The real difference between types of anarchisms

[alexqr1]

I often hear and read about different types of anarchism: anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-capitalism, left and right anarchisms, green... you name it.

 

All of which are fine by me because in reality, the real difference between all of them is how each anarchist believes a free society would eventually be shaped. Would the workers eventually own all the means of production as the anarcho-syndicalists claim? I don't think so, but who knows? The difference between true anarchist schools of thought is just how they believe things would pan out.

 

Now, if someone claiming to be an anacho-syndicalist claims that there is a need to have workers own the means of production and that a centralized effort must be carried out to ensure that happens using violent means, then they can call themselves whatever they want, but they sure as hell are no anarchists... by definition.

[ParaSait]

I see two fundamental differences between left and right anarchism.

The left is absolutely against property rights, whereas the right is absolutely pro property rights.

The left, as a principle, is against hierarchy and the right, as a principle, is against force.

 

They're two extremely important differences, and the left-a's views are so easy to refute. But no property and no hierarchy (and generally being against anything that smells like capitalism) is one of those things they religiously hang on to.

[alexqr1]

The left is absolutely against property rights, whereas the right is absolutely pro property rights.

 

Sure, but if either a left or right "anarchist" is willing to use centralized authority to enforce what they are for or against, then they are not anarchists whether they believe so or not.

So if I am against property rights that is one thing, but if I am willing to use the centralized use of force to keep you from owning property then I can not accurately call myself an anarchist.

 

I am aware of the different schools, but ultimately, if you are an anarchist, then there is nothing you can do to push your agenda other than through non-violent means.

[tasmlab]

 

 

I am aware of the different schools, but ultimately, if you are an anarchist, then there is nothing you can do to push your agenda other than through non-violent means.

 

In this sense, left* and right* anarchism could co-exist.  The commune people could set up their communal and communal factory, own it mutually, not use currency with each other, etc.

 

The an caps could own their property elsewhere.  They could choose to ignore each other or even trade.

 

* Not sure I like the terms "left" and "right" to discuss this, but it's handy enough to get the point across.

[alexqr1]

In this sense, left* and right* anarchism could co-exist.  The commune people could set up their communal and communal factory, own it mutually, not use currency with each other, etc.

 

The an caps could own their property elsewhere.  They could choose to ignore each other or even trade.

 

Exactly!

Time and the market (individual decisions) would decide which is best if any, or if multiple systems would co-exist. All in a peaceful environment. So when someone says they are an anarcho-syndicalist or anarcho-whatever, you need to find out if they are willing to use centralized coercive force to set up their system, if they are, then they are no anachists, but if they are not, then they are not the enemy. They simply have different ideals and preferences regarding an anarchistic society... nothing wrong with that.

[American_Crow]

My anachist thinking is primarily informed by two schools - anarcho capitalism and anarcho primitivism. Anarcho primitivism informs me that anarchy is the natural state of human society, and that organized violence and slavery arose with civilization. Anarcho capitalism informs me that voluntary society is possible in the context of modern society. These two schools are to me the two that make the most consistent and morally compelling cases.

 

I find leftist anarchist ideas inconsistent with what I think of as anarchy (i.e. voluntary society), or at best seem massively inefficient. I have heard of ideas such as parecon (participatory economy) in which everyone is supposed to attend massive meetings to vote on production and such. That strikes me as a massive waste of time. Other ideas involve democratic collectivism in other forms. Perhaps these ideas can work, perhaps they can't, but the vision of society that they propose seems tedious and boring to me. I also don't see within these visions where anyone would find incintive to innovate.

 

Regarding primitivism, in band society there may not be a great deal of innovation, but because lifestyles remain simple there is very little actual work to be done, and much of the work that is to be done is integrated into social activities. Technologies tend to be simple enough that everyone can make and use them, though some individuals may be better at a particular thing than others. The basis for authority in band society is voluntary, based on an individual's perception of who is the most skillful or knowledgable on a particular topic.

 

Contrast that with the idea of maintaining a modern society on a collectivist basis. Modern society requires a great deal more work because all of the technologies and production systems require a great deal of maintenance, so collectivising modern society requires much more work than band sociey, hence less natural play and social activity. Because modern technologies and systems are sophisticated enough that they require specialization, a division of labor has to be created in order to maintain the functionality of society, meaning that if none of the kids are interested in becoming an electrician, too bad. One of them needs to be, or else electricity dies with the last electrician. Because everything is collectivised, however, there is no real incintive to go beyond the minimum required to maintain functionality, which I would expect will lead to a simplification and stagnation of technologies. Meanwhile, there is supposed to still be a reason for people to produce (but why should they?), and there is supposed to still be a reason for people to go in the mines and do other hellish work - but beyond coercion how will anyone be convinced to do so?

 

In my view, it would be a far better bargain to give up on modernity entirely and return to band society than to enter into a collectivist society.

 

Anarcho capitalism offers natural incintive for people to carry on the work required for maintaining a modern society as well as the incintive to innovate, and thus offers modern society that is tolerable.

 

That's my point of view on the matter.

 

Different societies can live side by side each by their own order, but resolving disputes between the two different societies peacefully could present a challenge.

[Tree Frog]

I have found it hard to understand left-wing anarchism such as anarcho-socialism. The ideology contradicts. The way I think about it is:

 

Say I have a runny nose. I take MY tissue out of MY pocket and blow MY Nose. Now say a greasy haired hippy takes MY tissue from MY hand and blows HIS Nose.

 

Six instances of private property down to the most personal levels. For  Anarcho- socialism to exists means that everyone must be in compliance to a "social contract" if you will. Meaning that:

 

Say I have a runny nose. I take THE PEOPLES tissue out of THE PEOPLES pocket and blow THE PEOPLES Nose. Now say a greasy haired hippy takes THE PEOPLES tissue from  THE PEOPLES hand and blows THE PEOPLES Nose.

 

Stefan has even said we would not redistribute body parts, so neither should we redistribute wealth. Because morally they are equivalent. ITS THEFT, regardless.  Unless everyone is in full robot like compliance (knowing how humankind deals with scarcity, NO!), other wise a governing structure must be put into place to redistribute property by use of coercion for cooperation. 

 

 

Anarcho-Capitalism however to me, seems to be the purest form of anarchy, in which you are free to:

 

Take YOUR tissue out of  YOUR pocket and blow YOUR Nose.

 

Now say in the same anarcho- Capitalist society you don't believe capital should be the main motive for production, You are free to go off and:

 

Take THE PEOPLES tissue out of  THE PEOPLES pocket and blow THE PEOPLES Nose.

 

There are a reason why there are no Anarcho-Capitalist regions in collectivist countries (It requires 100% participation and cooperation), however in Capitalistic countries like the US, have allowed Anarcho-Socialist communes to exist along side the established economy.

[StylesGrant]

not all money is bad, not all property is bad, a great deal of hierarchy is unjustly illegitimate or more so redundant, martial force in self defense is justified but coercion is not, structural and cultural coercion through political and economic means is the same thing as force and is immoral

[cynicist]

Now, if someone claiming to be an anacho-syndicalist claims that there is a need to have workers own the means of production and that a centralized effort must be carried out to ensure that happens using violent means, then they can call themselves whatever they want, but they sure as hell are no anarchists... by definition.

 

Which is why they must create new terms or redefine existing ones, such as 'structural violence', to justify the violence they are advocating as a kind of self-defense. It's not much different from statism really.

[MFK]

Which is why they must create new terms or redefine existing ones, such as 'structural violence', to justify the violence they are advocating as a kind of self-defense. It's not much different from statism really.

 

The fact is that, in a "moneyless" society - there's will be still means/forms/medium of exchange, the only difference being that they call it actually: "Resources-based". They talk about trading (or "sharing" - which is an anti-concept, a bogging word) resources directly (as Stefan said: all serious/real economies are and will be "resources-based"); they just don't understood yet that money is simply the universalization of any materiel/physical means of exchange that we can have used in the past. Money is simply set for any kind of resources your want, or any rate, price. need, etc. - that you have and for which you're looking for some compensation. Zeitgeisters and co. evade astutely the reality of the swap-based form of their economical system - by pretending (or, more accurately: prophesying) that the "automation + altruism" formula will immediately surpass and outgrowth every type of economy we've known in the past; this is no more "money never sleeps", but: "machines never get tired"; no more the fact that when you're trying to exchange only manufactured products it is impossible to match in a complex system and on the long run the actual need of everybody, but: in a "gift economy" - everybody will share everything to everyone at every moment for any reason whatsoever, etc.

