There are no great Libertarian Thinkers but there are major Clever Libertarian Propagandists that twist reality so folks with a lot of money will pay them well.
It is not about People Vs State as their propaganda would have you believe. It is about Society. One person alone can accomplish very little. Even if you cut your own tree and make your own lumber, chances are you did not make the saw or the steel for the saw. So it takes the actions of many people, each doing their bit, to accomplish anything.
The great problem is that for each to do their bit requires someone to organize that. Not the hardest job or the most important, but it carries power, and that is the rub. The person who organizes is the AGENT of all who cooperate but is often the embezzler of the goodies and pushing the costs to others rather than sharing that either.
In a Socialized Society (as in socialized dog) all who wield power have to be held accountable for their decisions and actions, and all who cooperate must be Empowered to have a part in achieving the greatest contribution and fair share of the result, that actually causes the maximum return on effort, enriching everyone in the society.
Built into our brain is the ability of Empathy that can recognize Fairness, and those with that part damaged are called Sociopaths. It is the goal of Libertarian Propaganda to make everyone Sociopaths, look to their profit only, and ignore those who are damaged by their destruction.
Everyone wants control over their own life, but to accomplish most things in life, people have to work together. How they decide what and how is the definition of politics. I consider each such group a separate government. How that particular government is organized, who decides and how the others hold that decider responsible, is the fine grain of freedom or tyranny, and differs in each case.
For basic thoughts check out the sidebar starting at basic concepts.
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Freedom Is Freedom From Abuse, Not Freedom To Abuse
Economic freedom is freedom from abuse and not freedom to abuse others who should be free of your abuse. The primary vehicle that a society has to restrain such abuse is the government. There is almost nothing that can be accomplished by one person alone. To accomplish a goal everyone working on it needs to do their part, and always it comes to one person to make the final decision or there is a contest of opinions that one person wins, or the goal is not achieved.
This job of making those decisions is just a job, it contains power, but is rarely the most difficult, and certainly not the most effort. But in holding that power, the person with the job is the Agent, by some level of assent, of everyone else that is affected by that goal, and how it is accomplished. As the Agent with the power, there is special responsibility to act in the interests of all, and giving one's self all the goodies and dumping all the costs on to others is tantamount to embezzlement, and criminal at least in intent.
Forming a society is one of those group goals, more complicated and spread across generations, but the structure underneath remains. Like many such groups you can only opt out by suicide, or at best distant travel, and you give assent by not doing those things.
One of the decisions in any group goal is indeed the distribution of goodies usually called wealth and perks, and it is a dysfunction of most groups that Agents see themselves as so deserving of that power that they have the right to embezzle all the goodies. They have even spent an enormous amount of those ill-gotten goodies to try and convince their clients that they actually deserve the situation as they have made it.
However any sane person who looks at the situation can see that all that embezzlement has reduced not only the lives of the client/victims but made the entire society more dysfunctional and less capable of functioning overall. Looking back we can see that even Kings lived pretty wretched lives because the freedom they suppressed prevented the accomplishments that would have benefited them as well.
It is hard to see what might be, but you can bet that this society has already fallen short of that, and is falling further as I write this.
This job of making those decisions is just a job, it contains power, but is rarely the most difficult, and certainly not the most effort. But in holding that power, the person with the job is the Agent, by some level of assent, of everyone else that is affected by that goal, and how it is accomplished. As the Agent with the power, there is special responsibility to act in the interests of all, and giving one's self all the goodies and dumping all the costs on to others is tantamount to embezzlement, and criminal at least in intent.
Forming a society is one of those group goals, more complicated and spread across generations, but the structure underneath remains. Like many such groups you can only opt out by suicide, or at best distant travel, and you give assent by not doing those things.
One of the decisions in any group goal is indeed the distribution of goodies usually called wealth and perks, and it is a dysfunction of most groups that Agents see themselves as so deserving of that power that they have the right to embezzle all the goodies. They have even spent an enormous amount of those ill-gotten goodies to try and convince their clients that they actually deserve the situation as they have made it.
However any sane person who looks at the situation can see that all that embezzlement has reduced not only the lives of the client/victims but made the entire society more dysfunctional and less capable of functioning overall. Looking back we can see that even Kings lived pretty wretched lives because the freedom they suppressed prevented the accomplishments that would have benefited them as well.
It is hard to see what might be, but you can bet that this society has already fallen short of that, and is falling further as I write this.