On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 17:09:38 +0800 "James A. Donald" wrote:

On 2017-08-06 13:39, Zenaan Harkness wrote:

...

as is pretty widely known publicly -- Google's internal discussion culture is extremely robust, and overall I consider that to be good for Google and its users.

At google, all opinions from the frothing at the mouth biting mad genocidal left

uh oh - except for the little fact that google is the most right wing mafia on the planet, since google is nothing but an arm of your government. furthermore, google is the most pure product of your americunt 'free market' capitalism, so again google is at the right of the far right. looks as if you are unwilling to admit that right wingers and lefties are closely related fucktards.

to the biting mad genocidal left may be freely expressed, and frequently are.

From: Jason McVetta On Aug 6, 2017 4:18 PM, "juan" wrote: right wingers and         lefties are closely related fucktards.

Leftist = rightist = centrist = financialist. Using these obsolete terms does nothing but stultify the conversation.  Let's try to find a more expressive and useful vocabulary for political discussion.  Particularly since the Nolan Chart, combined with the World's Smallest Political Quiz, is so much more informative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart "Frustrated by the "left-right" line analysis that leaves no room for other ideologies, Nolan devised a chart with two axes which would come to be known as the Nolan Chart. The Nolan Chart is the centerpiece of the World's Smallest Political Quiz. Nolan's insight was that the major difference between various political philosophies, the real defining element in what a person believes politically, is the amount of government control over human action that is advocated.[citation needed] Nolan further reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two broad categories: economic and personal. The "economic" category includes what people do as producers and consumers – what they can buy, sell, and produce, where they work, who they hire, and what they do with their money. Examples of economic activity include starting or operating a business, buying a home, constructing a building, and working in an office. The "personal" category includes what people do in relationships, in self-expression, and what they do with their own bodies and minds. Examples of personal activities include whom they marry; choosing what books they read and movies they watch; what foods, medicines, and drugs they choose to consume; recreational activities; religious choices; organizations they join; and with whom they choose to associate."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Smallest_Political_Quiz "The World's Smallest Political Quiz[1] is a 10-question educational quiz for an American audience designed by the libertarian Advocates for Self Government, created by Marshall Fritz. It associates the quiz-taker with one of five categories: libertarian, left-liberal, centrist, right-conservative, or statist.According to the Advocates, the quiz was designed primarily to be more accurate than the one-dimensional "left-right" or "liberal-conservative" political spectrum by providing a two-dimensional representation. The Quiz is composed of two parts: a diagram of a political map; and a series of 10 short questions designed to help viewers quickly score themselves and others on that map.The 10 questions are divided into two groups, economic and personal, of five questions each. The answers to the questions can be Agree, Maybe or Disagree. Twenty points are given for an Agree, ten points for a Maybe, and zero for Disagree. The scores are added for each group and can be zero to one hundred. These two numbers are then plotted on the diamond-shaped chart and the result displays the political group that agrees most with the quiz taker."

On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 10:07:56 -0700 Razer wrote:

...

Statists favor a lot of government control in both the personal and economic areas. Different versions of the chart, as well as Nolan's original chart, use terms such as "communitarian" or "populist" to label this corner of the chart.

This is simply wrong. Assuming communitatians and populists are statists is moronic and bizarre...

only a statist like you would deny that fact. Or perhaps you don't even know what statist means? Or rather you are playing dumb since you are a left wing fascist (fidel castro cocksucker) posing as 'anarchist'.

Unless the assumption is that people directly governing the affairs of their own community is statist. I CAN imagine a Libertarian would think that. Because local self-governance interferes with their FEUDALISTIC PREDATORY tendencies.

Rr

PS. Met another Uber Driver who lives in his leased car this morning.

I wonder where the CEO of Uber sleeps?

I'd dox that in a flash so his slave drivers could look him up and butcher him while he sleeps. Sort of like the CPD did to BPP Leader Fred Hampton, but different, and deserving of it...

Rr

...

"Frustrated by the "left-right" line analysis that leaves no room for other ideologies, Nolan devised a chart with two axes which would come to be known as the Nolan Chart. The Nolan Chart is the centerpiece of the World's Smallest Political Quiz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Smallest_Political_Quiz. Nolan's insight was that the major difference between various political philosophies, the real defining element in what a person believes politically, is the amount of government control over human action that is advocated.^[/citation needed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Citation_needed/] Nolan further reasoned that virtually all human political action can be divided into two broad categories: economic and personal. The "economic" category includes what people do as producers and consumers – what they can buy, sell, and produce, where they work, who they hire, and what they do with their money. Examples of economic activity include starting or operating a business, buying a home, constructing a building, and working in an office. The "personal" category includes what people do in relationships, in self-expression, and what they do with their own bodies and minds. Examples of personal activities include whom they marry; choosing what books they read and movies they watch; what foods, medicines, and drugs they choose to consume; recreational activities; religious choices; organizations they join; and with whom they choose to associate."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Smallest_Political_Quiz

