I'm starting this thread because I don't want to hijack the
Re: [unSYSTEM] Looking for something to do? Here are some links.
thread more than I already have but I think this is an incredibly
important topic to discuss.

On 03/28/2014 04:27 PM, Amir Taaki wrote:
> Democracy is not a great concept.
> Although I can sometimes see it being applied as a compromise.
> I don't think it's ideal however.


Noted, democracy in the Greek sense has some issues but we're limited
because we just don't know what is the optimal system (there are a lot
of people who claim to know and my answer to them is "get off your
soapbox and code it"). For everyone else, democracy is the best stand-in
word I could think of because we can't phrase what we don't yet
understand.


> Collective decision making imposes on personal liberty.
> That's a huge problem with western democracies being run by moralisers
> who think we should hold their values.
> Live and let live I say.
>


On this topic, I think we fundamentally disagree. The problem I see with
Anarchist/Libertarian systems is they allow centralization of power and
are eventually self-destructive. The obvious example of power-centralization
in a libertarian world is the cult. Cults do not require anything from
government, not even the enforcement of contracts. People who have total
agency over their lives freely choose to warship a man (almost always a man),
that man becomes very powerful and when he becomes powerful enough, he will
eventually seek to crush anyone who dares to think critically because we will
be seen as a threat.

I was born in the United States, in a society which has become
self-destructive in almost precisely this way. A fantastically small group
of people in the US now control basically everything, including in many ways
the minds of the common folks. They don't even need to rig the votes, they
can just ask for them.

I'm now happily a resident of France and while I believe in individual
freedom, I believe strongly that centralization of *power* in all it's forms
must be prevented. For example: I don't think it's acceptable for one or a
handful of individuals to be able to unilaterally "buy up the government" any
more than it is acceptable for an individual to possess nuclear weapons.
In either case, a person with this level of power can order you rounded up
and nobody can stop him.


Communism, Facism, Amero-capitalism, Usury, NSA, The Web, it's always the
same story. Gross centralization of power in the hands of the few.


Thanks,
Caleb