Libertarian and Anarchist Society Part III by SignyM

Siggy, I got no problem with legit questions, beyond the fact that I might be busy with RL stuff and unable to address them as speedily as some would like - but a lot of questions are couched in terms and assumptions that render answering them as pointless as "So, are you still beating your wife", and other such setups.

I did note Rue's comment about technology taking a hit or not continuing to advance, and HKC already stated that it wouldn't, I thought we were clear on that point initially, and then realised perhaps it should be re-iterated.

Thing is, a lot of what HKC says approaches unity with what I say, only he does one hell of a better job than I do of articulating it... point in example...

He mentions the Genie, and letting it out of the bottle - compare that to my own comments such as "The more a persons humanity is suppressed, the more distorted the form in which it finally expresses itself."

We're saying the same thing - but HE manages to get it across, while when I say the same thing it either doesn't get across, or is instantly dismissed, or no one pays attention to it.

This is also why I am more inclined to give you a direct answer, as well, because you simply ask the question - rather than distorting the whole concept, throwing in assumptions that change it's nature radically, and then framing the question in such a way that no answer is going to make SENSE...

I cannot stress how wide the mental disconnect between the two forms of thought are, it's VERY hard for me to "get" what someone is asking unless they're very direct about it, without assumptions that other aspects of society would remain exactly the same, few of which, if any, would... and that changes the whole nature of the question and answer into something that would not even apply, you see?

And that is driving the folks trying to explain things up a wall, when even trying to get THAT across in either direction is also contaminated by various levels of hostility and snark in both directions - to be honest, I did not expect this discussion to be as productive as it has been, and I am seriously grateful to HKC for his ability to conceptually express a lotta things I been sayin around here for years now.

I already made my point for the folk I don't feel are here TO discuss it, so I need not re-iterate, just, if you want straight answers, ya need straight questions that are not pre-loaded with assumptions, right ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 7:40 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

When people who I repsect and admire all point to something that I can't seem to see, I want to take a GOOD LOOK in that direction. Thanks for continuing the discussion.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 10:26 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I wanted to give you some insight on people being "born evil". (Evil is a pejorative word, but some kids are really tough to take.)

Quote:
With such a mess up came seizures by late Sunday night/ Monday morning. Her nurse had to give her ativan yesterday and again this morning.... Of course the last couple of days the "old" Riley is back. Screaming, running, throwing stuff , just being obnoxious.

http://brain.hastypastry.net/forums/showthread.php?t=27116 son is 15. He had his first seizure when he was 6. He was diagnosed with complex partial seizures. I had taken him to a psychiatrist when he was 3 because of his severe temper tantrums. She told me it was because he was delayed in his speech. When Ryan had is last EEG in Nov 2002, it was normal: The first normal EEG since he was 6. We started tapering off Tegretol. After a couple of months with less Tegretol the mood swings and violent behavior started. We never increased the Tegretol to more than 400 mg during that time. However, after he tried to choke my husband and broke so many things in our home, I took him back to the psychiatrist. He diagnosed Intermittent Explosive Disorder He raised his Tegretol to the dose he was taking before, 1000 mg. Within a couple of weeks, he was better, but then one day he refused to go to school. Then he threatened suicide. He was cycling between being completely manic and running around to stopping and crying and saying he wanted to die. I called the pdoc who said to call the police and have him admitted to the hospital. Is it possible that he is having "deep brain or" or "limbic area," seizures? Or could the EEG just have been wrong? thank you!

www.medhelp.org/forums/neuro/messages/32442.html
And who can forget Seung-Hui Cho and the massacre at Virginia Tech?

Quote:
Cho's family, particularly family members who remained in South Korea, had concerns about Cho's behavior during his early childhood. Cho's relatives thought that he was mute or possibly mentally ill. According to Cho's uncle, Cho "didn’t say much and did not mix with other children." ... During an ABC News Nightline interview on August 30, 2007, Cho's grandfather reported his concerns about Cho's behavior during childhood. According to Cho's grandfather, Cho never... {made} eye contact, never called him grandfather, and never made physical contact to hug him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seung-Hui_Cho

A lot of kids have seriously abberant behavior because of developmental issues. I could go on about some of Bill Gates' more interesting quirks too. Again, not their fault.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 1:29 PM

That's what CITIVAS and the ChildTrauma Academy DO though, Siggy, is find ways to solve, mitigate, or prevent such aberration on a long term basis, while recognizing how critical early intervention and non-adversarial childrearing is.

That's why I keep mentioning them, because relative to this discussion their work is extraordinarily important.

Cho, on the other hand, is another can of worms, which I am very reluctant to open and would rather *not* get sidetracked discussing in detail, but.. umm.. how many of those students who Cho gunned down execution style were armed ?

Weapons restrictions aside, we have completely vilified self-defense in this society to the point where wackos and criminals DEPEND on "sympathetic environment" to work their will.

HKC has already touched on that point, but in Cho's case it shows the complete failure of learned helplessness as a defense measure - one doesn't have to be paranoid, just accepting of the fact that such things can happen in an imperfect world and be prepared to deal with that via means other than denial.

No, it's NOT possible to weed out or mitigate every potential screwball, nor would you want to, Harry Harrison, in his Stainless Steel Rat series, throws a couple of shots in that direction, and he's got a point cause some of those screwballs have lead to social and technological advancements no one else would have ever thought of.

But we can do our best to find out what, why, and how, and put real and actual effort into helping those folk rather than dismissing them and writing them off - as you may surmise, there's a little personal experience with the being written off thing going on there, as well as some lasting bitterness over it.

I was "born evil" too... am I a monster, then ?

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 1:37 PM

Not sure how to really express this one, carrying over from another thread where we were discussing negotiation...

Any of you ever seen the movie,
The Outlaw Josey Wales ?

One of the things that makes it my favorite movie is when he goes off to settle matters with the Comanche, and ACTUALLY NEGOTIATES like a mature, adult, human being instead of shooting everyone in sight.

In fact, that movie does show up a lot of the mindset I am talking about, even better so because Wales is imperfect, a bit on the vengeful side perhaps, but also humane, at times even charitable - without regard to Governments or laws.

If you haven't seen it, it's worth a watch, cause it's quite entertaining as well.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 2:11 PM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Not at all. That's a complete mis-representation of everything I, Rue, and Fletch2 have said. We have said, over and over.... and over and over... that people are MOSTLY cooperative.

Okay. Would they be any less cooperative in a society with no government? It seems to me that people in that situation would have a great motivation to be at least as, or even more, cooperative than they are now. Many of the posts from the 'statist' side of this discussion seem to think that without government it's every man for himself and devil take the hindmost. I've tried to mention voluntary cooperative associations, which have been successful in areas without law or government, but no one seems to believe they will work, despite examples.

Prior to the New Deal, lodges and benevolent societies provided low-cost medical care.
http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=2545

Folks in the West formed vigilance committees when government law enforcement was absent or corrupt.
http://www.libertariannation.org/a/f72h2.html

Claim associations recorded and enforced land claims. http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf

Iceland had private law enforcement for 300 years. http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 3:44 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"Would they be any less cooperative in a society with no government?'

They might be, or more, or the same. The question is - what do you do with the very few who will never cooperate ? For whom people are prey or goods to be consumed ?

A society without the means to deal with those very few people will eventually be gamed by them. They WILL take over the existing power structure - be it money, status, religion - or force. And they will amass control by those means.

Then what ?

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UK Le Guin's answer is to just not have power structures. No money (and obviously no business), no religion, no property, no organizations.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 5:39 PM

Simple, don't feed them easy, docile, disarmed victims ready-made like we do now.

Do not glorify their actions.

Do not hold them up as role models and icons of "success".

Do not rationalize or justify what they do.

In short, cut off the damn gravy train and actually make it *difficult* for them to feed, rather than actively enabling them as our current society does.

I though this was obvious, not meaning snark there, just... from the paths this discussion has taken, I thought that would stand out, is all.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 5:47 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

No it's not obvious.

CTS has no problem with people having more money, influence, or power - as long as it's not governmental. That sounds like a recipe for an oligarchy, which btw we already have.

Don't feed them victims ? What about a monopoly or consortium in which everybody is the victim ? That kind of thing seems to be allowable.

Pardon me, but you all seem to have such a fixation on guns as the problem - AND the answer - that everything else is just a big blank.

No professional public ambulance service ? Well, if only people had enough guns. Medical insurance company got you by the short-hairs ? Guns'll fix that ! People with enough economic power to gouge whatever price they want. Guns work there too !

Out of curiosity, do you have an answer that's NOT guns ?

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No snark meant - but it seems like a mantra. And I'm not hearing anything else. Some people will exert their 'will to power' through any available avenue. I'm surprised you don't seem to understand that.

As an after-thought - I actually can imagine a new paradigm. And as I've said before - I would give up everything I have if it would mean a fair world for those who can't run the race. But better minds than mine have stumbled on the issue of the sociopath on their way to that world.

Anyway, I have to get on with life. I'll be looking for your reply tomorrow.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 6:10 PM

Are you NOT reading my posts, or just being intentionally nasty ?

I have no IDEA how to express to you, in terms I have not already, repeatedly, ad nauseum, the core foundation of the concept itself.

ONE, quit producing so many mentally screwed up folks, this is bloody obvious, one screwball does not equal the entire destruction of society - they're not xenomorphs, allright ?