"The *World's Smallest Political Quiz*^[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World%27s_Smallest_Political_Quiz#cite_note-1 is a 10-question educational quiz for an American audience designed by the libertarian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism Advocates for Self Government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advocates_for_Self_Government, created by Marshall Fritz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Fritz. It associates the quiz-taker with one of five categories: libertarian https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism, left https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing-liberal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States, centrist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrist, right https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-wing-conservative https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism, or statist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statism. According to the Advocates, the quiz was designed primarily to be more accurate than the one-dimensional "left-right" or "liberal-conservative" political spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_spectrum by providing a two-dimensional representation. The Quiz is composed of two parts: a diagram of a political map; and a series of 10 short questions designed to help viewers quickly score themselves and others on that map. The 10 questions are divided into two groups, economic and personal, of five questions each. The answers to the questions can be Agree, Maybe or Disagree. Twenty points are given for an Agree, ten points for a Maybe, and zero for Disagree. The scores are added for each group and can be zero to one hundred. These two numbers are then plotted on the diamond-shaped chart and the result displays the political group that agrees most with the quiz taker."

On 08/06/2017 12:52 PM, jim bell wrote:

...

Leftist = rightist = centrist = financialist.

...

Using these obsolete terms does nothing but stultify the conversation. Let's try to find a more expressive and useful vocabulary for political discussion.

Particularly since the Nolan Chart, combined with the World's Smallest Political Quiz, is so much more informative:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nolan_Chart

"Frustrated by the "left-right" line analysis that leaves no room for other ideologies, Nolan devised a chart with two axes which would come to be known as the Nolan Chart. The Nolan Chart is the centerpiece of the World's Smallest Political Quiz

The Nolan Chart, beloved recruiting tool of the Libertarian Party, works reliably as such because - along with the associated diagnostic instrument - it measures and graphs the desire of the individual for ego gratification and freedom of action. Anyone who passes the Nolan test by landing in the "Libertarian" quadrant - a foregone conclusion for most healthy adults - should proceed from this introspective analysis to consideration of which political / economic system would offer the best shot at implementing their lifestyle choices as "rugged individualists." The Nolan instrument provides no help, as its diagnostic output indicates personal preferences among a set of stereotyped partisan sales pitches - not the net impact of competing public policy agendas on individual "freedom." The Nolan test indicates what people believe about themselves, not the actual motives that affect their actions - otherwise, the inevitable conversion of our society to a Libertarian model of governance would have happened decades ago. To represent something more like the real world, I propose a somewhat different graph to represent a two dimensional array of political / economic organizational principles: The vertical axis represents State power mediated by applied violence as an Authoritarian / Anarchist scale; the horizontal axis represents Private power mediated by applied economic force on a Capitalism / Free Enterprise scale. The upper left corner represents total concentration of power in the fewest hands, the lower right corner represents uniform distribution of power across an entire population. Kinney Chart http://pilobilus.net/Political-Power-Spectrum.png The Capitalism / Free Enterprise axis raises immediate objections from many observers, due to the indoctrinated belief that Capitalism /is/ Free Enterprise. In my observation and experience, corporate capitalism makes itself the natural enemy of free enterprise: Powerful corporations enforce their market dominance by any means necessary, from sponsoring legislation and controlling regulatory policy to suppress independent competitors, to dumping look-alike products on the market until smaller enterprises are bankrupted. This behavior may be "illegal" but in litigation as elsewhere, money is power and the real golden rule says: A player who shows up with orders of magnitude more gold than the other player wins. A buy-out removing the independent small business from the market by mutual agreement is the best case scenario for an independent enterprise in conflict with a well funded corporate adversary. I have placed the political Left and Right on the chart, to indicate their functional features in the chart's context: The actual players whose followers call themselves Liberals and Conservatives all seek to conserve and advance the concentration of financial power in the hands of an elite minority (corporate capitalists), differing only on whether that economic power should be consolidated and exercised indirectly through State institutions or directly through Private cartels. If most people who identify as Libertarian would rather live in the lower right quadrant of the above graph, so sorry. That Party offers no such program or agenda: Only a hollow promise that incorruptible Civil Courts will deliver equal justice to penniless individuals and corporate cartels, and that the infallible invisible hand of the Free Market will prevent systemic abuse of corporate power. If Fascism is defined as "the merger of Corporate and State power," the Libertarian agenda is not Fascist. In practical terms, the Libertarian agenda could be described as an effort to achieve full replacement of State power by Corporate power. One might call the result a Plutocratic Oligarchy. That is why I call my own orientation and agenda Anarchism. My preferred quadrant of the above graph is the lower right one: Broadly distributed political and economic power among autonomous local communities. Clockwise from lower left, I associate the quadrants with Free Market Capitalism, Socialist State Capitalism, Feudal Aristocracy and Tribal Federations. All loosely defined, as is proper with high level abstract labels. All have their upsides and downsides, but Tribal Federations have, so far, produced the least harmful results overall. Can that model make a comeback in the post-industrial world? I think so, but that outcome depends entirely on economic drivers: Will the global industrial economy crash, and if so, can it recover in its present form? I think the crash will happen, and recovery to "the old normal" will not. What the hell, it's something to play with. :o)

On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 19:27:23 -0400 Steve Kinney wrote:

The Nolan Chart, beloved recruiting tool of the Libertarian Party, works reliably as such because - along with the associated diagnostic instrument - it measures and graphs the desire of the individual for ego gratification and freedom of action.

