Why I stopped loving and learned to worry about democracy (reply to Oberon)

[Skybird]

I felt it was adequate to put this in a separate thread. The original one that led to this long reply to Oberon, can be found here:

http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=204938

For convenience and greater eye friendliness I have set it up as a pdf here, can be read online or printed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/yzs2hhb6wd1u44x/Oberon.pdf



This went a bit out of hand, and I got carried away and got surprised myself by how long it became, and in the end I further found that it was not what I really wanted to achieve. Well, reality can be a bitch. It still is not what I wanted it to be, and I feel it is terribly incomplete. But I had to stop at some time. Typos should be at an acceptable level, but for the lack of structure I think I still must apologize.

I certainly cannot and do not demand anyone to read all this, so everybody being potentially interested, see this as an invitation only. That includes you, Oberon. I would not be angry or offended if you decide that this would consume too much of your time.

[Skybird]

@Oberon,

I try this reply to you in two “phases”, first I will address your paragraphs to provide a first general, more specific answer to most of them, although it will be incomplete hints only. After that, I will add – still meant as a reply – a longer text of mine, where hopefully I succeeded in bringing more background thought into a structure that makes it a readable and understandable model or line of thoughts.

Nothing of all that is originally my brainwork's fruits, while I have come to many arguments and criticism like classical libertarians and Austrian school economics all by myself, neither was I the first man on Earth to learn thinking like that, nor did I succeed in putting all those many lose strings together and form one consistent “model” of them, which left me in a state of delusion and irritation, without advice, for as long as I did not stumble over according literature that helped me indeed to put it all together. The value of said literature for me was not to provide me with criticisms and arguments on single details – that far I came all by myself. We all can see how things turn into mess around us, if only we are willing to let loose of our precious self-deceptions and are to open the eyes to the inconvenient truths. But to put it all together to form not many different but just one huge image: that is where I profiteered from these books and where I am thankful to the authors for the help they provided to me by writing these books. Without them, I would have stayed stuck in a dead end: angry, but helpless. Today, I am still angry (even more so than ever), but the feeling of helplessness got replaced by understanding the unforgiving mechanisms behind the events that lead us to where we are heading. That might not be pleasant, but I am a very rational, head-heavy person, my head clearly dominates over my heart. That's me, whatever that tells about me, and wallowing in shallow sentiments or hysteric pathos never was my thing. Understanding even unpleasant things still helps me to bear them more calmly and becoming less concerned. It is the uncertainty, the lacking understanding, that sets me on alarm. If we go down the drain, then at least I want to know WHY we go down the drain.

The problem I think that is happening here is that you are not introducing a first step into the subject.

What is freedom? From libertarian POV, it is neither an idea nor an ideal. It can only be defined usefully by understanding that it needs to be understood as a material condition. It bases on property – the ability to gain it (the individual's skill in harvesting wheat from the field it owns, and baking bread), and the right to use it (to consume it, to bake bread – or do something different with the wheat).

It's a bit like saying to someone who wants to know why the earth moves that they should read a thesis by Stephen Hawking. Furthermore the method in which you put forward this thesis is borderline fanatical, comparable to fundamentalist preachers and extremist Imams in its ferocity and vehemence.
Sure, it's good to be passionate about a subject, but brow-beating people from a pulpit of righteousness that your cause is just and the only true way...well, makes you sound a lot like some of the people that you have argued against in the past in different threads.

It's just that we have been there already. There is a full thread about Hoppe for example
( http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/show...=202945&page=3 ),
and all links I gave in this actual thread, above, have been given before as well. I do not unleash my anger at modern states for the first time either, I have not hidden my uncompromised hostility to our modern ways and goings on several opportunities. I do not will to re-invent the wheel every time. I take it as a basis once it is there.

Putting this to one side, and coming back to the point at hand. What you describe, in essence, is the state of mankind in the days around the Neolithic era, when it boiled down to small local settlements which spawned new settlements off each other like buds from a plant.

??? No. I do not even know the models anthropologists have formed of how it might have been in that era.

When I attack Western states, and states in general, I do it due to two different perspectives on things.

The first is that I see the democratic model being different (already since the ancient Greek) than what it is claimed to be today, and that it does not work, just does not work as advertised – quite the opposite is the case, and many of those malfunctions that in summary are self-destructive to the community, are inbuilt features that do not indicate an aberration of the idea, but are features of it, implications that cannot be avoided.

The second perspective is that I find the alternative ideas that I introduce quite convincing from a rational and reasonable perspective. I know that I argue from a theoretic standpoint on the latter, which is true both for libertarian economics and the libertarian understanding of liberty and ethics. And that theoretic basis by nature is, as Rothbard and Hoppe both explain, a so-called a-priori-theory, which means that its conclusions and theorems base on assumptions and statements that cannot be rationally, logically or reasonably be rejected without creating contradictions or logical fallacies. Is it a proven theory? No, obviously not. But reason speaks strongly in its favour, and refusing the fundament it stands on – natural law – brings you into hell's kitchen.

My criticism of the present Western states bases on observation of the reality I presently live in, and what I see is going wrong although by democratic theory it should not only not go wrong, but the scenario where it goes wrong should not even be imaginable . When that theory says it should function beautifully, with things breaking apart around me, then that theory cannot be what it claims to be. In other words, it must be faulty, if not all-out wrong..

********

Eventually this collective group of settlements pooled their resources to form a nation, it may not have been done peacefully, it most likely was done through force, but there was strength in numbers against both disease, other settlements and predators.

This may or may not have been the case in that long ago era. However, in the era we associate with the term “high cultures”, trade was the deciding factor that led to the lasting economic foundation of huge empires, or not. The complex production cycle allowed complex interaction and cooperation only when monolithic values, like land property or a huge rock of precious ore, could be broken up into smaller quantities of value in order to trade these for small gains one desired (a craftsman's daily service for example) and the gain being so small that it was not justified to give the harvest of one field away for it, or the field itself. You do not trade your barn for getting a liter of salad oil. The solution was an intermediate variable: the introduction of money. And this money was a common trading good like any other, and its value was decided by market interactions amongst trading parties like the value of any other good. Instead of trading A for getting C, which would be a oss to you maybe, you traded A for several quantities of B, and then one quantity of B for C, keeping the rest of Bs for other purposes. This was a revolution in how trade, bartering was done, and only this allowed cooperation of bigger communities to achieve things that one man alone never would be able to achieve.

This gets very comfortably explained in a surprisingly small amount of pages in Rothbard's “What has government done to our money?”, part II, chapter 1-13, 45 pages only. LINK- http://library.mises.org/books/Murra...ur%20Money.pdf

It enabled them to do greater things,

I just hinted at it: civilisation is trade, trade before anything else, trade generates the revenue to pay for the civilisation growing, blossoming, developing. It is an evolutionary process, and beyond the easiest level of trade – 1 fur for 10 fishes -, when complex production cycles set in, you depend on this intermediate variable: money. No money - no complex trade, no complex production cycles, no communal cooperation efforts producing results surpassing what the single individual could achieve, no specialisation of the individual (which also is an essential quality: specialisation) – in brief: no complex civilisation.

Needless to say: we do not have that kind of money anymore, it got intentionally destroyed by states to expose citizens in greater helplessness and vulnerability to the state. More on that later.

to pool their knowledge and basically lead to where we are today, through a few thousand years.
There is a reason, a real reason, that we don't live that way any more, and it's got little to do with government greed, although certainly there is a factor in that, because after all government is made up of perfectly ordinary people just like you and me, but a need for collective strength.

As I hinted above, the reason for the rise of civilizations is: trade. Help it and foster. Hinder it, see it declining, and see civilization decline and empires fall. And then again the complex productivity cycle, specialisation, all what I said above. If I understand you correctly in what you say, then I think you are misled there in so far as that you seem to misidentify or misinterpret the solid material factors that enable empires and civilizations to blossom. Where there is plenty of ground and population to be supplied with food and stuff, there is needed an infrastructure, a transport of food and water and items and goods and services, there needs to be information traffic for coordination. All this needs specialisation by the individuals, and specialised individuals forming huge communities depend on means and a system of making all these quantities and items “inter-changeable”, so that you could compare their valuer: economic management, fiscal cost-effect calculations. Just having a government, no matter which kind, saying it should be like this or that, does not work. And this is one of the most devastating creiticism you can aim at today'S tyranny of government printed FIAT paper-”money” and fiscal regulation by the state: that both prevent everybody joining the market as producer or customer to form such value comparisons and fiscal cost-effect calculations by eroding the basis on which such comaprsions could be run. For that, a free value-determination of money by the market is inevitably a precondition. But that is what politicians desperately try to prevent.

