On 10/20/2014 10:37 AM, odinn wrote:
> (Ruminations)
>
> I don't consider myself a libertarian, and dislike boxes, but I'm

Of course, there is a conflict of needs.. on the one hand we need some
kind of words to communicate but whatever words we choose will be
misinterpreted either intentionally or unintentionally by others, fwiw
I understand that nothing quite fits.

> voluntaryistic / cryptoanarchistic with a dash of constitutionalism
> (e.g. if people bothered to fight long enough for "rights," and defend
> them in a variety of fora, then we should consider what those rights
> are and respect them when they are expressed ~ though I don't mean
> that as an endorsement of the state, it's simply "what people do" and
> "how we respect each other"). Throw in a dash of zen, and you've got

I think we should be careful of immortalizing a `right' because it's
something people have historically fought for. People in history have
fought for ``the right'' to do some pretty gruesome things, at least
gruesome by today's standards... At the time it was considered normal
and right.

> enough terms to put me in a box. I don't care much for politicians,
> but I appreciate that more people seem to be aware that they can
> choose more than red or blue (e.g., go with third parties) if they
> wish to vote. But that's just me stating the obvious.
>
> ( Caleb ~ )You asked where that libertarian stateless utopia is. You
> probably did not read the full article that I sent. A quote from the

I would not have written you back without reading it first, tired
as I was having just gotten up I may not have caught every nuance.

> article comes to mind: "Presented with statism’s ridiculous and
> backward narrative, we must wonder who the starry-eyed utopians really
> are." Indeed! But moving right along: Remove "libertarian" and
> "utopia" and you are left with "stateless." So, to get to the root of
> it, where is this so-called stateless society? It should be plainly
> obvious that wherever it manifests it will be difficult to identify.

Yes I saw it, what then is the objective of a stateless society, or
really any political endevor, if not to create a utopia or at least
something better than what we have today ?

> It does not have a flag or a banner. It certainly does not have a Ron
> Paul or a party. It does not have national boundaries. It would be
> too easy if I were to to respond by saying it is everywhere and
> nowhere. But that's part of it, so I will say that it is everywhere --
> everywhere that the minds and hearts of people who wish to co-create a
> new society make a decision in any moment of any day that they wish to
> liberate themselves from fear. It is not purely notional, either, as
> the distributed functions of consensus and the gears of
> decentralization have been turning in terms of societal development
> well before the internet came into existence and long before anyone
> could push a key on their computer and participate in decentralized
> and distributed-digital systems that do not require national
> boundaries or nationalistic identities and forms.
>
> There is a great deal of what I describe that occurs throughout
> society without being seen, which makes it harder to explain if you
> are asking for clear and perhaps visible evidence of it.
>
> I strongly suspect that the visible manifestations of developing
> decentralized, distributed systems and / or stateless societies will
> become far more evident only after anonymity technology advances
> enough to be both lightweight and widespread. Without saying much
> more about that, I believe that 2015 will be a significant historical
> marker in the area of such technologies, which include, but are not
> limited to implementations of such a variety as SNARK-based unlinkable
> transactions via Zerocash, Output Distribution Obfuscation involving a
> hybridization of BTC system(s) and BCN ring signatures, distribution
> of stealth TX technology throughout large numbers of currency systems
> (currently it is present in several systems), and Scalable Zero
> Knowledge via Cycles of Elliptic Curves designed to make zero
> knowledge proofs lightweight and accessible to all programmers,
> contingent on provable CPU. These are but a few of the many
> developments that will alter many aspects of your life in ways mostly
> unseen.
>
> I have stated in various fora that it has taken almost 226 years to
> arrive at the next major point of revolution action, and by necessity
> that is 'anonymity.' However, without relational strength and an
> understanding of how relationships themselves are the ultimate
> technology, the exponentially expanding possibilities for collective
> and distributed participation to compassionately serve many elements
> and aid in the determination of priorities to fund, and more, will not
> be realized. (My project, http://abis.io, still in a very early
> stage, is a reflection of my optimism that we are capable of doing
> more together (without direction being given by "authoritative"
> organizations) given time and a greater level of understanding.) Thus
> there will be a constant tension between bellicose corporation-states,
> their struggling advocates, and the increasing numbers of persons who
> either by choice or undesired circumstance, become (for all intents
> and purposes) stateless, whether or not they declare or are even aware
> of it being so. Some have made statelessness an advocacy issue or a
> point which they have individually declared. I submit that it is not
> about such a declaration (though declarations are interesting to
> explore as expressions within the context of discussion of what
> statelessness might mean), but rather about a realization that one may
> be free from fear and in opening oneself to finding the _many_
> _vehicles_ to a more compassionate future, the detachment from statism
> (and indeed, departures from ideologies of all kinds) will come
> naturally. Such terms, such as "stateless," "government," and
> "statism," indeed will cease to have relevance in the way we
> understand them today as society realizes more and more its collective
> potential. Perhaps then we will begin to consider "stateful" (such
> as, in a state of being) more descriptive of these 'decentralization
> developments' than "stateless" within the context of the
> corporation-state, or even notice that such references to the "state"
> as a nation, government, or corporation-state will diminish, for if
> the "state" as it has been known is no longer that important to us,
> then we need not regularly refer to it, nor need we be bound to other
> arguably related terminologies, such as "anarchism," "socialism,"
> "capitalism," and all the -isms we have allowed to condition our
> minds. Freeing oneself from fear, thus the old language will not
> excite or raise one's interest, but natural thoughts which create
> concepts, new terms, and numerous permutations and styles of
> meditation, can arise at any time, for any person, anywhere. The
> vehicles to our destinations, of course, are those which you might
> intend or those that you realize or are surprised by ~ they are
> countless in number.
> Thus does language set the tone for what we may choose to build for
> our shared future, the relationship provide the basis for connecting
> our minds and hearts to each other, and the reflection upon our
> present moment create the state in which we exist, now.

