Egads...right, I shall break my reply down and type it out as I go along, bite-sized so to speak. I think this is the best way to reply to this, although it might get a little hard to follow later on in the conversation, but at least the reply quote function doesn't stack like it used to otherwise it would get messy.

That's fair enough, although one has to keep an open mind in the matter that there is still the matter of 'if' we do go down the drain, and should we do so it might not be in the manner in which we expect. After all, things in this world rarely occur in the manner in which we expect them to.
You are certainly a 'head-heavy' person, and this I hold you in respect for, no matter what others may say about you, but certainly you write with a passion inspired by the heart and indeed other matters which have occurred within your life which have influenced you, matters which have likely not occurred within mine and thus my viewpoint differs from yours, however this is why we have these conversations so that we may get a better understanding of each others viewpoints. So, let us begin, I have some baroque music playing to help my brain open up a bit, although whether I'll be able to reply to all of this in one evening without sacrificing quality over velocity is another matter, but bear with me, I shall do what I can.


When you say property, do you define it as physical property or also include non-physical property. When I think of freedom, I think of the freedom of expression as opposed to a physical object, therefore whilst I am concerned about the erosion of the freedom of speech in some western countries, it is still a much better situation than in the Peoples Republic of China where speaking out against the government might net you a visit from the MSS, likewise in Nazi Germany or the Warsaw Pact, although admittedly you could express discontent with the government in both those nations at a low level without being arrested, but even so, certainly if America was a dictatorship as some people fear it to be, quite a few members of this forum would suddenly disappear. That is not to say that it cannot ever become so, and I can understand peoples concerns about it, but in many cases these concerns turn into paranoia, in a manner of the 'Red Scare' of the 1950s and that can equally be detrimental to the freedom of speech via witch hunts and the like. However, that's enough waffling about what I perceive to be freedom.


Even so, within that thread you highlight, you end the introduction with, and I quote:

"If you prefer to still dream on of democracy being the best of all bad options, and consider it to be just and lawful - don't touch it then. Your idols are unlikely to survive this lecture."

Which, whilst placed at the end of a decent appraisal of your feelings towards Hoppe, sour the whole tone of the piece by essentially telling readers that 'if they don't conform to my way of thinking then you have my contempt' which is generally acknowledged to be an inefficient manner of persuading people of your viewpoint. 'My way or the highway' I believe is a saying used to describe such sentiments. Generally this method of presentation leads to driving more people away than it does encouraging people to read your thesis.


It's generally understood that mankind began as nomadic tribes moving out from the birth of mankind in Africa, from there some tribes stopped being nomadic and discovered that they could settle down and farm the land. Now, obviously if you take this and run with it, you can see that the more nomadic tribes that settled down, the more settlements there would be, and likewise that those settlements would get larger and maybe even split as the population increased. Then at a certain tipping point two settlements would have a dispute over a stretch of land and conflict would begin. Now it makes sense that there is a safety in numbers, and such separate settlements would band together to protect themselves and their land from external forces, and as such nation-states would begin. This eventually leads, usually through conquest, to the states becoming larger and larger until one large state rules over all the settlements. That has lead us to the current age where the whole world is filled with nations and there is no new land to expand into that is not already occupied by another nation (on this planet anyway).

I agree that the democratic model of today is much far removed from the model envisioned by the Ancient Greeks, as indeed are most ideas that were founded in that era, the world is, after all, a different place and as such ideas have been changed in the face of new challenges. Although I do believe that the Ancient Greeks would have positively loved the way that the internet has brought the world together in a manner to discuss philosophical matters on a scale which dwarf even the largest fora of old. They probably would have enjoyed the porn as well.
Certainly one could argue that democracy as it was originally envisioned in the days of more recent times, has also changed and failed, in that the power is once again placed in the hands of the rich and privileged whilst the poor are expected to toil to feed the aristocracy. However, when you compare the living conditions of the modern age with that of two hundred years ago, you realise that there have been definite improvements, and even so there have been improvements in the equality of democracy. Three hundred years ago the thought of a female Prime Minister would have been unthinkable, in fact just the other day in the United Kingdom we celebrated a woman called Emily Davison, who died in 1913 after throwing herself in front of the Kings racehorse at the Epsom Derby in support of Womans sufferage. In less than a hundred years from Emily Davisons death, women have prominent places in office and there has even been a woman Prime Minister. Of course, it is still a male dominated world, and it is harder for women to advance in British politics than it is for men, but the point is that it is happening.
Democracy is flawed, yes, but so is every single other form of government, there is no magic bullet as every government is made up of people of different ideologies and beliefs, so no matter who is in power and no matter what they do, they will upset someone. It is the curse of the office, and I would not swap places with the President of the United States for all the tea in China, despite the great promises of wealth and power, since no matter what policies I introduced, I would be lampooned and hated by some manner of people.

I can see where you are coming from, and for each of us out there, there is often a well published individual who has expressed ideas who we agree with. The problem comes when these theories are attempted to be placed into reality. Karl Marx made some engaging arguments in his original work, however when it was filtered through humanity we wound up with the Soviet Union which was in many instances a direct contradiction to the ideas of socialism. For each political system that has emerged on this world, it has rapidly differed from the thoughts which gave birth to it.
'No plan survives first contact with the enemy' is a classic saying, oft quoted by those of us who enjoy strategy and tactics alike, however outside of strategy it is still valid in that no political theorem can survive the ravages of human behaviour that is placed upon it, even through the best of intentions, but more often through a sense of greed and lust for power.


The gulf of the difference between the theory and the fact can be quite large, and there is no theory out there that would remain unblemished by an attempt to reproduce it in the real world. Even more so, the longer a theory is put into practice, the more it changes, the less it resembles the original theory. For at each turn it is changed, moulded and altered by those within it, either to suit the circumstances of the era or to suit an individuals desire. Does this mean that the theory is wrong? Perhaps, perhaps not, or perhaps it is another example of the gap between our brains and our hearts in that our brains can often come up with fantastic ideas, but our hearts can smash those ideas within minutes. Rational thinking is not the strongest point of humanity, after all, if it were then the world would be a much different place. :haha:




This is true, and certainly I cannot argue that the system of economics now is so bloody convoluted that it is baffling to the simple man on the street, which has probably helped create the divide between the city and the nation which exists in many western European nations, particularly in the UK.


Trade is a founding block of civilisation, I fully agree, and the foundation of money has definitely enabled more complex trading and complex civilisation, and money and trade has also fed that part of human nature that desires improvement by setting forward an easier manner in which a person can achieve his desires. What is being sold has varied over the years, from materials in the early eras, to manpower and ideas in the later years. This has enabled both physical and intellectual labour to flourish through a reward system. As much as I would love to see a world that did not require money to exist, I do not think that such a thing could occur.

I would say that this varies, there is still a market for barter through private means, ebay for example, and although it is a very competative market, there is a market for intellectual labour too. If there was not then people like Mark Zuckerberg would not have amassed a great fortune.
The opportunities are still there, but the competition is so great that many people are unable to get into the market. Is this the fault of the states or the inevitable result of a free market? But yes, we will cover this later.


