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Comment by brokenmusic | Hacker News Reader

> The answer, to a depressing extent, is that our basic freedoms are threatened today because our political system and our very culture make it nearly impossible for us to act.

That's why action should not come as an open fight. History is full of examples when revolutions only lead to blood, after which other elites simply take over and keep exploiting everyone else. Or, alternatively, revolutions fail and after a bloody fight the same elites stay in power.

If you want real change and bloodless revolution, start using Bitcoin. Don't pay them a cut if you disagree with what your money are spent on. It's not democracy that keeps politicians in check. It's simply money. If they have none, they're powerless.

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> If you want real change and bloodless revolution

... destroy politicians' careers and make their techniques impossible to maintain.

I've written on this subject before, but I believe that destruction is the most effective means of change in politics today. The obvious way is to dig up as much dirt on politicians as possible and back them into a corner, but 1) that can easily backfire, and 2) it's hard to deal with the systematic problems.

A great example of how to deal with a serious technological hurdle: In Cory Doctorow's book "Little Brother" (absolutely worth a read -- my favorite of all time, FWIW) everyone in the bay area has RFID passes for traveling on BART and paying tolls by car. One of the characters comes up with plans for a device that will suck in IDs from these devices, then randomly swap them with others, preventing the DHS from tracking people based on their location. By distributing this far and wide, the system becomes completely and utterly useless.

I think that things like this are the way forward. Destroy, guide the rebuilding (using positive -- not negative -- means), destroy again if it doesn't fit the proper form. Semi-rapid iteration of government.

Why do you want a government so much?

I don't. Unfortunately, most people do, and I'm a pragmatist at the end of the day.

> Why do you want a government so much?

Because it's the only way to take proper care of the elderly and the disabled. No anarcho-syndicalist pipe dream has ever convincingly sketched me a scenario where the elderly (without family) do not just waste away in isolation, and the schizophrenics are rotting in the streets.

Now, a government is not a guarantee to fix this (see for example the NYC homeless), but without a government, the weaker groups in society are just shit out of luck.

If elderly without a family is not more than 2-3% of the population, I don't think it's anything that charities wouldn't be able to do.

And that is assuming people are completely irresponsible and don't save during their lifetime. Pensions is just that, but with a middleman.

Anarchist societies throughout history took care of the elderly and disabled. Do you have any evidence of your claims that they didn't?

A bunch of people who organize on purpose to put forward a given political ideology is hardly representative of how the mass of the population can be expected to handle a similar social concern.

Sure, the kids may clean their room if you tell them they can have cookies afterwards, but what's the plan when the anarchists have already achieved their goal and removed that external motivator?

I wasn't defining anarchists as you just have. Anarchism has taken a variety of forms throughout history, and the kind you describe is the most rare.

http://www.eleuthera.it/files/materiali/David_Graeber_Fragme...

Empirically speaking, government is utterly horrible about taking care of the elderly and disabled. The mentally disabled historically were far better treated by their communities before the government instituted sanitoria.

Block Island, RI, is a good example of a community thant functions to help each other without government aid. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUxu02GPAqg

And government has been similarly horrible at taking care of the poor. a large part of social equalization in the 1900-1950 era was the ascendancy of private community associations, mutual benefit societies, and so forth. The remnants of these are the Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary club, etc... But these have been squeezed out by government sponsored programs, and we have seen economic inequity rise. Part of this is probably also because the poor have been squeezed by money printing - but that's another issue altogether.

Especially the way that the government engages in charity. By spending money that is borrowed to bail out the poor (the anti-austerity argument) - the government transfers funds to the poor (which, let's assume is fine) by borrowing from the rich and politically connected. But it's a loan, so the rich are getting paid back, with interest. The net resource flow is to the rich, even though you have paid the poor.

Booster clubs have never really taken care of the poor, as Sinclair Lewis eloquently observed.

by his criteria, an honest analysis would conclude: neither has government.

Don't we need a social body (government) to enforce contracts? Be they social, financial, etc.

Edit: And to avoid might makes right?

No, we don't. A great talk and an illustration about how law and protection could work in a stateless society: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTYkdEU_B4o by David D. Friedman (an economist AND a lawyer).

Interesting talk, thanks. Basically, rule of law under market conditions/forces. The main benefit is more individual power over law due to market choice by that individual, instead of political choice and the lack of power that offers due to dilution.

That is of course assuming we do not end up with the same M&A activity that leaves only a handful of law market/arbitration agencies (similar to what has happened in many arenas, such as media).

I am going to have to think about that one for awhile...

"...to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evil-doers; so that the strong should not harm the weak ... to further the well-being of mankind."

