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Guest Post: The End Of History
The next in a continuing series (most recently: Security in a Free Society).
Submitted by Free Radical
The End of History
There is properly no history, only biography. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was famously proclaimed that what we were likely witnessing was
… not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of postwar history, but the end of history as such; that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
In reality, however, what we are witnessing is the ideological exhaustion of “Western liberal democracy” and therefore the last gasp of the fraud upon which it rests: the state, even its best form. No longer able to hide behind the Jeffersonian dream of constitutional freedom and order or the Lincolnian myth that the dream could be preserved at the expense of the principle upon which it was founded, the American state’s demise proves that “the final form of human government” has not yet arrived – not because a final form shouldn’t have arrived but because, for those who have had so much fun during historical times, the aftermath won’t be any fun. On the contrary, it will be “a very sad time”:
The struggle for recognition, the willingness to risk one’s life for a purely abstract goal, the worldwide ideological struggle that called forth daring, courage, imagination, and idealism, will be replaced by economic calculation, the endless solving of technical problems, environmental concerns, and the satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.
How sad, in other words, that if people were in fact freed from “the worldwide ideological struggle” (though of course they have not been), they would at long last be able to live their lives on their own terms. How sad that without “the struggle for recognition,” people would not have to endure another Pharoah, Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Clinton, Bush, or Obama, and would instead be left to while away the hours in the peaceful pursuit of their own happiness. How sad that without the “purely abstract goal” of one or another statist ideology, grandparents, parents, spouses, children, and grandchildren would not know the “daring, courage, imagination, and idealism” that continues to send their loved ones home in flag-draped cartons. How sad that “environmental concerns” could actually be solved, rather than perpetrated by governments and perpetuated by their bloated “regulatory” agencies. And how sad that “economic calculation and the endless solving of technical problems” – i.e., the day-by-day work of an increasingly complex and thus more richly rewarding world – would not be complicated by the relentless onslaught of the state.
Yes, there is the hope that “centuries of boredom at the end of history might serve to get history started once again,” so that murder and mayhem can once again spice up the dreary “satisfaction of sophisticated consumer demands.” What is a cell phone, after all, compared to a land mine? What is communication compared to mutilation? With “no struggle over ‘large’ issues and consequently no need for generals or statesmen,” how much attraction can life hold? What’s the use of living, in other words, if you can’t make a killing killing people?
And a twofold killing it is – over 15 billion people “since the beginning of authentic history,” at a cost of over a thousand trillion dollarsi – according to the research published in a 1914 New York Times piece that also makes the following observation:
Brilliant deeds on the battlefield are done by the man who will take the greatest risks in support of an ideal; the man who will take the greatest risks is, ordinarily, the best of men. So these are least likely to escape. …
… And even though large numbers of the best of men are left, many are destroyed, and of those remaining many have been deteriorated physically by the effort, by the wounds, by the diseases, of wartime; while the economic course of every man participating in a war is interrupted by his service, and, in the majority of cases, such an interruption harms his industrial or professional or mercantile future, thus directly affecting the opportunities that he may offer to the rising generation, which, for a time, depends upon him.
And thus does the killing of the best in war also kill “a certain portion of the incalculable social and educational effort of the ages.”
But no matter. For as war is its very health, the state will have a war if it wants one, never mind how much the people, understandably, do not:
Why, of course, the people don’t want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. … But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger. It works the same in any country.
But why? The answer is as old as Plato’s Dorians:
[I]t is immaterial for the citizens of any nation where the frontiers of their country are drawn. It is of no concern for anyone whether his country is big or small, and whether it conquers a province or not. The individual citizens do not derive any profit from the conquest of a territory.
It is different with the princes or ruling aristocracies. They can increase their power and their tax revenues by expanding the size of their realms. They can profit from conquest. They are bellicose, while the citizenry is peace loving.
The “princes and ruling aristocracies” will object, of course, that they are not bellicose at all and only want to increase their power in order to be of greater service to humanity. They are public servants, after all, seeking only to do good on their constituents’ behalf. What they do not understand, however – what they dare not even contemplate – is that because Men are cruel, but Man is kind, no men are more cruel than those who would do good with mankind’s money – with the proceeds, that is, of the legalized theft by which “Western liberal democracy” and every other manifestation of the state perpetuate themselves. For as easy as it is to make this theft legal, it is impossible to make it moral, the resulting assault on society being all the worse for the pretence upon which it is based: namely, that legalized theft is the price that must be paid for a civilized society.