I am not entirely sure where you are coming from in this respect. I agree that the growth of a civilisation requires the networking of food, water and services...but where it falls apart is when you start mentioning about the prevention of everybody joining the market as producer of customer. Surely we are all in a market of some nature as a producer or consumer. For example, I produce security and cleanliness during my night-shift, for this I am paid and this money then goes into the purchase and consumption of both leisure and necessary items. Therefore at the most basic level I am a producer and consumer. Of course, there are people who are unable to produce, and some who are simply unwilling, and the latter spoil the life of the former by prejudicing the general public and government against them, but that is a rant for another topic completely.
In an indeal world for a government, every member of society would produce work-hours and consume the result of the work-hours of other people. For example, my security and cleanliness enables people who stay at the hotel I work at to sleep in the knowledge that the place is unlikely to burn down around them and when they eat their breakfast in the morning it is unlikely to be shared by a cockroach or a rat. Equally, when I go to a shop, I am paying for the products of someone elses work, be it a person working on an assembly line, or a farmer growing the crops that I eat.
Obviously in todays market the person who grow the crops is likely to live on the other side of the planet, but aside from the fact that the entire world (well, most of it) is a market now, what is the difference between this and the world of six hundred years ago when democracies were rare and few and far between?

Yes, I understand what you mean here. There is only so far that unity of nations can go before it reaches a tipping point. Some people outside of Europe question the likelihood of a giant European superstate emerging, and I laugh at them, since it is incredibly unlikely that European nations could agree on something long enough to do so.
There is definitely a move towards devolution in modern society, in the United Kingdom we have the Welsh assembly and the Scottish parliament, both of whom have to pay lip service to Westminster of course, but it is something that did not exist a hundred years ago.
Of course, the problem lies that, if Bavaria, for example, did seperate from Germany, what would stop Poland from invading and occupying it? Other than the knowledge that to do so would lead to retaliation from the entire German nation, so...even though Bavaria would be seperate from Germany it would still be tied to it in a manner in which the Falkland Islands are tied to the United Kingdom despite being on the other side of the planet, the need for support from an entity larger than itself.

It is certainly an arguement that can be put forward, and from a rational viewpoint it makes perfect sense, after all 'A house divided against itself cannot stand'. If America had remained split into two entities when the First World War broke out, would either entity have intervened in Europe? Or would the war in Europe spread to America in a resumption of hostilities between the North and the South? Either way America as we know it today would be radically different, and I believe not for the better.
So, yes, a rational and calculating mind would certainly see that an empire that is united is stronger both financially and militarily than one that is divided in on itself. A civil war makes for a weakness, and a weak empire is one that is oft preyed upon by other empires. Were it not for the powderkeg like situation in Europe and the dash in Africa, would Britain have decided to invade the US again whilst they were struggling against the CSA? All situations that have been explored in fiction but certainly one cannot deny that Lincoln and those around him would be acutely aware that a divided house is politically, financially and militarily weaker than a unified one. Having the moral crusade to free the slaves makes it easier to sell to the public, and is certainly a just a noble endeavour, be it the primary or secondary objective of the American civil war or not.

I would struggle to suggest that this is a democratic speciality. The control of a citizens private wealth and property is something that has been sought after by the state since the idea of the state was created. This has been going on for longer than the United States of America has existed and certainly before the First World War.
Absolute monarchies, despotism, fascism, socialism, democracies, republics, all of them are governed by people who want control over the people below them. If anything, in todays democracy we are actually able to keep more than those of us who lived three to four hundred years ago, for if one were to scale the sort of tithe taken by feudal lords back in the medieval era to the taxes we pay today, it would be something like 80% of our earnings, with just enough allowed to eat. Nothing for electricity, nothing for internet or luxuries or leisure, and forget education because that would be a challenge to the dominance of the lord over you. Is this merely bread and circuses? Maybe, but it's clearly not wasted on everyone otherwise we would not be having this conversation.


Oh good lord, I would be naive if I did believe in the ability of the state to self-govern. No, goodness no. I agree that the state does bloat itself out somewhat, sure it tries to cut bits here and there, but civil servants are like cockroaches, you can't get rid of them. There was an old joke that referred to the early L85A1 rifle as the 'civil servant' as it "didn't work and couldn't be fired". Of course, some of these civil servants actually do keep things ticking along in government, more so than any of the politicians whose faces we see on television or in the newspapers. Earlier I stated that I wouldn't be the President of the United States for all the tea in China, because it's a job in which you are doomed to fail to please everyone. Well, when you factor in the grey men which stand behind the President you see that he is merely a sail in the wind, he may push the boat in a certain direction, but it's the civil servants who are the wind that push the sail.
Again, however, this is hardly a byproduct of a democratic system, although it is perhaps more noticable in one because of how much of the system we can see versus how much of it we cannot. Even in an absolute monarchy there were advisers, councillors, the little men who influence the ultimate decision of the monarch.

I believe what history and my understanding of the human race as an ultimately flawed species has told me.

You simply cannot put the genie back into the bottle, my friend. Nations came about through interconnectivity and a need to be strong to prevent other nations from conquering them. Once one group of people banded together they were stronger than those around them, they could take and do anything they wanted, and the individuals around them could do little to stop them, after all, which is stronger in a fight, one person with one gun, or eight people with the same type of gun? As the old saying goes, 'Quantity has a quality of its own', and so to combat this new threat, other individuals had to band together to form their groups.
Now, if a group of people were to split back up again, with no outside aid, it would be quite simple for their neighbours to walk in and help themselves to whatever they wanted through force.
As August put it, those who live by such principles are doomed to be overrun and enslaved by those who do not.

This was in the days when communication took months, nowadays it takes seconds, the world is too small for there to be far away empires any more, and even in those eras, the traders were quite often soon followed by diplomats, or sometimes co-erced into becoming diplomats themselves.

A good point, and one that should be put in bold really because it is a statement of humility which is something that not enough people connect with your statements on this forum. Of course, the primary problem lies in the old frying pan and fireplace situation, would the new way become even more self-destructive than the old? Would the new way lead to a massive war which would result in the loss of it all? Perhaps, and indeed, you state that if nothing is ventured then nothing is gained, but I think that right now there is far too much inertia in the system for such change to occur.
However, in the near future when resources start becoming more expensive to acquire, and the situation is more dire...well...nothing motivates a person like an empty stomach as they say. Who knows what will come about in the next fifty years in Europe alone, let alone the entire world. I certainly do not expect the sort of fluffy utopia that some do, but a world in which technology may have advanced but human nature remains the same.
Time will tell more than any single word of this conversation can.

Indeed it is no comfort, but it is reality and there is little comfort in it as you and I both well know. :03: In the vast long term perhaps this democracy will not last, Rome did not, and that was hardly a democracy by the end of it. There are hard times ahead, I think we both recognise that, that this Pax Europa will not last. Next year we will mark a hundred years since the Great War, and every time I go to the war memorial in our town and I see the children from the local primary school lined up and reading 'In Flanders fields' I wonder to myself what wars they will see in their lifetimes. Will there be another great European war? Will it involve nuclear weapons? I do not know, although I think the fear of the destruction of what has been built currently weighs greatly on the minds of the people who make the decisions to go to war. It is far easy now to destroy in greater magnitude than it has ever been before, and it is perhaps this fear that has prevented major wars in Europe? It certainly helped to prevent the Cold War from going hot. Again, this is something that only time will tell.


TO BE CONTINUED.

I have run out of time this afternoon to continue writing, so I will continue more tomorrow if and when I have time to get into the right frame of mind.

I can see where you're coming from Skybird, I really can, although at this point in time in this discussion I think that you are prescribing far too much blame towards a system rather than the reasons why that system is corrupted. That being said, I do see through a brief read of the next paragraph that you are moving on to compare the systems, so I shall address that later.

