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In the case of the U.S. that means voting for people who want to cut the budget because the less money the government has, they less power they wield.

Yeah. Less power to maintain the roads, fight fires, teach kids, rebuild flooded cities, feed the hungry, find and lock up murderers, care for the sick and injured...and, most importantly to the investment-class parasites who most strongly promote this "cut the budget!" meme, less power to put any regulation on big business.

Actual totalitarianism can be run on the cheap, clubs and jackboots are not very expensive. The size of the budget has little to do with how much freedom people have -- low government spending doesn't correlate with increased freedom. (Read the whole linked page, not just the table, especially the note about the U.S.'s rank -- the U.S. already spends less (by GDP) on government than any other large, prosperous country.)

Now, as a Zenarchist, I'd love -- and look forward to -- a society where we don't need government to maintain the roads, fight fires, teach kids, etcetera. But before we get government out of those things, we need to get it out of creating and enforcing the capitalist "property rights" that create economic injustice, that have us living in the L-curve. First tear up all those government-issued land deeds held by landlords, the government-issued corporate charters that make stock in companies meaningful, all those government-issued copyrights and patents. Then we can talk.

All so-called "rights" are simply creations of society, not universal truths handed down by God.

The only sensible definition of rights I've come across is Kerry Thornley's:

There are at least seven natural rights, or the Tao of human activity in society possesses seven attributes, or people are like machines only in the respect that they don't work good if you neglect their maintenance requirements.

What are the maintenance requirements of the human being? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and food, clothing, shelter and medical care.

Keeping us confused and divided against one another about these rights, the multinational power elite teaches us in America that only life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights. In socialist nations they promote the view that only food,clothing, shelter and medical care are rights.

We are further encouraged to argue about whether rights must be earned or whether it is the duty of the government to guarantee them. Everyone necessarily struggles for their rights, and no government can ever guarantee anything except death and taxes.

All that bickering begs the relevant question: What can we do in voluntary cooperation to see that our natural rights, our intimate functional needs, are respected? Without that much, human beings are incapable of behaving as constructively rational and loving members of any population.

Is is a basic maintenance requirement of the human person to have a state-backed monopoly on the copying of creative works for the life of the author plus 70 years? Of course not.

Is it a good thing if authors get paid? Sure. Is a state-backed monopoly on the making of copies the best way to do that? No.

As Kerry Thornley, my favorite paranoid schizophrenic Discordian-Society-founding JFK-conspiracy-theory pawn and political philosopher, put it:

The Seven Noble Natural Rights

There are at least seven natural rights, or the Tao of human activity in society possesses seven attributes, or people are like machines only in the respect that they don't work good if you neglect their maintenance requirements.

What are the maintenance requirements of the human being? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and food, clothing, shelter and medical care.

Keeping us confused and divided against one another about these rights, the multinational power elite teaches us in America that only life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights. In socialist nations they promote the view that only food,clothing, shelter and medical care are rights.

We are further encouraged to argue about whether rights must be earned or whether it is the duty of the government to guarantee them. Everyone necessarily struggles for their rights, and no government can ever guarantee anything except death and taxes.

All that bickering begs the relevant question: What can we do in voluntary cooperation to see that our natural rights, our intimate functional needs, are respected? Without that much, human beings are incapable of behaving as constructively rational and loving members of any population.

Yeah right on man! Feudal warlords rule!

Feudal warlords are a form of government, so the fact that they suck does not invalidate the premise that governments suck.

Thoreau wrote that "'That government is best which governs not at all'; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which the will have." Thornley wrote that "Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn."

But we are not prepared for it, and Universal Enlightenment has not yet occurred. So anarchy remains an unstable proposition at this stage of human development. Take a large enough group of people with no government, and at best they'll restrict their hierarchical primate dominance behavior to some form of democracy; at worst you end up with strongman rule.

We should keep working toward the anarchic ideal (I think it's an asymptotic process and we might never entirely get there), but in the mean time, again with Thoreau, "I ask for, not at one no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it....How does it become a man to behave toward the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

This government of the people by the people and for the people crap that those fucktard founding fathers came up with ... just pure evil.

