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F.A. Hayek On "The Great Utopia"
While it is hardly necessary to provide commentary to one of F.A. Hayek's timeless observations from his book, The Road To Serfdom, rereading the chapter titled The Great Utopia, in this year of what could possibly be the most important election in the history of the United States, in which the US public will be promised nothing short of utopia by virtually every candidate except the one who really knows that fixing America would require pain and sacrifice, is everyone's duty. Courtesy of the Center for Economic Liberty we recreate it below in its entirety, and urge all readers, regardless of political persuasion of economic beliefs to consider what F.A.Hayek was saying some 70 years earlier, and how very applicable it is to our current situation.
The Great Utopia
There can be no doubt that most of those in the democracies who demand a central direction of all economic activity still believe that socialism and individual freedom can be combined. Yet socialism was early recognized by many thinkers as the gravest threat to freedom.
It is rarely remembered now that socialism in its beginnings was frankly authoritarian. It began quite openly as a reaction against the liberalism of the French Revolution. The French writers who laid its foundation had no doubt that their ideas could be put into practice only by a strong dictatorial government. The first of modern planners, Saint-Simon, predicted that those who did not obey his proposed planning boards would be "treated as cattle."
Nobody saw more clearly than the great political thinker de Tocqueville that democracy stands in an irreconcilable conflict with socialism: "Democracy extends the sphere of individual freedom," he said. "Democracy attaches all possible value to each man," he said in 1848, "while socialism makes each man a mere agent, a mere number. Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word: equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude."
To allay these suspicions and to harness to its cart the strongest of all political motives—the craving for freedom — socialists began increasingly to make use of the promise of a "new freedom." Socialism was to bring "economic freedom," without which political freedom was "not worth having."
To make this argument sound plausible, the word "freedom" was subjected to a subtle change in meaning. The word had formerly meant freedom from coercion, from the arbitrary power of other men. Now it was made to mean freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us. Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for a redistribution of wealth.
The claim that a planned economy would produce a substantially larger output than the competitive system is being progressively abandoned by most students of the problem. Yet it is this false hope as much as anything which drives us along the road to planning.
Although our modern socialists' promise of greater freedom is genuine and sincere, in recent years observer after observer has been impressed by the unforeseen consequences of socialism, the extraordinary similarity in many respects of the conditions under "communism" and "fascism." As the writer Peter Drucker expressed it in 1939, "the complete collapse of the belief in the attainability of freedom and equality through Marxism has forced Russia to travel the same road toward a totalitarian society of un-freedom and inequality which Germany has been following. Not that communism and fascism are essentially the same. Fascism is the stage reached after communism has proved an illusion, and it has proved as much an illusion in Russia as in pre-Hitler Germany."
No less significant is the intellectual outlook of the rank and file in the communist and fascist movements in Germany before 1933. The relative ease with which a young communist could be converted into a Nazi or vice versa was well known, best of all to the propagandists of the two parties. The communists and Nazis clashed more frequently with each other than with other parties simply because they competed for the same type of mind and reserved for each other the hatred of the heretic. Their practice showed how closely they are related. To both, the real enemy, the man with whom they had nothing in common, was the liberal of the old type. While to the Nazi the communist and to the communist the Nazi, and to both the socialist, are potential recruits made of the right timber, they both know that there can be no compromise between them and those who really believe in individual freedom.
What is promised to us as the Road to Freedom is in fact the Highroad to Servitude. For it is not difficult to see what must be the consequences when democracy embarks upon a course of planning. The goal of the planning will be described by some such vague term as "the general welfare." There will be no real agreement as to the ends to be attained, and the effect of the people's agreeing that there must be central planning, without agreeing on the ends, will be rather as if a group of people were to commit themselves to take a journey together without agreeing where they want to go: with the result that they may all have to make a journey which most of them do not want at all.
Democratic assemblies cannot function as planning agencies. They cannot produce agreement on everything — the whole direction of the resources of the nation-for the number of possible courses of action will be legion. Even if a congress could, by proceeding step by step and compromising at each point, agree on some scheme, it would certainly in the end satisfy nobody.
To draw up an economic plan in this fashion is even less possible than, for instance, successfully to plan a military campaign by democratic procedure. As in strategy it would become inevitable to delegate the task to experts. And even if, by this expedient, a democracy should succeed in planning every sector of economic activity, it would still have to face the problem of integrating these separate plans into a unitary whole. There will be a stronger and stronger demand that some board or some single individual should be given power to act on their own responsibility. The cry for an economic dictator is a characteristic stage in the movement toward planning. Thus the legislative body will be reduced to choosing the persons who are to have practically absolute power. The whole system will tend toward that kind of dictatorship in which the head of the government is position by popular vote, but where he has all the powers at his command to make certain that the vote will go in the direction he desires.
Planning leads to dictatorship because dictatorship is the most effective instrument of coercion and, as such, essential if central planning on a large scale is to be possible. There is no justification for the widespread belief that, so long as power is conferred by democratic procedure, it cannot be arbitrary; it is not the source of power which prevents it from being arbitrary; to be free from dictatorial qualities, the power must also be limited. A true "dictatorship of the proletariat," even if democratic in form, if it undertook centrally to direct the economic system, would probably destroy personal freedom as completely as any autocracy has ever done.
Individual freedom cannot be reconciled with the supremacy of one single purpose to which the whole of society is permanently subordinated. To a limited extent we ourselves experience this fact in wartime, when subordination of almost everything to the immediate and pressing need is the price at which we preserve our freedom in the long run. The fashionable phrases about doing for the purposes of peace what we have learned.to do for the purposes of war are completely misleading, for it is sensible temporarily to sacrifice freedom in order to make it more secure in the future, but it is quite a different thing to sacrifice liberty permanently in the interests of a planned economy.
To those who have watched the transition from socialism to fascism at close quarters, the connection between the two systems is obvious. The realization of the socialist program means the destruction of freedom. Democratic socialism, the great utopia of the last few generations, is simply not achievable.
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Do what you can to alleviate some suffering: http://www.worldvision.org
Altruism is merely substituting your own misery for someone else's.
My own personal opinion is rather long and complicated on the matter, so I'll try a Reader's Digest version.