And it is because of this vast charade – the biggest of all big lies – that its perpetrators fail to realize that they are but the latest incarnation of the iniquity that has prevailed from time immemorial, that however much the forces of history have been debated over the centuries – are they blind, cyclical, progressive, eschatological, dialectical, etc. – there are actually no forces of history; there is only the history of force. In fact, there is only history as force, the absence of which is not history but biography – the ability to graph, as it were, one’s own bio in cooperative association with one’s fellow human beings.
Its perpetrators do not understand, that is, that their role in history is history, for history is nothing more than the biographies of those who have used the political means to trump the economic means, the producers of which have had their biographies expropriated in the process. As such, history is merely a chronicle of conquest, subjugation, and confiscation, and therefore a glorification of perpetual war for perpetual war. And just as war and the state are one, so, then, are the state and history one.
Therefore, the end of the state will be the end of history.
i Inflation-adjusted as follows: 15 billion battlefield deaths x $3,677 per death in 1914 dollars (see footnote 138) x 20 to correct for the dollar’s lost purchasing power since then (see here) = $1,103,100,000,000,000.My next submission: “The Final Form of Human Government.”
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The founding fathers were not infalliable men. They were however, able to put together one of humanity's greatest attempts at defining a state which protected individual liberty. They didn't get it perfect, obviously, but; who among today's political hacks could even come up with something like that?
The big political questions of today revolve around sexual exploits, personal gain and all of the other minor plot developments that belong to a bad melodrama.
No, just a bunch of big fish in small ponds who didn't want to give their ponds up. Came up with a loose agreement to kinda sorta work together. Like mafia dons dividing up territory. Lincoln came along with the consolodated interest of the bigger fish along the eastern seaboard and changed that agreement dramatically.
Does give a clue though, that smaller competing units is a preferable arraingement.
Thy failed when they wrote the Consitution and behind closed doors at that. They met to revise the Articles of the Confederation and came out with a completely different document taking away power from the individual states and giving too much power to the federal government, thus you have what we have now(an overpowering federal government) specifically because of our founding fathers. We were warned by Patrick Henry, George Mason and others......and now you see it!
Who famously won the Cold War, Russia who now out produces Saudi Arabia or the U.S. who can not off load the tankers fast enough?
When I heard that ridiculous statement for the first time, I was already sceptical if one form of human government wouldn't automatically lead to the slow demise of it - because of lack of competition in such a monopoly.
Unfortunately I was right.
"the Lincolnian myth that the dream could be preserved at the expense of the principle upon which it was founded"
That is a succinct and brilliant statement.
It would behoove us to go even further back ... to the political-philosphical discourses of Rousseau, Lock and Hobbs. I careful reading of these gents might serve as the basis for a conversation about what the government is/should be. More fundamentally, all three argued that we must first understand what the nature of man is, and based on this postulation, what a government should/should not be. I am sure all three would agree that the social contract has been diminished and perverted. Under our present circumstances, they would surely not look unfavorably upon insurrection, rebellion or something of that kind. "When in the course of human events ...." This needs to be re-read.
Um, yeah. That Hobbes sure was a revolutionary type.
That sounds really good........ defining some "human nature" (whatever that is.... probably just another god that makes us do what we do)... and THEN build a government to lock it in. Wait a minute... isn't that what we have already?
Click below to read if DSK was set up--as he claimed he would be--in response to his outspoken policies against the dollar and Fed:
http://thesilvergoldhedge.blogspot.com/2011/05/sdk-had-dollar-banksers-a...
Same as Thucydides observed. Those who have power do what they like, those who do not, do what they must. The Senate needs to grow up like the rest of World. All Country's have some good souls and bad. Trade with honest scales.
1) No way have wars killed 15 billion people--the actual number of victims is far smaller than that. The NYT of 1914 was apparently even less credible than today. Incredible.
2) The notion of a liberal democracy might be salvagable if it were built solely of individuals who weren't forced to compete against collectives for legal representation.
3) History's never been anything than a story, so it doesn't end with the collapse of the state--not even metaphorically. It just splinters, as has been seriously underway since the beginning of the Renaissance.
Some 30 billion people have lived since we added sapiens to Homo, at least according to some estimates.
Absolutely no way half of them died in war. The population during WWII was about 2.8 billion. Approximately 70 million died. That was the BIG one, yet it killed 2.5% of mankind.