I would put money on, if it still existed, the likelihood that any attempt to split a state into seperate individual states would eventually result in the reunification of those states into one larger entity.

Yes - by force and imperial demand of the centralist power. From libertarian POV, enforcing the union that way of course is illegal and immoral. Well. Libertarianism encourages local separation of regional communities from the – national – higher entity. It also is a moral right of the local population to do so, since other people outside that region have no legal or moral claim to make that they must obey these foreigner's commands. We are nobody else's possession, we are nobody else's slaves, we owe nobody our loyalty just because he demands it or due to the fast that we got born. That is the sovereignty of the individual, and it cannot be taken away from nobody and by nobody in a moral way. The political entity on the next higher level of hierarchy of course does not like subordinate regions breaking away, since this means a weakening of its influence and claim for more power. However, to have many city states and small regional communities, where people self-govern their affairs and decide themselves how to interact and trade and have treaties with neighbouring communities and cities – or to compete with them! Very important, this is what has brought Europe to the top of the list of influential civilisations known in human history! - to me seems to be the most promising way to go – although I know it is unlikely that all Europe will go that way. Nevertheless, I mind you that since Brussel claims more and more powers, independence movements that previously existed, got more support, and new movements get founded every year. The crisis in Europe causes many conflicts between people and regions, and the EU is directly responsible for having caused a massive rise in alienation and hostility – it achieves exactly the opposite of what it claims the Euro should bring and what the EU claims to want. Heck even here in Germany some would like to see Bavaria breaking away from Germany. If they would, I would move there, probably, if then they still let outsiders in.

I read that some historians point out that this kind of conflict – separation, or enforced unifying - also probably played the dominant role motivating the American civil war. Where the war for independence was a revolt against the British who after some time of relative laissez faire wanted to impose a stricter tax system again and tighten British control over and possession of “their colonies”, and the revolt thus was a self-defence on behalf of own sovereignty and own freedom, some historians, but also Hoppe, refer to historical quotes by Lincoln that reveal that Lincoln's decision for war against the South seems to have had not much to do with freeing the poor slaves, but with enforcing a claim for centralist power by Washington not only over the North, but the South as well. I got the impression that he just instrumentalised them for his - very different - intentions, but that ending slavery was not an item he had on his radar for the worth of the very issue itself. Also, apparently the centralised power by the whole union's government should had been supported by destroying the independent currencies circulating in the South (there were several, which from libertarianism's POV, seeing money as just a trading good like any other, was perfectly okay and imo makes more economic sense than any other monetarian model I have read about or heard of, and certainly much more than the bad joke of a paper money we have today). The result was a war that ended the southern money market, destroyed the South's economy and thus it's basis for independent survival, and paved the way for the North's centralised political regime taking control not only of the northern but the southern “provinces” as well.

Somebody would write later that any democratic state cannot afford to leave its citizen the simpliest form of defence against and escape from state control, that the state must secure total and undisputed control over the citizen's private wealth and property, and that a democratic regime can only live if it installs unhindered access by the state to private property and wealth to be able to expropriate it at will. And that is what Lincoln seems to have been about when destroying the sovereignty of the south, the southern economy, and especially the Southern money system. The same is being done in European states since WWI and the defeat of monarchies by the republican paradigm. The development of money and the rise of the central banks also must be seen in this light. The book on money by Rothbard explains that nicely in the parts III and IV. It is already such a compact book and so easy to read that I will not summarize its content any further. It already is a summary.

You can deregulate, transfer powers, like devolution in the United Kingdom, but somewhere along the line the buck has to stop, there has to be one entity which decides the collective direction of a nation,

Ever saw a deregulating, declining bureaucracy? A shrinking government? Spendings declining for longer time? Politicians deleting laws? Taxes taken back even if at entry it was said they only are temporary? Sorry, Oberon, if you believe what you say there, then that is very naive, and you prefer to believe what you want to believe only. A bit down this text, I hopefully succeed in explaining that the very nature of a state and especially the democratic state is totally against it. It does not shrink, it mutates, like cancer, it squeezes itself in more and more aspects of people's lives. You cannot deregulate a bureaucracy, for bureaucracy blossoms from expanding regulation. European states and the US are financially suffocating by their ever growing law canons and bureaucracies and ever expanding regulation canons. I read that in the US the number of administrative regulations additional to the laws, that touch upon just every single detail you can imagine, in the past twenty years alone have grown in number and volume by a factor of 120. In Germany, so I read, it is even worse. And more than the half of all global literature about tax systems and laws, written in just any language, more than half of that is about the German tax system alone! The EU promised the believing public that it wanted to battle bureaucracy and over-regulation, and had a commission for deregulation set up, which released regulations to regulate down regulations , resulting now in the labyrinth of regulations having grown even faster.

You are totally on the wrong path there. You believe what officials tell you, probably. That is a very very big mistake. It is officials who live by the system. Limiting the system, limiting its reach and powers, would limit their own material profiteering from it. What do you expect...? I will later argue that politician's best interest is to act immoral and to abuse the public as much as they can. In a causal understanding it is reasonable to do so, in a democracy. Even worse: it is inevitable.

But I would like to already question the very premise of your above quote already: why having a king government, nation in the first? The state does nothing better than private initiative and the basis of honest, grounded private business and craftsmen. In fact, states manage everything they take away from private responsibility of people much worse, having smaller net effect while wasting far more resources of that, and causing a plethora of follow-up costs. Spending money that is not yours, is more fun than to spend your own, you know. Pah! That also is an inbuilt feature of democracy, and states in general, that you cannot avoid. And the financial budgets of your nation as well as mine prove it, year for year.

be it a King, President, Fuhrer, General Secretary, Ayatollah, anyone, that central figure has to exist to interact with the figures from other nations, even if it's only a figurehead and the real business is done by the worker-ants underneath them.

Imagine there are no other states. And in the past, long before kings established relations to far away empires, relations already were run- by traders going there, not even speaking the language at first. But trading instead.

I mind you of one thing: I do not say my suggested “methods” would work in the context of the today existing environmental context. I talk about the environmental context being changed. The question is how to get from “here” to “there”, and honestly said I have little optimism there, and so said Hoppe and many other late libertarians as well. Nevertheless, it is the right thing to suggest the goal to reach out for. It is right to criticise sticking to the self-destructive old ways. If we dare the new ways, maybe we succeed, maybe we lose. If we stick to the old ways now, we are guaranteed to lose, with no chance to even just keep what we gained. We will lose it all.

Yes, the current democracy is bloated, and yes it is probably quite corrupt, but you show me one governmental system in this planets history that has NOT suffered from corruption of some sort in its existence, and lasted longer than a year.

That is neither any comfort, nor does it explain why it is wise to stick to democracy. Even more so when the deficits of it necessarily must always pervert it into what it claims to be its opposite: socialism, centralism, totalitarianism, collectivism. Already the ancient Greeks warned of that, they only argued about the order in which these things would follow each other. And they did not appreciate democracy, originally. Not one bit.

It also implies that there is no reason to not trust a monarchy, then. When democracies prove time and again that by their design after short time already just lousy opportunists and liars, blenders and propagandists, criminals and dilettantes can claim the top offices in elections after they babbled the public dizzy, and when they have an interest of not keeping the nation's resources together since their claim for them is limited in time only, so that everybody in office instead wants to abuse them to the maximum he can achieve - why not trusting in a feudal family instead that then has an interest to manage wisely, to keep it all together over long times, so that not some bullsh!t talking spineless a*****e or ideologically ambitioned messiah may end in office because he “got elected”, doing an enormous amount of damage in an amazing short period of time, but some son or daughter who got prepared all youth long in education and training for the post he/she later would claim – the crown – wouldn't one see at least a chance that the likelihood of unsuited persons coming to power in a monarchy at least is not higher than in a democracy? By the record our states have to show, I would even say that monarchies tend to show much better records here. If this is the case, and democratic regimes tend to enslave their citizens anyway and nowadays politicians behave like new feudal lords to whom the population must account (instead of the other way around!) - why then favouring democracy over monarchy?

