Nanny Free for Thee and Me?

[Idyllic society as derived from Nanny State thread.]


Well, I'd like a society with maximum Civil Liberties based on the non-aggression principle, with sound money, Law and protection of private property - beginning with one's own body.
I'd like a society where children are not hit as a form of "discipline".
I'd like a society where people can move and live anywhere on the Earth they're welcome to.
I'd like a society where we're not in a 12 year forgotten War, where single individuals can unilaterally use drones to kill 10-12 women and children while attempting to kill a "Target". To me, any society who looks the other way while this is happening, is a very very sick society. Probably one that uses physical punishment as a means to 'Teach' children to be 'Good Patriotic Citizens' and to think of themselves in terms of 'Citizen'.
I'd like to live in a society where children are cared for and raised by their parents - not dumped off at the age of 6 weeks in an infant supervision center.
I'd like a society were people living in said society can communicate without their government spying on them.



What have you done to make this happen?


A) Do you have a written analysis?

B)Do you have a methodology on how to obtain members and to build an organization? You do realize that there will be a huge vacuum without a state, so you will have to be organized enough to fill it. Unless you feel this will naturally happen in several generations and there is no need for you to do anything but try to convince others you are right.

C) Are you willing to get your hands dirty? (social struggle) Hey, that top 10% are doing just fine with the status quo, and another 80% or more have been co-opted.

D) Let us assume that your organization is successful in toppling the Government in oh let us say America, how would you implement your dream?

 

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Anyway, before I answer your questions, which I'm happy to do, a couple quick notes about me: I spend half my time training med students and the other half I spend conducting and/or supervising research and/or presenting research and/or writing grants to fund research and/or going to labs to learn new research tech [I'll be leaving in two weeks again] and the other half with family and a small bit here. Michael has a lot of dreams, such as curing multiple sclerosis and understanding how a specific molecular pathway keeps the stemyness in stem-cells. He is also trying to gather a group of programs to write him some free code that he'll put on the internet for free - if possible.

A) Do you have a written analysis?
Actually, I am writing. I've been working on it on and off for a few years. But, unfortunately, there's some parts I just can't write as I don't have the experience to write it. It's something I wish I had more time to work on. Probably Spidergoat would be more informed than I [as related to Zen meditation - Spidergoat used to or does meditate right?]. As they say, you can't do everything.

At the moment, I'm interesting in the differences between Euclidean and Analytically geometry. Any ideas?

B)Do you have a methodology on how to obtain members and to build an organization? You do realize that there will be a huge vacuum without a state, so you will have to be organized enough to fill it. Unless you feel this will naturally happen in several generations and there is no need for you to do anything but try to convince others you are right.

This will take place naturally over several generations. Raise your family peacefully and to think logically. Try to have as little to do with the State as possible (this isn't really all that hard - most people don't have much to do with it anyway). I'd advise against convincing anyone of anything. Imagine if you were to *poof* suddenly appear in North Korea and had a chance to explain to the local brainwashed starving population how evil their State was. What do you think their response would be? To listen to you rationally? Or do you think they'd have a visceral response and attack you? They'd attack you. Reread the responses to me when I stood up for YOUR civil liberties. "We" this and "Our" that.

We have your woman Outlander!!! [Children of the Corn

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]

C) Are you willing to get your hands dirty? (social struggle) Hey, that top 10% are doing just fine with the status quo, and another 80% or more have been co-opted.

I'm not sure what you mean by get your hands dirty? As I said, raise your family peacefully and to think logically. I'd suggest alternate private school if you can afford it. Or, mixed homeschool and private school if you have the inclination and time.

Other than that, as I mentioned, I'm working on some writing. I probably have a slightly different view on 'changing minds' then you because I have a fundamental understanding of both the gross neuroanatomy of the brain as well as how its cellular components function - as is understood up to today (a lot isn't understood). My primary research looks at emergent properties of signalling ions and the mathematical shape of those ion flux. Maybe BillyT would enjoy chatting about some of these topics? He probably intuitively knows the physics better than I do and he did study vision and so he understands the issues of consciousness - which brings me to my writing. Economics is a subdiscipline of psychology. That is something to think about.

