Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable, especially when they are using your resources to build places like Auschwitz.
It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, governments are actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization.
Maybe it would have taken longer, say, to land on the moon under a Free Market; however, when the Free Market did get us to the moon, it would be for something a lot more purposeful than sticking a flag pole in the dust and hauling back some rocks that nobody really cared about—mostly for the purpose of glorifying the State, no less.
You are counting only the triumphs taught to you by Government officials, while ignoring the unrealized ventures and the massive amounts of waste and strife. Evolution, not revolution, is the key to progress in society with as little strife as possible.
So, Government takes my money under penalty of violence and then spends it asking "So, uh, what exactly should we do with all this money?"
Solutions are best found through variation and selection, processes that are quashed and stifled by central planning; the power structure should be decentralized and localized as much as possible, and that is precisely the point of the Free Market.
The Bill of Rights exists only in the minds of the men who have the guns (hence the Second Amendment); it is a matter of culture. What determines the success of a society is its culture—that is, ingrained values that allow a society to function in a self-reinforcing way.
Voting in a western democracy isn't magical; it requires the men with guns to have a culture that values voting, which is no more special than to have a culture that values, say, the libertarian philosophy's Non-aggression Principle (NAP), a principle that leads to anarcho-capitalism, in which society is a phenomenon that is emergent from the voluntary associations and contracts between each pair of individuals.
In your case, you yourself are espousing and perpetuating a bad cultural value: It can be legitimate to use a strike-first threat of violence to coerce resources from people for some "public good" (such as "preventing rights abuses" or whatever label of propaganda seems best at the moment—"public safety", "national defense", "protection of the children", "honoring the old", etc.). Because you promote a culture that values coercion at all, you promote a culture that can condone coercion at any scale.
Under your culture, it is indeed very likely that any organization at all (including your Government) might grow into an abusive relationship with society; however, that is not an inherent problem with organizations, but rather a problem with the underlying culture. An organization that builds roads by extorting resources from people is much more likely to waste resources "exporting Democracy" to third-word theocrats by dropping bombs on their villages than a road-building organization that exists soley by the voluntary contracts of a Free Market.
Somalia is the result of a failed state, what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule. The resulting mayhem has nothing to do with libertarian or anarchist principles, particularly the NAP.
Why wouldn't the Somalians just form a "modern" Government and get on with the business of bettering their situation? The reason is that they don't understand how to do it at a fundamental level, because their culture is broken; in fact, whatever value Somalians have been able to derive from life is no doubt set upon what little of libertarian principles does actually manage to exist.
Why can't Somalians simply mirror the Governments and cultures from around the world? Values cannot be imposed; values can only be adopted. Culture (and by extension, law) cannot lead society; culture can only follow society. This is the reason why "exporting Democracy" to third-word theocrats is always a dismal failure; imposing values just causes strife and even more regression.
The key to progress in society with as little strife as possible is evolution, not revolution.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection (what some call the "Free Market"), which implies the localization and decentralization of the power structure; centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces. There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
If you think this sounds like a harsh, dog-eat-dog "social Darwinism", you forget that the principles of our more civilized modern society are the values of a species that emerged out of even the most horri
Here, you brush up against one truth: What determines the success of a society is its culture—that is, the shared values that have been internalized by each individual in a given population. This is why it is impossible "to export Democracy" to third-word theocrats (especially by bombing their villages); they just don't have the culture to support it properly.
However, voting in a western democracy isn't magical; it requires the men with guns to have a culture that values voting, which is no more special than to have a culture that values, say, the libertarian philosophy's Non-aggression Principle (which leads to anarcho-capitalism).
There doesn't need to be more than one provider; there just needs to be no provider that decrees my resources to be its resources.
Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable.
It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, governments are actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization.
What bigger monopoly is there than Government? I'd rather my ISP not be an organization that can take my resources by threat of violence, especially when I disagree with what they're doing with those resources.
This kind of thing would be dismissed out of hand if it came from Joe Nobody, but Shinichi Mochizuki's reputation in this case should ensure that it gets a good look.