And check on genocides and wars' death tolls. You will see that democratic regimes kill differently than totalitarian regimes – but that the death toll they have to accept resp0nsibility for is even slightly higher than with totalitarian regimes. Dictators kill themselves – democrats leave the killing done to somebody else. - Maybe you recall, several years ago we had that in a forum discussion.

My point is that a democratic state necessarily must go corrupt. That's one of the main reasons why the democratic state itself is the problem. It is not sustainable/enduring/long-time surviving. And it always leads to a planned, bureaucracy-run socialist economy. Which in itself also is a verdict against the economy surviving.

Furthermore, and here's the real kicker, any one nation that is dissolved into a collection of smaller states, will almost immediately be overrun by its neighbours, because it will be unable to form proper resistance without a central organisation, each individual militia will be fighting a separate battle against a unified army, so unless those militia have someone rich and power backing them, they will be kicked around by the unified force and destroyed.

Tell that the Swiss. I would direct you to the more detailed explanation on how security, military, police and justice would run in a private law society. Again, it comes down to voluntary cooperation and signing for mutually agreed business contracts. There is no argument why robust defence should be something only a government could provide. A STATE, A GOVERNMENT ITSELF MORALLY OWNS NOTHING! It abuses its status of acceptance to legalize robbing that it conducts. It talks populations into believing that they owe part of their private property to the “government”, and the government not only claims the right to steal that, but also claims the right to make laws legalizing this, and deciding on how much it may steal. And maybe steal more later. No matter what the citizen thinks or would agree to. Specialisation! There will be private business that provides policing n and legislative service. Insurance companies. Hoppe explains in many of his essay in quite some more detail how such companies would interact, form cooperations in policing and legal services, and that it could function as long as there is competition, no monopolising, so that people can chose between competitors if they are not satisfied with the service provided by one. They play foul – people will leave them and sign deal with another one. Or move to the neighbouring small community where in their view living is better. Why should this not be able to be organised by the population in a region by its own free will and decision, why is it that some far away centralist clique of parasites makes laws and decisions that are valid for millions and that all too often are so very disconnected form the realities on location? This is especially a problem with the EU, of course. Why must there be a transnational government telling me which light bulb to use, which browser head to use, how to live healthy, what diet to eat, at what increase I have to give away my private property and wealth, what policies of theirs I need to accept, what migration I have to tolerate, what cultures I have to respect, why must we save water in Germany, very rich in water, because the same amount of water they demand to be saved in Spain – isn't that like me needing to use sun-oil in rainy Germany because on the Spanish Riviera there is sunshine? And so on and on. Who is the government – national or transnational - to tell us that we must do it this or that way, and must do it not for ourselves, but for others?

I am not naive, I know there is invitation for abuse of business, in capitalism, there has always been the effort to deliver the smallest amount for the highest price, and this trend can lead to monopolies, and that is a big problem, yes. I have no complete solution than in theory calling for securing competition. But I mind you – THE BIGGEST MONOPOLIST OF ALL IS THE STATE! And it provides the worst service of lowest quality for the highest money, and all what it wastes it steals from the citizens!

Things throughout history happen for a reason, civilization evolves for a reason, right now democracy seems to be the government of choice, five hundred years ago it was monarchy,

One hundred years ago.

Then came America's Wilson, realising that America could increase its influence only in the world if monarchies in Europe are being destroyed. And so they did – seen from an American POV, WWI just came at the right time. Very opportunistic timing indeed. There also was a very strong personal antipathy in the clique around Wilson against monarchy. Hoppe explains that with the German emperor they could ,live, after all the Germans appeared to be quite sober and rational to them - but whom they really hated were the Habsburger, representing anything in shine and history that they wanted to leave behind in America when kicking the British out. That's why they made sure after the war that almost nothing of the Donau monarchy survived. Germany was economically exploited, since the opportunity was financially so inviting, but the Habsburg empire was destroyed for the sake of just destroying it. Not the fist time I heard that Wilson and his cabinet had very strong personal animosities against the Habsburger.

ninety years ago everyone was convinced that communism and socialism was the answer. Perhaps through some sort of giant war or ecological disaster Hoppes work will come to fruition,

Hoppe is realist, and not optimistic at all, as I said before. Also, for him and in a way already for the ancient Greek it is clear that democracy is just an early phase of communism, with socialism forming the transition in-between, the ochlocracy – the tyranny of the canaille. Democracy and socialism/communism are no opposites or different things. The opposite to them all is individuality and statelessness. I hope to illustrate that a bit more later, after answering your text.

I don't deny that should the planets population be reduced by three quarters of its current size then governmental types would have to rapidly evolve to suit the situation, and unless communications were swiftly restored between nations then there would be a break-up of states across the globe, because civilizations adapt, they have to, or they die.

First, politicians LOVE crises : it is the opportunity for them to manage, to do, to smile into cameras and to shine with actions (no matter how shallow and dumb they may be) – and to release new rules and legislations that widen their power and widen the state's reach and boost the law code and the bureaucracy for even more suppressions emitted by these against the people. Crises allow to install more control, to claim more power for the state, to have more rules telling the people what to do. Crises are jackpot wins for politicians.

Second, if a disaster takes place on a global level that would reduce the population levels by that scale you mention, then global civilisation would collapse, and it's hierarchical levels would desintegrate in reverse order in which they got established and created. Pretty much like any life forms seems to die, too – higher functions fail first, basic functions fail last.

Sure, it makes for some good fiction to have a civil war in America, Texas is independent, California tries to become the new Athens and instead becomes Rome post-visigoths, the Monroe Republic rules with an iron fist (yeah, I've seen some episodes of it, and no, I'm not impressed by it) or Cheyenne rules through subterfuge (much better imho), but each of those works of fiction require a major catastrophe to take place to break the current situation. No amount of links, posts, tirades, sermons or judgement on an internet forum is going to create the sort of catastrophe required to break up a nation.

Who mentioned civil wars? I did not, nor do libertarians, nor did Hoppe. You have to realise that it is any regional populations' moral right to decide to stay in a union with somebody else, or to split up. The greater entity of course wants to prevent that, but fact remains that from a libertarian point of view people the the moral right to decide freely on their company, to stay with somebody, or to split up, or to leave and move somewhere else. A state denying that, again already suppresses people and acts criminally. It is simply panic-calling to say that Europe will fall into war when the Euro gets destroyed – or when nations split up. Have you realised how much conflict was created last century, in the past 20 years alone, by pressing together people who do not want to live together (Balkans)? By creating arbitrary new states, at the cost of the one and the profit for the other? And again, Europe saw its greatest cultural blossoming in times and circumstances when still not all big European states had formed up (pre-Germany, pre-Italy namely). Think away these two alone – and see how much would be missing what later condensed to the strengths and advantages founding the – now over – era of Europe's global dominance and cultural greatness! Never has a culture had such an amount of global influence before and after. Only Islam comes to mind – and that is no creator of culture, but a destroyer with the only power to destroy humane culture. Neither Rome nor the ancient Chinese ever had such an amount of global influence in the past.

BTW, in Switzerland, they practice voluntary merging and splitting of Kantons, until today.

And over all of Europe you see a growing intensity and number in regional independence movements as a reaction to Brussel's brutal grab for totalitarian control, and enforced collectivising.

I, too, am disillusioned with the current political system in the United Kingdom, and a tad fearful of the one in America, here in the UK everyone has taken the middle ground and there is little difference between the parties, in America the middle ground has been napalmed and both sides are flying off the opposite ends of the spectrum, neither system particularly works, however I would much rather live under a democracy than under a system that, by typing these words, I am automatically picked up in the early hours of the morning by a policeman and spend the rest of my short life in a prison cell.

