Bitcoin Forum

Crypto digital currency as a way to bring down local governments?
Not saying tomorrow or anytime soon, thinking about the probability.


In their current incarnation, yep, definitely. As they rely on subterfuge and anonyinimity for its users (sound familiar?).

If (as is feasible) states and systems take on bitcoin (for tax purposes)
- People getting paid in bitcoin can avoid tax if they spend/keep their bitcoin in the bitcoin world, until the system adopts something along the lines of 'known wallet for initial wages, for tax purposes'. The onus same as now.

As today's system, we can not just go and look at David Cameron (UK) or Obama's bank accounts, and who is sending what, and how much. Under a bitcoin system, we would, anyone could. And I don't imagine the current 'style' of governments we had would last very long if everyone could see exactly what the politicians and parties were getting. Especially if some law stated that all large donations had to be declared. Thinking about it, politicians and especially the bankers already have the 'privacy' in place that bitcoin promises to give to the masses ..


Avoiding tax paying to corrupt parties and politicians would (when bitcoin was massively used) cripple governments. Also freeing up more local money to spend in a persons surrounding area.

So.. (assuming the inevitable growth of bitcoin)

1. If governments don't adopt they'll lose massively on tax, meaning more job losses and more tax to those paying still, to continue to fund their wars and banker bonuses.

2. When they finally adopt it, employees of the states finances will be much more transparent. This would hopefully force disbandment of corrupt parties and officials and growth of honest/transparent parties.

3. Government parties adopt late, or collapse, and bitcoin spending is done on supported local authorities, which gain more independence.


Hm.. these are just thoughts, I can't really see how governments would totally collapse, just the current greed/bankers fed corrupt governments to end, which wouldn't happen until sometime after the adoption of bitcoin by a state. And saying all this, individuals would still be able to receive anonymous money, just makes parties and those employed more transparent at the first instance, which is a hell of a lot more than what we have atm.

The governments were bound to collapse with or without Bitcoin, what Bitcoin does is make it so that people who are wise enough to at least diversify in Bitcoin don't suffer because of their actions.

They couldnt just make a new, discrete wallet?

Wrong - that's called tax evasion.  Receipt of bitcoin is like receipt of gold - it must be reported as income to the tax authority in your nation.

Technically correct but tough to enforce. And not all tax offices are quite as arrogant or aggressive as the US IRS (though they're all bad).

So what? That's why Bitcoin was invented.

In fairness, you don't need BTC to dodge taxes: cash works well enough at a local level. It's tougher to move cash or metal discretely over large distances, however.

True, but crypto is the best weapon thus far in the battle against centralization and confiscation.

What's ironic to me are the people that now possess this weapon yet still WANT to comply with some arbitrary authority.

"... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..."

However, nowadays "centralization and confiscation" is fairly repressive but the only method to keep stability in "modern" society which consist may be of over 90% "zombies" who depend mainly on social programs and subsidies.
If somebody disagrees, they may try to go and live in tribal area of Afghanistan to feel all the "pleasures" of society without authorities and governments.
Bitcoin, IMHO, is just like an offshore haven to hide assets for wise people. But the majority of not-so-wise people will continue ignoring it as they ignored great opportunities of "banana islands" in the past.

I would actually suggest the tribal areas of Somalia. It's still 3rd world, so it's not up to the safety and health standards of the US, but from reports (http://www.peterleeson.com/better_off_stateless.pdf), it's pretty decent.

Sorry to add just a quote as a response, but it's apropos.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it."

-Jefferson

Great words, but don't forget that Jefferson's "freedom" model was designated for the white and was based on slavery.
Today western "freedom" is also backed by 3rd world countries which play the role of those slaves.

Don't forget the leagues of people with three jobs in America :P

Jefferson's original Declaration of Independence contained a section on the evils of slavery*. That section was edited out by members of the Continental Congress, some of whom were also involved with the slave trade, especially the South Carolina and Georgia delegations.

Remember that Jefferson was greatly responsible for stopping the slave trade into Virginia in 1778 when he was governor of the colony. It was one of the first bans of slavery on a state/nation level in history. He also expended much political capital in his failure to ban slave importation in the US when he was president in the early 19th century.

Jefferson was far more complex than  given credit for by the larger culture. Yes, he was born to the institution of slavery as a slave owner but he hated it. He also had the same problem that all people are confronted with when asked to choose between doing what might be right versus being able to keep their economic position: they usually choose the money over doing the right thing. Jefferson kept his slaves not only because they paid his bills but he'd also known them for his entire life.

By the measure of our own times, Jefferson was a less than admirable figure. But we get a two-dimensional view of people looking at them only from our vantage point. In terms of his own day, Jefferson was far ahead of the crowd. Long before most other people figured it out, he knew that slavery would eat this country alive, as it ended up doing: "We have the wolf by the ears; and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go. Justice is in one scale, and self-preservation in the other."

Actually, if we want to get technical, Bitcoin is pretty much tax avoidance rather than tax evasion, tax evasion means you're still in the country with your wealth etc. not paying taxes from what I understand, tax avoidance means you're just not wanting to pay taxes at all and stay away from it? I think that's how it works but there's two definitions but tax avoidance is where you go out of the country to stay away from paying taxes. I think Bitcoin either falls somewhere in between or something because we're all putting our wealth in our computers to avoid paying for taxes rather than just simply not pay them at all, it's a whole new currency and you could argue it's like making a country on the internet rather than just simply not pay taxes which is what tax evasion is supposed to be.

Now I understand why the governments haven't said anything much about Bitcoin yet LOL this is a headache.

Yeah, this need to eat and to have some place with relative warmth in northern and southern parts of planet really does have some effects how free one can be...

Their time will be up shortly.

End of governments? Nope, it wont happen anytime soon. Some governments are so strong ( Germany ) that they can rule entire countries without military need. Well globalisation is the key...

The "end of government" would mean the end of peace, security, freedom, and all the infrastructure that has never worked without a governing authority.

People love to talk about how the U.S. government oppresses them.  I would suggest spending some coins on a world history course. We live in the safest, free-est conditions the world has ever known. You can expect to get old and have many of your diseases cured. You likely won't die in a war or starve.

Give it up and only the strongest will be free. Your food, women, possessions; all will belong to whoever organizes their own government.   

Security is a service, like any other, and we do not need a monopoly provider of this service. Infrastructure, even today, is mostly privately built, contracted by the governments. The "end of government" would only mean the "end of monopoly provision of security."

True. but every petty warlord considers himself a protector of the people and their rights. Rights such as the right to worship the leader or the right to be free of decision making responsibility.
Nature hates a vacuum, power vacuums included. No one can go ungoverned for long. I am thankful to have a say in my own governance because it is so very rare in history. I could, for example, decide to live as a woman. When else in history could I do that?

Having said these things, I'm always up for expanding my rights.

Who said anything about leaving a vacuum? And a "petty warlord" would be a government, would he not? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_defense_agency

Your statement is contrasted by the fact that the US has the largest prison population per capita on the planet and probably in history.

Not true in the U.S. If you receive BTC (or gold) in return for your labor, services, or merchandise, then the difference in value between those receipts and your expenses, including what you paid your suppliers, would be taxable income. But merely buying BTC (or gold) with money on which income taxes have already been paid is not taxable.

On the other hand, if you buy BTC (or gold) and then sell them for more than what you paid, then you are liable for capital gains tax (not income tax). But that is true if you buy chickens or pine cones or anything else and then sell for a profit.

Wrong -  that's called barter. Gold is not reported as income, nor is an income tax assessed on gold sales. You are highly misinformed and are misinforming others.
" it must be reported as income to the tax authority in your nation."  WTF WRONG   Exactly where is "your nation" located?  I don't remember it from geography class.
Just shut up.

Not something to be proud of.  :-[
Partly that's due to the modern idea of prisons.  Most systems in the past relied on punishment, such as public beatings, or banishment, or death. The idea of holding someone is very rare in history.

@myrkul  I would still worry about the pirate protection service realizing how much more profitable piracy is. Why not demand all your money instead of payment? What would stop them?

Pretty much any Native American tribe before the Europeans showed up. : )

http://www.dancingtoeaglespiritsociety.org/twospirit.php

This is a very common concern. It's discussed in the article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_defense_agency#Aggression_and_abuses_by_private_defense_agencies). (Short version: Piracy is not as profitable as defense, going on the attack incurs some pretty serious costs that defenders simply don't have to worry about. Not to mention the other defense agencies.)

