RE: Torn between Conservatism and Libertarianism?
The dilemma you describe of the inability to have liberty without forcing liberty—which as you point out is ironically the antithesis of liberty—exists because of the collective’s capability to use more force than the individual. Max Weber’s canonical definition of government is: a monopoly on the use of force.
What you’re essentially pointing out is that liberty is not possible because leeches game the political economics and subject the society to their leeching. And any conservative group that claims to offer a better (e.g. “more righteous or meritorious”) order is still depending on collectivized force and thus is a power vacuum that ultimately is captured by leeches. Both the Libertards and Conservatzars are hypocrites.
Thus my current goal with my decentralized ledger R&D is to ameliorate the power of the centralized collective.
The more resources we put technologically out-of-the-reach of leeches, the more impotent leeching becomes.
Leeching destroys society not because society can’t produce enough for most people to be lazy, but because leeching (aka socialism aka Marxism) enable/force totalitarianism wherein the most powerful who captures the power vacuum must also be the most corrupt (in order to retain power) and megadeath all those leeches in the end. Leeching is a cyclical, repeating self-destructive cancer on civilization that periodically razes civilization to the ground in a 600 year Dark Age.
Again I view my decentralized ledger technology work very seriously, because we are entering (at least in the West) the totalitarian end-game phase of socialism.
P.S. Lol on the helicopter.
P.S.S. CoinCube @ BCT had made some countervailing points about the importance of preventing group defection else groupwise capital can be destroyed. He presented a biological model for how important mutations can be lost if mutation is too rapid (too decentralized with unbounded defection from the dominant mutations statue quo). My more recent thoughts on this matter is that a decentralized ledger is about enabling coordination (synchronization) thus it supplants the top-down coordination that was formerly required. So the capital that is “destroyed” no longer is needed, i.e. it lost its value. Freeman Dyson’s point about cultural evolution being far more relevant than genetic evolution (see my other comment below for a link), tells me that enabling more peering coordination of culture is exponentially more valuable to society than preventing defection from a top-down governance model which has always been a rollercoaster tragedy-of-the-commons.
Nicely put! What are your thoughts about the morality necessary to sustain liberty? Do think technology alone, which minimizes the need for government and cripples it's ability to control, will be enough or do you think people need a moral awakening?
I sort of think that natural selection has been artificially subverted and that social programs are basically the subsidization of stupidity. Once these government distortions are removed, people will naturally become more moral out of necessity and through facing the negative consequences. The stupid genes will be eliminated from the gene pool resulting in more intelligent and more moral individuals.
I am still concerned with how fast it will happen. Socialists seem to be hell bent on destroying the West with mass third world immigration and it's happening quickly. This is why I truly wonder if all out war may be necessary to preserve Liberty in the meantime, hence my comment about helicopters.
I have not studied any science about whether natural selection would filter out predisposition to leeching. I presume nature will anneal to the resources available even if they’re a self-destructive power vacuum. Genetic evolution moves far too slowly anyway for that to make any sense. Although afair Freeman Dyson (when he obliterated Richard Dawkins) argued that cultural/technological change is a form of evolution which evolves much faster.
In any case, I agree we are entering a very dangerous potentially megadeath totalitarian juncture. We also have a Maunder Minimum coming and the changes to the climate and widespread natural disasters (e.g. drought/flooding) could potentially disrupt civilization. Technology may rescue us.
I ponder if MA reads my writings or if some who read my writings email MA. He often seems to write a blog that seems to be inspired by something I recently wrote about. Here is another recent example one day after I wrote the above comment pointing out that:
P.S. Marxism seems to be so pervasive.