TWO, severing the bonds of Government does NOT in any way mean severing the SOCIAL bonds that hold people together as a family, clan or community.

THREE, laying down and taking it doesn't work, period - and vilifying the people that don't is directly counterproductive to expressing the lesson that crime does not pay.

And again, you are taking social constructs that would not likely exist as they are, if at all, in the society we're discussing, dropping them wholesale into it and then making assumptions based on them and their conduct.

For example - WHAT medical insurance company ?

The whole CONCEPT of insurance, especially Government mandated insurance is an outright fraud, protection racket and legalised theft - IF insurance existed, it would most certainly NOT function in the organised crime model it follows here, it would not, could not, function because no one would willingly pay to be ripped off, abused and not covered effectively in spite of ruinous fees.

If someone is gouging, you find another supply or do without, or build it yourself - remember no Government to ensure protected monopolies that ALLOW and ENCOURAGE gouging, besides which no Government strongarm preventing you from building the item your damn self if you have the means and ability - or hiring someone else to do so.

And if I get sick and collapse, any member of the community will call upon the medical services in place, whether it be a hospital, local doc or what have you, who's funding and support would likely be gleefully provided by that community, given the need and use of such services...

Your absolute hysteria towards something that is a mere tool, and only a small PART of active self defense, no more and no less than locking doors, being alert, knowing how to de-escalate... bothers me greatly, you focus on one tiny aspect of a greater whole, refuse to see anything BUT that aspect, then go ballistic about it.

And then you LIE, every time you bring it up, as if no one has offered other solutions or alternatives outside of that, which they have, and this is not the only thread you've pulled that stunt in, either.

And go out of your way to be malicious to one specific person, repeatedly, because they disagreed with you passionately on ANOTHER SUBJECT ENTIRELY and you can't seem to let it go.

Frankly, I don't know what to tell you but to re-evaluate your approach to the situation, cause if you have not gotten anything but "guns, guns, guns" out of a discussion that has so far spanned three entire threads, there's not a damned thing I can say that's gonna make any difference.

*sigh*

-Frem

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 6:30 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Geezer, I think my issue with your posts is not that people are nasty bastards. They're not. I'm having a problem with what you seem to be proposing as an alternative to government function, which is "private" (for profit) business.

As long as businesses are small, things work well. But once you get past the "several person" stage, then the for-profit business starts to build momentum. And I see nothing in YOUR proposals between anarchism and corporatism, which is what we have now. And, IMHO, corporatism is the epitome of a pathological, inhuman system. So maybe if you clarify what size of business you envision, and whether there is any barrier to concentration of power in the monetary arena it would further the discussion. (And yes, I think businesses can form monopolies without government support.)

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 6:44 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
And then you LIE, every time you bring it up, as if no one has offered other solutions or alternatives outside of that.

But, they haven't. YOU haven't.

So, what does "society" do if a family beats their children and locks them indoors? The one thing that this society seems awfully impoverished in is action on anything other than an individual level. No neighborhood councils, no "shunning", no advanced medical care (forget heart surgery). And, as you can see from my post to Geezer I don't trust large-scale coordination to corporations either. There just seem to be critical functions which are missing.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008 7:45 PM

Frem,
I agree with what you wrote about medical insurance but how exactly do you agrigate medical costs in this situation? Both socialised medicine and insurance essentially do the same thing, they agrigate groups of patients together in such a way that the vast majority of healthy ones pay dues that help pay for the expensive procedures and chronic care situations.

Now say you have a heart attack and need a bypass, the cost of that kind of proceedure could clear out most families lifetime worth and still leave them in debt. Is this cost agrigated in some way or will people just let sick relatives die?

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 4:42 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
Geezer, I think my issue with your posts is not that people are nasty bastards. They're not. I'm having a problem with what you seem to be proposing as an alternative to government function, which is "private" (for profit) business.

As long as businesses are small, things work well. But once you get past the "several person" stage, then the for-profit business starts to build momentum. And I see nothing in YOUR proposals between anarchism and corporatism, which is what we have now. And, IMHO, corporatism is the epitome of a pathological, inhuman system. So maybe if you clarify what size of business you envision, and whether there is any barrier to concentration of power in the monetary arena it would further the discussion. (And yes, I think businesses can form monopolies without government support.)

This is where we get back to Fremd's notion that it is going to require a change in basic mindset for Anarchism to work on a large scale. I'm stating my understanding of this as someone studying, not a disciple, and welcome any correction or expansion.

To have an Anarchist society, it's pretty much a given that the large majority of folks would have to espouse Anarchist economic and social philosophy. The first rule of this philosophy is that every person owns himself and his property, and no one has the right to initiate force against any person or their property. From this rule we can derive rules against murder, assault, rape, theft, fraud, vandalism, pollution, price-gouging, etc. It also pretty much takes government right out of the picture since governments generally work only if they can initiate force, be it war or taxation.

Also, Anarchist economic theory posits that in any unforced transaction, both sides will receive benefit.

Now build a corporation using that mindset. You can accumulate capital from shareholders, use it to produce a product, and sell it on the open market. You can hire and fire employees. You can make or lose money.

Your corporate Anarchist mind-set doesn't allow you to price-fix, which causes a forced transaction with your customer. It doesn't allow you to defraud the customers or stockholders or employees. It doesn't allow you to use strongarm tactics on workers to keep wages low. It doesn't allow you to stifle competition.

Also consider that even if a corporation was made up of people who don't abide by these rules, they'd face a society that does, and is dedicated to enforcing them. This gets into a private judiciary, which I'm reading up on now. Lots of ideas to sift through.

So I don't really think it's the size of the company that matters, as much as the character of the people who make it up. People philosophically inclined to not initiate physical or financial force against others would have a hard time justifying the corporate excesses you fear within their company, and an even harder time justifying it to a society of Anarchists.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 4:53 AM

Siggy, if you truly believe that I have offered no solution to any of the problems facing us now - in any of this whole discussion, we got nothin left to talk about.

To say that I have not, that others have not, is absolutely as dishonest an assessment as it gets, and I do believe that to be intentional, and yes I am annoyed as hell about it.

Someone asks a question, I give em an answer... they don't LIKE the answer, and so act like I never gave it, no, I do not play that game - it's inherently dishonest to keep rephrasing the same questions cause you don't like the answers you are getting.

And once again, to the questions below that statement, answers that in ten post or less, someone else will pretend were never given....

"The one thing that this society seems awfully impoverished in is action on anything other than an individual level."

That is absolutely by intent and design, in order to prevent needless concentration of power and abdication of responsibility by the individual.

Of COURSE there would not be a Neighbohood Council, why bother to choose Anarchy if the first thing you do is start rebuilding Government ?

What YOU might see as critical functions, and I would need to details to be sure - are likely some of the very things Anarchists wish to be RID of.

For example, exploitive, rapacious power company monopolies, protected and encouraged by Government.

Depending on how you, personally, wanna live your life, electrical power may seem a necessity to you, maybe the quaker down the street doesn't want any, but you do - so you either cut a deal with a provider, or figure out some other way.. maybe put up a wind unit, a couple solar panels, move in a generator and contract for some diesel if you like... or, and this is most likely, get unanimous agreement and pool resources within the community to buy power service for the community as a whole.

Fletch, I would see medical care as a function of the community, folks would contribute labor, supplies, power, food, money, services - with the understanding that they will be cared for if something happens to them, without question.

And given the nature of the mentality we're talking about, an out of town visitor, should they fall ill, would have no need for concern as they would be cared for in the same fashion as would a member of that community should they fall in in his.

Most of the expense of medical care comes from the stupidity and exploitation within our current care model.. the hospital pays $8 for a single aspirin while the purchasing dept gets a nice kickback from the aspirin company and then charges your insurer $12 for it, who passes the cost onto you at approximately $14... and everyone gets paid while you get screwed.

In the society we're speakin of, say one of the guys on the outskirts of town produces aspirin (I dunno how it's made, mind, just makin an example, technical feasibility aside for the moment) for the local drugstore, who buys it in bulk lots cheaply depending on resale over time at a profit, but he generally doesn't sell direct to people cause small lots are a hassle... etc etc

But he DOES skim off some of each lot for the community hospital, having cut a contract with them to ensure longterm care for his disabled uncle, and for himself should anything happen to him.

There's also the fact that with a service based model configured around actual use, costs would be significantly lower, one set of quick stitches and a bandage wrap isn't gonna cost you $1200 like it does now - the hospital would have less interest and incentive to try gouging because people would be more reluctant to support it.

Say grandaddy carl keels over, he needs a bypass, the family rushes him off, or if needs be they call the hospitals transport service (this is where I would make my own contribution cause I can drive an ambo) and get him in and stable... gramma ellen, when she is not visiting him during his recovery, chooses to donate labor to the hospital cafeteria, which also allows her to bring him a cooked meal personally at the end of her shift, and grand daughter sally decides to donate some of her time as a receptionist in the pediatrics ward, both to offset the cost and because the kids doctor is single and a looker...

Medical care, specially a clinic or hospital, would be seen as a vital part of the community, almost organic in it's connection to it, rather than a predatory business preying on the sick, and it most certainly would not use that model of function.

If someone from another community fell ill, they'd contact his communities medical folk and ask them (with his permission, or his next of kin in a critical emergency) his history and standing, and let them know how it's resolved and then work it out between them.

And if some john doe on hard times gets struck by a vehicle and injured, they'd most certainly not just leave him swing, he's a fellow human being for crying out loud.