"In its most idealised form, the state is the protector of the people and the great equaliser between the haves and the have-nots".
No, the state cannot and must not be the 'great equaliser of the haves and have-nots. To do so requires the State to intervene into the affairs of its citizens, taking from those who are in 'surplus' and giving the confiscated wealth to those who are in deficit. That invites, and even guarantees, the very corruption that so many decry.
The idealised State, and indeed the only one that can survive in perpetuity, is the one whose only mission is to protect the freedom of its citizens. The State's only role must be to assure that life is a fair game. So long as each one of us rises or falls according to how we play the cards we were dealt, then the State must remain a dispassionate and disinterested observer. It is a fact of life we were not all dealt the same cards, that some of us were blessed with a royal flush while others only got a nine high. But that is the nature of life, and for the State to intervene in a vain attempt at rectifying the whims of Fortune and Fate can only lead to disaster.
It is not what I meant. I knew when I wrote it that it may be interpreted that way. Government is the great equaliser in that each citizen is equal under the law- nothing more. In other words, just because you have a load of money doesn't mean you can trounce on other people's rights. I dare anyone to say that the banksters haven't gotten away with crimes on the backs of the "little people." It is the state's responsibility to see that there are no little people.
"The State's only role must be to assure that life is a fair game."
Perhaps I should have said it that way.
:D
Oh, ok, I was also confused by your statement....
just because you have a load of money doesn't mean you can trounce on other people's rights
What are these "rights" of which you speak?
You have no right to a home, or to eat regularly, and if you don't have either of those, what's all that other bullshit you guys want to talk about?
Without those rights enumerated above, I guess you have an incentive to murder and plunder, n'est pas?
"Incentive"?
Here is the problem: everyone wants to draw some line here and select what they consider really really important and create a new category of concept called "right" that magically enshrines their personal values.
But your personal values are *personal.* The libertarians (just for example, because we have a lot them here) want preoperty rights enshrined, but often back away from the inescapable logical outcome of enshrining such "rights" without protection of "the right to eat" or "the right to a home."
Orly seems to assert that there is a way to strike a balance between protection of one's "right" to have money without ascribing unjust power to the wealth-holder. But in a world of private ownership, when wealth-disparity reaches a certain point, there is no other outcome OTHER THAN the poor being directly denied food/homes by the wealthy.
Somehow there must be protected a "right" to free speech or legal representation, but not a "right" to survival.
Does this help clarify the dilemma?
My conclusion is that there are no rights at all--you either take what you require or you do not. This is not justification or "incentive" to anything, just a description of the world we inhabit. Our society is a biological system.
As long as it continues to be easier for the truly destitute to eat garbage or collect welfare or live in boxes, we can probably sustain some semblance of civil society. When it starts becoming more difficult for the poor to maintain survival without resorting to violence, all bets are off.
How far are we from that tipping point, you think? Are we moving closer towards it, or further away from it?
There are to rights. But they're top down. Starting with Dieu et mon Droit and Droit de Seigneur all the way to the other end and the right to want some rights.
We passed the tipping point a few years ago. Right now we're just waiting for the last domino to hit us on the head.
Humor, ar ar. Cute.
Those aren't rights. Those are claims.
No one takes any of them any more seriously than the right to an attorney...
If the divine rights of kings is merely a claim, then you are correct and I concede the point: there are no rights.
They are just a sad joke by those who have a lot and whose claims are strong, on those who have little and think their weak claims to be rights.
"The State's only role must be to assure that life is a fair game."
Is baseball a fair game when one team's players get to start on third base while the other team doesn't get a chance to bat?
What do you mean by fair?
Hmmm... who put the player on third base? The ump (government)? or are you referring to inherited wealth? In a fully free society (no such creature exists today, the closest I can find is US from 1800's, discounting slavery, to 1873 and Hong Kong pre Chinese management), all individuals have an opportunity to rise or fall as high as their abilities permit. Have you heard of the term rising up by your bootstraps? Or self made man? Those are uniquely American terms. If you are talking about inherited wealth, no man can be smaller than his money. Eventually the money goes away. Only a truly deserving can keep his money since money is a reflection of the man. Yes, there are the super elite (the Kennedy's, Rotschilds, etc) bu they are the exception caused by a corrupt oligarchy, not the result of an organic society.