I wonder how many interesting insights we miss due to such bigotry.
This research (and how it has been reported to the public) is an example of an ad hominem attack (in this case, an attack against free market "ideology").
A quick googling shows that about 10960 athletes from 204 countries have come together in competition within one city. If you can't find the value in that, then I feel sorry for you.
The thing is, Somalia is the result of a failed state, what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule.
So, Central Planning does NOT work, either.
What you have pointed out (without realizing it, no doubt) is that what makes the difference between failure and successs is culture—ingrained values that allow a society to function in a self-reinforcing way; why wouldn't the Somalians just form a "modern" Government and get on with the business of bettering their situation? The reason is that they don't understand how to do it at a fundamental level, because their culture is broken; their culture has still produced Government, but it happens to be a Government under pockets of centralized power controlled by Warlords who reinforce the broken culture.
Why can't they mirror the Governments and cultures from around the world? Values cannot be imposed; values can only be adopted. Culture (and by extension, law) cannot lead society; culture can only follow society. This is the reason why "exporting Democracy" to third-word theocrats is always a dismal failure; imposing values just causes strife and even more regression.
In fact, Central Planning NEVER works.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection, which imply the localization and decentralization of the power structure; indeed, centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces.
There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
Firstly, I don't see how what you say in any way precludes the evolution of "higher" organisms.
Secondly, I think [random] mutation occurs much more frequently than you'd like to think, especially given that mutation—or, more generally, variation—is more complex than just the changing of gene sequences due to random bursts of radiation from far off supernovae. There are numerous viruses that insert their DNA sequences into infected hosts' DNA sequences, chemicals in the environment and produced by parasites, stress hormones that trigger inherited characteristics through epigentic variation, etc.
Also, here is the flaw in your logic: "High" organisms evolved from "low" organisms; ergo, the lower ancestors of those high organisms were capable of evolving just as quickly as the low organisms of today, and thereby developed many immunities to the common attacks that low organisms still employ and switch between—indeed, the extremely complex and profound sharing of information in the immune system can cope with a great deal of variation in the invading hordes.
Moreover, if low organisms become so virulent and devastating in their attacks on hosts that the host population cannot keep up with the onslaught, then BOTH the host and the low organism die off; it's more beneficial to the lower organism to evolve an asymptomatic and even symbiotic presence, which is exactly why your body is currently covered and filled with all manner of bacteria, some of which can indeed lead to infection if it gets into the wrong place. Speaking of these bacteria, they defend their environment (namely, you) from other, invading low organisms, so your bacterial entourage takes up some of the burden of evolving defenses quickly.
In short, the Universe is a much more complex place than you seem to appreciate.
What more is there to say? I don't understand why people are so vehemently opposed to this simple and readily verifiable explanation for the way that complex systems (like biological life, social structures, economic systems, galaxies, indeed the whole Universe or Universes, etc.) behave.
You're bothered by Facebook and the Government tapping all of your communications? What are you? A pedophile-sympathizer? Maybe even a pedophile yourself?! Hey, everybody, keep an eye on this guy! He's got a goatee!
If you're a good person, you shouldn't have anything to hide! Amirite?
Slashdot Mirror
Those issues are Government.
Woooooosh!
Last I checked, Auschwitz was Government-funded.
Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable, especially when they are using your resources to build places like Auschwitz.
It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, governments are actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization.
Where would a middle-class guy like Einstein have wound up without government funding?
Probably buried in Germany, having lived a prosperous and peaceful life with the rest of his fellow Germans.
Maybe it would have taken longer, say, to land on the moon under a Free Market; however, when the Free Market did get us to the moon, it would be for something a lot more purposeful than sticking a flag pole in the dust and hauling back some rocks that nobody really cared about—mostly for the purpose of glorifying the State, no less.
You are counting only the triumphs taught to you by Government officials, while ignoring the unrealized ventures and the massive amounts of waste and strife. Evolution, not revolution, is the key to progress in society with as little strife as possible.
So, Government takes my money under penalty of violence and then spends it asking "So, uh, what exactly should we do with all this money?"
