Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed.
One does not imply the other.
The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working
I think this is the thing that most people miss. It's not that the system is malfunctioning in terms of being self-inconsistent. It's working perfectly fine. So when people defend the various governmental abuses in the U.S. by saying "but we've decided that this is legal" they're right: we have decided that. And those things shouldn't be legal. So the system is being perfectly self-consistent. It just doesn't address the needs of the governed effectively anymore.
Governments, like every other manmade system involving people from development teams to civic groups, need to be refactored on a regular basis. There has to be some self-correction mechanism built-in, because the participants will actively game the system in hopes of gaining a slight advantage.
All we're really seeing is hundreds of years of this at work. Various participants have gamed the system to the degree that it's obviously way out of whack from where it started, even though many of the participants refuse to see it.
No need to burn it down. Politely supporting reforms in the primary process and 2-party-lock would probably do wonders in the U.S. There are lots of options open aside from the flame thrower. The important thing to remember is that the parts needing fixing are the auto-correcting parts, not all the other stuff like the high-court, low-court stuff. Focusing on that stuff is only a distraction -- and only serves to keep true reform from happening because it diverts needed reform energy elsewhere.
Having said that, the things that this author lists (and others) sure fret the hell out of me most days.
A friend has been tossing around the idea of "null vote" for quite some time. Basically, to encourage a bigger proportion of constituency to vote, add a new bracket: "none of the above". And then start to visibly track that figure. (Note: this is in Finland, not US)
The problem with general elections is that there is no meaningful choice. You can vote for the shade of your representative, but you can't vote against putting an invertebrate lizard in position of power. Adding a valid "none of the above" choice to the ballot would be a way to track just how big a fraction of population disagree with ALL of the available representative options.
Currently we lump "invalid" votes together with disqualified votes, so protest votes do not count. They are treated as empty ballots. Personally I would be very much interested in seeing the results after a few years of "N/A" votes. Once the fraction of the votes to go against all of the available choices starts to gain and approach any of the potentially winning entries in the ballot, you might just see a reaction against the uselessness of current political system. At least that's what I hope.
Yeah, I think a change in how the voting process works, including something like point based voting would do wonders to shake things up. The problem I've seen is that most people have no idea how to begin to contribute to making a change like that happen without getting into politics themselves, and doing that successfully seems to require getting completely entangled in the existing way things are done. Anyone have any suggestions besides donating to various advocacy groups?
First thing to start with is getting public financing of campaigns because that's the source of influence aka corruption... the money. It's the biggest problem, by far.
An odd rant. The judge in question appears to be an alcoholic, and came to the court drunk. Surely this is professional misconduct (and to my mind warrants firing), but it really doesn't justify the author's charges of system-rigging. Seems to me that Clark is trying to mislead people into thinking that Pollack was under the influence of e.g heroin. Pretty despicable.
Also, the smallest bit of Googling shows that Pollack heads was responsible for the creation of some sort of special "marijuana court" which expressly sent users to rehab, not jail.
I don't know much about this Clark guy (girl?), and I agree with some of the points in the article, but he/she seems pretty close to a flat-out liar.
It reads like a classic stir-the-pot rant fueled by cherry-picking a few extreme examples of misconduct, which can always be found.
So he wants to burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it? How will it be better? Most revolutions produce tyrants. Only a few have produced anything arguably better than what was in place before.
Although I've got quibbles with some of his points and emphases, I can tell his heart is in the right place. So now what?
There's reforming the system, but we've been reforming the system for decades, and it's gotten worse consistently since the 1970s. We elect a professed civil libertarian as President, and he brings the State to unimaginable and exciting new heights of violence against individual liberty.
Burn the system to the ground? Okay, sure. But we all know how most revolutions turn out. Which is to say, in the usual and best case they fizzle out, despite the strong emotions of would-be revolutionaries. Worst case scenario: well, look up any revolution, and let me know if you've got a solution beyond "Well I'm a good guy, I wouldn't be like every other revolutionary!"
I've settled on something in the space that's occupied by ideas about "counterpower" or "dual power" (using a Left-frame) and Konkinite agorism (using a Right-frame). We need to build up alternative institutions to government power to rebuild the civil society. Many institutions--certainly all the major media, corporations, unions, nonprofits, and universities--are so closely integrated in the network of State power that attempts at reforming them are pointless. Instead we should development alternative, parallel structures that we can live and operate in, trying to limit the amount we interact with and serve the government.