 

And, for sure ! - the very concept of "structural violence" is a mind-fuck, a non-argument, a complete childish perspective. It is what outrage me the most with the socialists patterns: what they always propose is a immediate shit-load of violence (what they call prudently: the "transition") - that we should accept bu the promise that it will "ends wars and poverty", and make everybody "free" (in AR's terms: non-existent): so, if you know how to read between lines - it's a form of mutation of the "love-hate pathology", a truly narcissistic and immature pattern of behaviour, outcome of childhood in most (all) cases.

 

The keyword is certainly: free - but the answer isn't necessarily (or limited to) capitalism, which is concrete terms, operationally, a system allowing a lot of waste and also the presence of a certain form of violence (not structural, haha, but surely psychological). The AR's version of capitalism is abstract, not concrete: it isn't equipped nor prepared to deal with the present technological issues and the new, emergent paradigms.  

[StylesGrant]

Well certainly, structural violence is a poor word choice, or an anti concept as you call it. And these kind of words tend to develop a negative connotation that often out lasts or expands beyond the original meaning.

 

But I would call a lot of things structural violence. And again,...this should illustrate the ambivalence of the word. Statism is structural violence. National socialism, welfare, the IMF, bailouts, austerity programs, restructuring economies, taxation, government and corporate surveillance. I mean hell anything mentioned in Orwell's book. Or pretty much any of Chomksy's points on US foreign policy. Or for instance, the video about Detroit by Stefan.

 

Colonialism especially comes to mind. There was just an important article in Nat Geo about the Chinese, and other countries buying land to turn into large industrial farms from the sub saharan governments. Whatever fanciful definition in the minds of the ancap and zeitgeisters that has arisen to denote the meaning of structural violence, is in my opinion wrong.

 

I don't think the arguments of African populations against the corrupt behavior of their governments is childish, when it is in regard to their food security and land rights being infringed by outside planning. This is a type of censorship or neo-colonialism at best. Something that  "shitload of violence" isn't relevant to fixing. It's entirely dependent on infrastructure building and planning. 

 

Talk to the food movement groups in America, and you'll see they are almost entirely a combination of populist and libertarian. I dare you to ask them if they want more government agencies to "fix" stuff for them. If that's what you think, you have some research to do. Honestly I can't explain the situation better than Gregory Sam in the interview of the video I posted or in his book The State is Out of Date.

 

Crypto-finance, alternative finance, permaculture, and an open-source tool for multiple parties to work with as an engineering and public planning database, including the Chinese and Brazilian corporations, could literally change the whole continent of Africa and set a precedent for a political, financial, and agricultural model that would force the West to change. Without the concept of open-source, its likely that the "planning" will continue to take place over the heads of the poor there. 

 

I said it once, so again- it's all about trade monopoly. The answer is simple, much simpler than radical socialist central planning which is really sort of a dark ironic comedy when you know the truth (for instance Stefan's video about Che). Stop censoring people, barring people out. Monopolies and middle men drive this, and to think otherwise is total blindness. There is a reason people talk about corporate fascism, corporate surveillance, or corporate state surveillance complex. People in high places care a great deal about being able to censor things, and to think otherwise that they do not seek to suppress other ideas is foolish.

 

Now I pose you this- say people do indeed create public databases, engineering tools, simulators, things along the lines of what Peter Joseph has mentioned as well, but better explained by Robert Steele,. . . it is not altruism or a sharing economy, it is a form of investment..but it is at odds with the secretive nature of neoliberal corporatism. Something tells me the people writing ObamaCare and the Transpacific Partnership are not very keen on your metaphysical definition of access "property" in an open-source system. 

And to further emphasize a point- permaculture is more prudently based upon fiscal economics, technical efficiency, and the conservation and avoidance of waste than the neoliberal capital model or fractional reserve banking and credit based economies. The value rate created in a credit system and its debts, with derivatives and such, are all based on the debt itself or the petroleum, and the amount of food that this can create, or livestock. The amount of externalities in that system are untold when you look at the lost efficiency. These values are based on intangible properties, ulterior motives, and underlying state policies and initiatives, metrics and end goals they have arbitrarily set. Economic efficiency is an extension of scientific efficiency in a real economic model, but not in the petrol-dollar model. 

 

It doesn't matter if you create an an-cap global society and power your tractors and fertilize your fields with infinite unicorn crap, if you manage the land in a wasteful way and build your currency upon wasteful bastard science than you will get a bastard currency. Real wealth, real value, real trade, and real investment, and thus real capital are in technical efficiency and a real resource based economy.

 

So my point is not that I want a resource based economy marxist utopia, but to explain to you that modern capitalism is delusional because it thinks that it is a resourced based economy. The currency is only as sustainable as are the technologies the societies practice. 

 

The banker can print money, but the soil cannot print micronutrients. 

[TDB]

I am aware of the different schools [left or right "anarchist"], but ultimately, if you are an anarchist, then there is nothing you can do to push your agenda other than through non-violent means.

Conflicts would arise from different concepts of property/possession. My impression is, left anarchists might not respect your property boundaries if you have "too much" land or if you were letting some land lie fallow. You, of course, feel entitled to use force to exclude them. They in turn would feel entitled to use force to exclude you. It might not be impossible to come to a workable compromise, but it's not clear what it would look like, if so. I am not sure what they would feel entitled to do about the existence of a factory where workers did not own the capital equipment. Though now that I think about it, while the factory is operating, how can you tell who owns it, besides looking at a piece of paper? Maybe they would have more objection to how profits were shared out. I'm not sure what they would want to do about it, but perhaps some protesting, striking, other nonviolent annoyances? Or maybe they would go all Starbucks on your ass and smash things. I guess you would want to employ a DRO that knows how to handle 'em.

 

[edit]My point being, the definition of "aggression" pretty much takes for granted a basic property/possession system, and that is a bit of a controversy with these guys.

And, for sure ! - the very concept of "structural violence" is a mind-fuck, a non-argument, a complete childish perspective.

I had to look it up after the Peter Joseph debate, but I didn't think it was quite that bad. The verbiage I found at wikipedia failed to really "explain" it, but seemed to suggest it was a politically correct name for 2 related things: simple poverty and a sort of evil twin of the invisible hand, the second order effects of state intervention, that enables some persons (state agents, the politically connected) to disregard the rights of others. They seem to think they should use the state to fix it, an idea that could perhaps replace the old cliche about putting out a fire with gasoline.

Maybe we could appropriate it. When a cop shoots your dog, that's structural violence, man. Or just plain violence? Is it structural violence when the zoning board won't let you grow vegetables in your front yard? Or when someone who could not buy a gun because of gun control laws gets killed by a mugger? Is all prison violence structural violence? When Obama drones a wedding party, is that structural violence? Maybe we should stick to "abuse" or "atrocity."

 

the promise that it will "ends wars and poverty", and make everybody "free"

Always with the bait & switch. "This time I will let you kick the football, Charlie Brown, I promise."

if you manage the land in a wasteful way and build your currency upon wasteful bastard science than you will get a bastard currency. Real wealth, real value, real trade, and real investment, and thus real capital are in technical efficiency and a real resource based economy.

 

[...] modern capitalism is delusional because it thinks that it is a resourced based economy. The currency is only as sustainable as are the technologies the societies practice.

Not sure what you're trying to say.

[MFK]

The specific problem with Zeitgeisters using the very package-deal concept of "structural violence" is that, in their ideology - it is intended to denote and then to crush the free market ! In fact (try to not laugh about it if you can) - they specifically apply it to the the concept of a free economy, like if this vague abstraction of higher-order was precisely design to counteract the concrete possibility of having practical, effective freedom. In the worst debate of all time, both side included, - the debate between P.Jo and Stefbot - notice that the notion comes up at the very moment that was being invoked the concept of a free market, as some sort of "antagonism": "Structural violence > free market". 

 

Argh ! dude ! that has insulted my intelligence so much ! "Ding ! ding ! ding ! BULLSHIT NO APOLOGIES" ! OMFG ! It's like if I was saying to you that  I'm a single caucasian male, and you were replying: "No ! you're a black single-parent female with eleven kids" !

 

Confucius said somewhere that every problems comes in the world when people start to "doublethink" (okay that one is from Orwell) - when they use the term "hot" to mean "cold", the term "right" to mean "left", etc. Associate the concept of "structural violence" to its very theoretical opposite is an act of intellectual sabotage (anti-mind and de facto anti-life): there's nothing to do with that crap. 