I do not care for political parties, for now hopefully obvious reasons. They must go, they are vicarious agents in the destruction of cultural life and liberty, they pout their own power interests before that of state reason and the people of which they live like blood-sucking parasites that crawl into people's brains and tell them to do what parties tell them to do; and while they are that totally and completely a part of the state-system that they are form up together with the bureaucracy, they necessarily help the state to grow and enforce its regime on the people. They also play the bribe game that I referred to as the “democratic disease”. Political parties are the visible symptoms of the cancer that destroys liberty from within. They are to libertarian politics what religious dogma and institutions are to true spirituality.

Political parties must go. Career politicians just go. Voluntarily, or by ropes around their necks – their choice. The means I do not care for, the goal is the priority – and the goal is they must go.

Sure, there are some circumstances in a democracy at the moment that can cause this to occur, and at the moment, they usually involve Islam, and now surely, Skybird, you cannot call for greater security against Islamic extremists on one hand, and decry increased government surveillance on another. It just doesn't work that way.

Do you really believe in this either-this-or-that black and white scheme? Do you seriously believe something just because father government says so, and prints it on an official document with an emblem on top? You are not that over-credulous, are you?

Has it ever come to your mind, that that Islamic migration is wanted by politicians because they vote for them and thus form an increasing voter basis supporting them in their idea of redesigning the ideological basis of the nation? The German Greens, their leaders, for example said it like this very clearly some years ago. 90% of Muslim migrants at that time voted left-leaning. What takes place is nothing else but a redesigning of the electorate's composition to influence the outcome of future elections and by that securing the left party's power basis. It is the same concept that all parties support when lowering the voting age. First it was 21. Then 18, now they make it 16. Their minds are unformed, the knowledge untested, life experienced almost non-existent, their character never challenged, and their thinking is easy to be manipulated, paroles can easily be implemented, and when you are young, left slogans for “justice” easily catch prey, unreflected and untested by minds that are easy to be ignited in enthusiasm for “a better world”.

Also, Islam is a authoritarian ideology in style, it teaches the individual submission, obedience, uncritical attitude, non-thinking. Western states do not wish for educated and informed citizens, that is a lie. The sovereign citizens is not wanted. The obedient, servile drone functioning and doing and ticking like demanded by politics is what states want. You shall not live by your morals, you shall live by the politically correct morals. That is two morals that are lightyears apart.

I said it earlier: politicians LOVE crises, and social conflicts are their most favourite ones. They can push wealth redistribution, they can fire the arsenal or fighting terms like “social justice” and “solidarity”, they can call for more state in order to regulate unjust conditions here, wealth inequality there, and what do you say: schwuppdiwupp you have more laws, and more indoctrination, and most important: MORE INFLUENCE AND LEGAL COMPETENCES FOR THE STATE.

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If I still have not exhausted your patience and you still are reading this, I would like to add some notes and thoughts now and in loose sequence; as they lie scattered around in my mind, that are not directly linked to your original posts.

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On justice and criminal laws, Rothbard's book on the Ethics of Freedom describes in chapter 13 “Punishment and Proportionality” that an implication of the libertarian basing of freedom on property rights leads to a punishment system in law where the victim of a crime must have the right to demand that the perpetrator at court is facing punishment to the ethically possible maximum of punishment – or that he shall be forgiven by the victim and thus leave freely. The ethically possible maximum (the proportionality) must be fixed by the principle of “an eye for an eye”, and may not exceed this. Now this has some reasonable implications that our law system constantly violate. Assume Smith steals 1000 dollars from Brown. Libertarian justice says that Brown thus has the right to do in effect to Smith what he previously has suffered from him. That means it is not enough if Smith is just giving back the 1000 dollars. Becasue by dpoing so he just reapirs the dmage he did, but hgas not suffered the damage he did to the other before. Additionally Smith thus must pay another 1000 dollars maximum to Brown – not before then he has been object to the damage he did to Smith before. - But in our states today, in germany namely, capital crimes do not get broght to court by the victims, at least the victims are not leading the procedures – but the state does, in form of thre state'S attorney. You rob a bank? Not the bajk leads the procedures but only plays a second, minor role, the state prosecute the robber instead. The vicitm of a rape may inform the police, but it is the state attorney lading the procedure, “in the name of the people”, as they say, but in reality it is in the name of the state who constitutes and arranges the courts and lawcodes. While ove rhere the ofender maybe must pay some – often symbolic only – compensation tpot he victim of his deed, he also must pay a penalty – not to the victim, but to the state. But why? The state has not been victim of any crime. It has suffered no damage to demand compoensation for . Morally it does not even own anything by itself. And it tailors laws and and admionstrative rules so that they best meet the state'S demands against the people (what can wionderfully be seen when constitutional courts or transnatrional courts currently are called for checking issues regarding the Euro and the EU – EU-politicians have the judges in their piockets, and so you do not see any seriosu questioning of the Eu and the Euro at these courts, nothing that could ever seriously become a threat for the EU's cause.

My family has been victim several times of such twisted “justice”, my family as well as me personally. I do not trust – or respect – our justice system even that far like I could spit. But the real issue I have with our justice system is not due to biographic reasons, but because of the fact that it is in bed with the state and corrupting the moral understanding of offender and victim, with one great profiteer of this distortion: the state.

Chapter 15 in the same book deals with HumanRights that must be understand – and can only be reaoisnbably defined on the ground of property rights. Anything else, what they usually do today, is just sentimental wallowing in imprecise, vague and nebulous assumptions, hear-says, and impossible-to-define-by-real-nature nebulous claims

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On war and guns, both the most favourite American hobby. Hoppe strongly suggests the right to carry arms, both claiming that this would help the sovereign citizen to defend himself and fight crime as it springs him in the face when walking in the streets, and reminding politicians that citizens not only can withdraw support to them, but also can fight against them if politicians push it too far against people's private wills. However, Hoppe just voiced nothing but criticism for the Iraq war, and called it another big crime by the government that created just chaos in an effort to bring morally unjustifiable and realistically non-functional governmental tyranny to other parts of the world. Needless to say that I see it the same way, on Iraq and Afghanistan even after more than a decade I have no reason at all to change my opinions I already held ten years ago.

Rothbard also defends the right to carry arms, and points out that there must be enough arms indeed that in fact the citizens' threat to resist to government by force, if necessary, indeed is a credible threat, else it does not fulfill its deterring function. Rothbard strongly spoke out against any wars of aggression and conquest, but claimed the right to militarily resist and defend oneself if being victim of somebody else's military aggression. According to the libertarian ethical principle of proportionality the war needs to be waged so that it does not exceed what the other side has done in violence and damage. This is a detail I have reservations about, not in general and covering all eventualities, but still: some things there I see different.

I have u-turned myself on the rights for private arms in recent years already, even before having read these two. Now I consider to even give up my rejection of right to carry military-style firearms.

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Some weeks ago, I have already summarised the perception of democracy in ancient Freece, that it was pretty much despised and warned of, that this reputation prevailed even beyond the time of the American founding fathers (who were no democrats), I also described that the Greeks had set up demands for the population that wanted to qualify for being allowed in majority-votes affecting communal issues, and that most people therefore were not allowed to vote ( see my post #48 here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe-arch.html )
A concept that I strongly support, I oppose the general right to vote for just every Peter and Paul. When the majority finds out that it can vote for the many living at the cost of the few and that the many can legalise that the few get robbed, guess where this ends. It ends at where we are today in Western, eroding, fiscally completely exhausted nations where people still demand for ever more and politicians try to win votes by claiming that one could spend one's ways out of debts. Total insanity, total childishness, total socialism. Ochlocracy at its best! Christian Ortner, an Austrian publicist, calls it “prolocracy”, which also is the title of his book from last year (C. Ortner: Prolokratie. Demokratisch in die Pleite).