Doing that, and figuring out how to do that, is the hard part that requires lots work. As technologists, I think we're in an ideal position, as the technological frontier is relatively unexplored compared to other ways of doing this. Research decentralized manufacturing: simpler supply chains and homogeneous production facilities means more fault-tolerant production, which means fewer opportunities for the State to exert control. Support open source: software is going to eat the world, and code that anyone can access disperses power from large entities incorporated by the State to anyone who's able to use it. Be thoughtful supporters of structures like Bitcoin: despite their flaws, they have the potential to make large portions of the economy illegible to the State.
This approach also doesn't ask us to relinquish the right to interact with the government if it suits our ends, particularly in legal cases and occasionally electorally.
I agree that we need new solutions that are distinct from the existing power structures. The idea of voting for "representatives" seems completely absurd when almost everyone is "connected" now - we could build systems which allow us to vote on issues directly, rather than people - and using distributed, anonymous cryptographic protocols with public ledgers, we could be sure there is no vote fraud. I'd envision a system where you can decide exactly how your tax money is distributed too, rather than a single central power structure, so we could literally put our money where our mouths are.
The big elephant is the existing tax system though. Alternative structures will never have anywhere near the resources governments have, and the government will always retain power for as long as it has the perceived legitimacy to tax by force. A new model would not be able to trump the government unless it makes the government seem illegitimate, or obsolete, to the point where people consciously decide where to put their money.
Pay-as-you-earn schemes are perhaps one of the biggest obstacles. Most earners have no control of where their money goes, so can not consciously object to state power without potentially losing their jobs and livelihoods. Most people would live on the breadline than take such risks, which is really the purpose of the welfare state - to ensure than the poverty threshold is just high enough for the majority of people to cope - because any lower would activate the switch people have, where they overcome that fear and say "enough".
Cryptocurrencies are very interesting, but I think we need to have stronger anonymity in transactions, and in the means of connecting into the network (via meshnets, or whatnot). This is the potential Achilles heel for the state, which is why they are building such vast surveillance and censorship platforms to try and prevent these from ever taking off.
Of course, we always have the problem that the existing government can simply declare any new structure we create as "illegal," with some poor propaganda spread through their MSM mouthpieces to justify those decisions, which will be effective while the majority of the population remains a bunch of gullible sycophants. Unless there is a big change in perception, and soon, it's more likely we'll have a bloody revolution, or boot stamping on our faces.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller
Are you seriously saying the system has become consistently worse since the 70's ? In what respects ?
I think we have (in the USA) a better safety net (especially now with Obamacare), a lot more respect for gays, a lot less racism, a lot more controls on the police, plus the internet which somewhat decentralizes power. I'd say it's had its ups and downs, but has been getting better overall
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
― R Buckminster Fuller
Burning the system to the ground is not very constructive (duh). In fact, this article - well, it's not clear what it advocates, but it sounds like it advocates some kind of violent "line the bastards against a wall and shoot them" revolution or civil war.
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
The worst case outcome of letting things continue along their current path is quite simply the end of the human race.
The system is forcing 100's of millions of people to choose between utter misery or soul crushing servitude to capitalists and managers whose philosophy of labor differs little from the slave holders of the pre-civil war south.
And that's how things are now. What will happen when 100's of millions more lose what little value to the system they currently have due to automation and robotics ?
Given the pace of technological advance sooner or later (I would guess within the next 100 years) one of these unhappy people will figure out how to synthesize a species ending bioweapon. I've heard the secret service is already taking measures to protect the president's DNA due to fear of a targeted bioweapon being developed. But an untargeted bioweapon would likely be easier to develop and it's effects far more frightening.
While undesirable, bloody revolutions happen pretty much all by themselves once some hard to estimate pain limit is crossed.
I tend to believe, most western civilizations are pretty far from that limit of pain. But, at the same time, they're far closer to the limit today than a few mere decades ago.
So there's ample reason to worry, and ample reason to speak out that the course we're staying will not end at a happy place.
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
Everyplace has a system. Russia has a system. Iran has a system. And everyplace that has a system, the system works pretty much as intended: Putting the Pussy Riot women in prison for insulting Putin was no malfunction.
This article does not claim or system is broken and needs fixing. The article claims the system has lost legitimacy. I'm pretty sure that if revolution came to Russia, people would die, and it would mean hard times for a few years.
But there is another problem with your choice of choosing the system over the alternatives. An open "hot war" revolution is not the only alternative.
