Jeff Swann @Jeff Swann - 14d
I mean, if you support funding things by force, then that makes YOU the authoritarian. The idea that we are moving to a world where people ultimately have more control over their own resources seems fairly self evident given Bitcoin, Nostr, Keet, 3d printing, & open source AI tools. The system that is eroding property rights is doing so at an accelerated pace, such that it is clearly destroying itself (likely driving people to our solutions). And destruction of property rights leading to economic collapse isn't exactly a new pattern. How are you going to force me to contribute to some govt program I don't support if I can secure my own money, transact without permission, & privately engage in trade bith in person & on networks like Nostr & Keet?
What is authoritarianism? I think it's effort to control people & resources that don't belong to you. Technologies which reduce third party control over individuals & their resources are inherently anti-authoritarian.
What portion of what someone else earns or trades to acquire should you or anyone elss get a say over? Greed is the desire for things unearned with no regard for those who bear the cost of having those desires satisfied. I think anyone who wants to initiate threats & coercion to acquire or reallocate resources (no matter how greatly they out number their victims) are morally in the wrong. Rather than calling me "smug," maybe explain how do you go about justifying your initiation of violence? If the greater good is all that matters, then any healthy individual like you or me could justifiably be sacrificed to provide the body parts needed to save multiple others. The individual is the smallest minority, the prime unit, if we don't protect individual rights, then we all become slaves to imaginary abstractions. Groups & collectives aren't real, they don't speak, they don't have desires, they are just our mental shortcuts for lots of individuals.
What is economic dominance? Can I make you sell me anything? If we have a system to enforce property rights then I can only offer you things in trade. What control does a billionaire have over me without a govt to influence to force me to buy their products or devalue my savings to bail them out? It's the govt & forced funding that is the primary source of all corruption & evil where "economic dominance" is concerned.
If I have a bunch of healthy body parts needed by 10 other people, and their "collective will" is to sacrifice me to save themselves, does that make it morally okay? You seem to just be trying to rhetorically evade & deny the underlying principles without addressing them directly.
How well do you think the poor are served by the current "justice" system? Or the current monetary system? The govt shut down small businesses, locked people in their homes, & printed 6 trillion dollars which basically wiped out the economic influence of 70% of the working class for the year. I think a world with a polycentric legal system where billionaires have to actually earn their money & they don't have a monopoly central authority to control will be far better for the poor. The most obvious problems are the ones we already have. I just want people to have the freedom to build something better without having to fund pedo politicians & their endless wars. Defense of forced funding is just support for more of the insanity we already have.
637a2 - 14d
This is similar to the self-censorship problem. The poor person probably won’t enter into a significant contract with a billionaire as the odds are not in his favour (if the deal goes wrong).
Nice. Let not perfection be the enemy of better principles.
You don't want people to be free to build anything better? An increasing amount of resources are being confiscated via the legacy system, and they are being allocated in ways that increase the cost of living & make life worse for most people. How is anything supposed to improve unless we can reduce the amount being confiscated by force & allow people to instead allocate their own resources to things that serve them? It doesn't really matter tho, because I don't think people like you can stop us 😘
Thanks Mike. There’s much food for thought in this exchange.
Jeff Swann @Jeff Swann - 12d
And you are both just clearly wrong. The proof is that there are times & places where people have been free & prosperous, & the difference between what we have now & those other times/places is the govt power that large special interests have to control & hide behind. Societies always collapse under too much govt. The politicians are the richest people in Venezuela & most other corrupt & collapsing societies. Govt is just institutionalized crime. Walmart can't build an army without people fighting walmart & refusing to do business with them, but they can buy political influence & weaponize the cops & tax authorities against people to extract your wealth without most knowing it is being done.
Communism is mostly just a philosophy developed/adopted to sell slavery to the slaves. The people who promote it (at all levels of society) always want to live at the expense of others (& Marx certainly was too). The poor person what wants communism has more in common with the corp oligarch who wants a political structure that serves him at the expense of others than either of them have in common with people who want to produce & trade value for value.
I have met quite a few wealthy people who generally have the right ideas, but fiat definitely rewards far too many who don't.