Hey Skybird, I sure hope you aren't married, your wife must feel neglected due to all your writing :O:(and to think you aren't publishing it, just posting it on subsim)

Oh, I just got threatened! :D
That is maybe the biggest difference between you (and most people here), and me: I so far ended up thinking that democracy was not so much corrupted (being moved away from an ideal state), but is a corrupt system by nature, from beginning on. At least if it is used as the modus vivendi in communities that exceed a certain size limit. In ancient Greece, the bad reputation of it did not unfold or develop over time. It was present from beginning of the use of its concept on, I understand

The corruption thing is a conclusion I came to over the past two years or so. The size limit for communities is something that is, in different forms and contexts, on my mind since much longer already. Ten years, if not more.

Anyhow, this just as a first quick reply to yours - I have not read your text so far, and just copied it into a text processor to make it easier to read. Will read it later this night, or tomorrow. Thanks for taking the time to type it in - and to read mine. I did not take it as a natural thing that you would. :salute:

No, not married, when it comes to the point of the church ceremony where the priest says "And will you type for your man till death will part you", they all use to turn and run away, screaming.

Women. :dead:

Yet you miss the key.
It isn't the system or any other of the systems which have been tried which are the problem, the problem is humans.

So you are back to genocide again. It is the only way to get a population small enough for the little isolated serfdoms you want.
Though of course those the populations of those serfdoms will still have to be regularly culled because people are still the problem even in your utopian dream/nightmare, though even that won't solve the problem as it can only increase the very obvious corruption which is built into the core of your dream system.

Here's my face as I read the text:
:)
:hmm2:
:hmmm:
:06:
:o
:doh:





:subsim:

EDIT: I'm not talking about the content of the text, just the sheer amount of it.

Oberon,

I would like to start replying to your comments, though maybe not doing it all in one rush, which makes it more comfortable for me to write, and for readers to consume it. Also, for the first paragraphs you can see that I already added quite some extensive quotes, making it a longer reading already again.

Not rushing it and doing stuff in smaller portions maybe also allows us to run this enjoyable discussion for some time to come - who knows? I am with Steve on what he said about the use of published letters in the old days... Reminds me of the long gone years when I played correspondence chess tournaments. :)

Property, and freedom. Well. Two things need to be mentioned here, and they are not just any part of the libertarian ethics: they form the very basis of it. First: the importance of “natural law”, namely the right of original appropriation and owning private property that was legally gained in trade, as a voluntary gift or by original appropriation , and second: the right for self-ownership (which includes the rejection of slavery both in explicit and implicit formats). Both points have have much to do with each other.

The following is by Rothbard, written in 1973, from the “Libertarian Manifesto”. I could as well have taken it from “The Ethics of Liberty” since all that stuff is in that as well (and in so many other of his texts - he was so incredibly productive and educated, additionally to his profession as an economic and political scientist he also was a passionate historian), but in trying to find the English texts (I have for the most in German, of course), I stumbled over this text first and found it matching the need. It focuses on right your opening question: what is property, is it meant physically or non-physically.

http://f4fs.org/murray-rothbard-on-t...s-of-property/

The most viable method of elaborating the natural-rights statement of the libertarian position is to divide it into parts, and to begin with the basic axiom of the “right to self-ownership.” The right to self-ownership asserts the absolute right of each man, by virtue of his (or her) being a human being, to “own” his or her own body; that is, to control that body free of coercive interference. Since each individual must think, learn, value, and choose his or her ends and means in order to survive and flourish, the right to self-ownership gives man the right to perform [p. 29] these vital activities without being hampered and restricted by coercive molestation.

Consider, too, the consequences of denying each man the right to own his own person. There are then only two alternatives: either (i) a certain class of people, A, have the right to own another class, B; or (2) everyone has the right to own his own equal quotal share of everyone else. The first alternative implies that while Class A deserves the rights of being human, Class B is in reality subhuman and therefore deserves no such rights. But since they are indeed human beings, the first alternative contradicts itself in denying natural human rights to one set of humans. Moreover, as we shall see, allowing Class A to own Class B means that the former is allowed to exploit, and therefore to live parasitically, at the expense of the latter. But this parasitism itself violates the basic economic requirement for life: production and exchange.

The second alternative, what we might call “participatory communal-ism” or “communism,” holds that every man should have the right to own his equal quotal share of everyone else. If there are two billion people in the world, then everyone has the right to own one two-billionth of every other person. In the first place, we can state that this ideal rests on an absurdity: proclaiming that every man is entitled to own a part of everyone else, yet is not entitled to own himself. Secondly, we can picture the viability of such a world: a world in which no man is free to take any action whatever without prior approval or indeed command by everyone else in society. It should be clear that in that sort of “communist” world, no one would be able to do anything, and the human race would quickly perish. But if a world of zero self-ownership and one hundred percent other ownership spells death for the human race, then any steps in that direction also contravene the natural law of what is best for man and his life on earth.

Finally, however, the participatory communist world cannot be put into practice. For it is physically impossible for everyone to keep continual tabs on everyone else, and thereby to exercise his equal quotal share of partial ownership over every other man. In practice, then, the concept of universal and equal other-ownership is Utopian and impossible, and supervision and therefore control and ownership of others necessarily devolves upon a specialized group of people, who thereby become a ruling class. Hence, in practice, any attempt at communist rule will automatically become class rule, and we would be back at our first alternative.

The libertarian therefore rejects these alternatives and concludes by adopting as his primary axiom the universal right of self-ownership, a [p. 30] right held by everyone by virtue of being a human being. A more difficult task is to settle on a theory of property in nonhuman objects, in the things of this earth. It is comparatively easy to recognize the practice when someone is aggressing against the property right of another’s person: If A assaults B, he is violating the property right of B in his own body. But with nonhuman objects the problem is more complex. If, for example, we see X seizing a watch in the possession of Y, we cannot automatically assume that X is aggressing against Y‘s right of property in the watch; for may not X have been the original, “true” owner of the watch who can therefore be said to be repossessing his own legitimate property? In order to decide, we need a theory of justice in property, a theory that will tell us whether X or Y or indeed someone else is the legitimate owner.

Some libertarians attempt to resolve the problem by asserting that whoever the existing government decrees has the property title should be considered the just owner of the property. At this point, we have not yet delved deeply into the nature of government, but the anomaly here should be glaring enough: it is surely odd to find a group eternally suspicious of virtually any and all functions of government suddenly leaving it to government to define and apply the precious concept of property, the base and groundwork of the entire social order. It is particularly the utilitarian laissez-fairists who believe it most feasible to begin the new libertarian world by confirming all existing property titles; that is, property titles and rights as decreed by the very government that is condemned as a chronic aggressor.

Let us illustrate with a hypothetical example. Suppose that libertarian agitation and pressure has escalated to such a point that the government and its various branches are ready to abdicate. But they engineer a cunning ruse. Just before the government of New York state abdicates it passes a law turning over the entire territorial area of New York to become the private property of the Rockefeller family. The Massachusetts legislature does the same for the Kennedy family. And so on for each state. The government could then abdicate and decree the abolition of taxes and coercive legislation, but the victorious libertarians would now be confronted with a dilemma. Do they recognize the new property titles as legitimately private property? The utilitarians, who have no theory of justice in property rights, would, if they were consistent with their acceptance of given property titles as decreed by government, have to accept a new social order in which fifty new satraps would be collecting taxes in the form of unilaterally imposed “rent.” The point is that only natural-rights libertarians, only those libertarians who have a theory [p. 31] of justice in property titles that does not depend on government decree, could be in a position to scoff at the new rulers’ claims to have private property in the territory of the country, and to rebuff these claims as invalid. As the great nineteenth-century liberal Lord Acton saw clearly, the natural law provides the only sure ground for a continuing critique of governmental laws and decrees.1 What, specifically, the natural-rights position on property titles may be is the question to which we now turn.