The Founding Fathers were a bunch of slave owners, bankers, and landlords who wanted to remove the hierarchy above them, but still sit on top of the lower classes. Government "of the people, by the people, for the people" was not one of their memes, but is a quote from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address; he probably lifted it from an abolitionist minister, Theodore Parker, or from Daniel Webster.

Sure, but don't pretend you aren't using the threat of violence to force people to obey the majority whims.

Well, that's government.

I'm all for the eventual elimination of government, but I'm a Zenarchist - I know that "Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn." Or as Thoreau put it, '"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.'

In the meantime, though, while we're waiting for "Universal Enlightenment", while we're waiting for the the time "when men are prepared for it", government is something that's going to exist where ever humans are; at best some form of constitutional democracy that acts as an expedient, at worst brutal rule by mobs and strong-men.

It's a combination of forcing people to pay for stuff they are by definition not voluntarily willing to buy in a free market.

We can talk about ending this "forcing people to pay for stuff" as soon as we actually have a "free market" - that means no government-charted corporations, no government-transfered inherited wealth, no reserve banking system, no government issued land or resource deeds or copyrights or patents, no government-issued currency. These instances of government force are so ubiquitous that libertarian capitalists take them for granted; but trace any claim of property back and you'll find government force at the root, trace any concentration of wealth and you'll find government force enabling it. To then complain of taxes as government coercion is rather hypocritical.

And so long as we have this government engine that drives the concentration of economic power that we know as "capitalism", we'll need a few safety governors on that engine. Money is a government creation: render onto Caesar what is Caesar's.

and this reinforces my theory (well.. .not mine but I suscribe to it) that it is not the type of government (democray, comunism, socialism, etc) but the nature of human been what is wrong.

Try this on for size:

ZEN is Meditation. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation.

As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.

"Having said that zen study is knowing yourself, the roshi went on: In America you have democracy, which means for you government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I in my turn am bringing democracy to Japan. You cannot have democracy until people know themselves. The Chinese said that government was unnecessary and they were right. When people know themselves and have their own strength, they do not need government. Otherwise they are just a mob and must be ruled..."

Zenarchy is an interesting read, written by one of the late 20th century's more...interesting...characters. Kerry Thornley was sometimes stark raving looney, and sometimes fscking brilliant. Zenarchy, IMHO, holds just to the brilliant side of the line.

(Well, discarding the small digression about transistorized mind control. We do know that the U.S. government has experimented with mind control, but it was drugs, not implants. Some conspiracy theorists believe that Thornley and Oswald may have been subject to such experimentation during their days at Atsugi Naval Air base - regardless of the truth of that, I'm willing to cut him some slack on the subject.)

and this reinforces my theory (well.. .not mine but I suscribe to it) that it is not the type of government (democray, comunism, socialism, etc) but the nature of human been what is wrong.

Try this on for size:

ZEN is Meditation. ARCHY is Social Order. ZENARCHY is the Social Order which springs from Meditation.

As a doctrine, it holds Universal Enlightenment a prerequisite to abolition of the State, after which the State will inevitably vanish. Or - that failing - nobody will give a damn.

"Having said that zen study is knowing yourself, the roshi went on: In America you have democracy, which means for you government of the people, by the people, and for the people. I in my turn am bringing democracy to Japan. You cannot have democracy until people know themselves. The Chinese said that government was unnecessary and they were right. When people know themselves and have their own strength, they do not need government. Otherwise they are just a mob and must be ruled..."

Zenarchy is an interesting read, written by one of the late 20th century's more...interesting...characters. Kerry Thornley was sometimes stark raving looney, and sometimes fscking brilliant. Zenarchy, IMHO, holds just to the brilliant side of the line.

(Well, discarding the small digression about transistorized mind control. We do know that the U.S. government has experimented with mind control, but it was drugs, not implants. Some conspiracy theorists believe that Thornley and Oswald may have been subject to such experimentation during their days at Atsugi Naval Air base - regardless of the truth of that, I'm willing to cut him some slack on the subject.)

Tom, thanks for reminding me of the cranks and loons that one meets on the Internet.

