Statism: The Prevailing Ideology
Political debates nowadays lay bare an obsequious human tendency towards statism. No matter what politician or party we vote for, the belief that a select coterie of fallible human beings should operate an all-powerful institution to meddle in the lives of everyone else is paramount, not only in those who seek to lead but also in those who seek to be led. Whenever I flirt with anarchism or throw shade at the government, for example, someone always brings up roads and bridges and how a state is necessary for infrastructure, the implication being that only man in his statist form can flatten ground and lay asphalt.
Statism takes a variety of poses. My own is of the minimal, “night watchmen” variety. Others prefer the state to intervene in nearly every facet of life, if not to nominally determine and protect our rights, than to provide the most basic necessities and securities, to direct our trade and industry, to educate, to house, to regulate our lives as if it were a parent and we it’s unweaned children. I fear the latter end of the spectrum because it approaches a degree of statism expressed in fascism and made concrete by a variety of totalitarian regimes.
At any rate, no matter the degree of statism, I hold that statism reigns in political thought, threading itself through most political ideologies, save for the ones that explicitly call for its abolition.
As a corollary, anti-statism, too, follows this thread, albeit at a much smaller gauge. We can find anti-statist sentiment among socialists, progressives, libertarians, liberals and conservatives.
I wanted to open this space to discuss the general topic of statism and its varieties, its meaning, whether it is the prevailing ideology (perhaps in the Althusserian sense), the pros and cons of such a belief, etc.
Additional musings:
On State Power
The State, it is I
Statism takes a variety of poses. My own is of the minimal, “night watchmen” variety. Others prefer the state to intervene in nearly every facet of life, if not to nominally determine and protect our rights, than to provide the most basic necessities and securities, to direct our trade and industry, to educate, to house, to regulate our lives as if it were a parent and we it’s unweaned children. I fear the latter end of the spectrum because it approaches a degree of statism expressed in fascism and made concrete by a variety of totalitarian regimes.
At any rate, no matter the degree of statism, I hold that statism reigns in political thought, threading itself through most political ideologies, save for the ones that explicitly call for its abolition.
As a corollary, anti-statism, too, follows this thread, albeit at a much smaller gauge. We can find anti-statist sentiment among socialists, progressives, libertarians, liberals and conservatives.
I wanted to open this space to discuss the general topic of statism and its varieties, its meaning, whether it is the prevailing ideology (perhaps in the Althusserian sense), the pros and cons of such a belief, etc.
Additional musings:
On State Power
The State, it is I
Comments (108)
A healthy state is not all powerful. Or even a half-healthy state. High taxation in a democracy generally goes with high accountability of the state to the population. Human Rights are a huge step forward in the protection of citizens. And only democratic states can reliably act for the common good. I am in favour of more statism to tackle worldwide problems such as climate change, reduction in biodiversity and tax havens. Only global level organisations can tackle these reliably it seems to me. I'd like a world government administered online.
It seems your objection to statism is very principled, and less practical, correct me if I'm wrong. You see it as fundamentally the removal of individual freedom, and that is such a bad thing that even common goods do not justify it.
You are right. I do not believe in any common good that must sacrifice its own members in order to reach it. That to me is a fundamental contradiction and ultimately an exclusionary project. But in practical terms I do not advocate for any abolition of the state because I think that would lead to misery.
All that you say is well and good, I suppose, but we should also remember the horrors of statism. If history is any indication, the state moves begrudgingly and only under great pressure towards any benefit to the citizenry, but with alacrity towards anything that increases its own power and benefit.
I don't understand your point, Tim. Perhaps this is because you insert quotes where your own thinking could have been.
You're probably right. Perhaps it is inevitable, the product of proximity.
Yes that seems logical to me. Instinctively I have some sympathy with NOS on this. I love post apocalyptic stories and dramas that involve drastic population reduction so we have a nearly empty world again with no authorities. What authorities there are might be private gangs. So I'd probably start setting up a pubic authority asap and embark on a programme of public goods, as long as the electorate let me of course.
I read a persuasive article some time ago, postulating that we would soon have to side with the Plutocracy or cartels. Both of those entities would permit the continuance of government to basically serve as a punching bag, or outlet for rage against the real source of the people's problems. Both would, through charity/philanthropy, take care of many good things, while letting government do the dirty jobs. I think we are almost there, especially when the plutocracy owns the government. We better take it back or suffer the consequences.
I think an even deeper assumption is that only man in his civilized form can possibly live as he was meant to live; that other ways of life are savage and regressive; that only a sedentary, agriculture-based lifestyle amongst billions of other humans is the right way to go about living.
Of course technological progress entails centralized statecraft. Only a state can possibly provide the organization needed to facilitate the aims of technique. Technology and statecraft go hand-in-hand. The state is only a consequence of the development of technique (being a technique in itself). I believe that it is naive to think it can be otherwise, as if one could reject the state but retain "the rest" of our techniques.
Rejecting technique entails rejecting the state. Rejecting the state alone is just myopic.
I think the main problem is that there are too many different views and too little time to test them. There are views held in common and views held individually and both sets of views are equally open to question.
With regard to statism, we need to determine certain principles on which we want society to be governed, direct government as to what it should do to realize them, how to organize itself to realize those principles, and find a mechanism that insures that this is achieved in a satisfactory way.
For example, in liberal democracy we elect a particular party for a few years. But we have no means of forcing the ruling party to govern in a way that is satisfactory to the majority or even that fulfills promises made during election campaigns. All we can do is to elect a different party next time around but there is no guaranty that the new party will be any better.
Additionally, when society changes at a very fast rate as is currently the case, we also need to very fast devise policies that enable us to keep up with those changes. And you can't make well-thought-out policy in a very limited space of time.
The danger is that people eventually give up and just accept their life being run by an increasingly powerful and intrusive state. Things can only change if society changes first. But this is difficult to achieve when society is subject to changes over which it has little or no control.
It seems that we are approaching a Tower of Babel situation where society becomes more and more fragmented on political, cultural and other lines and incapable of resisting the growing powers of the state.
I think you may be right, but I am saddened by the thought of politicians constituting a beneficial technique; especially the conniving ones. Those that have the technique down tend to dominate and last like herpes.
And that's perhaps the answer to the question of why statism reigns. States may be historically contingent, but they're not an accident, and if we look at world history, do not seem to have been optional. Ultimately "state" is just a name we give a specific from of organisation a community can take. Technically a 12th century european kingdom was not a "state" in the modern form, yet no anarchist imagines their goal to look like such a kingdom, or a tribe rigidly governed by custom and strongmen. When we imagine a stateless society as a desirable goal, we probably all imagine something that has not already existed in the past.
So, statism dominates because we haven't yet found the alternative we prefer. That might be due to a lack of experimentation, as @Apollodorus said. We might simply not have hit the right combination of circumstances yet. But fundamentally, overcoming statism can only be an evolution from where we are, not a mere rejection of the status quo.
Where/when do you think that break point is?