We have established each individual’s right to self-ownership, to a property right in his own body and person. But people are not floating wraiths; they are not self-subsistent entities; they can only survive and flourish by grappling with the earth around them. They must, for example, stand on land areas; they must also, in order to survive and maintain themselves, transform the resources given by nature into “consumer goods,” into objects more suitable for their use and consumption. Food must be grown and eaten; minerals must be mined and then transformed into capital and then useful consumer goods, etc. Man, in other words, must own not only his own person, but also material objects for his control and use. How, then, should the property titles in these objects be allocated?

Let us take, as our first example, a sculptor fashioning a work of art out of clay and other materials; and let us waive, for the moment, the question of original property rights in the clay and the sculptor’s tools. The question then becomes: Who owns the work of art as it emerges from the sculptor’s fashioning? It is, in fact, the sculptor’s “creation,” not in the sense that he has created matter, but in the sense that he has transformed nature-given matter — the clay — into another form dictated by his own ideas and fashioned by his own hands and energy. Surely, it is a rare person who, with the case put thus, would say that the sculptor does not have the property right in his own product. Surely, if every man has the right to own his own body, and if he must grapple with the material objects of the world in order to survive, then the sculptor has the right to own the product he has made, by his energy and effort, a veritable extension of his own personality. He has placed the stamp of his person upon the raw material, by “mixing his labor” with the clay, in the phrase of the great property theorist John Locke. And the product transformed by his own energy has become the material [p. 32] embodiment of the sculptor’s ideas and vision. John Locke put the case this way:

. . . every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labour of his body and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever, then, he removes out of the state that nature hath provided and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with it, and joined it to something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it that excludes the common right of other men. For this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to . . . 2

As in the case of the ownership of people’s bodies, we again have three logical alternatives: (i) either the transformer, or “creator,” has the property right in his creation; or (2) another man or set of men have the right in that creation, i.e., have the right to appropriate it by force without the sculptor’s consent; or (3) every individual in the world has an equal, quotal share in the ownership of the sculpture — the “communal” solution. Again, put baldly, there are very few who would not concede the monstrous injustice of confiscating the sculptor’s property, either by one or more others, or on behalf of the world as a whole. By what right do they do so? By what right do they appropriate to themselves the product of the creator’s mind and energy? In this clear-cut case, the right of the creator to own what he has mixed his person and labor with would be generally conceded. (Once again, as in the case of communal ownership of persons, the world communal solution would, in practice, be reduced to an oligarchy of a few others expropriating the creator’s work in the name of “world public” ownership.)

The main point, however, is that the case of the sculptor is not qualitatively different from all cases of “production.” The man or men who had extracted the clay from the ground and had sold it to the sculptor may not be as “creative” as the sculptor, but they too are “producers,” they too have mixed their ideas and their technological know-how with the nature-given soil to emerge with a useful product. They, too, are “producers,” and they too have mixed their labor with natural materials to transform those materials into more useful goods and services. These persons, too, are entitled to the ownership of their products. Where then does the process begin? Again, let us turn to Locke: [p. 33]

He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself Nobody can deny but the nourishment is his I ask then, when did they begin to be his? When he digested? or when he ate? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? And ’tis plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could That labour put a distinction between them and common That added something to them more than Nature, the common mother of all, had done, and so they became his private right And will any one say he had no right to those acorns or apples he thus appropriated because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common? If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstand ing the plenty God had given him Thus, the grass my horse has bit, the turfs my servant has cut, and the ore I have digged in my place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property without the as signation or consent of any body The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.

By making an explicit consent of every commoner necessary to any one’s appropriating to himself any part of what is given in common, children or servants could not cut the meat which their father or master had provided for them in common without assigning to every one his peculiar part Though the water running in the fountain be every one’s, yet who can doubt but that in the pitcher is his only who drew it out? His labour hath taken it out of the hands of Nature where it was common . . . and hath thereby appropriated it to himself.

Thus the law of reason makes the deer that Indian’s who killed it, ’tis allowed to be his goods who hath bestowed his labour upon it, though, before, it was the common right of every one And amongst those who are counted the civilized part of mankind . . . this original law of nature for the beginning of property, in what was before common, still takes place, and by virtue thereof, what fish any one catches in the ocean, that great and still remaining common of mankind, or what ambergris any one takes up here is by the labour that removes it out of that common state nature left it in, made his property who takes that pains about it.3

If every man owns his own person and therefore his own labor, and if by extension he owns whatever property he has “created” or gathered out of the previously unused, unowned, “state of nature,” then what of the last great question the right to own or control the earth itself? In short, if the gatherer has the right to own the acorns or berries he picks, or the farmer the right to own his crop of wheat or peaches, [p. 34] who has the right to own the land on which these things have grown? It is at this point that Henry George and his followers, who have gone all the way so far with the libertarians, leave the track and deny the individual’s right to own the piece of land itself, the ground on which these activities have taken place. The Georgists argue that, while every man should own the goods which he produces or creates, since Nature or God created the land itself, no individual has the right to assume ownership of that land. Yet, if the land is to be used at all as a resource in any sort of efficient manner, it must be owned or controlled by someone or some group, and we are again faced with our three alternatives: either the land belongs to the first user, the man who first brings it into production; or it belongs to a group of others; or it belongs to the world as a whole, with every individual owning a quotal part of every acre of land. George’s option for the last solution hardly solves his moral problem: If the land itself should belong to God or Nature, then why is it more moral for every acre in the world to be owned by the world as a whole, than to concede individual ownership? In practice, again, it is obviously impossible for every person in the world to exercise effective ownership of his four-billionth portion (if the world population is, say, four billion) of every piece of the world’s land surface. In practice, of course, a small oligarchy would do the controlling and owning, and not the world as a whole.

But apart from these difficulties in the Georgist position, the natural-rights justification for the ownership of ground land is the same as the justification for the original ownership of all other property. For, as we have seen, no producer really “creates” matter; he takes nature-given matter and transforms it by his labor energy in accordance with his ideas and vision. But this is precisely what the pioneer — the “homesteader” — does when he brings previously unused land into his own private ownership. Just as the man who makes steel out of iron ore transforms that ore out of his know-how and with his energy, and just as the man who takes the iron out of the ground does the same, so does the homesteader who clears, fences, cultivates, or builds upon the land. The homesteader, too, has transformed the character of the nature-given soil by his labor and his personality. The homesteader is just as legitimately the owner of the property as the sculptor or the manufacturer; he is just as much a “producer” as the others.

Furthermore, if the original land is nature- or God-given then so are the people’s talents, health, and beauty. And just as all these attributes are given to specific individuals and not to “society,” so then are land and natural resources. All of these resources are given to individuals [p. 35] and not to “society,” which is an abstraction that does not actually exist. There is no existing entity called “society”; there are only interacting individuals. To say that “society” should own land or any other property in common, then, must mean that a group of oligarchs — in practice, government bureaucrats — should own the property, and at the expense of expropriating the creator or the homesteader who had originally brought this product into existence.

Moreover, no one can produce anything without the cooperation of original land, if only as standing room. No man can produce or create anything by his labor alone; he must have the cooperation of land and other natural raw materials.

Man comes into the world with just himself and the world around him — the land and natural resources given him by nature. He takes these resources and transforms them by his labor and mind and energy into goods more useful to man. Therefore, if an individual cannot own original land, neither can he in the full sense own any of the fruits of his labor. The farmer cannot own his wheat crop if he cannot own the land on which the wheat grows. Now that his labor has been inextricably mixed with the land, he cannot be deprived of one without being deprived of the other.