Solutions are best found through variation and selection, processes that are quashed and stifled by central planning; the power structure should be decentralized and localized as much as possible, and that is precisely the point of the Free Market.
Those are restrictions imposed by a violent third-party gang of thugs.
You make the common mistake of confusing your interests as my interests.
Not even in the secular sector can people avoid their bizarre attraction to the macabre relics of mythically aggrandized heros.
The Bill of Rights exists only in the minds of the men who have the guns (hence the Second Amendment); it is a matter of culture. What determines the success of a society is its culture—that is, ingrained values that allow a society to function in a self-reinforcing way.
Voting in a western democracy isn't magical; it requires the men with guns to have a culture that values voting, which is no more special than to have a culture that values, say, the libertarian philosophy's Non-aggression Principle (NAP), a principle that leads to anarcho-capitalism, in which society is a phenomenon that is emergent from the voluntary associations and contracts between each pair of individuals.
In your case, you yourself are espousing and perpetuating a bad cultural value: It can be legitimate to use a strike-first threat of violence to coerce resources from people for some "public good" (such as "preventing rights abuses" or whatever label of propaganda seems best at the moment—"public safety", "national defense", "protection of the children", "honoring the old", etc.). Because you promote a culture that values coercion at all, you promote a culture that can condone coercion at any scale.
Under your culture, it is indeed very likely that any organization at all (including your Government) might grow into an abusive relationship with society; however, that is not an inherent problem with organizations, but rather a problem with the underlying culture. An organization that builds roads by extorting resources from people is much more likely to waste resources "exporting Democracy" to third-word theocrats by dropping bombs on their villages than a road-building organization that exists soley by the voluntary contracts of a Free Market.
Somalia is the result of a failed state, what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule. The resulting mayhem has nothing to do with libertarian or anarchist principles, particularly the NAP.
Why wouldn't the Somalians just form a "modern" Government and get on with the business of bettering their situation? The reason is that they don't understand how to do it at a fundamental level, because their culture is broken; in fact, whatever value Somalians have been able to derive from life is no doubt set upon what little of libertarian principles does actually manage to exist.
Why can't Somalians simply mirror the Governments and cultures from around the world? Values cannot be imposed; values can only be adopted. Culture (and by extension, law) cannot lead society; culture can only follow society. This is the reason why "exporting Democracy" to third-word theocrats is always a dismal failure; imposing values just causes strife and even more regression.
The key to progress in society with as little strife as possible is evolution, not revolution.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection (what some call the "Free Market"), which implies the localization and decentralization of the power structure; centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces. There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
If you think this sounds like a harsh, dog-eat-dog "social Darwinism", you forget that the principles of our more civilized modern society are the values of a species that emerged out of even the most horri
So, at worst , you end up with Government.
Here, you brush up against one truth: What determines the success of a society is its culture—that is, the shared values that have been internalized by each individual in a given population. This is why it is impossible "to export Democracy" to third-word theocrats (especially by bombing their villages); they just don't have the culture to support it properly.
However, voting in a western democracy isn't magical; it requires the men with guns to have a culture that values voting, which is no more special than to have a culture that values, say, the libertarian philosophy's Non-aggression Principle (which leads to anarcho-capitalism).
That's irrelevant; it's ultimately smoke and mirrors.
Therefore, the problem is still Government.
There doesn't need to be more than one provider; there just needs to be no provider that decrees my resources to be its resources.
Any organization—any organization at all—that confiscates resources by threat of strike-first violence is a "governmental" organization. When one such organization becomes a monopoly, we call that organization "Government".
Government is simply a bad company that doesn't go out of business because it is able to confiscate your resources by threat of violence; it doesn't give you the goods and services for which you personally think you are paying, but you have to pay them anyway—it's totally absurd and unconscionable.
It is not a modern value to coerce resources from people by threat of violence. So, in fact, governments are actually the last barbaric vestige of a pre-modern civilization.
What bigger monopoly is there than Government? I'd rather my ISP not be an organization that can take my resources by threat of violence, especially when I disagree with what they're doing with those resources.