Most people are raised, or at least were, to help others out when you can, as you can. The whole "karma" thing, if you will, give your neighbor help and it'll be returned. Little things add up to big things, etc. etc.
Somewhere along the way, probably during "education," things change. "Don't help the person next to you, it's cheating, and you're cheating them." "The only way to learn is to do it yourself, and if you can't, you're a failure." "Santa Claus will bring you presents, if you're good (and don't get caught when you're bad)."
Then, things get worse as you get older. That which you work hard for, in the current system, is taken away. One is left with less and less time and treasure to use to better those around you, and it snowballs. People become more and more cynical.
There was a time when people actually had the time and/or treasure to go and do "noble causes" and even fight for what they believed in, like the Lafayette Escadrille, Flying Tigers, etc., missionaries or whatever floats your boat. Now, barely squeaking by for the most part, focus turns inward, and "causes" go unbidden.
This is just my view, and mine alone, so take it or leave it.
The 'solutions' proferred by governments are emotional lozenges to stimulate suport from the populas, not much more than that. By the time the 'help' is finished you have a bigger clusterfuck. If you feel that things are of your concern then by all means try and help, but don't expect to coerce others. It's all just a sad sham.
maybe once we help all the 15 million unemployed, the millions of homeless, the kids on the street, kids in gangs, poor people and people with mental issues IN THE USA FIRST, THEN we can go about the world protecting the other poor people.
If we can't get our own house in order who are we to go and police the world?
And sure you bring up all those, but then why aren't we invading Zimbabwe, DRC, Venezuela, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Burma, Kashmir, etc etc? what aout the poor people there? should we draft the youth of the USA to go fight those wars?
It's not about not caring, its about priorities. It's not the US government's role to protect the world, there's no power that the constitution, which created the federal government, allowing that.
As Americans, individually we can choose to go help. Join a group like doctors without borders or the red cross or any other of hundreds of charities. WE CHOOSE individually, the government doesn't decide for us where to send our lives.
As Americans we can stop our government (stop voting the same assholes in) from selling ARMS to those repressive regimes, or stop giving financial aid and military assistance to those regimes (see Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt etc).
"I was wondering, when doing a rotation in Bosnia, what the fuck the U.S. military was doing there. It ain't our job..."
It ISN'T our job! But it does waste our children and grandchildren. And it wastes our resources, makes central banks and weapons developors and producers rich and indirectly it makes congress rich when the defense money comes to their districts...
Read HOW THE WORLD REALLY WORKS http://www.amazon.com/World-Really-Works-Alan-Jones/dp/0964084813/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327853492&sr=1-1
The message is less about what author Jones writes and more about the list of books he suggests reading. Very interesting.
Yeah, attending a MLK memorial service on the first anniversary of his death, protesting Kent State and campaigning for McGovern (all before age 10) proves that I was raised as a sociopathic Ayn Rand disciple. I probably shouldn't mention my votes for Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown. That will simply cement your mental image of me wearing a white sheet and being silhouetted against the light of a flaming cross.
But I just want folks to be able to live their lives without being forced to sanction the violence used against them. It's a humble ambition.
The system worked beautifully for generations before it got corrupted. Think of all the out-of-work Americans who'd gladly take their jobs at far less pay.
or did it work beautifully until you plebes got too big for your britches? Should've quit whining in 1962 then maybe the elites would've let you have your trinkets...
Read people like eat rand here and learn to identify them. Narrow shallow thinkers that will lever themselves into positions of apparatchiks and informers in the new system. You can smell the class warfare he has vacuumed up and he will be more than happy to use government to create his utopia on your back and blood. All those in positions he holds in esteem cops, firefighters, teachers all union of course will be lords while evil producers will get whats coming to them.
A lot of people can't, or won't, think in more than one dimension.
But yes, it's the firefighters who are the problem.
roflmao..... no you moron, the problems are idiots like YOU who believe that wealth distribution is the mandate from government all this shit brought upon
vote buyers (aka politicians who promise nirvana and unrealistic shit that society cannot afford....)
and as far as "people who risk their life for you and your family must have pensions" (implied by your statements)
fuck that shit.... they made a FREE choice to take on such jobs.... i most certainly did not ask for such "heroism" (as implied by your statements)
and indeed REASON ought to be applied..... i.e. 20 years of such job in exchange for a lifetime of suck the government tit" fuck that shit....
and as far as policemen doing an honest "job" lol you have not heard about the corruption, racism, and thievery by these gorillas ?
in what fucking utopia do you live in ?
get lost i am sick of people like you
How can we know what we have taken out of the system? The debt hasn't been paid. The FED balance sheet has not been paid. It could be we haven't paid for the police or firefighters, we obviously haven't paid for SS, though we did once already.
How do we know the oil is cheap? Please illuminate us on how you came to this conclusion?
Please explain how crime is proportionate to government funding? (can't wait)
Just what did the space program make possible and how would my life be worse without it?
You make a lot of assumptions, yet provide no arguments or citations in support.
Seeing this first could have saved me some time.
The Space Program is responsible for:
teflon-coated fibreglass roofing
Firemen's breathing gear
portable cooling systems for medical treatment
safer school buses
remote operations using robotic arms
Internet-based GPS
and more!
http://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/benefits.html
I suspect without the Space Program / Space Race, there might not be GPS. Solar panels likely have a major root in the space program. Google Maps. Several other things I can think of, but don't have direct sources for at the moment.
Do you have a cost for these items so we can see a cost/ benefit analysis? 471 billion dollars. I'm pretty sure we could have done it privately for less right here on Earth- not that I don't think the exploration of space is useful, especially as it becomes more private and less public...
This obviously does not count the cost of defense projects. Probably trillions?
I liked many of your comments up until this one because they are non-inflammatory and you use historical facts to back them.
Your psyche appears to be convinced that most of the world is filled with people and things that are evil. That is fine if it serves you well, but give people a chance. I don't intend to actually act like I know you, but I often wonder if people who adapt this mentality know subconsciously how screwed up they are so that you assume everyone else is too.
Do you really think that private enterprise, that which created the computer, which uses the internet, would not have invented the internet absent public funding?
What has the space program done? At what cost?