D) Let us assume that your organization is successful in toppling the Government in oh let us say America, how would you implement your dream?

I don't have an organization and the State is not going to "topple". Did the North Korean government topple? Nope. Still there the last time I looked. Still has the vast support of the majority. They still believe they exist in a "collective". "We" and "Our", "We and "Our" (this is probably a left over bit of DNA from when we were unconscious primates - which, we may still be). North Koreans still think they're "North Koreans". They worship their State in the same way the superstitious worship their Gods. Oh, all the edificial props are there - but the concept "God" is only an abstraction. Pointing at the Cathedral and saying: See, there be Gods. Isn't going to make Gods be.


So? Did that clear everything up?

 

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Hahah... that was a bit obtuse wasn't it?

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The short version is, most people want to live in a State - so we're going to be living in a State for some time. And, a State according to Weber [Politics as a Vocation (1919)], is that entity which "upholds the claim to the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force in the enforcement of its order". Most people think the "State" is something else. Which is why people constantly confuse Public with Private.

In a sense, the thread asks the question: How and when are we going to achieve a society based on voluntarism? Well, no one can answer that question. It'd be like a Slave owner asking an Abolitionist: Without Slavery, who'll pick the cotton and produce the food. Most Slave owners, and many Slaves, legitimately thought society would freeze and starve to death if Slavery ended. No one could look into the future and know machinery and satellites and dinosaur juice would all come together to create so much food we'd be dying of obesity. In a world where starvation was a very real threat to life, such an answer would sound as obtuse (or even insane) as the one I posted

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AND, people felt Abolitionists were a threat against the State - against them. They feared a world where African people were their equals.

As there's many hurdles between us and a peaceful society. My advice is to raise your family peacefully (the question of Zen) and to think logically (the question on geometry) and try to prepare them for a world where the ONLY way you can really get ahead is to create value for other people through voluntary trade - which actually is the only real way a civilized modern world. A State that regulates everything - isn't even able to keep up with the pace of change now - let alone in 20-30 years time.

 

So in your dream all of this happens organically and the State eventually is no longer needed or wanted. No blueprint needed!

I think this http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/lookingbackward/section2.rhtml offers at least a blueprint of how society could arrive at a peaceful and logical society. However, Edward's dream is in direct contradiction to your Stateless society and it also deals with individualism and class, which you really never address.

There is a summary and analysis of chapters 1-28, so please read Michael and tell me why this possibility scares the hell out of you.

Women are for the most part still delegated to the institution of marriage is this fictional utopia, so he was not too forward looking in that aspect.:bugeye:

 

People are social animals. I think that they will always be organizing themselves in order to achieve ends.

I'm not really happy with the kind of social theories that define 'state' as little more than an instrument of coercion. Though there certainly is an aspect of that in states, as in the case of criminal law on one extreme, and police-states on the other.

Nor would I happily agree with Weber's idea that states (must always? should? just happen to?) claim the monopoly in the use of legitimate force. I personally support the people's right to own firearms and even to use them in self-defense, precisely as an antidote to state tyranny. But yeah, states around the world definitely seem to be moving en-masse in the direction of trying to make people powerless to resist their rulers' will.

My inclination might be to define 'state' as referring to the broadest social sphere, the sphere that takes in and includes everyone in a particular realm (a geographical region or whatever). It would be distinguished from the vast number of smaller-scale associations (families, friends, clubs, churches, organizations, companies), in which the scope of the associations doesn't include everyone in the realm.

Put another way, 'private' refers to the realm of individual rights and to the scope of rights of selective free association.

I don't think that human beings ever will (or even that they should) move to a world in which the broadest-scale social organization doesn't exist. We are probably always going to need criminal and civil law that applies to everybody. And the people composing a state might legitimately agree to give their state broader functions, such as collective defense and perhaps some social-welfare functions.

But I'm adamant that the sphere of individual liberty needs to be respected. That's absolutely vital in my opinion. The rights of individuals to make choices for themselves and to live their own lives as they see fit should be interfered with by the powerful ruling elites in the capital as little as possible. That's perhaps the basic principle in my political thinking -- I'm typically inclined to side with the little people against the elites, as far as that's consistent with basic public order.