Anyone who passes the Nolan test by landing in the "Libertarian" quadrant - a foregone conclusion for most healthy adults - should proceed from this introspective analysis to consideration of which political / economic system would offer the best shot at implementing their lifestyle choices as "rugged individualists." The Nolan instrument provides no help, as its diagnostic output indicates personal preferences among a set of stereotyped partisan sales pitches - not the net impact of competing public policy agendas on individual "freedom." The Nolan test indicates what people believe about themselves, not the actual motives that affect their actions - otherwise, the inevitable conversion of our society to a Libertarian model of governance would have happened decades ago.

I'm not following. Are you saying that most "healthy adults" are libertarians? If that was the case, then indeed we would expect society to be libertarian. But since the US (in this case) is anything but libertarian, then your premise is false? It seems kinda obvious that most 'healthy' adults are either left wing fascists or right wing fascists. Not healthy at all of course.

To represent something more like the real world, I propose a somewhat different graph to represent a two dimensional array of political / economic organizational principles: The vertical axis represents State power mediated by applied violence as an Authoritarian / Anarchist scale; the horizontal axis represents Private power mediated by applied economic force on a Capitalism / Free Enterprise scale. The upper left corner represents total concentration of power in the fewest hands, the lower right corner represents uniform distribution of power across an entire population.

Kinney Chart

http://pilobilus.net/Political-Power-Spectrum.png

Looks good. However, the term "capitalism" isn't the right one I think, because it's too ambiguous. More accurate terms : mercantilism or corporatism, which in practice lead to big businesses and monopoly. The authoritarian/anarchist axis is a really good concept. On the other hand, when you look at the four corners you get weird stuff =P - your four corners are : authoritarian capitalism (you marked that "left") authoritarian free enterprise anarchist free enterprise "anarcho capitalism" (right) Authoritarian capitalism is pretty much what rules the world today, and both right wingers and lefties support it to varying degrees. authoritarian free enterprise seems like a contradiction since free enterprise requires the absence of state granted privi-leges. anarchist free enterprise is just free enterprise proper, or a real free market - it's what real libertarians should advocate, etc. and then anarchist capitalism seems contradictory/impossible too, because big businesses need the state to prop them up, grant them privileges, bailouts, subsidies, etc, etc. One could try a variation with two X axis/lines... anarchist<--------------->authoritarian free-market<------------->monopoly Of course, commie anarchists would say that private property is theft, that a free market is hell, and that freedom is slavery.

The Capitalism / Free Enterprise axis raises immediate objections from many observers, due to the indoctrinated belief that Capitalism /is/ Free Enterprise. In my observation and experience, corporate capitalism makes itself the natural enemy of free enterprise:

Indeed. And that's what adam smith and co. called "mercantile system" or mercantilism, mercantilism being exactly the sort of system that actual libertarians should oppose.

Powerful corporations enforce their market dominance by any means necessary, from sponsoring legislation and controlling regulatory policy to suppress independent competitors, to dumping look-alike products on the market until smaller enterprises are bankrupted. This behavior may be "illegal" but in litigation as elsewhere, money is power and the real golden rule says: A player who shows up with orders of magnitude more gold than the other player wins. A buy-out removing the independent small business from the market by mutual agreement is the best case scenario for an independent enterprise in conflict with a well funded corporate adversary.

I have placed the political Left and Right on the chart, to indicate their functional features in the chart's context: The actual players whose followers call themselves Liberals and Conservatives all seek to conserve and advance the concentration of financial power in the hands of an elite minority (corporate capitalists), differing only on whether that economic power should be consolidated and exercised indirectly through State institutions or directly through Private cartels.

I think both the political left and political right are cleary in the authoritarian-capitalist quadrant. Most of the differences between left and right are cosmetic. And it's not possible to defend "capitalism" (the current criminal system) without recourse to the state. It's true that there are people who defend the current fascist system and claim that big businesses are a poor oppressed minority and the government should stop taxing goldman sachs and google and raytheon. I'm referring to the randroid scumbags of course. They certainly beong to the far right, but they have obviously nothing to do with 'anarchism'.

If most people who identify as Libertarian would rather live in the lower right quadrant of the above graph, so sorry. That Party offers no such program or agenda:

well, the US libertarian party is really a non-entity so their offerings don't really mean anything...

