I only see atoms dancing around. That doesn't make it a useful abstraction at the scale we are discussing. Government is just an abstraction over a group of people self organizing.
> People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much.
Agreed, but government monopoly on violence is the only system that seems to have stuck. I would prefer a system of anarchy where everybody just did the right thing, but I haven't seen any evidence such a system lasts more than hours. Maybe we have to eradicate the cultural training and distrust we have already instilled into ourselves too. I've sat down and worked out the "root philosophy" of our political opinions with as many folks who will sit still for it, and this smells like the "Libertarian presumption that people, removed from the system of control, would all act better" and being in active denial that their planed solution for nonconformity they can't handle is "round up a posse and threaten/kill nonconformists".
Thing is, we are people. So the "people scale" is always going to be the most one relevant to us in terms of what governments do for / to us. The atom analogy doesn't hold here.
Replying to the lower comment by 'alehlopeh' since I don't think threaded replies go this far down.
Right now, I'm looking for people with "naive optimism" who would like to see this world. There are a few of us. I'll share concrete details with those folks.
Your rights are inherent to being a human being. You are endowed by your Creator with the inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. A libertarian government would be one that enforces those rights.
Governments do not grant rights. They either enforce or abrogate them.
You're a right libertarian, no? Something worth bearing in mind, because a left-libertarian answer to many questions - especially those pertaining to property rights - is likely to be fundamentally different.
Libertarianism requires someone empowered to use force. The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.
> Libertarianism requires someone empowered to use force.
As I said.
> The idea of multiple competing law enforcement apparatus within the same jurisdiction is not just theoretical wankery, either; it's actually been tried. Most notably in the Icelandic Commonwealth, which endured for 300 years.
Libertarianism doesn't specify the form of government, just the role of government.
The path to such a future will either be paved with mass extermination to lower to population to remove scarcity or via surviving with government until scarcity is defeated and government can be safely dismantled.
I do agree that there is a root problem with any existing power structure not being truely incentivized to reduce scarcity and then loose power, but that doesn't make the thanos solution more ok.
What actions are you taking that could potentially cause billions of individuals to suddenly act as though the concept of scarcity doesn’t exist? If the only path forward you see is for every single human to start acting differently, then you don’t see any path forward.
I only see atoms dancing around. That doesn't make it a useful abstraction at the scale we are discussing. Government is just an abstraction over a group of people self organizing.
> People feeling they have a right to use violence to achieve their goals, not so much.
Agreed, but government monopoly on violence is the only system that seems to have stuck. I would prefer a system of anarchy where everybody just did the right thing, but I haven't seen any evidence such a system lasts more than hours. Maybe we have to eradicate the cultural training and distrust we have already instilled into ourselves too. I've sat down and worked out the "root philosophy" of our political opinions with as many folks who will sit still for it, and this smells like the "Libertarian presumption that people, removed from the system of control, would all act better" and being in active denial that their planed solution for nonconformity they can't handle is "round up a posse and threaten/kill nonconformists".