Is Democracy Failing?

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Anything that attempts to tear down the foundation of the statist cage you inhabit is “Rothbardian” now? Interesting.[/quote]

Wasn’t long ago that you did nothing but post tracts from Murray Rothbard’s materials. Have you moved on to a new flavor of the month? Do tell.

And yes, you are correct. I am always revising my beliefs because learning requires it.

Revising, yes. Hopping from one radical idiocy to another isn’t the mark of learning - in fact, it’s the opposite: it means you aren’t learning at all. That’s a symbol of flakisness, not progress.

Ideas are all that matter. Some of them are good and some of them lead to trouble.

You’ve insisted that “communism is the truth!” and “anarchy is the truth!” - yes, you are a fanstatic barometer of the ideas that “lead to trouble”. Any philosophy that mankind rejects as rank stupidity you have thought to be the One True Solution to all society’s problems. Thanks for your service in reminding us all as to the ideas that lead to trouble and human misery.

[quote]Wouldn’t it be helpful if there was a method to analyze them.

Oh, wait! there is.[/quote]

Let me guess - you stumbled across some article or Wikipedia entry and discovered a “method to analyze” ideas that is…“the truth!”? And let me guess, part two - you want someone here to say “what method are you talking about?” so you can launch into your new, latest-greatest copy-and-paste of something you desperately want to talk about, regardless of thread?

So predictable. What will it be next week, Lifty? Can’t wait to hear the next “truth!”.[/quote]

I have never used the phrase, “is truth” with respect to any ism.

I was interested in the idea of communism…before I understood human action better; but I became skeptical of government as soon as I stepped foot on those yellow foot prints…that is not a new thing.

Oh, well!

Realizing I was incorrect is “flakiness” now? Interesting.

When a new idea passes your ears do you immediately plug them so your brain does not have a chance to process the thought that might follow it?

Heck, I might be a bit childish in my enthusiasm for life and learning but you are a child in a much more destructive manner.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Do you understand that underlying the organization of the T-Nation Forums is anarchy? [/quote]

No, it isn’t.

It is completely voluntary. There are many more examples I could cite for you but you would just say, “no, it cannot work,” while you childishly close your eyes and ears.

Once people come together and establish rules for behavior (and sanctions for non-compliance), you cease to have anarchy, and you cease to enjoy “absolute freedom”. And yes, people do it all the time and always have, ever since the days of the hunter-gatherer.

Prove that the state’s existence is necessary – meaning that there is some role that it must fulfill that cannot be fulfilled by a privately organized and voluntary society.

I don’t have a burden to demonstrate that “the state” is necessary - I only need to demonstrate that it is better than the alternative, which it is.

What you never explain is why free people have consistently formed “states” to fulfill the roles you whine about being fulfilled by private interests. Why is that? Why have people - when given the choice throughout history, from hunting-gathering through the rise of agriculture through the modern age - always rejected “anarchy”?

Organisms organize with or with out the state’s existence – obviously, organization must precede government to begin with. You fail.

When organisms organize, they create a “state” or call it whatever you want, the name doesn’t matter - a government isn’t anything more than the institutionalization of that organization.

Yours is nothing more than the adolescent lament that you can’t do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. The rest is just backfilling claptrap.

[Headhunter]

[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Democracy has not been implemented. On the contrary, it is ONLY democracy that will put an end to the contradictions and antagonisms of the present capitalist system. What you are witnessing is the conflict between the interests of the mass of the people and the continued accumulation on the part of the capitalist class.[/quote]

Democracy and capitalism are incompatible. Voters will always vote to rob their betters – crime is easier than Calculus.

An aristocracy based on intelligence is what the world will eventually become. Bankers and scientists will administer, while the superwealthy own the world (they hire the brains to do this). Elections have basically been a sham since Abe Lincoln.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

I have never used the phrase, “is truth” with respect to any ism.[/quote]

But your commitment to these “isms” leave no room for disagreement or calibration - there is “anarchy!” or there is a crime against your person. It’s “the truth!” that will supply us with earthly paradise! Liberate us from the state! (or whatever you decide we need to be liberated from next week - meat-eating? women’s tennis?)

I was interested in the idea of communism…before I understood human action better; but I became skeptical of government as soon as I stepped foot on those yellow foot prints…that is not a new thing.