Only a hollow promise that incorruptible Civil Courts will deliver equal justice to penniless individuals and corporate cartels, and that the infallible invisible hand of the Free Market will prevent systemic abuse of corporate power.

well, that's indeed the philosophy behind "anarchist free enterprise". If on the other hand, you think that a free market will NOT prevent abuse/concentration of economic power, then you'd need to call the state to 'regulate' the market....and stop being an anarchist.

If Fascism is defined as "the merger of Corporate and State power," the Libertarian agenda is not Fascist.

correct.

In practical terms, the Libertarian agenda could be described as an effort to achieve full replacement of State power by Corporate power. One might call the result a Plutocratic Oligarchy.

well, now I'm not sure who you are referring to when you say Libertarians with a capital L. You mean the fake libertarians in the US on the koch payroll? Well yes, those want a plutocratic oligarchy. But they are not really libertarians. They are fake libertarians, like the randroid scumbags I mentioned above. They are conservatives using free market rhetoric. Typical of americans who murder children for fun and profit, in the name of "justice".

That is why I call my own orientation and agenda Anarchism. My preferred quadrant of the above graph is the lower right one: Broadly distributed political and economic power among autonomous local communities. Clockwise from lower left, I associate the quadrants with Free Market Capitalism, Socialist State Capitalism, Feudal Aristocracy and Tribal Federations.

Sorry, the red (lower left) quadrant is not free market capitalism at all. The red quadrant is an absurd position IF we use your definition of capitalism. You can't have state privileges(capitalism) if there's no state. Free market capitalism is basically the green quadrant. But you are referring to it as "tribal federations" which is term you just made up... Your red quadrant and your violet quadrant are absurdities and not recognized in 'standard' political philosophy, plus your classification can't account for plain old state socialism/communism.

All loosely defined, as is proper with high level abstract labels. All have their upsides and downsides, but Tribal Federations have, so far, produced the least harmful results overall. Can that model make a comeback in the post-industrial world?

Are you assuming this is a 'post industrial' world? Or are you talking about some hypothetical collapse of the industrial world? I've bad news for you (and me). The industrial world isn't going away anytime soon. I think so, but that outcome depends entirely

on economic drivers: Will the global industrial economy crash, and if so, can it recover in its present form? I think the crash will happen, and recovery to "the old normal" will not.

What the hell, it's something to play with.

:o)

<mucho snippage> On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 3:27 PM, jim bell wrote:

The United States Congress, and at least the very large majority of state legislatures, are based on the "first past the post" voting system. That system while not initially obvious, invokes an effect called "Duverger's Law": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

"In political science, Duverger's law holds that plurality-rule elections (such as first past the post) structured within single-member districts tend to favor a two-party system and that "the double ballot majority system and proportional representation tend to favor multipartism".[1][2] The discovery of this tendency is attributed to Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who observed the effect and recorded it in several papers published in the 1950s and 1960s. In the course of further research, other political scientists began calling the effect a "law" or principle." "Duverger's law suggests a nexus or synthesis between a party system and an electoral system: a proportional representation (PR) system creates the electoral conditions necessary to foster party development while a plurality system marginalizes many smaller political parties, resulting in what is known as a two-party system."

This, Duverger's law, strongly protects the formation and maintenance of the two-party system, and the two parties which make up the majority. People who are in favor of a third-party system, for example the Libertarian party (or Green Party, or just about anything else) are deterred from voting: Generally, they are told that they are "throwing away their vote".

I have long advocated a different system: Every candidate for a Congressional Office "wins", but the weight of their influence is based on the proportion of their vote in the general election. If, for instance, the Democrat gets 50% of the vote, he gets 0.50 Congressional votes. If the Republican gets 40% of the vote in the general election, he gets 0.40 Congressional votes. If the Libertarian gets 10% of the vote, he gets 0.10 votes. The second- and third-party candidates are given relatively small offices, back in the home district (or state), and can phone/fax/email their votes in. Modern electronic communications makes all this practical. The advantage of this system is that nobody's vote can be said to have been "wasted". . And, I believe that this system would allow the Libertarian party to gradually increase in side and influence, unlike the current system limited by Duverger's Law. It would also effectively force both the D's and R's to become more libertarian.

Jim Bell

At what point, and why, do you limit the number of candidates for voting purposes? Why stop, e.g., at three? Why not 5 or 20? And do these extra "winners" get a salary? Is the salary for the district divided amongst the winners? Do any of them get assistants? Seems rather complicated. Instead, I propose a much simpler system: It's long past time to vastly increase the number of Representatives, and limit them to 1 paid assistant. If we were to apportion House members as originally conceived (something like 1 Representative per 100k eligible voters), we're certainly have a lot more representative House (as it were), with lots more members to vote for, and much smaller voting districts. More efficient? Oh heaven forbid! But certainly more representative. One could even add a number of fillips that you mentioned - move the Capitol to, say, somewhere near the geographic center of the lower 48 (or even all 50, which I think might place it on a floating platform off the West Coast - heh), or mandate that Congress assemble via videoconference, in open halls to which their constituents have access. But those are mostly icing on the cake. Kurt

From: Steve Kinney On 08/07/2017 05:33 PM, juan wrote:

On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 19:27:23 -0400 Steve Kinney wrote:

...