Quoting 180 Proof
I'm having a little brain lock-up on that one. Can you give me an example of when that might have been, past or present, as a reference? Would that just be when we used to make and consume everything on site, ourselves?
That is a decent point about technology. Perhaps the state, too, is a technology. Over time it has made obedience, subjugation, oppression and exploitation at least manageable for those of us born into it.
Good insights.
We should remember that state institutions tend to outlive its creators, those it was designed to favor, and finally, its original purpose. The New Deal programs that still exist in the American administrative state are myriad. Fannie Mae was created to alleviate the burdens of the Great Depression, only to have the public bail it out in the Great Recession some 80 years later. The Farm Credit System is over 100 years old, and during its life other regulative institutions, associations, “government-sponsored enterprises” have popped up to keep it going. That the state might wither away over time, I fear, is mistaken.
I’ve already stated the extent of my own statism in the OP, which directly aligns with that of Paine. But in your febrile responses you need to pretend I know nothing about it. I suppose fakery and mischaracterization is how you get on in life.
No clue.
Approximately 60%-75% of GDP in neoliberal securitized late capitalist / shareholder states are consumption-driven; starve the beast and the beast starves or restructures (not reforms). Crash mass consumption to pre-WW2 / pre-1929 levels and wipe-out the shareholder-investor class status quo (re: the "strategic necessity" after 1945 to establish the National Security Military Industrial Complex (i.e. military keynesianism via NSC 47 & the "Cold War", interstate highways, suburban sprawl, "fastfood" franchises, malls, etc) that maintained high enough levels of effective demand, or over-consumption (war economy in "peace time" for 75+ years so far) in order to prop-up 'zombie capitalism' – fiat hyper-statist nonsense on stilts).
No, it isn’t. The suffix ism and the way in which I used the term indicate otherwise.
:razz:
What do you get if you add "-ism" to "social"...?
Or perhaps to "Community..."?
I admit I have a personal interest. The State saved my life. I continue to depend on it for security. I am at least a little grateful for that.
Ok, here we go:
social + ism = socialism!
community + ism = communityism!
Wow! cool!
Was the emancipation proclamation statist?
Perhaps it was.
Sounds intractable. Somewhat off topic, and fiction, but have you ever seen "Captain Fantastic" 2016? I always recommend people not read reviews, but if you want to kill a few hours, it's fun.
count me in, then
I mentioned earlier that the state moves begrudgingly and only under great pressure towards any benefit to the citizenry, but with alacrity towards anything that increases its own power and benefit. That's probably why the Emancipation Proclamation applied only to the enemy states, and not to the slavery within its own borders.
Since it was done with war power, the jurisdiction ended at the MD line.
Yes, sometimes state power is the only way to accomplish some good, but once the state has power, it will be used by the corrupt.
Welcome to the human race.
I often wonder how the country would have been had the state listened to the brilliant individualism of Frederick Douglass. On the question of what should be done with the slaves once emancipated he gave the perfect answer: "Our answer is, do nothing with them; mind your business, and let them mind theirs. Your doing with them is their greatest misfortune. They have been undone by your doings, and all they now ask, and really have need of at your hands, is just to let them alone. They suffer by every interference, and succeed best by being let alone."
But statism couldn't help itself. So-called "black codes" restricted black people's right to own property, conduct business, buy and lease land, and move freely through public spaces. It went to great lengths to meddle in their lives, essentially slavery by a different name.
So the federal govt passed the 14th amendment in response. By the 1890s black votership was 40-70%. Blacks owned businesses, worked side by side with whites, were accumulating wealth, and were entering into politics.
This progress was halted by violent opposition to the state by white supremacists who hired thugs to terrorize black voters.
We can only speculate what sort of history the South would have if certain parties could have had respect for the authority of the state.
We can do this all day, you know. There isn't going to be an uprising in the US. You know that, right?
Under many black codes freed men weren't allowed to bear arms, and the KKK were their enforcers. So the state authority and their thugs first denies the right of a man to defend himself, then it presents itself as the solution to his woes, like a protection racket. Martin Luther King himself was denied this right to own a gun nearly a century later, as were many others fighting for their freedom.
No, I don't think there will be an uprising in the US.
He favored nonviolent resistance, so he probably didn't care.
Quoting NOS4A2
:up:
It's my understanding Ronald Reagan first championed gun control in CA in response to black folks packing guns at rallies and occupations. Gun control is evil, unless it means black folks. Then it's okay. Guns seemed to have worked for some blacks in the 50s and 60s. Read "Negros With Guns" by Robert F. Williams, 1962. Apparently him and MLK had some back and forth.
In philosophical discussions, it usually helps to narrow the range of responses by defining primary terms. In this case, the core problem to be addressed seems to be the degree of centralized control. For example, a positive assessment of a Fascist Dictatorship, is that "they make the trains run on time", while laissez faire decentralized governments tend to be disorderly and inefficient. Which is why democratic states, in their official charter, tend to aim for a happy middle-ground. For example, the framers of the US Constitution argued on one side for the individual freedom of a Greek Democracy, while the other side preferred the communal stability of a Monarchy. The result was a strained compromise.
So, in practice, due to the polarization of populist politics, states typically swing back & forth between too much freedom and too much regulation. However, does that erratic balancing act indicate "obsequious human tendency towards statism", or simply a Hegelian dynamic of progressive historical evolution? We do indeed now seem to be at a tipping point between recent world-shaking experiments in both directions : Communism & Fascism. And each attempt at Utopia showed a tendency to "totalitarian" rule, working in the interest of the heads-of-State, rather than the masses. So "government by the people", despite its frustrating tendency to disorganization and confusion, at least provides a tipsy balance of freedom within determinism. :cool:
Statism : a political system in which the state has substantial centralized control over social and economic affairs.
Definitions from Oxford Languages
I defined statism as “the belief that a select coterie of fallible human beings should operate an all-powerful institution to meddle in the lives of everyone else”. Philosophical discussion should rarely appeal to the dictionary, anyways, because dictionaries define common usage, what it may have meant to the authors at a certain time, and not what words should mean. Either way, the Oxford definition you provided suffices for my own tastes.
I don’t think it’s true that democratic governments swing back and forth between individual freedom and regulation. There is a great quote of James Madison’s that exemplifies a common excuse for the conversion of individual liberty into state power. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson he wrote “you understand the game behind the Curtain too well not to perceive the old trick of turning every contingency into a resource for accumulating force in the Government”. Little more needs to be said. The most glaring example of this in recent times was the contingency of megadeath upon which the state would pilfer our liberties.
This transfer of power is progressive, like a disease. The sum of federal laws in a country like the United States is seemingly uncountable; no lawyer or judge, let alone the layman, could know what they all are. In a system where ignorance of the law is no excuse this presents a problem. When the laws of the US were codified as the United States Codes in 1926 they occupied a single volume. This is to say nothing of state and local laws. Each principle recorded in these volumes are intended to restrain the individual in directions where his actions were previously unchecked and compel his actions which previously he might perform or not as he wished.
The corresponding effect of this progressive diminution of individual liberty is statism, in my opinion.