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Trade, capitalism, market – and the danger of monopolism. That danger always is present in capitalism, since capitalism seeks to establish monopoles. A monopolist can maximise his profit by delivering less (quantity and quality) for more (higher price), since those depending on him have no choice (that is the nature of monopolies). An unsolved problem I see in the ideas of letting the market dealing with it. Hoppe indicates that people should live in communities that small and independent that they can vote on services and products with their feet – just moving to a neighbouring community where life is better to them. He refers to the Italian city states, the German condition before the national state was called out, and what enormous wealth and culturally highly influential blossoming this had for Europe, and the whole world. This would enforce competition amongst providers of goods and service.

But if the producers to not play honest and secretly organise themselves and their market shares and price policies over several communities in order to bypass market mechanisms, then you again deal with monopolies, this time in form of cartels. I am a bit clueless on what to do about that. Maybe it cannot be prevented, like you also cannot prevent bank robbery, you can only deal with the consequences and try to bring the offenders to justice. Who said that perfection is possible in this world? Wouldn't that mark the end of history and evolution? I believe there can only be constant improvement and change for the better, hopefully – but not perfection. Maybe the solution is to keep communities indeed so small that every member can be fully aware of what is going on and how somebody's action affect him, and his own actions affect the whole rest of the community (see Jared Diamond's examinations of several past, failed cultures in “Collapse”). In other words: finding a way to guarantee transparency seems to be inevitable. Democracy fails in establishing that in today's state, since it fosters the massive increase of ever growing bureaucracy. Democracy also I consider to be an option for very very small-sized communities only.

I consider this whole problem of monopolies and cartels unsolved. They are the natural antagonist to the theory of free markets, and thus monopolists must be seen as some of our worst enemies. Freedom coexisting beside monopolism: impossible. That is true for economic monopolists. That is true for the biggest monopolist there is: the state.

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Free speech, tolerance. Well, according to this paradox that tolerance will get destroyed by the intolerant if the tolerant even tolerate the intolerant, parallels can be drawn to that with regard to free speech and freedom, too. And Rothbard and Hoppe both explicitly do so. That means there can be no right for total freedom of speech. I want to leave it at this general hint, the reference goes to quotes scattered across the whole work of both authors, it seems. Explicitly it gets formulated in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, too. What it all aims at, in popular phrasing would be “my house, my rules” and “as long as I pay the bills and you accept to benefit from that I define what goes and what not”. You don't like it – you don't take my money. You don't like my home and how I run it – you pack your things and leave.

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I would strongly encourage to check this list of headlines for items related to this conversation, they all are brief articles, interviews and short pieces by Hoppe with the nice detail of that the headlines nicely describe what the focus is on in that goven piece of text. Save me a lot of more – repetitive -typing and adds depth and detail to all that what I just touch upon on th surface and cannot examine deeper here without killing my time table completely.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/hoppe/hoppe-arch.html

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I mentioned Jared Diamond, and four years ago I even ran a whole thread on one of his books, Collapse. Diamond formulates some conclusions that may be of interest for our perception of politicians' performance today, so I link to that thread again. I wanted to mention him again in more detail (like previously announced somewhere above), but this text already is hilariously long, and so I cut some corners short.

How to fail in survival for very rational reasons (Nov. 2009): http://www.subsim.com/radioroom//sho...d.php?t=159065

I think that especially in the later part of Diamond's book, Collapse, there are some rules formulated that are about the need for transparency and community sizes being limited and small, both to be seen as indispensable preconditions for any system of majority-oriented self-governing decision-making (and a decision making exclusively based on the majority argument is highly vulnerable to moral counter-arguments putting its legitimacy in doubt, btw, but that is another discussion and thread...) . He points out that many past cultures and civilisations failed because this rule was violated, and that such cultures also fell due to over-stretching their borders, growing beyond sustainable economic sizes instead of saving reserves for bad times, and allowing decision makers to claim immunity from their own decisions, having only all others affected by them. I think the latter is one of the most obvious signs of corruption and failures with our so-called elites today.

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The “democratic disease”, to use this old term, should be enough explanation by now to see why states never will limit themselves, but always will claim more power and control, and that this growth necessarily must lead to a situation of where competition between governments reduces the number of governments existing, making the surviving ones even bigger and more powerful. Ultimately this must lead to continental one-governments and finally one world government. This will be one with a claim for totalitarian, autocratic, absolute ruling and total control, however. I already mentioned the example of the American civil war which led to one centralised government dominating the union's states. Other examples are of course the path followed by the EU, which first wants the banking union, then the transfer union, next the planned European economy, and finally just one federal European state – under central command by Brussel, which means: France, the leaders both in socialistic aim and centralized government in Europe, are in control, and the Germans must pay for it and occasionally bend over to get spanked. In three months there are German general elections, you will be amazed at the u-turning taking place after that over here! Take me by my words. That aim by France to ultimately dominate Europe is the primary reason why they insisted on Germany destroying the D-Mark and the Bundesbank as precondition for accepting reunification (the French press in 1992 called the triumph of France to bully the Germans into the Maastricht treaty “like Versailles without war”). France is too impotent top be economically strong enough by itself, so it must seek dominance by weakening others. There is no more thing like French-German axis and cooperation, one finally has to realise and admit that. It's a thing of the past – if it ever was real anyway.

When the people endlessly demand more and more social and material and fiscal responsibilities of theirs being fulfilled by the state, and the state demands the people to be obedient vasalls in return for that, while the state also lets them pay the bill of their ever growing demands (devaluing money by printing more, raising taxes, increasing debts and by that increasing the overall burden), then this must lead to a situation where people become more and more weakening in character and sense of responsibility, and for material demands they are willing to compromise morals, their own creativity, and instead develop what Kenneth Minogue calls the “servile mind”. The dog does not bite the hand that feeds it, but wags the tail instead. This also leads to a situation where the politicians must represent the people whom elected them, but is powerful enough to instead demand that the people shall do what the politicians say them. As Minogue so laconically says, today were account to politicians instead of the other way around. And it seems, so he continues, that in all their lecturing on how we should live, what we should like, what we should do and what we should think, they are finally loosing patience with us. Politicians today have a totally feudal, aristocratic self-understanding,. They think they have a right not only to candidate, but to demand to play a role in politics no matter what, and that their performance is unimportant there and that it is enoiugh to claim that they mean things this way and not the other way, while their actual actin g then is that of a third way, and that behave – and are proven right – as if they cannot really get voted off the scene. They may need to change chairs, but you only see them popping up again in some other office, in another committee, in some other gremium, often more influential than before. They get payed Royal fees and added boni and social compensations and live by priviliges that they do not deserve, while demanding all others to obey the law that they avoid, and to save and accept cuts where they waste what is not theirs anyway, and they take ever bigger heaps of the pie for themselves the shadow lobbies and networks behind them, and they form new seats for their buddies at the table to have more parasites living by our life blood. You cannot vote politicians to stay out of politics, you cannot get rid of them as the populistic interpretation of “democracy” often implies.

What this taking-the-free-party-for-granted means for the degeneration of public morals and the individual's morals, gets dealt with in Minogues book, or also in that by Ortner (Prolokratie), and this great, insightful history of dilettantism by Thoams Rietzschel, a very well-educated publicist and expert for historic arts: Die Stunde der Dilettanten. One bon mot from it: “The dilettante reduces everything he has to deal with to the standards of his own imagination. (…) He lives by the conviction that just being what he imagines to be, already is enough to be admired and applauded by the others.”

How very different today's business of democracy, and the way we glorify it, is from what the Greeks had to say about it! We could as well glorify the hygienic standards in Medieval and ancient cities and claim we should run modern public health the same way. Half of us would commit suicide the same day we install that, just due to not being able to stand the smell in the streets.

That is while the very system of the political circus as well as the mutual dependency between gift-giving politicians and gift-taking citizens paying with obedience makes sure that only networker successfully adopting to the rules of climbing the ladders can make it to the top. The system generates the same kind of career politicians time and again. You thus do not get really a choice at elections, they are all like clones with some singing the song in minor and the others singing the same song, just in major. But it is always the same tune: social justice they say, and they mean: socialist redistribution, taking from those who seem to work more successfully and thus getting more reward, and giving it to those that are not that competitive but by getting fed for free tend to learnt hat they can demand it for free. This has as a consequence, that the number of people living by the state's robbed treasury grows, and the number of people producing private wealth that then gets expropriated from them, is shrinking. Even with weak notes in math at school one can easily imagine where this must lead. The precariat is growing, and it is consuming us to death, and even beyond that, demands and claims for money by “the state” are still growing high into the sky.