There's not really an "us and them" mentality present, there wouldn't be cause EVERYONE, barring outright blatant sociopaths would be "us".

I do not know if I can get this across, but that's my best effort at trying to make folk understand, and it's probably not good enough, but there you have it.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:25 AM

Keep the Shiny side up

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
So, what does "society" do if a family beats their children and locks them indoors? The one thing that this society seems awfully impoverished in is action on anything other than an individual level. No neighborhood councils, no "shunning", no advanced medical care (forget heart surgery). And, as you can see from my post to Geezer I don't trust large-scale coordination to corporations either. There just seem to be critical functions which are missing.

I know that I've mentioned voluntary organizations several times. Think of existing volunteer fire companies (many with ems), church and civic charitable organizations, legal aid societies, neighborhood watches, etc. One would think that in an Anarchist society, the people would understand the importance of developing these to a higher level. Anarchism isn't rugged individualism, and cooperation doesn't disappear if government does. (also see my last post on Anarchist-minded corporations)

A family beating its children and locking them indoors is initiating force against them. This would violate the basic Anarchist mind-set of the community in the gravest way, and would obviously draw a response. The local neighborhood watch, or a concerned individual, could file charges against the family (I'm still researching private judiciary, please be patient) or remove the children in dire circumstances. Remember that it is permissible to respond to the initiation of force with appropriate force, be it legal or physical. Also remember that the children are not the 'property' of the family, and can be removed if they request it.

As to advanced medical care, consider the Shriners' hospitals for children. Between charitable institutions and for-profit hospitals run with the Anarchist business mindset, I can't see any reason why medical care should decline.

As Fremd has noted, you can't just drop folks into an Anarchist world if they're not ready for it. This stuff won't work as long as most people think they, or their goverment proxies, have the right to enforce compliance from anyone else, either for the 'greater good' or for personal gain.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 6:20 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
For example, exploitive, rapacious power company monopolies, protected and encouraged by Government.

Frem, the reason why I keep asking the same quesiton over and over isn't because I don't like the answer, it's because the answer doesn't seem to address my question. Now, maybe my questions don't make sense from you anarchist perspective, in which case we're suffering from a real disconnect.

I've boiled down one of my conundrums to this: People WILL form associations which are much larger than the 150 or so people that one can include in the "monkeysphere". Why? Because its more efficient and you can't stop it. There is a minimum number of people required to maintain an advanced society... specialization dictates that it be so. (For example, how many heart surgeons can a population of 150 support?) That minimum is WELL beyond 150 people... the more advanced the technology, the more people are required to support that degree of specialization.

So how do you handle interactions that are well beyond a monkeysphere's-worth? Geezer proposes, for example, a mix of charity and for-profit business. Now, IMHO the two cannot exist together without ONE of them suffering in function... usually it's charity that suffers.

It seems to me that unless you limit how these interactions between groups takes place, SOME will inevitably form pathological characteristics. And its probable that the most pathological will "win", simply because "the host" has no coordinated defenses (and I don't mean violent defenses, I mean collective defenses) Saying that these associations and coordination won't form, or won't become pathological, is denying reality. They have, and they will cotinue to do so, based on sheer economics. You need more than a philosophy of "monkeysphere" to deal with it. You need a system of feedbacks. It seem to me that the challenge is to find the minimum structure that will be self-sustaining, and yet not have the capacity to itself become a problem. That's quite a challenge.

Geezer's proposal is voluntary or private judiciaries. But that implies "laws" and the power to enforce them. Your vision doens't seem to include the concept of "laws". CTS' concept seems more like Libertarianism (supports government police, military, and judiciary but nothing else.) So I'm getting a scattershot of ideas to sort out.

I promise to read through all of your posts carefuly and address each particular point.

Once again- thank you ALL for the conversation. It's been mind-challenging for me.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 7:20 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Frem

The only thing I hear is: people will be different. We don't know at this point how to fix the 5% born sociopaths, but in my magical world we'll have figured it out. And things will be different. We don't have a plan but we have a vision so it must be possible.
Trust me.

You want very specific questions but then you don't come up with specific answers - the nuts and bolts HOW of it all.

Can one person ruin a society ? Look at Bill Gates. Without a gun or fist raised, without the help of government he has appropriated an entire concept for his personal gain. And in the meantime he's foisted on society a monopoly that it to this day hasn't gotten free of.

Do you really think we're better off with Billy boy's products running our lives, or do you think it might be nice to have some better ideas, better products and better prices ?

How does your model take Bill Gates into account ? How does it keep Bill Gates from gaining control of an entire industry ?

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 8:09 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

And to repeat a question in a very specific way -

Like SignyM I have a family member (not a daughter) disabled by a stroke at an unusually young age. For the last 20 years every decision I've made has been about providing for this person after I'm gone. So I wonder what place your society has for a disabled person who has no immediate family to care for them.

CTS has said that 'people' would be more generous if there was no safety net. That unfortunately wasn't borne out by Reagan's big deinstitutionalization fiasco - the deadly consequences of which we are still dealing with today.
Now Geezer says that if there's a need there will be a provider. What he doesn't take into account in his world is that for-profit providers will only be there if there is money to be made. The deciding factor is profit not need. Look at 'orphan diseases' which exist in such low numbers that literally no business is working on them b/c the investment is too high and the profit - would not be there.
Now you seem to be saying the same as CTS - if you need it, it will be there. But as I have pointed out already, and at length - it simply isn’t. Where people have the choice to help - be it looking out for a sick old man in a crowd, supplying food banks, or housing and caring for the deinstitutionalized - it just DOESNT HAPPEN. And what in your world would be so different to make it happen ? People will be different ? HOW will that happen ?

So, if I had to ask ONE specific question it would be this -
Given my concern for the helpless (which out of sheer humanity should be your very specific concern too) - why would I pick your society with its hypotheticals and maybes over Sweden where the government looks after people very well - in a very demonstrable practical way ?

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"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 8:50 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Rue- People CAN be different. People in the USA are particularly harsh because of our hyper individualism, our basic acceptance of social Darwinism underlying capitalism, and (above all) the monopolization of our ethics by the corporate oligarchy. Given those stresses, the constant assault on social connections, etc I'm surprised that we are as generous as we are.

What I find disturbing is that anarchists seem to embrace certain aspects of our current paradigm as the solution to our problems when I think they may actually be part of the problem.

I note that the cultures which come closest to non-adversarial child rearing are the most "socialist" of economies. Perhaps socialism is a necessary step towards anarchism.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:07 AM

Except socialist societies are not exactly examples of bare knuckle personal liberty. For one thing the care you are talking about is provided by high taxation -- CTS, Frem and Geezer don't actually agree that much when you get down to specifics but they REALLY don't like paying taxes. Socialist economies control industry through regulation, that's hardly a free for all without government interference. Lastly moving power into the society produces more authority not less. There you WOULD have works comitees, local councils, trade associations and unions all of which are power structures an Anarchist would want to do away with.

I can't think of a system that goes further away from Anarchism than that?

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:13 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I agree. But supposedly capitalism is a necesary step towards communism, so maybe any system eventually creates its own nemesis.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:37 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

FREM

Quote:
Thing is, when thrown back on their own resources, and over time developing a far greater sense of personal and community responsibility than we have now, folks would be less inclined to pop out kids THEY would have to be responsible for - You want em fed, clothed, educated, you'd better be ready, willing and able to do it...

The lowest birthrates are in the most socialist nations and the highest birthrates where government helps the least. Tagging overpopulation on "government aid" is just... well.. silly.

Quote:
I do believe our technological advancement would take a sharp hit.. until new methodologies for development and production come about

Which will require more than monkeysphere philosophy to redevelop.

Quote:
As for the population problem... is gonna lead to that... erm, population correction... sooner or later, which I would prefer to be later or even not at all, but it's not like my opinion here is in the majority, right

You have GOT to be joking! I think we all see the looming population problem and I think we'd all rather have it resolved in a nice way, so climb down from that cross, Frem!

Quote:
In the end, to my mind there's really only 2 ways this can go - and I could be wrong, since we're lookin at hundreds of years and more here. We keep producing jack sociopath the corpo-climbing backstabber who'll turn on anyone and anything to smash them out of the way as he climbs that ladder to the 'success" carrot our society holds up in front of him like a plow mule, till our resources run low and we fight a series of extremely destructive wars over the remainder which if we are very lucky don't leave our planet an irradiated hulk - causing a total social collapse and possibly restarting the cycle all over again...

Or we grow the fekk up and begin actually embracing our humanity instead of rejecting it, going through that necessary stage of anarchism or semi-anarchism, which might be an end point, or maybe just a beginning, but is far less likely to result in the utter destruction of our species as a whole.

I agree with the first part. I'm still thinking about anarchism as "The Solution".

Quote:
As far as the supposedly irredeemable kids go, by your own rules *I* should be a fully functioning sociopath, having such a diminished emotional capacity, but it's that very drive to cling to the humanity I DO have that has lead me to understand it's crucial importance, so just because a kid has "issues" does not automatically and outright condemn them to that fate, unless abandoned as "hopeless" by folk who believe they're "born bad" and we shouldn't waste the time and effort...