Since no one has poked at the "War is the health of the state" meme, supposedly section 1034 under Title X of HR1540 (National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012) features a more streamlined way to kill people when congress affirms the abdication of their duty to declare war to the president (more time for fundraisers that way). Sounds like it is an affirmation of existing edict, custom, or laziness. Lots of luck finding a marked up version of HR1540 containing sec 1034. The closest reference with a .gov domain seems to be http://armedservices.house.gov/index.cfm/files/serve?File_id=61e9d0d1-58... and it is a summary.
The Constitution is no longer relavant. TPTB are no longer even paying lip service.
The time is coming.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKYALsp-sIg&feature=related
To oppose the existence of the state absolutely, in all possible forms, is itself an ideological statement, and a totally unrealistic one in a world where you have millions of people living in close proximity. If the current state were somehow raptured out of existence, successor states on the same territory would quickly be formed, for defense and other purposes. Anarchism is like pacifism, it's just a way of rendering yourself irrelevant, and if you want to protect yourself from the state and from organized violence, it's better to have some ideas about what the state should and shouldn't do, and some ideas about the conditions under which violence is and is not a good idea, rather than just hoping that they will conveniently abolish themselves from the world.
Oh yeah, the state's the reason why out system doesn't work. It's nothing to do with bankers and the military-industrial-complex, how foolish we were to try such an untested system, it's only been tried by virtually every region in the world constantly for the past 300 years. Let's crown Jamie Dimon dictator, he'll save us!
Free Radical
Agree with everything you write here and the idealogy and historical battle. But the failure of 'democratic Govt' is not the death of a liberal idea, it is the 100% guaranteed result of any monopoly power structure be it a private commercial monopoly or a monopoly of authority over society (wrapped in BS liberal idealogy)
Abraham Lincoln waged murderous war in his own land and on his neighbours to force a monopoly power structure across a free land and a free people. He wrapped his parasitical intent and that of his backers in sugar coated crap as has every politician and political party to get elected to the 'Throne' of monopoly authority over society
the problem is not Govt it is inherently in any monopoly structure of power/authority and economic enterprise. Monopolies do not work because sole power mechanisms corrupt people and eventually implode in their own Diva-ness (inflated self-serving deluded ego) whereas the competition mechanism improves and enriches with the distribution of power
we are indeed coming to the logical conclusion of this monopoly authority structure we mis-label 'democratic Govt'. Authority is going up its own arse in ego, abuse, murder, bankruptcy, incompetence, ignorance and paranoia
...let it be the last time and replaced not with the Tea Parties smaller version of the exact same monopoly authority but with a free society and free markets both of which are competitive and both of which self regulate (like all nature and every species on Earth does)
Agreed. Unfortunately for us, the Hamiltonians have defeated the Jeffersonians. The combined rule of big government and crony-capitalism has destroyed liberty.
"destroying liberty" in society and free markets is precisely what a monopoly power/authority structure (like Government) is designed to do... if you want liberty you don't funnel power into a monopoly structure or centralise social decision-making into centralised national, or even local, institutions/committees
i'm afraid even the Jeffersonians were wrong. Liberty and monopolies, freedom and Government do not mix... you can only have one or the other, not both
The Constitution protects nobody, the Law protects nobody, they are both words on pieces of paper at the whims of men to be followed and at the whims of the judiciary (another monopoly authority) to be enforced
the only protection from tyranny is personal freedom, the only protection from monopolists is competition in a free market
The end of ''history''?
How is darkness risen and at end because of darkness?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfF4t9-wpCM
Every dark mark of contempt and fear is at end. Stand fast, in agreement, and do no harm. Watch. The revelation of the Lord of Hosts is upon the nations. Do not call upon darkness to escape the fear of The Light, you will not wake up and rise. Babylon is fallen ...is fallen.
I've been saying this for many years. Most peope have simply told me I was insane. Its nice to see a few others coming around.
One of the interesting things about it is that all of the modern armies,navies, and air forces around the world have become entirely dependent upon technology, electronic communications, and most especially, oil to move large things very far very fast.
And guess what? Oil is in decline anyway, and more and more difficult and expensive to extract smaller and smaller amounts every year. Wars will attack those oil fields, those oil sand facilities, refineries, storage tanks, sitting duck ULCC's, and all ...
the outcome will be that all of the armies all over the world will very quickly become completely helpless, because the generals have no imagination whatever and do not know what to do without energy ... I can see this coming already: the american soldiers now in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world, will be stranded, never able to come home again ....
