Politics govtheory was: assange

Karl gmkarl at gmail.com
Thu Aug 12 03:40:48 PDT 2021


On Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 8:56 PM jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I've never blocked anyone in my life.   Why would you think that?  I
> haven't even looked to see HOW to 'block' anyone, in ANY forum that I've
> ever discussed in, as I recall.
>

You must be experienced at going through some pretty ridiculous stuff on a
regular basis.


> On Wednesday, August 11, 2021, 04:17:39 PM PDT, Karl <gmkarl at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>
> >Hi jim,
>
> >You've probably blocked me by now, but
>
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2021, 6:56 PM jim bell <jdb10987 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> The problem, briefly stated, is "How do you defend a country based on
> anarchistic or libertarian principles, if they cannot tax themselves to put
> on a defense?"
>
>
> >The money and labor rise from people who value defense.  This value is
> clear when the danger is clear.
>
> The problem is related to the concept of "Tragedy of the Commons", I
> think.  What happens if it costs about $X to
>

The concept of the tragedy of the commons assumes that people's self
interest is different from their shared interest.  We have a lot of
marketing helping us believe that would be true, but in reality we all rely
on shared resources such as our land and safety to survive, and if people
don't choose to defend that either their whole community dies from not
protecting itself or the people who don't do that are outcompeted
reputation-wise by the members of the community who do.

An example is the indigenous people of the kalahari desert: they had very
little game, living in a desert, and if one family hoarded meat all the
other families would gang up and attack them, as a norm.

protect a given land region from external aggression.  What if many people
> don't contribute to this cost?  People who support taxation (I don't;
> taxation is theft) worry that "We'll be conquered!" if not enough is
> collected to support some level of defense.
>

It's in their self interest to, because of the conquering: but they need
communication channels to learn and act on this.  Today our communication
channels are youtube videos.  Not exactly productive reliable dialog.

>AP is a little similar to a culture I heard of among indigenous people in
> canada.  There is a nation of them who do not provide for outsiders to
> trespass on their land.  The punishment for trespass is death, and that's
> just a part of their shared culture and has been for as long as anybody
> knows, so the entire nation would be familiar with supporting it.  When
> living off the land, if the ecosystem is mistreated (e.g. overhunted by a
> neighbor), your families die, so managing the impact of others has been
> important.
>
> Can you associate this with a name, a label that can be google-searched?
>

http://www.wetsuweten.com/culture/governance/

>But jim and I disagree on the result of money.  I think I see supporting
> unlimited wealth as oppressive and jim sees it as freeing, not sure.
> Regardless you probably need some kind of financial government to provide
> for unlimited wealth, since people as a whole only have so much demand.
> Most people don't want advertisements in their search results, and those
> ads produce a lot of unnatural demand.
>
>
> What do you mean by "supporting unlimited wealth"?   Maybe you merely mean
> "ALLOWING unlimited wealth".
>

Right: it should not be possible for a single individual to have an
unlimited degree (many many orders of magnitude) of purchasing power
compared to another.  It means the richest person easily controls the
entire economy as the gap grows and grows.


> Myself, I don't think that's a problem.  The way I look at it, if a person
> makes a huge amount of money, and assuming that he doesn't get that money
> by some sort of 'illegal' (or wrongful, or way that people generally agree
> is a violation of somebody's rights), he does so because he is doing even
> more 'good' for others than he collects.
>

I think that makes sense on a reasonable scale, but not in extremes.  I
don't see addiction-oriented drugs and profit-oriented marketing (where the
truth of ads is considered moot in comparison to their influence on the
viewer) as good.

It is not hard for a quintillionaire to hire people in poverty to beat
everyone up and institute a private government.

Assuming that there isn't some improperly-achieved monopoly
>

What makes a monopoly improper or proper?

going on, then there must be competition, and that means that such profits
> are legitimate.  If people object to paying whatever the going rate is, for
> those goods and services, then somebody else can and will enter the market
> to act as competition to that existing source.  That's the way things ought
> to work.
>

If you have a monopoly, you have control of the economy related to your
monopoly.  You can prevent other people from entering it with that power.
Say you sell toothbrushes.  A startup competitor has to find ways to
compete with you when nobody they work with can buy a toothbrush, and
everybody who brushes their teeth receives marketing against them.


>                Jim Bell
>
>
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