Correct. But suppose we decide we don't want statism. That won't take us very far if we have no knowledge or ability to resist.
In his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, La Boétie wondered why people will suffer under a tyrant who has no other power than what they give him. He concluded that it was simply customary to do so. In order for a citizenry to shrug the tyrant from their backs, all they must do is refuse to consent to their own enslavement. As for the tyrant, “it is not necessary to deprive him of anything, but simply to give him nothing”.
It’s not that easy, of course, especially in a tyranny without a tyrant.
The State sucks, for sure.
The absence of State sucks too.
There are various arguments from Hobbes and Rousseau who put the matter into relief. For them, the issue considered where the arrangements between persons cancelled some more "natural" order that was in force before.
And that approach does have the virtue of owning the opposite idea.
If "statism" is an idea by itself, I am not able to perceive it.
I don’t see the use of any social contract theory of the state. I prefer the idea that states form and rule by conquest and exploitation, and never by voluntary or consensual association. Colonialism and imperialism are examples of this. Vast empires have seized power and exploited the people all across the globe throughout recorded history.
Now here you are bemoaning the oppressiveness of any state at all. You've come a long way (too far, perhaps). Or is it just hypocrisy? Someone who is against the state oppression of its most victimised demographics is in charge, time to rally the people against the state sort of thing?
Anyway, I kind of agree with you in principle of not in practice. The state exists because large, self-policing social groups are untenable but agriculture favours large social groups. Historically the state has favoured the owners of production over its consumers, hence the importance of private property laws, trespass laws and more severe punishments for proletariat crimes than for crimes committed by the powerful, which remains true in a less severe form today. The state is oppressive because the powerful favour oppressive states
It needn't be that way. Yes, there has to be some degree of policing because the larger the social group, the higher the number of people who end up with no stake in it. But there's no reason not to have a state the does the opposite to what ours does: protecting the natural egalitarianism of our species rather than the greed of its more resourceful, violent, and antisocial elements. That is, after all, the principal mode of our natural self-policing: to stop freeloaders, exploiters and other maniacs from taking control of the group.
Ensuring that everyone has an equal stake in their town would be the most effective route to minimising state interference: it would allow people to do what you guys say you want people to do (decide for themselves, do the right thing out of self-interest, etc.) Problem is, sounds kinda like communityism.
I don’t recall conversing with you at all so it might not have been that interesting. But yes I tend to criticize violence, rioting theft, and the destruction of property, and my own statism require rights and properties be defended. I also think all collectivist ideologies are pap, and should be criticized, communism included.
But yes, wherever a faction of human beings is in control that’s where the powerful and powerless alike seek influence and favor. They cannot do otherwise. So why put a faction of human beings in control?
I don’t believe there is a natural egalitarianism in our species, nor would I want an equal stake in a land that is unequal. It seems to me building and enforcing such an association would require totalitarian methods and an unfathomable suppression of regular human activity. I’ll pass.
Now that is a problem of centralized government that could, and should, be alleviated, if not eliminated. I've long thought that a rule-of-law should be : for every new law passed, an old one should be removed. Instead of just piling law on top of law, until common sense is legislated away, and replaced with an overwhelming Tower of Legal Babel. :cool:
Quoting NOS4A2
Ah okay, so when black people protest, however peacefully, it's still a violent crime, so you can freely substitute those occurrences as if they were the same. I guess this is the logic certain police officers employ too. Anyway, good to know the world hasn't turned upside down.
Quoting NOS4A2
A faction of human beings in control is powerful, they don't need to seek favour. Or do you mean between factions, like land owners and politicians? Then yes.
Quoting NOS4A2
I suppose people imagine human beings to be approximately like them. I don't know how seriously you take science, but the reigning wisdom is that, yes, human beings are naturally egalitarian and altruistic by default. We've had tens of thousands of years of social cooperation within groups; the exploitative power dynamics we're used to are thought to be relatively recent, post-agricultural. There are still many hunter gatherer tribes in the world now who, far from civilisation, remain egalitarian and altruistic.
However, key to their success is staying small. Basically it relies on everyone being close. This gives everyone a reason to want to help each other, while also allowing everyone to keep everyone else in check.
Power differentials are at odds with that, and that's one reason why you need a state to maintain them. I don't think there's anything untotalitarian in brainwashing people into thinking that their disadvantage from birth isn't real and enforcing the point with violence and dual-standard policing. It seems infinitely better, if we must have a state, to have one that ensures everyone's stake in society is comparable. After all, the lie that is the American dream is meant to appeal to precisely that sense of egalitarianism and self-realisation.
I think there is tyrant alright but he is hiding behind Big Bucks, Big Tech, the Media, and George Soros.
The "idea that states form and rule by conquest and exploitation" is an odd place to find the "individual liberty" you also advocate.
So, you have two "statisms." One you like and one you don't. You eschew the use of social contracts but seem to be expecting a better deal in one system versus another for yourself.
I don't understand the difference you are claiming.
What I said was I see no use with the social contract theory of state. I simply don’t believe that is how man transitioned from earlier times to what we have now. I believe states form through conquest and exploitation. I didn’t say or mean to imply I eschew the use of social contracts.
There are plenty degrees of statism, not just two. I mentioned this already. But it is true that I prefer and expect a better deal from one side of the spectrum over the other.
I was speaking about riots, violence and theft. So why bring up black people and peaceful protest? Logic?
I mean between those who possess the monopoly on violence and those who do not.
Equivocating between protean and compulsory egalitarianism makes it all the more confusing. To me it doesn’t follow that because people are generally altruistic or egalitarian they all must be given a comparable stake in some combination of civil order, presumably by some benevolent and incorruptible group of brokers.
I’m all for people starting their own communes, so long as people are there by their own free will. I’m against the involuntary, statist communes, however. The list of failed attempts and the corpses they are built upon is long enough for me dismiss the notion outright.
But that's not true in historical terms. Power has repeatedly be decentralized as well.
Quoting NOS4A2
The idea that individual actions are unchecked until a law concerning them is codified doesn't hold up to any scrutiny. Pre-state societies often have very elaborate rules for conduct.
Quoting NOS4A2
No-one actually thinks states historically formed through a social contract, and if you believe that is what social contract theories of state argue, then you have not understood them very well.
Quoting NOS4A2
That's because you're not actually responding to the argument. What you're missing is that the "protean" altruism is based on direct interpersonal relationships, but humans are only capable of forming such relationships with a couple dozen to maybe a few hundred people. Beyond that, additional institutions are necessary in order to organize communal action. We ignore the constitution of these institutions at our own peril - if we don't take an active part in their design, we are allowing someone else to do it for us, and we already know the likely consequences of that.
Because the first time we spoke about this you were quite happy to tar every BLM protestor, however peaceful, with the same brush as it's worst individuals and, indeed, opportunistic looters who had nothing to do with the protests (while maintaining that a minority of murderous, racist cops does not look bad for the police system that arms and trains them). And you seem to be doing that again here: I spoke of protestors; you substituted protestors for rioters and looters, not me.
