When presented with a political or cultural dilemma I admit that my immediate reaction is not to attempt to find a nuanced, centrist position. I look at the problem, mentally hold it up to my values and attempt to discern whether this quandary is originating from the Left side of the political spectrum or the Right. The most important thing for me in classifying something as Left or Right is whether it is egalitarian or anti-egalitarian. I consider that distinction to be my political foundation.
Anarchists have value as critics and gadflys and will occasionally offer up ideas that i cant do without (the myth of the rule of law and spooner's criticism of the constitution in Malice's handbook come to mind), but there is no way to ally with them or treat them as friends. They're basically liberals that actually believe in all that enlightenment shit.
Fake tough and crazy brave 2a types arent even good for a laugh
Mar 3, 2023·edited Mar 3, 2023Liked by Peter R. Quiñones
Some people can't seem to understand that a forest is a real thing and isn't a bunch of individual unconnected trees that happen to be near each other. How long can a single tree stay healthy when everything around it has tent worms? I am sure when the arborist comes in to spray the caterpillars they will call him a tyrant .
Supposedly, Benjamin Franklin's answer to the question, "what have you given us?", was, "a republic, if you can keep it".
If that's true, then I can say for sure, we haven't kept it. Next. So this beggars the question, what could we keep?
Anyone else want to spend the next century arguing this point 👉? A quandary to say the least. The most obvious problem is that we're dealing with humans. And now we are dealing with a majority of lazy, ignorant, propagandized, tax slaves. But even worse than that, we've become a nation of cowards. I have bucked every authoritarian rule that was handed down during the scamdemic. But I was alone in my defiance. So pathetic. I will never give in. But me thinks me will be short on support. Thanks for letting me along for the ride pete. I think about this alot. Wish I could come up with a good solution. Mebbe thangs will have to get much harder for folks to finally get triggered to action. As long as the majority is relatively comfortable, they will continue to put up with the bs.
Like your question of "who protects these rights?", I like to ask "who decides and what skin do they have in the game".
Our current experiment in 'representative democracy' is a huge failure IMO, based on the above 3 questions. I think the founders tried to strike a reasonable balance with the 3 branches, appointment of senators at state level, giving land owners voting rights, and on but it's been pissed away. What we're left with is either the 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on dinner or the old forest and ax metaphor. "The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe. For the ax was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was wood, he was one of them."
Excellent necessary cold splash of water as usual that Libertarians are in desperate need right now lest they accidentally let reality punch them in the face.
As for your latter question, anything below Dunbar’s Number 150 doesn’t require any formal organization structure. All changes can be willed into existence via cultural changes alone. This is so well documented that Roman military units all the way to today all have around 100 guys in them because at that scale you know everyone on a personal basis and can differentiate strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Same goes for Mennonite and other communities once they hit 150 they split in 2 villages of 75 each. This is actually the natural way we’re evolved to live. Immediate and extended family, 5 ultra close friends that you would call over in the case of death of a family member, an additional 20 or so friends in the broader community, where you spend a decent chunk of your time, etc. there’s a neurobiological reason for this the size of our neocortex limits the max number of relationships we can concurrently juggle to 150.
The data of social graphs from Big Tech firms like Facebook also bear this out. Up to about 1,500 is the max number where we can identify faces to names. Beyond that everyone becomes another of the faceless masses. This is also why a company of maybe 100 people still feels like a startup while a mega corporation of 10,000+ you just feel like another cog in the system.
You can have a global presence these days with just a laptop but as a functional matter you need a few dozen people at least. This country in general would be much better off if we’re optimized for the SMALLEST unit of governance effectively the village level below 150 or maybe a town council of a dozen people at that level.
Considering America’s unique geography, scale, political history, etc. with 3,000+ counties/parishes and 20,000+ mayors the local/county level is where 95-98% of all political energy and attention should be directed towards.
We know due to Disney World that Hoppe was absolutely correct in the sense that you can have a fully private city 25,000+ acres 2x the area of Manhattan with MORE visitors than all of NYC annually 50-60+ million. That’s the upper bound we know of for private cities.
No reason why that couldn’t be scaled down to say a much smaller theme park where the theme is say America in 2001 the summer before 9/11 or say Victorian England, Feudal Japan, Steampunk Chicago, etc. anything you want just at the level of 160 acres 1/4th square miles with a population of 100-1,000. There should be 10,000+ private cities in this country ranging from say 500 acres all the way to 5,000 aka ~1 sq mile to 10 sq mile’s population 1,000 to 10,000. Texas alone could have 100’s of them of all different varieties.