You moved from communism to anarchism in one move - clearly, you don’t understand human action better or you would understand actual human beings cannot and do not want to exist in such unrealistic social constructs as your two previous “truths!”.

[quote]Oh, well!

Realizing I was incorrect is “flakiness” now? Interesting.[/quote]

No, being a flake is.

When a new idea passes your ears do you immediately plug them so your brain does not have a chance to process the thought that might follow it?

“The purpose of an open mind is to close it on particular subjects. If you never do, you’ve simply abdicated the responsibility to think.”

Philosophies consigned to the dustbin of history don’t deserve a rehearing just because you refuse to grow up.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Yours is nothing more than the adolescent lament that you can’t do whatever you want to do whenever you want to do it. The rest is just backfilling claptrap. [/quote]

I don’t believe I can do “whatever I want” because I live in a society with other people.

Are you going to prove the necessity of the state or are you going to pull a Ryan P. MacCarter on us?

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

I don’t believe I can do “whatever I want” because I live in a society with other people.[/quote]

Of course you do - you pay your taxes, observe laws you disagree with and generally yield to the state like a good little pragmatist despite your adherence to an uncompromising idea.

The fact that you can’t do whatever you want is your first clue that anarchy is a dead letter.

Are you going to prove the necessity of the state or are you going to pull a Ryan P. MacCarter on us?

See above - I don’t have the burden of proving the necessity of the state because I am not arguing the necessity of the state. I simply have the burden of proving that it is better than the alternative - that we resign protection of our rights to private interests.

I’ve done many times on the facial question, and also demonstrated historical predicate that free people, when free to choose what organization they want, freely opt for “the state”. They do because that is the superior way to preserve liberties and private property as a matter of law.

But you still haven’t told me why, if “anarchy” is so awesomely awesome, why no free people choose it. Odd.

As for the comparison to Ryan P. McCarter, swing and a miss - and realize that you and Ryan are merely two sides of the same coin. Ouch.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
“The purpose of an open mind is to close it on particular subjects. If you never do, you’ve simply abdicated the responsibility to think.”
[/quote]

Yes, and you’ve abdicated yours along time ago.

All ideas require serious mental scrutiny or else they cannot be rightly judged. I don’t think you can honestly judge something until it is understood. You cannot understand something that is nothing more than simple logic yet I am the adolescent one for trying to point it out to you?

In stead of saying something doesn’t work or is stupid – especially since you refuse to consider the possibilities – why don’t you just say what it is you want.

You want to be one of those “important” guys with “power”. I am familiar with your type all too well.

Nuff said.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
But you still haven’t told me why, if “anarchy” is so awesomely awesome, why no free people choose it. Odd.[/quote]

Because most people, like you, do not realize it is a choice.

The state certainly isn’t going to teach it to them in their public schools.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
The fact that you can’t do whatever you want is your first clue that anarchy is a dead letter.
[/quote]

Talk about swing and miss…

Anarchy is not about people “doing whatever they want”. It is about respecting relationships.

All of civilization is predicated on relationships – i.e., interpersonal organization. None have the right to interfere in voluntary relationships.

It’s about minding your own business and not hurting other people.

I realize that might seem a bit “childish” to you but I look at it as an ideal worth striving for.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Yes, and you’ve abdicated yours along time ago.[/quote]

You’ve accused me of not having an openly open mind - the quote, as applied, doesn’t make sense, genius.

All ideas require serious mental scrutiny or else they cannot be rightly judged. I don’t think you can honestly judge something until it is understood. You cannot understand something that is nothing more than simple logic yet I am the adolescent one for trying to point it out to you?

No, you are an adolescent for trying to get a rehearing on buffoonish ideas that have had centuries of “mental scrutiny” and been found unimpressive. These aren’t new ideas - and you aren’t some philosophical pioneer because you want to resurrect a school of thought that is dead and buried. It’s just proof you have no common sense.

You aren’t turning over any new stones or examining any new lines of logic - you are just parroting the same banalities that have already been dispensed with over and over.

Do something original instead of doing something obviously derivative and unoriginal while trying to convince us all that you are merely “exploring new ideas” for the first time. It’s nonsense on stilts. The ideas you propose now have been “rightly judged” - you aren’t doing anything interesting or new.

You want to be one of those “important” guys with “power”. I am familiar with your type all too well.