I have, in my life, had the opportunity to live, for a short time, back in the hills in Abbysinia ... I can tell you all that the people there, do not mind the abject poverty, not at all, in fact they laugh and play with each other all the time ... it is paradise ... the garden of Eden could not have been far away ... those people who survive the coming holocaust, will be so much better off than we were ....
Until...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOuQPZqcEbk
The more things seem to change.....
Tend to remain the same.....
One can see this in the still standing estancias in Mexico.....large French chateaus.....and the old US southern plantations....
So tell me....what´s the difference in the top 1% versus the top 1%.....
An amusing twist in the way American political history progressed in the 1990s is the sequel to that Fukuyama's "End of History" book; as it was followed by...Paul Wolfowitz's 'New world Order' and most ironically of all... Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations..." which took the world back to the medieval ages...as in Iraq 2003 under GWB !
Now that's History's answering backlash for you AND with a vengeance !
To chastise the fool that said it was good and dead!
Next...the line never ends...that's human folly in all its simple grandeur!
The state makes me want to puke.
Oh shit, an Anarchist! That means chaos. <- What a dumbfuck statement.
Golf is anarchy. Just think how chaotic and dangerous a golf course is. Everyone follows a set of predetermined rules, enforced by oneself and disputes are arbitrated.
i hate golf, but you know what, you're absolutely right.
Last time I checked, there were still police in golf. As a matter of fact, there are super-police because now some armchair tiger can call in a foul from Ann Arbor to Pebble Beach.
(They got rid of that idea by the way. If it is not seen on the course, the foul no longer applies...).
orly, with all due respect to your eloquent summation of the Jeffersonian ideal (which i believe is a worthwhile compromise to pursue given the current level of consciousness & circumstances), when you're out on the course in a "friendly" foursome and you're faced with a bad lie somewhere in the rough while everyone else hit their tee shots dead center of the fairway, there ain't no police around, except for the birds and the trees.
i've caddied long enough in my teenage years to know what eventually happens to those who continuously improve their lie through lies. sooner or later, the ball just goes missing and the cursing and club throwing commence.
karma's a divot.
UPDATE (see bottom of article) on whether or not DSK was set-up because he opposed the dollar and the Fed: http://thesilvergoldhedge.blogspot.com/2011/05/SDK-had-dollar-banksers-a...
Bad Link, try
http://tinyurl.com/5s9sf2f
http://thesilvergoldhedge.blogspot.com/2011/05/sdk-had-dollar-banksers-and-fed-in-his.html
Thanks for posting this, ZH.
When the austerity comes, it'll become easier to ask people "what has democracy done for you other than give you a lIfetime of headaches?"
Democracy murders millions of innocent people. Perpetrating the greatest crimes like mass murder, fraud, and counterfeiting is the hallmark of a democratic government. Democracy is an immoral, illogical, illegitimate, failed idea. It's proven to be a failure in practice and in theory. Slavery is alive and well in USSA and each person born here is forced into a yoke of massive debt per illegitimate contracts known as Treasury bonds, aka slavery futures.
All governments are illegitimate and immoral, because taxation is immoral: whether one person mugs you on the street or a million people vote to mug you, it's still theft. Governments claiming to be protectors of property rights while operating with stolen money is a farce. And it's only a gang of criminals who would claim to protect the public while persecuting any one who tries to set up competing services to protect the public. The idea of government is a great enemy of mankind.
Unlike governments, private providers of security and arbitration services who operate based on voluntary exchange, rather than theft, can be legitimate.
"there are actually no forces of history; there is only the history of force"
This article seems too pessimistic to me. There is the inexorable accumulation of knowledge in science, including that of human action. And there is a LOT of time left in the future.
Most of which effectively gets stolen from the originators by the state and large corporations. Can you imagine how much Einstein would have been worth if he had received compensation for his ideas equal to even 1% of the economic value they have yielded throughout the world?
>Most of which [knowledge] effectively gets stolen
NO. Copying is not theft: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fw-MFeR8Frw
>Can you imagine how much Einstein would have been worth if he had received compensation for his ideas
Ideas have little objective exchange value; i.e. they have a low price. Ideas can be duplicated almost effortlessly. Ideas are not property because they are not contentious: two people cannot eat the same hamburger at once, but a million people can use the same idea at once.
