latest false flag attack?
Peter Fairbrother
peter at tsto.co.uk
Sat Sep 29 15:17:22 PDT 2018
On 29/09/18 19:23, juan wrote:
> OK Peter. Now if you don't mind tell me (or 'us') about your views on liberal anarchy?
Not relevant here, but fundamentally - old hippy, still.
Not an anarchist, there are obvious individual and collective benefits
to having some sort of state.
Used to be a libertarian minimalist (that probably means something
completely different to US persons; I mean wanting a minimal state, but
neither US style left-wing nor right-wing libertarianism).
Communism fails because it has no place for value; right-wing strong
property anarchocapitalism fails because it has no heart.
After that the main problem seems to be that a state is run by people,
and power corrupts - or maybe they were corrupt anyway. I don't
necessarily mean greed-led corruption, it takes many forms. Like Mother
Theresa - a stone bitch. You have to suffer to get to heaven - not for
me, or my God if I had one.
Another problem is pigeon-holing - the state categorises people and
treats everyone in those categories as the same, when they aren't the same.
So we have to balance the benefits of having a state with the
disbenefits of corruption, pigeon-holing, etc. In general it seems
better to have a state, especially if it's the right state, or not too
wrong - those benefits are powerful things.
So nowadays I'd go with liberal, in the sense that the state should not
stop people from doing things unless there is a very good reason to. But
note, these categorising words mean very different things to US and UK
people.
Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness - Jefferson got that much right.
A bit like Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Sadly, the pursuit of happiness
doesn't seem to be an inalienable right any more.
"Democracy is the worst type of state, apart from everything else we
have tried." On one hand, Trump and Brexit - on the other, ?hope. On the
gripping hand ...
And I haven't touched on what to do when people's rights conflict with
other people's rights .. or with the "rights" of the state, only
properly there ain't no such thing; the state has no rights, only people
can have rights.
The people of a state can en masse have rights, but not the state itself
- something which is too often forgotten by employees of the state.
-- Peter Fairbrother
More information about the cypherpunks
mailing list