Ok then. I want one now. Anyone want to defend me for bitcoins?  ;D

Just wanted to single this one out ;D

There are more/as many wars happening today as there ever was.  One could argue large scale war can only occur with the help of government; it unites a large group of people to act in a certain way.  Instill patriotism, a love of one's country, and you have a nation which will defend themselves against any perceived threat--even if said nation is the cause of the war.  Peace doesn't happen, not on the large scale.  On the small scale, it still doesn't happen; no body really says they're scared to out in the city at night.  But it's in the back of everyone's mind.  Government does not bring peace, nor does it bring security.

I'd like to point out the native Americans as an example of a peaceful society without government (even though they also had to protect themselves against rival tribes--do tribes count as a governing body?)  There were native tribes without governing bodies which were peaceful, secure and free.  They used the land when they needed to, but never called it "mine".  That was a concept that didn't appear until the governance of Spain showed up to teach the 'barbaric' natives the right way to live (not to mention, disease, as they weren't very clean.)  The natives had no understanding of possession, no governing ruler, aside from a tribe leader.  Women and men were perfectly equal in every activity.  It was pretty swell.  They were absolutely, 100% free to do whatever they wanted.  There were no laws, and yet they got along, much like other animals somehow manage to get along with their own kind without having to define clearly the laws of their own ecosystems.  Of course, they'll eat other animals, but so do we, yes?

So to say that peace, security and freedom would never exist without governance isn't true.  It has happened before, and has never happened under government; there is always a sacrifice of one's peace, security and freedoms to make it work.  It's needless, I think.  If the native Americans could do it--and by our standards, they didn't know much about anything, outside of farming--why are we, so civilized and intelligent, still failing to make it work?  I propose that is doesn't work.  You can push a round peg through a square hole, but that doesn't mean it works.

There are wars on a scale almost unseen in the pre-modern past. But tribal people, including native Americans, were not at peace. Tribal cultures live in a state of perpetual war. Raiding their neighbors as a way of life. It is easy to romanticize native Americans, and think of them as living in peace and harmony. A more objective look at them reveals them to be humans.
The world we live in, where you as a male will likely not die fighting, is unusual. The tribe I visited in the Darien gap is estimated historically to have lost 70% of adult males to fighting. The number one cause of death for adult males.

 

Begging the question. Security means that one's basic needs of food, shelter, and protection from harm are met. It is not a service. These needs can be self-provided. They can also be offered as a service at a price by an entity like a brutal dictator or even a democratically elected government, but that is a seperate issue.

I might suggest that anyone against using a democratically elected government to provide these services can choose from the other two options by moving to Somalia.

I can cook a meal for myself. That does not mean that providing me with a meal is not a service. And when I speak of the "service" of security, I am specifically referring to provision of the need of protection from harm. Though Food and Shelter are certainly services that can be provided, they lie outside the scope of most private defense agencies. (And outside the scope of Government as laid out in the Constitution, as well.)

Definition of service: The action of helping or doing work for someone.

Again, you do not need anyone else to protect you from harm. You just have to have good survival skills. It just makes life easier when we cooperate and specialize our skills for efficiency. How this is organized is irrelevant. All I am saying is that a collective organization is more efficient at providing a broad range of the necessities of life for the the most people. They theoretically maximize resources for the collective good of everyone.

You're right, you don't. You don't need anyone to mow your lawn for you, or to cook your meals for you, or to make your clothes for you, either. Providing these things for someone, however, is a service. (Or, arguably, a product, but we needn't split hairs.)


Again, you're correct. Specialization and division of labor make doing these things more efficient. You could grow your own food, and make your own clothes, and be 100% self-sufficient. You'd have little time for anything else, though. Which is where service providers, such as farmers, clothiers, and the like come in.

The question is, do the service providers for Security (http://mises.org/document/2716) operate under the free-market principles which have so greatly increased prosperity in other areas of life, or do they continue to operate regional monopolies and use force to extract their payment?

I saw what you did there. Going back to my original argument.


In fact, I never profered the notion that free-market principles provide any services for the greater good of a populace or individual. In fact, I don't even believe in the free-market fairy.

Thankfully, you don't need to believe in it. Reality doesn't need belief.

Nope, but it does need evidence for which there is none.

Crack a history book. Plenty of evidence.

If you've ever conducted a transaction or made a trade in which you and the other person consented to the exchange, the free market fairy was hovering over your head.

Oh I don't know. I had to travel on publicly funded roads to get to the store. I had to use publicly funded GPS to find my way there. Most clerks at the stores are probably home-schooled;-) but some of them were products of a public school. I could go on, but suffice to say that much of the modern industrial and economic infrastructure is not the product of a free-market.

Like the publicly funded oil pipelines - oops, no, not those.
Or the publicly funded electrical grid... oh, not that, either.
Maybe the publicly provided internet you're using... oops, not that, either.

Perhaps your public school education explains why you needed GPS to find the grocery store....

You win. You are so smart. (http://bible.cc/proverbs/29-9.htm)

You don't seem to get the point he's trying to make cbeast, as long as two parties involved consent that is a free market, do you think the government could get all of those without peoples consent? The problem is of course the percentage of people who consented at the time all the spending started has massively decreased because people hardly vote any more and when questioned about this our 'leaders' just shrug and go "Yes it's a problem" then carry on as normal as long as they have a majority.

Going a little bit off topic here, but if we're going to talk about this mathematically I'll put it into perspective for you. I'm sure you've seen these 'opinion' polls which are made up of about 2000 people or so which morons claim represent the opinions of an entire country. Well elections are a lot like that except on a slightly bigger scale, if you have millions upon millions of unregistered voters or people who specifically choose not to vote and only a couple of million register and vote for a party then that does not mean that the couple of million people are actually representative of the country nor are their leaders.

Don't think just because you're told it's 'publicly' funded that it's the case, in fact with the UK in particular we have a problem of supposedly 'public' government services being outsourced to privately funded agencies because of cost and so on. Who do you think that the government hands out it's contracts too? Who do you think produces all the military equipment they purchase? The whole situation is so fucked up it's probably going to take historians several thousand years into the future even more years to uncover all the bullshit and propaganda that has been made by our governments to trick gullible people like you cbeast. You seriously need to start at least researching the things people tell you because you sound like how I thought when I was younger and believed all the bullshit I was told too.

I agree. That's why so much of that infrastructure is fucked. It's the product of the billions of coercive efforts on the part of State actors, not the result of billions of consenting efforts on the part of individuals.

You can either have the evils of a consensual system or the evils of a coercive system. I choose to live in a consensual system as far as is humanly possible in the larger coercive system.

That's just mean but I laughed anyway.

No offense, cbeast.

Where do your free-market fairies live that don't have publicly financed infrastructure? Because if they were so efficient and profitable, sure they must have streets paved with gold, food shelves bursting with the sweetest fruits and meats, and flying cars!

Most roads are actually built by private contractors... Paid for with public funds.

I suppose if no one stole the money to pay these people, no one would ever pay for roads to be built, right?

If a market need exists, someone will be willing to provide it. If no one is willing to pay for it, no market need exists.

That's a lot of ifs. Evidentiary facts would be better.

Those aren't "ifs," they're if-then statements. As for evidence to back up those statements, you need only look at the black market. People want drugs. They are willing to pay for them. (There is a market need for drugs.) Other people are willing to provide these drugs, even at significant personal risk.

Drug trafficking is an excellent example of a secure, industrious, and well-adjusted population. Thank you for such fine examples. I am getting such a good education here.

No, it isn't. Well, not "secure" or "well adjusted", but they certainly are industrious.

Well, if a drug cartel run country is your best evidence of a free-market economy, then you can have it. Try Afghanistan, you might like it there.

Did I say it was? You wanted evidence that the market acts to fill market needs. I provided that.

Big Pharma also has quite the stranglehold on the "free" American economy. There's more drugs on the black market in the US than there is in Afghanistan.

Free markets will always look like the wild west to anyone with a predilection to centralization and the dull order of life under the State.

Just a quick note: Bitcoin only allows you to avoid taxes because it's not well adopted. In everyone's fantasies here, with currency collapse and full adoption of Bitcoin, then you'll be back to square one and paying taxes again.

Stop your delusions.

Bitcoin allows tax avoidance because it's impossible to prove how much a person has, even if they publish an address.

I never volunteer to pay a thief.

My original question was not if the market can meet needs, but whether there is such a thing as a free-market without a publicly created infrastructure. Do you feel you have done that?

Is there a market need for infrastructure? Do people want infrastructure? Are they willing to pay?

Do you want roads, police, courts, firemen, water, and electricity? Are you willing to live near people that would not pay for those because they can get what they want by force instead? Would you pay for them as well?