    I'm not following. Are you saying that most "healthy adults" are     libertarians? If that was the case, then indeed we would expect     society to be libertarian. But since the US (in this case) is     anything but libertarian, then your premise is false? It seems     kinda obvious that most 'healthy' adults are either left wing     fascists or right wing fascists. Not healthy at all of course.

I would not say that most healthy adults are Libertarians; I would say that the Nolan Chart should diagnose most healthy adults as Libertarians.  That's what makes it a high value recruiting tool for the Libertarian Party.  "What you always were has a name, and even a political party working for what YOU want!"  Anyone working for any Party can /say/ that to anyone else, but the Libertarians present a convincing illusion of objective proof.

Whether the likely outcomes of implementing the Party's policy agenda resemble the promised results, bears no relation to the recruitment

The Libertarian Party does divert a lot of bright, capable people down a blind alley.  They are presented with a believable ideology that, if adopted as national policy, would remove present restraints (such as

What basis do you have to say it's an "illusion", rather than what, in principle, it might very well be.  I remember clearly, in about 1975, reading my first Libertarian literature that my uncle had.  It didn't need to convince me:  I knew I was already 'there'. Given this, and I very much doubt my experience is greatly different than that of other people, I think most such people will be quite satisfied that this is in no way an "illusion" Republicans and Democrats don't have that.  Given how much such parties actual positions can vary, I doubt that any young adult (or older) is going to view Republican or Democrat positions and say, "Wow!  That's where I always was!!!"   They can't:  For example, in the 1960's, liberals' positions for very much in favor of free-speech.  Now look where they are!! process. Please say that again, in understandable wording.   they are) from our Robber Baron capitalists.  Whether this is a good or bad idea is left as an exercise. I guess you believe that those same "Robber Baron capitalists" don't derive their power FROM government, rather than being restricted or impeded by government.  Think again.   Consider the Shay's Rebellion.  (distilled spirits tax, applied in a distinct and biased way to favor big, influential distillers, and impede much smaller, western distillers.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion       An early example of what should be called "crony capitalism". Or, much more recently, the Epi-pen controversy.  The manufacturer was able to hugely raise prices.  It turns out that the reason was simple:  Despite the fact that the patent had run out, the Federal government was putting other obstructions and restrictions on potential competitors.  The result is that the one incumbent manufacturer was effectively being rewarded with a monopoly, probably based on his relationsihp with the government itself        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epinephrine_autoinjector    So, stop thinking that government exists to impede the formation of monopolies and crony capitalists.  It does quite the opposite.  Pretending it does the former actually makes society worse, rather than better.                        Jim Bell

Reality check for the vocal minority: Who are the most oppressed people in America? Is it: blacks, hispanics, the poor, homosexuals, women....? I mean, big points to who actually gets the right answer.... \0xd On 8/8/17, Razer wrote:

On 08/07/2017 07:34 PM, jim bell wrote:

...

I guess you believe that those same "Robber Baron capitalists" don't derive their power FROM government, rather than being restricted or impeded by government. Think again.

To criminals (robber barons ARE criminals), it simply doesn't matter, as long as they 'get the goods'.

Rr

On Mon, 7 Aug 2017 21:18:43 -0400 Steve Kinney wrote:

...

...

http://pilobilus.net/Political-Power-Spectrum.png Looks good. However, the term "capitalism" isn't the right one I think, because it's too ambiguous. More accurate terms : mercantilism or corporatism, which in practice lead to big businesses and monopoly.

Any analysis at this level of abstraction will have plenty of ambiguities. I was aiming for "common sense" a.k.a. propaganda driven terminology, with breaking certain "common sense" paradigms in mind. Filling in the details is up to the individual. That's where the fun is.

Oh, OK. So let me play along and not ask for a consistent definition of capitalism...at least for now.

...

It's true that there are people who defend the current fascist system and claim that big businesses are a poor oppressed minority and the government should stop taxing goldman sachs and google and raytheon. I'm referring to the randroid scumbags of course. They certainly beong to the far right, but they have obviously nothing to do with 'anarchism'.

In a context where ownership of capital is highly concentrated in the hands of a small minority, but access to armed force is widely distributed across the population, you might get Robber Barons: More or less the "Right."

If capital is highly concentrated and the population is 'armed' I'd expect the 'capitalists' to be shot in no time. Unless something else is going on.

In a context where ownership of capital is highly concentrated in the hands of a small minority, and access to armed force is highly concentrated in the hands of a small minority, you might get NeoLiberals: More or less the "Left."

I'd argue that concentration of political power(access to force) and concentration of economic power go hand in hand. It's the basic recipe for tyranny and it's certainly not new nor liberal =P

These outcomes are not inherent in the model, but given that the Left and Right as described here already dominate the playing field...

