Rethinking Anarchist Doctrine
I believe fundamentally the Libertarian / Anarchist doctrine is flawed. Not in it's end, but in it's means. The endgame is flawless, we all want a voluntary society without coercion. However the means are very questionable and problematic, and it makes this philosophy look childish and discredits itself.
It's just like the communists, they had a dream, however the steps they took to reach that dream has literally created a hell on earth. So every time you have dreamers like this, who see a clear goal ahead of themselves, but sacrifice the means for the ends, you will get suffering.
Balance
The thing is that nature and society is usually in balance, even currently we have a pretty stable status quo. People are paying their taxes, cops are patrolling the streets, ambulance services working.
If you were to introduce sudden change, and just abolish that immediately, that will cause unimaginable suffering, and will have the same results as communism. It will turn into something really bad.
So as irritating the status quo is, you can never introduce sudden change in society, because people will get hurt as a result of it.
Abolitionism
The second problem is this abolitionist mindset. For example I would like nothing more than to abolish the Pension System, since it's an obvious Ponzi Scheme, that will enslave countless future youth generations to pay for the debt of old people.
However as much as I would like to abolish the Pension System, and most rational economists would also want that. You just simply can't do it.
It's literally impossible, it would be very very unpopular, and it would actually cause chaos, proving that government is indeed the savior. Which is the last thing you should do is to give positive reputation to the government.
So you have 100,000,000 pensioners in Europe. What are you going to do? Let them all starve? You understand that that is not an option. However if you keep the system, then you will have even more old people, dependent on it, and more young people enslaved by it.
So you can't abolish it, but you also can't keep it either, because it will either way collapse in a few years. You will have austerity, and then many old pensioners will starve. So either way the government option will cause chaos, because the debt is unpayable.
Strategy
There is a solution, but first we have to understand what Government is. Government is a monopoly of force and violence. So you can't abolish it, by just removing it. You abolish government by breaking up it's monopoly.
So in this pension system example, the government will either way let pensioners down, and they will suffer. What we need to do is to provide an alternative for that. So when the pension system collapses, we will already have an alternative in place that will help old people out, and not let them starve.
You don't want to end up like Venezuela, where old people are starving on the streets, because that is what will happen when the Government collapses. So you need to have an alternative in place already to help poor people out.
Private Pensions is not an alternative, they will just loot that. They are thieves, who will loot everything they can get their hands on:
- http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/The-Adam-Smith-Institute-Blog/2011/0102/European-nations-begin-seizing-private-pensions
- http://thefederalist-gary.blogspot.com/2012/01/pension-plans-nationalized-by.html
- http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2010/11/08/hungary-readies-to-nationalize-mandatory-private-pension-funds/
- https://www.thenewamerican.com/world-news/europe/item/16518-polish-government-seizes-private-pension-assets
BLOCKCHAIN
It has to be a blockchain social security system. So that the government can not put it's filthy hands on it. Everything else will be looted.
It's just how it is, they are thieves. Blockchain systems have to be transparent and immune to theft, so that people can really keep their assets and savings in safe places.
We are really tired of these government run Ponzi Schemes. So if vulnerable people can be helped this way, then, and only then we can show the world how voluntarism is really better than government.
Because you will have dependent people either way, but we have to show people that they should be helped by us, not by them.
So when you have Trump for example cutting food stamps, leaving many children to starve, while increasing the military budget:
- https://ctmirror.org/2017/03/17/trumps-move-to-end-heating-aid-also-would-trim-food-stamps-for-many/
Okay, now this is a perfect opportunity to create a blockchain-based food stamp system, to help out the starving kids. And then we can show that we don't need the government's services at all, we can help people without the government.
So this is how government will lose it's credibility, by slowly being replaced by voluntary / cooperative projects that will help people.
And then they will shrink into insignificance, when you will have the free market provide all services, the government will have literally 0 role left.
And then it can be abolished. But only then. Until then, people have to work hard, to create alternatives for it.
Sources:
https://pixabay.com
Fantastic post mate. Very good arguments. I don't know enough about blockchains and how they work to know if this is a good idea or not but I love the outside of the box thinking and your passion for making the world a better place. I understand your sentiments completely regarding the chaos that would be caused and many would argue that the better Devil is the one you know but I live in hope that one day we will regain our senses and get back to living here the way that we were intended to.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts buddy!
This is what I have been wondering about, since most people just want to cut government spending recklessly, without even considering the consequences of that.
I think we need to introduce competition before cutting the spending. There is legitimate need for some of the government services, but that doesn't mean that only the government can provide them.
Pensions, healthcare ,education,food assistance, these things can all be provided voluntarily, if an organizational framework is established.