I therefore see no oral wrong in avpoidni89g taxes, if one can get away with it, even more so since I refuse the right of the state to steal from me anyway. Immoral. anti-social and criminal it only becomes if you do not pay taxes and refuse to cooperate with the state's robbery – but hold your hand open and demand it to freely give to you and pay for you and have you fed and supplied with free services. I have no problem with tax evaders anymore these days, that far I have moved in reaction to the madness and lunacy all around. I despise those parasites who avoid paying taxes - but still encourage the robbing of others and then demand their share form that loot. That actually is two crimes in one act! That the state claims it to be criminal and also immoral (anti-social, as the German president said recently) to avoid paying taxes, just illustrates how very naturally they take it for granted and how righteous and self-convinced these robbers, gangster and mafiosi indeed are. The more they fail, the more corrupt they become, the more the disaster they caused unfolds, the more costly it becomes for everybody – the more convinced they are of themselves, and claiming that to be their moral integrity and their “unperturbed morals”. Anti-social psychopaths from head to toe! Manipulative, cheating, unscrupulous, without any sense for moral right and wrong: that are some of the psychiatric key characteristics of psychopaths and antisocial personality disorder indeed, check just any psychiatric book.

And I am expected to vote for these people - of whom, from a certain level in the political hierarchy on criminal lunatics, losers, robbers, manipulative propagandists, lobby-owned strawmen and parasites fill most of the ranks, and I should give the moral legitimation and forgiving of sins and install them a shine of respectability when they push forward my enslavement and follow their never enough appetite for my freedom and my property? That is like a rapist demanding his victim to give consent to get raped, and calling it a moral crime if the victim refuses to comply.

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Rothbard's book on money, which I linked and which is short and totally free and legal, explains so simple why the states not just manipulated but destroyed real money when democratic regimes rose, because democratic regimes never are sustainable regimes, but always consume more than they produce, always. This is due to the vicious circle between politicians' promises and voters' demands. To endure that for some time longer, before the system breaks down, the state needs to take full control of money-creating, it needs card blanche for printing as much paper tickets as is needed to keep illusions alive and not needing to depend on market assessments of what that money'S real value is, and so he has to destroy the market mechanisms that privately produced money before in a private business enterprise and traded it according to market mechanism. So we got paper-money, made by the state. The damage done by Keynes' seriously flawed' thinking (I would call it even self-decepting) cannot be overestimated, the collapse of especially the European all-inclusive wellfare states is closely linked to it manna-from nothing philosophy. With the old, value-based money, both Keynes utopia of fiscal perpetuum mobiles and spending frenzies by states and the wellfare paradise states in Europe would not have been possible, would never have materialised. Thus the replacing of the gold standard with gold derivates, replacing gold derivates with FIAT money, prohibiting private coin making, and banning the use of precious ores for coin making. (I know I know, there have been some more reasons for the abandoning of the origal gold standard, namely the socalled bimetal problem – changing gold in silver and reverse -, but in principle the main reasons still are what I briefly lay out in sketches here). The inflationary self-boosting state depends desperately on being allowed to bring as many chips into the game as it needs to keep the illusion alive. The market, however, knows it better. The more an item (FIAT money) is available the lesser is its value. Rarity is what makes a good or item precious. In the end, the voicing of doubts about the 500 Euro notes as being channeled by EU sources, and plans to stop producing 1 and 2 cent coins, are only a psychological preparation of the public for the digital currency, to increase the public'S willingness to give up material expression of currency – coins, notes – alltogether, so that the state's money-from-nothing monopoly must not care for a material understanding of money at all, and the citizens being fully exposed to any political intention to expropriate even more of their private savings and wealth, when all financial transactions are digital and electronic only. Why is it that the vast majority of peope slipping into porivate debts do so by using credit cards, not by handing over too many coins and banknotes...?

The infrastructure to just push a button in the finance ministry to have so and so much of private savings being collected by the state, already exists. Schäuble and other europhile super-gangsters do not hide at all that they want to get rid of real money (as far as “real” has any meaning with FIAT money) better yesterday than tomorrow. Be assured the state will steal all and everything from the European private households as long as there is something to steal, since this is the only way to keep the worsening snowball system alive and running for some time longer – hopefully long enough so that collapse takes place after the actual politicians have had their power-party. When at the end the lights go out, you can be certain that they went off because nothing, really nothing was left in private savings that could be stolen anymore. Politically wanted low interest rates, wanted inflation are forms of self-legalised expropriation as well, and thus represent theft and robbery.

Citizens must be pushed and kept in total helplessness towards the state, this is one unpleasant, brutal truth about our Western states – just the means of controlling the people are more subtle and clever, than in an uncovered police dictatorship. But the chains are as merciless and solid, if not more. Brutal violence can be identified, it can be pointed out, it can be morally condemned – the creeping re-education of people minds in the west, the omni-present medial background training and social engineering and cognitive rearranging we are being subjected to, is far more difficult to resist to, not to mention to openly fight against – in form of public opinion, political correctness, combative terminology like “solidarity!” and “social justice” and the many term”xyz”-phobias (homophobia, Europhobia, Islamophobia, religiophobia, xenophobia) , all energy you invest into resisting and fighting is turned against you,m gets deflected against you, and you end up being the one called mentally ill, subversive, immoral, phobic, extremist, irrational – a mentally deranged person who needs the state's and community's help to assist him thinking in the right way again: effectively what the Borg may call “Rebooting the system”. What a horror, what a cold-blooded and calculated mercilessness! All in the name of humanism and a better world, of course.

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People vote for those people that tell them the best lies, that deceive them the most gloriously, and are the most unscrupulous in telling fairy tales and are wise enough to not dusrtub the running party, even when it is the party before next morning's execution. This tells you something not only about the share of guilt the electorate – this hopelessly overestimated sovereign instance from which all power in a democracy should emit and lighten the world from here to the horizon – has to face, but also about the character quality in our political personnel, don't you think? And when you think of it, you must recognise that it is against politicians' very interest to be any different, and to act more responsible – usually they get the boot for being that. It thus is naive to think that things would ever turn better if only the right candidate wins, the right guy comes along, the right Über-Führer steps onto the scene, the right party takes control, a noble, good man takes over. It will not happen like that, in the end they always are just about one thing: about themselves. Did not happen with the EU's operetta kings (in some years I will be threatened with punishment for using such derogatory terminology about our brave and glorious EU). Not with Obama. Not with Reagan or Kennedy. Not with Merkel, Hollande or anyone. Not only can the system not form up other characters at the top, it is against these people's very self-interest to be any different than how they are. Things become better if voting for the right guy? My doubt crystalizes in one single question: how could that be? That would be better than from rags to riches. That would be like from nothing comes everything, free express delivery included , delivered already yesterday, on a platin plate.

And consider this. The more people vote, the less worth has the single ballot. Something that people oversee time and again. Your vote means the less and has the less influenhce the more people vote. Also, When politician A promises to rob person B and share the loot with C, then he will be elected by C. Do we really want every Peter and every Paul having a say on what at the same time is pathetically advertised as influencing the fate and future of the nation? Even worse. Do we want to have people having said influence on the whole who contribute nothing, share no responsibility, have nothing at stake that is truly theirs, and live by state wellfare and at other people's expenses? Or who lack school education to calculate by the simple rule of three – but should form an opinion on highly complex matter like economic cycles, fiscal policies, international interdependency and the consequences of demographic changes?

Needless to say: I am totally and strictly against a general, unqualified right to vote. I I would support democracy and would see any reason in having votes in today's nation's context. Which is not the case. So go voting, everybody, if it flatters your ego, I do not really care. I just say you would stay morally less guilty if you do note participate in this collective crime of legitimizing what you better should not wish to legitimate.