It is also arguable that most disease has been erradicated due to standard of living increases. Made possibly only through private inventions to raise standard of living. Additionally, Hippocrates thought that medicine shall be food and food shall be medicine many years ago.
I actually don't know, but how often are firefighters useful in the modern world? At what cost?
I also don't know, but how often are police useful in dealing with real crime? Seems like most violent crime is committed regardless of laws and cops, and the suspects are rarely caught. At what cost? The rest is locking up non-violent pot smokers and pulling people over that are fully capable of safely driving faster.
Sam, that is a profound and excellent insight, as well as a sobering one that I had never truly considered before. Thank you greatly for providing it --- your post above was, in my opinion, one of the most important in this entire thread.
>>>It is also arguable that most disease has been erradicated due to standard of living increases. Made possibly only through private inventions to raise standard of living.<<<
Wow...private interventions erradicated disease due to standard of living increases??? You have got this ass-backwards. You are deluded.
Sanitary sewer and water service has done more to erradicate disease than any private intervention in the last two centuries...and because of the size and scope of the growing problem during the 19th century, there had to be a government response and funding...otherwise you still be wading through your neighbor's nightsoil and garbage and drinking from the contaminated village well.
Read. Get a clue.
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/mdd/v05/i05/html/05ttl.html
First, you can't read and repeat. I said "inventions" not "interventions." Second, he seemed to be talking about vaccinations and drugs so that is why I responded with food as medicine, and more food is more widely available now due in part to machines and cheaper energy as a result of diamond tip drills. Both of which were not invented by government.
But, we can switch subjects, did the government invent the various types of water pipes, does it manufacture them, does it pay for the civil engineers' educations, does it know the material well enough to teach them, did it invent waste water treatment methodology, water pumps, or reverse osmosis water filters?
Most people that I know that work in the business now recognize that it is now completely dependent on government funding, which isn't funding it adequately and is instead squandering the resources. This is the problem with government funding something once, like charity, everyone else forgets about it.
Thank you for the article. It appears that this was done (prior to 1913) without the government needing the deficit spending enabling bulldog Federal Reserve, and some of the work was done by state governments which I fully advocate. I am not an anarchist who says the government should completely disappear.
Inventions, interventions it hardly matters...without municipal, yes, government adoption of sanitary sewer and water service disease would run rampant (and still does in many parts of the world.) No amount of vaccinations and drugs trump simple common sense prevention of this variety.
Yes, the movement started prior to 1913 but was paid for by and large with taxdollars and in many cases bonds were sold to finance the installations both before and after the FED. Sewer and water bonds are still being issued.
>>>did it invent waste water treatment methodology, water pumps,<<<
Yes, in many cases government did those things directly and indirectly.
Pardon, but why do you write such hateful things when someone has diiferent opinion than you?
,
One of your best posts.
I'll go one step further. His best post, by far.
If I request that the government use its prisons and guns to convince you to turn over your hard earned wages to me will you send me flowers?
If it's not the elected government, it will be King Koch and Queen Walton. Show me once in history -- ever -- where it was not.
So then you agree that government is always compromised by the special interests of the rich and powerful. Just like Ayn Rand said.
Ayn forgot that the rich and powerful will make their own government if we don't have our democracy. Yes, they will always try to corrupt government. It is up the people to stop it. People like you will take out the middle man.
Ayn Rand forgot no such thing. Atlas Shrugged is a road map for defeating those who use government to expand and perpetuate their power.
Except Ayn Rand's roadmap is exactly as flawed as Marx's.
Yes, Rand's roadmap was flawed.
Rand was a Sociopath.
And Sociopaths really, really suck at roadmaps.
Rand was the Queen of the Self-Absorbed....
Narcissism spewing out of every pore.
And here we are.
We don't have our democracy. So.....
Sociopaths found their Bible in Rand.
LBJ killed millions on the way to the Great Society. Rand killed no one.
Keep telling yourself that. Most of the neocons are Fucking Rand Sociopaths. Do some research. They've killed millions you fucking idiot.
Please present evidence that the neocons are Randians. It's entirely possible that some neocons have read Ayn Rand but the neocons started as Trotskyites, morphed into Scoop Jackson Democrats and finally emerged as nation building Republican. You know -- the kind of people who love big government.
In any case, LBJ started the Vietnam war over the Gulf of Tonkin lie and proceeded to murder over two million Vietnamese. Rand killed no one.
What is a "Randian?"
I'm terrified that there is such thing as a "Randian."
Are "Randians" like "Greenspanians" or ?
More disturbing is that the Narcissists have found their idol (read: condonement, cover, excuse).
So it's Narcissistic to not want to see your fellow man subjected to the violence of governmental systems. How's that work?
Ayn Rand suggested that individuals withdraw their productivity from the predator class. She simply takes Thoreau's concept of civil disobedience and applies it to the economic realm rather than the political realm -- a superior tactic as the oligarchs don't mind seeing La Fayette park turned into a cattle pen but they really don't like it when individuals seek ways to deny them their productivity.
"Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts... perhaps the fear of a loss of power." John Steinbeck, who I feel was much more insightful than Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand says that you should live by your own values and not let others dictate to you. So read all the Steinbeck you like. But will you permit others the right to live their own lives the way they see fit, even if they don't like Steinbeck?
"I pledge by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine." -- John Galt in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
Uhh- the United States of America... it used to be a Representative Republic- no direct elections except for the Congress. Now it is just a popularity contest to whatever schmuck promises the most.
Senators were elected by State Representatives and Electoral College elected the President.
So the Senators acually had their States best interests in mind and the Electoral College could trump the popularity contest- that was a true balance of power.
Sad how we have degraded into a socialist democracy.
Fucktard, the oligarchs created the gerrymandered congressional districts. Think about it.
"...the United States of America... it used to be a Representative Republic- no direct elections except for the Congress."
Try not to confuse her anymore with facts, she's on a "progressive" roll.
Don't you know we should be just like the europeans! Caving in to fucking bankers! Abrogate our sovereingty for the good of all!
Hey, wait a minute... ;-)
Men aren't angels, according to another JM. Thus there is a role for government. It has to be funded somehow.
