Ha, good luck! You’re going to be waiting forever, given the person you’re asking…
Maybe we should ask the Greeks about how that voting against the 0.01% thing works out. I mean they did it, and nobody stopped them right?
No, no one stopped them. Everyone in charge is happy to watch Greek unemployment go up over 50% and for the country to collapse.
That doesn’t seem like a model to emulate.
I find it amusing that people call me out on lack of examples, when they are free to implement such things themselves. If something new only happened once we saw someone else do it, nothing would ever happen. This is where populism fails, when contrasted against self-discipline. But, paradoxically, it can often be more selfish to avoid using one’s own initiative to solve problems.
Obviously not! It is bigger than the span of my lifetime, and I’ve only been working on this project for about two years.
I know that you don’t like to hear it when I start off with this, but: you have several fundamental presumptions baked into this question.
- that state recognition is a one-way phenomenon
- the legitimacy of non-voluntary citizenship
- that other states or their police are a problem
Many people I speak with seem to assume that police being armed is the main obstacle they present, but it is really their organizational structure. Why cops often act like such cocky jerks is because they assume that they have an endless supply of backup. When citizens are able to radio for help which arrives within a matter of minutes, this levels the playing field considerably. The difficulty with people freely organizing is that it tends to rely upon ready-made frameworks provided by the state, so we get the same kinds of businesses, NPOs, etc. Providing a new system for devising more flexible organizational structures offers more possibilities. If you are more isolated, or lack such organizational structure, then scrambling nearby radio frequencies works wonders. When it becomes just a couple of cops versus you and your friends, then they are basically just like any other random yahoos with guns. They can’t count on somebody coming to bail them out if they blow it.
Besides radio, the other crucial communications network which the state relies upon to draw people into their system are public records. This is how people find themselves captive audience to governments in the first place, by trusting them to record births, deaths, marriages, travel, property, etc. Using these means undermining the autonomy of you and your family instantly. But with modern tech, pretty much anyone can do it, rather than relying upon the state.
So, again, this is not so much a reaction against how others do things, but rather a DIY effort to make the best systems I can from first principles. No doubt, everything I have to say can be countered by a “but… but…” based upon the assumption that yet another facet of the task could only possibly be done by the same centralized institutions which have been doing it, but please appreciate that I actually do try to not derail every topic I participate in! A person should be able to make a passing comment you don’t agree with without being required to write a whole manifesto to support it every time.
Also, some parts of a more involved explanation would be both quite strategically and personally risky at this time. I think it’s nice to be able to encourage people to recognize that they have more options, without needing to spell out to them what to do. The “specifics” people often press me for are like the difference between telling somebody: “You could go into business for yourself!”, and drafting for them a charter and a detailed business plan.
When they beat you with a stick or shoot you for not complying with the police or lock you in jail for not paying your taxes or not complying with the law, yeah, I think that this is an unacknowledged weakness in your “plan.”
You live within the legal boundaries of a state, whether you recognize that state or its laws or not. In fact, I suspect you were born a citizen of said state and said state thinks (and legally enforces) your citizenship in it, unless you choose to leave the geographical boundaries of said state and renounce your citizenship in a way that the state recognizes.
You can pretend it doesn’t exist or matter all you want. It won’t care but it will force compliance. You have, so far, given no evidence that you have any counter to that glaring weakness in your ideas about states being voluntary.
You seem to be making the same mistake that a lot of would-be political philosophers make, which is ignoring the actual reality on the ground in preference for your wishes of how it should be. The only way to exist without the state is to dismantle the state. It will resist that process and I don’t think you’re leading a revolution anytime soon.
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The Greeks were allowed have their little vote precisely because they had no power. It just made the elite furious is all.
I mean when Italy didn’t play ball they just installed a dictatorship and nobody blinked an eye. Not a peep in the media. Business as usual. The utter contempt shown to Greece for their recent referendum is only marginally instructive as when the result isn’t as required the population are just required to do it again.
Greece had no cards once it signed on to the debt con and perhaps not even before. I guess they wondered would the nerve be there to order the huzzars to attach bayonets in full view of the world. It was.
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You are engaged in the same defeatist trope that many here dwell upon, that the two parties involved here are a monolithic state of “everybody”, versus “me”. all by myself. This suggests that when other people organize, that there is somehow absolute consensus and concrete reality to their structures. Whereas anything I do is essentially solo and without foundation, “just because” you assume a totality as your starting point. That people being free to organize changes this dynamic doesn’t register with you. Also, those who control the machinery of the state are far from a critical mass, they are actually a minority.
That I did address many of the points you keep coming back to indicates to me that you are running in a loop here, and have not made any attempt to carefully read and understand my position as outlined in previous posts. You keep coming back to “But they are The Government! The Police!” Yes, and they are also “The Minority”. Your concept of motivation and incentive here sounds entirely one-sided, negative, that of avoiding punishment. People can also benefit from reasons why they should do something, how it will benefit them. The positive incentive can be that of participating in government instead of watching it. Instead of biding time in a system which makes plain that it can and will never truly represent most people.
This is more conjecture. People often tell me that I am an ivory tower academic type with a cushy background and lofty ideas. But my experience has been mostly on the street, self-educated, without any money, and often fighting police - both in person and by pressuring municipalities. I am a veteran “cop watcher” (and then some) with a lot of experience. My strategies are not based upon my wishes, but have been informed by witnessing dysfunctions of how things have been done in reality. I know better than to invest in a system that I have no stake in, and is exploitive of the masses.
Leadership is not revolution, it is business-as-usual. Being egalitarian, I see them as a contradiction in terms.
But I agree about dismantling The State, as a monolithic, centralized territory. This type of revolution has been historically expensive and violent. It has traditionally still been dependent upon control of territory, abstracted through the control of people, and so still requiring central forms of control. Creating polystates within erodes a monopolistic state more gradually, by destroying its authority. The control of territory, populace, monopoly on violence, negotiating power, etc. With a state based upon territory, you always know where they live, literally and figuratively. But countering multiple internal states, all with fluid boundaries and membership is a task they are ill-equipped for. No, it is not easy, but I think it is possible. Although the longer we wait, the less possible it is likely to become.
I await proof that is more than “I talked about this on the Internet” that you can set up your alternative social and cultural structures in the midst of America and have it work. Send us all a letter when you get it working. We’ll wait.
I will point out that there is no “we.” There is “you” unless you’re a group of people (which I suppose is possible and would explain things). You are assuming that the vast majority of your fellow citizens would be on board with your plan. I think that the vast majority want massive reform but I doubt very many of them want the abolition of the nation state and its structures. People only want limited forms of change because, really, they just want to live their lives in peace, find fulfilling things to do, get laid, and have a decent life, not turn everything over.
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God bless the work
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