Nope, I just want a good whiskey, a good cigar and a boat on a quiet lake. But some ideas are just too stupid and dangerous not to confront with all the venom I can spare.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

Because most people, like you, do not realize it is a choice.[/quote]

Manure. You mean to say that since the beginning of the time Mankind began organizing and bulding social institutions, Mankind wasn’t aware that they could forego a “state” as one of the options of organizing themselves? They just didn’t know what was an option - over and over throughout thousands of years, through countless cultures and eras?

It just gets goofier and goofier.

Instead of far-fetched, self-serving theories that have no basis in fact or logic, let’s just state it sober: men want a state. That doesn’t mean men want an unlimited state, and to suggest so is to suggest a false choice. But men want an authority to protect certain interests from other men, because no matter how starry-eyed your naive idealism, men tend not to peacefully respect each other’s lives and property.

No social arrangement should be organized on your foolish assumption that men will simply leave each other alone and not bother one another and respect another man’s choices if given the freedom to do so. You have to take Man as is he is, not as you want him to be.

[Brother_Chris]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

Why not?[/quote]

You mean you think anarchy is a plausible form of human organization? I’ve heard Lifticus’ juvenile recitation of why anarchy would work many times - sadly - so if you think you can improve on it, I am all ears.[/quote]

It would work if enough people decided they did not want to be governed by someone else, if you look over the Anabaptist colonies in Rhode Island, many of them are Anarchists, as well as their future counter parts the Amish.

Calvinists can be counted in as well, they were separated off from the rest when they developed. They were one of the originals when it came to working hard and saving money (gold & silver), they all denied the authority of the state (as well as The Church, bless their hearts). It has worked for them, because of their values it stayed that way for some of them.

Even Catholic monks were known to do the same (Orders are not under control of anyone except the head guy, except the Jesuits and they are under the Holy Father), and where chastised for having earthly wealth in such abundance as they did.

However, change happened as it usually does when you are surrounded by other opinions, which is fine, and some where forced into giving up their lands during wars and battles through history.

If you want to study how power corrupts people research the down fall of the Anabaptist Colonies in Rhode Island and allowing a few men to govern an abritrary state.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Nope, I just want a good whiskey, a good cigar and a boat on a quiet lake…[/quote]

Me too! see? We’re not that much different.

[Brother_Chris]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Nope, I just want a good whiskey, a good cigar and a boat on a quiet lake…[/quote]

Me too! see? We’re not that much different.[/quote]

I hate lakes, I’ll take a river and a trot line though, and moonshine thicker than syrup.

[thunderbolt23]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

It would work if enough people decided they did not want to be governed by someone else…[/quote]

Oh good, the same defense of communism.

…if you look over the Anabaptist colonies in Rhode Island, many of them are Anarchists, as well as their future counter parts the Amish.

The Amish are not Anarchists - they are extreme localists with a very strict form of social organization that is a libertarian’s nightmare. The Amish do not reject authority - quite the opposite - they embrace a very harsh form of authority; it just happens to be very local in nature. You aren’t promoting Anarchy - you are promoting Extreme Localism.

Which is fine, of course, but once these “local communities” start interacting with one another - and they will if you have any interest in economic development and/or diffusion of knowledge - more need for authority arises to govern that new, more complex state of affairs. And off we go - and you see the rise of “the state” in human affairs as it was millenia ago.

At any rate, if you think the “extreme local” is optimal, why aren’t you doing it? Go for it. If the Amish can pull it off, why can’t you, Lifticus, Dustin, etc.?

However, change happened as it usually does when you are surrounded by other opinions, which is fine, and some where forced into giving up their lands during wars and battles through history.

Correct - human interaction always seems to modify the working theory; see above w/r/t th eneed for more governance once small, localized communities start interacting with other communities and experiencing “other opinions”. Therefore, you must supply an “ism” that recognizes this human interaction. Anarchy does not.

If you want to study how power corrupts people research the down fall of the Anabaptist Colonies in Rhode Island and allowing a few men to govern an abritrary state.

No need - the question before us is “could Anarchism work?”, to which you still haven’t answered in the affirmative.

[Dustin]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

No need - the question before us is “could Anarchism work?”, to which you still haven’t answered in the affirmative.[/quote]

Wouldn’t you be better off studying libertarianism from some of its well known scholars than trying to be convinced it could work by anonymous people posting on T-Nation? Honestly, what information would have to be presented to you to suffice as a reasonable answer?

