Saturday, September 24, 2016

Minarchy May Be The Only Viable Practical Path To Freedom

The prospects for proper human freedom appear to be waning in this age of brazen usurpation and other governmental corruption.  It is everywhere one turns, no matter what the nation.

There are those of us who recognize that the proper freedom of a man means he may act as he pleases, so long as he does not violate the rights of his fellows.  This is the very definition of autodiathism, which is equivalent to anarchy, minus the negative connotations.

In a closer-to-ideal world, humanity would return to its roots of autodiatistic governance, where each man governed himself, respected the rights of others to do the same, and generally minded his own business.

We do not, however, live in that world.  Today's world is rife with one man's disrespect for his fellows.  It is full of morbid greed, bitter envy, destructive levels of hatred, and the nearly bottomless ignorance that leads him to believe that these conditions are inherently part and parcel with life as a human being and cannot be avoided.  He therefore comes to the belief that he must learn to optimally take advantage of these inescapable features of human relations such that he "wins" this undefined game of desire running amok, no matter who gets hurt.  The only real rule in that game is: don't get caught at anything for which you may be held accountable.  Today, that risk shrinks almost by the minute, particularly for those brazen enough to act boldly in pursuit of their self-interest at the expense of their fellows.

The chances of a land such as America returning to a societal and cultural structure of governance that is fully autodiathistic is just this side of zero.  The chances that "the state" will disappear through a return of humanity to its senses are not at all good, so far as I can see.  This is largely due to the deeply ingrained set of basic assumptions under which virtually all men labor such that in their minds they cannot so much as conceive of a world where no state exists, much less that it could function in any manner other than utter, terminal chaos.

Let us remind ourselves that mind is everything; your thoughts form your reality.  Therefore, if your basic assumptions preclude the possibility of pure self-determination for each member of a given society of men, it then becomes impossible such that your mind becomes incapable of conceiving it as plausible.  The imagination becomes limited in that direction and one becomes incapable of fabricating the mental potential for such a thing.  The mind, being unable to go there, withdraws and rejects the notion out of hand and the status quo is thereby preserved.  This is the way in which people are kept as prisoners in a dark-age; mostly by their own hands directly after accepting the limiting assumptions fed them by third parties.

And so it is for the vast and overwhelming majority of humanity who, having taken in that particular assumption that the world would fall to ruin in the absence of "the state", they become strongly incapable and unwilling to so much as consider the possibility of self-governance.  There is a whole litany of associated boogeymen that frighten or otherwise fail to appeal to such people such they many become irate and even prone to emotional violence in their rejection of the notion.  Just one example: responsibility.  True freedom requires of men they be fully responsible and accountable for every act; what they say, what they do, how they think and feel.  In a world where men have been heavily trained away from being responsible, this idea rests bitterly upon their tongues, however subconsciously, and therefore leaves them shaking their heads at it and walking away as quickly as their mental legs will carry them from it.

Thus far, we have examined a primary reason why proper human freedom may never again see the light of day.  But what if some significant subpopulation of the world's humanity were swayed?  What if, for example, the people of America could be somehow convinced that autodiathism is in fact the light and the only way forward that does not involve compulsory servitude, poverty, and misery for the average man?  What would then happen?

Would America suddenly become this island of bright and shining liberty in the midst of the vast oceans of global oppression and despair; a safe harbor for those yearning for the levity and invigoration of blessèd liberty?

No.

Why, you ask?  Precisely because of the remaining plague of global brutality running rampant across the world.  The despot seeks, at the very least, to retain the grips he holds on power at any given moment, never to give up the least epsilon of it.  In practical reality, the tyrant's deeper wish is to grow that power by whatever means he may find fitting.  The tyrant tends strongly to see power as a zero-sum, meaning that if he wants more, he must steal it from someone else.

Returning the the initial point of preserving what he has, the despotic leader can in no possible way tolerate the existence of anything "better" than that which he offers his own serfs.  This is because that which people deem as "better" and is beheld as possible for others becomes desired for themselves.  This desire naturally pits the wishes of the common man against those of the autocrat, and he who wields the power simply cannot tolerate such competition of desires and expect to retain his power.  This is why societies such as the Soviet Union blacked out the truth regarding the western world, for it would only lead to desires that conflicted with those of the Supreme Soviet.  China and North Korea remain as such to their respective degrees by state limitation of internet access, for example.

The tyrants of the world would flirt with political and possibly physical suicide, were they to tolerate the existence of even a single nation where people were self-governing and free to go about their business so long as they did not bring harm to others.  This is an outrage and affront to all who seek to dominate their fellows, and as such it must be eliminated.  No free land is safe in the company of external tyranny.