 

All examples you quote in your post are relevant to the etymological meaning of the notion: effectively - every kind of statism, planned economy, welfare, communitarianism, etc., are explicits form a massive, ideological, "structural" violence. 

 

A free market cannot be "structurally" violent - it would denote mental illness to process that kind of incoherent argument. 

 

Every system which is not free can however be analyzed through the spectrum and the tools invoked by the notion of structural violence. But we all know that their (Zeitgeisters) problem isn't really with the existence of violence - but with the existence of sovereign self-ownership: as abused children - they cannot processed the fact that this world is organized by its very identifiable, individual properties. 

 

Again - they equate "natural laws" and the so-called "scientific method" with: absolute freedom, peace, solidarity, holism, transcendance, etc. - a bunch of absurd and disgusting anti-concepts trolling and parading these days on the Internet. 

 

 

Confucius shrugged... !

[StylesGrant]

I hate the paper arguments in general. The implied notion that zeitgeisters are statist is controversial. I strongly believe many are, or would be predisposed to it due to ignorance about various key aspects of history. I am more worried about the pretenses and misgivings of people who listen to Peter and Stefan than I am Peter and Stefan.

 

Now we already have a presupposed hypothesis that the leftist anti-market, vegetarian, global warming believing, pro-sustainability will somehow overpower the dominant military-neoliberal-transnational corporate state complex that is American elite interest. And that in your supposed property, you would need a DRO private enforcement (pinkerton?) to run the hippie squatters off your property.

 

What sincerely worried me, was the prison podcast, only about 10 minutes long, of Stefan's. The way he would deal with a rapist. I think he should sell a screenplay on that one, it sounds more thorough than minority report. You need force to blacklist and embargo all participants who would theoretically consider offering refuge to an offender. You've insinuated that people are being kept on a criminal database tied to a DRO or credit bureau. This is something to consider given the severity of having bad credit even now in the debt system we have, in this over financialized system. No one likes the idea of constantly being listed, tracked, and held under a rating system of large credit and other financial and insurance institutions that are monolithic, outside their representation or understanding, and heavily shaped by large political association $.

 

I recommend listening to the Rome series by Dan Carlin to understand the difference between Republican interest and populist interest, and how that played out in the long run. I mention that, because you should also read up about the Texas populist being opposed to North Eastern finance. It is also organized finance that played a large role in sparking both world wars. 

 

Personally I don't think you can take out the aspects of currency in this paper argument, even though Peter is against usury. But I believe currency can become a weapon against organized market hegemony. This is in my mind, a war between Capitalisms. State Imperial Capital vs. Panarchy/Populism/Direct Participation Economics/Counter-Economics (Read the books by Brett Scott http://suitpossum.blogspot.co.uk/p/the-heretics-guide.html and also Raj Patel's books)

 

Peter is obsessed with the idea of the market and usury perpetuating scarcity and inefficiency, so therefor money is bad and etc - MFK outlined the flaws in this. I believe that the capital production + technical complexity has resulted in efficiency also. This is why we have factory looms and not hand deseeding cotton (though essentially textiles are still fueled by near slavery). And there is a strong 'temporal' aspect to capital exploitation or 'structural violence'. The technical efficiency is great for profit, but not for long term profit. The real currency is time, a lot long term economic planning is nothing more than a game of speculation. This is part of the point behind me mentioning 'infinite unicorn crap powered tractors'. If you pumped 'clean' non-externality fuel into this economic argument, the capital agricultural markets would still speculate and rape the local economies because they don't care about the science. You can use technical efficiency for the wrong thing. There is technical efficiency in capitalism, but capitalism is not a resource based economy because the goals of the usage are deliberately unsound from resource management tenets. You cannot tie fractional reserve banking, rent seeking capitalism, and the risk and cost immune carte blanche blank check financialization of central financial institutions driving behavior of stocks to real land value based on industrial concepts. From the permacultural and sustainable ecological understandings of resource management you get more in the long run, sustained regenerative productive capital, temporally.

 

My definition of structural violence IS monopoly economic coordinated intrusion. All an-caps either are ignoring, are lying, or are unaware in cases where they will not concede to well defined cases of intrusive economic suppression against competing ideas. Africa is a story of rampant land abuse, as is colonization and feudalism, simply by the profiteering of the land in the short term or mismanagement and neglect. If people can simply steal money from the region and funnel it into speculative markets elsewhere, then there is no true economic productive capital for those local regions.

 

For example; Money works and wins in the scheme of Western Medicine, and the consequences are playing out. Mercola wrote a good article just recently. I would not even be on this forum, or associating with libertarians, nor skeptical about global warming, but because of having my life sabotaged by rotten scoundrels in the medical complex, I have learned REAL not PAPER political economics. Many of you are underestimating the capacity for collusion and violence when an industry is being protected. 

 

Only obtrusive counter economics, agorism, crypto-finance, as well as other constructs outlined by people like Peter Joseph and Robert Steel can effectively undermine protected economics. But follow the money, and you can see that the goals of global warming advocates and anti-global warming are heavily associated with state-industry collusion interests. There are many, many environmental reasons to support sustainability as a school of thought that do not pertain to carbon. Mother nature has a long list of shit she wants to kill you with long before the global warming argument is arrived at. (strongly suggest listening to interview with Joe Rogan and Randall Carson and Joel Salatin) 

 

You would be surprised how much real political economics you would learn from some health radio people such as Robert Scott Bell or Gary Null. 

 

There is tremendous technical efficiency, complexity in Western medical science, but its geared, through statistics, actuary, premeditation by elite pharmacist to give calculated results. And this is tied to profits. It cannot cure chronic conditions, while Eastern medicine does. Because Eastern medicine is designed on technical efficiency to create long term sustained productive capital i.e. well being. 

 

Pharmaceutical treatment without cure for chronic conditions is a rent seeking behavior that uses intrusive violent political economics organized through cartel to stop sustained technical efficiency for the value of an individual.

 

Peter is always talking about 3D printers. Well, he should be. Any disruptive force that can increase productive abundance should be supported. 

 

Politicians and Lawyers are beautiful with language. They only go to school to learn to lie, they don't need real world arguments, or knowledge of agricultural science, or other science. Just sound good in a debate, and win the day. 

 

Most people want peaceful trade...but there will always be those who want to do harm..with money. The best thing to do with these people is censor them the way they have censored good people....through disruptive economics...to pull the rug out from beneath them...to delegitimize their profiteering. Peter conflates those who do use the profit seeking, individually accountable concept of property with the outright theft, because that is what the magical word structural violence is, it is theft through forceful economic censorship. I give you this quote

 

 

 

• There's no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous. -Cormac McCarthy
• The New York Times, April 19, 1992, "Cormac McCarthy's Venomous Fiction" by Richard B. Woodward

 

I have a socialist friend, whom I debated numerous times to convince him his Belgian government and the EU are evil. He says that the world would be better off run by just scientist. I have to agree with him on that almost. Sadly, elitist corrupt scientist are a key element of the evil. The madd evil genius scientist stereotype comes from somewhere.

 

Everything we have was gotten through some form of violence, and the rights we have wanted were wrought out of the hands of elitists. They give us constitutional rights like a parent gives a child an allowance. 

There are very real natural scientific laws. The western mind has always sought to cheat nature through some arbitrary notion. When people try to sell you that lie, they are enslaving you. So I can sympathize with SOME of Peter's misgivings. There are clearly madmen who run the world who will speculate and engage in financial wizardry at any cost by stealing value elsewhere. And it is theft.  If you lie about natural science, and build finance upon it and sell it you get what I said, you get a bastard currency. This is a perversity, just like those wonderful drugs the doctor gives you to make your depression go away. There is a perversity happening at the biomolecular level.

 

A few more quotes.

 

 

 

 

“In an insane world, a sane man must appear insane.”
-Golic (Aliens 3)

 

 

[“So what you read here is not what I've written. It's what I've said and someone else has written down (sic). . .Newton, for example, "revolutionized" physics and the so-called natural sciences by reducing the physical universe to a linear mathematical equation. . . Each one of these "thinkers" took a piece of the spirituality of human existence and converted it into code, an abstraction. . . Hegel and Marx were heirs to the thinking of Newton, Descartes, Locke and Smith. . . Then Marx put Hegel's philosophy in terms of "materialism," which is to say that Marx despiritualized Hegel's work altogether. . . The European materialist tradition of despiritualizing the universe is very similar to the mental process which goes into dehumanizing another person. . . All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. . . There is another way. There is the traditional Lakota way and the ways of the American Indian peoples. It is the way that knows that humans do not have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony. . .There is no need for a revolutionary theory to bring this about; it's beyond human control. The nature peoples of this planet know this and so they do not theorize about it. Theory is an abstract; our knowledge is real. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution. And that's a prophecy of my people, of the Hopi people and of other correct peoples.”] 