Ideas are almost not economic goods, because they are not really scarce. There is some scarcity due to the government's artificial patent laws trying to turn these non-contentious goods into "property".
If you feel a particular thinker/artist/musician deserves more wealth, then you can always buy their books/painting/cds or donate to them. But accusing others of theft of their ideas isn't valid; acts of copying do not deprive the original creator of anything.
Any intellectuals who like thinking about such things should very definitely watch this if they haven't seen it already:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRTfex2VQ7g&feature=player_detailpage#t=719s
Agreed ..patent, copywright, logos and even music rights are all forms of protection rackets
Can someone tell me what form of organization should replace the state? I'd like to end the central bank or make it 100% transparent sunshine law style.
>Can someone tell me what form of organization should replace the state?
1. Organizations that depend on voluntary exchange (providing services that people want and will pay for), rather than coercion and theft
2. Organizations that compete to please consumers instead of being arbitrary monopolies insulated from market disciplines
3. Private security firms competing for business (security guards, nightwatchmen, bounty hunters, repo men, etc.). There may be assassins to take out murderous criminals who through their own actions are estopped from having a right to their life.
4. Private arbitration firms competing for business.
5. Private financial and insurnace companies - that actually go bankrupt if they fail, instead of getting bailouts
6. Firms providing services like bus transport, libraries, and parks; however these will be entirely subject to consumers' willingness to pay or provide charity.
7. Private fire departments that don't let people's houses burn down because of arbitrary bureaurcratic rules http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39516346/ns/us_news-life/t/no-pay-no-spray-firefighters-let-home-burn/
Most likely fire protection services will be provided by insurance companies who have a vested interest in protecting insured properties.
8. Undreamt of things the free market will be able to invent in the absence of violent monopolistic governments
9. Credit score firms and other kinds of reputation assessments to discourage and punish criminal activity
10. Firms that purchase claims of injury from victimized poor people and then pursue the criminals on the basis of the claim
11. Firms (kind of like Consumer Reports) to subject willing companies to inspections and to notify consumers of the safety and quality of foods and pharmaceutical and recreational drugs. (You can buy a generic pack of Marlboro Joints if you want to be safe. Or buy your neighbor's homegrown pot if you want to take a chance.)
12. Private mints that will be incentivized (through the profit motive) to compete to make the best quality and most trusted coins - e.g. silver and gold, not phoney copper and zinc wafers and green confetti
13. Private roads whose owners control rules like what happens to drunk drivers - i.e. the contractual obligations that violators are subject to. If you own a bar and a nearby road, you may choose to not bother drunk drivers that drive there. It's up to customers whose roads they drive on and it's up to freely acting market participants to choose what rules apply where. Of course, if a drunk driver hurts someone, then the driver will most likely be held responsible for the harm they've caused. In any case, drunk driving overall will likely decrease and employment will likely increase once there is no longer a government monopoly on issuing licenses for taxi drivers.
When I flush the toilet, who is going to take my sh$t away? Private firms are going to bring fresh water to the masses? Private firms are going to police the streets? Private firms are going to build the roads? Dude you're dreaming. There are many ways to organize people to get sht done. The corporation is one way. Less formal groups, clubs, NGO's are another, government is another. To say we should have no organized government is just dumb. Please point to one example, anywhere in time, anywhere in space, anywhere, where there was no government and things went swimmingly. Any geographic area in any point in recorded history. The floor is yours.
Turkey
who do you think invented and then developed streets/roads, trade routes, buildings, fresh water supply, electricity, gas, computers, telecoms, sport and all forms of transport?
...who every day delivers your food, clothes, technology, furniture, healthcare and all your wealth, quality of life and all your comfort???
all innovation and progress throughout history has been individual and then enterprise led... the fuktards of politics come along decades after, plant their flag called the 'Dept of Energy', years after the private sector has developed the new technology
Govt has no knowledge. Govt has no skill. Everything Govt wants it buys in from the private sector. The Govt is incapable of developing anything, much less have the commercial skills and discipline to produce it or even duplicate it (see the Hubbal telescope). Govt is the most ignorant, clueless, indiciplined (see budget farce) and incapable institution in every country
the private sector developed the steam engine, steam ships, steam trains and laid the train tracks cross countries... it then moved on to the far more efficient, comfortable, personal and flexible car... but Govt took over the old steam technology and has kept its bankrupt dumb arse alive with subsidies ever since its sell-by-date passed almost a century ago!