What would you say is the most you will tolerate before the French Revolution seems like an appropriate course of action? Does your personal French Revolution cutoff happen before or after a close friend or family member is robbed, raped, kidnapped, or murdered by royalty? Does your personal French Revolution cutoff happen before or after the level of oppression makes the French Revolution impossible?
One of the lies that keeps corruption churning is that the only alternative is anarchy, destruction, and more corruption. "Corruption" vs. "revolution" is a false dichotomy.
There are more effective non-violent ways to "burn down the system." Alternative forms of democratic participation facilitated by modern technology, improved voting systems like approval voting, etc.
The System better get wise because eventually enough "reasonable" people like me will start to agree with this sentiment and we'll have ourselves executions in the street because I'll be looking the other way because the solution is less worse than the problem.
Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.
The system can't get right because it is fundamentally corrupt. It was carefully designed for this very purpose from the beginning. Too many smart and intelligent people are in charge for the system to get this fucked up by accident.
Just like mediocre software architectures, sometimes a full rewrite is the only way to go. No amount of refactoring will cleanse a self-corrupting system.
Just like a Windows installation after a while, nothing will help but a fresh reinstall with a blank slate.
However, it is the nature of our institutions to try and stay alive, even when they are outdated ideas, have been proven inneffective time and time again. Above all, they want to survive, even if the cost for this is a massively decreased quality of life for virtually everyone not holding the reins.
I'm already at that point. If I start hearing about the general public going after corrupt law enforcement & government officials with lethal force... I will not condemn them.
I'll just be like "Well, they just kept pushing & squeezing on people; something had to give. It's just human nature. Maybe the populace has finally woken up."
BTW, as much as I am anti-firearm... the eventual uprising of the public against the government is the only reason I want the public to be well armed. I can count on all those pro-gun people to have a solid stockpile when the need arises. I actually think those in power know this too.
Dec 23, 2013
By Clark.
Effluvia
"I'm a good judge" … said by government employee and judge Gisele Pollack who, it seems, sentenced people to jail because of their drug use…while she, herself, was high on drugs.
But, in her defense, "she’s had some severe personal tragedy in her life".
And that's why, it seems, she's being allowed to check herself into rehab instead of being thrown in jail.
…because not a single poor person or non government employee who gets caught using drugs ever "had some severe personal tragedy in her life".
I'm reminded of something I read earlier today:
techdirt.com
We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times before — in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules.
…
The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain, you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the report until you switch jobs.
But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report.
Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. I thought that some parts of it "worked"… whatever that means. I thought that the goals were noble, even if not often achieved.
The older I get, the more I see, the more I read, the more clear it becomes to me that the entire game is rigged. The leftists and the rightists each see half of the fraud. The lefties correctly note that a poor kid caught with cocaine goes to jail, while a Bush can write it off as a youthful mistake (they somehow overlook the fact that their man Barrack hasn't granted clemency to any one of the people doing federal time for the same felonies he committed). The righties note that government subsidized windmills kill protected eagles with impunity while Joe Sixpack would be deep in the crap if he even picked up a dead eagle from the side of the road. The lefties note that no one was prosecuted over the financial meltdown. The righties note that the Obama administration rewrote bankruptcy law on the fly to loot value from GM stockholders and hand it to the unions. The lefties note that Republicans tweak export rules to give big corporations subsidies. Every now and then both sides join together to note that, hey! the government is spying on every one of us…or that, hey! the government stole a bunch of people's houses and gave them to Pfizer, because a privately owned for-profit corporation is apparently what the Constitution means by "public use".
What neither side seems to realize is that the system is not reformable. There are multiple classes of people, but it boils down to the connected, and the not connected. Just as in pre-Revolutionary France, there is a very strict class hierarchy, and the very idea that we are equal before the law is a laughable nonsequitr.
Jamal the $5 weed slinger, Shaneekwa the hair braider, and Loudmouth Bob in the 7-11 parking lot are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They can, literally, be killed with impunity … as long as the dash cam isn't running. And, hell, half the time they can be killed even if the dash cam is running. This isn't hyperbole, mother-fucker. This is literal. Question me and I'll throw 400 cites and 20 youtube clips at you.