Just bc kids are born a certain way doesn't make them "irredeemable". Thats' two different concepts. I think we NEED to run down that Seung-Hui Cho bunny trail, because a LOT of the brain-damaged kids I know have very nice families that are totally overwhelmed by their children's issues, which are far beyond what a nuclear family can handle. (Often needs medical and therapeutic involvement as well.) There is no intention of "writing people off", or only dealing with them when they become violent. My only point is that it takes more than a passive "Let's not screw 'em up" approach, because these kids WILL be born and they MUST be accounted for. Too many studies show that a single asshole can throw off a work group of thirty people or more.

Quote:
For example - WHAT medical insurance company ?

Er... the one that Geezer seems to be proposing?

Quote:
And if I get sick and collapse, any member of the community will call upon the medical services in place, whether it be a hospital, local doc or what have you, who's funding and support would likely be gleefully provided by that community, given the need and use of such services...

Which needs more than a small community for support.

Quote:
That is absolutely by intent and design, in order to prevent needless concentration of power and abdication of responsibility by the individual.

The conundrum. Large groups will form and power will concentrate regardless, unless psecifically blocked. Has nothing to do with individuals and everything to do with systems.

Quote:
There's not really an "us and them" mentality present, there wouldn't be cause EVERYONE, barring outright blatant sociopaths would be "us".

So, who pays the heart surgeon, the anesthesiologist, and the scrub nurse? Grandma's time in the kitchen and Sally's time at reception are all great, but they don't provide take-home for the specialists.

The only way I see volunteerism working on a grand scale and in a technologically advanced system is to get rid of money completely. In addition, there has to a wide-sytem net of informaiton flow, so that people know where and what kind of help is needed. Given that, your system might work.

As Geezer seems to have a different take on Anarchism, I'll try to deal with that in another post.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:53 AM

CANTTAKESKY

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
CTS' concept seems more like Libertarianism (supports government police, military, and judiciary but nothing else.)

I said specifically that it WAS libertarianism, not anarchism. I also said specifically that was because we are not ready for anarchism yet.

Sig, it sounds like you would have no problems understanding left anarchism, the original anarchism proposed by Marx. It is pure communism, with the intent to abolish all hierarchy (everyone is equal, no differences in social status, wealth, power, etc.). Of course, such a society cannot sustain a specialized economy and is likely to be small and agrarian. Communists understand this and accept this limitation.

What you have a hard time wrapping your head around is right anarchism, or anarcho-capitalism. Now right anarchism will allow for larger societies and specialization. But the power differentials means more power struggles and violence. Right anarchists understand this and accept this limitation.

What you can't have is both large, specialized societies and no hierarchy/power/violence. Every model has its limitations. The trick to understanding the different kinds of anarchism is to understand the pros and cons of each.

Then you compare it to the pros and cons of the current system. After that, it is a matter of taste or personal preference. See, some of us are ok with all the weaknesses in a right anarchistic society, whereas you would find those same weaknesses unacceptable and fundamentally flawed.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that you're trying to figure out how a perfect anarchist society would work, that allows all the pros and none of the cons. Such a thing doesn't exist. I don't know if this helps, but that's what I am seeing in your questions.

--------------------------
There are two sides to every question.
-- Protagoras, from Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers
Greek philosopher (485 BC - 421 BC)

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 11:32 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that you're trying to figure out how a perfect anarchist society would work, that allows all the pros and none of the cons.

Of course!

What's the point of having a thought-experiment if you don't go for the gusto? I can propose all kinds of fixes, tweaks, and modifications to the current system, but I don't think that's what Frem and HKC have in mind.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 12:57 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

SignyM

I guess I wasn't clear enough. What I was asking Frem is - how do you expect people to be different if you have the exact same inputs, minus government of course.

You have your profit oriented business - check, which means a competitive society - check, lack of socially accepted support system and individual insecurity - check ... given the economic basis of living he's proposing, how does he expect people will learn to be different ? B/c they are all imagining that they need to be 'nicer' ?

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And in a slightly different direction - there was a Swedish (maybe Danish) couple charged w/ child endangerment in NYC b/c they left their toddler unattended in a stroller outside a store while they went in to shop. What they said in their defense was - oops - you know people do this all the time where we come from. It's just expected your child will be safe and all sorts of passers-by will tend to them if they are crying or having a problem. (They got off the charges.)

Now is that society so incredibly humane b/c they have a socialist government - or do they have a socialist government b/c they are so incredibly humane ?

I'm guessing it's the latter.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:15 PM

I have a few Swedish observations.

I mentioned the idea of "enough" before. I think that's a major cultural component. It doesn't really matter what your neighbor has as long as you are comfortable. You don't buy a bigger/faster/more expensive car to outdo your neighbour, you buy what appeals to you. I work in tech so maybe I just associate with geeks more, but if someone bought something and thought it was great he would show it off not in the spirit that he had one and you -- poor loser --- did not, but because it made him happy and he wanted to share that with you.

Office doors were never closed (other than during the few REALLY personal private meetings) because it was understood that you were always available to help whoever needed it. There was less formal hierarchy, your manager was one of the team whose job it was to insure the smooth running of the department, not some kind of superior being gifted to us. Often managers were paid less than the engineers they managed, because promotion did not necessarily mean becoming a manager so senior people could stick with what they were good at rather than being forced to manage to make more money.

My work group did far far more stuff together outside of work than in any country I have lived in. We went canoe racing, we went to festivals together, we went out after work to eat on a regular basis as a group. Groups are important in Sweden, group activity is encouraged in the tax system, so if you are a photography group and you equip a darkroom, you can right off those expenses as a company would.

It isn't an overly violent place. Alcohol is seriously taxed so few people can afford to get drunk enough to swing punches. Outside of work and groups they chose to join Swede's seem a very private people. An invite to someone's house is a big deal, they are also big on family.

They are very big on education, civically responsible, I dunno, grown up. You can walk through the center of their parliament building, politicians go out on the street, you don't get the impression that anyone there sees anyone else as being that big a deal.

It's not socialism as such, there are some VERY rich people in Sweden but i think Swede's just see them as other people who just happen to have more money, not people that are happier, more successful, wiser or better than anyone else. A friend of mine was married into a family where his father in law had inherited several million dollars and worked as a policeman. He worked there because he liked it and the money meant he could get a nicer apartment and a new car when SAAB brought out a new model. Other than that he just worked as normal.

Over there you're not special because of what you do, that's just your job it has nothing to do with who you are as a human being. You're not really special because of your money, it's considered distasteful to flaunt wealth but on the other hand people don't seem overly envious either. You just get on and do things with the minimum of fuss happy that you have enough.

However, downside for Frem. First, they have an aggressively progressive tax regime. I think I worked out once that based on my salary I was paying about 60% taxation. Taxes are targeted to discourage antisocial behavior like drinking. They make it tough to get drivers licensed at least in part to make people reluctant to drive. Almost all financial transactions require government issued ID.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:38 PM

Egads, this is prolly gonna be way longer and more complex than I would like....

Quote:
Frem, the reason why I keep asking the same quesiton over and over isn't because I don't like the answer, it's because the answer doesn't seem to address my question. Now, maybe my questions don't make sense from you anarchist perspective, in which case we're suffering from a real disconnect.

Without a doubt, and it's one I don't happen to be all that hot at bridging, and I'm getting very frustrated about it.

As for private judiciary, having thought on it a while, you'll note my constant use of the word Contract.

And I don't mean one forced down the throat of another, allowing the writer and forcer to change terms at whim, neither - real a EULA, or a phone service agreement, or a loan contract in our current society...

Absolute insanity, yes ?

AND forced on you with no choice, either due to Government regulation and Law, or by an exploitive cabal of businesses with a Government protected monopoly, and effective competition outlawed or regulated right out of business.

I mean an actual CONTRACT, written and approved by both parties with mutually agreed upon arbitration and enforcement provisions.

And believe me, in THAT environment, Contract Enforcement would be serious, SERIOUS business indeed - a breach of contract could lead to asset seizure, punitive measures, being blacklisted, or even abrogation of other contracts via domino provisions (i.e. break one contract with this collective, and ALL contracts with that collective and the individuals thereof would be voided by default) - there would not be, like there is now, the ability for a company to depend on Government and it's corrupt Judiciary to protect them if they abrogated it and laughed in your face, cause they would NOT be laughing for long.

I can't really stress how serious a business that would become, and entirely private, scaling to the needs and styles of one contract type or another, most likely - but Contract Enforcement would be a key part of doing business.

The only example that comes to mind right off would be the Bonding Authority in David Drakes Hammers Slammers series, which, if anyone here has read those - shows how that would work, albeit in a wholly different society and environ, it's not the best example, I know.

Quote:
So, if I had to ask ONE specific question it would be this -
Given my concern for the helpless (which out of sheer humanity should be your very specific concern too) - why would I pick your society with its hypotheticals and maybes over Sweden where the government looks after people very well - in a very demonstrable practical way ?

If the post detailing how medical services would be an integral, organic PART of the community rather than a seperate entity doesn't get it across, nothing I can say will.

Quote:
I note that the cultures which come closest to non-adversarial child rearing are the most "socialist" of economies. Perhaps socialism is a necessary step towards anarchism.

A possibility I will not dispute, given the medical care example posted above, which could be described, if you looked at it sideways and squinted really hard, as a socialist model, although it's obviously more interconnected than that.

Quote:
they REALLY don't like paying taxes.