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The qualities that make you a governing politicians, are the qualities of a gangster and mafiosi, a liar and fraudster, a cheater and tyrant. Another reason that speaks against democracy. This failure and the moral degeneration are inbuilt features of the democratic system, the democratic disease. In what way could one say this is better than monarchy...??? It is not even as bad as monarchy, imo it even is WORSE. Hoppe would still say that he does not favour monarchy over democracy, since historicall the abuse and damage in monarchies has been smaller, but still existent, because a monarchy also is a central state, like democracy today. Thus his conclusion: statelessness it must be.

Today people have to hand over more than 50% of an ordinary employee's or worker's income to the state, in forma of various taxes and mandatory payments to state-de,manded or state-driven fonds and -insurances. In the late monarchic system before WWI, it were a maximum of just 8% . and wise monarchs even tried to not squeeze out more than 5%, knowing that this would help to let “their property” foster, grow and develope. In capitalism, I often heard in the forum, having managers being payedfwith insane wages is okay as long the whole company benefit from their decisions and general wealth has advantage from them, too. I never agreed with that logic, but however: I still demand that the same right and logic is being apllied then when comparing a monarchic and a democratic ruler. Why should a monarch not “own” the country as long as that results in policies and a managing of its resources that sees trade and culture blossom due to wise management? A monarch has a natural self-interest to keep his property together and in good shape. The democratic leader only is short time in office, and so tends to abuse to the maximum the resources available to him (and these today are existing only in form of – debts) . His successor does the same, and the same it is with the guy coming after him. Total, maxium exploitation of the nation's resources (especially the middle class) is the consequence. A moral degeneration is also a consequence, expressed in the unscrupulousness in which politicians do not fix the damage, do not tell the uncomfortable truth, increase the damage to bribe their voters, and telling lies. Democracy implies ochlocracy, I think, always: the tyranny of the mob, the cheap prolete, the dog of the street, the precariat. And we see it everywhere. Our democratic regimes know no real victims, the people are not victims, not really: they are accomplices in crime. Only when you refuse to formally and morally legitimate the state, democracy, parties, politicians, the majority dictatorship of the plebs and canaille – only then you can hope to put as little guilt on yourself as possible under these insane circumstances. I am of the opinion that it is a moral imperative to speak out against democracy, and against this danse macabre of today's Western states. It is a bitter historic irony that the West is turning in exactly that kind of regime that it claimed to have defeated after the cold war. We are becoming communist, totalitarian, unfree and suppressive, we become brainwashed and opinion-pressed and anonymously blackmailed - we call it political correctness. Oh brave new world!

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It goes without further need for explanation, I think: it just be demanded that states and governments shall be stripped of their monopoly to print money, this and central banks as the state's fiscal executor must be destroyed. I am willing to unleash civil wars over enforcing this, it is of utmost importance and must be seen as a non-negotiable condition. The state's monopoly to print money, and to manage money (as if there would be any need to manage value.-basing money! ) must be destroyed, no matter how, no matter the price, at all cost.

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It is the state of societies as formed by the Northern European Hanse alliance (12th-17th century), or the Italian city states. States that were formed more by the trading class and the businessmen, where the basis of our modern laws were laid although these laws based on traders' codifications and courts where entities called and maintained by the trading class of businessman – not by a superior instance called “state”. We have remains of that still in some craftsman guilds. Even military and policing functions were run not by a higher authority of kings or democratic government (a state in today's understanding), but where organised and maintained by the traders and businessmen.

Hoppe's reiteration of what he calls „private law society“ bases on this, and so it is not just theory, but a historically proven example. Mind you, although there were the Medicis' corruption, the Italian city states represent a blossoming of Italian and European culture of absolutely highest worth and importance.

Same in the Hanse, an alliance of “private people” (traders) so powerful that it ruled, even dominated the Baltic and Northern Europe, had I think over 300 member cities right down to central Europe (!), with my beloved Lübeck as its centre of wealth, control and power. They were a political, economic, fiscal and military superpower – not bad for just a private alliance formed by businessmen and traders only, eh? That was no state, but a free and voluntary alliance by free people, basing on free trade, and supporting the diea that trade brings development and that it is in everybody's interest to guarantee the safety of trading transactions: thus the military component build by the Hanse, strong enough to keep not only pirates but the Scandinavian Royal navies behaving. The Hanse was an equal, sometime superior diplomatic partner for Scandinavian kingdoms. It's sad that the glorious history of the Hanse is so much forgotten these days, especially in Germany. The success and the former wealth of it you can still see in many of the old Hanse cities.

I mentioned in the other thread the era when Germany still did not exist as a united nation under one central command, but was formed by dozens, hundreds, thousands of free cities and dukedoms – all of them competing for the best talents, the most gifted artists and craftsmen, the best living conditions, in order to shine brighter than the others. This represented a climax in German cultural creation: music, literature, painting, architecture, trade blossoming, and so forth. Sometimes their rulers declared war, but these wars were not that absolute and not about word views like today (which makes the wars since the 20th century so tremendously total, bloody and unforgiving), but they were more military comparisons that were stopped early usually before any real costly damage to property and trade and wealth took place. There also was a strict separation between combatants and non-combatants, and property damage of non combatants often was to be compensated for by the feudal lord of the city or dukedom. Also, these lords has far more limitations and responsibilities and were not that absolutely free at all to abuse laws as today normally gets understood.

Nevertheless, a monarchy still is a morally non-justifiable ruling of the one over the other. That's why - different to some accusations - neither me nor Hoppe prefer monarchy over democracy. I learned to reject both. But when democracies produce incompetent selfish criminals gaining power time and again, and when they increase their elections chances the more the worse their character is in cheating, defaming, making false promises and abusing access to the state treasury, and this get rewarded by the crowds, I'd say the chance that in a monarchy the heritage of the throne, who undergoes his youth years and early adult years in education and preparation for his later job, probably more often is a better candidate, and while there is no guarantee, there is not smaller a chance (I think even better a chance) that morally and by sense of responsibility he is superior to elected politicans in general, for it is against reason and the very own interest of politicians to be moral and acting by a sense of responsibility. Monarchs owning the land as a property, have a best interest in keeping it intact and have it blossoming – democratic politicians have an interest in abusing the country and stealing from it as long as they have their limited timespan of access to its financial resources. Make hay while the day lasts, and let the world end once you get kicked out of office – to find another office thanks to your party's networking with your old job being taken by somebody being the same miserable character like you are yourself – that is the logic of crewing political offices today. Why should I defend to get ever more of this, of this and nothing else? We see the results today, we see the enormous damage, the stellar bills. It all is at our costs. Democratic politicians abuse the system much more and more hurting than most feudal rulers in the past ever did.

Natural law means the right to own something that you discover before anyone else, so that you are the first to make a claim for it. For further intricacies (owner is missing or died, ownership is challenged and so forth, see the according chapters in Rothbard'S book, I do not plan two rewrite it chapter for chapter here). Any understanding of a morally legal state must base on that, I think, the term liberty or freedom else makes no sense. I would argue that leaves states no legal status at all, for the following reasons.

Usually they say a state shall have two responsibilities, and these two exclusively, banning it from anything else: it shall make laws guaranteeing the right for private property, and it shall maintain these measurements needed to enforce that protection: police, a military. Implied is that everything else: social relations between people, trade, business contracts, community projects, street building etc etc, should be left to the local population living in the places and areas effected by these things. Let them organise their firebrigade. Let them sign insurance contracts as the see fit. Let them vote with their feet or their wallets on services, products, living conditions. And let everybody be the master and unlimited owner of property that according to natural law is legally his own. What need is there for a centralised state regulating all this?

However, that is an ideal only and there was never a state that had accepted to stay in that limited role. And that is why I have a big time problem with democracy as well as states in general. The businessman does not care for how the conditions were formed up by which he decides whether or not he invests in a place. If the conditions are positive, he invests, no matter whether the conditions were created by a military dictatorship or a democratically elected government. For him only the quality of these conditions is important, and whehe he trusts the government having created them, or not.