Next up from Shaneekwa and Loudmouth Bob are us regular peons. We can have our balls squeezed at the airport, our rectums explored at the roadside, our cars searched because the cops got permission from a dog (I owe some Reason intern a drink for that one), our telephones tapped (because terrorism!), our bank accounts investigated (because FinCEN! and no expectation of privacy!). We don't own the house we live in, not if someone of a higher social class wants it. We don't own our own financial lives, because the education accreditation / student loan industry / legal triumvirate have declared that we can never escape – even through bankruptcy – our $200,000 debt that a bunch of adults convinced a can't-tell-his-ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground 18 year old that (a) he was smart enough to make his own decisions, and (b) college is a time to explore your interests and broaden yourself). And if there's a "national security emergency" (defined as two idiots with a pressure cooker), then the constitution is suspended, martial law is declared, and people are hauled out of their homes.
Next up from the regular peons are the unionized, disciplined-voting-blocks. Not-much-brighter-than-a-box-of-crayolas teachers who work 180 days a year and get automatic raises. Firefighters who disproportionately retire on disability the very day they sub in for their bosses and get a paper cut.
A step up from the teachers and firefighters are the cops: all the same advantages of nobility of the previous group, but a few more in addition: the de facto power to murder someone as long as not too many cameras are rolling. The de facto power to confiscate cameras in case the murder wasn't well planned. A right to keep and bear arms that far exceeds that of the serf class: 50 state concealed carry for life, not just just for actual cops, but even for retired cops.
At the same level of privilege as cops, but slightly off to one side is different class of nobility: the judiciary and the prosecutors. Judges and prosecutors can't execute citizens in an alley, a parking lot, or their own homes ("he had a knife! …and I don't care what the lying video says."), but they can sentence people to decades in jail for things that any clear-minded reading of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments make clear are not with in the purview of the government. They have effectively infinite resources. They orchestrate perp walks. They selectively leak information to shame defendants. They buy testimony from other defendants by promising them immunity. By exercising their discretion they make sure that the bad people are prosecuted while the good people (i.e. members of their own clan) are not.
Above the cops, the prosecutors, and the judiciary we have the true ruling class: the cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs, conspiring both against their own competitors and the public at large. If the public is burdened with a $100 million debt to pay off a money losing stadium, that's a small price to pay if a politician gets reelected (and gets to hobnob with entertainers and sports heroes via free tickets and backstage passes). If new entrants into a market are hindered and the populace ends up overpaying for coffins, or Tesla cars, or wine that can't be mail ordered, then that's a small price to pay if a connected CEO can keep his firm profitable without doing any work to help the customer. If the Google founders want to agitate for Green laws that make Joe Sixpack's daily commute more expensive at the same time that they buy discount avgas for their private flying fuck palaces, then isn't that their right? They donated to Obama's campaign after all!
I could keep myself up all night and into tomorrow by listing different groups of royalty and the ways they scam the system.
…except "scam the system" is a misnomer. I am not listing defects in a perfectable system. I am describing the system.
It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. From Ted Kennedy who killed a woman and yet is toasted as a "lion of liberalism", to George Bush who did his share of party drugs (and my share, and your share, and your share…) while young yet let other youngsters rot in jail for the exact same excesses instead of waving his royal wand of pardoning, to thousand of well-paid NSA employees who put the Stasi to shame in their ruthless destruction of our rights, to the Silicon Valley CEOs who buy vacation houses with the money they make forging and selling chains to Fort Meade, to every single bastard at RSA who had a hand in taking the thirty pieces of silver, to the three star generals who routinely screw subordinates and get away with it (even as sergeants are given dishonorable discharges for the same thing), to the MIT cops and Massachusetts prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to suicide, to every drug court judge who sends 22 year olds to jail for pot…while high on Quaalude and vodka because she's got some fucking personal tragedy and no one understands her pain, to every cop who's anally raped a citizen under color of law, to every other cop who's intentionally triggered a "drug" dog because the guy looked guilty, to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, to every cop who has 50 state concealed carry even while the serfs are disarmed, to every politician, judge, or editorial-writer who has ever used the phrase "first amendment zone" non-ironically: this is how the system is designed to work.
The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to give the insiders their royal prerogatives, and to shove the regulations, the laws, and the debt up the asses of everyone else.
Good heavens, and he didn't even get around to foreign policy, making no mention of assassination, torture, or infinite detention without trial.
I'm going to play devil's advocate and point out that the system does incentivize productivity - that is, it offers power to those who can produce the most, or the most innovative, products. It's true that Ivy League institutions churn out smart, loyal suits to staff these productive juggernauts once they get going, but "they system" still doesn't quite understand the magic that goes into getting them going, and so the startup world does exist, and it really is a full blown meritocracy (well, at least once you factor out information asymmetry particularly about finance, ownership, and the law).