Nope, especially when they go to things directly against our own beliefs... but I got no problem contracting payments for the benefit of both self and community, say... pooling resources and contracting for waste pickup and disposal as a community - as long as agreement is unanimous amongst everyone who contracted.
Those who chose not to or opted out can contract it individually, find another provider, or DIY, but Taxes are the very essence of coercion.

Technology

Quote:
Which will require more than monkeysphere philosophy to redevelop.

Not necessarily true, look at the impact of the internet, and imagine going back to 1950-1960 and trying to explain it to those folks ?
Technology is a pretty strange thing at times and doesn't obey easy assumptions.

Population?

Quote:
You have GOT to be joking!

I meant my opinion of what to DO about it, not whether there was a problem or not... we're really shorting wires here.

Quote:
My only point is that it takes more than a passive "Let's not screw 'em up" approach, because these kids WILL be born and they MUST be accounted for. Too many studies show that a single asshole can throw off a work group of thirty people or more.

Apparently it's not getting across, dealing with that is threefold, first off early intervention and actual work and research into the matter, along with an intensive, active effort to fully eliminate that horrific crush-till-they-comply methodology referred to as "poisonous pedagogy" for a damned good reason.

Third part of that is not being easy victims - yes, such people exist, even when and where they statistically should not, natures a bitch and we know that.

But people in our current society are easy, defenseless (not just physically, but so MENTALLY unprepared for it) low hanging fruit just begging to be plucked, the vilification of active and passive self-defense, substituted with learned helplessness has gone a long way towards creating an environment for them, it's like chumming for sharks, really it is.

The priority order of that methodology is simple.

PREVENT->MITIGATE->DEFEND.

Prevent the ones that can be prevented, help the ones who can be helped, and defend yourself actively and passively from those rare few that slip through both nets.

That last part seems to bother people all out of proportion to it's expression, but do some research on how freaks groom kids, and note that a mentally alert, stable, prepared kid can blow em off or appear as a "hard target", shutting them down before they even get started - bad people prefer easy targets, don't be one, is what I am sayin.

MONEY

Quote:
The only way I see volunteerism working on a grand scale and in a technologically advanced system is to get rid of money completely.

Not necessarily completely, just that direct services or goods would be a preferred medium and more personal an exchange

Systems?

Quote:
The conundrum. Large groups will form and power will concentrate regardless, unless psecifically blocked. Has nothing to do with individuals and everything to do with systems.

You are assuming an inclination completely at odds with the mentality being expressed - I don't understand ?

I keep pointing out that Anarchists are the kind of people who actively hate and fear "Government Authority" of any kind, and you keep saying they'll flock to and rebuild it at the first opportunity ?
WHY?

MEDICAL?

Quote:
Which needs more than a small community for support.

Again, why ?
Especially if it only has a small community TO support ?

Final note: Change the freakin inputs.
That's what I do, barring work and a small amount of leisure time, some of which is spent here, that's ALL I DO.

I do prettymuch all one person can ever do, even to some pretty extreme degrees, to make as much impact as possible on future decision makers, everyone thrown the golden rope, every kid pulled from the rabbit hole, there's an influance, greater or lesser depending on what they choose to believe - and I wholehearted support folks trying to make that change, Riak, Earnshaw, Miller, Vachss, Perry, in every possible way I logistically can... but I am just one guy, and gotta earn a living besides.

However, when you're pushing pebbles off a mountaintop, it only takes ONE to start an avalanche, and I push a lotta pebbles - Alice Miller goes on in great detail about how Hitler came to power in a society screwed up enough to accept him, and I think, and I wonder, if perhaps some day a charismatic leader with a society seeded with folks ready to accept them... can push the world in the OTHER direction.

But first, the seeds, yes ?

There from here isn't gonna be quick, it will have to be a generational change, although I see it speeding up somewhat as our current unsupportable models being to collapse - I only hope it does so fast enough.

And that's all I got time for, at the moment.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 2:46 PM

Keep the Shiny side up

Fremd

Back to my original goal of asking questions of folks in the know, what do you think of the Nonaggression Principle?

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 3:43 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Which needs more than a small community for support.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, why ?
Especially if it only has a small community TO support ?

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Well, take a 'simple' angioplasty - something that a significant fraction of the population will (probably) eventually need. It takes a lot of training, equipment and practice to field a team that can do that kind of thing and not screw up too much. Far more than local resources can muster.

Or take the '1 in a million' case (like SignyM's daughter). You just can't create the expertise locally.

***************************************************************
I think what we are all hoping for, though is change - we know what a screwed up place this is. What we can't get together on is means.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 4:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Okay I'm gonna try to mentally create an anarchist system for a city of a million... which is about what you'd need to support a major university-hospital, a major university research (not a corporate R&D department 'cause for the most part they REALLY don't do blue-sky research) and some cultural institutions.

Frem, I'm going to tell you a dream that i had.... Like Rue's dream of "enough".

It had to do with a guy who woke up in the future. This future was populated by small villages of people in "organic" houses, with other people who wandered in and out on various affairs... definitely well-connected to the wider world. This future's great cultural tradition was a sort of competition called SANYAGOHING. (Yeah, I even dreamt up a name.)

Now, what this competition was was a kind of performance art that took place every few months. The ONLY RULE was that a performance group COULD NOT reject anyone who volunteered, and the group would be judged on how well they integrated all of the diverse talents.

The man went to a SANYAGOHING. One perforamce was a rousing, muscular dance of bright colors... men tossed women in the air while the oldsters played instruments and children twirled streamers and clapped and sang. It hard to keep in his seat and not get up and dance.

Another was music and song... voices and flutes and harps rose into the deep blue of twilight while children sang down the aisles, scattering rose petals as they, and and the elders carried candles, hugging the audience in a sign of peace. The man was in tears, it was the most inspirational moment of his life.

And then the third group got on stage. They divided themselves somewhat unevenly, their song and dance got off to a ragged start. So they stopped, rearranged themselves somewhat and started again, only worse. Several people split off from both groups, and went towards the back of the stage to discuss. The audience started to murmur, and the man mentally cringed for the performers. The performance started again, but it seemed that the smaller group wanted to do something entirely different while the larger group couldn't agree to disagree. The audience started to laugh out loud as the performers split, reassembled, argued and discussed, as some walked off and others tried to bring them back until they ALL wallked off, still arguing.

They won the prize.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:08 PM

Did I not say technology basis and advancement would take a hit ?
That would likely include medical technologies.

We're not talkin wild-west here, but some fallback would occur, yes... thing is, and I am not quite sure how to express this...

Death is part of life, some people just do not have the abject terror of it that others do, for a multitude of reasons - if the cost of saving a few means the misery of millions, where is the benefit, regardless of what you believe ?

I have some pretty harsh personal experiences with our medical care system that cause me to lack respect for it, not only from my own misadventures, but watching folks dignity and comfort stripped away as they were "vampirised" to keep them alive at any and all cost, even when that cost was causing them to suffer needlessly with no hope of recovery - so I cannot offer you an unbiased viewpoint.

There's also a big flaw in the idea of "city of one million" - if you crammed a million anarchists THAT close together in a modern "city" environment with no room to breathe and no real resources that did not have to be externally imported... you'd wind up with a bloodbath of epic proportions, the models are so completely incompatible I cannot even begin to express it, people are not perfect, and the closer you pack them together, the harder the sharp edges of those imperfections grind the nerves of every one, population density is a proven factor in interpersonal violence for that very reason.

There's also, once again, taking a fully formed structure from this society, (Big, industrialised, modern tech hospital and affiliated complex, run in our current or-else force-control methology) plunking it down into a wholly different society, wholesale, unchanged, and then making assumptions based on that.

Oh and Siggy ?
Whole premise falls apart on "Rule" and "Could not Reject" - right there.

Anyhow, the population density issue is one that I honestly do NOT have an answer for, but we damned well better solve - before it solves itself in some extremely deleterious fashion.

Did I mention that I wanted off this rock ?

But we'd have to have somewhere to GO, and some way to get there - and that doesn't seem to be much of a priority for any earthly Government for reasons I've repeated ad naseum by now.

One last bit, is that I will to some degree dispute the level of support certain medical techniques or educations need - I know it's a lot, but I also know full and well that "education" is also padded in many ways to ensure the University's bottom line, too.

It's not my field and I have no expertise within it to comment beyond that, but I do know that the "frankensteins" I have enlisted to handle stuff do it on one holy hell of a lot less than the so-called experts who said I would never, ever, walk again.

Again, I don't have an unbiased viewpoint to offer you, no sense trying to say otherwise.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 5:31 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"also know full and well that "education" is also padded in many ways to ensure the University's bottom line"

From personal experience I can say that I needed every bit of my education for what I did back then and what I do now. It's medical and scientific - and there's a lot to learn, which doesn't happen by skimming a few books.

Frem - I'm getting the impression that if every one in the anarchy got together and said - you know, we all really DO want to pay something like a tax to support --- X --- medical training and research, materials technology, ways to heal the planet - you'd have a problem with that. Same as "rule" and "reject". What if that's just what they decided ?
No ? You seem to have a problem with any group action at all. Am I wrong ?

***************************************************************
"Global warming - it's not just a fact, it's a choice."

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 7:23 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Frem- your anarchism ALSO has a rule: the rule of individual sovereignty. Kinda like: "The one rule is there are no rules". Doesn't that smack of self-contradiction?

