Could/would you live in a stateless (NOT ANARCHIST) society?

oncebitten55 · **Posted:** 28 Dec 2011, 21:27

loveablenerd wrote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Give even a (theoretically) democratic government too much power and you get insane happenings like armed SWAT raids on Amish families for selling raw milk and TSA sexually molesting children and old ladies in the name of security on a daily basis.

Governments are run by people, and most people are self-centered and greedy. The more money they have, the more they must have. The same goes with power. The power over who eats and who doesn't is too much for any human to have. Case in point, the hundreds of millions of people that starved to death in communist countries in the 20th century, while the party elite partied like the 1%. Sure there are a few people in government that aren't like that, but they encounter nothing but resistance from the corrupt majority and when they do try to reign them in get labeled kooks and conspiracy theorists.

I have no qualms with the ideals of socialism, but it will NEVER EVER turn into anything good if you let government administer it. Voluntary community initiatives and coops are the only way to make it work.
(Voluntary means you can opt out, in case it still doesn't work.)

People don't want to volunteer much anymore, unless it makes money, or boosts their egos. I have seen that happen over my lifetime, when people were more open and generous then they are currently. They enjoy Big Sister doing everything for them, but of course, in some cases like Hurricane Katrina, we see the true evil that lurks in our own government, unveiled for what it really is, a genuine police state.

As I have pointed out, living free in a libertarian society is *not* for everyone, and in fact most people who have never dealt with all the government agencies I had to deal with in my own business, will probably never choose to do so. They prefer the "safety", however false it is, over the freedom to make their own decisions in life, without depending on a large, heavily-armed, government to do so.

I can easily live without all that nonsense and would not hesitate for a nanosecond to move anywhere there was a
functioning free-state, leaving this shithole nation to the people that so rightly deserve it.

loveablenerd · **Posted:** 29 Dec 2011, 12:04

Onkel Willie wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Give even a (theoretically) democratic government too much power and you get insane happenings like armed SWAT raids on Amish families for selling raw milk and TSA sexually molesting children and old ladies in the name of security on a daily basis.

Governments are run by people, and most people are self-centered and greedy. The more money they have, the more they must have. The same goes with power. The power over who eats and who doesn't is too much for any human to have. Case in point, the hundreds of millions of people that starved to death in communist countries in the 20th century, while the party elite partied like the 1%. Sure there are a few people in government that aren't like that, but they encounter nothing but resistance from the corrupt majority and when they do try to reign them in get labeled kooks and conspiracy theorists.

I have no qualms with the ideals of socialism, but it will NEVER EVER turn into anything good if you let government administer it.
Voluntary community initiatives and coops are the only way to make it work.
(Voluntary means you can opt out, in case it still doesn't work.)

Seriously, you and oncebitten55 need to live in Western Europe for at least a year. The extreme government-related stuff you and others talk about is almost completely limited to the US (because its SOCIETY is fucked up - nothing, at least directly, to do with the choice of economic system).

I can't argue about us having a fucked up society... I'm no fan of capitalism either, but if we are going to have it (every form of socialism I've ever seen is just government-managed capitalism), then the freer the market, the better for everyone.

Monopolies and cronyism are anathema to free-market capitalism, but are the root of most of the economic problems in the US.

The only difference between fascism and socialism is the chain of command, does the government run the corporations or do the corporations run the government? And even those lines are blurred considerably because in both cases, it is usually the same core group running both. It's not the 99%.

By saying this your basically treating all the various currents within socialist thought as if they are the same, which they are not. Social Democracy is vastly different from, say, Maoism or something like that.

The freer the market, the better for everyone? Can I have some of what you've been smoking? The excesses of the free market like poverty, child labour, long work hours, dangerous working conditions pollution, economic exploitation of poorer countries, the looting of our planet's precious and limited natural resources are visible for all to see if you just open your eyes for once. 99% of the population has paid enough. It's time for the rich to pay for the economic crisis they put us in due to speculation, risky financial gambles etcetera.

Since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007 the median household has lost 36.1% of its wealth while the top 1% of richest people have lost only 11.1% which may seem a lot, but in absolute terms it means nothing to them. They still have millions if not billions of dollars left. The top 1% as of 2007 owned 38.3% of all stocks and 88.4% of all stocks worth more than $10.000,-.