So yes, the system is corrupt, but the people who are taking advantage of this corruption are, at least, normally not vetted by bloodline, but rather by the result of their actions. And this, perhaps, is the best we can hope for - and pray that these people have some morality (which is not selected for at all - the market seems perfectly willing to accept amorality that isn't illegal and which doesn't endanger profit).
Apparently, we are working on it. Just read "The Crash Course" by Chris Martenson, PHd. The era of cheap X (X=oil, silver, food, soil, US dollar, Euro, lead, gold, etc.) is over, resources are going to get revalued fairly soon, and without an additional planet to mine/refine/plunder/exploit, we will be forced to switch to Prosperity-aimed living, instead of growth-aimed living. Or substanence-aimed/survival-aimed living, our choice.
I expect power structures and our economy to also experience significant change, although I will not conjecture for good or evil, just change. Those prepared may come out considerably better than those not. And with it, another chance to majorly rewrite the rule system.
The opportunity, as I see it, is that most current government bodies find the changes uncomfortable, so will likely pursue "kick the can down the road" policies, giving others a chance to set the tone, the beat, and the new rules.
Regarding these issues specifically are we better off today then we were 100 years ago? 500 years ago? Sometimes I feel like society has increasingly less problems to worry about, and therefore more time to spend looking under the microscope.
We are, primarily due to technological advancements.
The logistics of government have not changed that drastically. In fact, I would say the political climate today is among the worst and absolutely most surreal. Largely because sophisticated technology enables rights violations on scales that were once only a dream. Most of the world still writhes in poverty, but as per Dunbar's number, it is simply impossible for the average human to care.
What has happened in the Western world is that, while we may have toned down the medieval barbarism, the structures and social machinations that build up our society, are profoundly sick and volatile on so many layers, both implicitly and explicitly, like never before.
That said, there will always be time to spend looking under the microscope. Conflict necessitates innovation and discovery.
An equivalent rant could be written about any system of government that has or does exist. Establishing such hierarchies of privilege is intrinsic to the governing class. Always has been and always will be.
Is the "Error establishing a database connection" message that's currently showing an actual error message? Or is it just a play on the "Burn the Fucking System to the Ground" theme in the supposed article's title?
Used to be a libertarian? Still a right winger, though.
Obama rewrote the bankruptcy laws to help a union? Speaking of union's, firefighters are a problem now? Since when?
Ted Kennedy the murderer. The serfs are being disarmed? How about "cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs"...because (to the right wing mind) it's more likely that politicians are pulling the strings than business people...they make are jerbs! Plus one drudge point for saying that the Google guys are hypocrites (shocking) that voted for Obama.
RSA, a company that makes money, took money from a customer to do something that benefited the customer? That doesn't rise to the level of tragedy as the problems in the justice system.
Let's see the NSA is the Stasi...he also mentioned pre-revolutionary France...the right wing mind loves dreaming that we might have a revolution...and then all the "serfs" that haven't been "disarmed" will throw off their shitty jobs and fight fer freedum!
Here's a gem:
"to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, "
Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag.
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|12 years ago|reply
One does not imply the other.
The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working
I think this is the thing that most people miss. It's not that the system is malfunctioning in terms of being self-inconsistent. It's working perfectly fine. So when people defend the various governmental abuses in the U.S. by saying "but we've decided that this is legal" they're right: we have decided that. And those things shouldn't be legal. So the system is being perfectly self-consistent. It just doesn't address the needs of the governed effectively anymore.
Governments, like every other manmade system involving people from development teams to civic groups, need to be refactored on a regular basis. There has to be some self-correction mechanism built-in, because the participants will actively game the system in hopes of gaining a slight advantage.
All we're really seeing is hundreds of years of this at work. Various participants have gamed the system to the degree that it's obviously way out of whack from where it started, even though many of the participants refuse to see it.
No need to burn it down. Politely supporting reforms in the primary process and 2-party-lock would probably do wonders in the U.S. There are lots of options open aside from the flame thrower. The important thing to remember is that the parts needing fixing are the auto-correcting parts, not all the other stuff like the high-court, low-court stuff. Focusing on that stuff is only a distraction -- and only serves to keep true reform from happening because it diverts needed reform energy elsewhere.
Having said that, the things that this author lists (and others) sure fret the hell out of me most days.