...

...

If most people who identify as Libertarian would rather live in the lower right quadrant of the above graph, so sorry. That Party offers no such program or agenda: well, the US libertarian party is really a non-entity so their offerings don't really mean anything...

The Libertarian Party does divert a lot of bright, capable people down a blind alley.

As far as I know the libertarian party has a very small number of members, and the libertarian party hasn't never ever won any political position at all. In almost 50 years the libertarian party achieved absolutely nothing, be it 'practical', or 'educational'. Furthermore, some of the founders were allegedly 'anarchists', in reality sell outs who 'agreed' to not talk about anarchism.

They are presented with a believable ideology that, if adopted as national policy, would remove present restraints (such as they are) from our Robber Baron capitalists.

I have to disagree with that, at least partially. If libertarian ideology would actually be put in practice then goldman sachs, google, the cops and the military would be hung by their balls exactly like they deserve, and so would be any wannabe robber baron. The catch is, the vast majority of 'libertarians' are correctly described as republicans who smoke pot, so have like zero interest in justice. You have to also take into account that the americunt nazi empire was founded by slave owning 'libertarians' like jefferson and washington.

Whether this is a good or bad idea is left as an exercise.

"enforcement' of personal rights and justice would be a bloodbath for the establishment. Anything that doesn't hold 'robber barons' and politicians accountable is not libertarian.

...

...

Only a hollow promise that incorruptible Civil Courts will deliver equal justice to penniless individuals and corporate cartels, and that the infallible invisible hand of the Free Market will prevent systemic abuse of corporate power.

well, that's indeed the philosophy behind "anarchist free enterprise". If on the other hand, you think that a free market will NOT prevent abuse/concentration of economic power, then you'd need to call the state to 'regulate' the market....and stop being an anarchist.

Again, a lot depends on the definitions of highly abstract terms. In a localized, decentralized system of governance, the inhabitants of any given self governing region could do whatever they damn well please about regulating commerce

Oh, of course it all depends on definitions of terms and now you've just 'defined' 'anarchy' to mean 'governance'? But no, 'inhabitants' cannot do whatever they please 'regulating', for instance, commerce. Or the vast majority of human activities. You only get to 'regulate' people if they attack you.

and addressing the impact of industrial processes on resources of value to the community, i.e. what the folks upstream are doing to the water you irrigate your fields with. In the event of conflicting interests some sort of settlement will be worked out, with or without resort to brute force.

So how is that different from the current system?

The definition of anarchy as the absence of governance would be a joke, if it was not a very well established article of indoctrinated faith,

Well you seem to be defining 'anarchy' as "local government I like" so your definition is hardly impressive either... Whatever kind of 'governance' anarchy allows, it is just individual self government. Individual, at the individual level. So for instance, no 'regulation' of commerce at all.

bestowed on us by our forbears' authoritarian rulers. People organize into groups and make collective decisions;

lawl - so now 'anarchy' has become 'democracy' or mob rule?

those who don't have that trait went extinct ages ago. How they do that, and at what scale, have varied widely. In my view, the smaller the units of governance, the more widely distributed the decision making process, and the fewer barriers to participation the better.

Well yes, but more 'distributed' GOVERNMENT is not anarchy.

To err is human and every form of governance fucks up; but, generally speaking, tribal councils that act by consensus seem to have done the least harm.

oh yeah, "consent of the governed"....

...

...

That is why I call my own orientation and agenda Anarchism. My preferred quadrant of the above graph is the lower right one: Broadly distributed political and economic power among autonomous local communities. Clockwise from lower left, I associate the quadrants with Free Market Capitalism, Socialist State Capitalism, Feudal Aristocracy and Tribal Federations.

Sorry, the red (lower left) quadrant is not free market capitalism at all. The red quadrant is an absurd position IF we use your definition of capitalism. You can't have state privileges(capitalism) if there's no state.

Let's see: The red quadrant indicates high concentration of economic power in the hands of a small number of people, plus distribution of power mediated by armed force across a large number of people. The power of a wealthy minority, not restrained by rules enforced by an armed central authority, sounds like Free Market Capitalism to me.

Sorry, that's not true. First, the scenario doesn't make sense, because economic and political power will be both concentrated. Second, calling that "market capitalism' is just...inconsistent propaganda.

With that concentration of wealth, it should be no problem for an economic ruling class to hire enough mercenaries to protect their interests from all those armed citizens.

Why wouldn't the rest of armed citiznes fight back? But are you talking about the US and their right-wing, gun-carrying nutcases? If so I don't think you are describing the whole situation correctly.

Note that capitalism != corporatism, it only indicates a specialization in acquisition and growth of private wealth.

You changed the definition of 'capitalism' for the third time or so? Maybe you should define "capitalism" and then re-state your views.

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Free market capitalism is basically the green quadrant. But you are referring to it as "tribal federations" which is term you just made up...