i am sick of State school educated retards like yourself that have absolutely no fuking understanding of anything around you or how anything arrived to this point. You can thank your State education for teaching you precisely fuk all about how the world works or developes
everything Govt touches turns to crap
Dude stop it, for real? "it then moved on to the far more efficient, comfortable, personal and flexible car." Who built the roads? Who built the roads and sewage lines for fresh water? Municipal governments grew around the fundamental need for fresh water and sanitation. You think water mains were built by private entities? What do you think the IRR is on a suburban sewer? 0 guy. 0
Government is simply one way of organizing people. A sole proprietorship, a corp, your local Elk lodge is another. Wait do you really think private entities built the roads? Would you consider the Roman Empire a private institution? Wait do you think electricity was brought to rural areas by private entities chasing profit? Do you know anything about the rate of return is on running a wire or building a road to a farmhouse? Let me help you, there is none.Anarchy, what a douche. There is always someone willing to use force (see Africa), it's simply whether you want that person to have some sort of responsibility to the people. I do. I gather you think you can do it alone. good luck with that. Better yet, move somewhere where there is no govt. Try Somalia, send postcards.
Who started the internet?
I'm sorry, I can't let it drop. WHO BUILT THE ROADS? Please tell me what you think the basic cost/return structure is on your average local road. Not a toll highway. The road to your house.
This writer is as wrong now as Fukuyama was in 1989.
+1
Maybe not the end of history. But the past might just be repeated.
http://youtu.be/ORY-mXXgJg4
The moral of the story: show some love to your local Catholic priest.
The fact that the nation state is now in jeopardy does not mean the end of history. It means new forms of world governance...chilly wind blowing down from the melting Arctic!
new forms of world governance
i'm an adult, i need no leader (bankers rent boy), no policy advise, no murdering warmongers doing anything in my name, no health fascists telling me i can't smoke, drink, take drugs, eat fatty meat, salt or sugary drinks. I can handle it all far better than they think i can. And I don't need any local, national or international Govt in my wage packet, taxing my consumption higher. Adult to adult, they can all go fuk themselves silly
No you need to learn how to capitalize the letter "I" properly.
At times I do envy the poor, listless people with no ambition to achieve, and who seem content with just getting by on as little effort as possible. In a way, they are the most free from the pressures and anxieties of our power based social structure. It’s not that those in power can’t get to these people if they wanted to, they just don’t have any economic reason to do so. In other words, it is more costly to turn these lackeys into a social asset than they would be worth.
Sometimes when I travel to remote areas I think to myself, “now there’s a fine place where no one would want to come find me.”
“Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, and the grass grows by itself”. Zen Proverb
good writing.
Except in Canada, which actually works. Next!
No longer able to hide behind the Jeffersonian dream of constitutional freedom and order or the Lincolnian myth that the dream could be preserved at the expense of the principle upon which it was founded, the American state’s demise proves that “the final form of human government” has not yet arrived – not because a final form shouldn’t have arrived but because, for those who have had so much fun during historical times, the aftermath won’t be any fun.
The "American state" does not resemble its foundation, and hasn't for a long, long time. The failure wasn't one of the system or its design, but in the inadequacy of the controls needed to prevent concentration of power.
That is what the framers tried mercilessly to accomplish. With great foresight, they even warned of the means by which power distillation could be forged by a few through sleight-of-hand, manipulation of crises, and incrementalists overriding the principles of the framework.
The American idea remains the greatest of them all, precisely because it sought to establish government through minimizing the potential for individual power grabs. Alas, it has been replaced by an imposter system.
An irony with the fall of the Soviets is that it allowed people to forget the type of antithetical system we ought to avoid. Yet we march forward, led by power-hungry oligarchs toward the same ends.
The argument has been made that the state is predicated on “theft” of property, domestic and foreign; and that very intrinsic nature of the state is the ultimate source of domestic travail, and the casus belli for wars.
Despite its appeal to those who wish to escape taxation, the above argument is quite flawed.
1) It is organized or collective power, whether private or public, that is the source of organized abuses. Whether in China, Europe, or elsewhere, the absence of official state organized power has given rise to the ad hoc organized power of unofficial “state” entities (i.e., criminal gangs, war lords, drug lords, and the like). And where state authority has in some cases seemingly ‘withered away’, corporate power (whether the East India Company or Halliburton) has taken the lead in organized abuse.