[+] [-] bostik|12 years ago|reply
The problem with general elections is that there is no meaningful choice. You can vote for the shade of your representative, but you can't vote against putting an invertebrate lizard in position of power. Adding a valid "none of the above" choice to the ballot would be a way to track just how big a fraction of population disagree with ALL of the available representative options.
Currently we lump "invalid" votes together with disqualified votes, so protest votes do not count. They are treated as empty ballots. Personally I would be very much interested in seeing the results after a few years of "N/A" votes. Once the fraction of the votes to go against all of the available choices starts to gain and approach any of the potentially winning entries in the ballot, you might just see a reaction against the uselessness of current political system. At least that's what I hope.
[+] [-] ericd|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ballard|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliptic|12 years ago|reply
Also, the smallest bit of Googling shows that Pollack heads was responsible for the creation of some sort of special "marijuana court" which expressly sent users to rehab, not jail.
I don't know much about this Clark guy (girl?), and I agree with some of the points in the article, but he/she seems pretty close to a flat-out liar.
[+] [-] ams6110|12 years ago|reply
So he wants to burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it? How will it be better? Most revolutions produce tyrants. Only a few have produced anything arguably better than what was in place before.
[+] [-] eliteraspberrie|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarmig|12 years ago|reply
There's reforming the system, but we've been reforming the system for decades, and it's gotten worse consistently since the 1970s. We elect a professed civil libertarian as President, and he brings the State to unimaginable and exciting new heights of violence against individual liberty.
Burn the system to the ground? Okay, sure. But we all know how most revolutions turn out. Which is to say, in the usual and best case they fizzle out, despite the strong emotions of would-be revolutionaries. Worst case scenario: well, look up any revolution, and let me know if you've got a solution beyond "Well I'm a good guy, I wouldn't be like every other revolutionary!"
I've settled on something in the space that's occupied by ideas about "counterpower" or "dual power" (using a Left-frame) and Konkinite agorism (using a Right-frame). We need to build up alternative institutions to government power to rebuild the civil society. Many institutions--certainly all the major media, corporations, unions, nonprofits, and universities--are so closely integrated in the network of State power that attempts at reforming them are pointless. Instead we should development alternative, parallel structures that we can live and operate in, trying to limit the amount we interact with and serve the government.
Doing that, and figuring out how to do that, is the hard part that requires lots work. As technologists, I think we're in an ideal position, as the technological frontier is relatively unexplored compared to other ways of doing this. Research decentralized manufacturing: simpler supply chains and homogeneous production facilities means more fault-tolerant production, which means fewer opportunities for the State to exert control. Support open source: software is going to eat the world, and code that anyone can access disperses power from large entities incorporated by the State to anyone who's able to use it. Be thoughtful supporters of structures like Bitcoin: despite their flaws, they have the potential to make large portions of the economy illegible to the State.
This approach also doesn't ask us to relinquish the right to interact with the government if it suits our ends, particularly in legal cases and occasionally electorally.
[+] [-] sparkie|12 years ago|reply
The big elephant is the existing tax system though. Alternative structures will never have anywhere near the resources governments have, and the government will always retain power for as long as it has the perceived legitimacy to tax by force. A new model would not be able to trump the government unless it makes the government seem illegitimate, or obsolete, to the point where people consciously decide where to put their money.
Pay-as-you-earn schemes are perhaps one of the biggest obstacles. Most earners have no control of where their money goes, so can not consciously object to state power without potentially losing their jobs and livelihoods. Most people would live on the breadline than take such risks, which is really the purpose of the welfare state - to ensure than the poverty threshold is just high enough for the majority of people to cope - because any lower would activate the switch people have, where they overcome that fear and say "enough".
Cryptocurrencies are very interesting, but I think we need to have stronger anonymity in transactions, and in the means of connecting into the network (via meshnets, or whatnot). This is the potential Achilles heel for the state, which is why they are building such vast surveillance and censorship platforms to try and prevent these from ever taking off.
Of course, we always have the problem that the existing government can simply declare any new structure we create as "illegal," with some poor propaganda spread through their MSM mouthpieces to justify those decisions, which will be effective while the majority of the population remains a bunch of gullible sycophants. Unless there is a big change in perception, and soon, it's more likely we'll have a bloody revolution, or boot stamping on our faces.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” - R. Buckminster Fuller
[+] [-] okaram|12 years ago|reply
I think we have (in the USA) a better safety net (especially now with Obamacare), a lot more respect for gays, a lot less racism, a lot more controls on the police, plus the internet which somewhat decentralizes power. I'd say it's had its ups and downs, but has been getting better overall
[+] [-] loomio|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swombat|12 years ago|reply
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
[+] [-] tgflynn|12 years ago|reply
The system is forcing 100's of millions of people to choose between utter misery or soul crushing servitude to capitalists and managers whose philosophy of labor differs little from the slave holders of the pre-civil war south.