- Speech by Russell Means of Oglala Sioux Lakota tribe at Black Hills International Survival Gathering ;July 1980

[Alan C.]

We don't have to imagine how different types of anarchistic societies would look; we can simply observe real-world examples of societies with varying degrees of private property. Societies in which private property is largely respected produce prosperity for the masses while societies with little or no private property cause impoverishment.Left-anarchists aren't opposed to private property or hierarchy in principle; only in rhetoric.Regarding hierarchy, they oppose monarchy and oligarchy, but not ochlocracy. In other words, they support hierarchy in the form of an inverted pyramid.Regarding private property, they use words and phrases such as 'possessions' and 'occupation and use' in lieu of private property. The objective is to frame the debate in such a way as to rationalize trespass and larceny while vilifying people who justly acquired their property and don't want to be expropriated. Some left-anarchists will accuse property owners of statism, landlordism, rent-seeking, fiefdom, etc.

[TDB]

A free market cannot be "structurally" violent - it would denote mental illness to process that kind of incoherent argument.

All those consumers are conspiring against me to make prices too high! Oh, the humanity! 

insinuated that people are being kept on a criminal database tied to a DRO or credit bureau.

Stef often warns about speculating about the future then jumps right in and does it. Have you ever read "The Transparent Society"? 

My definition of structural violence IS monopoly economic coordinated intrusion. All an-caps either are ignoring, are lying, or are unaware in cases where they will not concede to well defined cases of intrusive economic suppression against competing ideas. Africa is a story of rampant land abuse, as is colonization and feudalism, simply by the profiteering of the land in the short term or mismanagement and neglect. If people can simply steal money from the region and funnel it into speculative markets elsewhere, then there is no true economic productive capital for those local regions.

Not really following this thought. Are you saying ancaps deny intrusive economic suppression exists in Africa?  

There is tremendous technical efficiency, complexity in Western medical science, but its geared, through statistics, actuary, premeditation by elite pharmacist to give calculated results. And this is tied to profits. It cannot cure chronic conditions, while Eastern medicine does. Because Eastern medicine is designed on technical efficiency to create long term sustained productive capital i.e. well being. 

I think you could be clearer. Are you sure you're being objective here? I don't have a problem thinking big pharma is corrupt, but... Has a lot of empirical evidence piled up lately indicating that Eastern medicine is the be-al-end-all and I failed to notice?  

We don't have to imagine how different types of anarchistic societies would look; we can simply observe real-world examples of societies with varying degrees of private property. Societies in which private property is largely respected produce prosperity for the masses while societies with little or no private property cause impoverishment.

Well, I agree with your conclusion, but you are making some fairly sweeping generalizations. And that's a bit like doing econ stats on regions with and without a state, and using those conclusions to debunk ancapism, see what I mean? They don't just want to end private property, they want to replace it with something specific, which as far as I know, has almost never been tried. 

Left-anarchists aren't opposed to private property or hierarchy in principle; only in rhetoric.

Not sure what that means. Saying they just want to change the name? 

Regarding private property, they use words and phrases such as 'possessions' and 'occupation and use' in lieu of private property.

This is the part that always confuses me, use a different word for it and it becomes good. To me it is just a set of rules, whether you call it private property or possessions doesn't matter. Of course, they do want different rules. I'm not sure what the details are.

[Alan C.]

Well, I agree with your conclusion, but you are making some fairly sweeping generalizations. And that's a bit like doing econ stats on regions with and without a state, and using those conclusions to debunk ancapism, see what I mean? They don't just want to end private property, they want to replace it with something specific, which as far as I know, has almost never been tried.

 

Under anarcho-capitalism, coordination of production is facilitated through the pricing mechanism (itself a result of free exchange on the market). The result of this coordination is what gives us computers, smart phones, and stocked shelves at grocery stores.

 

The more interference there is with the pricing mechanism by State intervention, the greater the malinvestment and dislocations. Real-world examples in the U.S. would include the housing and asset bubbles, and shortages and lines during natural disasters that result from price controls and crackdowns on so-called "price gougers."

 

In places with central planning, such as Venezuela, people stand in line all day to get food and personal care products. We're observing the economy of Venezuela slowly grind to a hault in front of our eyes. The more the government interferes, the worse the problem becomes.

 

When I say that left-anarchists do not oppose private property in principle, they demonstrate this through their actions. One cannot denounce private property and simultaneously demand shelter. To do so would be a performative contradiction.

[TDB]

The more interference there is with the pricing mechanism by State intervention, the greater the malinvestment and dislocations. [...]s. The more the government interferes, the worse the problem becomes.

I agree, but I don't think you can come up with a slam dunk statistical analysis. 

One cannot denounce private property and simultaneously demand shelter. To do so would be a performative contradiction.

they want some different flavor of property, under a different name. The slogans sound so much better that way. Not too clear what they would do about it if someone started forming a stock market in the middle of their utopia (assuming by powerful magic that it could be brought into existence).

[ainvision]

I often hear and read about different types of anarchism: anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-capitalism, left and right anarchisms, green... you name it.

 

All of which are fine by me because in reality, the real difference between all of them is how each anarchist believes a free society would eventually be shaped. Would the workers eventually own all the means of production as the anarcho-syndicalists claim? I don't think so, but who knows? The difference between true anarchist schools of thought is just how they believe things would pan out.

 

Now, if someone claiming to be an anacho-syndicalist claims that there is a need to have workers own the means of production and that a centralized effort must be carried out to ensure that happens using violent means, then they can call themselves whatever they want, but they sure as hell are no anarchists... by definition.

One of the best political analytical graphics I've ever seen was the line in the book "None Dare Call It Conspiracy" by Gary Allan. To the left it showed Socialism/Communism and to the right it showed Fascism/Plutocracy/Monarchy/Dictatorship and in the middle Anarchy/Self-Government.

 

The media and most political commentators represent 'anarchy' as revolution and chaos. No-thing could be farther from the truth. 'Serfs', like you and I in the eyes of the 'elites', when left to their own devices will naturally treat others as equals and respect their personal lives and communal lives.

 

When egotism, self-aggrandizement and the delusion of the 'superiority complex' is exhibited by any indivivdual and/or group with a lust for leadership that society is DOOMED!

[Alan C.]

I agree, but I don't think you can come up with a slam dunk statistical analysis.

 

It isn't necessary to conduct controlled experiments to demonstrate direct causation with different societies, and it isn't possible, anyway (Austrian economists acknowledge this). Austrian economics is deductive, which forms conclusions through reasoning.

 

Austrian economics is remarkably accurate in its predictions, and we can observe its predictions unfold in the real world.

[TDB]

It isn't necessary to conduct controlled experiments

Statistical analysis does not imply controlled experiments. Economists do stats all day long, controlled experiments are rare. 

to demonstrate direct causation with different societies, and it isn't possible, anyway (Austrian economists acknowledge this).

Mises claimed that empirical data could illustrate economic principles, but could not verify or refute them. We still have a choice, do statistics, wave our hands vaguely, or just quote the theory. None are particularly satisfying.To come at it from a more FDR direction, you are arguing from consequences, not from morality. Statists will try to convince you that Denmark or Sweden is a socialist paradise, but they cannot tolerate true dissent. 

Austrian economics is deductive, which forms conclusions through reasoning.Austrian economics is remarkably accurate in its predictions, and we can observe its predictions unfold in the real world.

Austrian economics doesn't predict anything, it explains everything. It is a tautology. a vital dependent variable is not observable, much less controllable.

Aprioristic reasoning is purely conceptual and deductive. It cannot produce anything else but tautologies and analytic judgments.-Mises, Human Action

In case this all begins to look like a digression, let me summarize. I read you as claiming "Venezuela proves private property is good and socialism is bad." If you were arguing with a socialist, they'd say something like "what about Sweden and Denmark?" Misis would probably say something like "socialism is impossible, Venezuela is just really inept interventionist capitalism." I actually didn't think the discussion was about state socialism at all, but an attempt to understand what the heck the ancoms really want. So I should probably just shut up.

[StylesGrant]

 

 

Sapolsky Lectures on Human Behavioral Biology

 

More on this later

As well as this , 

score one more for Rogan

[Alan C.]

To come at it from a more FDR direction, you are arguing from consequences, not from morality.

 

. . . Austrian economics doesn't predict anything, it explains everything.