Moreover, if a producer is not entitled to the fruits of his labor, who is? It is difficult to see why a newborn Pakistani baby should have a moral claim to a quotal share of ownership of a piece of Iowa land that someone has just transformed into a wheatfield — and vice versa of course for an lowan baby and a Pakistani farm. Land in its original state is unused and unowned. Georgists and other land communalists may claim that the whole world population really “owns” it, but if no one has yet used it, it is in the real sense owned and controlled by no one. The pioneer, the homesteader, the first user and transformer of this land, is the man who first brings this simple valueless thing into production and social use. It is difficult to see the morality of depriving him of ownership in favor of people who have never gotten within a thousand miles of the land, and who may not even know of the existence of the property over which they are supposed to have a claim.


And this is an essay by Hoppe on the question of Ethics and Economics of Property, putting it into a more complete, compact, though summarised form:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe11.html

What's more, you mentioned that you think of - or in context at that point in your text: mean – freedom as the freedom of speech. I quote from The Ethics of Liberty, where Rothbard discusses in chapter 15 how and why “human rights” make only sense if understood as in principle material rights for owning property.

He mentions freedom of speech and explains:

Liberals generally wish to preserve the concept of "rights" for such "human" rights as freedom of speech, while denying the concept to private property.' And yet, on the contrary the concept of "rights" only makes sense as property rights. For not only are there no human rights which are not also property rights, but the former rights lose their absoluteness and clarity and become fuzzy and vulnerable when property rights are not used as the standard.

In the first place, there are two senses in which property rights are identical with human rights: one, that property can only accrue to humans, so that their rights to property are rights that belong to human beings; and two, that the person's right to his own body, his personal liberty,, is a property right in his own person as well as a "human right." But more importantly for our discussion, human rights, when not put in terms of property rights, turn out to be vague and contradictory, causing liberals to weaken those rights on behalf of "public policy" or the "public good."

As I wrote in another work:
Take, fdr example, the "human right" of free speech. Freedom of speech is supposed to mean the right of everyone to say whatever he likes. But the neglected question is: Where? Where does a man have this right? He certainly does not have it on property on which he is trespassing. In short, he has this right only either on his own property or on the property of someone who has agreed, as a gift or in a rental contract, to allow him on the premises. In fact, then, there is no such thing as a separate "right to free speech"; there is only a man's property right: the right to do as he wills with his own or to make voluntary agreements with other property owners In short, a person does not have a "right to freedom of speech"; what he does have is the right to hire a hall and address the people who enter the premises. He does not have a "right to freedom of the press"; what he does have is the right to write or publish a pamphlet, and to sell that pamphlet to those who are willing to buy it (or to give it away to those who are willing to accept it). Thus, what he has in each of these cases is property rights, including the right of free contract and transfer which form a part of such rights of ownership. There is no extra "right of free speech" or free press beyond the property rights that a person may have in any given case.


I take note of that you see it as being that personal in tone. But I would lie when claiming that I can understand it. Translating the English sentence you quoted into German and using it in that thread at that point, does not raise any emotions in me of the kind you described. I do not see it as such a personal statement about people agreeing or disagreeing with me, but I see it as a reference to the critical attacks of Hoppe against the democratic system of which I think that they have such a logical and rational “penetration” power that it is hard to deflect them by counter-arguments that would convince. I repeatedly said that Hoppe's suggestion for an alternative world design may be more open to debate and difference in opinions - but that he is “unstoppable” when being on the attack against the existing system. To me, this still holds truth. Hoppe is best when he charges against the status quo, there he is most convincing. And to that part I have gotten reactions in the forum only that not only did not convince me rationally, intellectually, but gave me the impression of being strongly motivated by emotional antipathy to him - because he slaughters the beloved golden calf. Well, I would happily hand him the axe. If that destruction of idols is seen as a loss stirring emotions by some, then so be it. I refuse to be considerate of that, since I think it is more important to get this deconstruction done.

That is I think a bit too much of simplifying there, or better: ignoring too many aspects that also weigh in. There are many other factors who most likely also seriously affected the stories unfolding: ethnic and tribal/family identities of factions one confronted of allied with, natural disasters and environmental changes, climatic changes, famines, and the ever-happening trading, bartering. All the time, while the history of coin-money began with the first minting of coins in the 6th or 7th century BC, barter and trade basing on natural law conceptions obviously is much older; using any commodity as an intermediate “currency” for allowing complex trade is much older than minting: before that coin making era, it were rare stones, seashells, beans and the like. “Natural law” may not have been a formulated academic model back then, but it's underlying and obvious reasonability is what makes us think of it and referring to it as “natural”, and thus it probably was the pragmatic basis of many things that happened and many relations, friendly and hostile, that were maintained.

Since I think the history of the past let's say 3000 years (and I really have no intention to link the history of modern states to the conditions of the stone-age cave-owners) is decisvely influenced by the spreading use of money-tokens and later: minted coins, I'd like to refer to an earlier posting by myself on the history of money and previous money-tokens (the latter being used since around 3500 years):

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...+currency+mint

From the far east and Polynesia, over the deserts in Africa, to the Western/European sphere, you could see that tokens that turned into a standardization method for abstract trading processes (establishing trading and complex production lines that in direct 1:1 trade without such tokens was not possible) emerged from more primitive trade-exchange. As I said: money is just ordinary trading goods which are seen by people as valuable, desirable, and are available in sufficient quantity to really penetrate and become omnipresent in the market.
(...)
This German Wikipedia entry is better than the English pendant, it lists several of the early primitive currencies that were used to standardize the value of items in an indirect way so that things could be calculated and compared in their value to each other and trading became able even if you needed to accept to trade for something that was not immediately offering you the thing that you originally wanted. Your cow does not help you if the other needs no cow or you only need three planks of wood, since your cow is too valuable to trade it for just three planks of wood. But by trading it for coins, you get the market-agreed value (that means the value you and the other negotiated and finally agreed to) of the cow, and can use that to pay a craftsman and to buy a piece of wood so that he makes three planks from it for you. That is the difference between primitive bartering to complex trading, and without this expanding of trading complexity you cannot hope to form a huge and influential civilization, culture, empire.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitivgeld

They used: salt, cacao and plant seeds, tea-leafs, seashells, peas, teeth, hair, bones, textiles, "Spangengeld" (bronze era 1200 B.C.), "Axtgeld" (middle America until 1500), Messergeld (knife coins, China 12th-3rd century B.C.), Larin (16th-18th century from the Persian gulf to the Bengalian sea, kind of a metallic wire), "Hackgeld" (bars of precious material where slides got cut off when needed to pay something), and then the wide variety of natural produce. Trading with these intermediate tokens allowed complex trade. When rare metals like silver and gold entered the trading scheme, these primitive forms of a currency transformed into the money currency that we knew until last century. But in principle a currency until today, no matter what currency it is, always means: a certain quantity/weight of a material that is agree by the market to serve as a carrier material for standardizing these quantities: by forming them into coins with a certain specified amount of that material, or bars.

For more detail I refer again to Rothbard's “What the state has done to our money?”, part II, and additionally: Carl Menger, “On the Origins of Money”.

TBC

And that is where you are completely wrong.
Hoppe like you say identifies problems and argues against their existance.
It is where he excels because it is very very easy.
The hostility towards Hoppes dreamworld isn't his attacks on the problems, it is the plain lunacy of his solutions.
It is well illustrated by his use of historical ideals he wants to follow which clearly create the very problems which he is saying they can get rid of.
The only emotion is from people who have swallowed Hoppe whole like a grade school student who read Marx and passionately thinks they have discovered some wonderful panacea that the ignorant masses just can't see.
It is those wonderful fans of the fanciful ideal which are emotional about their new idol, which is very easily slaughtered.