Quoting NOS4A2
You don't seem to understand. I'm not equivocating between humans in their natural state and larger groups with an egalitarian policy: I've said twice now that larger groups can't support that default behaviour. I'm saying that modelling a state on our natural egalitarianism would be better than carving one out protect tyrants, oppressors, exploiters and thieves from the masses, which I gather is your preference.
Quoting NOS4A2
One of your straw men against BLM was that it had communes. I guess you mean you're all for white people starting their own communes?
You accuse me, falsely, of criticizing people “protesting their oppression and lives lost in the hands of a violently oppressive state”. In fact, I was criticizing the rioting, looting, and assaulting, which left dozens deceased and the damage in the billions of dollars. Then it turned out I was criticizing the black people protesting. Now its BLM protesters. I fear we’re entering duck-speak territory.
In any case it’s probably better to ask my opinion on these matters instead of inventing them.
Of course larger groups can’t support support natural human behavior. It’s why collectivism has always sought to wipe out natural human behavior and association in order to enforce compulsory behavior and association. So no matter which way you model your state, at some point you’ll run out of voluntary participants and move right to force. In the end this scheming and state building will snuff out natural human behavior, not compliment it.
That’s not true. I claimed then that no activist network such as BLM can substitute for family or community, and still stand by that.
Curious question, but why do you keep bringing up race?
Again, it still doesn’t follow. The idea that “humans are only capable of forming such relationships with a couple dozen to maybe a few hundred people” does not lead me to the conclusion “additional institutions are necessary in order to organize communal action”. Why would you need to force someone into “communal action” because he doesn’t know enough people? You don’t; you do it because you require his labor, his wealth, and his obedience to complete your schemes, and you will take it by force.
It has nothing to do with needing to do it. I want to do it. So do most other people. Most people prefer a technological civilization with all their comforts, long livespans etc. to subsitence farming somewhere.
You can only get to and maintain a technological society via communal action.
The problem I have is I see state "communal action" as compulsory, maintained through coercion and funded by exploitation. This is why I cannot see it as something desirable, no matter the comforts it may be able to provide.
But who could be convinced by such a viewpoint? I don't think you can even live according to a standard of "all compulsion is bad", unless you are a hermit subsistence farmer somewhere.
You're thinking of capitalism.
Myself, for one, but also many individualist, anarchist, liberal, and libertarian thinkers. Anti-statism has quite a rich literature if you ever care to take a look. I could be wrong but I doubt you yourself engages in compulsion, and prefer a voluntarist approach to your relations.
I’m thinking of statism, though I’m interested to hear your argument.
I basically keyed off your statement:
Quoting NOS4A2
When I read that I immediately thought of your average indebted working stiff in the U.S. The current situation in the United States and China, two states with capitalist economies, I see the majority of people as worker bees in compulsory communal action maintained through coercion and funded by exploitation, no matter the comforts it may be able to provided.
While capitalism is an economic system and not a form of government, when it is unbridled, it ends up owning the government (U.S.). It manufactures tax exemptions, limitations on liability, coercive and binding user agreements, limited standards and scopes of judicial review, limits on collective bargaining, exclusive legislation, and a general "work will set you free" mentality. The same corporations that own the state will avail themselves of communist and dictatorial, artificially lowered labor value in order to produce cheap pieces of plastic Chinese shit for American workers who's wages must more accurately compare to emerging marked labor in order to survive. (i.e. the tide that lifts their boats, lowers our boats and keeps us in compulsory, coerced exploitation.) Can we bail? Yeah, just like the Individualist can bail.
From your previous posts, you seem to only be concerned with certain types of compulsion, where I cannot threaten someone with a slap on the face, but can threaten them with starvation. If we take the common meaning of compulsion - being forced to do something you do not, right now, want to do, it seems very implausible to have any kind of society - even an anarchist one - that might work only based on the day to day whims of it's inhabitants.
And this is why your distinction between "voluntary" and "compulsory" is ultimately flawed. You treat these as if these were physical descriptions of some process, when in reality they are just judgements of motivations. You judge the motivation: "work to earn money, so you can buy food to avoid starvation" as a voluntary action, meanwhile you judge "work to fill your state-mandated quota so you avoid a prison sentence" to be compulsory. You may say the reason is that one motivation is caused by "force", but "force" here again is not a physical thing, just another value judgement.
What you're missing is an actual ground to stand on regarding the value of freedom. Just what constitutes that value, and how it is manifested. Freedom cannot simply be equated with wants or needs, if one wants to avoid the paradox that the drug addict, as the person most directly in tune with their needs, is the most free person. Rather, it seems like the opposite is true: They're least free, precisely because they have lost the ability to compel themselves to act according to a goal, rather than just a need.
“Nobody wants to work anymore.”
Response:
"Nobody ever wanted to work at all. We wanted to be productive, be creative, be part of a community, be supported, be validated, and have the time and space to truly rest. No one actually wants to trade in hours of their life to “earn” necessities." Emelyne Museaux
To me the idea of “unbridled capitalism” is largely a myth. The history seems to me to be one of state interventionism. It’s even written into the American constitution. Congress has the power “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes”. I cannot think of many states that have refused intervening in the affairs of the citizens, whether social or economic. Maybe there is, but nowadays the so-called capitalist economies are of the mixed variety, and have been for quite some time. This reeks to me of mercantilism rather than capitalism.
But you’re right. One of the problems with a state is that it is ripe for corrupting influences, as have all institutions of human power. If it has the power, as all states do, to rig the game for its own interest it will do so. It will favor who it pleases, impose tariffs and taxes and so on. I contend that reducing state power will have a corresponding effect of reducing corruption for the simple reason that there will be no one in power besides the citizenry to seek favor with.
I don’t see how a voluntary society is implausible, or at least you haven’t shown it. Appeals to incredulity do not suffice to dismiss the notion in any case.
When using the terms “compulsory” and “voluntary” I am speaking of relations between human beings, not between the individual and nature. I thought this was clear. We can discuss the compulsion of nature if you want but I don’t see why we should. To me, speaking of voluntary and compulsory association—that is, between human beings—necessarily involves motivation and human action. Yes, my objections are value judgements, particularly moral ones. And you’re right, when I speak of “force” I do not mean the force described by Newton’s laws of motion. I mean the methods of coercion, violence, and exploitation. I don’t understand how any of this is flawed.
I don’t subscribe to the Hegelian idea of freedom, as if one should be emancipated from the consequences of nature and his own actions, or that man is free so long as he is content with his situation. When I speak of freedom I do so in the social and political sense (negative), as in the absence of the methods of “force” mentioned above.
About 40 years ago I thought I read something about Mussolini and fascism. If I recall, he coined the term, and it had something to do with state control of corporations. I always thought, yeah, so what's the difference between state control of corporations and corporate control of the state? Six of one, half dozen of the other.
While unbridled capitalism may be a myth, that is only because self-identified "capitalists" are really socialists to the extent they socialize costs and have government/politicians do their dirty work for them.
