Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

  • What Do Quora’s Right-wing-oriented Members Think About Anarcho-capitalism?

    The Anarcho Capitalist Research Program (Mises -> Rothbard -> Rothbardians -> Hoppe, and arguably, myself) was interesting in that we completed the Locke/Smith/Hume/Adams/Jefferson attempt to reduce all social science to a single language of property rights, and therefore to natural law (the natural law of reciprocity). This reduction of human behavior to a common, empirical language of perfect commensurability and decidability allowed us to produce a formal logic of cooperation (ethics and politics).

    And in retrospect it’s fairly obvious that the only empirical social science has always been Tort (common law of property), and economics is merely an extension of Tort law to the measurement of externalities, and scale. So, the AC program completed the Anglo Enlightenment, The Roman-Stoic Research Program, and The Aristotelian Enlightenment. Or I would argue, it completed the western philosophical program of Sovereignty by Reciprocity, to which the only answer is rule of law under the natural law of reciprocity, which of necessity produces markets in everything – from association to rule.

    However, the difference between Anarcho Capitalist and Western Upper class Sovereignty, Middle Class Liberty, and Working Class Freedom programs is expressible as the limit to reciprocity. In Anarcho capitalism that reciprocity was inherited from the needs of diasporic pastoralists (middle easterners), and not from landed agrarians (westerners). Pastoralists respect only private property and do not invest in the commons. Whereas landed people respect all investments of all kinds, regardless of their means of production, and compete by the production of commons (hence why old europe is a vast open air museum).

    So while the western Sovereign model of total prohibition on any imposition of costs of any kind, against investments of any kind – at least those that would produce an incentive for retaliation and therefore ‘disharmony’ – can produce a prosperous high trust western civilization with multipliers using the production of commons of all kinds, the middle eastern (Semitic) model of limited prohibition on the imposition of costs against physical property and total avoidance of payment for commons, and maximization of parasitism upon those commons, cannot produce a polity that can survive competition for territory, population, and trade.

    So in that sense, the anarcho capitalist program succeeded in producing a formal logic of cooperation (ethics, law, and politics) but it failed to define the minimum criteria for the production of a survivable polity.

    It’s profoundly ironic that a philosophical system placing highest emphasis on the market, and that would create the formal logic of cooperation, would itself, not question whether a polity constructed under that system of thought, using a pastoralist scope of ethics, would survive in the market for polities, (none has, nor can). And worse, that one expressing the empirical findings of law over millennia would be argued in Rousseau’s vision of man (Roussea/ Kant/ Postmodernists), Kant’s Rationalism (Kant / Marx / Postmodernists), and Jewish diasporic Ethics (Mises/Rothbard/Popper) – instead of Anglo vision of man (Rational), Anglo empiricism(Scientific), Anglo ethics(Reciprocal).

    Sovereignty, Liberty, Freedom, and Subsidy(insurance) are possible only under the total, incremental, suppression of parasitism – the total prohibition on imposition of costs upon the investments of others, of all kinds. And there is no other means of doing so than the common law of reciprocity, we know as tort, extended to the insurance of restitution and punishment for all impositions of costs upon all investments of others.

    So, I have moved quite firmly ‘to the right’ in the sense that the “Right” refers to the group evolutionary strategy we call “Aristocracy”, and aristocracy to the production of Sovereignty, Liberty, Freedom, and Subsidy, through the organized use of violence to impose incremental suppression of all forms of parasitism (cost impositions), through the competition we call ‘debate’ in the form we call ‘jury’ using the means of decidability we call ‘reciprocity’ and the empirical measurement of the imposition of costs against any and all investment in converted opportunities: “property”.

    And I have moved to the right because there is no logical or empirical means of doing otherwise, yet carrying the pretense of one’s ethics as ‘moral’.

    Cheers

    https://www.quora.com/What-do-Quoras-right-wing-oriented-members-think-about-anarcho-capitalism

  • Would Democracy Be A Large Scale Thing If America Did Not Exist?

    No. Democracy was valuable for the left as a means of incrementally bringing about socialism and then communism. For Americans it was a useful ruse in the postwar period to force states to become participants in the world economy and benefits of consumer capitalism.

    https://www.quora.com/Would-democracy-be-a-large-scale-thing-if-America-did-not-exist

  • Why Are Americans So Scared Of Socialism And Communism?

    Because communists were responsible for the world wars and 100M dead, and socialism has empirically failed everywhere it was tried.

    really.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Americans-so-scared-of-socialism-and-communism

  • Why Hasn’t America Stopped White Supremacy?

    Why should it? Really?

    https://www.quora.com/Why-hasnt-America-stopped-white-supremacy

  • Why Are Libertarians So Quickly And Immediately Dismissed In Common Political Discourse?