Anarchists have value as critics and gadflys and will occasionally offer up ideas that i cant do without (the myth of the rule of law and spooner's criticism of the constitution in Malice's handbook come to mind), but there is no way to ally with them or treat them as friends. They're basically liberals that actually believe in all that enlightenment shit.
Fake tough and crazy brave 2a types arent even good for a laugh
Some people can't seem to understand that a forest is a real thing and isn't a bunch of individual unconnected trees that happen to be near each other. How long can a single tree stay healthy when everything around it has tent worms? I am sure when the arborist comes in to spray the caterpillars they will call him a tyrant .
Supposedly, Benjamin Franklin's answer to the question, "what have you given us?", was, "a republic, if you can keep it".
If that's true, then I can say for sure, we haven't kept it. Next. So this beggars the question, what could we keep?
Anyone else want to spend the next century arguing this point 👉? A quandary to say the least. The most obvious problem is that we're dealing with humans. And now we are dealing with a majority of lazy, ignorant, propagandized, tax slaves. But even worse than that, we've become a nation of cowards. I have bucked every authoritarian rule that was handed down during the scamdemic. But I was alone in my defiance. So pathetic. I will never give in. But me thinks me will be short on support. Thanks for letting me along for the ride pete. I think about this alot. Wish I could come up with a good solution. Mebbe thangs will have to get much harder for folks to finally get triggered to action. As long as the majority is relatively comfortable, they will continue to put up with the bs.
Like your question of "who protects these rights?", I like to ask "who decides and what skin do they have in the game".
Our current experiment in 'representative democracy' is a huge failure IMO, based on the above 3 questions. I think the founders tried to strike a reasonable balance with the 3 branches, appointment of senators at state level, giving land owners voting rights, and on but it's been pissed away. What we're left with is either the 3 wolves and 1 sheep voting on dinner or the old forest and ax metaphor. "The forest was shrinking, but the trees kept voting for the axe. For the ax was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was wood, he was one of them."
Excellent necessary cold splash of water as usual that Libertarians are in desperate need right now lest they accidentally let reality punch them in the face.
As for your latter question, anything below Dunbar’s Number 150 doesn’t require any formal organization structure. All changes can be willed into existence via cultural changes alone. This is so well documented that Roman military units all the way to today all have around 100 guys in them because at that scale you know everyone on a personal basis and can differentiate strengths, weaknesses, etc.
Same goes for Mennonite and other communities once they hit 150 they split in 2 villages of 75 each. This is actually the natural way we’re evolved to live. Immediate and extended family, 5 ultra close friends that you would call over in the case of death of a family member, an additional 20 or so friends in the broader community, where you spend a decent chunk of your time, etc. there’s a neurobiological reason for this the size of our neocortex limits the max number of relationships we can concurrently juggle to 150.
The data of social graphs from Big Tech firms like Facebook also bear this out. Up to about 1,500 is the max number where we can identify faces to names. Beyond that everyone becomes another of the faceless masses. This is also why a company of maybe 100 people still feels like a startup while a mega corporation of 10,000+ you just feel like another cog in the system.
You can have a global presence these days with just a laptop but as a functional matter you need a few dozen people at least. This country in general would be much better off if we’re optimized for the SMALLEST unit of governance effectively the village level below 150 or maybe a town council of a dozen people at that level.
Considering America’s unique geography, scale, political history, etc. with 3,000+ counties/parishes and 20,000+ mayors the local/county level is where 95-98% of all political energy and attention should be directed towards.
We know due to Disney World that Hoppe was absolutely correct in the sense that you can have a fully private city 25,000+ acres 2x the area of Manhattan with MORE visitors than all of NYC annually 50-60+ million. That’s the upper bound we know of for private cities.
No reason why that couldn’t be scaled down to say a much smaller theme park where the theme is say America in 2001 the summer before 9/11 or say Victorian England, Feudal Japan, Steampunk Chicago, etc. anything you want just at the level of 160 acres 1/4th square miles with a population of 100-1,000. There should be 10,000+ private cities in this country ranging from say 500 acres all the way to 5,000 aka ~1 sq mile to 10 sq mile’s population 1,000 to 10,000. Texas alone could have 100’s of them of all different varieties.
Just spitballin. Lee up the great work, Pete!