(Digression: They can hardly complain when folks like me disparage capitalism. Sure, it's not pure capitalism's fault. But they don't abide pure capitalism. An analogy would be the "right" misappropriating "America" and the flag and "patriotism" and "the troops" as theirs, and theirs alone. Then they say "See!" when the left lets them have it. Fuckers. Well, it's the same for capitalism. So yes, unbridled capitalism is real. They stole it, they can bear their lie, and the twisting of the term on their own. While true capitalism may be innocent, American "capitalists" have redefined the term to mean them, and they are not capitalists.)
Corporations have risen to such levels of power that if the people want to influence government, they are better off doing cancel culture on a corporation than they are petitioning their elected representatives. If you don't like a state statute, why call your worthless politician? Just follow the money, boycott corporation X who owns that politician, if the corps focus groups show it matters, they call the politician and tell him the corporation is going to cut off the gravy train and the politician whimpers and does what he's told.
Citizens United and campaign finance make "the people" an emasculated joke.
What you see as state interventionism is corporate interventionism using the state as it's proxy bitch.
The American constitution, providing congress has the power “To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes” need only be peeled back to see how that power has been applied and for who, and to who.
If you live in the U.S., it ain't the state that's been messing with you, and it hasn't been for a long time. But the plutocracy is happy to have you all pissed off at the state. That' part of the plan.
It's flawed because it's vague and you're not supplying any argument for why we should accept your conception of compulsion, why it should be avoided etc.
For example:
Quoting NOS4A2
This is just circular reasoning. Freedom is the absence of force, and force is bad because it's the absence of freedom. Nothing about this tells me anything beyond establishing "freedom = good, force = bad".
A reminder:
Quoting Kenosha Kid
Quoting NOS4A2
You complain about the characterisation, but it's quite clear you permit no concept of a justified protest against murder of black Americans. I said "protestors", you read "violence, rioting theft, and the destruction of property". I wasn't talking about looters, why did you substitute them in? Then or now? The position you stated at the time was against BLM as a whole, not the violent members of it, or the concurrent looters on which we've had no disagreement. (Looters are protest parasites. There was a lot of looting during the 2010 UK student protests. Needless to say, they weren't students.)
Just trying to pin down your logic here. It did seem rather incredible that you could describe the oppressive aspect of the state, and see a problem with people protesting state oppression and no problem with the state's violence (either that which triggered the protests or that which met them). It occurs to me that no rational answer to this can possibly be forthcoming.
Quoting NOS4A2
I agree with part of the first point, but I'm not arguing that anything would reproduce that natural state in an unnaturally large group, merely that a law that is in line with that natural behaviour would have fewer problems it needed force to resolve. (Btw even small groups had to resort to force sometimes. There's no recipe for churning out 100% good citizens under any schema.) The second point is therefore rather moot.
For one thing, it is simply not possible for our natural social behaviour to play out on a large stage: it's untenable to share your food with a town, or to help everyone you meet. Nor is it feasible to recognise fellow members of your group as in-group, since odds are you've never met them before.
But it's straightforward to see that satisfying those impulses indirectly is better than directly thwarting them. An egalitarian society would have lower levels of stress (empirically), wouldn't have to work as hard (because they're not lining the pockets of others), would have less resentment (fewer reasons for those pesky protestors, or bloody revolutions), less class and race hate (no one to demonise), and of course no one dying of starvation or hypothermia.
I'm not saying that there's any version of a state that's free from having to force individuals to behave in a certain way (the kinds of people you admire would probably be in prison, although that's happening anyway), just that, if we have to accept statism, we don't have to accept one based on the concept of protecting the dubious right of the rich to withhold stolen goods from the majority (which is what our states are at root)?
Perhaps a more precise term is “duress”.
It should be avoided because you do not own the person. He is neither your child nor your slave. He has not given you the right to force him to do anything.
Except I never stated that, so that’s not my reasoning. How can you establish “force = bad” when we were just talking about forcing people to do things against their will? In fact, in the text from which you quoted I clarified what I was talking about.
I partially agree, especially wherever the state weds itself to corporations. But I just don’t see corporations bombing countries, taxing and jailing citizens, or shooting them dead in the street for victimless crimes. Maybe there is, I don’t know, but states have engaged in countless atrocities and genocides, and that fact cannot be avoided. My point is, only the state has the monopoly on violence. Corporate influence doesn’t exist at that level as far as I know.
Bless your heart.
Corporations don't have to do anything like that when they have a state to do it for them.
P.S. Perhaps I should flesh that out a little bit: MIC, Private Prisons, distraction, Oil. You can take if from there. Just follow the money.
Well, I would have to blame the state in these instances. They could have refused and done otherwise, but didn’t. It’s just another reason why people shouldn’t have that sort of power over others.
That's what the corporations want you to do: blame the state. The state not executing the will of the corporations which own it, would be political suicide. I mean really, you expect a congressman or woman, or senator to go against the will of their boss? Oh, wait, you're still working under the mistaken impression that the people control the legislature. LOL! That's so 18th century.
I don't believe people control the legislature at all. I believe the state is an anti-social institution. It operates only for its own benefit. It forbids murder but commits murder on a grand scale. It forbids theft but puts its hands on anything it pleases, and claims the right to do so.
Why wouldn’t you blame the state? is the question. They’re the ones with all the power, who accept bribes, and pull all the levers. Remove the state and that all vanishes.
:100:
Quoting NOS4A2
That brings us back to my original question regarding what I recall (long time ago) about Mussolini and fascism: six of one, half dozen of the other. If you remove the state, none of that vanishes. You just have the corporations doing the same shit, beholden only to the shareholders. In order for you to have influence, you have to buy stock and attend the shareholder meetings, raise a stink and pray enough other shareholders put their financial interests on the back-burner to support whatever it is you are whining about.
Why do you think cancel culture works when people pressure corporations but it doesn't work on the corporate employees in the legislature? Follow the money.
Has he not given me the right? Everyone has the right to force other to respect what's theirs. So since everyone can demand respect from everyone else, they all mutually have the right to enforce that respect.
Quoting NOS4A2
You clarified that you mean freedom as "freedom from", yes, but that doesn't anwer what the force is, or why it's good to be free from it.
Mussolini’s statism was a frightening, quasi-religious affair. He was statism and collectivism manifest. I have never seen any corporation rise to his level of ardor. Maybe there is a better example.
I don’t like many corporations either, but they have no control over me. It’s only when they run to the state could they hope to do so. One can stop supporting a corporation and no longer associate with them by refusing to buy or use their products. Not only that but corporations are the work of private, non-state actors like you and myself. You and I could start a corporation and direct it towards good ends. That’s not the case with the state. Refusal to associate or purchase means prison or fine.
Yes, and so you should respect the autonomy and individuality of their body. It’s theirs, not yours. I fully support the use of force to defend that right.
I did answer what type of force I was talking about.
Again, you fail to grasp the concept of proxy. Whatever. I just see the genius and the effectiveness of their intent and implementation in you: blaming the state for your woes. LOL! Black ants, red ants, who's shaking the jar? If there were an independent state working for the people, it would want the opposite.