Of course I do.
No. That's why I am an anarchist.

What you think you are is irrelevant. Before the extant of public commons, there was no civilization. Without civilization, you are merely food.

That's an interesting theory.

Are you claiming that government = civilization?

Don't you think that this way you are just paying for your safety?
Imagine how these hungry crowds of lazy poor people rob and kill you and other wealthy people around just for food and drugs. Even your shotgun won't help as they are also armed and outnumber you.
And this scenario is very typical for non-civilized part of our world...

In the "civilized" parts of the world, the hungry crowds of lazy poor people select thugs to do their robbing and killing for them.

Mostly robbing, but not killing, and, for sure, you have much more chances to survive in the US than somewhere in Africa or A-stan. That's the difference between civilized world and non-civilized :)

Not killing? A quick google search will disprove that...

And what do you suppose happens if you object to the robbing?

I mean that 0.000001% chance of being killed in "civilized" word is better against 0.01% chance in non-civilized. Oh, and of course the chance to survive will be much higher if you pay tributes to local tribal leader :)

I am not an anthropologist. But yes, In the modern era I will argue that civilization requires a government for protection at the very minimum. Since you are not supporting your argument and are merely fabricating fallacious attacks, I will return you to my ignore list and you may continue to troll in your free-market fairyland.

Looked to me as though he was asking you to clarify your position.

I am curious, though, why protection must be forced upon people, if it's so necessary. Would people not voluntarily seek protection?

this is so amazingly backward. Government cant exist with out leaching resources from society. Reseources can not be leached from a society that does not have surplus production. A society can not have surpluss production with out specialization and the division of labor. Specialization and the division of labor are the hallmarks of civilization.

civilization necessarily comes before government because government has no means with which to sustain its self with out civilization.

Society cannot aggregate resources until they have protection from anarchist bandits and warlords. Tribes paying for good governance is far cheaper and more efficient than losing everything to roving barbarians. That's why people choose to live in the protection of castle walls. Eventually, the castle walls are replaced by roads (i.e. Rome) and standing armies that police the environs. Finally feudalism evolves into empire and into modern civilization.

And then we start selecting our defenders ourselves, instead of our defenders forcing their protection (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket) upon us. Progress!

But again, you seem to forget that the roving bandits would have nothing to steal, if the tribe had not been already specializing... (ie, practicing civilization)

I think you should be free to choose which country you want to live in up till you are 18-25. By this I mean you arent a citizen untill you actually sign a contract. A child cant understand or sign contracts so why should they be forced into one because of birth ?

This is why the Amish let their teenagers go into the world for a year or two as teenagers so that when they return it is their own choice.

Darn Anarchists.  Just as bad as those darn Atheists.  Always gotta go around shouting your hoo-haw and your fiddley-fud.

:P

Ruining your comfortable illusions with our pesky logic....

Do a little traveling.  I don't know how you are measuring freedom, but I feel far more free outside the US then I ever did in it.

So the basic question of this thread is:

If we disband government, can we stil have a free and safe society?

Answer: YES, WE CAN.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o

A completely philisophical thought experiment. You may believe this argument if you wish, but it is not based on forensic sciences. There are a lot of ifs used (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNX5FR8hRwg) and no historical examples.

Yes, of course, this stuf never made it to real world. Yet. Of course it was only thught of few decades ago, when the implementation was impossible, because the existing solutions worked fine for western world. Which is no more so.

There are ifs for sure (nice song, btw), however about historical examples following could be said:
-every empire, when only founded and rising to power (Say Greek, Roman, etc), had same rules: low taxes, low or inexistent welfare, simple and small set of laws. Yet population managed to grow, technical progres was made and civilisation was thriving. When empires were slowly dying, things above were mostly opposite. When romans realized that their budget spending will make them lose all the gold soon, they started to mix other metals to their coins while coins were maintaining same value. And they postponed their decline for a while.

-some of things that are described in video worked just fine in the wild west, includng basically  no welfare support.

Government isnt protection from bandits naive person, government is what resulted from the bandits winning and taking over.

That is probably the dumbest, most poorly contrived argument ever trolled. It belongs in the Internet Troll Hall of Shame.

and that was not a rebuttal ;) nice try tho, i haven't fallen for tricks like that since i was very young.

Right, no historical examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_commonwealth
And since it's St. Patrick's day, let's not forget the Irish Tuatha: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tuath

Historically, anarchies have been more stable, long-term, than States.

if cbeast didn't have me on ignore, he'd learn that a troll got onto a German stamp for exactly the idea put forward by Anon136:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Oppenheimer#Der_Staat_.28The_State.29

Let's see something that has been written in recent anthropological or sociological peer reviewed journals. Anyone can conjecture. Again, if you are going to assert an opinion, base it on some evidence. I am not an historian, but at least I used Rome as an example of a developing state. That's the difference between philosophy and science. You can prove facts wrong, that is how science is done. Since philosophy cannot be falsified it is not science. Maybe I'll look for a discourse between Oppenheimer and Marx. It sounds like an interesting subject on labor philosophy. This will be very important in the post central bank era.

Moving the goalposts isn't an intellectually honest approach. It was your claim that only "trolls" would posit that the State is a gang of thieves. Now that your claim is disproved, it might serve you better to educate yourself further or refrain from commenting out of ignorance again.


That's quite obvious. I can safely discount your further opinions of anything having to do with historical matters, theories of the State being one of them.

Look. He threw the first ad hominem. Calling him a troll was for that more than the argument. Besides, Oppenheimer's opinions are interesting, but hardly prove or disprove anything. Perhaps he was only trolling Marx or vice verse. As far as my opinions, you may discount anything you like. Your feelings add nothing to the conversation. Unless you are an accredited historian, shall I discount your conjecture as well?

I agreed with you. You said you weren't a historian. That's not ad hominem.


Yes, I have publicly acknowledged expertise in certain branches of history, mostly having to do with the rise of central banking in America. What would you like to know?

You did not answer my question about supporting the posited Oppenheimer hypothesis in a peer reviewed science journal. Or at least some historical example that demonstrates the dynamic. Or maybe you too are a naive person? According to you, that is not ad hominem.

I'll look around and get back to you. While I'm doing that, find me a something in a peer reviewed science journal supporting Bitcoin. I'll probably have a little more luck than you will but let's post our findings here.


I've been called worse. In contrast, "naive" is a compliment. ;)

I did not proffer an argument about Bitcoin in this discussion, so I'll concede the point if I did. I would truly like to see a study about how bandits form governments as the argument you are championing:

I don't believe either one of us can be persuaded from our positions so I'm going to refrain from further engagement in a pissing contest. I've found that by and large, an individual's nature is either geared toward bending to the authority of the State and its decrees or its geared to less centralized modes of existence. No amount of debate is going to change a person's nature.

An excellent history of the rise of centralized authority of the past 100 years and its fruits is found in Advance To Barbarism: The Development of Total Warfare From Sarajevo to Hiroshima (http://archive.org/stream/AdvanceToBarabrism#page/n0/mode/2up) by Veale. You probably won't see this work used as a history book in any state-funded university.

As a return, perhaps you could direct me to a work that details the positive aspects of the centralized control of economic, jurisdictional and civil matters. We have examples in the Soviet Union, Maoist and modern China, the European Union and the United States so there's plenty to draw from.

I am not accepting your false dichotomy of statist vs. agorist (or whatever). There are a lot of books these days with highly provocative themes. Most of them use cherry-picked facts and twist statistics into things that would make a contortionist wince. I have my own hypotheses that are far more complex and involve the rise of religion, developmental psychology, linguistics, and other correlational research. People tend to see the patterns they want to see in complex systems, but these systems arose from somewhere and somewhen. I am more curious about fundamental forces in psychohistory and sociohistory.

One is either prone to accept the yoke or not. If nothing else, this is what political history teaches us.

Then that is the limit of political history. I don't bind myself to currently accepted paradigms.

The rights of the individual vs. the power of the collective is one of the oldest paradigms there is. What paradigm are you working under?

There are many others. Morals, mores, religious experience, customs, rituals, laws, etc., spring from the mirror neuron receptors. Social dynamics such as heirarchy predate the evolution of homo sapien. Technically we are nothing but food machines for the bacterial collectives that we spring from and infest our bodies and will consume us when we expire.

If that's your paradigm, it's no wonder we have a difficult time communicating.

Sais you by typing it on a computer and sending it to us over the internets...
It seems to me you are not willing to live without these inconveniencies.