Or if you like

"We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

The moment that you abolish government I will personally get a gang together to make you regret the action. The power vacuum will be filled, and given the opportunity I would much rather be the one wearing the boots than the one getting his face kicked in.

I like to think that most libertarians are mostly confused anarchists, and thus mostly imbeciles, but those that can deny the necessity of government altogether are beyond idiocy into an entirely separate plane of existence. It's beyond even opprobrium; we simply do not live in a world that would permit large groups of humanity to live without some form of government.

In other words, you'd rather have a really big and powerful gang that is impossible to fight, than many more competing small gangs? Totally sold me on the idea.

Setting aside the tendency of small gangs to become large ones, a gang is a form of government in most senses of the term, i.e. it is not anarchy. You'll also need to show that gang warfare is a desirous state.

A government is a local monopoly on the use of force. We do not live in a world that can be made free of violence, therefore government is an unpleasant necessity. Solve the violence issue, and we can talk about abolishing government -- although you should also be aware of the concepts of "market failure" and "natural monopoly".

Interesting. If you look at history, it is precisely governments and empires that produced more violence than anyone else. The bloodiest, most devastating wars are all the result of government action. Even the most bloodiest anarchist in the world cannot come close to what an average "peaceful" state has done in his lifetime.

Violence is inherent, at least at this point of our development, in human species. Question is, what brings about more violence. I would argue, that it's the idea that we need some sort of government. This very idea creates the incentive for sociopaths and bandits to get into politics and allows the ruling class to continuously keep fucking the population.

> I would argue, that it's the idea that we need some sort of government.

It's not an idea at all. It's what OP referred to as a 'power vacuum'.

An anarchy sits at the top of a local maxima, where a little nudge in any direction is enough to set the whole political situation careening toward violence and the acquisition of power all over again.

An anarchy can only survive until the first person gets enough allies to put their boots on the throats of the rest.

So while it's true that an anarchy is such that you can effectively only cause people nearby you to be killed, it is an inherently unstable political situation. Witness the stateless tribal areas of Pakistan; despite the lack of the state there is assuredly a boss. The power vacuum has been filled by local tribal warlords.

An anarchy surrounded by Western democracies might even be safe (that is, from external conflict), but a world full of anarchies will not remain a set of anarchies for that long.

A government is a local monopoly on the use of force.

Not according to the authors of the Second Amendment.

You must be confused. The Second Amendment deals with possession, not use.

Whatever you say, I guess.

Yeah, except that, you know, our government is supposed to be us.

But, you can be forgiven for forgetting that fact. It's really hard to remember these days.

Still, for the record, we should all be suspicious of anyone who seeks to disempower the government in a country wherein self-rule is supposed to be the law. There is a third option, and that is restoring the spirit of our government.

I don't understand this. "Supposed to be us" is a meaningless propaganda thing in any country. Much like "for your protection". What they are supposed to be has nothing to do with what they really are. You can't change the system by telling it what it's supposed to be and complaining. The system will listen and ignore.

Yeah, that was pretty much my point. It is propaganda at this point, but it doesn't have to be and shouldn't be.

I wasn't proposing that my HN post (or complaint, as you say) would change the system. I was noting that people have forgotten what the system is even supposed to be. There's a binary false choice between abolishing the "evil government" altogether or just dealing with its egregious violations. In either case, the implicit supposition is that it's this third thing that we're dealing with, outside of the people.

But, there is another choice (put simply, reclaiming our government) and I (and others) actually have ideas around helping to facilitate those changes. Maybe you'll hear about these ideas some day and want to be a part of the change.

But, in any case, it starts with people remembering what our government is supposed to be. And, as of right now, we're nowhere close to even that.

empirical and historical evidence doesn't completely bear out what you are saying:

http://www.eleuthera.it/files/materiali/David_Graeber_Fragme...

Because I don't live in a hunter-gatherer tribe geographically separated from other competing tribes.

Because I don't live in a spaceship with nuclear power, an FTL drive and a working replicator to run away from the rest of humanity.

See Sethrin's comment.

>In Cory Doctorow's book...

This is a really cool concept. You have just sold me to read this book man, I'd been putting it off for so long.

Awesome. I strongly recommend both "Little Brother" and "Makers" to every single developer I know. Makers is more directly relevant to techies.

Please don't make this a case for bitcoin. This is much more serious and complicated issue and will not get solved just by using bitcoin. I think you are over-romanticising the use of bitcoin, nothing else...

Just saying,..