I like this passage by oberon a lot:

I could boil it down to:
Between our Dreams for our future Society (Concepts, Theories) and the application of these, there is a Problem, it is Ourselves.

In a very rough manner, Humans are too flawed to achieve what we could achieve.
Our bad ways hinder us from moving forwards.
Too dum for our own good.


Enjoying the reading so far. It is a bit "deeper" than what i expect from a gaming forum, but that just adds to the value. It is educating to see two guys send their ideas back and forth.
thank you Neal, Thank you Subsim, thank you Authors.

Right, I shall finish with the original post before I tackle your reply to my replies otherwise we'll be tail-chasing forever more. :haha: I've started so I'll finish as the great Magnus Magnusson used to say.

Well, this is true in some respects, however history is littered with as many defective monarchs as there has been defective Prime Ministers or Presidents, and the detachment between the monarchical system and the people it governs has been just as big if not bigger than a present democratic system. If this was not the case then there would not have been a revolution in France or Russia, or a civil war in England, although admittedly there were plenty of other factors in the origins of these events but traditionally it has been accepted that within the nobility there is a certain disconnection with the plight of the common people.
What differs this from democracy? Perhaps the illusion of choice, after all you're stuck with one Monarch, in a two party system then you can at least change the face of the idiot trying to sell you a dream.
Why would I favour a democracy over a monarchy? Having never lived under a monarchy I couldn't tell you for certain, however when I examine the abuses of feudal lords of their subjects in the Dark Ages and Medieval eras, taxation far and beyond the sort that we experience today, then I am grateful to be in this era than then, not that I would know the difference.

I don't recall the discussion off hand, but I honestly can't really see where you're coming from here. Hitler is widely regarded as a dictator, but outside of the First World War he didn't actually kill anyone directly, likewise Hirohito and yet both were responsible for the deaths of thousands, and thousands of people. It's been a very long time since the leader of a nation has been on the battlefield and directly killed people, well, in Western Europe anyway.

.

What makes this different from any other political system? Yes, democracy is flawed, but that is because it is a system created by a flawed species, just like the socialist system.

The Swiss Confederacy had Imperial immediacy under the Holy Roman Empire, if someone had tried to invade the Swiss Confederacy I would wager that the HRE would have not stood for it. Look what happened when the HRE was on the verge of defeat by the French, the Helvetic Republic occurred. Then, following the defeat of the French in the Napoleonic wars, the Swiss federalised after a civil war and became the Switzerland of today. Had the Swiss remained a faction of several independent states without a central military command then they might not have faired quite so well in the First and Second World Wars. Certainly they would not have had the luxury of remaining neutral in European affairs without a strong military defensive presence.

I'd say that the state is certainly a big monopolist, but I would doubt that it is the biggest, certainly when you examine multi-national companies, some of whom have a greater GNP than some democratic nations. Would I trust the government to run a critical service? Once upon a time perhaps I would have, but since the trend in government now, greater than before, is to provide a profit over a service then I would question the ability of the state to provide a service.
Of course, privatization doesn't always equal success. In the United Kingdom, British Rail was privatized in the 1990s, it has split into several smaller companies, some of whom provided such appalling service that the railway was taken away from them, and since then the amount of companies has shrunk and now we're in a situation a bit akin to the 1920s when the dozens of smaller railway companies had amalgamated into the 'Big Four' which eventually were nationalised after the war.
Has the system improved? Not particularly, the trains still run late, some worse than in BR days, and ticket prices have gone through the roof.
So, I'd say that the state is equal to some businesses in terms of abuse of monopolies, but certainly no greater than some.


Not particularly. The United Kingdom has moved towards a democratic system since the Civil war, the monarch has increasingly become little more than a figurehead since that era. In fact if you look at the Bill of Rights of 1689, there are some similarities to the US Bill of Rights which was (IIRC) based upon it.
In regards to European monarchies, well, post-French revolution there were not a great deal of them left that were not primarily figureheads, even the German Empire was going that way until Wilhelm II reasserted his right to rule which lead to Bismarcks resignation. Would the First World War have taken place if Bismarck had still had control over Germany's foreign affairs? Would millions of people still have died in the battlefields of Flanders? Who can say?
I think that saying that Woodrow Wilson had a vendetta against the Habsburg-Lorraines is a bit of a stretch, certainly the US government would have had no love of a monarchical family but I think to place upon it all the ills of post-WWI Germany and Austria is a bit simplistic.
The downfall of the German Empire was, ultimately, the ineptitude of Kaiser Wilhelm II in his foreign affairs, had he taken Germany down a slightly different route, well, the Empire might still exist in some form today, but as it was he only served to add to tensions that already existed amongst the powerhouses of Europe and increase the chances of a conflagration. I don't blame Wilhelm II solely for the First World War, that would be stupid of me, and to be honest I suspect that even if Bismarck had stayed in power the Great War would have happened in some way, some how, because the road to war was paved in the late 1800s.

An Ochlocracy is probably a good description of the current situation of democracy, and one could argue that the ultimate destination of a Ochlocracy is an Oligarchy. I would also add Kleptocracy to the list, Plutocracy too, and perhaps a descent into a Illiberal democracy.
Is this a transition to communism? Not in its strictest form, because the ideals of communism is to create a state-less society, rather than a society in which the state controls everything. True Communism has never been achieved, only bastardisations of the original idea. So, what has been called a Communist state (such as the Soviet Union or the PRC) is really and truly a dictatorship (or to give it its proper name, a dictatorship of the proliteriat) which in turn becomes a Oligarchy or Ochlocracy.

Definitely, not going to disagree with you there. One only has to look at what 9/11 did for the career of President Bush and the Falklands War that for Margaret Thatcher, to be seen as a strong leader in a time of crisis endears a leader to the people, and enables the leader to get away with whatever reforms he wants to make in the name of response.
As Goering put it "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

Not disagreeing. Although the human race would likely endure depending upon the nature of the disaster.

You make a good point, however I hope you realise that with the reference to civil war in America I was joking. :03: (in particular the reference to the Monroe Republic and Cheyenne was to two television series, 'Revolution' and 'Jericho' respectively). However in order to break a nation down, you need to have something that is so strong that it overcomes the bonds which hold it together. Obviously the strength of these bonds varies from nation to nation, depending upon its individual circumstances, it took the collapse of a superpower to break apart Yugoslavia after all. Although the Balkans have historically been a very fractuous area hostile to any form of unification, heck, they even invented a term for the break-up of a unified nation after it 'Balkanization'. Although one could argue that the creation of Kosovo was more 'Pakistanization' than it was 'Balkanization'.
The weakening of the bonds that hold nations together though can come through a vast number of scenarios and I don't deny that such a scenario can take place within Europe or any other nation on this planet given the passage of time.
Perhaps our differing viewpoints on this come from the historical backgrounds of our nations? It's harder for me to understand the fractioning of nations because England has been unified for well over a thousand years, obviously when you zoom out a bit and bring in Scotland, Ireland and Wales into the picture then it gets a bit more difficult, but when you compare it to Germany which is a relatively modern construct and has shifted borders a lot over the past millennia in comparison to the island bound relatively static Great Britain (excluding our colonial exploits of course). Of course, we've been overrun by foreign nations from time to time, but our borders have remained relatively the same. Therefore to someone from England it seems completely unthinkable that, for example, Northumberland would form a separate nation-state from its neighbours. Whereas in Germany or America, the idea is seen as a positive thing.