I live with the evils of too much liberty. How you structure your life is no concern of mine.

Nope. Security is a status.
A service can then make sure a status of peace is maintained.
If you do not more or less centralize the power used for maintaining peace you get rivalry (because one mans peace is another mans chaos) and that means no security untill a top dog arises. This top dog would be basically the same thing as a government protecting you only it will be Sony or Nike or Microsoft. And you will live in a city protected by such a multinational and will be working in their (or their friends) factories.
This will happen because multinationals have enourmous power world wide (they provide goods, they provide jobs, they have capital, they have real estate and they have an established global organisation). Some multinationals already have more power than some nations.
You will exchange a broken democratic system for a slave-worker operated multinational where a human beings life is measured in how much money they can make for the company.

And all that because you want to float your peace on a market.

Yeah, well that guy is pretty amazingly wrong.
He is constantly arguing from within a protected society.
He only deals with people following their incentive to cooperate.
Unfortunately not all humans feel this way and they are a large enough group to form a society of their own with completely different sets of laws from your local laws which will prevent interoperability.

I think he is right that you can create a core of a system that operates like he suggests.
He is just way too optimistical about how such a system would operate at the fringes.
Dealing with fringes has been the greatest success of modern society and it is why we got to have this period of relative peace.

Another striking brainfart on the part of the narrator is that he seems to think that the most profitable way for any company to operate is by getting the best possible deal for their customers.
Companies usually have only one incentive: make more money.
If that can be achieved by screwing over their customers than that will become a reality sooner or later.

Another effect of his way of thinking is these protection enforcement service agencies will have to conglomerate over time.
This is because he argues that these agencies will mediate in the differences of law between themselfs.
This naturally leads to stuff like treaties and in the end you get a multiheaded dragon not disimilar to our current military systems, but with the incentive of making money.
So after all these law arbitration processes have settled down we will get a new military top dog that does all the 'peace keeping' in the world and has the incentive to make money from operating.
Great...
 :-\

Yeah, and since these works became increasingly built by private contractors the quality became an issue.
That is because the step of outsourcing gives an incentive to the issuer to get the job done as cheaply as possible and it gives the contractor an incentive to do it as cheap as possible. Result: expensive roads that break easily and in the long run cost more to society than had it all been done by an institution.
By creating incentive for ever cheaper services we are digging a hole under society.

Wait, what?

So then what is the actual ratio of successfull anarchies against successfull states?
Or even, how many stability years have been noted throughout history for anarchies and for states?

Don't try to falsify history.


Also, the icelandic commonwealth was far from an anarchy.

That would be pretty shitty because most adults have no clear understanding of complex contracts, never mind one that defines your role in society.
And what if i find out that i don't like the country when i'm 40? Tough luck? Who's gonna accept that?


The amish will be making your brain so small when you're a kid that when you're confronted with the rest of society you are sure to get a sensory overload and run back home to mommy and poppy while crying 'Why is is flashing so much?!'.
Then mom and pop can reassure you that here is the best place for your tender soul to spend the rest of its time.
It's a pretty effective way of indoctrination and propably the only mechanism that keeps the amish population somewhat level.

Interesting notion altho i would say that in general this varies much more than just being extremes.
I think that it is strength in numbers in a given situation that forces people into either of the camp. But when not forced to choose i'd say every person has a different subset of what they want secured by what level of their social group and what they want to secure as individuals.

Bending? Wow. You must be the real deal, a guy who whines his whole life and simultaneously projects the facade of being someone who doesn't bend. Guess what? I bet you've bent over all your life just like the rest of us.

Only difference is, most of us don't whine, nor feel like we're bending over, because we aren't. But those who whine about it - those are the ones really feeling the shaft. Life sucks so bad for you, dude.

I'll repost this as a reminder:


Have a great night.

Just to add,

"End of Government"

Does not = end of security, safety, civil jobs/service, etc, etc, etc

Most everything is privatised these days anyway.

And generally I meant the "end of government (as it exists now, e.g. corrupt and greed led)"

And the recognition of a State towards Bitcoin -

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154672.0

Blink and you'll miss it, welcome to tomorrow :)

I find it unlikely that governmental authority would dissolve, yet the Internet would continue to function well enough for Bitcoin to be an exchange medium.

Ding ding ding, you win a cookie Sir ;)

The internet is run completely privately. There's no reason whatsoever that it couldn't keep on chugging, and plenty of reasons why it would. (Primary being that it was designed to.)

1 word - Cyprus

Now I know you all didn't see this coming, but there it is, the start of the end, welcome to tomorrow, glad to ride these waves with you :)

cbeast, don't worry .. well actually, you should worry.

A drug cartel run country ... I must assume you live on a different planet. There's around 5 countries in the world of whom their governments don't have their fingers in the drug trade. You are extremely naive if you think otherwise. All the evidence is right there, they ARE that arrogant.

GW Pharmaceuticals heads various organisations (bayer) globally (just to name 1 drug cartel). And yes, certain individuals have their sticky fingers in the 'illegal drugs' trade.

Here's a tiny bit of information for you - very recently (a few months ago) the Director of the financial part of international terrorism in the UK was caught being involved in money laundering. Ofc this information wasn't splashed all over the mainstream media, because the ones in charge are getting paid off also, but is the information is there, if you wish to open your eyes and look.

Also, (patented years back), GW has now put forward a new patent design for the treatment and prevention of Cancer (cannabis), now that they can commercialise it the governments (US first) will twist the law appropriately so that GW (and bayer by extension) will be able to 'legally sell' their cannabis as extortionate prices as a 'Cancer Cure'. The patent went forward for review a few days ago.

http://www.clear-uk.org/new-patent-granted-on-cannabis-compounds-for-treatment-and-prevention-of-cancer/

(yes, I'm plugging us, but its the most relevant)

Also .. about the 'drug cartel run country' - who do you think let HSBC get away with laundering soooo much money (yes, they got caught with xxx amount, how much do you think they didn't get caught with?) - no government will touch them, because they're hand in hand with the drug cartels.

Wake up.

These bits.

Let me ask, what government would YOU like? The current style? or if you had the choice to design a 'people friendly' government, are you happy living under your current government? Or would you prefer a transparent government? And whatever you answer, try saying the same answer when your government decides to copy Cyprus.

Just to add, someone early in this thread said something along the lines of;


Indeed, and I hope so. But the major point is, that the 'initial' wallet that government officials get paid with would be identified and would be visible for ALL to observe whenever they wished. So any 'extra under the table' money can be observed.

Yes, they could have other wallets that they'd be using to be getting 'under the table bribes'. And here's how a system can stop that.

-  ONLY allow a political party to spend money from their designated wallet (or wallets) -
- IF things look dodgy, then ANYONE can go looking through the bitchain - This will be the fear into the corrupt to abide by the people.

And here's a little secret for you,

There are hardly NO Governments left (huh?? shock horror?!) - what exists is the global banking empire - your government is dead, it died a long time ago, what exists is a shell of a corpse that the global banking empire has crawled into and pretends it's your government.

Tell me about how yours, or any government, around the world has dealt with HSBC as a government SHOULD (according to constitution and international law). Tell me about how yours, or any government has dealt with the lies to invade Afghanistan and Iraq and Libyia, and everywhere else that's been invaded. Tell me about how your government protects its people as it raises taxes and cuts benefits whilst dolling out HUGE bonuses to bankers. Tell me about how your government continues to bring to light pedophile investigations into their administrations (US & UK, I havn't had time to look into other countries, but they were/are involved) over the decades. Tell me about your government making sure that voting is not twisted and cheated upon (especially in the US, I feel sorry for you guys and gals). Tell me about how the Greek and Cyprus governments protect their people as they steal their money for the EU and international banks. Tell me about how Iceland's government survived when their crisis hit the fan a few years back.

I could go on, but you get the picture.

Your governments are dead, or maybe there's a breath in there somewhere and we can kick out the parasite .. or we leave the infested corrupt body to die with the bankers as we move forward into a new era.

Cut the puppet strings and watch the infested puppet corpse drop.

The internet escaped the milspecs long time ago.
Only parts are redundant these days and they also rely on working infras in society.

microsoft is so so so sooo sooo sooooooooo much more competent than the united states government. Ill take my chances.

Microsoft is competent at locking people into bloated software packages, overcharging for said packages, and keeping money for themselves. Microsoft is also incompetent at changing and innovating.

I'll take the government over Microsoft any day.

Exactly ladies and gents, you'll have a choice.

Freedom is choice, not enforcement.

Choice does not guarantee freedom in any way.