Let's see here. You quote Thornley paraphrasing Lao Tzu - a philosopher whose works have endured for thousands of years, an man whose work is one of the great influences on Chinese culture - and then accuse me of being a crank because I used a completely different quote from Thornley.

Hmm. Sorry, but that's one of the greatest non-sequitors I've seen on line in at least the past year, and would seem to be indiciative of great confusion. Let me see if I can help.

If you want to dismiss Lao Tzu as a crank, you at least owe it to him and to millions of people influenced by Taoism to understand it enough to recognize it when you see it. I highly recommend Ursula K. Le Guin's interpretation of the Tao Te Ching and Raymond Smullyans' book The Tao is Silent . (Those aren't affiliate links or anything, by the way.)

Thornley may have been a crank on some subjects, a medium to heavy conspiracy theorist, but given that he got caught up in the weirdness vortex of the JFK assassination I think he deserves a little slack on that. His concept of Zenarchy is an inspiring application of Taoism and Zen concepts to politics, showing the connection with libertarian socialism (a.k.a. anarchy).

The fact that I may quote Thornley on some topic, because I like the way he explains something - or that I might similarly quote Lao Tzu, the Shakyamuni Buddha, Thomas Jefferson, Emperor Norton, Hunter S. Thompson, or whoever - does not mean I agree with the quotee on everything. That one may quote a crank, is non-informative on one's own crank-ness or lack thereof.

HTH. HAND.

"Artificial Rights?"

Yes. Copyright is an artifical creation of the government.

And the right to free speech is a "natural" right, why, exactly?

There are several theories of natural rights. Perhaps you've heard of the one about how human beings are "endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights"? Of course that's something of a religious spin on things. I prefer Kerry Thornley's explanation myself:

The Seven Noble Natural Rights

There are at least seven natural rights, or the Tao of human activity in society possesses seven attributes, or people are like machines only in the respect that they don't work good if you neglect their maintenance requirements.

What are the maintenance requirements of the human being? Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and food, clothing, shelter and medical care.

Keeping us confused and divided against one another about these rights, the multinational power elite teaches us in America that only life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are rights. In socialist nations they promote the view that only food,clothing, shelter and medical care are rights.

We are further encouraged to argue about whether rights must be earned or whether it is the duty of the government to guarantee them. Everyone necessarily struggles for their rights, and no government can ever guarantee anything except death and taxes.

All that bickering begs the relevant question: What can we do in voluntary cooperation to see that our natural rights, our intimate functional needs, are respected? Without that much, human beings are incapable of behaving as constructively rational and loving members of any population.

An artifical monopoly on the making of copies is clearly not an "intimate functional need" of human beings. It is not a "right of the people" in the same way as the right to free speech or the right to be secure against unreasonable search an seizure.

That is why you see the creation of this artificial right listed as a government power, rather than seeing it as a listing in the Bill Of Rights along the lines of "The right of authors and inventors to exclusively copy and implement their creations, being necessary to the progress of the useful arts and sciences, shall not be infringed".

You can't possibly be so stupid as to not recognize that your last two statements are mutually contradictory.

There is no contradiction at all. You are simply confusing what you think the Constitution should say, with what it actually does say.

In the second, you seem categorigally discount the appropriateness that one of those structures might include the concept of transmission/assignment/sale of said rights to others

It's not a question of whether it's "appropriate". Under our Constitution, the powers of the federal government are strictly enumerated, and any powers not so enumerated. They include securing to authors and inventors certain rights for a limited time. There is nothing in there about securing those rights to others, therefore the federal governmen does not legitimately possess such power - whether or not you or I think that such additional state power would be useful.

(I generally don't. And I certainly disagree with your apparent assumption that there is no better way to make progress in phamaceutical technology than the screwed-up system we have now.)

Well, "owned by the workers" is a slightly misleading description since it will be controlled by the state ...

Only in state socialism. Other arrangements are possible.

See some of these sites for more information:

http://flag.blackened.net/liberty/libsoc.html

http://william-king.www.drexel.edu/top/polemica.ht ml

http://www.impropaganda.net/old/zenarchy.html