On Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 08:36:24PM +0000, Sean Lynch wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 6:51 PM Zenaan Harkness <zen@freedbms.net> wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 29, 2016 at 09:45:40PM -0300, juan wrote:
> > > On Fri, 29 Jul 2016 13:43:12 +0300
> > > Georgi Guninski <guninski@guninski.com> wrote:
...
> even if those institutions are entirely
> voluntary. I can imagine sets of institutions that would allow corporations
> in a similar sense to how they exist now, i.e. limited liability and some
> form of "personhood."
'limited liability' means that the owners of the company cannot be
personally sued.
An anarchic company only exists by those who freely agree to it, and
someone wanting to attach an individual (legally, financially,
personally) may not have agreed to be part of that company, may
vehemently disagree with "the corporate veil" of protection by "statute
fiction".
It's a different way of thinking - we are so schooled in current
'realities' (real fictions, or shared common delusions) of "Western
style democratic fascist government".
Agreed. I'm just saying that such an arrangement is not inconceivable in an anarchic/voluntary society. And without the state to force it on everyone, assuming no single "court" system comes to dominate and abuse its monopoly position, I doubt it could be nearly as harmful. And even if some court does become a monopoly, since opting out of even a monopoly voluntary court system is far easier than opting out of a state.
> The most likely such institution would be some kind
> of court system where, in order to have access to the court as a means of
> seeking restitution, you must agree not to go outside it to go after any
> other participant, and must not have done so before.
Your initial wording is fine on the face, but whilst my "aggrieved self"
might be willing to agree to 'court' arbitration, "limited liability
fictional entity" may well not even make sense, and yet in the current
world we are 'bound' by government statutes giving that real protection
to those owners/ directors of that fictional entity.
Agreed. Though even under the status quo there are situations where corporations lose their limited liability, such as in certain criminal scenarios. Limited liability can only apply in a voluntary society where a transaction has taken place. Third parties can always sue in some court that does not recognize the limited liability, and it may well be that even within the same court system, they decided to drastically limit the scope of limited liability, for example only to situations where a transaction has taken place. Not sure what that would mean to, say, product liability where a third party is injured, though. But unlimited product liability could result in a far smaller number of products. Who'd make a car, for example? Or an airliner? Sure, the airline could require passengers to agree not to sue, but they can't do that for people on the ground. Under the status quo there's blanket indemnification for airlines and aircraft manufacturers. That is probably not the best solution, but I also don't know what is or how one would implement it in a purely voluntary society. Intuitively I think (hope) it must be possible, but I am by no means certain.
Or maybe unlimited liability is just no big deal and limited liability has always just been a way for some people to gain advantage over others. Perhaps without a system like the US's that encourages frivolous lawsuits, there would be no need.
> I see revolutions as a symptom of a broken society. Reform, or evolution,
> is certainly preferable.
Revolution arises when too few attempt to stand in peaceful (or other)
political protests, in personal non-compliance (driver licenses, vehicle
rego, paying tax to the war machine, not running off in the army to
shoot brown people) and the situation deteriorates to the point that the
ideological extremists collectively agree that there is no option but
revolution.
I think by the time revolution happens, people HAVE done these things, and the government's response has been to crack down rather than reforming. Exactly what is happening in the US right now with police brutality. Perhaps if more people got involved, the government could have been convinced to reform rather than cracking down further, but it is a central tenet of governing that you need to have a reasonably large and productive class that is happy with its modicum of control, i.e. the "middle" class. Keep them happy and protected from the lower class, and you can keep society under control.
Unfortunately, revolution is the usual way of things, since the majority
are too shit cowardly to rock any boat, even a dinghy cause "gotta go to
the footy this weekend", "gotta pay the mortgage/ car loan", "gotta
live my useless irrelevant life", when deep down it is truly fear,
mostly unacknowledged fear.
I suppose it depends on how you're counting. Reform happens all the time. Not often reforms the size of what you get from revolutions, but I'd say far more positive change happens through gradual reform than directly from revolution. But perhaps I'm setting the bar too low by qualifying it with "directly."