We can talk about the appropriate level of spending and size of government, which is worthwhile. But only an ideologue, a dictator with no power, thinks that he has the answer that trumps the will of people in a democracy
1. Men are not angels.
2. Government makes some non-angelic men far more powerful than other non-angelic men.
3. Very powerful non-angelic men use the power of government to perform far more evil than they could have accomplished as individuals.
So limit the size and scope of governent.
But remember that you began this discussion with a flimsy straw-man about police, coercion, and (gasp) going to jail for not paying your taxes. Taxes are a legal obligation in this country. I applaud you voting to minimize them. But pay them and stop whining about it.
In a dmeocracy, the government is only as evil as voters let it become. It can of course be a great evil, but if you are no closet totalitarian/ideologue, then we both know who is to blame.
Government has a monopoly on the use of violence. How can any citizen limit the power of government when that is the case?
I pay my taxes. And I do more than whine about them. I have deliberately reduced the size of my business and now pay fewer taxes as compared to previous years. Atlas shrugged and man is it a relief.
But you're free to keep spinning on that hamster wheel as fast as you can. Remember that every time you earn enough to buy a burger and fries you also buy the bullets which assault innocent people on the other side of the world.
It's called checks and balances.
My hamster wheel is called civilization. It beats the apocalypse-porn wet dreams of the Mad Max crowd.
You are the one who believes in Mad Max. I've never even seen it. You think that without government the world would explode. Funny thing is that it's only the tens of thousands of nuclear warheads produced by government which could actually destroy human society. Why do you project your own irrationality onto others?
Free men seek to interact voluntarily. Why do you pretend otherwise? Is it a debate tactic, an honest mistake or have you deluded yourself about the economic and political views of those whom you dislike?
Mad Max is a movie that was actually pretty cool. It serves as a metaphor for the worldview of the enraged and crippled ideologues that I see on ZH who talk about buying a small arsenal of guns and/or holding up Iran as a model of inocent virtue.
This may or may not be you.
As far as voluntary interaction, here I am laying out my views. What else do you want with respect to interaction?
I am free to not agree with any ideology and point out the ridiculous aspect of each one.
You can't be free to accept or reject any idea until you assert your sovereignty as an individual.
+1 for psychobabble.
Who owns you? You, or the collective?
No one owns me. My wife and kids have a big place in my heart and I do my best to provide as many opportunities for them as I can. I chose to serve those that trust and have faith in my abilities.
The "collective" seems just another device that the weak use to blame others. Implicit whining.
As the government can compel you to do its bidding against your own interest and will what exactly makes you believe that you are not owned?
I have the means to leave if I wish. I chose to not leave. I choose in contrast to pay taxes and accept the costs and obligations palced on me by law in this country.
Thanks for thinking about all the little people who are forced to hand over half of every dollar they earn to one government agency or another for services which they neither request nor require. They don't have the means to escape. You compassion for your neighbors is overwhelming.
Hey, anybody could reverse emigrate across the Rio Grande. But strangely the costs are greater than the benefits. But again, I applaud your efforts to lower your taxes and mine and support them and do my part in that category.
Life is more than taxes, so stop being juvenile and trying to turn this into a compassion critique. You are the one whose ideology demands complete autonomy of the individual, unsympathetic to his failures in life.
Give it up... dumb ideologies, that is.
I am quite sympathetic. I want to keep my money for myself and to help others whom I personally know to be in need. I don't want that money to be instead used to brutalize people at home or abroad.
If you see a man in trouble and insist that someone else be taxed to help that person you can hardly claim compassion on your own part.
I don't claim any such thing on my part. I am honest in saying that neither you nor I give much concern for people unconnecxted to us.
So why did you even bring such a silly diversion up?
Goodnight.
You ask a combative question and then say "good night?" Sweet passive aggressive dreams. Sleep tight. Don't let reality bite.
I'm still here. Just tired of this conversation.
Well it is getting a little thin.
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A world without government would not explode. It would create government so that it becomes a world with government.
There are two parts of the human condition that make this so (on average), like it or not.
The first is that, for whatever reason, the average human wants someone to set the rules. That's why we create gods and allow kings and vote in Presidents. People---again, the average---need to believe somebody or something a little more powerful or a little smarter is in control. People will even take malevolent over nothing, as randomness is scarier to most people than a ruthless leader. There always exists the possibility of a deal with even a malevolent leader. With randomness, there is no deal. Heck, most people's gods are sons of bitches, at least according to every single religion's "holy book", but all gather a flock nonetheless. People rationalize scriptual brutality and unparalleled evil either as part of a "plan" or as a god's purview.
The second thing that makes government inevitable is that Darwinian Socialism always has somebody "more fit", and thus achieving or accumulating more than most. On average, the one who achieves will endeavor to protect his gains by establishing some sort of system that guarantees it. He doesn't want to have to battle the roving and underachieving---but envious---hordes every day. From this some type of government arises.
Perhaps someone can point out an instance or two, in all of human history, of a society where there was no leader. I haven't seen it. The ascension of a leadership class is, in my opinion, the only absolute of the human condition, save for death.
If human nature suddenly changes across the board, maybe we can have a Randian Utopia. I will not see it in my lifetime. What I am more likely to see---though I won't hold my breath on this---is that citizens accept and embrace their role in a democracy to define the limits of government, and to demand that if government is going to aggregate resources, it uses them for the common good. Like the old adage says, it's the worst system there is...except for all the others.
People can learn that security, adjudication and other services often forcibly provided by government can be organized in a voluntary fashion. All conditions upon which peace and security are predicated can be created by the voluntary interaction of sovereign individuals without the abuse inherent in a top down organizational structure.
"I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe -- "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." -- Thoreau
I will not argue that you are wrong. What I will say is that theory and the ideal is trumped by human nature, as I noted in my post. Nothing I have witnessed in my life nor in reading history suggests to me that human nature is on the verge of change.
A system of leadership will always emerge, and once it emerges, it will always be corrupted. The best case is that the citizenry maintains its vigilance, though even that is undoubtedly a false hope. Even a Randian world cannot be implemented because it presupposes a leadership class to teach, and when the lesson goes unheeded (or unwanted), imposition is the only course of action. Kind of a Catch 22. Non-adherents would simply form their own more comfortable (to them) societal structure.