I did not know that. How is it organised? Must be an administrative nightmare. :haha:

Of course, because for each action there is a clear and opposite reaction. Brussels grabs for more power, people shy away. I don't think that Brussels will ever achieve its goals, simply because, as I have repeatedly stated on the subject, you simply cannot mesh together a collection of nations that have spent the last millenia brutally murdering each other. The idea of a global super-state is a pipe-dream, not because of any libertarian belief but simply because human beings struggle to co-operate with each other for long periods of time, after all the longer the amount of time that people are together, the more they find to disagree about.

The only thing that prevents me from agreeing with you is concern over what they would be replaced with. Time and again history has shown us nations that have thrown off the yoke of one oppressor only to put another one into office. Sometimes the best choice really can be the devil that you know.

So what is the answer? The destruction of migration? Because then aren't you restricting the libertarian right of people to choose their company? Or is it the destruction of a group of people based upon religious beliefs, in which case you would be creating genocide greater than any democracy has created. How do you combat religious extremism without restricting libertarian rights or creating mass genocide?

---------------------------------------------

In regard to your further thoughts, I may come back to them at a later time or in reference to future discussions, for I think that for me to address each one in turn would bloat this conversation a bit too much, however it is a good reference to your beliefs and perhaps at some point one day I will get around to putting down a similar series of thoughts of my own.
I recently stumbled upon the concept of Nihilism (well, I say stumbled upon, I had been aware of the term for a long time but not researched it or read up on it much) and I am intrigued by it, and the existential thinking of the likes of Nietzsche, this understanding of the fundamental flaws of humanity, to me, leads to a greater understanding of political systems and their failings than that understood by the seemingly optimistic Ancient Greeks.
To understand that humanity is an imperfect species gives you the ability to acknowledge that any product of humanity is also an imperfect thing, and to replace one flawed system with another flawed system by externally seem a fantastic idea, it generally boils back down to the same system, power in the hands of the few over the many.

It helps to have it all in a separate word document, adding the latest replies at the bottom of the existing list,there I also colour code your and my entries, earlier quotes, and quotes from literature.

As I said, I see no need to rush this, so I will do it in sequence of your returns, but in smaller heaps. When you do not hear from me one or two days, that does not mean you have been forgotten.

It takes two to tango. Thanks for falling in to the tune! ;)

No this is why we have books.

Could it be that you have misunderstood me there, 180° reversed? My point is that the ancient Greeks despoised democracy, and explicitly warned of it. Two or three months ago I used a brief summary by Rahim Taghizadegan, an Iranian living in Austria and founder of the “Institut für Wertewirtschaft” (institute for value-based economics), he is about economics, history, politcal science, cultural anthropology and theology. About the institute (the opening page in English):

http://wertewirtschaft.org/en/index.php

He has released one essay which so very unfortunately is only available in German, for whatever it is worth I nevertheless link it, it explains in compact format how it was with democracy in an ancient Greece. It's not my only basis for assessing Greek history, but I like it for its very handy and compact format. The key issues imo it gets right.

http://wertewirtschaft.org/analysen/Demokratie.pdf

In an older thread ( http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...=203589&page=4 ), I summarized part of that like this:

The Greek had no illusions about democracy. They favored a small social elite that was about 5% - maximum 15% of the total population to be allowed in assemblies to vote on issues that affected the community. These 10% had to be males, they had to be rich and materially contributing to the community, they had to believe in the gods and they must honored their parents and forefathers and pay respect to the rites by which the dead forefathers got remembered and honored. Especially the latter was very important and was called for examination not rarely when a new young man demanded access to the assembly. These people were what constitutes the “citizens” of the community. The others - were of lesser social value than citizens. In other words, citizens were an elite, a minority, and a privileged group that also had to live up to the responsibility they had to accept.

In ancient Greece, the "demos" originally meant a small village, and later the "deme" was the smallest local administration cell (surprise, surprise: again the reference to having communities as small as possible!). The "demos" was not the totality of the whole population. At that time, the governing inside the demos meant the self-governing of the "citizen". But the citizens were an elite that was different to the ordinary population. The term "citizen" originally referred to an organized band of armed men - a small military unit, in other words. Men who served under arms were seen as free people and were full citizens, whereas unfree people - most of the population - were forbidden to carry arms or to gain access to the governing assembly.

So, where "democracy" was meant at those times in a positive context, it meant something like the self-governing of small administrative entities like a small city, and one criterion was that from the top of the hill where the assembly met outside the city walls, all of the country and community being governed must have been in view, and places that laid beyond that viewing range could not be claimed to be part of this community. In these assemblies, orthodoxy and conservatism were demanded and defended to protect culture, identity and rites, and the way this elite was identified could only be described as being aristocratic.

Rahim Taghizadegan mentions also this nice little detail: the realm of public affairs, in whose governing the citizens (the free, arms-carrying men) were not only allowed but were expected to participate and take up responsibility, was called "demosios". On the other side, there was the "idios", the sphere of privacy, private household, the non-public life behind the walls and doors of your home. This was seen in a negative, disadvantaged connotation, because the “idiot” was a poor dog or a fool or an unfree man who had to do the work in the household or his job and had no time and no inspiration to make a personal engagement for public issues, he lacked the education for that as well, and finally was not allowed to do that. Thus our modern negative understanding of the term "idiot". Taghizadegan points out that this discriminatory weighing was necessary and understandable, because the private household - the "oikos" - was holy and untouchable (protected private property as well, not that caricature of property protection we have today), whereas to safeguard the common good and a solid living basis for all the community - the "polis" -, public engagement was necessary as well. To engage yourself in the public part of the demosios was needed and encouraged and thus was seen positive, compared to somebody just withdrawing into the privacy of his own life in his home where he could not be of any use for the common good.

So, with this idea of aristocracy, there also came an understanding of that the aristocracy had to accept the responsibility coming with the privileged status. There also was the understanding that not everybody had what it takes to be part of that elite, both in character features and education and wisdowm, and in material wealth and fiscal/economic autonomy. Those without having own investments at risk (the ordinary man, the unfree, the slaves, the poor, all of whom did not own much or nothing) were excluded from decision making so that they could not make decisions that would redistribute other people's private property that was not theirs and direct it into their pockets (I cut it very short, you get the point, I hope). Also there was understanding that not just every stranger, just because he was wealthy, could be allowed into the aristocracy if he did not accept and integrate into the cultural context of rules, rites and traditions, because that would destroy the cultural identity of the whole polis. And finally there was understanding of the need that those wanting to decide needed to be of the education standards to be able to decide, intellectually and morally and with reagrd to knowledge and experience, while it would be a great danger if just any imbecile dumbhead, who had his intellectuality from counting flies in the streets, were allowed to effect the future of the polis.
(...)
The Romans followed that separation between aristocratic public life and idiotic private life, calling them "res publica" and "res privata". "SPQR" in the legions' emblems indicated the one-identity of the army and the senate - the citizens (free, carrying arms, male) and the political privilege to participate in governing. [Where one legion stood in the field, there was - at least symbolically - present the senate of Rome also] While senators and legionaires were not one and the same in person, that the soldiers still were speaking for the senate as if they were them, was implied.

In modern times, some fascists argued and still argue that only those who have served in the army, are real citizens and should have full rights to civil rights and offices of political power.

You see, democracy is a highly discriminatory (and to some degree even intolerant) affair. It refers to self-governing local communities of very small size, that function feudalistically-aristocratically, are hierarchically structured, that clearly differed between “us” and “them”, and where the majority principle - that today we mistake to be the most important feature of democracy - only was used in the governing assembly of the “full citizen's” elite, which only 5-15% of the population were part of.