I’m just saying that I doubt anything presented to you here would do justice to the ideology, nor would it “convert” you.

If you are truly curious as to how or could anarchism work, read, for instance, Lysander Spooner or Murray Rothbard. I came to the conclusion that anarchism could work because of what I have studied, it wasn’t because I read a thread here on T-Nation and declared, “I’m a libertarian!”

Lastly, I’m not sure what economic school of thought you adhere to, but if think that Austrian economics is bunk, or a good portion of it is, then you probably won’t ever be convinced that libertarianism is viable. One essentially follows the other.

And x2 on the whiskey and cigar.

[Deorum]

No democracy is not failing, the Marxist philosophies instituted within these “democracies” are failing. When you practice the majority of the 10 planks you can no longer blame “democracy”.

[LIFTICVSMAXIMVS]

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Nope, I just want a good whiskey, a good cigar and a boat on a quiet lake…[/quote]

Me too! see? We’re not that much different.[/quote]

I hate lakes, I’ll take a river and a trot line though, and moonshine thicker than syrup.[/quote]

Prefer ocean. I am landlocked right now so I will take what I can get.

[duffyj2]

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Nope, I just want a good whiskey, a good cigar and a boat on a quiet lake…[/quote]

Me too! see? We’re not that much different.[/quote]

I hate lakes, I’ll take a river and a trot line though, and moonshine thicker than syrup.[/quote]

Prefer ocean. I am landlocked right now so I will take what I can get.[/quote]

If all people were this simple, we wouldn’t have to ask questions like “Is democracy failing?”.

Unfortunately, there are always cunts who want to make things complicated.

[Brother_Chris]

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]Brother Chris wrote:

It would work if enough people decided they did not want to be governed by someone else…[/quote]

Oh good, the same defense of communism.[/quote]

Except mine does not lead to violation of private property.

…if you look over the Anabaptist colonies in Rhode Island, many of them are Anarchists, as well as their future counter parts the Amish.

The Amish are not Anarchists - they are extreme localists with a very strict form of social organization that is a libertarian’s nightmare. The Amish do not reject authority - quite the opposite - they embrace a very harsh form of authority; it just happens to be very local in nature. You aren’t promoting Anarchy - you are promoting Extreme Localism.

Actually they are anarchist, very much so. They come from the old Anabaptist that denied the authority of the state and the church. They did not deny authority, they denied the authority of the state and church.

Which is fine, of course, but once these “local communities” start interacting with one another - and they will if you have any interest in economic development and/or diffusion of knowledge - more need for authority arises to govern that new, more complex state of affairs. And off we go - and you see the rise of “the state” in human affairs as it was millenia ago.

Explain the Amish then, they have been around a long time, very wealthy people. They do not need the State.

At any rate, if you think the “extreme local” is optimal, why aren’t you doing it? Go for it. If the Amish can pull it off, why can’t you, Lifticus, Dustin, etc.?

I do, I live on a ranch. However, you can still have Anarchy in the city, they did it in the “Wild West.” Which from studying history was more peaceful than the cities of the North East.

[quote]

However, change happened as it usually does when you are surrounded by other opinions, which is fine, and some where forced into giving up their lands during wars and battles through history.

Correct - human interaction always seems to modify the working theory; see above w/r/t th eneed for more governance once small, localized communities start interacting with other communities and experiencing “other opinions”. Therefore, you must supply an “ism” that recognizes this human interaction. Anarchy does not.[/quote]

It does speak on it, you assume that there needs to be a coercive state to govern, anarchy does not. You can use private law to govern interactions if governance needs to be implemented.

[quote]

If you want to study how power corrupts people research the down fall of the Anabaptist Colonies in Rhode Island and allowing a few men to govern an abritrary state.

No need - the question before us is “could Anarchism work?”, to which you still haven’t answered in the affirmative.[/quote]

Yes, Anarchism can work. “Such a process [as capitalism] cannot be adopted by a government, for it is not an artificial construct. Capital accumulation, exchange and investment are all naturally occurring” (1). And, in order to keep oneself from violating someone’s private property and liberty (through socialist measures, as the state is inherently a social construct), the state would have to abolished first in order to fully allow capitalism to work.

1 - Thank Goodness for Capitalism - Jonathan M. Finegold Catalan - Mises Daily http://mises.org/daily/4327#ixzz0o2ItQWVk