And no, I'm not talking about mom and pop s corps. I'm talking about the big c corps that spend all that money on politics. They aren't doing that because it doesn't work. They are buying a product and a service and they are getting what they pay for as the new owners of that which they bought.
But you narrow the extend to that right to a few specific cases. You don't delineate a general right of free self-expression of actualisation. You're only concerned with some conditions of life (such as bodily integrity), but not with the others. I'd like to know why you think this is a reasonable approach. To me it seems like you're lifting your view straight from 18th century enlightenment texts without accounting for the historical contingency of those demands.
Quoting NOS4A2
But in an anecdotal and ecclectic approach. What's the general rule according to which some methods are admissible and others are not?
Nothing I’ve said precludes "a general right of free self-expression of actualization”, as far as I'm aware. I just don’t think anyone should have the right or power to make others provide the conditions for it. It seems to me a contradiction to do otherwise.
Yes, these are old principles but so far I haven’t heard any better ones.
If I had to formulate a rule it would be something like “do not make man a slave”.
Well, I think you imagined their intent and implementation, or at least you haven’t shown it. I blame the state for my woes simply because they are the perpetrator of them. If a corporation ever becomes a parasite, stealing my wealth, skimming from my purchases, restricting my movement, and claiming the right to use force against me should I refuse, my ire will turn to them.
But yes its easy to curry favor with those in power if you have more money. That's why I think no one should have that power. Men are fallen and fallible.
I know. By analogy only (for it's not simply a U.S. thing) the civilian population in a war zone often blames the soldier simply because he is the perpetrator. It's completely understandable for the simpleton on the ground to lash out at what he, in his naivety, sees in front of him.
It's like the individual BLM member who hates cops. The more reasonable, objective member will see the systemic (system) racism behind it. Peel the onion more, and you find private prison systems and others who benefit from the way our system is set up. Follow the money. The state you hate is funded by someone. You just stop at the state and blame it. Part of the plan. It's working so long as you blame the state.
What's contradictory about it?
Here is my opinion: Ronald Reagan, and his acolytes, was/are wrong. Government (the state) is not the problem, it is the solution. And government, as proposed in the organic documents of the U.S., is the best solution.
The problem is this: Those who don't want to see that solution fully realized, because it would be inimical to their financial interests, have successfully created a state that serves their interests at the expense of the people at large. They have done this in various ways that I could delve into if you wish, but for right now, in consideration of your feelings about the state, I will stick to the sewing of distrust of the state, and of those who look to the state for alleviation of woes.
This is important, because the distrust (not just of the state, but of those who look to the state), is such that those who look to the state for simple protection of their civil liberties, feel they have been pushed beyond merely looking to the state for alleviation of those woes, ala the organic documents (and something that is dear to your heart, individualism), but further into a camp that itself would justify the distrust that people like you have of them.
That was a little wordy and hard to follow, so let me try again: The wedge has been driven so deep that those who would simply have the state defend their individual liberties have been divided, right and left, to points where the right defends those who drive the wedge, while the left would use the state (if they could) to not only neuter those who drive the wedge, protecting their individualism, but to also and further provide reparations for the damage done by the wedge-drivers. In other words, the left was not the boogey man the right thought it was until the right created in the left what the right so feared.
The right, and the wedge-drivers created the Sanders and the AOCs and the socialists and commies of the world by failure to protect the individual liberties of all. By failing to listen to enlightened capitalists like Warren.
The state is the best solution if the wedge-driver is neutered. If there had been power to the people, then those on the left would not seek to use the state in derogation of civil liberties or individual liberty of the right.
But alas, the longer you keep a man down, the worse you will suffer if he ever gets back up again. Ask the King of France. I'm sure he said "Hey, fellas, let's let bygones be bygones. It's all cool now. I get it."
Sorry MFr, too late, LOP!
If people like you would quit excusing the wedge-drivers by your antagonism toward that which our founding fathers set up to protect all, then we the people could take back the state and use it as the solution for the woes brought on by wedge-drivers. But alas, it may be too late. If the people ever get the state back, they may be looking for a little pay-back and then you'll be pissed, saying "See, I told you so. These evil statists are cutting heads off!"
On this notion of "power to the people" it's also interesting to note how the wedge-drivers have the state infringing upon the right of the people to keep and bear power. Those on the right, in support of the wedge-drivers, maintain that power. But those on the left forfeit that fundamental civil liberty from the Bill of Rights, further cementing the power of the wedge-drivers. Everyone should be well educated (the pen) and well armed (the sword) but today, the right has given up their pen to men like Donald Trump and the left has given their arms to men like MLK. And the wedge-drivers tighten their grip on the state, using it to do their dirty work.
I like your opinion, James, and I can find some affinity with it.
I can’t get out of my mind, though, that we the people are already in possession of the state. Every lawmaker up there is elected, funded by our donations and taxes, and by some feat of the imagination we believe that they represent us. Anyways, it doesn’t matter who takes power because the machinery, the laws, the regulations, the taxes, the agencies, and their enforcers remain after the politicians who enacted them are a faded memory. While state power accrues, our freedom diminishes. I swear, the distinction between state and citizen on the one hand and lord and serf on the other is steadily decreasing in degree. Is statism not fealty in a sense?
I can’t stand the collectivist and paternalistic superstition that so long as the anointed are in power the future will be better for everyone. So many disasters have been premised on this obsequious and blood-soaked notion. Even so, I’m never disappointed with what Herbert Spencer called “the perennial faith of mankind”, that even though every day chronicles another failure, whether war or injustice or unforeseen consequence, every day it is believed that only the right rulers and an act of legislation can correct it.
All that we have left is to take a vote and perhaps stamp our feet on the pavement now and then. It’s all we can do. We have to beg the state to take care of us because we’ve long since delegated our duties to one another, and any power we’ve had, to an institution of impersonal officialdom.
Wouldn’t forcing someone to do something against their will contradict their general right of free self-expression of actualization?
Does it work this way for other rights? Doesn't restraining or injuring or even killing someone who is about to kill someone else violate their general right of bodily autonomy and freedom of movement?
Rights are not absolute "bubbles" that extend a certain given distance at all times. They're rules that apportion a territory given by the circumstances.
Yes it does but only because they are about to violate the general right of bodily autonomy and freedom of someone else. Rather, one defends these rights and freedoms by stopping people from trampling on them and denying them of others. I don't the same cannot be said of forcing someone to provide the conditions for someone else's free self-expression of actualization.
So let me simulate a little conversation between our two positions:
[i]I say: Bread is important for people, I think people should have a right to bread.
You say: Why yes I agree. People should be allowed to freely buy bread, if they so wish, and noone should be allowed to take their bread away.
I say: But if bread is important to people, then surely we ought to make sure everyone actually gets bread.
You say: But that means taking away bread from people who already have it, and this violates their right to bread, which you agree they should have.[/i]
So taking the metaphor, my question to you is: What about the people who can't get bread? Do they not get bread just because they happened to not have any when we implemented this rule?