Galt's Gulch is always going to be a gated community of a self-selected few, because its very concept goes against empirical evidence of the human condition. Playing the role of the active citizen is fighting the more beat-able windmill.
It is human nature to identify and solve problems. The government problem will some day be solved if the politicians and their hacks don't blow us to kingdom come first.
Hey! We overloaded the ZH servers and caused it to post replies under the incorrect posts. My first response was to the one where you (CrockettAlmanac.com---I better be clear) used the line "world will not explode if there is no government". Also, akak's response was not to my post, but to another. Maybe this happens a lot on active threads, but I haven't seen it. Maybe it will self-correct if given time, but for the moment it is confusing.
Crockett, I wish I could give you 100 green arrows for that post.
It is just so sad to see such brainwashed and committed statists as this LetThemEatRand fight tooth and nail in defense of their sociopathic overlords. I guess some men are just inherently born to be slaves and servile bootlickers.
Hey, akak. Times are tough. I'm willing to accept chickens in lieu of the 100 green arrows.
I just recently butchered and dressed eight of them, organically raised and fed (while it's still legal), and only wish I could conveniently send you a few.
PS: While I was slicing off their heads, I was imagining they were Grinchgrinch ... and Obombya ... and Pelosi .... and Boehner .... and Romney .... etc. I felt an extra sense of satisfaction that day.
Thank you for proving my point.
Angry.
Violent.
Sociopath.
Me, me, me, me, me, me, meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
Well, just to make you happy, the next time around, I promise I'll be thinking of you too.
Really, your debating skills and logical reasoning leave much to be desire --- it is only rarely that I get the opportunity to see somebody such as yourself balance multiple red herrings on top of a line of strawmen, each dressed up in dirty and repulsive ad hominen attire.
Anyway, even if you think that my imaging chopping off your head would be twisted and sociopathic, or indicative of some homicidal nature on my part (which it would not be, but let's just pretend), reflect on the fact that even if I were to cut off your head in actuality, neither I nor anyone else in a truly free society would have the ability, much less the motivation, to kill millions or tens of millions at a time in war, as the centralized power of your statism so easily allows and indeed encourages.
Ever notice how a lot of the violent sociopaths never do anything violent despite their preparations? Isn't it amazing that despite all the hatred aroused by the "right-wing" radio shows and TV that they never actually commit a violent act? Lots of talk and no action is what I see. This implies that they aren't as evil as you might believe, and that non-well funded individuals actually cannot pull off much violence in any world. The wild west killed off the rapists and criminals without needing courts or police. Do you have that little faith in the common man's psyche?
However, who has committed violence? Who has consolidated wealth and deficit spent to do violence? Who has, by endless deficit spending, pushed millions on the globe further into poverty causing starvation, disease, and death? Ever feel any pain for them while you enjoy your internet and "benefits" from the space program? Or for the single mothers who have seen their real wage get cut in half since deficit spending really took off as we came off the gold standard allowing for the unmitigated theft of the working class?
It is not the individuals who post about their guns and gold here doing these things. It is the people we freely elect and unfortunately idolize.
"Remember that every time you earn enough to buy a burger and fries you also buy the bullets which assault innocent people on the other side of the world."
Well said. Good luck continuing to reduce your tax tribute/blood on your hands. I think acknowledging complicity is an important step in dissociating oneself from further culpability.
The only solution available to my reasoning was to leave, and I did; I'm still not otherwise an angel, but at least in this respect, I no longer compound my villiany by continuing to foreknowingly pay for more genocide. I decided it was an important moral distinction for me personally. Most people I've discussed this with seem to prefer a 'pragmatic compromise' rather than adhere to the hardline standard I have espoused. Of course, by this standard, such compromise amounts to capitulation.
I had a great discussion some years ago with a Spanish physicist one day at Haad Yuan, Koh Pha Ngan, as we talked about Gary Zukav and Fritjof Capra, it occured to me, and I said, "It's very easy to talk about Taoism when we are sitting on a beach in Thailand." I think I went on to muse that to whatever extent life was a game, we were already winning.
There is a 'looking glass' effect. Looking back into the bubble of American life and society, from outside, I can easily see the simple movements and machinations that it took to successfully break with participating in and funding the empire. Most people I know who have looked with the opposite vantage through the threshold of that bubble cannot so easily see their way to pass it, and for so many reasons, they are not able to leave. It is to me now just so many cases of people defining imaginary boxes around themselves from which they are not free to exit, often with elaborate explanations, and yet there is no box.
Taxes are legal. an 85,000 page tax code is not law because it is too complex for a reasonable human to be expected to follow.
It would be like stopping a person on a side walk and asking them to recite pi to 15 places. If they can't, they must pay a toll, if they can they proceed. And it is not possible to say "well only 1,000 pages apply to you so quit 'yer bitchin" 'cause that is not how law works.
If more than 51% of people paid federal tax, there would be a lot more war weariness, depite the fact that is all borrowed money anyway, but servicing the debt would also be an issue in peace time.
Everyone should protest the current tax system which is not actually legal according to any J.D. Anyone who gets charged with tax crimes should be able to plead mentally incapable of standing trial.
Timmay!
I said to the dude above me: "I applaud you voting to minimize taxes."
I agree with everything you say.
Sure. But my point is that atleast in the US, the tax code is not actually legal according to any theory of law (short of tyrrany). It is legal for the government to say something like "smoking pot is forbidden", or "you must pick up dog crap out of your yard, even if you dont own a dog."
Ron Paul would probably issue a bunch of pardons for people in jail for tax issues first, and those dirty non-violent pot smokers second. snarc: but those people who dont own (non-human) pets should probably suffer!
Sorry I misunderstood you. I stand corrected on the nature of our ultracomplicated tax system.
Its just another too big to fail concept. If a law is too complex for a human to understand, then it can not be enforced. I mean heck, Elizabeth Warren is arguing that $5 ATM fees are not legal, but $3 ones are?
My joke was about mitt romneys dog pooping on my lawn during the vacations his "family" takes to visit his peeps (corporations). Bad attempt at humor but it was getting pretty hot in here amonst some posters.
i am going to have to come up with a new schtick when timmy is not part of Obama's second term. Sad on many levels.