I respect your position here, personally I feel that the opportunity
of anonymity is limited and will eventually pail in comparison to
decentralized states which compete for the individual's voluntary
association.

The reason why I don't expect the anonymous cryptoanarchy to scale
is because The Darknet, as it were, is the Jungle. One mistake, one
too many details in an IRC story, one day too late to update your
system...
() {:;}; you're lunch.
It is not exactly a society without rulers; it is a society ruled,
in a very personal one-on-one way, by whoever has the most blackmail
and 0days.

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is
getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is
stupidity.

Caleb

>
> Stopping here. The stars are out.
>
> -Odinn
>
> Caleb James DeLisle wrote:
>> Hi Odinn, Thanks for your reply, I know taking a socialist position
>> on an unabashedly libertarian list is not going to be popular but I
>> sent it here because I really want to be fact-checked. ~nothing
>> more infuriating than bobbing heads of unconstructive agreement..
>
>> Your link speaks of "Rights of The State", this immediately struck
>> me because I don't any longer care about rights, I care about
>> people.
>
>> I was born in the USA which pays awful heed to Rights and Justice,
>> and trucks millions off to prison cells for violation of The Law. I
>> was a fervent follower of the libertarian dogma myself it because
>> it looks so damned good on paper (I even have a pair of Ron Paul
>> tshirts to prove it).
>
>> The question I have is "where's the beef?" where is the
>> libertarian stateless utopia? I understand we can't have perfect
>> now so maybe there is something moving in the right direction, a
>> small-government state where individual liberties are protected?
>> Give me any example you like as long as it's not some kind of
>> libertarian community which exists under the protective umbrella of
>> a social state.
>
>> I've not been able to find any such example and so have taken to
>> trying to understand why what looks so good in theory doesn't apply
>> in practice.
>
>
>
>> On 10/20/2014 02:51 AM, odinn wrote:
>>> Caleb,
>>>
>>> I don't want to waste energy typing in my own words here what
>>> someone else has written in a way that I think would enhance
>>> understanding of this subject in a better way than if I were to
>>> comment further on it.
>>>
>>> With that said, I think you really need to read (and carefully
>>> re-read) the following article, which I submit may well enhance
>>> your understanding of this matter substantially:
>>> http://c4ss.org/content/32570
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> -Odinn
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Caleb James DeLisle wrote:
>>>> I have a hypotheses which has been percolating in the back of
>>>> my mind for some time now and I thought now is a good time to
>>>> share it.
>>>
>>>> For all that libertarian systems offer in theory, they have a
>>>> distinct problem that when it comes to practice. Unless you
>>>> consider Texas a utopia, libertarian utopias don't really exist
>>>> and I wanted to study how something which looks so good on
>>>> paper manages to fail so completely in practice.
>>>
>>>> To be ruled by law, as opposed to being ruled by men, means to
>>>> me that nobody can just order your execution or imprisonment
>>>> without dire consequences. Given wealth and power are
>>>> interchangeable, if you live in a country where one person
>>>> controls 99% of the wealth of the nation, there is no rule of
>>>> law. He can just simply up the government and whatever checks
>>>> and balances you put in place he can undo or subvert. Judges,
>>>> as impartial as they might like to be, do not live in a vacuum
>>>> and challenging a de-facto dictator is not good for one's
>>>> health.
>>>
>>>> Therefore, wealth redistribution is not about paying alms to
>>>> the poor but about making sure that nobody amasses such power
>>>> as to threaten society as a whole.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> tl;dr wealth and power are interchangeable, wealth/power pools
>>>> up in certain lucky and industrious individuals, without
>>>> redistributing it, democracies devolve into oligarchies and
>>>> then eventually into monarchy or chaos. The US is in the
>>>> oligarchy phase.
>>>> _______________________________________________ unSYSTEM
>>>> mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>
> _______________________________________________
>>> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>

--
Caleb James DeLisle
XWiki SAS
calebjamesdelisle@???