I am currently struggling with what it is I should care about.
I have created for myself a situation that is about as close to what it is I think you would like to have, as is possible in the world today. A couple of thoughts come to mind: In my cat-bird seat, many would have me be concerned about the affairs of man, simply because I am a man, and because I am supposed to have empathy for my fellow man. I am partially persuaded by their thinking, not simply for the logic of it, but, believe it or not, I actually do have empathy. So, should I limit my concern for my fellow Americans, who have it relatively good, like me, and in which case I would probably limit my actions to voting? Or should I go over seas, take up arms and engage the POS-statists who really do impose themselves upon my fellow man? Or should I simply encourage my state to do the heavy lifting for me when it comes to POS-statists overseas?
Do you, NOS, really feel imposed-upon by your state? And, just for the sake of argument, would you be satisfied with a state that could impose upon you but which does not do so? Or do you not want a state to even have the capability/power to impose upon you if it felt like it? Those are two vastly different situations, and vastly different "asks."
When I hear the champions of the oppressed appeal, or demand, that I care about their specific area of concern, I hear some pretty compelling cases. Yet I also hear the Earth crying out from under the weight of the whole human race, and I feel that to champion her is, ultimately, in the best interest of the human race. So the idea of helping people seems inimical to helping people, unless that help is directed at the Earth upon which others (non-humans and humans) depend.
How much of the individualist's fear of the state is simply a fear that more justice for someone else means less justice for them; as if it were a pie? How much of their fear of the state is a fear that if the state works for others, it will be working against them/the individual? I'm reminded of a meme that shows your typical Trump supporter all armed up to the teeth and saying "I will not live in fear!" Below that is a list of 30 people/groups/things that his ilk seem to be afraid of (sharing power with). Is he not me, in the cat-bird seat, unwilling to let those 30 types of people/groups/things have the same civil liberties that he has? If their individual liberty boat rises, will his lower? And if so, who's fault will that have been? Personally, I understand where he is coming from. But he's personally offensive to me and seems like a POS. I'm no fan of the other side either, but I can understand their point even more.
So, why should I give a shit about any of them or any of their concerns? If I find them all offensive, why can't I turn my back on them, stand on their bones and sacrifices, and live my life in peace?
I'm inclined to toss my moral support to the oppressed, and let the POS learn empathy through experience. He's going to be a minority soon. If he insists on being a POS, well, the results will be interesting. If justice is a pie, "they" will be coming after me, too. Maybe I'll deserve what I get for having failed to take up their cause. Either way, I see a new generation on the way; it's going to be their planet, and if we don't like what they've become, we certainly won't be able to say that we knew how to raise them. That will be on us. Men like us don't blame others.
I guess I'll just sit up here, resting on my laurels, but I won't look down upon them in derision or fear. And if I share, I will reduce my footprint and share with the Earth. Maybe people can thank me later. Or they can piss on my grave. LOL!
White Privilege: it's real.
From where, then, does the state gain its authority? Assuming that, like money, the state has no power of its own, it goes to follow that we in the West, with our nobles and parliaments and congresses, willingly and obsequiously furnish it power each time we head to the ballot-box to select which mammalian “representatives” should have the right to our thraldom. Where one may on some days think it absurd to choose others to run his life, come election time he falls in line seeking suffrage, only to receive a perversion of it. It is in this act, the vote, that we participate in the state’s aggrandizement, never our own. And no matter whether our guy or their guy sits upon the throne, the throne itself, perched parasitically upon the wealth, land and bodies of the people who live there, remains long after he has left it. This is because the transient power of our so-called representatives is always offset, if not negated, by the absolute power of the institution. Furthermore, if the body of legislations, prohibitions, and regulations increase far quicker than their repeal, as they always do, state power must grow in inverse proportion to our own. It’s statism all the way down.
If one cannot justify state authority, if he believes with William Morris that no man is good enough to be another’s master, perhaps refusing to participate in the state’s aggrandizement is a first step to conscientious objection. But unless everyone refuses to vote this is not enough. One must, in a sense, vote through means not available in marking a slip of paper: with his influence, his voice, and his activity.
In his Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Etienne de la Boétie provides the only means of escape from this relationship without descending into another kind of tyranny, which is to simply refuse to obey.
Remember Shelley: “Ye are many—they are few!"
Boétie’s sentiment precedes the civil disobedience of Thoreau and Satyagraha of Gandhi by centuries, but it is an idea seemingly unvanquished by state power and propaganda. At this point refusing to obey, and the many actions and reactions such a choice may entail, is all we have left.
Wherever the state relinquishes power, whether through privatization, deregulation, or cuts in spending and taxation, there is no shortage of critics lamenting the process. But why? If the criticism is not so servile as to be the knowing and explicit defence of state power, then it teeters on one flimsy assumption: that what the government loses so too does the governed.
This assumption brings to mind Ortega Y Gasset’s "The Revolt of the Masses". In it he distinguishes between the superior man and the “mass-man”. Man is naturally-inclined to seek a higher authority. “If he succeeds in finding it of himself, he is a superior man; if not, he is a mass-man and must receive it from his superiors.”
According to Ortega Y Gasset, one should watch with interest the attitude mass-man adopts before the state:
I suppose this is why, in statist terms, the “state sector” is synonymous with the “public sector”. The state thrives when the public believes it is the state, that the ruling class and its mechanisms of power represents the public en masse rather than its own interests. But when one recognizes the parasitic nature of this relationship, who is host and what is parasite, it becomes difficult to sustain it, or at any rate, to maintain the faith in symbiosis.
It’s easy to fall pray to statism. We are born in it, moulded by it, and forever governed by it. So we should always remember, like Proudhon, what it means to be governed.
The General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century
I only go there for argument. In the final analysis, I love the state as a weapon I wield against those who would oppress me in it's absence. I need only subordinate myself to it to wield it. Could it come back to bite me? Yes, but I'd rather be bitten it than to subordinate myself to a man. And of all men, I find the greatest threat in those who want to be free of the state. They are, irretrievably, the villain.
By the way, that is true. You can't flatten my ground or lay asphalt on it without my permission, and the permission of countless other private property owners from here to there. Some things just aren't for sale, and you'd end up with roads that had to go around so much that was not for sale, or come to a dead end, that it would not be worth building.
The state is operated by men. It was also built by men. So you are subordinate to men. But these men don’t act like men, like your neighbor might. They act like officials. So you are subordinate to a lower form of man, the official. The statist is little more than a stooge or thrall in that sense.
In a free world we’d build roads together in common enterprise. But since we live in a statist world we cannot. So your property is declared eminent domain, the state’s property, and a road goes through your property without your say in the matter.
The state is operated by men that the community elected. I am subordinate to my community and no individual fuck-stick that might use his might to subordinate me. The elected men ARE officials. They are officially elected. So I am subordinate to a higher form of man: the official who has subordinated himself to the community and who is (or, but for the creep of the individualist into ownership of government) subordinate to the community. The individualist is little more than a stooge who think he could defend himself from Alpha males who would make him their bitch.