Gee, how about this? Don't harm your neighbors, you don't get punished. Don't commit fraud, don't get punished.
You want protection from fire? Pay a fee. Don't give a shit about your house burning down? Don't pay.
Want protection? Get a gun. The Supreme Court says police aren't there to protect you, just to clean up the mess.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia
Want to change things? There's three ways to do it. Through the ballot box (popular elections, how's that working), through the jury box (what's the conviction rate for the bullshit laws by Federal Prosecutors, 95% or so with kept juries?), and with the cartridge box, to start the whole game over again, with unknowable outcomes.
Any way you look at it, it's a rigged game, and I'm not having fun.
I'm a big judeo-christian pacifist. I can only do the Galt/Bhudda thing. And the golden rule stuff you mentioned. And I do acknowledge that law can be used to find oblique justice (they got capone for his murders via tax fraud)
But the system as it is now means every single person is most probably a tax cheat. Including federal employees who are the biggest deliquents. Not just Timmay and Mitt. This is how all police states are set up.
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And so that is why we give concentrated power, in the form of government (the institutionalized monopoly of coercive power) to those least like angels, and to those most motivated and willing to abuse that inordinately concentrated power.
Tell me again how this is supposed to be a solution to the problem?
You clearly don't get the concept of democracy.
Instead you whine and blame the "sheeple" for not seeing things your way.
And you clearly know nothing about human nature and history --- sociopaths will ALWAYS seek concentrated power, and there is far and away no seat of power as concentrated, and as seductive to them, as that in government.
I find one who presumes to know about human nature and history whilst promoting Objectivism, and somehow not imagining a world that is just south of hell, to be quite schitzophrenic.
Who said anything here at all about Objectivism?
For that matter, I am no kneejerk, automatic defender of Ayn Rand --- the woman had her flaws and intellectual contradictions, no doubt. But she still was a tireless defender of liberty, not merely on practical terms, but on MORAL grounds, and for that she deserves a place in the Pro-Freedom Hall of Fame.
Do not let the perfect become the enemy of the good.
You don't get the concept of government. Name one private individual who has ever killed more people or stolen more money than those in government.
Fool. Until a few hundred years ago, "government" was almost always equal to a King or Queen. Our system keeps those fuckers at bay. Your philosophy would bring them back to power.
Fuck you are a disingenuous bastard, and a blatant liar to boot.
Show me a war waged by a Wal-Mart or GM, or a "War on Drugs" waged by any private concern, or ANY business that has a gulag of prisons in which those opposed to it can be and are held incommunicado indefinitely while being physically tortured.
Are you fucking serious?
ALL of our current wars are waged to benefit corporations: Boeing, Halliburton, Shell, BP, Exxon, Rand Corporation, and even GM who makes Hummers now.
When you look at the list of people who visit the Whitehouse each month (oh, you can't), they are all Fortune 500 companies. Do you believe they wage war for the sake of us small business owners? I had no idea just how naive you are. Bravo.
And do you never bother to ask youself just WHY those sociopaths in mega-corporate business (and yes, there are plenty of them there) visit the White House, and Congress, in the first place? Because that is where the POWER is! Without soliciting and teaming up with the concentrated, centralized power of government, they would not have nearly the wealth and power that such "business" interests have today. But your solution to such fascism and crony capitalism? Give even MORE power to government, to dole out to its favored cronies!
How can you not see how INSANE your morally and intellectually bankrupt statism truly is?
We need to DECENTRALIZE power --- not concentrate it further! With you statists, the solution to your failed policies is always MORE of the same failed policies. It would be comical if it were not so tragic.
Let me give it one more try.
Every time throughout thousands of years where a vacuum of centralized power existed, it ended up with: Hitler, Stalin, Hun, Napolean, King George, Queen Victoria, King Tut, Ceaser, etc.
Rand simply ignores this basic tenet of humanity.
Go watch the superbowl next week. Millions of grown men and women will paint their face and root for their team. It is humanity. Better an elected democracy with at least a chance for accountability than a world run by Ayn Rand sociopaths.
When people come to realize that sovereignty lies with individuals alone and make voluntary arrangements to protect that sovereignty there can be no such power vacuum to exploit.
Marx also ignored humanity's flaws.
Ayn Rand pointed out the moochers and looters, whether they acted through religion or politics, always use the Original Sin canard to justify their control.
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To that extent, I agree with you, pathetic as the spectacle actually is. I am and always have been utterly repelled by such kneejerk, collectivist groupthink (which is actually a contradiction in terms, as no actual thinking is involved).
Again, though, with the naive utopianism, which flies in the face of all the history you had just recently referenced.
No, NOT better an elected democracy, which as Congress and Ron Paul's mercilessly attacked campaign is proving daily is NOT a democracy, but an OLIGARCHY dressed up in ill-fitting democratic rags. No, much better would be the acknowledgment that society not only should be but CAN be organized along voluntary lines and free association, rather than through force and institutionalized coercion. Your political proscriptions are regressive in the truest sense of the word, as you constantly look to authoritarianism and the modern equivalent of kings to rule over men, rather than liberty as a guiding light and principle of social organization.
You forget that Americans, and by extension the rest of the western world, had the golden goose in their hand and chose to trade it for baubles & trinkets. Unless you're advocating for a reset of the population, what makes you thing that Rand's Objectivism ever has a chance to see the light of day?
As LetThemEatRand had stated, there is a reason that nature (especially human nature) abhors a void. You're a silly person to think that somehow your paper theories will ever work in the real world.
You know I loved Rand when I was a selfish, narcissistic teenager who thought the world revolved around him. Then I grew up and realized that the world wasn't as simplistic or lonely as it seemed.
I'm not a Ron Paul fan. I don't care if his campaigned is attacked.
In fact, it should be attacked, like all platforms, and be put to the test.
But I do care that the MSM is evidently suppressing his campain
altogether. That's inexcusable given his support and pertinence.
I'll fight for his right to be heard even if I strongly disagree with it.
All I can say here as I shake my head is that government does a lot more than kill people.
There are wars that a part of a noble purpose, and wars that do not. An example of the former was the one that saved millions of Jews, homosexuals, and other people that didn't fit the mold.
I suspect significant tunnel-vision in your thinking, which when combined to some ideology is one of the greatest problems the world holds.