In other words, today's modern understanding of "democracy" is a distortion that has little to do with the original meaning of it, and which was far more negatively seen by many Greek philosophers. When the Greek city states grew in size and corruption blossomed as a side effect from that, democracy was made available to the wide public, the citizenship was opened for access for more non-elitarist people, and there it all started to go down the drain: Athens leading the way. From that time on, "democracy" became synonymous with the "tyranny of the majority" , the "dictatorship of the canaille". It then was seen as something that was to be avoided, at all cost.

Max Weber's phrase "Dilettantenverwaltung durch Beutepolitiker" (=dilletantic administration by predatory politicians) describes it quite well.

I remind of that even the American founding fathers were decisevely anti-democratic, a fact that really took me many years and more than just one hard swallowing to see and to understand. That the people shall have a govenrment, although with the idelaistic right to rerplace it if they desire that, is not part of the declaration of independence, but just came later, with the constitution. Still, until the time of around WWI, the reputation of “democracy” in the feuilletons, the political and artistic elites, the general “intelligentsia”, was predominantly negative.

That's what I mean when pointing out that the good reputation of democracy today is a relatively young and new phenomenon in human history, with the justification of that fame still not confirmed so far. Considering that it necessarily leads to the robbing of the few on behalf of the many, it is no surprise that the majority mob seems to like it - not understanding how in the end it is at their own cost, too. Most people's time preference, as I explained earlier, is such that they prefer the immediate or imminent smaller reward at cost of higher future costs over greater rewords in a distant future, with risks involved. That is where I would start mentioning this thing of “human nature”.

I again must oppose what I believe to identify as your intention to imply that democracy in principle is something positive, but just gets distorted or abused or perverted and so becomes something that then represents the original idea turned into its fallen, degenerated state. As I see it, democracy for the ancient Greeks meant a state of generation in general – there is no positive format of democracy, neither the way it got used back then, nor as it is understood today. As I said earlier, the concept has implications that imo makes it a very questionable concept from all beginning on – by its most inner essence and nature. And that the Greeks held it in so low esteem and warned of it, imo reflects that. Its not as if they were first celebrating it, and then learned to warn of it. The warning of it is part of its very beginning already, and they tried to keep it on very short line. Like a disease is nothing that was once good and then turned into something bad, but was nothing but really only a disease haunting the people from the time on when it first showed up. The ideal condition would be not the disease in its imagined, idealized form when it was if not good so then at least nevertheless harmless - but to not have the disease at all.

I would like to scratch the paint on that idealised line of thoughts, too, at least a bit, but I would automatically link all what you say here necessarily with the history of feminism (okay) and ultrafundamentalist, radical feminism and today's modern renaissance of it under the proxy-term genderism, and for the sake of not drowning in this already complicated and content-heavy exchange I would at least for this thread prefer to not go into this thematic complex, at least not for the time being. So, for a parting over this theme, I only say I do not agree with what you said at least due to the way you put it, I see problems there.

Maybe we will have another thread like this one, just over feminism and genderism, collectivism, sexism and sexual supremacism – and yes, these terms imo cannot be separated, thematically. It's not for no reason that I ring red alert over the EU's and Germany's genderism agenda.

I do not wish to be personally offensive when I say that I fail to see a rational or logical relevance in this lament. In principle it says nothing meaningful. The claim that democracy is flawed, but so are other thing as well, is a commonplace - imagine what Tuvok or Spock would say to that. :)

TBC

I can only repeat again that, as I see it, the conception of democracy is such, from beginning on, that it can only work in very small community sizes, smaller than most people maybe imagine, but that it's dysfunctional by inherent, inbuilt design beyond that scaling, like a plane from all beginning on is made for flying, not for diving into a deep sea abyss – it has not “lost” the ability to dive, but it just has never had it. If you think of it, today's “distortions” and “abuse” of democracy, all are nd have been forseeable AND INDEED HAVE BEEN PREDICTED OVER CENTURIES AND MILLENIA, if it were a random degeneration only, that prediction would have been a case of hitting a target by pure chance only – and for that I think the criticism of democracy and warning of where it necessarily leads, has been a little bit too uni-sono and has been agreed on by too many great names in history. That the idea nevertheless is welcomed by those majorities of people who would and do profit from “taking from the one and giving it to the others – which are said profiteers that today come in such majorities that they bring down the economic basis of modern Western states, cannot really be surprising. Socialism always is welcomed by the big crowds, although – to quote Konrad Adenauer – the only thing socialism knows about economics is how to spend the money of others.

So I do not follow you where you seem to think that today's dysfunctional appearance of democracy is due to imperfection of man, or is a process of qualitative erosion in democracy. Democracy today just is what it has always been, and it is man who today holds extremely transfigured ideas about it, lifting it to a status of shine and greatness that already in ancient Greece – which we love to refer to to defend our idealised image of it – was not shared. The problems with it are in its genes, and it appears to me that the ancient Greeks already knew that, and that many thinkers and noble spirits of the past until just one century ago also still kept that understanding alive.

One can also question the moral legitimacy of having the majority deciding an issue due to being the majority vote, with the minority more or less being plowed under. This indeed gets debated in political science, and apparently with hot emotions and since long time. I just want to make that note on it, and leave it to that remark, it would lead too far to follow that trail here, maybe. Some of the points Steve once made in a locked engagement with me, I would have understood better if he would have already back then erected the theoretical background that back then I did not had in reading and knowledge on these things, but gained just in the past two years or so. Steve, you had a correct point there, I nowadays understand you better.

I could only share grounds with you - Oberon now :) - on this detail currently talked on, if you mean that the idea of democracy failed in “getting designed” by man >>with a sufficiently realistic assessment of human nature.<< The reason that democracy may work in very small human communities, but does not in big ones, of course is due to social dynamics and cognitive and behavioral changes in humans due to growing communities as their social environment with which they interact, are exposed to, and adapt to. But even then the concept still would have stood as what it is from beginning on, even if not having taken that change in man sufficiently into account where man interacts with an altering social and cultural environment. Also, there still remain to be factors that apply to even state-altering communities that still are objective factors and have little to do with human nature. For example the need of nutrition and water in a growing population does not grow linear with the growth in population size, but non-linear, due to the growing complexity of the needed infrastructure that needs to transport these goods over greater and greater distances. Humans fail in overseeing these factors – that I would agree on. Humans fail on this, so that often they cast doom and fall over the empires and cultures they have formed up, due to this. The book by Jarred Diamond, Collapse, explains that in many examples and references.

I see it as an inconsistency in thought if really wishing for an end of money, since it is a tool that simply is required to allow complex production cycles and complex civilization forming. I also refer to Rothbard's remarks about the sculptor somewhere above, in a longer quote I gave, and libertarian understanding of property, both intellectually and materialistically. When we say “For him, the purpose justifies the means” – that is a commonplace usually being used to morally discredit somebody doing something we do not like, and so we paint his act as something immoral by implying that he just does anything as long as it fits his intentions. But the phrase is very stupid, if you think of it, because without a purpose we never implement or use any means at all. When I am hungry, I eat – the bread is the means that serves my purpose. If the purpose of ending my feeling of hunger do9es not exist, I would not use the means: the bread, that is. Money also is such a means that serves the purpose, to achieve our goal, to form complex production and civilization. Even more, it is an indispensable tool for serving these our purposes.

So why wishing for a world without money? That would be a very primitive and jungle-law-like world, believe me.

TBC

:rotfl2::rotfl2::rotfl2:

When I see all this it makes me think a lot when some people say we don't have to take life so seriously...