 

You're right. Austrian economics doesn't predict.

 

For the record, I often argue from morality, but the OP asked about different types of anarchisms.

 

I ascribe to anarcho-capitalism, rather than other kinds, because it gets both the morality and economics correct (assuming one wishes to maximize prosperity).

[J. D. Stembal]

Why is TZM mentioned in this thread? It is complete lunacy. How can an artificial intelligence control the global resourced based economy? Humans cannot succeed in a RBE with actual intelligence.

[StylesGrant]

I'm planning on trying to tie in Robert  Sapolsky and others on some points about behavioralism and evolutionary biology affecting economic behavior... but first this really is sort of concretely pertinent to this thread.

 

"

 

What is Left-Libertarianism?

Kevin Carson | June 15th, 2014

 

Left-libertarianism has been getting a lot of buzz recently in the broader American libertarian community. The term “left-libertarian” has been used many ways in American politics, and there seems to be some confusion within the libertarian community itself as to who left-libertarians actually are.

The basic ideas of left-libertarianism, as we at the Alliance of the Libertarian Left (ALL) andCenter for a Stateless Society (C4SS) identify with that label, are broader than our organizations alone. The 1990s were a sort of Steam Engine Time for the general idea of libertarianism with a left-wing orientation, and the use of free market ideas as a weapon against the evils of corporate capitalism; a number of thinkers have developed parallel linesof analysis independently of one another, and it has grown into a large and loose-knit ideological tendency. But considering the disproportionate role ALL and C4SS have played in the growing prominence of this tendency, it’s only appropriate to explain where we’re coming from and what we mean by left-libertarianism.

The oldest and broadest usage of “left-libertarian,” and perhaps most familiar to those in the anarchist movement at large, dates back to the late nineteenth century, and includes pretty much the whole non-statist, horizontalist or decentralist Left — everybody but Social Democrats and Leninists, basically. It was originally used as a synonym for “libertarian socialist” or “anarchist,” and also commonly included syndicalists, council communists, followers of Rosa Luxemburg and Daniel DeLeon, etc. Many of us at C4SS would consider ourselves part of this broader left-libertarian community, although what we mean when we call our position “left-libertarian” is more specific.

To the general public these days, “left-libertarian” is more apt to call to mind a school of thought exemplified within the past twenty years by Hillel Steiner and Peter Vallentyne, among others. Most adherents of this philosophy combine a belief in self-ownership and the non-aggression principle with left-wing views on the limited extent to which individuals can remove property from the common and acquire unlimited rights of disposal over it simply by mixing their labor with it. It overlaps heavily with Georgism and Geolibertarianism. Although this version of left-libertarianism is not coextensive with what we promote at ALL/C4SS, and some of our members would object to aspects of it, it’s easy to imagine an adherent of this philosophy being at home among us.

Within the Anglospheric libertarian community, and those who describe themselves as “liberal” elsewhere in the world, “left-libertarianism” might be associated with Murray Rothbard’s and Karl Hess’s attempt at an alliance with anarchists in the SDS around 1970, and left-Rothbardian movements like Sam Konkin’s Agorism that grew out of it. Although left-Rothbardianism and Konkin’s Agorism are not the official position of the ALL/C4SS, it’s fair to say that we have some organizational continuity with Konkin’s Movement of the Libertarian Left, and a significant part of our oldest core membership come from the left-Rothbardian and Konkinite tradition. I myself do not. We are a multi-tendency coalition that includes left-Rothbardians, classic 19th century individualist anarchists, Georgists, and many other traditions.

There is also a tendency among American libertarians to confuse us with “Bleeding Heart Libertarians,” which is actually the name of a specific blog. Although there is some good writing there and they’ve published some of our stuff, we are not bleeding heart libertarians as such. Bleeding Heart Libertarians are a lot closer to “liberaltarian” fusionism, with deviations ranging from Cass Sunstein’s “libertarian paternalism” to the defense of sweatshops and Israeli settlements. Not to mention most of them aren’t anarchists, and we are.

So now that we’ve considered all the things that we of ALL/C4SS are not, and do not mean by “left-libertarianism,” what do we actually stand for? We call ourselves left-libertarians, first, because we want to recuperate the left-wing roots of free market libertarianism, and second because we want to demonstrate the relevance and usefulness of free market thought for addressing the concerns of today’s Left.

Read more at http://c4ss.org/content/28216

[LovePrevails]

Left Anarchists misattribute cause and effect

[StylesGrant]

Alright so, some more points.

 

This next bit I want to share I hope at least someone will look at for the sake of this thread, because it is only going to be available for the next 24 hours approximately. This is the eating psychology conference, which I decided to reference to at the last minute, realize it could make a valid point. http://eatingpsychologyconference.com/ sign up 

 

Basically in my mind, a big aspect of philosophy and consequentially culture and economics, and hence this thread, should revolve around the body. Stefan constantly factors in developmental biology with parenting and childhood abuse. Lloyd Demause's book is hugely significant for this reason. I spend a fair amount of time studying things related to PTSD and mental illness, especially the influence of entheogens (see reset.me or Rogan rants among others). So here is the psychology of eating. Basically all these things could be broadly defined as the interplay between evolutionary behavioral biology and psychobiology.

 

Often, as in this thread, I will rant about alternative medicine. Which people like Penn Gillette hate. What I really intend with attacking western medicine and psychiatry is no different than the arguments that Stefan has made about Psychiatry. I simply am saying, that the concepts, culture, and assumptions are not in line with real psychobiology. Anglo-Saxon culture lives in its head. The meat body doesn't get factored into the equation.

 

When I make concessions to Peter Joseph its not so much about the economic ideals of communism or capitalism, but simply the reality of the health issues. The idea that you can separate culture, economics, psychology, and physical health is just not sound. They are mixed together in a messy way. And this does not conclude to communitarian outcomes to simply apply a once again mental abstraction of economics to everyone to alleviate their suffering, as this is a half truth. The culture is the larger influence towards how peoples minds will react to adversity, and therefore the outcome of their health. If there is any point I am trying to make in this thread, it is that you cannot centrally plan, materialize, and calculate a culture. Though this is a wide held belief, that you can.

 

Also, here are the lineups for today.

 

• 12:00pm (EST) Dr. Mark Hyman  - A Doctor’s View of Food, Nutrition, and Health

• 12:30pm (EST) Amy Pershing  - The Psychology of Binge Eating

• 1:00pm (EST) Thomas Moore  - A Soulful Approach to Food

• 1:30pm (EST) Jessica Ortner – Tapping Meets Eating Psychology

• 2:00pm (EST) Dr. David Perlmutter  - New & Daring Insights into Brain Health

• 2:30pm (EST) John Assaraf – Mastering Your Mindset

• 3:00pm (EST) Isabelle Tierney – If You Don’t Dare to Love Your Body, Who Will?

• 3:30pm (EST) John Robbins – A Heartfelt Understanding of Food, Planet & Soul

• 4:00pm (EST) Dr. Sara Gottfried – A Deeper Look at Hormones & Sacred Chemistry

• 4:30pm (EST) Jon Gabriel – The Psychobiology of Weight

• 5:00pm (EST) Lindsey Averill – Fattitude: An Empowering Look at Fat

 

Yes some of it is more on the woo woo side, the freaky crystal side...but there are solid illustrations made by the more objective as well. I recommend Dr. Hyman, Jon Gabriel, and Perlmutter especially.

[TDB]

a big aspect of philosophy and consequentially culture and economics, and hence this thread, should revolve around the body.

Either I lack a lot of context, or you are dancing around your point. I am groping to understand what you're saying, beyond the idea that western medicine might be deeply flawed.

[StylesGrant]

So, I'll state something for the record.

I don't get a strong sense that FDR as a whole, though I concede there are individuals here who do, understand the difference between market volunteerism leftist anarchism, and communistic or communitarian and other democratic and egalitarian forms of anarchism.

 

I would strongly agree with Robert Steele, in his interview with Max Keiser, Panarchy is NOT Anarchy. And I am not an an cap or a volunteerist leftist market anarchist. I can best be thought of as a Centrist Panarchist. 

[StylesGrant]

But I have to add, I cannot finish tying in the points to posts I made. Though it certainly would have made a pretty elaborate and interesting post about cultural history in the last two centuries of the west. And, it would not have garnered good agreement, but it would certainly have been interesting. I really do see the strong need for analyzing things from a perspective of culture and evolutionary psychology and biology to understand how culture creates economic behavior. I am fascinated by the concept of moral impositions being a product of culture, and culture being a product of how people choose to handle their own biological imperatives i.e. wants/needs. 