All I said that NSA, Drones and imprisonment of the population for victimless crimes requires money. I would also claim that if taxes were not collected (or would be impossible to collect) with a threat of force, very little number of people would pay them voluntarily. Also, if people were not forced by law to use national currencies for exchanging goods and services, they wouldn't be subject to hidden taxes, such as inflation. Bitcoin makes taxes prohibitively expensive to collect and inflation impossible. How is it an oversimplification then?

> hidden taxes, such as inflation.

Maybe it was a typo, but I think you should double check what inflation means.

The effect of the Federal Reserve increasing the money supply, and making it available to favored banks and the US Treasury at low rates helps cause inflation and has about the same effect as a tax: your holdings are worth less, and somebody else, albeit indirectly, is able to tap into the value that those dollars held.

Sounds like a pretty big stretch to call it a tax in my opinion.

The government has more money and I have less. I'd be interested to hear your suggestions for a better descriptor?

I'm not convinced that the government gets more money when inflation goes up. I've only taken an introductory level economics course, but I'm pretty sure the value of a currency goes down for everyone - government included - when inflation rises.

If it was not forced by law there would be no private property at all.

empirically not true:

http://www.eleuthera.it/files/materiali/David_Graeber_Fragme...

Please make a proper argument, nobody is going to read through all of that.

TLDR; Anarchist systems have existed throughout history both alongside and within, and most certainly in awareness of hierarchical systems which they often explicitly reject.

Most assertions about the nature of those societies are based on ignorance. Most relevant to your comment, they tend(ed) to maintain rules, conventions, personal property, arbitrate disputes, take care of the weak, and do any number of other things considered impossible without government. Various types of egalitarian social order have existed, it isn't one monolithic concept, and it certainly doesn't necessarily result in chaos or might-makes-right.

If you want specific examples and actual information, take the time to read the pdf. It is written by an anthropologist, so it is his gig to footnote all this stuff.

How have these anarchist societies fared after hierarchically-driven societies came through? I don't seem to recall it working out well in Africa, Asia, North America, or South America.

That wasn't the discussion I was responding to. If anything, it bolsters my intuition which is: the fact that anarchist societies historically haven't stood up well to the depredations of authoritarian and warlike organizations is probably the reason we think they can't work.

But to do the other things discussed, other than organized warfare, they seem to work just as well as anything else.

I think this point is important when evaluating the need for government in a variety of other contexts, other than war.

> If anything, it bolsters my intuition which is: the fact that anarchist societies historically haven't stood up well to the depredations of authoritarian and warlike organizations is probably the reason we think they can't work.

Sure, but my intuition is that you cannot simultaneously stamp out all authoritarian/warlike organizations. And even if you could, you'd eventually get one more, which would screw the whole world up again.

The idea is one of those "would be nice in theory/won't work in the real world" types of things. I wish it weren't, I really do. But life is about dealing with the hand you're given, not the hand you'd wished you'd have been dealt.

By that logic we would all still be sitting in mud huts. Progress is about imagining a better future and then working to achieve it.

Well, you get people to not ever rape or murder one another and I'll get political schemes to all settle on anarchist societies where major industrial projects still manage to get funded and no one ever tried to take more by force.

David Graeber is a left-anarchist whose work backs me up: those anarchist societies don't have private property, they have personal possessions. You don't get capitalist enterprises without a state.

Here is an alternate dimension too.

If both left and right political wings are full of dubious people, then don't bring them both to power. Create an alternative political party of your own and then compete in the next elections. Vow to kill all the FUD such as mass surveillance, Gitmo, SOPA, PIPA, bring in transparency, bring youth to power etc.

I mean fight 'em with the system, and fight outside the system too as more and more people, I noted, have been suggesting the latter on HN here.

This is how India is currently planning for the 2014 elections. The ground reality is so intense that one cannot describe in words.

We have a legion of corrupt assholes both in our Government and its opposition that is called the congress and BJP duo. These guys have a history of carrying out some of the biggest scams on the planet. Shamelessly. They are known to have killed thousands of innocents, like Congress done away with Sikhs in 1984 [1], BJP done away with Gujrati muslims in Godhra in 2002 [2] and so on ...

Not much of a choice w.r.t democracy, you know!

So people lately have built a third political party called the 'Aam Aadmi Party' AAP [3], meaning common man party, whose president is Mr. Arvind Kejriwal [4] (A young engineer from IIT and an ex-diplomat of Indian Government.) Ground is swelling with support to put the new face into power, give power back to youth of our country. And yet traditional and powerful media continues to sleep with the incumbents, so a similar situation of dimwit reporting too.