Add to that the mere fact that such a land would stand only to become highly enriched such that it would come to represent a golden egg so large and appealing that leaders of the other nations would find it impossible to resist the attempt to take it.  The long and miserable path of our history attests to this worst of all human habits.

Therein lies the two central reasons why a purely free land would likely fall to the predations of its neighbors.  Such a land would, at least for some period, lack the organization of its despotic global neighbors.  In so lacking, it would stand militarily vulnerable to material encroachment, looting, and eventual reabsorption into the cancerous fold of authoritarianism.

This is absolutely key as to understanding why pure autodiathism cannot simply pop up in a technologically advanced world and expect to survive the longer haul, no matter how enlightened the local population may have become.  Everything autodiathism implies, which includes a society based on 100% agorism, would stand vulnerable to more centrally-organized and presumably predatory nations - at least for a while.

For some period, what we may call that of "adjustment", an anarchic land whose political culture was based on naught but contract, would remain less materially powerful than those lands it philosophically, morally, and functionally left in the dust.  The people would have to learn how to apply voluntary engagement to functions such as that of national defense, which is the SINGLE consideration where centralization, properly carried forth and executed, leads to a superior capability.

It is a sad truth of this world, which is rapidly flinging itself back into a dark-age, that where militarism is concerned, all nations wishing to survive as such must do one of two things: shrink away and toe the lines of globalist tyranny in the hope of remaining uninteresting to those more materially powerful than themselves, or become sufficiently strong to discourage predation by one's neighbors.  Neither option is particularly appealing, the former leading to a dreary gray existence of constant dread, devoid of all joy; the latter being materially wasteful to a degree that nauseates and appalls all decent men, for war is the ultimate obscenity of waste and stupidity.

This then, leads us to what I believe may be the only practical path to freedom that holds in its hand longer-term survivability: Minarchy, which is roughly defined as:

"...a libertarian political philosophy which advocates for a particular variety of minimal state that acts only to enforce a universal framework of natural and legal rights essential to the functioning of a free marketplace in economy and culture, and operating through a limited government."

There is more to the definition as per wikipedia (yes, I know) but those elements are extraneous and to my eyes at least partly disagreeable.  Suffice for our purposes here that this is a reasonable working definition.

The one advantage of a proper minarchist state would be the organization and broad management of the military function.  Without a sufficient military capability, the free and agorist land would remain deeply vulnerable to the designs of conquest its less-than-free neighbors would doubtlessly contrive in their envy, lust, and fear.

I must, however, be clear that it is at least possible that such a state need not remain in perpetuity.  I do believe, however unlikely seeming at this time, that the potential exists for humans to evolve beyond their desires for conquest.  Given sufficient training and habituation to the grand virtues of proper freedom, and coupled with the continuing material advances of our technologies, it seems clear that predation by one group of men upon another might become a wholly unappealing notion.  Given that a vast number would presumably be sufficiently trained to the arts of self-defense, well armed with said technologically advanced weaponry, and all in the context where far more profitable endeavors were freely available to one and all for nothing more than the cost of having a dream and being willing to pursue it, notions of conquest would lose their shine.  Such a situation would constitute the ultimate carrot and stick arrangement: be cool and prosper beyond your wildest dreams on the one hand, or be a schmuck and likely die or be horribly maimed, on the other.

And let us not judge this possibility for plausibility based on the current level of average human perception and applied intelligence.  It is clear that such a land could only come to exist where the people have gotten their proper clues, accepted them, and aligned their daily practices and life philosophies with them.  As has been quipped before: freedom and stupidity are mutually and violently incompatible.

In summary, I contend that the path to real freedom is long, slowly trodden, and always fraught with risk such that a population cannot jump instantly from tyranny to freedom from one minute to the next.  Those surrounding you will not tolerate it due to fear, envy, and hatred.  Therefore, the slow ramping upward from the depths of despotism and servitude must be the reality such that the transfer of material power is gradually made from the hands of the few to those of the many, as all parties are learning how to do what is needed without falling prey to the evils that surround them in other lands and even in one's own, for we cannot safely assume that consensus would be universal.

This slow ramp-up implies the medial goal of a minarchist state.  Some purists may chafe, but ask yourself this: what would you prefer today, right now - a minarchy where your rights were actually respected but where some central authority remained, or what we currently enjoy?

I see minarchy as an essential step toward better times for our posterity, with the ultimate goal being that of complete and proper freedom such that one day men will be able to pursue life truly on their own terms in accord with the principles of proper human relations.

Until next time, please accept my best wishes.