Made up? Far from it. A tribal federation is a group of local councils, coordinating regional relations with other councils by treaty agreements. It was the dominant form of governance in North America when the Europeans showed up in force with superior technology.

OK, So you are not advocating anarchy but tribal statism.

We are not taught about the tribal council and federation model, because it is important for us to understand that the natives were "ignorant savages, incapable of organizing and governing themselves." Otherwise, what becomes of Manifest Destiny and the White Man's Burden?

I can reject both the political system of the fucking, joo-kristian, european invaders of the american continent without siding with the local tribal governments. Anarchy, you know, means no rulers, no government, no authority, et cetera.

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Your red quadrant and your violet quadrant are absurdities and not recognized in 'standard' political philosophy, plus your classification can't account for plain old state socialism/communism.

The graph seems to account exactly for plain old state socialism/communitsm:

So you are using capitalism to mean communism? And communism to mean capitalism as well, I should assume? While I certainly can see how the americunt 'capitalist' system is hardly different from the soviet commie system in many ways, I don't think your usage of the term "capitalism" leads to clear thinking. capitalism : system based on 'capital' - so unless you live naked in the woods, evertything is capitalism. capitalism : private property - free enterpreise capitalism : corporatism/fascism capitalism : state communism so which one is it?

See the dot marked "Left." Maximum concentration of economic power in the hands of a minority (State appointed functionaries), plus maximum concentration of coercive force in the hands of a minority (State legal, police, and military activities). How is that inconsistent with plain old state socialism/communism?

It isn't. But that's where the "right" should be placed too.

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All loosely defined, as is proper with high level abstract labels. All have their upsides and downsides, but Tribal Federations have, so far, produced the least harmful results overall. Can that model make a comeback in the post-industrial world? Are you assuming this is a 'post industrial' world? Or are you talking about some hypothetical collapse of the industrial world?

I've bad news for you (and me). The industrial world isn't going away anytime soon.

Depends one's definition of "soon." I do expect today's global economic system to crash, hard, within 10 to 20 years, taking "heavy industry" and long range transportation of bulk material commodities with it. Not completely, but sufficiently to cause a domino effect leading to a significant human population crash.

It certainly would be great if the industrial system blew up, but things are moving in the exact opposite direction.

I could be wrong in this case, but exponential growth inside a closed container usually ends badly for whatever is growing exponentially, and/or for its container. In the context of human affairs, that end typically comes as a shocking surprise because exponential growth functions are counter-intuitive; our normative bias leads us to expect linear change where we anticipate any change at all. The immediate self interest of millions of human actors whose combined decision making drives the exponential growth of industrial process,

What does 'exponential growth' mean here? Exponential growth of control, I'd say...

biases the lot of them toward magical thinking - even those who /can/ accurately imagine exponential processes.

Just now, peak extraction rates for many non-regenerating environmental resources are arriving at the same time; the humans have been spending down their 'natural capital' faster than Donald Trump spending down his inheritance to maintain the illusion that he is a brilliantly successful businessman. One of the more alarming features of material economics today, is that the rising curve of food demand and falling curve of food production rates are presently crossing, while essential inputs to agriculture (and animal husbandry) - potable water, topsoil, phosphates - have reached or passed peak utilization rates. Worldwide, food reserves are at historic lows and resupply is not expected.

So population will adjust. Assuming your 'curves' are correct which I don't think they necessarily are. You seem to be missing a couple of points : 1) the industrial system allows the non-human psychos at the top 'exponential' amounts of control and power, both over nature and people. 2) malthus was wrong.

Our industrial civilization is brittle, but the humans themselves are very resilient. Although I do expect Very Bad Things to happen, I see lots of room for very good long term outcomes.

On Mon, 7 Aug 2017 05:21:43 +0800 "James A. Donald" wrote:

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On Sun, 6 Aug 2017 17:09:38 +0800 "James A. Donald" wrote:

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At google, all opinions from the frothing at the mouth biting mad genocidal left

On 2017-08-06 17:17, juan wrote:

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uh oh - except for the little fact that google is the most right wing mafia on the planet, since google is nothing but an arm of your government.

Which government has been moving left since 1820, so that today's government is left of Pol Pot.

Not sure why you chose 1820? I don't think anything special happened at that time. The US was 'founded' as a *slave society* by a bunch of 'ex' monarchists. So the US gov't was from its very beginning a far right tyranny. But the thing is, something like the right wing, american, joo-kristian, slave society from 1700s is hardly different from a commie tyranny in many ways. In both systems you have a small oligarchy at the top, and slaves at the bottom. So the left/right division can be quite meaningless, or can nicely illustrate that, as I said, left and right are close cousins.

On Mon, 7 Aug 2017 06:26:21 +0800 "James A. Donald" wrote:

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On 2017-08-06 17:17, juan wrote:

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uh oh - except for the little fact that google is the most right wing mafia on the planet, since google is nothing but an arm of your government.