Ironically, those favoring the constant expansion of the role of the state insist that they side with the little people too, even as they work to install systems in which powerful ruling elites at the top of the pyramid usurp all those little-people's rights to make their own decisions in their own lives. The little ones must be forced if necessary into behaving in what the elites believe is the common good, and constantly monitored like children to prevent them from harming themselves and others.

There isn't really any easy algorithm by which we can decide just how much centralized top-down rule is enough, and how much is finally too much. That's often a matter of constant political negotiation in states, between the people and their would-be political masters. Not everyone is going to come to the same conclusion and one-size probably doesn't fit-all. There are libertarians and there are champions of an ever-expanding welfare-state. And perhaps that's an argument for why it makes sense to have more than one state in the world. Once again, it's about preserving choices.

 

Mod Hat — Nothing to see, here ....

Mod Hat — Nothing to see, here ....

(Not so explicitly, but the point is to prevent targeted, hostile threads. As you have noted this one, I shall make the necessary edits to accommodate that point.)

 

Much better title anyway. I like it!

 

Sounds good.

How do you do that?

Should criminals be allowed into any country they choose to emigrate to?

If you could have used drones to stop the 9/11 attacks - would you have done it? Should there be a law against stopping 9/11 type attacks?

Sounds good. How do you do this?

Also sounds good.

 

Here are some thoughts, and a link for further study. Forget about the world, forget about the state, establishing your dream of an ideal society is impossible without getting your hands dirty (translation: bloody) which is incompatible with your principles. The societies which survive are small, isolated, and have a shared belief system.

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2013/07/communities-that-abidepart-i.html

 

I think that Gandhi had some phenomenal ideals, some of which relate to what is being discussed here.
Just wanted to leave you this link to read at your leisure. Many links are posted on the net, but this is well worth a read. (or two)
He wasn't as dogmatic in his views 'against' industrialization and modernism, as I had once thought. (While industrialization brought with it positives, it brought with it negatives, and I think it's relevant to the thread, at least partly)

I believe that we need to get back to a base way of looking at life, how we fit into it, how we as individuals and communities can make a difference, how progress for progress' sake isn't always a good thing, etc. No one wants to look at fundamentals in our society to elicit change. We're too busy trying to find quick fixes...elect new people...erect new laws.

But, until we figure out how to fix the foundation of the bigger problem, nothing will change.
I hope I don't sound Pollyanna.

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http://www.gvpwardha.in/documents/books/env/4.pdf

 

True. You wanna organize for economic change?

Where is the middle ground?

How is your firearm gonna defend against the military? Really?

As long as my individual rights and my free association does not exploit or abuse another group or individual economically or physically.

Would be great to no longer need a collective defense or social-welfare programs, though.

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The powerful ruling elites could really give a squat about what you do and who you do it with as long as you do not organize to dismantle their pyramid scheme.

Collusion?

If the elites have algorithms to cause an ever-widening gap between rich and poor and to decimate the middle class then "we" surely can come up with an algorithm for a market place that is geared specifically to address the economic needs of all of it's people.

Government contracting systems like Enterprise Zones is the best our elites and government can come up with?

 

@ billvon,

This is Michael's utopia not mine, so he will have to respond.

 

Oh. Never mind then. I've tried to get such answers out of him before with zero success, and have no illusions that this time would be any different.

 

Spidergoat,

This amounts to giving up!

 

I really like Ghandi, I do, but once you start canvassing the most deprived (who then become depraved) neighborhoods in America you come to the realization that Ghandi's beliefs offer no real or more immediate solution to economic injustice as well as judicial injustice in America. Someone a little more hardcore for the time being is needed.

 

I have an analysis I would like to present a little later and I would ask that all who actually read it, provide input and their insights on this analysis. Deal?

 

Yeah, you should give up. It's a waste of time and effort and ultimately futile. You should do what is possible, which is implementing your ideals on a small scale. Like a seed. If it works so well, you will have the last laugh and people will imitate you.

 

Deal.

 

The selfsame spirit of those who have come before and those that will come after will never give up, even if you have.