As you can see below, the top 1% has never owned less than 20% of all the wealth in the entire United States in the 20th century which is absurd.

This is what it's come to in this world:

The freer the market, the better? Ha, don't make me laugh. Capitalism, as we've seen in the US, in the ends leads to plutocracy if left unchecked. It's the stock owners and CEOs who rule the US and by extension the world. Nationalisation of key sectors (energy production, transportation infrastructure, education, health care, telecommunications, banking petroleum, mining) and a progressive taxation system to redistribute the wealth caused by the excesses of the free market is the only way.

I'm sorry, but the way the current system is rigged against the little man is absurd. We need more regulation, not less.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I said IF WE ARE GOING TO HAVE CAPITALISM, we are better off with as free a market as possible. An even playing field. Once those with more money use their wealth as power to buy government favors, it ceases being a free market. Most regulations help the big corps by creating a hurdle for their smaller competition and a deterrent for start ups. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is because of the influence they have. A true free market would have checks to prevent this. The best check is a government so limited that it would do no good to buy it, because it can't give them what they want. So left to the market's regulation, if a company screws people over too much, the people boycott them and someone starts up a more people-friendly competition that everyone flocks to.

Wal-mart and Monsanto would not last long in a real free market.

That being said, I know there are wide variations in socialist thought, but past a certain point they have less in common with socialist/communist governments in place and more in common with anarchists. I have no qualms with those schools of thought. It's not the economic differences I object to, it's the heavy-handed top-down approach to government. I'm what you call a left libertarian, and truth be told I would prefer to get rid of money entirely. All it does is create an artificial imaginary resource that has no real value toward preserving human life, or accomplishing anything of value. It is the biggest weakness in the free market concept. As long as you allow one resource to be monopolized, in this case the medium of exchange, it is going to be doomed to failure. This will be true regardless of how much or how little central economic planning you do. Central banks are the greatest engine of crony capitalism... yet for some reason Marx loved them.

A weak or no state, no corporations or hierarchical institutions, no money or commerce in the current sense, and everything is done through voluntary cooperative groups. The community-driven free/open source software development model is the ideal working real world example to follow. This would be how I would remake the world.

These guys have the right idea: http://www.freeworldcharter.org/

eruditebeholder · **Posted:** 29 Dec 2011, 16:28

loveablenerd wrote:

The community-driven free/open source software development model is the ideal working real world example to follow.

Having never used a SINGLE open-source program that wasn't riddled with bugs, inconsistencies, and various other flaws, I don't think I would feel very comfortable, say, getting into an airplane made using that model.

Commercial software, on the other hand, is very often of high quality (especially when it's European... but I digress).

Onkel Willie · **Posted:** 29 Dec 2011, 17:17

loveablenerd wrote:

Onkel Willie wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Give even a (theoretically) democratic government too much power and you get insane happenings like armed SWAT raids on Amish families for selling raw milk and TSA sexually molesting children and old ladies in the name of security on a daily basis.

Governments are run by people, and most people are self-centered and greedy. The more money they have, the more they must have. The same goes with power. The power over who eats and who doesn't is too much for any human to have. Case in point, the hundreds of millions of people that starved to death in communist countries in the 20th century, while the party elite partied like the 1%. Sure there are a few people in government that aren't like that, but they encounter nothing but resistance from the corrupt majority and when they do try to reign them in get labeled kooks and conspiracy theorists.

I have no qualms with the ideals of socialism, but it will NEVER EVER turn into anything good if you let government administer it.
Voluntary community initiatives and coops are the only way to make it work.
(Voluntary means you can opt out, in case it still doesn't work.)

Seriously, you and oncebitten55 need to live in Western Europe for at least a year. The extreme government-related stuff you and others talk about is almost completely limited to the US (because its SOCIETY is fucked up - nothing, at least directly, to do with the choice of economic system).

I can't argue about us having a fucked up society... I'm no fan of capitalism either, but if we are going to have it (every form of socialism I've ever seen is just government-managed capitalism), then the freer the market, the better for everyone.

Monopolies and cronyism are anathema to free-market capitalism, but are the root of most of the economic problems in the US.

The only difference between fascism and socialism is the chain of command, does the government run the corporations or do the corporations run the government? And even those lines are blurred considerably because in both cases, it is usually the same core group running both. It's not the 99%.