I don't know how the elections in the US work, heard it is complicated and messy, but this is one angle that perhaps you guys could look at: form a party of your own. Call it something else, like a pirate party, and then fight the elections.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_anti-Sikh_riots

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Gujarat_violence

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aam_Aadmi_Party

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Kejriwal

The big problem is that fear is such an effective weapon to use again any such campaign. The establishment would have to spend barely a penny to totally crush such a movement before it got off the ground given the general status quo of relative comfort for most Americans.

The two party system, as alluded to in the article, really is a huge problem for getting momentum on any movement that has any kind of easy sound bite rebuttals. However I think a good place to start would be to proclaim strong support for congresspeople like Udall, and start going after the NSA shills like Kerry.

> The two party system, as alluded to in the article, really is a huge problem ...

Yup! A truly open system would respect as many competing forces as possible. However, in India we've seen several competing parties forming a coalition after the voting is done with. And then they play different equations to their advantage, grab power bring in misery back again.

So it is not as easy as it seems.

What kind of 'third front' do you want? The fact that you don't actually detail what sort of politics it would have makes me suspicious. Who is it that you want me to give power to?

You know what I don't really get? Why do we need anyone to give power to? Keep it to yourself. We've got everything we really need to make ourselves happy and live our lives. Why do people so desperately need someone to reign over them? This sounds like a Stockholm syndrome.

> Who is it that you want me to give power to?

To yourself, I meant.

I removed the term 'third front' because it does contain the political bullshit angle that is certainly suspicious. Thanks for pointing out.

There are the very real issues of apathy and media-influenced distractions. For example, here's the last 30 days of Google search traffic on "NSA" vs. "Paula Deen":

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?q=nsa%2C%22paula+deen%2...

I wholeheartedly agree with your last point. Hit them where it hurts, and that's their wallet. If you dislike what's happening and you notice a certain corporation is associated with that, simply stop using their services and stop giving them money. If you dislike your information being shared, stop using Facebook or any of the other tech giants. They didn't have much incentive to protect their user's privacy, but they would if they noticed people moving away from their services because they can't be trusted.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't saying exactly that. Yes, you got the point right: if you don't like the services a private company provides - stop paying. It works. With government it has historically been impossible to do, because it controls money supply and extracts taxes with the threat of force (don't want to pay? Go to prison). Bitcoin offers a simple non-violent and effective way out of this, because it would be prohibitively expensive to collect taxes if people used Bitcoin. It would only be possible when they converted it to fiat or physical things big enough to be noticed and tracked (like houses or cars). Thus, my point: use Bitcoin as a unit of exchange and don't pay a cut.

Bitcoin offers very little here. If you are smart about how you interact with it, it might be substantially more anonymous than other digital payment mechanisms. It is not any more anonymous than physical cash, and governments collected taxes just fine when everyone was paying with cash. They do this through audit and threat of force, and that is just as applicable to bitcoin.

Not true. 1) Is gets a lot harder and more expensive to collect taxes when you have to conduct audits 2) It is impossible to collect the inflation tax 3) It's easier to control people when you can close down or freeze their bank accounts for any reason you like.

Bitcoin offers a lot of freedom at a price of learning a little bit about the technology.

1 and 3 are not at all applicable to cash, which was my point - governments have collected taxes in cash since forever, so they can collect taxes in bitcoin.

2 is a point, but I am not convinced it's hugely significant (though will be happy to delve deeper).

>collect the inflation tax

What does this mean? I do not understand.

By printing more money, he government has more money. By increasing the supply of money, the "price" (which is to say "value" - how much you can trade it for) of money goes down. So value moved from "those who hold dollars" to the government, which can be viewed as a sort of tax. By not using dollars, you reduce demand for dollars (hopefully more than you reduce supply through decreased velocity - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money) meaning the government has to print more to pay for the same things and so you lessen the ability to raise money in this way.

I am skeptical about this being significant, because the amount of money raised by printing money has historically been radically lower than the amount of money raised by levying taxes.

You would need a substantial percentage of a population to stop paying taxes to send the government a message. If you do it on your own, you run the risk of getting a message. A coercive one.

The Diamond Age is based in a reality where all countries collapsed due to the advent of cryptocurrency and cryptocommunication which undermined nation states' ability to collect tax. I think this is an eventuality.

One of my favorite books, but the chicken and egg problem is substantial. Hitting the "tax dodger" tipping point requires a huge number of people to break the law before it 1) has any impact at all, and 2) becomes unenforcable.

I think that there's a clever missing step.

Nations are not based only on the ability to collect tax. And a percentage of income or sales are not the only kinds of tax which have been collected in history.

The Diamond Age is also a sickening crapsack world filled with immensely dangerous uncontrolled nanotechnology. And of course the mandatory Neal Stephenson lectures on programming and bizarre sex cults.

That said, Snow Crash was an even worse crapsack to live in.

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