    The libertarian assessment of the nature of man is demonstrably adolescent.

    https://www.quora.com/Why-are-libertarians-so-quickly-and-immediately-dismissed-in-common-political-discourse

  • Aren’t Conservative And Libertarian Values Generally Fairly Similar On Topics Like Taxes? I Saw A Meme On A Conservative Page With The Quote €˜how The Grinch Stole My Income, By Being Libertarian’. Why Was This?

    Conservatives intuit the family as the central unit of inter-personal, social, economic and political organization, and the pursuit of law, policy, and the production of commons toward that intergenerational (and eugenic) end. It is a tediously empirical and stoic group evolutionary strategy.

    Libertarians intuit the (adolescent) individual as the central unit of inter-personal, social, economic and political organization, and the pursuit of law, policy, and the production of commons toward that individual (and dysgenic) end. The difference being that libertarians demonstrably seek to circumvent all commons and to free ride on those commons they justify as natural under a Rousseauian vision of man’s nature, but empirically man is not rousseauian, nor hobbesian, nor lockean, put purely rational – acting as predator, parasite, competitor, ally, and kin as circumstances suit.

    Communitarians ( women, children, and the weak) intuit those lacking agency as the central unit of inter-personal, social, economic and political organization, and the pursuit of law, policy, and the production of commons toward that communal (and dysgenic) end. They have a desire or need for consensus over and above all other concerns. It is a resistance movement.

    https://www.quora.com/Aren’t-conservative-and-libertarian-values-generally-fairly-similar-on-topics-like-taxes-I-saw-a-meme-on-a-conservative-page-with-the-quote-‘How-the-Grinch-stole-my-income-by-being-libertarian’-Why-was-this

  • How Can Americans (finally) Bridge The Political €˜culture War’ Between Conservatives And Liberal Leaning Ideals?

    It’s not possible becasue the two goals are incompatible. The answer is to reverse the mistake of the civil war, and separate the ‘coasts’ from the ‘core’.

    https://www.quora.com/How-can-Americans-finally-bridge-the-political-‘culture-war’-between-conservatives-and-liberal-leaning-ideals

  • You Have Complete Control Of The Federal Republic Of Nigeria For 20 Years. What Would You Do To Better The Country Across All Sectors (e.g. Education, Economy, Military, National Unity)?

    I’ve looked into this, and the answer is the same for any developing country: if you can produce a judiciary, police force, and military that will enforce property rights, moral (reciprocal) contracts, and where bureaucrats are open to suit by anyone for corruption, then eventually you will prosper.

    Nigeria and Ghana at the very least have nothing but time holding them from becoming an advanced society. There are, in both countries, upper middle class (professionals), and those people are the ones who matter.

    https://www.quora.com/You-have-complete-control-of-the-Federal-Republic-of-Nigeria-for-20-years-What-would-you-do-to-better-the-country-across-all-sectors-e-g-education-economy-military-national-unity

  • Is China Stronger Than America?

    China is a very poor country. But it has more population than the Western world, more population than the African world, about the same or more than the Indian world, less population than the Muslim world, and perhaps most importantly, greater racial and cultural homogeneity than any other people other than the japanese – and that’s coupled with a ‘self righteous’ military, a history and culture of monolithic bureaucracy; no history whatsoever of what we call ‘rule of law’ or individual rights (sovereignty), or peerage; And a severe ‘chip on its shoulder’ for having been backward, and the loser of modern wars, and the poor choice of communism, which is contrary to the Chinese cultural ‘mythos’ that china is the ‘Center of the World’.

    So while it is easy for china to ‘catch up from behind’ using authoritarianism, it is very hard to produce a constantly competitive, and constantly evolving economy given ‘chinese characteristics’. (WHich I won’t go into)

    Can china use her central bureaucracy to concentrate capital in industry and military to achieve by threat, bribery, and obstruction, that which the west achieved by technical innovation, economic expansion, and ‘dragging the world out of ignorance, superstition, tyranny, poverty, and disease?’

    Of course she can.

    And there are more nations in this world that do not want meritocracy than do so. And china, russia, and islam, seem poised to conflict with the west, india, and christian africa.

    I think the period of the west’s ideals has ended and the future belongs to non-market nations.

    Democracy, Liberty, Innovation, Individualism, are western if not scandinavian (english) preoccupations.

    The north sea people are, quite honestly, sons of cattle raiders, pirates, vikings, and warriors. It’s a materialistic heritage.

    Most people had no such luxury.

    https://www.quora.com/Is-China-stronger-than-America

  • Do You Think All Nations On Earth Should Unite As One?

    Since when has any monopoly been good for anyone?

    https://www.quora.com/Do-you-think-all-nations-on-Earth-should-unite-as-one