Waffles

Screw the rest of humanity. To the individual, moral action never was and never will be about them. So to follow true moral action, to intact true change, one simply needs to control oneself. "He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still." -Lao Tzu

Thanks for some points I didn't realize before.

Great post edwinhere Very clear and thorough I remember reading eragon, the fantasy saga, and I found the elvish society very interesting. I think it is very applicable to our post industrial society as we become more like elves, freer from death, and able to use technology, like magic to fulfill our needs and desires. For one, they lived indefinitely, making reproduction rare, to avoid over population. Secondly, they had no concept of binding marriage, because with indefinite life spans, things change. And thirdly, and possibly most interestingly their use of the magic language made it so that they could not speak lies, physically couldn't, making their culture infinitely more subtle, because everything they said was binding. Since we humans don't have such a language, this is less similar, but I think as privacy becomes impossible to keep, such an effect could impact human behavior. Anyway, I find the similarities quite striking.

Screw gold, long live dogecoin

I'll be honest, I only read about a tenth of that, but I think I agree. " The only way to hold back the state is to abolish it entirely. " And that is the challenge that the crypto anarchists have risen to. They changed the question from whether or not there should be regulation to whether or not there can be regulation.

With the relative success of crypto anarchist technology, such as bitcoin and the Tor nettwork, the individual now has power that the state can do nothing about. That's the point, the government literally can't stop this, even if they made up their mind to, which poses some interesting questions. When they lose their fundamental power to regulate the economy, because regulation of trade and minting have been taken away from them, what can they do then? On a second note, these technologies are beginning to leave their prototype stage, so shouldn't we be able to see the stress they put on the government soon?

This is almost exactly the sahara IQ interaction hypothesis http://www.psych-it.com.au/Psychlopedia/article.asp?id=331

The people are only as free as the information is. Say someone has the choice to take trade option a or b or none or whatever. This great, right, but useless if that person doesn't have the knowledge/information to make the best decision (assuming there is a best).

Free society. Haha what an oxymoron.

Bias Alert: this is my opinion, but I'm gonna say it. I haven't lived in france, but I get the impression that they are very nationalistic. They think that France is the center of the universe, and everywhere else sucks, and because of this they are united, so the the socialist/statist system almost works for them, and add this this to their sense of cultural superiority and you have a fabulous recipe for unprecedented bone headedness. What do you think?

Yeah, but culture is a thing, and different populations are different, and still are. However I think it's important to note that geopolitical power is slowly (or not so slowly) disintegrating with the rise of the global economy and market economy. Borders just don't mean as much as they used to, especially with the new existence of the world wide web. On a somewhat relevant note, possession is ten tenths of the law. Ownership is the ability to use, and the current states have ownership because we consent to it by actually paying taxes, and following laws. We don't actually have to obey, but they don't want you to know that, its bad for business. So geopolitical entities exist because the populous allows it, but I think the growing dominance of the market economy will eventually empower the people to break the monopoly on governing by legitimizing another provider. This is essentially what lots of organized crime is, alternate governing providers.

Well, anarchy isn't really a political or social state. it's just a state of mind, a belief that the people in charge are just that, people, and nothing more. So in a way, anarchy is individual empowerment,which is independent of the current state. So in order to encourage individual integrity (which is in my opinion the core principle of anarchy), the most important thing to do is to reveal the current state of affairs, and why we should not be content with it.