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"James A. Donald" wrote:

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Which government has been moving left since 1820, so that today's government is left of Pol Pot.

On 2017-08-07 06:02, juan wrote:

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Not sure why you chose 1820? I don't think anything special happened at that time.

The proposition that women are saints, and would never do anything bad except evil men make them do it,

except that's joo kristian bullshit and so it's older than 1820 Then again, you keep making my point. What you see as 'left' actually is right wing garbage. Most of feminist bullshit is anti-sex puritanism coming orginally from right wing joo-kristianity. Notice how both the catholic church and O'Brien run the anti sex league.

therefore there is no need to enforce marriage vows upon women, only upon men, triumphed at that time, resulting in the collapse of marriage, the collapse of total fertility, and intolerable levels of women giving birth to bastards in the rain and mud in dark alleys.

Intolerable levels intolerable levels of women giving birth to bastards in the rain and mud in dark alleys led, via "Les Miserables" and "Oliver Twist", to the vote for women and to today's welfare state,

The welfare state is of course older than that If you actually were anti state you'd be against the family too, because the family is the source of all the authoritarian nonsense or 'culture' that makes the state possible.

where the women are brides of Uncle Sam, and the boys masturbate to anime in their mother's basement.

On Mon, 7 Aug 2017 16:21:37 +1000 Zenaan Harkness wrote:

On Sun, Aug 06, 2017 at 07:38:08PM -0300, Juan wrote:

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If you actually were anti state you'd be against the family too, because the family is the source of all the authoritarian nonsense or 'culture' that makes the state possible.

Of course the logic in this is logical, but ...

Yes, he who grows up with an abusive authoritarian father, meek and submissive mother possibly also violent upon the child when the father is away (taking out her repressed anger on the one small and unable to defend himself) may have a tendency to grow into his father's boots and support or recreate an authoritarian state where none otherwise exists.

But he who grews up with a single mum, not quite a bastard child, "missing out" on certain holidays trips and other extra curricular activities by virtue of "living in the alley", struggling to find sane boundaries and a grounding authority (external or internal) may also swing toward recreating or supporting the authoritarian state.

Point being, broken families in no way guarantee something other than maintenance of a despotic authoritarian state!

I don't think the difference between 'broken' families and 'good' families makes too much sense. Good cops are dead cops. Of course, some families are worse than others but they all operate on the same authoritarian principle : "my house, my rules" And people who have been subjected to such 'philosophy' since they are born will then accept state authority as something 'normal'.

In fact far from it, I posit that broken families, by virtue of the lack of grounding authority and sane boundaries-upon-which-to-safely-test-and-grow-ones- internal-strengths as a child, leads almost inevitably to desire for a strong external state authority, and therefore an authoritarian state! (personal experience of experiences and consequent inner reactions/ motivations arising therefrom)

Those who have been abused by external authority, either state or family, may well seek ("other") external authorities to "improve my world".

And when the state and other created-by-the-state (/church) authorities provide backup, support and effective sanction for despotic family authority, the child who grows up suffering the bottom of the shit pile may instead of seeking "another external authority", may say "damn, y'all full o lies and abuse, keep your damned authority away from me!"

But those bastard childs who grow up in broken families, no families, and also those who grow up in balanced grounded "reasonable" families, can also reach this comprehension of external authorities vs "my own internal authority", and conclude that "my own internal authority would actually be relatively functional in this world, at as compared with the external authorities I have experienced" - stop imposing upon me, and you might find we can create a high functioning world together as "a community" or whatever you want to name it.

The problem is, that many humans today fail to witness their own role in the interplay between their own actions and the external authorities that react, or respond, to those actions (let alone actually witnessing one's own internal authority!),

and so the majority (by this lack of insight) clamour for external authorities "to fix the problems", and the extant authorities readily claim to be able to solve said problems, and the rest of the majority tend to believe, or at least go along with all this and maintain the external authorities by active and/ or tacit consent,

and thus is perpetuated the existing state of affairs of external authorities, which the evidence shows is full of graft and ready corruptibility by $.

The age old problem continues, pursuant to the average state of consciousness of ones fellow humans.

The current reality of the predominant existence of external authorities and their tools and abuse of power, and the overwhelming tendency of the average human to clamour for said external authorities, is the reality we face.

For any journey of change, it is from the present reality that we begin, communicating with today's fellow humans, not some ideal utopian humans we wished existed - we're in this together, like it or not!

Good luck,

On Sun, Aug 06, 2017 at 05:09:38PM +0800, James A. Donald wrote:

On 2017-08-06 13:39, Zenaan Harkness wrote:

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as is pretty widely known publicly -- Google's internal discussion culture is extremely robust, and overall I consider that to be good for Google and its users.

At google, all opinions from the frothing at the mouth biting mad genocidal left to the biting mad genocidal left may be freely expressed, and frequently are.

:D Nicely put :) (BTW, that quote from from a (((free speach "advocate"))), not myself.)