Your form of anarchy is inevitably tied to primitivism. Given that family members have survived and thrived due to medical intervention, I don't want to give that up. You say that nobody is "irredeemable" but you don't want to put the ass behind it to make it so. So yeah... kiss 'em off. And as far as I'm concerned, if you tag "technology" as an equal problem with "government" then you don't have a clear idea what you're talking about.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 7:45 PM

Hi Everyone,

I have another evening off (been working double shifts this whole month), so I thought I'd spend part of it with you!

Here's an analogy: say you're talking to an acquaintance about your plans for marriage, about how you and your partner plan to share responsibilities, make sharing feelings--particularly difficult, negative feeling--a major focus of your routine, be sure to make time both for the two of you as a couple and for each of you separately, yadda-yadda-yadda--you get the idea. And your acquaintance stops you in the midst of your description and says, "But, my friend, how are you going to have your wife's respect if you don't beat her? And how are you going to have any peace in your home if your wife doesn't respect you?"

Okay, so, first of all, it's obvious that your acquaintance doesn't share your definitions of "respect" or "peace." But that's not really your main problem, is it? Your main problem is that what your acquaintance is proposing is abhorant, immoral and, thank goodness, criminal. So what the heck do you say to the guy?

Okay, imagine that you're having this conversation 100 years ago and by some bizarre twist of fate you nonetheless propose this typical modern opinion about love and marriage. How do you set this guy straight in that context? And when his 5 friends chime in, laugh at you, accuse you of being childish or insane, what would keep you from simply walking away?

Okay, so a hundred years ago, a man beating his wife was an entirely acceptable method of keeping order in the home in a lot of places. What was it that changed in the past hundred years to make wife beating unacceptable around your neck of the woods? Was it a law that suddenly made men cease beating their wives? Was it a government program?

Of course, some of you may notice that wife beating in certain circles is still an entirely acceptable practice, even in places where the law of the land forbids it! Some of you may recall various prominent law enforcement officers recently going to jail for spousal abuse! Why there was even a very famous fellow in the news not too long ago who brutally murdered his wife and his neighbor and he's not only still a free man, but he now gets to beat his new girlfriend! How can it be?

Laws don't make a community or a culture moral. The collective will of the people make it moral. And that collective will exists under any regime.

Here's a thing: division of labor is basic to even the most rudamentary social systems. Problems arise when one segment of the culture's labor is more onerous than another's. Then the division is between the quality of life of one segment and the quality of life of another and you have invented a class system. But some jobs are just more unpleasant than others! Perhaps a just society would pay those people doing the undesirable jobs more than those doing the easier or shall we say, "cooshier," jobs. Hmmmmm?

Part of my difficulty in talking to folks about this is that so many of you seem to accept your privileges, your affluence, your class status as your right. You see what Frem and I propose as taking away your rights. You become almost unreachably defensive. You imagine the anarchist gastapo forcing you to give up your myriad modern conveniences only to have them siezed by all the terrible retarded sociopaths who were born bad and who want to rule the world.

I'm sorry, I started this post full of enthusiasm for my little analogy and now that I've gotten this far, I've half a mind to scrap it and just let y'all go on envisioning your ugly world and perpetuating the ugliness on down through posterity. This thread has afforded me the opportunity to feel a lot more alone than I expected it to. And though I am by no means a stranger to being misunderstood, this thread has raised that feeling amoung my fellow browncoats to a new height.

Signy has noted that the three people who have spoken on behalf of anarchism in this thread are either gun nuts, martial arts enthusiasts or both, implying A) that interest in taking personal responsibility for one's safety in the world is crazy or merely a matter of (excentric) taste, and B) that the majority of people, those who leave their personal safety entirely in the hands of strangers, have every right to their privileged status.

Signy and others point at the tiny percentage of people who are born with poor impulse control, autism, or problems with aggression caused by brain-damage and use these unfortumates to prop up their belief in intrinsic evil. Color me floored. Signy points at the number of brain-damaged and "borderline mentally retarded" people who populate death row to show that such conditions lead naturally to criminality. (C'mon, I mean, most of the men on death row are black as well, is that because being black also naturally leads to a life of crime?) But none of these people are on death row for defrauding the American people of trillions of dollars, or killing thousands unnecessarily in a war for profit (and what war isn't?), or fishing the seas to extinction. What evils are we fighting here?

More later. Thanks for listening. Misgivings and my personal termoil aside, I deeply appreciate all of you for taking ownership of this little corner of the Internet and taking these discussions as seriously as you do.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 7:59 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

HKC- My personal belief is that people, for the most part, are caring folks who just really "want to get along".

AFA taking personal responsibility for self-protection, you seem to think that you and just a few other people do that. Really, don't you think that's just a bit presumptuous?

I've often long thought that the people who REALLY make our lives comfortable: garbagemen, janitors etc are waaaay underpaid. IMHO any average working person is worth way more than Bill Gates. So again, you seem to be operating on some mistaken assumptions about my motivations.

Now, what I would like to see... not that anyone is asking... is "economic democracy": Anyone who works is an equal part-owner. I look at it this way: concentrating power up until now has meant concentrating arms, moral authority, and money. The answer isn't tao take it away, but to spread it all around and make it so that nobody can grab it from anyone else.

There is one emerging arena of concentrating power, and that is the power of ideas. And that is why I'm for open source and open access to the inet.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 9:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
HKC- My personal belief is that people, for the most part, are caring folks who just really "want to get along".

AFA taking personal responsibility for self-protection, you seem to think that you and just a few other people do that. Really, don't you think that's just a bit presumptuous?

???

No, I was saying that owning a gun or studying martial arts were respectable ways to take personal responsibility for one's life--NOT the only ways. Forgive me, but I thought you were defending people who "didn't want" to take such an interest, but blithely ceded that responsibility to the government.

Quote:
I've often long thought that the people who REALLY make our lives comfortable: garbagemen, janitors etc are waaaay underpaid. IMHO any average working person is worth way more than Bill Gates. So again, you seem to be operating on some mistaken assumptions about my motivations.

Signy! Just because I spoke to you directly in the latter part of my post, doesn't mean I was directing all my remarks to you. I was dropping class distinction into the discussion in the interest of finding common ground.

I seriously don't know what's happened to make you think I am attacking you with my every word. Don't you ever have serious disagreements with friends? I was talking generally about this epic thread up to the stuff about brain-damage = genetic evil. I did intend to challenge you on that issue. You have anything to say about that? Or about the substance of my post? (Genuine questions, not demanding anything of you.)

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:02 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Hi Everyone,

I have another evening off (been working double shifts this whole month), so I thought I'd spend part of it with you!

Here's an analogy: say you're talking to an acquaintance about your plans for marriage, about how you and your partner plan to share responsibilities, make sharing feelings--particularly difficult, negative feeling--a major focus of your routine, be sure to make time both for the two of you as a couple and for each of you separately, yadda-yadda-yadda--you get the idea. And your acquaintance stops you in the midst of your description and says, "But, my friend, how are you going to have your wife's respect if you don't beat her? And how are you going to have any peace in your home if your wife doesn't respect you?"

Okay, so, first of all, it's obvious that your acquaintance doesn't share your definitions of "respect" or "peace." But that's not really your main problem, is it? Your main problem is that what your acquaintance is proposing is abhorant, immoral and, thank goodness, criminal. So what the heck do you say to the guy?

Okay, imagine that you're having this conversation 100 years ago and by some bizarre twist of fate you nonetheless propose this typical modern opinion about love and marriage. How do you set this guy straight in that context? And when his 5 friends chime in, laugh at you, accuse you of being childish or insane, what would keep you from simply walking away?

Okay, so a hundred years ago, a man beating his wife was an entirely acceptable method of keeping order in the home in a lot of places. What was it that changed in the past hundred years to make wife beating unacceptable around your neck of the woods? Was it a law that suddenly made men cease beating their wives? Was it a government program?

Of course, some of you may notice that wife beating in certain circles is still an entirely acceptable practice, even in places where the law of the land forbids it! Some of you may recall various prominent law enforcement officers recently going to jail for spousal abuse! Why there was even a very famous fellow in the news not too long ago who brutally murdered his wife and his neighbor and he's not only still a free man, but he now gets to beat his new girlfriend! How can it be?

Laws don't make a community or a culture moral. The collective will of the people make it moral. And that collective will exists under any regime.

I disagree. Collective will in the South continued the practice of slavery there and yet that system was never moral. Further collective will is another way of saying the rule if the majority or mob rule, hardly a good example?

Good laws are based on principles not morals. To lead a "moral" life could mean just blindly following the rules laid down by your religion, to live a principled life is to made a stand on an issue and defend it even when doing so is uncomfortable to you. US Civil Rights legislation was good law because it was based on principle, not the morals of a few and certainly not on the collective will of many of the folks involved.

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Hi Everyone,

Part of my difficulty in talking to folks about this is that so many of you seem to accept your privileges, your affluence, your class status as your right. You see what Frem and I propose as taking away your rights. You become almost unreachably defensive. You imagine the anarchist gastapo forcing you to give up your myriad modern conveniences only to have them siezed by all the terrible retarded sociopaths who were born bad and who want to rule the world.

Actually no. What I actually see are people that can't really function in the modern world, ones who basically don't fit in because their mental, emotional and intellectual toolkit doesn't actually offer anything that's... well very useful. They can exist here but they'll never amount to much.