By saying this your basically treating all the various currents within socialist thought as if they are the same, which they are not. Social Democracy is vastly different from, say, Maoism or something like that.

The freer the market, the better for everyone? Can I have some of what you've been smoking? The excesses of the free market like poverty, child labour, long work hours, dangerous working conditions pollution, economic exploitation of poorer countries, the looting of our planet's precious and limited natural resources are visible for all to see if you just open your eyes for once. 99% of the population has paid enough. It's time for the rich to pay for the economic crisis they put us in due to speculation, risky financial gambles etcetera.

Since the peak of the housing bubble in 2007 the median household has lost 36.1% of its wealth while the top 1% of richest people have lost only 11.1% which may seem a lot, but in absolute terms it means nothing to them. They still have millions if not billions of dollars left. The top 1% as of 2007 owned 38.3% of all stocks and 88.4% of all stocks worth more than $10.000,-.

As you can see below, the top 1% has never owned less than 20% of all the wealth in the entire United States in the 20th century which is absurd.

This is what it's come to in this world:

The freer the market, the better? Ha, don't make me laugh. Capitalism, as we've seen in the US, in the ends leads to plutocracy if left unchecked. It's the stock owners and CEOs who rule the US and by extension the world. Nationalisation of key sectors (energy production, transportation infrastructure, education, health care, telecommunications, banking petroleum, mining) and a progressive taxation system to redistribute the wealth caused by the excesses of the free market is the only way.

I'm sorry, but the way the current system is rigged against the little man is absurd. We need more regulation, not less.

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

I said IF WE ARE GOING TO HAVE CAPITALISM, we are better off with as free a market as possible. An even playing field. Once those with more money use their wealth as power to buy government favors, it ceases being a free market. Most regulations help the big corps by creating a hurdle for their smaller competition and a deterrent for start ups. It doesn't have to be that way, but it is because of the influence they have. A true free market would have checks to prevent this. The best check is a government so limited that it would do no good to buy it, because it can't give them what they want. So left to the market's regulation, if a company screws people over too much, the people boycott them and someone starts up a more people-friendly competition that everyone flocks to.

Wal-mart and Monsanto would not last long in a real free market.

That being said, I know there are wide variations in socialist thought, but past a certain point they have less in common with socialist/communist governments in place and more in common with anarchists. I have no qualms with those schools of thought. It's not the economic differences I object to, it's the heavy-handed top-down approach to government. I'm what you call a left libertarian, and truth be told I would prefer to get rid of money entirely. All it does is create an artificial imaginary resource that has no real value toward preserving human life, or accomplishing anything of value. It is the biggest weakness in the free market concept. As long as you allow one resource to be monopolized, in this case the medium of exchange, it is going to be doomed to failure. This will be true regardless of how much or how little central economic planning you do. Central banks are the greatest engine of crony capitalism... yet for some reason Marx loved them.

A weak or no state, no corporations or hierarchical institutions, no money or commerce in the current sense, and everything is done through voluntary cooperative groups. The community-driven free/open source software development model is the ideal working real world example to follow. This would be how I would remake the world.

These guys have the right idea: http://www.freeworldcharter.org/

Are you thinking in the direction of Israeli kibbutzes here, at least as they were in the traditional sense before most converted to market economics? I quite like the idea of voluntary cooperative communal groups, but it isn't going to happen any time soon on a societal scale.

loveablenerd · **Posted:** 29 Dec 2011, 18:16

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

The community-driven free/open source software development model is the ideal working real world example to follow.

Having never used a SINGLE open-source program that wasn't riddled with bugs, inconsistencies, and various other flaws

Fixed.

theyoungagegroup wrote:

Commercial software, on the other hand, is very often of high quality (especially when it's European... but I digress).

Are you seriously going to argue that Internet Explorer, for example, is higher quality than say Firefox or Google Chrome(ium)?

Even if you can make that case for some software, the point is that ALL software ships with bugs. It's the nature of the beast. But when one of those bugs rears it's head, how is it dealt with and how quickly? I think you'll find the community model beats the proprietary model by leaps and bounds in that respect. On the other hand, you should have seen what my Iphone's autocorrect did to my first edit of this post for a prime example of deeply flawed proprietary software at its buggiest and most inconsistent but still not fixed after all these years.

What causes free software to often remain gimped (no pun intended) is software patents that prevent the inclusion of certain features, and the hasty forced removal of others.