 

All I really wanted to do is debate the moral impositions of hierarchical authoritarianism and communitarism (propertyless anti-individual concepts) and how they formed (which Thaddeus Russell talks about). 

 

But this community and I are incompatible. There is a fairly rigid confirmation bias geared on moral imperatives of western philosophy like Kant, Smith, and especially Rothbard, Mises, and Hayek, and anything that ever influenced who and what Rothbard was and where his morals came from. The guiding principles here are pretty locked in, in terms of how people respond to counter arguments, debate, explanations etc. So I can expect nothing outside that etiquette that Stefan has laid in those books. I am going to stop while I am ahead, with somewhat less regret. I strongly urge you to consider the reputation system, the concept of social shaming, the concept of ego and reputation within small communities, and confirmation bias. I strongly suggest this 7 part series with the Schoolsucksproject and Thaddeus Russell http://schoolsucksproject.com/podcast-269-the-shame-debate-with-thaddeus-russell/

 

I also want to remind you to look at the article I posted about regulatory algorithm. I know right wing capitalist advocates plan to use a moral imperative in how they form society through the crypto-contracts, in terms of how they are structured, the moral principals that are the lattice of which the algorithms code for to create terms and conditions. Its algorithms, but just like criticisms of Zeitgeist, people aren't going to be ruled by those technologies or saved, but only by the morals behind them. Which is why FDR community attacked Peter so vigorously, and for which I am not totally in disagreement at all. If algorithms and crypto-contracts or concepts in a decentralized society have a moral basis behind them that is not in accordance with self-sovereignty and self interest will result in those algorithmic regulatory aspects within the legal contracts resulting in more class privilege and abuse and tyranny, be it socialistic or capitalistic.

 

 

 

Historically, the process by which the bourgeoisie became in the course of the eighteenth century the politically dominant class was masked by the establishment of an explicit, coded and formally egalitarian juridical framework, made possible by the organization of a parliamentary, representative regime. But the development and generalization of disciplinary mechanisms constituted the other, dark side of these processes. The general juridical form that guaranteed a system of rights that were egalitarian in principle was supported by these tiny, everyday, physical mechanisms, by all those systems of micro-power that are essentially non-egalitarian and asymmetrical that we call the disciplines. -Michel Foucalt Discipline and Punish

 

I see that there is a strong need for insulating the core values of the FDR community in order to maintain the principals and moral points that Stefan is trying to make. If there wasn't some sort of rating system, this community and the board would likely fall apart and the good and bad would be lost. I have probably never met a man that I disagree with and simultaneously agree with as vehemently as Stefan Molyneux. I suppose this is an extension of my views on Rothbard. I dont want to repeatedly 'double down' on my belligerence, thus directly implying that I want the community to fall apart, at the expense of losing the good that is here, but I don't want to be censored. 

 

 

I certainly like to play devils advocate. If I weren't that way, I would have never found myself drifting more to capitalistic morals outlined in the work of Stefan or Rothbard or Mises. I certainly wouldn't be the history advocate I was if I didn't play the devil's advocate. I certainly don't claim to have all the self knowledge that is talked about so much here. Frankly, I have observed Stefan's way of dealing with people he doesn't agree with and the way he completely deconstructs call-ins so methodically to refute peoples explanations. Maybe its warranted. Maybe it has its moral basis, maybe it has its principals. But you cannot deny that it is heavy handed and absolute. Stefan doesn't parse his words, when he says he will consistently hammer in his stated principals. He does. For better or worse. 

 

If I were utterly morally opposed to capitalistic principles I would have never started reading left libertarian-ism, nor the history of anarchism, nor the FDR community. I needed historical and moral explanations for what the hell was going on. Anything in terms of the history of anarchism is almost certainly the only example of harmonious consistently moral, morally consistent social structures in modern history.

 

But that also dictates to me that I favor socialistic communitarian values in anarchistic frames like that of Kropotkin more than contemporary State Capitalism. And now it is beginning to be possible to have a propertied, market system coincide with a move towards anarchism, libertarian-ism, and panarchism because of the technology and social backlash, so I have a self interest in trying to survive and utilize a part of those At least Kevin Carson points out that the history of anarchism was always associated with leftist attacks of class privilege. 

 

I was somewhat generically, reactionary and liberal in high-school. I honestly would have taken a greater appeal to this community 3 years ago in college, as I had by that point become much more geared towards 'reputation', 'success'. 'earning respect' 'dignity' and other types of somewhat moralizing cultural pressures. It was the alternative health and paleo nutritionist that exposed me to libertarian economics, and really changed my moral system along with experiences with women, positive experiences, that led me to deciding a more favorable attitude towards capitalistic culture and the value systems inherent with living the American life in a ordered integrated fashion.

 

I thought I could adapt, and develop myself. I was looking for self knowledge even then without knowing about any of this communities notions. I was idealistically under the belief that I could solve issues related to environmental, medical, and public health issues with libertarian and lifestyle changes to a more naturally an-cap friendly approach. I related this simply to business done by environmental consulting firms, game management, and farming businesses for the organic industry, herbal and neutraceutical industries, insurance and policy positions, and large marketing of healthier food systems, and I suppose countless other entrepreneurial fantasies I had during that time. So naturally I became hellishly interested in learning applicable economics and finance.

 

But that ended badly 3 years ago. I was already a sick individual physically and in all ways. But I underwent an accident of sorts, a type of health breakdown related directly to the incompetence of this medical paradigm and the culture behind it. My education was ruined, and I was left broken and for dead. Since then I have learned so many things that have made me so disgusted with the notion of working within the apparatus of environmental law and the legal system in general and our regulatory bodies.

 

And it wasn't just me that was affected. I found out that there were other indications that had affected deceased family members, as well as living ones being essentially screwed. Not to mention the economic detriment I have suffered. And frankly, death is better than giving my brain and skills to the corporate state nexus of scientific endeavors in the medical-pharmaceutical-agronomics-biotech complex or the natural resource field with its marriage to the oil cartels and massive government overreach.

 

And I realize now that even the most well intention ed ant-collectivist anti-welfare culture and moral system cannot if funneled through the lens of Mises economic principals give me the answers I need. Though that it is because this world ain't built on Mises principles, its built on state corporate capitalism. Which itself comes from many moral assumptions about the poor, about work ethic, about human rights, class divisions, fairness, cultural hegemony, religion, etc. Social Darwinism, hyper competition, ruthless materialistic egoism.

 

So I am saying, I don't agree with the morals and principles in this community, its only going to be hurtful in the long run. Its not in my self interest. The reputation system is a moral enforcer. No other way to paint it but that. And the idea of putting reputation on a pedestal carries its own problems. I'd rather hear the truth from a frog on a log, than a proselytizing moral crusader. I use to think that it was a lack of morals, a total failure of my self and capacities, internal sense of responsibility.

 

Or That in society it was the materialistic profusion and decadence that was the result of statism and corporitism and inequality. That these were the causes of misery. But really, these are observations of the ill effects of moral authoritarianism. I even have given a lot of credence to Peter Joseph's anti-materialistic fallacies. I have already posted arguments in this thread that are strongly centered on how much better things would be if there was this absolute efficiency. But I have to concede that such puritanical assumptions about efficiency would only stifle innovative expensive inefficient accidents that turn out to be the ideas that change things.

 

I listened to the video about the truth on immigration. And I did like it, I understood it and where Stefan is coming from. But without a doubt I have my disagreements. I'm not going to accept western hegemonic culture by de facto as a form of fatalism towards tribalism. I grew up in a hellish backwater hyper religious conservative bigoted part of East Texas, and was raised around ex-conns and hardcore alcoholics. I hear people like Thaddeus and countless people that Rogan talks to, and people just cannot stop bitching about progressive and Californian liberals. You are angry for good reasons, but the so called zoo animals you're not used to dealing with still control a huge portion of this countries culture and ideology. And no matter how hard you try to sanitize it with von Mises economics, these people are still religious as can be in the worst possible ways. They are neocons and statists to the core, and very dangerous.

 

More over I am firmly against Western philosophic hegemony. The Lakota Russell Means has a very good point, and I believe Cormac McCarthy's books have an encoded warning against the Western Man, as well. Marxism may be a perversity of Western values, but it is a western creation. The philosophy of logic, science, materialistic inquiry...are all more similar among the western approach to central and decentralized economics, than as compared to eastern esoteric philosophy. It is clear that the Western mind has failed at certain things, and has caused tremendous complications in areas of scientific inquiry regarding medicine and agriculture among others.