I think they somewhat like the idea of going back to a wild west kinda world where the few mental tools they have might actually benefit them. The kind of place were ammunition for fuel oil is a big deal and hospitals just doll out locally made aspirin, patch up bullet wounds but let anyone with anything more complex die because ya know God was calling them home. I'm sure they think they'll be big men in such a world because they know how to look after themselves.

No wait, that's only some of them. The rest are just going to get rid of government and let anybody else that wants to fill the vacuum. As long as they don't have to pay taxes they're shiny. These folks are talking private ambulances, private cops, I suspect the kinds of deals they are thinking of probably don't involve ammunition.

So now we've got the pointless finger pointing and characterizations out of the way can I make a suggestion. Seems to me that what you're proposing is not going to come about in your lifetime, because most sane people given a choice would probably want things like schools (and not old Mr Johnson teaching you for the price of chores) hospitals (and not the place where you pay for thirdworld healthcare by working in the gift ship) and a reasonable amount of security (that doesn't involve living life as a survivalist.)

So, with so many failed states out there, places where good old fashioned yankie dollars are actually worth serious amounts of goods and there is no gov to cramp your style. Why not head out there and found a colony? This is not a "if you dont like the country you are welcome to leave" kind of comment but if a lawless third world kind of existence is what you want there are places that can do that for you, places where you could prove your ideas in practical ways to those that doubt they will work?

So how about it Frem, HKC? People that founded this country did so to get away from a political system they didnt agree with back home, Frem says you need space to make this work. Lots of that in Africa. CTS even has contacts?

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Thursday, January 24, 2008 10:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
I disagree. Collective will in the South continued the practice of slavery there and yet that system was never moral. Further collective will is another way of saying the rule if the majority or mob rule, hardly a good example?

Criminy, Fletch, you must think I'm a goddamn idiot. I said "Law's don't make a community moral. The collective will of the people make a community moral." The "OR NOT!" was implicit. Crap, I was talking about a collective will that promotes spousal abuse. I was saying that it is the collective will of the community that determined the moral character of a community not a law or a cop or a judge. That is all.

Quote:
Good laws are based on principles not morals. To lead a "moral" life could mean just blindly following the rules laid down by your religion, to live a principled life is to made a stand on an issue and defend it even when doing so is uncomfortable to you. US Civil Rights legislation was good law because it was based on principle, not the morals of a few and certainly not on the collective will of many of the folks involved.

If you say so. Again, your definitions of "respect" and "peace" are different from mine.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, January 25, 2008 12:17 AM

AGENTROUKA

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my thoughts in the Part II thread, Frem!

You certainly piked my interest with your mention of a population "correction".

Quote:
As for the population problem, sadly, I think that's gonna sort itself in the next 50-80 years, and it won't be any kinda way you or I would like, alas - barring radical improvements and investment in space travel and colonisation, which would, in our current industry/production model require Government to do.. *hiss*

I'm sure you mentioned this as an aside, not part of the main subject, so don't answer it here if you don't want to, a PM would be fine. I'm just curious what exactly you're referring to. Self-destruction by war? A collapse because we mismanaged our resources? Disease? Something to do with demographics?

Another thought is, a family-based society would naturally imply the having of children. Possibly more children than today, as people would actually have the time and possibly more resources to do so. Would this create population density problems long-term, if health care remains as generally effective as it is now? Or do you think it'll balance out. Many European countries actually have a negative population development these days, so people might still choose to have few children, one or two, but considering the community/family-based support, I am assuming it'd be more like 2 or 3 or more. What do you guys think?

Now, concerning cities:
I take it, the general idea is to reduce the density of living, which, if I read this correctly, then led to an exploration of what this would mean for medical expertise, etc?

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
Did I not say technology basis and advancement would take a hit ?
That would likely include medical technologies.

We're not talkin wild-west here, but some fallback would occur, yes... thing is, and I am not quite sure how to express this...

Death is part of life, some people just do not have the abject terror of it that others do, for a multitude of reasons - if the cost of saving a few means the misery of millions, where is the benefit, regardless of what you believe ?

The death thing wouldn't even be that scary to me. I'm more concerned about things like disfiguration or debilitation illnesses that can be healed through surgery or other highly complex treatments. I get that dealing with chronic pain may not be as complex in that regard and need less of a support system, but - for example - things like a child's foot getting run over by a car.

A colleague's friend's son had that happen to him one day ago and highly skilled surgeons are working to save his foot. It's mangled, but there's a chance.

It could just be cut off and he would live, hell, even walk, but the chance that he may keep it is something that I think should not be swept aside as being coddled by our current previleges. Being concerned about that doesn't necessarily need to be judged, as were talking about some pretty fundamental achievments in terms of quality of life. My uncle lives because of dialysis and he is glad of it. He hates not being able to travel anymore, but he jokes with his wife, sees friends, etc... He's not being vampirised.

To me, to be honest, the idea of your society seems quite attractive. Freedom to travel whenever, no paperwork, take up work as I go - or open a kindergarten for my circle of friends without a million of hoops to jump through or getting registered or complicated taxes...
What I find far more scary is the idea of that period of getting from one system to the other, because that's where I see the greatest suffering happening, before things settle into their new un-governmental structures.

External alien invasion crisis that has everyone pulling together aside, are there certain ways to bring about gradual change with a minumum of discomfort? Just... basically voting toward it? Supporting alternative support structures to make the governmental ones unnecessary? I'm curious about the process.

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Friday, January 25, 2008 3:54 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

HKC- Okay, points taken.

Quote:
Signy and others point at the tiny percentage of people who are born with poor impulse control, autism, or problems with aggression caused by brain-damage and use these unfortumates to prop up their belief in intrinsic evil.

First of all, it's not a tiny percentage. By the time you add up the numbers of kids with poor impulse control, epilepsy (Which is often associated with behavioral issues), bipolar disorder, ODD, OCD, traumatic brain injury, borderline retardation and autism you're looking at about 10% of children. Having lived in that world for 19 years, I can tell you that MOST families love their children and struggle with their issues. Dealing with kids like that in a non-adversarial way is an endurance exercise in patience and energy.

"Evil" is a pejorative word. I only used it because someone else did; I truly don't believe that children are "evil" but they may have disorders that predispose them to violent acts. Actually, I'm more concerned about the BIll Gates of the world: As Rue said, with nary a fist raised or a shot fired he's created a monopoly worthy of the robber barons of old. I read an interesting study of robber barons: They tend to be antisocial, lacking empathy, and single-minded in the extreme, and have some bizarre behaviors. Anarchism simply doesn't have the means to deal with these kinds of people. As long as there is "free energy" in the system, some people are bound to take it up.

I don't find anarchism un-doable as proposed but incomplete or (in some versions) internally conflicted. For example, I can't imagine anarchism and for-profit corporations (no matter how "friendly") existing together because I think they're intrinsically at odds with each other, corporations representing ONE form of concentrated power.

BTW- Fletch2, thank you for getting those characterizations out of the way. They have been lingering on the sidelines for quite a while, and so far it seems have been mostly one-sided (from the anarchist's end).

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Friday, January 25, 2008 6:01 AM

Thank you, Signy.

Hey, look what I found!

http://books.google.com/books?id=AvK6UW0bAc8C&dq=the+drama+of+the+gift
ed+child&pg=PP1&ots=FKeGw0Ltt1&sig=Fig_6WzQGLx6CS-oyIU_oNNXxis&hl=en&prev=
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&rlz=&q=the+drama+of+the+gifted+chil
d&btnG=Google+Search&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail (URL split up to keep the thread from getting too wide--thanks leadb--sorry, got a wide screen computer and didn't notice any problem.)

It's the entire text of Alice Miller's book, The Drama of the Gifted Child! Huzzah! Her writings are at the heart of Frem's and my theories of why the world rewards sociopaths and destroys children's empathy all in the name of love and good parenting. I challenge ANYONE to read this book and still say they don't understand where Frem and I are coming from! (Not sayin' you'll agree, but I hope it would put an end to the prejudice).

You say, "I read an interesting study of robber barons: They tend to be antisocial, lacking empathy, and single-minded in the extreme, and have some bizarre behaviors. Anarchism simply doesn't have the means to deal with these kinds of people." Alice Miller handily accounts for exactly this sort of "bizarre behavior." And again, when you say that anarchism hasn't "the means," I can't help thinking you're talking about some kind of force-based control of other people's behavior. And when you say "these kinds of people" And in the present context, I can't help thinking that your demonstrating a lack of empathy that goes to the heart of why "these kinds of people" are a problem in the first place.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, January 25, 2008 6:16 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"You see what Frem and I propose as taking away your rights."

Hunhhh ?

My problem with Frem's version is not that he goes too far - it's that he doesn't go far enough. You can't have a viable anarchy and have all the same systems in place that concentrate wealth and power - like private property (goods and land), money, guns, nuclear families and parental authority, organizations, and the ideology that justifies them. ALL those things make the interaction between individuals something other than a free association between equals - just in and of themselves. And THEN you have the problem of the born sociopath who willingly manipulates every system for gain with complete (and I do mean complete) disregard for the people affected.

And my contention has been that if you have those things - those power structures ripe to be gamed by the few - you ALSO need the means for society as a whole to deal with that.

You can't have one without the other.

But the other thing I've noticed is an easy-breezy - sometimes downright callous - disregard for the weaker and slower in the systems they propose. Think on it - they want systems of unequal power, no collective rein on what people with power might do - and complete and utter disinterest in the helpless, the slow, the infirm, in the face of the very systems that could easily victimize them.