2) On a somewhat more technical point, “property” rights do not exist except as allowed by the (official or unofficial) state. The historical “god-given” protections for land, labor, wives, children, or even life against any organized collective power have proven slight indeed. Obviously, those who have obtained property under government protection do not wish to see their property “rights” abrogated, and may regard that as “theft”. They may even further wish to protect their acquired “property” against what they regard as government intrusions, by limiting the role of government to protecting their property, or possibly even ‘abolishing’ government in favor of privatized police forces funded by the well-to-do.
When humans organize, as they invariably do, for collective endeavors, the potential benefits are great. But in that organization is also contained the potential for great abuse and great harm. That is the human conundrum. That is the riddle to (perhaps endlessly) to be solved.
It is a false paradigm to view the problem of organizations and organized power as one between public/private, and it is a misdirected pursuit to attempt to resolve the problem on that basis.
+1,000,000
Rwe2late, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts here, but I must completely disagree.
Yes, private organizations can attempt to abuse their "power", but the natureo of that power is entirely different from that of the State, which claims a MONOPOLY on power within a given territory, and to the abuse of which their is no legal or practical appeal. And to the extent to which many private organizations, such as corporations today, do demonstrably abuse their economic powers, it is almost always only as a result of them being empowered to do so by the State.
Government is institutionalized force, nothing else, and nothing within the honestly private, free-market sphere can make or enforce such a claim.
15 Billion people killed or not existing because of war, eh? So, where would those 15 Billlion be residing now if allowed to live? Especially without the tools and technology tha make feeding the 7 Billion we have today possible, the flip-side of which is our warring technology?
If we had the density of the Native American circa 1600 all across the World, having limited technology to either war on each other or condense into complex city-states, such an outcome would have doomed 50 Billion+ souls to have never existed.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
The End of History is accompanied by and defined by what history, in actuality, is.
So. Their was a fall after all.
We are all Genesis subscribers , now
Did the fall leave all men totally depraved
Then how could we be aware of the results of the fall.
And Distinguish good and evil even if we disagree.
War is Man's evolutionary advantage over the lesser creatures......most of whom can't rise above seeing each other as Happy Meals ! Monedas 2011 Comedy Jihad World Tour
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
George Washington
The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.
John Adams
"Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself."
John Adams
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
John Adams (The Works of John Adams, ed. C. F. Adams, Boston: Little, Brown Co., 1851, 4:31)
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
Samuel Adams
they were speaking to us. but we do not listen to them. they were illuminati. they were on the inside. they saw things as they are and not as the sheep see them. some of them offered to help us so that we could see also. but many do not harken to these words, and for this error, our nation dies.
'[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flag and loyalty-parades…. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.'
- From George Orwell's review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/George_Orwell
Hitler was a Socialist self-injecting Methamphetamine ! DSK was just a Socialist with a nice expense account ! Monedas 2011 Bad Monkey Comedy Tour
on Wed, 05/18/2011 - 10:10
#1286799
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Hitler sold them what we all like to buy.. even me right now.. US verse them! and they suck and we dont and they should not be able to play with heavy equipment or vote! due to their expansive lock on stupidity!
Preach Brother Remus Preach from the Mountaint TOP!
Liberals are always congratulating themselves on how they get it....Darwinism is Divine ! If you dare to suggest that some humanoids have evolved further than others (see Monedas' Arctic Hare musings) because their harsh wintery and warlike environments have removed more dead wood from their gene pools and have rewarded thrift and intelligence...........suddendly Liberals become "Strict Creationists" ! Monedas 2011 Founding Rapists of the DRC
i like it! More!!
".....Lincolnian myth that the dream could be preserved at the expense of the principle upon which it was founded.....".
True, that.
Please, this sort of stuff is so tiring. This sort of eschatology is the underpinning, not the result of the State. Wherever you see eschatological rapture, rest assured there will be no dissolution eventhough society may deteriorate.
It is not that easy.
Lupita's flyin' in to TJ International tonight ! Gonna drizzle a little icing on her Apple Strudel ! Monedas 2011 Cecil the sea sick sea serpent !
Did Free Radical hire Marla Singer? Reading this intense & majestic depiction of reality was as savoring as sipping on a château lafite-rothschild top Bordeaux wine.
Apply this logic to the fundumentals of the US and Global Economies.
Determine the case between Austrian and Keyensian Economics in our current economic climate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zORv8wwiadQ&NR=1&feature=fvwp