I couldn't agree more, but it would be a much better option than what we have now.

If I think Microsoft is competent I can go with them.  If not I can go with a competitor.

With the government, I have no choice.

Microsoft doesn't force me to be a customer.  They try their best to lock you in once you do, but it's still your choice and you can always opt out.  Not so with the government.

The government of course knows this, which is why it generally doesn't bother serving my needs as it's customer.  It knows it's got my money regardless so why make much of an effort?

In general, you can opt out of the government and choose a competitor. Try harder. Enough of everyone's excuses.

Microsoft lets me opt out of their services and keep my computer. I'd like to opt out of the government's services and keep my house.

Nah, you don't really get it.
See, Microsoft will need you.
Microsoft will be cultivating its own people.
You won't want to leave microsoft because you will be genetically bound to it.
If you pay off your life-debt (the one you got when your parents decided to make a child) you may leave.

No one is arguing that the only way this society can function is if it is the only society. There is plenty of room on this planet for some people to try this particular experiment and for others to try other experiments.


if a companies offers are not competitive enough consumers will opt to use a different company. This forces companies to compete with each other on the basis of price and quality. Thus we see there is no dichotomy of giving the customer a good deal vs making more money, in a free market giving the customer a good deal is the only way (besides fraud) to make money.


in a free market why would it be in the interest of a company to screw over its customers? if we are talking about fraud, as an example if we are talking about a bank rading its customers accounts than this is a type of fraud that would be extremely rare absent limited liability. if you are talking about the company not defrauding but just taking unreasonable profits, than this company will quickly be crowded out of the market by entrepreneurs who are willing to work for smaller profits.


there is some truth to this but it is important to understand that david is not claiming to offer the keys to heaven, he is claiming to offer a system that would be better than what we have now and better than atleast most other proposed alternatives. Granted this market will never exist in the theoretical state of perfect competition but ANY amount of competition among service providers is better than a full on, out in the open, non apologetic, monopoly. Sometimes in life we are forced not to chose between good and bad or right and wrong, but bad and worse or wrong and wronger. The best case scenario is that everyone behave peacefully and we wouldn't need law, but since this is not realistic and we do need law, its *better* to have that law be provided by competing firms than by a monpolist.

is this lordhawkeye from youtube?

Wrong.
Once microsoft IS your country you will have just as much or even less choice than you had before.

Microsoft country has started a little war in Middle East. It is not working. Solution is simple. Let's close this war and start it again, maybe it will work for us then.

Well, these have been tried out in many forms in the past and it turns out humans are pretty bad at self government. People have to operate along certain psychological lines (because of our specificness) and the social dynamics of human groups prevent fairytails like the one in the video from actually occuring in stable form. It is just not how human groups operate on a psychological level.
But what if you signed a 10 year contract with that company to get their service cheaper? As if companies have no means to financially or emotionally bind people to them.. Just look outside and see how (large) companies operate on this relatively peacefull battlefield of an economy. Then imagine we give them the power to police themselfs.
You make the mistake that every human can choose how their life will be. It's just not that simple. Most people don't make a choice of living somewhere purely on rational choices. If it was like this then i bet there would be no 3rd world countries and almost everyone would live in the west. People don't get to chose most of the time so its better not to pretend they will have a real choice i a different situation. There are many (legal) ways for taking someones freedom and most of these are not obvious.
Even in a free market comanies can be too powerfull. You assume that competition will assure that noone will become dominant. But that is just a fantasy. There are many ways for companies to become bigger than others and a lot of those have nothing to do with actual economics. Important things like geographical conglomeration of these companies will have a strong effect. You get neighborhoods controlled by separate firms untill the whole city will be controlled by just one company. This is because the service becomes cheaper for the top dog so they can offer that service cheaper and people will go for it.
And even better, those pesky checkpoints between the neighbourhoods are gone! Hooray! But of course by then you have sold your soul to the biggest devil.
Security services are just another natural monopoly so the majority of people can always be persuaded to take the cheaper (more monopolistic) service.
I claim that it would not be better than what we have now. In fact, i'd wager it will be far far worse.
Security should never be at a competing edge within a society. It will lead to escalations.
The whole idea of an open monopoly is so that everyone knows they should play nice or face the consequences.
It is litteraly the glue that holds our society together.
Competing security forces will give a lot of unrest and insecurity (the consequences of the separate laws of the companies will first have to be evaluated) and noone actually knows how their laws will hold up against other firms laws.
It would be bedlam. People would have no clue about their current and future situation. (what if the negociations don't go well and we get into a war with the other security company?).
Seriously, All he proposes is to take the big dominance fights right back to our streets. It's like microcredit of militance.
You'll get houses with tanks in front because they are secured by company A in a company B neighborhood.
It Would Be A Mess.
You don't seem to realize that competing over security means getting the other guy out when he doesn't want to leave. And if he doesn't want to leave you kill him. That process will not change with these new security structures.
Moreover, they all will have a different idea and you can be sure that many potential dictators will seek the leadership jobs in these companies just to prove how good they are.
And gain, companies just have one incentive. Money.
If they can use 'security' to keep you inside so you can work for the factory that pays underhand money to your local dictator then that is exactly what will happen.
You DO know there is decades of research gone into how to keep people complacent, don't you?
Why do you think north korea is acting like it is? It is one big security firm and the people cannot get out. Try competing with that.
The bizarre thing is that those people actually at some point had a choice about how their local security force acts.
In the situation mister friedman describes the firm with the largest 'security' force will have the better negociation position and their 'laws' will prevail. People will conglomerate around them BECAUSE the have more guns.
It is realy unthinkable that security firms, consisting of human beings with human emotions, will be able to compete in a civilized way. Security is about domination.
The dynamics that are proposed by the video are completely synthetic and need to be kept in check or they will not exist. But who is going to enforce these dynamics? Who will prevent a war between competing factions? Who will prevent a 3rd firm taking advantage of that situation and take over both competing territories so they can offer cheaper service to their sheep?
What if a certain firm has most of its customers in a region that has no resources? Will they go to war with other firms to secure resources? And how is that different from the current situation?
There are just too many things intertwined with this notion of security and however cute the proposal is, it is pretty amazingly naive.
The world, and people in general, just doesn't work like this guy thinks it does.
No ammount of free market will change human drives. His ideas only give you the temporal ilusion of things being ok. But this too will escalate in  dog fight and we will be in the same situation we are now only with governments replaced by private military corporations. Thank you mister friedman. :/

Hey, all they have to do is bombard the country with Windows ME, right?

I agree with your overall observations, but i feel it has become more of a forced symbiosis than being purely parasitic.
The banking system has enabled a lot of things in society and removing the parasite may kill the host.

Thanks for this. Good reading.

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/capitalism-steven-pearlstein-and-morality (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/capitalism-steven-pearlstein-and-morality)

I've been reading this article about double standards in US economy: lower classes are subjected to competing with china workforce, while higher classes, say doctors, bankers and lawyers are protected from that same competition. The problem is you see, that higher classes tend to bribe or somehow otherwise influence the politicians.

How to make the government resilient to this? One way is to only let wealthy folks into politics. But the newly chosen politicians (industrials, bankers, doctors) will stil protect their own interests and wealth. Put Warren Buffet for a president and you'll see some bailouts!

Other way around this is, of course to disband the government...

Depends on what you want.  If you're wealthy, everything's peachy.  If you're not wealthy, it's not a lot of fun.  But as long as the wealthy can keep the not-wealthy in line by distracting them with political parties and celebrity news, we can keep this system going for the wealthy.

Even if one is to support government of any sort, nobody (except the rich, but I stopped counting them as people a while ago,) actually believes what we have now is satisfactory.

Wealth is relative.
The wealthy of 100 years ago (even kings and emperors) didn't have the cool stuff we have now.
The thing is that it never gets satisfactory.
We are programmed to eat the cake and so we can't have it.

I finally understand the phrase "You can't have your cake and eat it, too."

Thank you so much ;D  A little embarrassing I didn't get it until now, tho.

But by wealth, I'm referring to those with the visage of having the most amounts of political influence via lobbying and bribes.  From a philosophical point of view, their wealth is negligible to my wealth of another form, but when considering the powers that be in any government, those with the most Freedom-FunBux and therefor the most influence appear to be the wealthiest.

Can there never be a satisfactory government?  Is it designed to forever disappoint some and not others?  Seems better to avoid it all together, if that's going to be the case.