And that's how things are now. What will happen when 100's of millions more lose what little value to the system they currently have due to automation and robotics ?
Given the pace of technological advance sooner or later (I would guess within the next 100 years) one of these unhappy people will figure out how to synthesize a species ending bioweapon. I've heard the secret service is already taking measures to protect the president's DNA due to fear of a targeted bioweapon being developed. But an untargeted bioweapon would likely be easier to develop and it's effects far more frightening.
[+] [-] csomar|12 years ago|reply
The system is good as long as you are not the one who is mentioned in the news.
[+] [-] pyalot2|12 years ago|reply
I tend to believe, most western civilizations are pretty far from that limit of pain. But, at the same time, they're far closer to the limit today than a few mere decades ago.
So there's ample reason to worry, and ample reason to speak out that the course we're staying will not end at a happy place.
[+] [-] skylan_q|12 years ago|reply
The American revolution?
[+] [-] glesica|12 years ago|reply
To be clear, I'm not saying it's that bad, but things sure seem to be moving in that direction.
[+] [-] Zigurd|12 years ago|reply
This article does not claim or system is broken and needs fixing. The article claims the system has lost legitimacy. I'm pretty sure that if revolution came to Russia, people would die, and it would mean hard times for a few years.
But there is another problem with your choice of choosing the system over the alternatives. An open "hot war" revolution is not the only alternative.
[+] [-] anonymoushn|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nitrogen|12 years ago|reply
There are more effective non-violent ways to "burn down the system." Alternative forms of democratic participation facilitated by modern technology, improved voting systems like approval voting, etc.
[+] [-] undoware|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cognivore|12 years ago|reply
Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.
[+] [-] jeremiep|12 years ago|reply
Just like mediocre software architectures, sometimes a full rewrite is the only way to go. No amount of refactoring will cleanse a self-corrupting system.
Just like a Windows installation after a while, nothing will help but a fresh reinstall with a blank slate.
However, it is the nature of our institutions to try and stay alive, even when they are outdated ideas, have been proven inneffective time and time again. Above all, they want to survive, even if the cost for this is a massively decreased quality of life for virtually everyone not holding the reins.
[+] [-] IvyMike|12 years ago|reply
But I am not so sure about this anymore. It might be that people just want a minimal level of comfort. Maybe everybody just wanted a big screen TV.
[+] [-] smtddr|12 years ago|reply
I'll just be like "Well, they just kept pushing & squeezing on people; something had to give. It's just human nature. Maybe the populace has finally woken up."
BTW, as much as I am anti-firearm... the eventual uprising of the public against the government is the only reason I want the public to be well armed. I can count on all those pro-gun people to have a solid stockpile when the need arises. I actually think those in power know this too.
>>There is a saying that "A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny." --- http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment
[+] [-] schappim|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] undoware|12 years ago|reply
What, that legislation hasn't passed yet? Got my super-PAC on super-speed dial....
[+] [-] schappim|12 years ago|reply
Burn the Fucking System to the Ground
Dec 23, 2013 By Clark. Effluvia "I'm a good judge" … said by government employee and judge Gisele Pollack who, it seems, sentenced people to jail because of their drug use…while she, herself, was high on drugs.
But, in her defense, "she’s had some severe personal tragedy in her life".
And that's why, it seems, she's being allowed to check herself into rehab instead of being thrown in jail.
…because not a single poor person or non government employee who gets caught using drugs ever "had some severe personal tragedy in her life".
I'm reminded of something I read earlier today:
techdirt.com
We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times before — in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules.
…
The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain, you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the report until you switch jobs.
But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report.
Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. I thought that some parts of it "worked"… whatever that means. I thought that the goals were noble, even if not often achieved.