Let me ask you personally HKC - do you find that approach moral ?

***************************************************************
Oh - and double shifts - that sucks.

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Friday, January 25, 2008 6:33 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

HKC_ I worry about the vanishingly small percentage of people who would take over an anarchist system because the number of people who determine our current economic, social, moral and political landscape is "vanishingly small" ... about 0.00001% of the population. It doesn't take many people to really mess things up, if the conditions are right!

The thing I find troubling about Frem's proposals is that he would sacrifice a much larger number of people to deal with this 0.00001% on his way to his "preferred system". Now personally I've always thought systems were to serve people, not the other way around.

---------------------------------
Always look upstream.

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Friday, January 25, 2008 6:41 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:
Quote:
Originally posted by Fletch2:
I disagree. Collective will in the South continued the practice of slavery there and yet that system was never moral. Further collective will is another way of saying the rule if the majority or mob rule, hardly a good example?

Criminy, Fletch, you must think I'm a goddamn idiot. I said "Law's don't make a community moral. The collective will of the people make a community moral." The "OR NOT!" was implicit. Crap, I was talking about a collective will that promotes spousal abuse. I was saying that it is the collective will of the community that determined the moral character of a community not a law or a cop or a judge. That is all.
Quote:
Good laws are based on principles not morals. To lead a "moral" life could mean just blindly following the rules laid down by your religion, to live a principled life is to made a stand on an issue and defend it even when doing so is uncomfortable to you. US Civil Rights legislation was good law because it was based on principle, not the morals of a few and certainly not on the collective will of many of the folks involved.

If you say so. Again, your definitions of "respect" and "peace" are different from mine.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

Are you saying that it's ok for a society to oppress a man because of the colour of his skin? Jack seems to have no problem with the idea of ethnic cleansing, he thinks that if a community in anarchist world doesn't want to live with "niggers" they have the right to force them out, even if that families property rights are violated even if violence is used.

Geezer disagrees with that, but then he's just reading the material and he seems more a Libertarian anyway. What I haven't heard is a rejection of that idea from the people that "believe hard" so how about it? Clear that up for us right now, who else suffers for your "better world?"

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Friday, January 25, 2008 7:28 AM

Quote:
Frem - I'm getting the impression that if every one in the anarchy got together and said - you know, we all really DO want to pay something like a tax to support --- X --- medical training and research, materials technology, ways to heal the planet - you'd have a problem with that. Same as "rule" and "reject". What if that's just what they decided ?
No ? You seem to have a problem with any group action at all. Am I wrong ?

I don't have a problem with an agreement that is unanimous by all affected by it.

I have a problem with an agreement that is NOT unanimous being forced on people who did not agree.

That right there is more or less the root concept I have tried express repeatedly... not sure how I can express it beyond that.

Quote:
Your form of anarchy is inevitably tied to primitivism.

I do not see it so, yes, initially Technological progress and development would take a hit, sure - but only until new models and metholodolgies were created, we're a VERY adaptive species, it's one of our greatest strengths.

And our current models of business, logistics, education and research are so abysmally corrupted, wasteful and abusive... and becoming more so, that past a certain point they will bog down and be unable to function as intended, between regulations, fees, red tape and silliness caused by lack of actual HUMAN interaction and decision making, it's a wonder they work at all.

Case in point, automated phone support systems designed in part to frustrate you into giving up, unable to hold the company which sold you the product to it's end of the deal.

It's like bailing out a boat while the hole in the bottom gets bigger and bigger, eventually your boat is GOING to sink because it will reach a point where it's flooding faster than you can bail out the water - Government does this to EVERYTHING eventually, it's like a cancer that grows and grows and chokes off everything else seeking it's own existance and expansion.

Our current models are wholly unsustainable, and when the brick wall our little train is headed for looms closer and closer, that jump one felt "too dangerous" a little while back starts looking more and more like a good idea, you understand ?

Given the choice between a maybe-disaster and a guaranteed one, I think imma bet on the maybe.

Quote:
I'm sure you mentioned this as an aside, not part of the main subject, so don't answer it here if you don't want to, a PM would be fine. I'm just curious what exactly you're referring to. Self-destruction by war? A collapse because we mismanaged our resources? Disease? Something to do with demographics?

AR - one of the things that makes our current model unsustainable is that it's based on limited resources being used faster than they can be replaced (not just oil, but that's a big one), and sooner or later that *IS* going to catch up with us - we'll find ourselves embroiled in wars over it, which ironically tend to consume or destroy those resources at a far greater rate than peace... leading to less resources, leading to more war... until we either wipe ourselves our, turn this place into an unihabitable radioactive wasteland, or the societies and Governments involved completely implode, throwing us back into barbarism - from which we might find another way, or might, and this is what scares me, just might be dumb enough to repeat the entire cycle AGAIN... I use the sig line I do for a reason.

One especially scary thought is that it wouldn't be fuel per se, that did us in over oil, it would be plastic, most plastic is petrol based, and our whole society is practically built on it, just imagine if THAT resource cut short or dried up rapidly ?

Quote:
What I find far more scary is the idea of that period of getting from one system to the other, because that's where I see the greatest suffering happening, before things settle into their new un-governmental structures.

You and me both, but see the Train analogy above... like I said, imma bet the maybe.

As for the kid you mentioned, I can totally empathise, my right leg is gone from just below the knee - but after the failure of several prosthetics designed by modern medical tech, I drew up my own designs and worked them out with an engineering firm, giving them the rights in exchange for them putting the effort into it... they got the function right, but couldn't get the fit to work..

When I moved to MI, I found some "frankenstein" types who didn't hold with the established lines of thought and methods too much, and did find a way to make them fit better - the interesting part is that any of these designs can use some pretty common parts, rather than the super-ultra-expensive specialty stuff that doesn't seem to be any different in any way that I can understand... I mean, and 18" long, 1.5" wide tube of material rated to hold 300lbs is something a machine shop could crank out, isn't it ?

And it sure as hell won't cost you (I kid you NOT) $7800.00USD if they do, would it ?

Mine DO work, they work better than the ones I broke trying to use, all of which cost at LEAST ten times more to make, my problem is just that there is so much irreperable damage to the stump of what is left that any prosthetic has a limited duration before damage and pain make it unusable for a while, and better fit and function extend that duration quite a bit.

So from my experience, modern med-tech isn't all it's supposedly cracked up to be.

Quote:
External alien invasion crisis that has everyone pulling together aside, are there certain ways to bring about gradual change with a minumum of discomfort? Just... basically voting toward it? Supporting alternative support structures to make the governmental ones unnecessary? I'm curious about the process.

Well, my part of the process involves a lot of direct intervention on behalf of future decision makers, it would take way too long to explain here, but a good bit of what I do is counsel kids who've been totally mentally, and often physically screwed up by our societies force-control model, some of them critically.

Do you know what HAPPENS to kids who "choke on the kool-aid" in todays brutal education-indoctrination system ?

Many of which are folk naturally inclined to the throught processes and mentalities I have been trying (and apparently mostly failing) to describe here.

I'll keep it to one link for the sake of brevity.
http://www.caica.org/

I help family members get their kids OUT of that mess, and do a lot of work helping them put the shattered pieces of their humanity together, and I can tell you for a fact that rabbit hole goes way deeper, way darker, than you ever wanna know and explore - fair warning, the deeper you dig, the uglier it gets.

Eventually, those that do not kill themselves (after one of these places, that's a heartbreakingly high percentage) eventually do grow up, and some of them WILL be the decision makers of our future, and understand in ways most people never will just how critical our own humanity is, how fragile it is, and how distorted it can become, and what the results are.

Most of em in fact still carry the pebble I give em when I start talking to em, cause you push enough pebbles over the side of a mountain, sooner or later you'll get the avalanche you're hoping for.
"If you do not know the solution, then you must BE the solution."
Proverb- Translated from Chinese.

Quote:
I read an interesting study of robber barons: They tend to be antisocial, lacking empathy, and single-minded in the extreme, and have some bizarre behaviors.

I am anti-social, lack empathy, and am single minded and weird....

Am I evil ?

Not everyone runs in the same direction when that ball is handed to them, pre-disposition or no.

Quote:
You say that nobody is "irredeemable" but you don't want to put the ass behind it to make it so.

This bit I felt the need to address last, cause it's so factually untrue, in every way, it's downright insulting.

I do put the "ass" behind it, often MINE, on the line - some of the folks who run those places are NOT nice people, by any means, and some of them operate outside of US Jurisdiction.

Besides supporting the other folks so involved, both materially and otherwise, I do a cursed lot of direct intervention with the kids who would otherwise be considered write-offs - and unlike conventional counsellors don't hide our world behind polite fictions and demonstrably false statements, say their worldview is distorted cause they see through the facade, or think that they are mentally deranged for wanting straight answers to questions adults "know better" than to ask.

Oddly enough, it seems to work in spite of not having any "official" credentials, and quite well compared to the rate of suicide and psychological implosion otherwise, a sympathetic voice of ANY kind (the official terminology is "helping witness") for badly broken kids that don't have ANY, makes a tremendous difference in how things go for them.

What gives a lot of them the most hope is that some day THEY may be in a position of enough power and authority to change things, and you know, that's my hope too.

It's why I freakin do it.

And yes, I was a "write-off" myself, it's why I can so effectively relate to them when no one else can.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, January 25, 2008 7:36 AM