Quoting NOS4A2
First, there is not such thing as a free world. That is a utopian fantasy of a child. And no, you would not build roads together in a common enterprise across my land because I wouldn't let you. Oh, wait, I wouldn't have a choice because that aforementioned man I referred to would do what the state does and run rough shod right over me. And I wouldn't even have a vote or fair market value.
Quoting NOS4A2
Who declares eminent domain? DOH! The state. You need the state to protect you from people like you who would take your land without your permission or without fair market value under the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment.
What law proscribes the voluntary building of roads in a common enterprise? I'd think the barrier to such a communal sense of purpose would be lack of cooperation, not government intervention.
Let's assume eminent domain were illegalized, describe your vision of how new roads would be built.
Yessuh...c'mon!
Quoting NOS4A2
That's right, Reverend, that's right....
Quoting NOS4A2
Lay it down, brotha...preach!
Quoting NOS4A2
Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!
As you can probably tell, you are preaching to the choir with me. I had something of a revolution in my thinking a few years back, and the once quite patriotic, pro-American, "don't mess with the U.S., cause we the best" type fella quite quickly evolved into a guy who has a certain resentment towards the institution known as "the nation-state", not particularly my own nation state, but rather ANY nation state and ALL nation states. I particularly resent the fact that there is no habitable place on the face of this globe which is not claimed as sovereign territory by one or another nation state; I cannot simply go anywhere without some goddamned (forgive the emotive tone) government presuming to demand to see my "entrance visa". Apparently, all land on Earth is now some form of private property of "the nation states".
As a matter of fact, this seeming imperative to have all available land under the control of some government seems to me akin to the (I believe "western", as in "Western Civilization") imperative towards private property. I think that both arise in the same type of ideology. Of course, there have been cultures, such as certain "Native American" cultures, wherein the concept of the private ownership of land would have been considered absurd. How did we get here? The problem with "the state" is, I think, a particular case of the general problem with all human organizations: once established, they tend to quickly become greedy for authority and increased power, and self-protective even with respect to those who founded the group. It is always the same with organizational structures, which quickly get out of our control, take on a life of their own, and often become something which the organizational founders never intended them to be. Now that the state has become ubiquitous, however, we all must have one, because a stateless people will quickly become the Uighurs to a powerful nation-state like China; only a state can defend itself against a state. This is because only a modern State has the capacity to organize and direct the effective implementation of technology in fulfilling civil needs and in fielding an effective military to defend against the type of agression that we are seeing in Xinjiang province (ostensibly) in China, which is really a Turkic land. Like it or not, it seems that now we're stuck with "the state" for our own good. What a state of affairs...
:100: Yup.
Hell, even before the state, there was the tribe and, while some of them might have found the idea of land ownership preposterous, they too would kill you in a heart beat if competition for resources on that land became an issue.
The rise of the state is the direct result of the rise of population. Where the individualist demands his God-given right to breed like a rabbit, he himself has sewn the seeds of his own destruction. It's too late put that horse back in the barn.
Explain this. Do you want all land to be privately held with each landowner being an independent sovereign, or do you want all land communal? As you've stated it, it's private yet belongs to the nation state, which isn't clear.Quoting Michael Zwingli
Except that's a myth. https://daily.jstor.org/yes-americans-owned-land-before-columbus/
It's very clear in the U.S. The sovereign is, well, sovereign. But in it's sovereignty it has recognized the right to property being held by private individuals.
Quoting Hanover
Except it's not a myth. As is typical of such articles, they lead with an enticing headline speaking to a universal truth, and then cover their ass shortly thereafter with an "it's complicated." LOL! The only "myth" that "all" Native Americans were of one-mind on anything is a myth created by those with a guilty conscience about stealing what was not theirs under their own understanding of private property. It's easier to take what, ostensibly, no one claims ownership of.
Regardless, the "complicated" part was over 500 separate nations, with some, albeit few, that did not conceive of land as something to own. Many a hot spring or mineral spring was deemed a place of peace for all. Other areas, before the horse assisted with inroads, were vast, empty of humans, hard to penetrate and deemed to be not owned by anyone, but they would be used. Conflict often resulted over competition for resources without a claim to ownership thereof. When there was plenty, the conflict was cultural (war parties and what not) and not over alleged ownership.
Were there a lot of nations that understood and used the concept of property? Yes. But to lead with a universal and call the inverse a myth, in the face of complexity is just as disingenuous as the alleged myth itself. Let's give some kid a talking point and don't expect him to read the caveats in the article. We'll bolster it with those tribes that support our contention of ownership and ignore those that don't, covering with an "it's complicated." Yeah, that's the ticket!
Side bar: I fucking hate articles like that because they seem to spin themselves as a correction of some liberal ideal that did not exist. Kind of like racists alleging that anti-racists don't know about blacks selling blacks in Africa, or blacks owning blacks in the U.S. It's all a BS strawman designed to give talking points to a choir that is out to "own the libs" with our outstanding research and critical thinking skill. :lol: And the irony is, it wasn't the libs that spun up the idea of non-ownership or "one with nature" in the first place.
Sorry, end rant.
Eminent domain cannot be rendered illegal under our system of land tenure, precisely because the state is the only entity to hold allodial title to land, which it does over all the land within it's sovereign territory. Land today is held by "owners" in just the same way it was under feudal systems, as a "grant in fee" (that is, a "fief"), with the state having taken the place of the king in the scheme. A "fee" is only a grant of a right to use your superior's land, which is the key point to understanding this. Where once there were several types of "fee" by which land could be owned, each with its own differing levels of right and responsibility, now there is only one: the grant of land tenure in fee simple. This type of fee is transferrable, which is what allows a person to "sell" his real property, but what one is really selling is his grant of land tenure, not actually the land itself, since the land is actually owned, "in allodium", by the state, regardless of who holds the grant of land tenure at any particular time. Indeed, none of us actually "owns" our own land, we only hold a grant of tenure thereto in fee simple, from the state. You see, you are not sovereign, only the state is sovereign, without any authority over it, which is the condition that allows it to hold allidial title to land (actually, it is the law that is sovereign, and the state acting in proxy, but that is splitting hairs). When the state takes land by "eminent domain", for which action it must make adequate compensation to the holder of the grant in order to comply with the principles of equity underpinning the law, what it is actually doing is revoking its grant of land tenure in fee simple, as is the right of the sovereign to do. After all, what does the term "eminent domain" mean? "Eminent"..."high", "lofty"; "domain"..."the control of land", which alludes to the fact that the state's title to "your" land is of a higher/stronger type than is yours.
No, of course not. As to the nature of the ownership of land, see my previous post, in which I seem to have preconcieved your question. As to nation states claiming sovereignty over literally all the habitable land on Earth, which is my basic gripe, Mr, Riley hit that nail on it's head...too many homo sapiens, too little a planet. I don't have a good answer for this conundrum, but given a long enough time, I feel certain that mother nature will.
:100: :up: Yes, as they say on Wall Street, there will be a correction. :grin: