and they are upheld primarily *by default*. We enact the very same patterns of action consequent of these structures in a vain attempt to remove them, only further deepening our slavery. We all need to stop, to drop the patterned actions guaranteeing our own self-destruction.
Fantastic conclusion. Why do I have to comment to follow comments via email? I need to digest a bit.
Jim, has to do with the massive quantities of emails that would have to go out, so it’s a necessary limitation we set. There is an RSS feed for comments.
I agree with you completely, but there are consequences to anarchy that you must know already. Without complex organized society on the scale of billions there would not be billions of us. If (or better to say when) we return to anarchy we must accept that there would be no iPhones, no Internet, no cars for those 100 millions of us that will survive and be able to feed and sustain themselves living of the land and without oil. You might not live to see it but me and my kids certainly will.
“Without complex organized society on the scale of billions there would not be billions of us.”
But there already are billions of us.
I do not believe that complex organization in society requires the state.
“If (or better to say when) we return to anarchy…”
I think you’re missing the point. It’s simply about individuals turning from centralized violence to get things done. Everything will still get done—literally everything, including iPhones, cars & airplanes. None of these require centralized force and violence to produce.
Ahhhh, nothing like a post that soothes my moral compass and reminds me that I am not a complete fucking weirdo. Many of the grander points you made define how I have been attempting to live my life for the past ten years. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have begun this journey at the age of 20 (16?), encouraged by wise teachers who never gave me the answers and always pushed my to go further down the rabbit hole. Fortunately I have been able to convince my wife/partner (over the past 11 years) to continue exploring her own rabbit hole, which for many can be a scary place at first glance.
One of my greatest fears in life is to stop caring, exploring and asking big questions. Time spent in this virtual community help keep the flame alive when the real world is a bit lacking. It is not a replacement for the true fire of social reality, but a nice dry log when the fire is starting to wane.
Thanks again, everyone.
This is pretty much exactly what I have long believed (but only found words for relatively recently: it sucks to be a kid sometimes). People tell me I want weapons or wealth in order to control them, that what I am really aiming at is always some untamed, destructive lust beneath the thin layer of civilization as we currently experience it en masse instead of something more civilized. They think I want to exterminate the mob (the way a dictator like Mao, Stalin, or Hitler would do), when all I really want to do is sunder myself more from it. I don’t want to use the mob. I want a gun of my own so that I don’t have to put up those signs threatening to call the police (or the military: give me a gun and destroy the nukes, the drones, the biological weapons; who is the real villain here, again? who kills more people?). I want knowledge so that I don’t have to go begging to empty suits when a little information with context would help me get through a necessary transaction. I want wisdom so that I am not dependent on jobs (my own or anybody else’s) when it comes to evaluating risks and taking the ones that are worth it to me.
Civilization is part of what human nature is and has been for a long time now. The process of civilization, like all evolutionary processes, stirs up a lot of shit as it moves on. We get a lot of death in the pursuit of life. But we don’t have to carry it all around with us everywhere. The genius of evolution is that we can keep going. We can become more civilized, putting away the shit that doesn’t work. We can stop voting when it stops being a useful process. We can stop shooting when the situation doesn’t need more bullets. We can stop going to school when that means killing our bodies as well as our souls (as it doesn’t always and needn’t, as far as I am concerned). We can stop believing things without destroying ourselves. We can change our minds. I can get along with you even if I cannot read your mind, even if we approach individual situations very differently (and always will). I don’t need an army of my friends to make you do things my way (or die), as though it were the only way (for you or for me, even).
Life seems crazier and crazier to me as I get older. People come around talking about stuff, and some of them just make no sense. People love peace, but then they have no idea what it costs, what the price for their peace is. Some of them naively think that it is possible to exist without taking life, and they end up out-sourcing their killing to some government representative (who might or might not be elected: that doesn’t really matter much when it comes to his practical function). “I can’t be bothered to kill my food, to see how my commercial decisions are killing people in my country and abroad, to face the reality that I am paying taxes and casting votes to prolong wars of conquest and dominion that elected officials wage as my representatives in countries I couldn’t find on a map.” I can’t live that way. I just can’t. I tried for years, and it always felt wrong. It still feels wrong. How could I want more of this–more lies, more illusion of control, more “people like me” (gag) empowered to make decisions that are manifestly beyond human capacity to make well as I know it? I just cannot handle it.
Sometimes I think I should just die, but I cannot because (in spite of what it costs) I really love my life. My family, friends, and the little experiences I have every day mean a lot to me, too much probably (to the degree that that attachment makes me feel OK sentencing others to live miserable under the despotic powers that deliver me goods and services I have been conditioned to expect as though they were some kind of human right). If I ever see clearly how my death becomes a net gain for the things I really love more than my life is, though, I am definitely gone. I am not willing to live complicit in causing more pain than I alleviate (for myself as for others: I am not an altruist in any pure sense; ultimately, this is about me, as all individual human decisions are about the mind that makes them, as far as I can tell).
Thanks for saying this, Richard. It means a lot to me to see that there are people with this mindset out there in the world.
When I say I can’t live that way, what I really mean is that I cannot live without acknowledging the ways in which my life costs other life. I am perfectly happy going to the store and buying meat, but I cannot pretend some animal didn’t die so that I might live (the same way plants died so that the animal might live and/or so that I might have some nice seasoning for my dinner). I am not a hippy, nor some kind of wild man living in the woods without modern conveniences (or even aspiring to that life). I can live with modern culture, modern civilization even, but I cannot pretend that this civilization doesn’t make shit–and I have to admit that sometimes that shit really stinks.
FYI to anyone getting email notification, this morning I went in and did some edits here & there for better readability. I also added a significant update about a new book by Jeffrey Tucker that fits right into the general theme. You might want to check it out, along with the short Reason.TV interview i put up.
“We’re only great as a species because we’re so capable of both such enormous evil and such amazing splendor, all in a single species of animal and the greatness is in choosing the good over the evil.”
Human mind is mose divisive mind to ever exist because of just what you say, Richard. Whereas naked mole rat can no do too much damages, human can take out entire planet if they choose to –but they can also make for second act of ballet Gizelle.
I no think human gonna make it, Richard. If nothing else, over population, environment distortion and/or resource usurpation gonna bring about massive depopulation event.
But, you know, maybe is worth, for second act of Gizelle.
I with you cow. I too sees massive depopulations event come.
I also predict a depopulation event, but I doubt it’s the same one that you and Leo foresee.
The rate of growth in population has slowed and is slowing. The more developed nations become, the fewer children they have. If that trend continues, a slow and gradual depopulation will begin in the early 22nd century, declining to some sort of sustainable “homeostasis”.
I agree, Joshua.
Ironically, many of the “return to simple agrarian nature” types also bemoan population levels. Nothing grows populations like agrarian poverty and the need for more cheap labor in the form of children. And nothing makes birth rates begin to level off, even to less than replacement levels like economic development and relative wealth.
So, yea, Paul Ehlich was laughably wrong in 1968 and is still wrong. Just as with many very hardcore environmentalists (I’m more of a conservationist), they look around in nature, filled with all manner of negative feedback loop homeostatic/stability systems and conclude that all human derived action is a positive feedback, unstable chain-reaction bomb, like nuclear fission.
Go figure.
The only sort of a mass depopulation event I can envision is some new pathogen. It’s happened before and germs are pretty damn clever.
Yeah, I’m afraid that a new pathogen is pretty much guaranteed, but I doubt it would take out more than a billion of us & that would barely even slow us down.
In my mind, to qualify as “massive” depopulation, it’s gotta kill at least a third.
1 billon or 3 billion deaths in a short period of time is catastrophic any way you slice it, I think.
Richard, I can appreciate that you are sincere in this and you truly believe in what you wrote; but the vast majority of people (say 95%) would think that this is a load of bollocks if they ever read it. Why? because they have too much to lose and too little to gain. Look at the evidence on the right hand side of this blog page, Leangains and Jack Kruse dominate, a very practical, clear guide to physical improvement and entertainment provided by a crazy, mad genius stirring shit.
And Simons’s comment above is WHY I foresee the massive depopulation event a coming. Ignorance is bliss (ha! If only we were blissful) until you’re dead.
The whole thing is so fucking tragic. Shakespeare will be put to shame when the story of the 21st-22nd century is told.
Serious question: what the fuck is going to happen when we run out of oil? Anyone have any informed predictions on this one?
“what the fuck is going to happen when we run out of oil? Anyone have any informed predictions on this one?”
I doubt it will happen. Should it become scarce it will be priced accordingly. This is what markets do. Then other sources of energy will become increasingly attractive. Take photovoltaic. Like flat screen TVs that cost $15,000 in ’97 when they came out. Now they are everywhere, under $1,000 and lighter and thinner than ever.
I think it was around 2002 I went over to a friend’s house who also flies hang-gliders (owns his own airplane, too). He’s an electrician by trade and had recently installed photovoltaic cells on his roof. It was a sunny day, so he took me out to the meter to demonstrate how it was running backwards, feeding power back to the grid.
I looked around and saw all these roofs—mini power stations. All you need is the economies of scale to get the price of the cells down, and it’s an obvious deal. And now, that day has arrived. Companies are now installing for free. They assume your entire electric bill and charge you a reasonable markup which pays for the equipment over something like 20 years. Alternatively, you can just pay for the installation and realize the entire savings yourself.
This is just beginning to be scratched but it’s so obvious. There are hundreds of millions of residential and commercial rooftops the world over just waiting to become power stations. I don’t know what the relief would be in terms of generating electricity, but at that scale it’s gotta be pretty damned important.
I am forever mystified over hand wringing over natural resources. I’m sure there were people running all over warning that eventually, we’d run out of whales from which to render blubber in order to fuel lamps.
With regard to oil, I like the possibilities with algae. I also want to believe that thorium nuclear has potential, but I don’t like its odds with cheap fossil energy. If there are suddenly shortages in fossil energy, then prices will rise, and incentives for alternatives will be enough to stimulate better development.
Thanks fellas for the responses. This is what I dug up with half an hour of research, too. Thanks.
“but the vast majority of people (say 95%) would think that this is a load of bollocks if they ever read it.”
Seems about right. Dismissed by the ignorant. Well excuse me while I wipe away a tear. …The vast majority of people since the Neolithic never had much of an original thought, critical analysis, or their own ability to elucidate what they think in some chain of reason beginning with first precepts or principles, carrying forward into a consistent hierarchy of knowledge—in their entire lives.
First they are indoctrinated with a collection of good-sounding memes and then they spend their lives licking their finger and pointing it up in the air in order to confirm what it is they are supposed to think, which is what everyone else thinks. Then they have children and indoctrinate them with the same memes. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I _only_ care about original thinkers in terms of ideas. Only and exclusively, which means I don’t care much about what 95-99% of people think about the human condition. Because they don’t actually, truly think. That is changing, owing to the rapid and free flow of information that’s not gate-kept by a State and its three news networks. Increasingly, I see little blogs here and there with people attempting to tap out something that’s their very own take on things. Good. And the youth seem increasingly to question the memes of their fathers and mothers. Good.
“because they have too much to lose and too little to gain.”
That’s what they “think,” and they think it because it’s the conventional “wisdom” they were indoctrinated with and simply regurgitate.
All of this isn’t necessarily to say that I’m right. It is to say, however, that at least I’ve taken a rather unique position (even in terms of anarchist thought) that is very largely my own, and that’s because for 20 years I’ve taken nothing as a given and I’ve thought about it al that time, written about it, and argued endlessly about it. I’m defending my own ideas. Very few people actually do that. They are either defending somebody else’s ideas they agree with, or some synthesis of ideas they have managed to piece together.
BTW, in addition to the posts I did on Leangains and Kruse that are popular, there is also The Manifesto, at 25,000 views and that has been up there a far shorter time than Leangains (these are cumulative views, not views just in the last 30 days). That Manifesto largely prefigures this series. There’s also the Potato diet and Fat Bread, both very recent, and then the no-soap post—all of which are the practical side of things.
It never ceases to amaze me as a blogger, the sense of entitlement people have because they grace me with eyeballs.
Do you have an opinion as to why this anarcho, Libertarian thinking is primarily an Anglo-sphere phenomenon?
Seems like the rest of the world is fairly resolved to statist realities, what with aristocratic Latin America, “big-man” minded Africa, courtesan/feudal Asia and the religiously totalitarian Middle East. Where are the Patrick Henrys of color?
Could an argument be made that the rationalist anarchy you espouse has much to do with race and ethnicity?English common law, the Magna Carta, classical natural law, Austrian school, etc. etc. simply don’t have non-Western analogues.
In other words, as white folks dwindle will anarcho libertarian ideals correlate?
(At my school the libertarians are almost all lilly white while the politically minded non-white students and faculty seem to care almost exclusively about “social justice” and “organizing”. )
“Seems like the rest of the world is fairly resolved to statist realities, what with aristocratic Latin America, “big-man” minded Africa, courtesan/feudal Asia and the religiously totalitarian Middle East. Where are the Patrick Henrys of color?”
The industrial revolution taught them nothing except where to migrate to.
“Could an argument be made that the rationalist anarchy you espouse has much to do with race and ethnicity?”
No. Coincidence and circumstance. Cold, ice age, and surviving it, perhaps. Skin color is not a cause, only an effect. Ethnicity and culture, perhaps. But neither—while associated with because of how they originated—depend upon skin color. Skin color is irrelevant. Its merely an association.
“At my school the libertarians are almost all lilly white while the politically minded non-white students and faculty seem to care almost exclusively about “social justice” and “organizing”. ”
Well, yes. The chip on that shoulder will persist for a long time for many. ….And turning immigration from an opportunity for a better life to things like refuge from oppression, social services, public dole and such over the decades has not helped matters at all. I think we still incentivise the entrepreneurial risk taker, but they are getting drowned out by the parasites.
I think is mainly cultural. In the case of Latin America, is a question I have been exploring many years, here are some bullet points:
– Latin America was a child of the Middle Ages, whereas USA was a child of the enlightment, so the ideas and goals of the immigrants were completely different.
– Latin America first adopted the ideas of the enlightment and wanted to prosper, but when the USA outcompeted those countries, to explain it, the elites created cultural icons that highlighted something special and spiritual about Latin America against the pursuit of wealth and freedom in USA, creating great internal contradictions. Then marxism came along and the disparities were explained by opression, etc.
– Latin America education was traditionally scholastic, based on memorization, repetition and no questioning of authority.
– A belief caused by nationalism and culture that the countries, systems and laws are great, but currently they are managed by ‘bad persons’ and will someday change when ‘good persons’ take power. No questioning that the system is unworkable.
RJ
No point in even a slight quibble here & there, because the essentials seem pretty solid to me.
I gotta say. Latin America is so wonderfully rich in wonderful people and yet, it seems to want to be more like Africa. It has everything. Frustrating sadness.
latin american here
There was various wars here, the most infamous being the triple alliance war. altought that war effectively destroyed paraguay for decades, the wars are not satisfactory explanations. Usa had wars, europe had huge wars.
The elites (aristocracy, oligarchy) here cutted down the liberties of the people, and (important and) they weren’t agents of change, liberty, science, etc. long to explain, but the entrepreneurs here mainly did two things in sXIX: they were land owners. Latifundismo. The other entrepreneurs were mainly about trade of expensive goods from others countries like england. Both always worked very closely with the goverments. That would explain the appeal to marxism. That would explain too the low appeal of the liberal thinking (liberal as Adam smith, Locke, etc). The private sector here was small, and closely related to the state. Sometimes they were essencially the state. Only during very leftists goverments the private sector was less related to the state (but no that much…). There never was a sector of the private sector that were powerful or numerous and without very strong ties to the goverment.
I think that this is the reason why
The last point of RJ is enterly true. The people here don’t fight for or expect freedom, they just want better employement conditions. This is changing, but slowly.
btw, i don’t comprehend enterely the libertarian tought neither. There are statists from the left, from the right and between; and nothing more. The anarchist were almost wiped out. There are one or two libertarians only.
PD: that “parasites” speech i don’t like it either. Anarchists, marxists, objetivists, capitalists, conservatives, etc, etc, etc. They all use it, in a world were are thousand of jobs that are superflous at best.
Hi Chris:
Thanks for commenting from the other down under.
I don’t fully grasp your comment but the principal thing I get from it is that no matter the base political persuasion of any players, the State was strong enough that most found it easiest to placate and do business with the state.
It that about right?
Happy to explore more with you.
BTW, I’m very interested in Ecuador as an eventual beach retirement designation. I read very good things about it and it rates very highly amongst expats internationally.
Again, love the international mix folks like you bring.
the core of the idea is that the private sector here was much more tied to the goverment than in usa and europe. also, the “latifundismo” was much stronger, that means few people with land. In other words, less freedom, less people with dreams. Less people confident, thinkin that they can do something by themselves. Less individualism.
america latina is an hybrid between europa and africa. elites plus primary goods.
this is one of the main reason why i think in america latina ideas like libertarianism are much less popular compared to usa.
I don’t fully grasp the ideas myself. i understand them, but various things i disagree but i think that they may be true in other parts of the world. Perhaps i’m wrong. The situation is slowly changing though. I mean, a cultural change. For better, even with the left leaning governments and excessive public spending.
Chris
Ok’ that clarifies.
You srike me as a smart man interested more in sea change of time (cultural) vs. revolution that harms at least as many people as it helps. I’m a fan of that.
yeah…
there are a lot of problems of course.
there are more people with their own investments. two friends will start a business soon, and i will join them (as employee… for now)
the government put barriers. a big barrier named bureaucracy. worse than ever. but nonetheless there are more and more small and medium enterprises. which is very odd, because there are two-digit inflation (+20%! in my country, argentina), taxes, annoying and complex bureaucracy, quality of life and adquisitive power almost stagnated. i don’t know if this situation is sustainable and stable or all will fall apart. but regardless of that, the cultural change is happening, and that change is something powerful and a real and durable change.
Richard, Finally read your 9 parter, It’s beautiful, I’ve being talking this shit for years, the flaw is whilst we in the process of slow generational change, the system of the world is about to annihilate the planet, we *cannot* just watch. Gary