 

Though only western science can fix it, there continues to be a lag in how the greater minds view the things that they cannot wrap the western mind around. The Chinese do not have this attitude, as they simply amalgamate and steal everything, so in another 300 years it will be hard to imagine that the Chinese wont be more technologically advanced. Once they completely cross analyze their own philosophical history and esoteric sciences like acupuncture, martial arts, meditation, TCM...when they bring those things from the esoteric to the material...its going to radically change the human condition.

 

I still have hope that technology will begin to develop towards sustainability and to reflect social constructs that are more morally in tune with the real ecological predicaments, more morally equivalent to the inalienable rights of all humans, and more morally honest about all peoples sharing a interrelated, and interdependent fate, more morally honest about the consequences of cultural hegemony and classism being the metaphorical Valdeez Captain at the wheel on 2/5ths of vodka hurling the people on board into utter oblivion while leaving waste and pollution in the midst all while under a power raging egoistic hubris. Indeed, I agree with Thaddeus Russell, I'd rather have a society capable of giving freedom to the worst drunks, whores, derelicts, negligent, homeless, and social rift-raft, the non-integratable pariahs.

 

A society that can handle not always having a contingency or principle in every situation, a moral assumption, or regulating reaction. At least a society with a plurality of morals, cultures, technologies, social constructs, an element of ungarenteed safety, lack of absolute clarity and certainty in outcome -would be more human, less like a total realization of The Wachowskis Brothers, Kevin Kelly's, and Baudrillard's nightmare The Matrix. A Bukowski poem sticks out in my mind vividly

 

 

 

there is enough treachery, hatred violence absurdity in the average
human being to supply any given army on any given day

and the best at murder are those who preach against it
and the best at hate are those who preach love
and the best at war finally are those who preach peace

those who preach god, need god
those who preach peace do not have peace
those who preach peace do not have love

beware the preachers
beware the knowers
beware those who are always reading books
beware those who either detest poverty
or are proud of it
beware those quick to praise
for they need praise in return
beware those who are quick to censor
they are afraid of what they do not know
beware those who seek constant crowds for
they are nothing alone
beware the average man the average woman
beware their love, their love is average
seeks average

but there is genius in their hatred
there is enough genius in their hatred to kill you
to kill anybody
not wanting solitude
not understanding solitude
they will attempt to destroy anything
that differs from their own
not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world
not being able to love fully
they will believe your love incomplete
and then they will hate you
and their hatred will be perfect

like a shining diamond
like a knife
like a mountain
like a tiger
like hemlock

their finest art

[StylesGrant]

Well since we are on to Matrix, and I wanted to include Panarchy discription this is pretty important 

 

 

 

Kevin Kelly

Ten Rules for the Networking Economy
from "New Rules for the New Economy"

(1998)

 

Note

These passages from Kevin Kelly's "New Rules for the New Economy" are only an invitation to read the entire text that is still stimulating and full of insights, even if quite a few years have already elapsed since it was written. The central focus is on the network and on what happens when a multitude of nodes connect and interact. Kelly explores possibilities and opportunities already more or less visible around us, offering suggestions in order to be prepared for the times ahead.

 

 

1) Embrace the Swarm

As power flows away from the center, the competitive advantage belongs to those who learn how to embrace decentralized points of control.

Of all the endeavours we humans are now engaged in, perhaps the grandest of them all is the steady weaving together of our lives, minds, and artefacts into a global scale network.

Any network has two ingredients: nodes and connections. In the grand network we are now assembling, the size of the nodes is collapsing while the quantity and quality of the connections are exploding.

We are connecting everything to everything.

 

2) Increasing Returns.

As the number of connections between people and things add up, the consequences of those connections multiply out even faster, so that initial successes aren't self-limiting, but self-feeding.

Mathematics says the sum value of a network increases as the square of the number of members. In other words, as the number of nodes in a network increases arithmetically, the value of the network increases exponentially.

A good definition of a network is organic behavior in a technological matrix.

Everyday we see evidence of biological growth in technological systems. This is one of the marks of the network economy: that biology has taken root in technology. And this is one of the reason why networks change everything.

 

3) Plentitude, Not Scarcity

As manufacturing techniques perfect the art of making copies plentiful, value is carried by abundance, rather than scarcity, inverting traditional business propositions.

The value of an invention, company, or technology increases exponentially as the number of systems it participates with increase linearity.

The abundance upon which the network economy is built is one of opportunity.

Networks spew fecundity because by connecting everything to everything, they increase the number of potential relationships, and out of relationships come products, services and intangibles.

 

4) Follow the Free

As resource scarcity gives way to abundance, generosity begets wealth. Following the free rehearses the inevitable fall of prices, and takes advantage of the only true scarcity: human attention.

The more an industry makes, the better it learns how to make them, the more the cost drops.

If goods and services become more valuable as they become more plentiful, and if they become cheaper as they become valuable, then the natural extension of this logic says that the most valuable things of all should be those that are ubiquitous and free.

The only factor becoming scarce in a world of abundance is human attention.

 

5) Feed the Web First

As networks entangle all commerce, a firm's primary focus shifts from maximizing the firm's value to maximizing the network's value. Unless the net survives, the firm perishes.

Players compete not by locking in a product on their own but by building webs - lose alliances of companies organised around a mini-ecology - that amplify positive feedbacks to the base technology.

The three great currents of the network economy: vast globalization, steady dematerialization into knowledge, and deep, ubiquitous networking - these three tides are washing over all shores.

 

6) Let Go at the Top

As innovation accelerates, abandoning the highly successful in order to escape from its eventual obsolescence becomes the most difficult and yet most essential task.

An organization can cheer itself silly on its way to becoming the world's expert on dead-end technology. (The nuclear power industry offers one example).

The problem with the top is not too much perfection, but too little perspective. Legendary, long-lived companies are intensely outward-looking.

The competitive advantage goes to the nimble and malleable, the flexible and quick.

 

7) From Places to Spaces

As physical proximity (place) is replaced by multiple interactions with anything, anytime, anywhere (space), the opportunities for intermediaries, middlemen, and mid-size niches expand greatly.

Spaces aren't bound by proximity. The advantage of spaces is rooted less in their nongeographical virtuality and more in their unlimited ability to absorb connections and relationships.

The network economy has set into motion the power of hobby tribes and informed peers.

The only side a network has is outside.

 

8) No Harmony, All Flux

As turbulence and instability become the norm in business, the most effective survival stance is a constant but highly selective disruption that we call innovation.

In a poetic sense, the prime goal of the new economy is to undo - company by company, industry by industry - the industrial economy.

To achieve sustainable innovation you need to seek persistent disequilibrium. To seek persistent disequilibrium means that one must chase after disruption without succumbing to it, or retreating from it.

 

9) Relationship Tech

As the soft trumps the hard, the most powerful technologies are those that enhance, amplify, extend, augment, distill, recall, expand, and develop soft relationships of all types.

The net tends to dismantle authority and shift its allegiance to peer groups. The cultural life in a network economy will not emanate from academia, or the cubicle of corporations, or even primetime media. Rather, it will reside in the small communities of interest known as fans, and 'zines, and subcultures.

The final destiny for the future of the company often seems to be the "virtual corporation" the corporation as a small nexus with essential functions outsourced to subcontractors. But there is an alternative vision of an ultimate destination - the company that is only staffed by customers. No firm will ever reach that extreme, but the trajectory that leads in that direction is the right one.

The network economy is founded on technology but can only be built on relationships. It starts with chips and ends with trust.

 

10) Opportunities Before Efficiencies

As fortunes are made by training machines to be ever more efficient, there is yet far greater wealth to be had by unleashing the inefficient discovery and creation of new opportunities.

The origin of economic wealth begins in opportunities.

Every opportunity seized launches at least two new opportunities

Technology is no panacea. It will never solve the ills or injustices of society. Technology can do only one thing for us - but it is an astonishing thing: Technology brings us an increase in  opportunities.

In the coming era, doing the exactly right next thing is far more fruitful than doing the same thing better.

http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.09/newrules_pr.html

[StylesGrant]

http://schoolsucksproject.com/podcast-297-behold-a-dictator-part-1-of-2-with-thaddeus-russell/

 

Cannot more strongly suggest this podcast for this thread.

 

So let me further make some points.