In other words, it does not matter for business what kind of state it deals with. The quality of the situation and the trust put or not put into the government are the deciding factors. A democratic government not being trusted, sees a decline in investments. A military dictatorship reliably fulfilling its agreed contract duties, is being favoured. During the cold war, even at the highest tensions during Cuba, the Russians were reliable trading partners in oil and gas for european (potentially hostile) customers. Ethics and morals have little to do with it. Trust is what it is about. Trust that what one has assessed in contract conditions will not get arbitrarily changed by the other side over night.

And while it is sometimes claimed that without democracy there would not have formed up law and order in the West, no humanistic tradition, no liberty, and no wealth, I must point out that several writers demonstrate that historically this has been exactly the other way around: that the seeds were sown and beginnings of modern legal systems base on fundaments rooting in ancient law of the land and juristic codifications founded by private business guilts like for example the Hanse; that many of our today's liberal values and rights and morals emerged in conditions where there was no democracy in sight, but enforced, sometimes in bitter conflicts, a free space for themselves and by doing so allowed later that democracy started to pout itself onto their achievements (and starting to consume them), and that the basis of wealth never has been a democratic base order, but a context in which natural law was allowed to regulate free market interactions by freely deciding individuals. The stronger the democratic state has become, the more the meaning of justice in the law system, the more moral values, the more our wealth, our sovereignty, our self-determined way of life has been eroded and weakened and declared a bagatelle in the name of politically corrected ideological redesigns and social engineering experiments.

High time to get beyond this madness. Before madness gets us all killed.

[August]

Originally Posted by Skybird

High time to get beyond this madness. Before madness gets us all killed.

Your preferred replacement for this madness is madness itself.

[Dowly]

This why we have private messages.

[troopie]

You'se are merely attacking the symtoms; you can go to half a dozen doctors complainling of an illness (trust me I know) and get many varied responses. What you'se need to address is the cause.

The problem is the human condition and how people accept it's various guises. No social group can be free of it, save for the individual; He who must then shun the benifits of a social system, i.e, weigh up survival prospects.

Were people better off in the medieval period? Being controlled by a church under heavy government influence?

And so survaillence today is what grinds our goat; what was the major complaint of peoples of old? I'd reackon It'd be as close to their hearts as our issues today.

For questions regarding the aptness of modern social structure, or even any historical period, I would strongly recomend reading Jacques Rousseau's work 'the Social Contract':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract

Rather than squabling over your idealisms, I'd suggest educating yourselves on the fundamental problem.

I too get irate over our 'leaders' shenanigans, but, in oder to address and deal with them we must understand the root causes of their actions.

People from the dawn of time have had to deal with social tensions, yet merely their manifestation changes.

Indeed, even a wild dog in a pack must succumb to his own leaders wants.

Is this dubiuos order what we are comfirtable with as a species? History would suggest yes. Personally I seek greater values, but in reallity' how many anarchistict civillisations remain today, or indeed, ever thrived?

I suspect, none.

[Armistead]

Possibly the longest post in SUbsim history?

[Stealhead]

Originally Posted by Dowly

This why we have private messages.

Truer words have not been spoken or typed.

@Armistead according to Word 2013 the second post is 13,310 words 25 pages long its like a rough draft of a thesis.Which guess is sort of what it is.

[Bilge_Rat]

Skybird,

are you actually Hans-Herman Hoppe?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Hermann_Hoppe

just wondering.

[AVGWarhawk]

I think I earned 3 college credits after reading that.

[Takeda Shingen]

Originally Posted by AVGWarhawk

I think I earned 3 college credits after reading that.

Funny, because I think that I actually lost 3 credits after reading it.

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Dowly

This why we have private messages.

I don't know; I think it's good to have it out where everyone can read it. Not so much today, but in the past people would write private letters "for publication", meaning that while they were written to private individuals they were written so that everyone would get the message. I can cite several examples, but I don't think this is the appropriate place to do so.

If this had been sent by PM it would be lost to everyone but Oberon. Here it can be read or ignored by everyone. I'm not saying I agree or disagree, and I'm not qualified to single out and address specific points as I usually do. I'm not even going to say what I think of it in general, just that I think it's a good thing it's here.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by troopie

You'se are merely attacking the symtoms; you can go to half a dozen doctors complainling of an illness (trust me I know) and get many varied responses. What you'se need to address is the cause.

The problem is the human condition and how people accept it's various guises. No social group can be free of it, save for the individual; He who must then shun the benifits of a social system, i.e, weigh up survival prospects.

Were people better off in the medieval period? Being controlled by a church under heavy government influence?

And so survaillence today is what grinds our goat; what was the major complaint of peoples of old? I'd reackon It'd be as close to their hearts as our issues today.

For questions regarding the aptness of modern social structure, or even any historical period, I would strongly recomend reading Jacques Rousseau's work 'the Social Contract':

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Contract

Rather than squabling over your idealisms, I'd suggest educating yourselves on the fundamental problem.

I too get irate over our 'leaders' shenanigans, but, in oder to address and deal with them we must understand the root causes of their actions.

People from the dawn of time have had to deal with social tensions, yet merely their manifestation changes.

Indeed, even a wild dog in a pack must succumb to his own leaders wants.

Is this dubiuos order what we are comfirtable with as a species? History would suggest yes. Personally I seek greater values, but in reallity' how many anarchistict civillisations remain today, or indeed, ever thrived?

I suspect, none.

Most people - not all, but most people - prefer to chose the easier way, pick the comfortable option, prefer the bigger net gain over the smaller. Can't get any closer to human nature than this. Most people even do so when the longterm cost for the short term advantage is bigger. This is what economists call and refer to as the "time preference": if you can gain something in profit, gain, something positive now, or could wait a little bit longer to then gain something more profitable, a bigger gain, something even more positive: how long are you willing to harvest before you reap? How long and how much do you invest the possible immediate win, to win something bigger later on?

The modern present, short-lived media society claims reward for immediate satisfaction of your desires. Human cognitions and memory functioning are such that that over 2-3 generation we tend to delete memories ("learned lessons") from history becasue they are not transported and handed over to later generation in a manner functional enough to keep these lessons present on mind. During our own lifetime, we tend to overlook changes that unfold slowly only (the so-called landscape memory, meaning that we do not become aware how the glacier for example withdraws more and more from the mountain when we look out of the window - and when we then get shown a photo from 40 years ago, how it was back then, we cannot believe it and are completely surprised, although the change took places right before our eyes, every year).

when considering this and also considering that I studied psychology and have had a bit of experience in counseling people and also for years teaching meditation and having to deal with the usual problems that haunt people starting with that, I must say that the time preference for most people is such that most people really want a gain, a reward now or after very short time, with only very few being able and willing to wait longer and invest more time for the chance to harvesting even more profit some longer time later. Pay tomorrow, get it yesterday, enjoy stuff NOW - isn't that the motto of our modern consumer society?

And that is as close to human nature as I must be in order to understand why people support todays politics of bribing others and getting bribed, of believing in promises and miracles, and not caring for long-termed outlooks and costly consequences in the future.

Irnically, this may be due to the decline of religion. Not that I would admit religion's claims are right, but they focus the perspective on longer time tables, and hint at a final bill - finals bills that today most people tend to ignore, thinking it is not their responsibility and they will not be affected by them. Couple that with the short timespan we learn to have by media hysteria entertainment and a fast living hectic way of life, and there you are.

= = =

Everybody:

as I said, nobody expects you or forces you to read all the above. But if I would have left the reply to Oberon a PM, then the adress by him to me would have stood unanswered in the other thread - and then again you would complain for me having "ignored" him or having no answers to him, and I would need to explain tiem and again why I have not made my reply public. Sorry, my way is the easier solution.

Yoiu can read through all the above, and if you don't want that, then just let it be. Freedom of choice is a great thing, isn't it!?

Freedom of choice is a great thing, isn't it!?

Not according to Hoppe.
Freedom of choice is a great thing only if you accept his choice of what your freedom is, if you don't then you are not a person but an animal which must be punished until tame or simply eradicated for the sake of the real humans.
As nutty as squirrel excrement

[MH]

I dont see anything good coming out of it at the end.
It looks sort of like tribalism future mixed with industrial revolution and corporation rule?

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen

Funny, because I think that I actually lost 3 credits after reading it.