And once people see that that system will be much more efficient and much more helpful, then we can get rid of the government programs, one by one.
I agree completely with your sentiments and wrote a post along similar lines the other day regarding taking active steps away from government. It can be a scary thought even for those who advocate an anarchistic society with many who do advocate feeling that they would be able to survive quite comfortably in this kind of society, often with little regard for how it would impact those who are less able. ' It is easier to lie to someone than to convince them they have been lied to!'
cheers
He does make good arguments
Blockchains are awesome, I had a similar idea before, it seems if that more things take the blockchain shape the better and more efficients things become.
It certainly removes the corruption associated with most or all bureaucracies. After a bureaucracy becomes too big, corruption is just inevitable.
So this is a "scaling solution" to remove the bureaucracy and the corruption, while keep the benefits of it. It is a lot more efficient.
If I had to guess ,I would say that your average bureaucracy operates at 5-10% efficiency. It's just mindboggling how much money is embezzled or spent the wrong way.
Great article and I agree. However, wouldn't many of these problems have easier solutions if we didn't have such huge waste? I would argue that more than half of Americans' wealth is stolen both through taxes and currency debasement. Most of that wealth is not spend serving the people, but blowing them up and controlling prices. If we all switched to blockchain currencies, think of all the extra wealth we would have to voluntarily help our elderly and poor.
I think the transition to voluntaryism is already happening. It isn't going to happen overnight. It is going to happen in ways in you just described, and by us choosing to trade in crypto rather than government fiat. If the whole world switched to sound money today, most problems could be gone by tomorrow. It will take a little bit for everyone to get in, though.
I understand that, but the question is how are you going to convince people.
You first have to show people that the alternative systems works, before they jump the boat. So we already have to have a "voluntaryst infrastructure" in place before we shrink the size of the government.
You cant shrink it without having any other organization to replace it. Yes a lot of taxes are wasted, but people associate those taxes with the welfare benefits.
So we first have to detach the welfare from the government, and then start to eliminate the taxes. Because cutting the taxes, and then letting people starve on the streets isn't an option either.
And I am not talking about the US here, they spend a lot on the military. But in Europe, most of the spending is on Welfare. So that is what I am highlighting here.
Very true. I think once people realize how hard the banks have been screwing them for the last century, we will see a huge transition from banks to blockchains.
It certainly won't happen over night, but it would be a lot cooler if it did.
I'll just leave that to Bitcoin.
But on the government services side, some decentralized organizations, DAO's could easily replace them.
We shall see what will happen.
"Government is a monopoly of force and violence. So you can't abolish it, by just removing it. You abolish government by breaking up it's monopoly." Yeah, free competition!
Yes, it's just irritating to see the government forcing it's own monopoly on things , and then providing horrible service.
If you have a bad private school, you can sue them to hell for treating your kids badly. Meanwhile if you have a pedophile teacher in a public school, the school might actually cover up for him.
I am not joking, there were literally cases where the school covered up pedophilia incidents for some sick minded teachers.
Thats how much the government "protects the children".
Totally agree. The education quality of US is deteriorating due to the prevalent monopoly public school system. No matter how much fund the system gets, it can't improve its quality dramatically. The infrastructure can get refurbished, not the soul of it.
Good argument, but I remain a libertarian.
Followed.
What does that mean? It's a broad definition. And I said that the means are bad, not the ends.
Freedom is the end, how we get there is the tricky part.
have you read about ur and swift demand?
I dont understand your question.
There are both experiments in universal income. UR (or is it OUR?) has a identification procedure, with that you can have one person one key. Then use say doge party or eth for food stamp tokens.
I don't think that is viable. You can't encourage parasitism, otherwise you will have a lazy soviet-style society.
Economic communism should not be pursued.
It's one thing to actually help people who are in dire need, but to just put everyone on welfare will destroy the human spirit. It will make humans like zombies.
Like what free oxygen and radiation shields have done, right?
We just now realize that what nature gives us might not be free at all. The cost of destroying the environment is actually growing in $.
And nobody is paying for it's repair. So no, there is nothing that is for free. Nothing.
Even the sunlight is limited, of course it might take billions of years to realize that, but once it's gone, and if there will still be humans by that time, they will know that everything has a limit and a cost.
Since the government are taking the funds anyway via taxation, getting this off the ground will require lots of people paying twice.
That will be the wake-up call for most people. Since as the decentralized systems become more efficient than government bureaucracies (which they will, there is no way they wont), people will start to demand lower and lower taxes.
So the government will be forced to shrink into nonexistence, while a decentralized system takes it's place slowly.
They then can't come with the arguments that "but without taxes who will feed the poor", because that will be done without it, and taxes will have absolutely no benefit afterwards.