This kind of thing would be dismissed out of hand if it came from Joe Nobody, but Shinichi Mochizuki's reputation in this case should ensure that it gets a good look.
I wonder how many interesting insights we miss due to such bigotry.
This research (and how it has been reported to the public) is an example of an ad hominem attack (in this case, an attack against free market "ideology").
... and homeopathy and chiropractic are now legitimate medicine worthy of coverage...
People bricked their own machines by deliberately forcing upgrades even against warnings; you cannot protect people from their own stupidity.
A quick googling shows that about 10960 athletes from 204 countries have come together in competition within one city. If you can't find the value in that, then I feel sorry for you.
Join me in celebrating the wonders of our world.
The thing is, Somalia is the result of a failed state , what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule.
So, Central Planning does NOT work, either.
What you have pointed out (without realizing it, no doubt) is that what makes the difference between failure and successs is culture—ingrained values that allow a society to function in a self-reinforcing way; why wouldn't the Somalians just form a "modern" Government and get on with the business of bettering their situation? The reason is that they don't understand how to do it at a fundamental level, because their culture is broken; their culture has still produced Government, but it happens to be a Government under pockets of centralized power controlled by Warlords who reinforce the broken culture.
Why can't they mirror the Governments and cultures from around the world? Values cannot be imposed; values can only be adopted. Culture (and by extension, law) cannot lead society; culture can only follow society. This is the reason why "exporting Democracy" to third-word theocrats is always a dismal failure; imposing values just causes strife and even more regression.
In fact, Central Planning NEVER works.
As with every other system of complexity, society can most effectively evolve (that is, adapt to the needs at hand) when there are robust processes of variation and selection, which imply the localization and decentralization of the power structure; indeed, centralized power—by its very nature—inhibits the process of evolution by quashing variation and stifling selective forces.
There is no such thing as an Intelligent Designer; it is foolish to put your faith in a "noble" bureaucrat, who gazes into his crystal ball and then—at everyone else's expense—pushes and pulls naive levers and buttons based on what he thinks he sees.
not offering an *acceptable* solution
It is still valuable just to state what is not acceptable.
Firstly, I don't see how what you say in any way precludes the evolution of "higher" organisms.
Secondly, I think [random] mutation occurs much more frequently than you'd like to think, especially given that mutation—or, more generally, variation—is more complex than just the changing of gene sequences due to random bursts of radiation from far off supernovae. There are numerous viruses that insert their DNA sequences into infected hosts' DNA sequences, chemicals in the environment and produced by parasites, stress hormones that trigger inherited characteristics through epigentic variation, etc.
Also, here is the flaw in your logic: "High" organisms evolved from "low" organisms; ergo, the lower ancestors of those high organisms were capable of evolving just as quickly as the low organisms of today, and thereby developed many immunities to the common attacks that low organisms still employ and switch between—indeed, the extremely complex and profound sharing of information in the immune system can cope with a great deal of variation in the invading hordes.
Moreover, if low organisms become so virulent and devastating in their attacks on hosts that the host population cannot keep up with the onslaught, then BOTH the host and the low organism die off; it's more beneficial to the lower organism to evolve an asymptomatic and even symbiotic presence, which is exactly why your body is currently covered and filled with all manner of bacteria, some of which can indeed lead to infection if it gets into the wrong place. Speaking of these bacteria, they defend their environment (namely, you) from other, invading low organisms, so your bacterial entourage takes up some of the burden of evolving defenses quickly.
In short, the Universe is a much more complex place than you seem to appreciate.
Evolution by variation and selection.
Is there variation? Yes.
Is there selection? Yes.
What more is there to say? I don't understand why people are so vehemently opposed to this simple and readily verifiable explanation for the way that complex systems (like biological life, social structures, economic systems, galaxies, indeed the whole Universe or Universes, etc.) behave.
You're bothered by Facebook and the Government tapping all of your communications? What are you? A pedophile-sympathizer? Maybe even a pedophile yourself?! Hey, everybody, keep an eye on this guy! He's got a goatee!
If you're a good person, you shouldn't have anything to hide! Amirite?
It's the definition of central planning.