For example, to go back to the Iphone... before he passed away, Steve Jobs managed to patent the idea of something so derp as the swipe to unlock feature. And now Apple is preparing to go to war over it. So you can expect future Droid and Windows mobile phones to be stripped of this common sense convenience in future models. "Intellectual property" FTL. Copyrighted code? Ok, I can see that as a necessary evil in some cases within the corporate model. But Android and Windows have their own independent code for their own implementation of the feature. Software patents are a threat to the entire industry.

Major props to organizations like the ones behind VLC and Linux Mint that refuse to bow down.

eruditebeholder · **Posted:** 29 Dec 2011, 21:26

loveablenerd wrote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

The community-driven free/open source software development model is the ideal working real world example to follow.

Having never used a SINGLE open-source program that wasn't riddled with bugs, inconsistencies, and various other flaws

Fixed.

Well, no - the keywords here are "riddled with". Many open-source programs contain such bugs that they are rendered almost unusable for all but the simplest tasks - and see below for more on this topic.

Quote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

Commercial software, on the other hand, is very often of high quality (especially when it's European... but I digress).

Are you seriously going to argue that Internet Explorer, for example, is higher quality than say Firefox or Google Chrome(ium)?

Oh, come on. Using IE as an example... plus, the ONLY reason IE was bad - for a few years - is because Microsoft stopped updating it, but the web obviously continued to develop. The web standards that ALL browsers, including IE - by the way, IE beats other browsers in terms of some standards compliance these days - comply with, more or less, today DID NOT exist when IE6 was released. (And, IMO, IE, like much other commercial software compared to open-source alternatives, has a much nicer UI than the Windows versions of all the other browsers - very likely showing the snobby attitude of the developers of those browsers towards Windows.)

Quote:

Even if you can make that case for some software, the point is that ALL software ships with bugs. It's the nature of the beast. But when one of those bugs rears it's head, how is it dealt with and how quickly? I think you'll find the community model beats the proprietary model by leaps and bounds in that respect.

NO. What primarily causes the shitty quality of free software is the shitty attitude of many of the developers towards the users, especially any who report bugs. (I have personal experience with this.) The second main reason is a lack of funding - something that is obviously inherent to free software and therefore can't readily be fixed.

oncebitten55 · **Posted:** 29 Dec 2011, 21:34

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

loveablenerd wrote:

The community-driven free/open source software development model is the ideal working real world example to follow.

Having never used a SINGLE open-source program that wasn't riddled with bugs, inconsistencies, and various other flaws

Fixed.

Well, no - the keywords here are "riddled with". Many open-source programs contain such bugs that they are rendered almost unusable for all but the simplest tasks - and see below for more on this topic.

Quote:

theyoungagegroup wrote:

Commercial software, on the other hand, is very often of high quality (especially when it's European... but I digress).

Are you seriously going to argue that Internet Explorer, for example, is higher quality than say Firefox or Google Chrome(ium)?

Oh, come on. Using IE as an example... plus, the ONLY reason IE was bad - for a few years - is because Microsoft stopped updating it, but the web obviously continued to develop. The web standards that ALL browsers, including IE - by the way, IE beats other browsers in terms of some standards compliance these days - comply with, more or less, today DID NOT exist when IE6 was released. (And, IMO, IE, like much other commercial software compared to open-source alternatives, has a much nicer UI than the Windows versions of all the other browsers - very likely showing the snobby attitude of the developers of those browsers towards Windows.)

Quote:

Even if you can make that case for some software, the point is that ALL software ships with bugs. It's the nature of the beast. But when one of those bugs rears it's head, how is it dealt with and how quickly? I think you'll find the community model beats the proprietary model by leaps and bounds in that respect.

NO. What primarily causes the shitty quality of free software is the shitty attitude of many of the developers towards the users, especially any who report bugs. (I have personal experience with this.) The second main reason is a lack of funding - something that is obviously inherent to free software and therefore can't readily be fixed.

Well, I am no software wizard, nor some computer genius, but I prefer Firefox over IE 9, since I have had nothing but trouble printing with IE 9 as well as a few other issues.

Keeps giving me script error messages when I try to print , and I havent figured out how to resovle that yet. IE 8 was not a problem. Could be my 64 bit Win 7 OS, but hell you guys know more about that stuff then I do, thats for certain.

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