Well, we people get used to luxury. So we always want more. Even better if it's more then my neighbour. So yes, any form of civilization will dissapoint in this way. Social hyrarchies are as old as human history so it's not realy about governments either. We are social animals that have many social hierarchies. Government is just a refined and scaled up form of the topmost part of social hierarchy.
And in the end there is just not enough room for everyone to be at the top of the social hierarchy. We also decided to kindof ritualize the thing so that the top of the hierarchy can be better controled by the base of the piramid (democracy). Unfortunately that process is only partially successfull as there are big scaling problems with representation (of people).

But besides governments we have these multinationals that are also hierarchies but are usually completely non-democratic and operate for the purpose of profit. These hierarchies are fastly becoming larger than governments. They play on a larger field than any single country and they can bend around laws. In fact, they are taking over our lifes by controling ever larger parts of the mechanisms around us. In larger and larger ammounts they decide how resources get divided around the world.
Not people, not governments but multinationals that would sell your baby for profit. Not theirs, of course.

I agree with your overall observations, but i feel it has become more of a forced symbiosis than being purely parasitic.
The banking system has enabled a lot of things in society and removing the parasite may kill the host.

Creation always comes from destruction. This is the reality of things, throughout the ages, it is true today as it was 2,000 years ago.

I feel at this point I should point this part out;

We, as humans, have evolved, our physical attribute evolution stopped a while back, our intellectual evolution (depending on your research and beliefs, but lets not go there) is continuing to evolve.

Side by side with our intellectual evolution comes Societal Evolution.

There have been various forms of ruling parties through the millenniums, either through Monarchy, Despotism, Anarchy, Tribalism .. the list is actually very extensive (http://phrontistery.info/govern.html). Though obviously only certain types relevant for this discussion.

We as a society, have evolved into a global society as various nations have intermingled, and this global society has evolved with its types of governance (e.g. when many monarchy's were overthrown they were done within a relatively small time period). As such we have slowly evolved to the current form we are in now.

The majority of the populace of the world do not feel it is working, similar to how a majority of nations didn't feel monarchy was working hundreds of years ago. The paramount questions are (as is being discussed very interestingly),

All the ingredients are there,

What remains is for what has been baked for quite some time to be finished cooking and released. (Translation: People over the world are getting more and more fed up, and when the key to release, (escape from fiat) is looming, it may very well present the key for society to evolve alongside the monetary system).

What will evolve? Multiple contractors seeking 'customers' with short or long term plans, what would attract them? (btw, on this note, I'd never sign into a 10 year contract, and anyone who did would be very foolish and advised against strongly. A 10 year contract would be shunned in favour of a 1 year, already making that 10 year contractor fail).

New government style parties that will allow existence of multiple 'private' contractors (aka, Councils) to develop more independently? Allowing contractors (councils) to attract new residents with their "my product is better than theirs, and we'll even pay for you to move here, if you sign a 1 year contract"?

Governments come and go, institutional change is a MUST for human societal evolution for evolution can NOT come without growth, and growth can NOT happen without change.

Will some governments resist? Of course they will. And they will stay stale, with a distressed populace desperate to escape their monoplized society.

Whilst a competitive country with a dozen competing contractors constantly strengthening themselves to provide a better service than their neighbour to attract you. And such a country as an 'overall' would grow, economically, scientifically and sociologically.
-----------------------

100 Years ago we reached the end of the usefulness of the current governmental style, the 1st World War was an extremely clear sign of that, and the blocking of science and scientists, the strangling of technologies and monies to the people. These are the signs that its times to change.

However, we did not know how, or what to ....

Do we now? Is what we dream better? Is change better? or is it better to keep our governments as they are until the end of time? And what powers would be needed to enact such a change? Will a new monetary system escaped from the fiat prison enable those with the will and the 'wealth' to finance and enact these changes with wisdom?

Yeah, it's called culture.
But you have to be carefull in comparing the evolution of things. The actual driving forces behind the changes can and do shape the path.
We, unlike nature, can think far into the future.

It's not pure evolution tho, it took libraries full of planning and adjusting.
That's nonsense. Ask them if it works like they hoped and you get your answer. But it is not always easy or indeed possible to turn hopes into reality. A lot of coutries are open source tho, so if the people have a better idea to make it all work (and make it work well and make the change without breaking everything) they can step up and other people will hear them. It is just not an easy task to run a country, never mnid doing so on a global stage.
I hope you realize the people suffering under those monarchies you talk of just didnt have enough food and clean water?
In reality most people these days are glad we got this far.
By the time people will be escaping from fiat there will be chaos all over because our complete world economy runs on fiat money.
What you propose is a destruction of modern life. It's not just a litte part of europe or asia that will suffer, it will be almost every nation in the world.

Lol, no. What will evolve for the first years is what you see in Mad Max. People brutally surviving and scaveging for energy.
There will be nothing and all production will stop.
If fiat collapses so does our world. It would be the equivalent of ripping out your veins. See society jerking on the ground? That's what you propose.
You mean that the companies that settle in saudi arabia and russia will be the big winners of the energy wars that are sure to follow?
Sounds like no change at all.
What you propose is just another form of governance and these councils you mention will start behaving like governments over time.
I mean, i can live in another country if i like their 'product' better right now! You don't need private corporations to have that.
The product of these councils will be shaped mostly exactly like that of governments because their task will be the same and the forces that play at those levels give it that shape. How would the USA look now if there was no Bell, IBM or Ford?
But then these councils will not be democratically corrected. So if you live in Bayer City and Bayer will have invented a chemical that makes you just love Bayer then there will be no one to stop them. Happy times, i'm sure.
If you think about it nothing can happen without change, wether its growth, shrinkage or frogs getting run over. You're arguing dynamics.
These councils will also be governments. They will just not be run by you but by people wanting to sell you something.
What is a country if not governed? What is a country if not united by one law?
Now it's getting bizarre.
You mean that governments have been useless for the past 100 years? Did you even look how things were 100 years ago and how the change from that was facilitated through government?
That's a fantasy dude. Governments were incredibly usefull during the past centuries.
And get your history right. WWI was started over a monarchy.
There was no current style government in those days.
The whole idea of governance changed in the past 100 years. Incredible dramatic changes. The lower classes got social and economic freedoms that were never ever possible before in known history and on that scale. That's what the last 100 years of governance did for you.
So i have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
No, and i think you don't realy get how the world works and why.

I have no idea what you are talking about.  I am talking about an absence of countries.

You don't even have to have a computer if you don't want to.  You are forced to choose a government.

When you are born you are automatically locked into a government.   You can move, but that is much harder to do than simply buying a new computer.   And most countries lock you out anyway.

Try again.

That is not the fault of any government, and therein lies the fault of your argument. It is not any government's fault that no land is left for you to go play rebellious anti-government dreamer.

It's like you complaining that all the homes in a neighborhood are already owned by someone else and you can't move into a home in that neighborhood yourself without playing by the house rules.

You are wrong. Try harder. Find a government you like, and get on with life.

Cyprus is in proble for decades due to 1 part being Turkish and 2nd part Greece. So nope not a valid example. Goevrmentas dont fall just like that, those things dont happen. Just take a look at Cuba, SSSR was comunist for decades. So try better.

I'm not comparing anything .. Social Evolution is a THING, read up on it.

Civil wars and theocracies and monarchies did NOT in fact take libraries, full of planning and adjusting to start .. Don't you know any history?

I've talked to PLENTY of people, I'm a politician its what I DO. And they are not happy! They do NOT like these continued taxes, nor bailouts for bankers, not corrupt politicians abusing their tax money, nor wars started with lies and more wars!!

I gave up reading after that ...

What planet are you from? For you Sir are a troll.

I can simply buy a house from someone in that neighborhood.

Even when you buy land, governments take a dim view of trying to set up your own rules on it. Even when you buy land from the government, they still think it's theirs.

You can simply buy a house in that neighborhood? Really?

And conflation of analogies does not work. Let's assume that we're talking about a neighborhood in your fabled AnCap world. Now try again.

Yes, really. Somebody will sell, if I offer enough money. It all depends on how much I want to live in that neighborhood.

Perhaps you should try harder.

We can't assume that you have enough money.

Then I'll just have to save until I do, won't I?

Again, it's all bout how much I want to live there.  And no matter how much I save, I can't give any government enough money for them to leave me the hell alone. They keep coming back for more.

Please, do try a little harder?

I'm talking about the fact that these kind of services must be somehow largely geographically bound.
If you want to opt out of your local bit of civilization, you will have to move. Just like now. So effectively microsoft would be your new country.
But what if there is no more growth potential? What will such a company do then to keep it's precious civilicustomerslaves?
How do you assure such a big world power will act ethical if you cannot control these entities? Choice is nice, but you need to have information to make a good choice. But big corporations are the ideal tools for information manipulation. It just cannot work without a bigger structure that keeps these companies in check.