Like it wasn't government that imprisoned and killed those Jews and homosexuals.
So your real point in all of this is that you want no government at all?
There is a difference between Mao's China and Singapore. These differences should matter in your arguments more than they have thus far.
There is no way you can convince me that we should live in a world with no government. That is like driving through Manhattan with no stoplights. We can't go back to the prairie lifestyle, just too many people in the world.
CA has tunnel vision but you immediately jump to no government at all as if such wild swings in logic and straw man construction prove anything other than the bankruptcy of worshipping government in any form. The individual must be sovereign.
You and Eat rand are ignorant fools incapable of grasping the argument which is going on above your heads.
Well, I happy to admit I misinterpreted his point, but all I saw was a thumbs down.
I don't worship government. But I admit its purpose and role in human life.
If your point is that the individual must be sovereign, then it is OK for someone to kill a person when they get angry at them. That is an absurdity. There has to be balance in all things.
That last sentence says more about you than me.
"your point is that the individual must be sovereign, then it is OK for someone to kill a person when they get angry at them"
Your really useless at this aren't you.. You could perhaps possibly win a rational argument with me if I stood still long enough for you to put the words in my mouth otherwise your eally ucked..
I'm not trying to win anything here, much less an argument with someone I don't even know. Just evaluationg ideas to kick the types. You aren't adding weight to your words by being abusive. It makes you look small-minded and threatened more than anything.
The sovereignty of one individual has to be balanced by the same sovereignty of other individuals. Men aren't angels.
One does not balance the rights of one individual against the rights of other individuals. The rights of each individual buttress the rights of other individuals. I can not be free if my neighbors are not free. This is liberty. Any just system must be predicated on it.
Hey Crockett. All I am saying is that there have to be limits on an individual's choice of action. Not sure that we disagree in that at all.
I see a role, if not THE role for government in accomplishing this. In fact, I'm not sure how else it can be accomplished, as I consider an association of consenting people a government.
Do you disagree?
Government claims to protect individuals from each other by employing a monopoly of force over all. Ironically this power to tax, detain and kill in the name of individual protection makes individual freedom impossible.
The vast majority of people desire peace and security. Enlightened individuals will realize that individual rights can only be protected by the recognition of individual sovereignty. I own me and you own you. No one can ethically force us to do or not do anything we chose as long as we agree to recognize that others have the same natural rights.
In a free market one can employ security and adjudicative services as one sees fit. If the providers of these services behave in an untoward manner they can be fired and new providers can be employed. Governments object to being fired. When you try to fire them, they fire on you.
It may or may not be ethical in your view, but I am glad that some limited government protects me from the individual sovereignty of others. These others could put heroin in my burger to addict me; they could burn a cross in my yarde because of the color of my skin; they could blame me for all the evils in the world, take my stuff, and put me in jail without a trial or defense.
And I glad to pay the taxes necessary to protect me and others from these evils.
I am not saying all govs are perfect or even great. But you really do seem to be incapable of seeing the dangers of a lynch mob.
I say with a lot of sympathy and trepidation, as I read a lot and even wrote a published book: get your head of of the propaganda and experience the real world. That can help smooth out your views on things a bit.
Why would someone put heroin in your burger? People used to burn crosses and government allowed it. Native Americans were murdered and their lands stolen and government allowed it (they even ignored three supreme court decisions), government does take your stuff- try not paying taxes, you can now be put in jail and even killed without a trial (NDAA).
Still, it is not taxes that protect you. Crimes happen regardless of the number of police and regardless of how full our prisons are ( the fullest in the world). What protects you is that most people do not target each other. It is a small minority and that minority can be dealt with just as easily by private security and private arbitration systems that are dedicated to you, the consuner of their services.
Assuming that Crockett or anyone else is not part of the "real" world is incredibly arrogant and shows a real lack of discernement.
Good, you responded with out setting up a ridiculously shallow straw man.
Balance yes, your right to swing your fist ends at my nose, it is such an elementary concept of individual rights versus societal constraints, ying and yang balance if you will, it did not seem worth mentioning but I guess it is a novel concept for you. Of course men are not angels I am just glad that personal sovereignity no longer means just anyone can be killed as in your former argument. Frankly I am past evaluating ideas for the sake of the practice, any notion other than individual rights to the limit of normal societal constraints is not an idea worth fleshing out, good night.
The essence of "government" is the use of force against others. To the extent that people can freely interact with each other w/o coercion, then there is no force involved and thus there's no government either. It's not hard to imagine, and history is full of examples of, people cooperating on a non-coercive basis on a large scale.
Unfortunately, people being the creatures they are, nothing happens for long before a conflict arises. In case of conflict we have the following choices:
1. Figure out how to negotiate a solution.
2. Endure an issue that's irresolvable.
3. Run, run, run away. (Bravely runs Sir Robin!)
4. Be reasonable and do it their way.
5. Kick their asses and make them do it our way.
Only choice 5 involves government.
Instead of framing the issue as the false-dichotomy of zero or infinite government, don't you think it would be better to focus on minimizing the use of force instead?
Back in the good ole days it was acceptable to beat our women, children, and slaves. Now that folks are so civilized in today's world, such force is generally frowned upon, and yet even without, civilization persists. Why not continue the trend of enlightenment and see how far you can run with the minimization-of-force plan? Please don't tell me that today's world is anywhere near that minimum.
That's delusional, Nazi Germany was a state presided over by totalitarian government. Average Germans didn't voluntarily decide to gang up & persecute anybody.
And as for killing people, here's a good book you should read - The Battle of Hamburg, by Martin Middlebrook, Cassell Military Paperbacks.
So your real point in all of this is that you want no government at all?
There is a difference between Mao's China and Singapore. These differences should matter in your arguments more than they have thus far.
There is no way you can convince me that we should live in a world with no government. That is like driving through Manhattan with no stoplights. We can't go back to the prairie lifestyle, just too many people in the world.
So your real point in all of this is that you is that you are delusional?
Your real point is that when your argument falls flat you turn pretty weak.
We had no idea of the plight of the Jews upon entering WWII. It is therefore illogical to state the WWII was noble based on the premise of saving Jews.