 

You hear a lot about modernism and post-modernism, and relativism and objectivism. People have tried to hint at the mystical nature of Communism and Fascism, but in the podcast Thaddeus Russell explains that it is actually very objectivist. In this podcast Thaddeus will also correctly point out, as has Peter Joseph, that the most accurately applied case of enlightenment ojbectivist materialist order was the scientific regimentation of military organizations. If you had listened to Dan Carlin's WWI podcasts, he goes into detail about the phenomenal engineering skills of the German Artillery units. They were all crack math wizards. Without the objectivist greco-roman mind, the armies of WWII would have simply been impossible. We know all too well how evil arguing economics from morality can be when it goes wrong, but I don't hear much about the dangers of mathematically controlling people working so well when it becomes the kind of threat that military are. It is certainly true that because of the lack of enlightenment in central Europe, the people were more susceptible to organizing their laws, economics, and social structures through moral authoritarianism, lacking an objectivist approach. But this did not stop them from regimenting their military and peoples in an authoritarian fashion. Pope Leo dictated a need for 'benevolent subservience and father figures'. Thaddeus described the military as a 'total rationalization of man' and something that weeded out 'all but a small, narrow, particular function'. Later, talking about the nature in which the state and church replaced Dunbar's number, and small tribes (hearken to anarcho-primitivism), was a 'total attack on the cultural history of groups of individuals engaging in mutual aid at the town level'. This is to say, the German Nazis, like Peter Joseph, suggested, and implemented, like the New Deal, a rationalized objectivist approach to poverty, which resulted in a drastic reduction of poverty in Germany in the 1930's. What you see is an amalgamation of objectivism and moral authoritarianism. And to a degree by Dan Carlin's arguments, the Russian Communist had better military generals than Hitler...meaning that the organization of divisions was so ultra consequentialist and mathematical, that the Russian troops could better be thought of as a swarm...This quote gives some impression..

 

 

 

Now faced with the immanent impending catastrophe, the question about whether what was happening, that had plagued me so often during the war, seized me again with cruel force. Hundreds of thousands of flowering lives, were being senselessly snuffed out here in Stalingrad. What an immeasurable amount of human talent, plans, hopes, fertile possibilities for the future, were there by being destroyed forever. The criminal insanity of an irresponsible war management, with its superstitious belief in technology, and its utter lack of empathy for the life, value, and dignity of man, had here prepared a hell on earth for us. Of what importance was the individual in his uniqueness and distinctiveness? He felt himself as if distinguished and used up as raw material in a demonic demon of destruction. Here war showed itself in its unmasked brutality. Stalingrad appeared to me as an unsurpassed violation and degeneration of the human essence. I felt myself to be locked into a giant inhuman mechanism, as it was running with deadly precision to its own dissolution and destruction.”
-German private at Stalingrad 1942

 

Eastern health experts will often use the words 'reductionist' and 'narrow' and 'truncated' much much more than Peter Joseph, to describe western pharmacology and medicine. People like Joel Salatin will use those words to describe Western agriculture. It is because of a root philosophical fallacy. Much in the Progressive method, a pharmacologist will design a drug that functions on a 'particular, narrow, function', when this is in fact not how the body works. The body is essentially Hayekian. Ecology, and life systems are Hayekian, market like dynamically regulating, incapable of being encompassed by central governing and an absolute knowledge of outcomes. Thus there are 'truncations' and 'assumptions' made, that explain a large degree of the chronic illness in the West. The only thing I can suggest, is study it concretely in biology. Study biogeochemical cycles, wildlife land management and population ecology, restoration ecology, bioinformatics, forestry, or perhaps network theory, artificial intelligence, and programming language. Or perhaps study the pharmacology of different Chinese and Ayurvedic herbs, and you'll quickly realize how much of a bastardization western pharmacology is.

 

Through the years I have learned a great deal about permaculture, sustainable agriculture, and alternative health, and the main philosophical contention behind people in those fields is the egregious use of the scientific model used to rationalize moral and social proscription and behaviorism -to force people to self regulate through a moral form of internal control under an objectivist guise. This was also something Gad Saad and Joe Rogan discussed (and in fact Rogan talks about it constantly). Applying positivism, enlightenment, and modernist objective philosophy of logic, science, language, epistemology, etc to human behavior was rooted in the Catholic Pope Leo's early concept of 'corporatism', and then further developed into Italian Fascism. While Communism is more mystical and built upon arguing economics from a moral standpoint, it is still strongly rooted in dehumanizing people with the materialist application of social proscription for a more rational man. But in the case of American and German history and culture, corporatism is much more evident. Since the greco-roman rational material mind is behind all of these historical events, it is not a surprise that America today is the full embodiment of a paternalistic relation of puritanical moral proscription to the corporatism ideology. This is traumatically evident in Obamacare, Archer Daniel Midland, Cargrill, Mansanto, Pfizer, NIH, FDA, ADA, AMA, research grants, journals, Ivy league Progressive hegemony in universities, Insurance monopolies, Glaxo-Kline-Smith, Walmart, and other types of cartel behavior. The manner in which the medical field conducts research has deep roots in the corporatism agenda, the methods in which they design cancer drugs, auto-immune drugs, etc. It is whole sale genocide and corporatism gone wrong.

 

Peter Joseph had indeed suggested more of this extension of the scientific principal in the objectivist sense along with a great deal of post modern mysticism to social problems. You can see how this is a rehash. I mention Peter as much as I do, because he incorporated (no pun intended) a great deal of ideas not traditionally associated with Progressivism or Classical Objectivism into his school of thoughts. Then this community wrongfully criticized those concepts not understanding where they come from. A lot of it comes from computer science, AI, chaos theory, network theory, biological sciences, bioinformatics, cybernetics, and are essentially Hayekian in nature. These same theories are very contradictory towards Fordism, Taylorism, and Weber managerial constructs. Personally, I'm hoping I can read Kevin Carson's Organization Theory.

 

All of this is just loud, screaming, clear in your face in The Matrix Trilogy!!

[StylesGrant]

 

Daniel Vitalis: The problem isn't neccessarily what we eat, the problem with what we eat is coming from our psychological relationship to our planet.

Marc David: Science is very bias to think that science has the answer, but science comes through the filter of the human mind, and the human mind can make up whatever it wants to about science, so it seems like what you're doing here, you're taking a step back and saying how is the mind looking at this whole conversation, hmm doesn't it make sense to say, well let's trace back a little bit into our history, 

Daniel Vitalis: The last known point, we need to go back to that last known spot where we got lost, start there, and go wait a second where did we come from, we're just running around like a lost person in a panic. Einstein has, its an almost overused quote but I'm going to use it, we cannot solve the problem with the same thinking we used when we created them, from that mindset, they appear to be solutions at first.

see - 

 

Heidigger

Mckenna

Watts

Paul Stammets

Randall Carlson

Graham hancock

 

For hell's sake, even the article about the history of intellectuals (in favor of natural elistism and anti-intellectualism which I couldn't more strongly disagree with) on von Mises by Rothbard agrees with this sentiment. State supported intellectuals are to be suspect at best and untrustworthy at worst. Most 19th and 20th and 21st century science is statist, and hence corporatism. Though there were certainly many influential independent scientist in the 19th century, its largely eclipsed. Never mind the fact that Tesla wasn't supported by the state, and Bell was......

[StylesGrant]

On a side note.

 

I'm well aware that everything that America and The West could possibly do bad, is blamed by the likes of Chomsky. And of course Progressives want to bring people down into an underclass, so long as there is an overlord priesthood, along with some financial elite and bankers for I suppose variety. And every anarchist school of thought basically hates established structural derived privilege in some kind of sense. So it is well established that there are a lot of people who hate crimes committed by certain entities in Western History. No doubt.

 

So, yes- I am being very critical of greco-roman western culture, history, and philosophy, on a philosophy board. But I have a point I am trying to make here - no one can be immune to criticism, no one can be irreproachable. If Stefan Molyneux were that way, it would undermine what he is trying to do. 

 

I listen to him, because I get a perspective that isn't bias towards the endless accusations against the West. One that is more objective, and coming from a different angle. I listen to him, because he explains the essential good aspects of greco-roman Western culture, history, and philosophy. I just don't want to support total cultural insular value systems of Westernism, in a world where most people aren't of that origin.

 

I am trying to stress that, I don't want to avoid expanding the degree of lens with which inquiry is shown through. I'm not multicultural, if anything I am anti-cultural. Culture is at best, an attempt of humans to interpret their own biology through their own mind. It couldn't possibly be the objective truth.

 

I don't think I need to ask if we'd like to resurrect Aristotle from the dead and ask him if Nicaraguan Coups, and CIA backed contras, death squads that killed Bolivian citizens, and evil corporatism are in fact evil. Isn't it kinda self explanatory?