Well, it's a thing in the same way your conciousness is a thing. It is an information structure that cannot be pinpointed to anything specific and which is constantly in a feedback loop with itself.
Not sure what libraries you have seen, but governance is a pretty big topic throughout history. Just as an example, have you ever heared of the Lithuanian Commonwealth? Lots of planning and adjusting went into that one. How do you think the romans managed their water supplies? You think one day someone got up and thought "Let's build Aquaducts!". Of course not, they need to be engineerd for the specific implementation. It requires lots and lots of planning and structure and institutions and bureaucracy . All large social structures require planning and management and upkeep. You cannot have a civilization without planning. Even the egyptian farao's had to plan for bad years where the nyle didn't overflow. So they 'taxed' their people in grain and that grain went to silo's and were stored so he could give the grain back when they had a bad year and his people didn't die off from hunger. It  was a massive operation as everyone must be levied in a fair way. They invented a system of numarals and mathemtics to account this.

History is full of planned societies. In fact, the most important fact we learn from history is that planning ahead is the best survival strategy. All civilisations that wrote history both had governments and were in the business of making multi-year plans. It is essential for the survival of a civilization.

So again, what libraries have you seen from the inside?
Or even the USA, it's built on pretty well thought through ideas. Without the insights of its founders it would have been something else completely. It would propably still be a ritisch colony.

What? You're a politician? And you are seriously considering the need of governments? Seriously? Because people don't like tax? And you claim to have read history books?
LOL., i fear for the future of the people you claim to represent.

OF COURSE people are not happy. But killing society over tax unhappiness is a bit suicidal, don't you think?
IF you're a politician and IF people are not happy (and by people i mean some majority) then you would have no problem representing this majority because you're a politician, yes sir, that's what you are.
Good luck explaining to the people that YES they can have NO TAX AT ALL but that they have to make their own food from now on because society just ceased to exist. And water will be in bottles in the shop once you get a job to pay for it.

Ow, and you have the magical idea that some government replacing organisation will not have this same incentive?
Think again.
They will have the incentve AND no laws or control to stop them from exploiting this to the max.
If i was a multinational and was alowed to have my own population i would just breed them and dispose of them when no needed any more.
Of course they would be genetically modified to somehow bind them to my company.
Screw al those free people, i'd just make my own slave race that i can manage to do all my work. Hey, capitalism to the max! HI HO!

In any modern governmental crisis, Internet access is the FIRST THING TO GO.
How many Middle East/North African governments cut off the net in the last year alone?
Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Tunisia, etc...

In these types of scenarios, even if you have net access, is it SAFE TO USE IT?
Rounding up dissidents is a lot easier if they're dumb enough to broadcast their location...

Yeah, that's an even even better thing to mention.
All countries have internet kill-switches these days.

This is all nonsense.

Organized Government is not going to fall...

Unless Aliens come. ;)

And what makes you so sure we haven't? Huh?

Because i have yet to be deemed "King Of All Humans"


Maybe that's just my ego talking  :D

Ok, I gotta throw this bit in now - My actual thoughts is a combination of both,

An extremely transparent 'government' that allows 'states' to govern themselves with much more freedom. BUT, in competition with each other. In that the 'government' sets down that each state must provide the basics, human rights.

'More freedom' in that less tax goes to the government (which would need less for itself with no wars and more transparency/less corruption), and more tax stays with the 'states'.

1. No 'unified' tax, each state would be free to set tax at whatever rates it wanted.
2. Laws would be decided by each state, BUT as long as they did not go against universal basic human rights.
(This would be enforced by the 'government').
3. The government must provide at a minimum to all, the free (or extremely cheap) ability to travel to other states (assuming the states accept the person).
4. The 'government' responsibility would be only to enforce rule 2 and carry out rule 3, take an extreme minimum of tax needed to cover the costs, which would be a flat base from all the 'states', after that amount
6. Politicians would be cut down massively to reduce costs, there would be no need for a politician representing each state. The states can choose their own 'politicians' that stay in the state, and states can sort their own minimum wages, and similar.
7. The army would be cut down massively to reduce costs.
8. Competition for 'tax payers' would ensure positive growth between 'states', as more 'tax payers' = more jobs, more education, more wages for all, more everything really.

If a state treated its citizens badly, then the government would ensure that human rights were upheld, and if the citizen just wanted to move anyway, then they could.

I hear 'replies' already, saying, "ye, but you can't just go and live in a house". What if, because these states were free to set and keep their own taxes, they use it to build houses, or provide benefit/welfare to those moving in (probably under some condition, but then thats why there would be multiple states competing, trying to give the best offer).

I think this because, as people have mentioned, I also think that 'governments' won't ever fully disappear, but that they will change, and because of the continued privatisation and liberalisation movements 'states' might one day get a chance to try this. It would probably happen partially first, say 10 'states' in a country, and 5 would opt into this new scheme, etc, and see how it works.

This will lead to social stratification and 'states' that specialize in certain social classes.
You'll get massive differences between these kinds of states and these differences will lead to instability.
If anything we need more social cohesion.

This will lead to social stratification and 'states' that specialize in certain social classes.
You'll get massive differences between these kinds of states and these differences will lead to instability.

I could'nt agree more Sir, but I must ask, how is this different from today? Apart from the fact that the divide is vaster that can not truly be conceived unless you've lived on the streets feeding from dustbins, and lived a life of luxury where money did not matter anymore?

Today, the stratification is mixed right on top of us, however if 1 state does better than the 2nd, then the 2nd would be wise to adopt and improve upon whatever strategy state 1 is doing to do so well, wouldn't they?

In the world I envision, the 'states' would not be governed by corporate entities, but by 'local politicians' (for want of a better word), who would get voted into power every xxx years, decided by the 'states' themselves. This way, when I state starts to collapse due to bad management it is in everyones interest in that state to vote in people who will not collapse. For the freedom and availability to relocate of their citizens (would be enshrined in their basic human rights) would be bad for all (no taxes, lower pay, best, less teachers, etc, it's just not in ones best interest if your own wages (as a 'voted in statesman') is directly reliant upon your states laws (which should be tied into how much tax/populace you have, as any other competitive growing 'business' is). You screw up your own state, your own and administration wages drop, people will leave, you'd get voted out.

Fear of profit & wages loss is a great motivator in this day and age, one day, perhaps it won't be, but I can't see that happening in our lifetimes.

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I have a feeling you've never lived on the streets, nor lived the life of a criminal who never wanted to be one?

Yes, there will be some differences. Some very well 'classy states', may require more from you as an individual to move into their state. So? Work for it then? Whilst at the same time other states will be trying to get their states up to 'numero 1' quality, so they don't lose their citizens, constantly improving. Those that truly fall behind would lose their citizens to the other states that are providing jobs, different taxes (that appeal specifically to those person), industrial states, hi-tech states, vegetarian states, agricultural, etc, etc, all will form, being able to provide to each other, yet at the same time trying to provide the best quality of living for fear of losing citizens.

And I think instead of 'government' as I was using before, it would sound better to use 'administrative government', as through transparency and decentralization to this extent, such a large 'ruling body' simply won't be needed.

'government', 'government administration', 'state', etc - I'm crap with names, feel free to substitute the names with something of your choice.

The difference will be that there will be walls between classes/states.
Different classes have different needs in society so switching strategy would be strange when these states will start to split in function. And they will split because it makes them more efficient and thus cheaper.
Yeah, its always nice to envision stuff. But in the real world you need to take a hard look at human dynamics. Then you find that visions are usually utopias and that humans in general do not think in the same way you/me/us do.
In the real world you would be too late. When a state collapses the reasons why it collapses are usually some time in the past and propably obscure.
I don't care, i grow my own clone army of slaves. I mean, who is going to teach me ethics if i can engineer my own workers?
You would need some other species of animals to achieve this. Humans thrive on fear and profit.
One of the reasons the western world is collapsing is that we have too little fears and too much profit. Most people in our society are not very motivated to get more than they have now . Most of the rest is just overly ambicious and finds ever weirder things to become proud of themselfs for.
I don't get it. If there is a number 1 state and people are free to move, why would not everyone instantly move to the number one state? What would prevent a single state from completely outcompeting all the other states within a year or so?
If you ever get into a situation with multiple states per country the transparrent government you talk of will become one huge ball of legal snakes. All states will have slightly different laws and so you will need a different set of exceptions between these states and it needs to be resolved by a 3rd party to even have a chance to prevent conflict.