> > We must always remember it is never the arm chair pundit ("oh I wish our
> > democracy elected representatives actually represented us") crowd who
> > will change the world.
> >
> > So historically, revolutions seem to be more a devolution than an
> > evolution of the status quo. If you have counter examples, please
> > highlight them now.
>
> The French and English revolutions both resulted, after a while, in better
> societies than they started in, as far as I can tell. The Haitian
> revolution ended slavery there. I don't consider the American revolution,
> on the other hand, to be a counter example, though it clearly inspired the
> French revolution. Not to say that the French revolution and other reforms
> of European monarchies wouldn't have happened anyway.
As I've said, by the time the ex-convict Aussies wanted more control
from the "Crown", the English monarchy was well and truly on the page -
a genuinely peaceful transition (yes, not for the Aboriginies being
slaughtered since 100 years prior).
> One of the pieces of evidence used against Ross Ulbricht was a post of his
> in which he stated, "I am creating an economic simulation to give people a
> first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without
> the systemic use of force." Whether or not Silk Road was that "simulation",
> the general statement is exactly what we need to do, in my opinion. Create
> systems of "law" and "governance" that do not require the use of force.
Although I prefer revolution to evolution, I do not agree that force has
no place.
Force has different dimensions too - we think superficially about
physical and violent force. But consider that our white Western
oligarch's use the courts to force us to comply with an endless litany
of evil and unfair laws (yes they are backed up by police with guns, but
10,000 people just saying "no" is a challenging number of people to put
in jail in a two month time frame - for not paying tax for example).
"If only enough people would resist". But keeping people from resisting en masse is government's specialty. This is classic prisoners' dilemma. As Mike explains in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, sometimes you have to make things worse before they get better. I.e. convince people to revolt by making it so they are no longer comfortable.
> These systems do not have to be all-encompassing; they can be small and
> narrow in scope. They just have to make it so people don't feel like they
> have to resort to government (i.e. force) to achieve their ends.
There is obvious low hanging fruit - eg. legalising all plants and
substance ingestion by (naturally experimental and contrarian and
rebellious) humans. I heard Portugal became an example of this to a
degree, but perhaps the person saying this to me mixed it up with
Amsterdam.
I think Uruguay is actually on the forefront of drug legalization. Colorado is ahead of Amsterdam, even, because drugs have never really been legal there. Buying and using is legal, but a bunch of other necessary parts like growing & transporting are not. The authorities just look the other way, but can change their minds at any time and have cracked down in the past.
> Security of property and computer systems is an area that's pretty ripe for
> non-government solutions.
Sorry, in most cases today, it is government legislation/ statutes/
protectionism which causes the problem.
For example, try establishing a minimum cost wireless internet access
provision 'FM enterprise' - even Google is having trouble against the
telecomms giants, and Google has plenty of money for lawyers.
Indeed, and even if/when it succeeds, Google will just become another vertically-integrated telecomms giant.
One has to go -really- grass roots to avoid the despotism of government
- neighbour to neighbour/ N2N community mesh networks may be possible to
do in the face of corporations and governments (who naturally oppose and
gang up together).
Regarding "private" networking, I have seen no comms protocol research
showing that you can achieve anonymity in the face of the global
passive/active adversary (GPA), which we know the western "5 eyes"
governments and spy agencies are.
Research can never prove something is secure, only that it's insecure. Low latency onion routing is about as crappy as you can get when it comes to anonymity, just a step above a chain of proxies. I see no reason a high latency mix net couldn't be made sufficiently secure with, say, operators in mutually antagonistic countries.
Longer term, we need our own physical N2N mesh network.
Maybe. Definitely if you assume that government will eventually outlaw all anonymous use of the Internet. Of course, then they could always phrase the legislation in such a way that an N2N mesh network is also covered. Are you forwarding packets from your neighbor to a different neighbor? Well, you're "providing a public communications service" or some such bullshit.