It was well known that concentration camps existed. What was unknown was that those camps would have ovens and gas facilities to literally slaughter people.
It never entered into people's minds that such things would be conceived.
Yep. Good thing no one died in internment camps in the U.S. during the Civil War, or in British South African concentration camps during the Second Boer War.
Perish the thought they would be used through intent or neglect to kill people.
I'm missing your point entirely.
Concentration camps are inherently evil no matter which gov't sets them up.
And turning a blind eye to them while submitting quietly to said gov't ends up worse.
Example please?
You're telling a business owner that he is a socialist parasite. At some point your knee-jerk has to stop and the thought process has to engage. It hasn't happened yet.
If the government took over the production and distribution of pepperoni pizza within a few short years folks like you would come to believe that without government pepperoni pizza would be impossible. You'd say that anyone who didn't support government pizza control hated pizza and wanted the poor to starve.
People here gave you plus ones for that? Really?
Just ignore it. The government schools spent thousands of dollars to train to you disbelieve that which you see with your own eyes.
Private school for you from your inherited wealth? Thanks for all of your productivity and job creation as a child.
Dude, I was raised by a single, working Mom. But in your mind that means that I'm not allowed to want my liberty.
Ha! Let me guess. Your mom got some beneift from the progressive government rules against discrimination? Your mom has social security and/or a pension.
Fuck. The. Rest. Of. Us?
My Mom always said that she made just a little to much to get government benefits but she wouldn't take them anyway. She paid into Social Security all her working life and the government changed the rules on her midstream by increasing the payments (under Reagan) and reducing the payout by changing the computation of CPI (1990s to present). A private company that did such a thing would be liable for prosecution due to fraud.
You scream for more government control in the name of compassion but when confronted with regular people who want to make their way in the world on their own merit and exercise the right to help their own family, friends and neighbors you start freaking out and acting like a victim.
I don't scream out for more government control.
Get a fucking grip, sociopath. Gray areas. Complex thought and all that.
I scream out for not throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Your straw man is a straw man.
You cry out for the redistribution of the wealth earned by the labor of others. When your pilfering is questioned you cry out as if you were a victim of assault.
When did we let the poor starve? Citation please. How do you know whether someone is a business owner or inherited money without asking? Most roads were originally private- there is no reason they can't be again- please prove otherwise.
The internet is not dependent on the government. It can be privately operated. Prove otherwise or the benefit that would derive from government operation.
No, I do not enjoy the offense by the military. It is completely unecessary. Defense would be nice and I'm willing to support that, but that is not what we have.
Energy would be cheaper with all private control.
Now, what are the benefits of socialism, besides the totalitarianism?
Are you fucking serious? Most roads could be private?
Go type into Google how the internet was created. It was created by public university research. It could exist now through private enterprise, thanks to government creation.
Atomic energy -- which no doubt could be fully privatized today -- was developed during WWII. by the government. Remember the Manhattan project?
Basically, like all Randers you want to take the fruits of the labor of the society and turn it to your own benefit. Me. me. me. me. me. Say it. me me me me me me
Yes, roads can be constructed and maintained by private enterprise. It's not that difficult of a concept to grasp. People want roads. Other people want to make a living. The people who want to make a living by building roads can make voluntary arrangements to construct and maintain those roads. There ya go.
No, there you go.
Me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, ad infinitum.
You, and every statist intellectual pervert like you, are a monster. The vast majority of mankind's ills can be laid directly on your doorstep.
You really aren't that fucking stupid, are you? You do realize that throughout the entirety of human history we had Kings and Queens -- no democracy, just the most powerful running the show as you advocate. Have you every fucking thought for a fucking second about what the world would look like if you got your way? Have you ever cracked a history book?
I do not defend kings and queens, any more than I defend this modern-day sham of oligarchic rule dressed up in a thin shroud of democratic trappings. I defend LIBERTY --- you know, that concept with which you are by turns either unfamiliar or opposed. Freedom from government itself --- which is freedom from coercion, from brute force, from the idea that some men have the right to exercise power over others, which is the only real kind of freedom in the first place.
What your small mind cannot understand is that I cry out for liberty.
Liberty from small minded fuckholes who would do away with Democracy in favor of the oligarchs.
Wake up, asshole. Brute force has existed throughout our entire time on the planet. If we let the Koch brothers rule us, we will be ruled by brute force.
From a barage of insults, we see a single question. How would the Koch brothers rule? Please, I really want to know?
They have zero influence on me presently, it is hard to imagine how they would without a government.
There is nothing magical about Democracy. It is so often linked with freedom when it is the opposite. It is the rule of the majority and can be as selfish and uncaring as any despot. What is hard to grasp about the concept that you cannot have freedom where the majority has absolute rule. Absolute rule in any form is incompatible with freedom. To the extent the Koch brothers are liberetarians they do not want to rule us, they want individuals to be free to rule themselves and to exchange goods and services as they see fit without the majority coming in after the fact (after they have reaped the benefits of another labor) and claiming that the value one side got in the free exchange was more than was fair.
Ok. I believe I am starting to see the argument on both sides and I don't believe it is about Rand or Hayek.
The question(s) for the argument may be one of scale when it comes to government. Question one.
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being government having the most control or 1 being the free market having the most control, where are we know?
Second question. Using the same Likert scale, where do we want to be?
Third question is on admininstrative power of different branches on a scale of 1-10. After the heated exchanges (the insults waste time) do you all understand why it is so critical to have an X Prize globally for the next form of government?
If we don't pose the questions and act we may have to accept A Monarchy for the rest of our lives (I am 40). The pyramid model of 666 (it means 160 years of two 80 year periods of Monarchy, depth of administrators) is 4,000 years old.
With the Internet and mass adoption we can all do better and will soon compete or not to build the next model. Please leave the Mothers out of our competition between us or I have full rights to compete playing equally dirty. As adult men and women this is our challenge for our times.
The word "me" does not appear in my post. It appears eight times in yours. So what was your point?
The irony would be funny if it were not so tragic. You are the one who wants to take what is not yours from those who have earned it through their own labor. You want to do this to create a society whose values are to your liking whether it tramples others people's freedom or even sells the working class into economic slavery and when people object you say they are being selfish. Truely stunning.