I think you are being waaaay too naive about how the real world works.
The situation we have now could only become stable after many many gruesome wars because of conflict of interest. A lightweight transparent government would have no teeth to force the involved parties into peace.
Say state A is run pretty well but it happens to be that all its citizens live in parts of land where there is no oil.
So state A has a big problem because they have no energy to run their society.
State B is run pretty flakey, but who cares they have oil. Their citizens get a bonus from the overpriced oil being sold to state A.
In effect, the badly run state B can outcompete state A just because they happened to control some resource and are unwilling to share. The lightweight government hasn't got enough military to cope with the private overpayed security force of state B.

These are the kinds of scenarios you need to walk through to see the problems.
Your proposal is whishfull thinking because people and the dynamics of their interactions have absolutely nothing to do with how you imagine things will work out.
You idea is only possible if absolutely everyone agrees with you in exactly the same way.
In reality there are too many things that divide us. I may like state B more than state A but since a certain person i hate happens to work for state B i will chose state A.

People, most of the time, do not behave in a rational way but that is exactly what your idea requires to work.

Laws are used to exploit if you haven't already figured that out.  eg, the government locks us into their currency so that their crony banks can exploit us to the max.

Multinationals breeding people?  Why?  Which ones are we talking about?  What is their incentive to do so?   Where would they get the capital for such a scheme?  Have you been reading  science fiction lately?  Because I'm struggling to understand what you are saying here.

Some government replacing organisation?  Why would that happen?  The only reason people accept government is because the idea has been indoctrinated into them through public education over generations.  It's just a label in reality.  The people in government are the same as you and me.  You and I don't have these powers, nor does anyone else.

Governments are a natural consequence of society and no existing government. They form because people want structure, uniformity, and protection, and there are those who are motivated to fill the roles in the presence of a vacuum.

People have been able to clone life for about two decades and recently scientists have announced that they can clone cells indefinitely without degradation. The tech is there and is commercialized.
Incentinve? For a corporate state it can be a cheap labor force.
If we didn't have laws prohibiting human cloning there would already be engineerd human derivatives on the market competing for your job.

Now this is starting to get interesting.

Why do we need to be lied to all the time?  Why does government need the best liars in society to sustain itself?

Yes, people want structure and protection, (I don't think uniformity is either wanted or desirable), but there's no reason why a government is required for that.  As has been said many times government is just a monopoly protection service.  There's no reason why we can't have competition in that field.

This.

Well, there is.
The reason is that it works because it's a monopoly.
Competition on that scale equals war.
World economy is built on treaties, not on absolute competition.
In the end we need each other so competition has only a limited use. It can only be done within a bigger context or it will become an arms race.

He means market competition, not military. Ford and Nissan, not Israel and Palestine.

But if Ford has to keep its people safe and Nissan has all the oil the effect is the same.
Or maybe christians like Nike better and muslims like Puma better or something.
The problems we have is not because of governments, it is because of people.
What we need are tools to make peole in charge take responsibility and do their job instead of filling their pockets.
We need long term thinkers that assure and stabilize the future.
No ammount of market competition will assure that because direct competition will drive short term thinking (you can already see this in cities that compete with each other).
Short term egoistical thinking in the economy is already an enourmous problem. Why do you think the corporate world will not eat itself up the moment they get the chance.
You? You mean nothing to them. You are a profit machine. And now you want to give them tools to completely control your life.

This may be a surprise to you:

They already have those tools. It's called "government." I propose taking them away.

But that is not possible. Due to the structures of our brains all successfull civilizations have been based on one form of gorvernence or another.
You would need some other lifeform besides humans to make a society without governance work.

I refer you... here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155570.0
and, here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=129895.0
and.... here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard81.html

It's been done. Quite successfully.

1st one: They talk about stateless, not government less.
All nordic tribes had forms of governance. The chieftain was the leader of the village and the chieftains were then representatives in talks on a higher level. Disputes were often resolved with violence (pillaging, tribal wars, etc, etc, etc).
Pretty barbaric stuff by modern standards.

2nd one: Same thing, ancient celtic societies had governance but mostly local and less strictly organized at the top.

You need to realize that these ancient tribes were constantly at war with each other and there was no real peace.
These civilizations never grew out of their tribal forms. It was the romans that taught them how to settle in cities properly.

3rd one: Well, what can i say, religion is just another form of governance.


So there you have it. All these three examples show that humans organize their societies in a way that there is a leader that does all the big stuff and there are the workers who care about the details.
We call it governance and even monkeys do it.

Tell you what, you just slide those goalposts wherever you feel makes you most comfortable, m'kay?

Hey, you started refering to tribal celts as a good example of government-less society.  ::)

If you want to play it that way, I'm in favor of more governments... specifically, 6 billion or so, each with only one "citizen."

Same thing as no government at all. Won't work for the same reasons.
This is not me playing, this is just the human situation.
But i agree that we need to get some rights back as citizens, if that's what you mean.

No, Like you said, treaties.
Mutual aid, trade agreements, and just like today, if one government is too weak to defend itself, it joins a defense treaty organization, and larger, better-armed governments will protect it from governments that would like to take it's stuff.

It works just fine now. I see no reason why it would not work at smaller scales.

Yeah, but people went through a lot of misery to get to the point where we could have these treaties.
History shows that it is not at all an easy (or safe) process to stabilize different parties in a political sense and maintain a stable economy on top of that.

There will allways be an overarching governmental structure to create the framework of society like we know it. So all you want is an extra layer of government that is supposed to compete against itself internally. At best you'll be moving problems around, maybe temporarily fixing them, but with the added layers of bureaucracy that need to be supported by society.

Even larger and better armed governments don't always have the ability to protect you. The situation will be no different than today in the kinds of dynamics you'll find.
You would need a complete global destabilization of power to even get it going.
I think it will break everything to start with and fix nothing in the end.

You say this like it is established scientific fact... but it's just your personal opinion.

It's an observation. Pretty factual..

No, it's a prediction. And one based on a flawed premise.

Let me ask you this:

What, exactly, are you arguing against?

And what, exactly, do you think I am arguing for?

I honestly can't fathom the former, and I doubt you understand the latter.

I'm arguing that the examples in your videos are hardly good examples of possible futures for mankind and that if you don't see that you have no clue what drives a mean human being in a given situation.

What you're arguing for, as far as i can see, would not solve any of the problems we currently have with governments without breaking our current system in an catastrophic way.
I say this because i know that the problem is not with the system, its with the humans.

A decentralized (administrative) government CAN exist, with  more power to councils/states/counties (whatever).

It's based from a combination of how the US and UK works, but with the decentralized government part.

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I mean, 1st off, this style of government is not going to last, there are other ways, just because no ones fully thought it up and tested it, does not mean it doesn't exist. Trial and error, and don't get me wrong, this current governments 'principle' was sound, but unfortunately the bankers built the fiat system in a way knowing that they could corrupt it (Rothschilds for anyone that cares).

It wasn't the fault of THIS government, it got infected, its diseased, and way too corrupt to save as it's exists now. The trust and the faith is simply not there. What's needed is more transparency and more growth.

And growth is best when it's decentralized to give the opportunity for competition! There is no argument that can beat the fact that 2 things in growth competition with each other grows faster and better than 1 thing that has a total monopoly. Not saying it wouldn't grow, but the 2 things would grow MUCH faster.

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A nation offers the opportunity to the land, stating that at least 2 must sign-up, it can't be just 1. And after testing, there is nothing they can do but grow. Especially in this economic day and age. Then bit by bit other councils/states/etc signup, free choice of tax, of setting wages, of their education, their police focus, their own laws ... they wouldn't be forced to signup, but who wouldn't want work and live in a place like that?

Well, there's part of the problem, I have posted no videos. I gave you links to a few past posts, and one article. those past posts may have contained videos, but we are not here discussing them. You asked for historical examples of anarchies. I gave you them. If you say that they were violent, (with the exception of the Pennsylvania one) as your main argument against them, well, I would point you to their contemporary governments. Those were considerably worse, and modern governments have not improved much.

And here's the other half of the problem: you do not, nor, I think, do you have any desire to, understand exactly what it is I advocate, else you would have at minimum, called it by name.

In summation, you are arguing against me, personally, and not what I advocate. I could state the sky was blue, and you would debate terminology. I think we're done here.

lol., i'm arguing your ideas, not your person.

I think this was the start of our argument:
I'm just telling you it, just like your several later ideas, is unrealistic.

But sure, if you want we're done.