The older I get, the more I see, the more I read, the more clear it becomes to me that the entire game is rigged. The leftists and the rightists each see half of the fraud. The lefties correctly note that a poor kid caught with cocaine goes to jail, while a Bush can write it off as a youthful mistake (they somehow overlook the fact that their man Barrack hasn't granted clemency to any one of the people doing federal time for the same felonies he committed). The righties note that government subsidized windmills kill protected eagles with impunity while Joe Sixpack would be deep in the crap if he even picked up a dead eagle from the side of the road. The lefties note that no one was prosecuted over the financial meltdown. The righties note that the Obama administration rewrote bankruptcy law on the fly to loot value from GM stockholders and hand it to the unions. The lefties note that Republicans tweak export rules to give big corporations subsidies. Every now and then both sides join together to note that, hey! the government is spying on every one of us…or that, hey! the government stole a bunch of people's houses and gave them to Pfizer, because a privately owned for-profit corporation is apparently what the Constitution means by "public use".
What neither side seems to realize is that the system is not reformable. There are multiple classes of people, but it boils down to the connected, and the not connected. Just as in pre-Revolutionary France, there is a very strict class hierarchy, and the very idea that we are equal before the law is a laughable nonsequitr.
Jamal the $5 weed slinger, Shaneekwa the hair braider, and Loudmouth Bob in the 7-11 parking lot are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They can, literally, be killed with impunity … as long as the dash cam isn't running. And, hell, half the time they can be killed even if the dash cam is running. This isn't hyperbole, mother-fucker. This is literal. Question me and I'll throw 400 cites and 20 youtube clips at you.
Next up from Shaneekwa and Loudmouth Bob are us regular peons. We can have our balls squeezed at the airport, our rectums explored at the roadside, our cars searched because the cops got permission from a dog (I owe some Reason intern a drink for that one), our telephones tapped (because terrorism!), our bank accounts investigated (because FinCEN! and no expectation of privacy!). We don't own the house we live in, not if someone of a higher social class wants it. We don't own our own financial lives, because the education accreditation / student loan industry / legal triumvirate have declared that we can never escape – even through bankruptcy – our $200,000 debt that a bunch of adults convinced a can't-tell-his-ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground 18 year old that (a) he was smart enough to make his own decisions, and (b) college is a time to explore your interests and broaden yourself). And if there's a "national security emergency" (defined as two idiots with a pressure cooker), then the constitution is suspended, martial law is declared, and people are hauled out of their homes.
Next up from the regular peons are the unionized, disciplined-voting-blocks. Not-much-brighter-than-a-box-of-crayolas teachers who work 180 days a year and get automatic raises. Firefighters who disproportionately retire on disability the very day they sub in for their bosses and get a paper cut.
A step up from the teachers and firefighters are the cops: all the same advantages of nobility of the previous group, but a few more in addition: the de facto power to murder someone as long as not too many cameras are rolling. The de facto power to confiscate cameras in case the murder wasn't well planned. A right to keep and bear arms that far exceeds that of the serf class: 50 state concealed carry for life, not just just for actual cops, but even for retired cops.
At the same level of privilege as cops, but slightly off to one side is different class of nobility: the judiciary and the prosecutors. Judges and prosecutors can't execute citizens in an alley, a parking lot, or their own homes ("he had a knife! …and I don't care what the lying video says."), but they can sentence people to decades in jail for things that any clear-minded reading of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments make clear are not with in the purview of the government. They have effectively infinite resources. They orchestrate perp walks. They selectively leak information to shame defendants. They buy testimony from other defendants by promising them immunity. By exercising their discretion they make sure that the bad people are prosecuted while the good people (i.e. members of their own clan) are not.
Above the cops, the prosecutors, and the judiciary we have the true ruling class: the cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs, conspiring both against their own competitors and the public at large. If the public is burdened with a $100 million debt to pay off a money losing stadium, that's a small price to pay if a politician gets reelected (and gets to hobnob with entertainers and sports heroes via free tickets and backstage passes). If new entrants into a market are hindered and the populace ends up overpaying for coffins, or Tesla cars, or wine that can't be mail ordered, then that's a small price to pay if a connected CEO can keep his firm profitable without doing any work to help the customer. If the Google founders want to agitate for Green laws that make Joe Sixpack's daily commute more expensive at the same time that they buy discount avgas for their private flying fuck palaces, then isn't that their right? They donated to Obama's campaign after all!
I could keep myself up all night and into tomorrow by listing different groups of royalty and the ways they scam the system.
…except "scam the system" is a misnomer. I am not listing defects in a perfectable system. I am describing the system.
It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. From Ted Kennedy who killed a woman and yet is toasted as a "lion of liberalism", to George Bush who did his share of party drugs (and my share, and your share, and your share…) while young yet let other youngsters rot in jail for the exact same excesses instead of waving his royal wand of pardoning, to thousand of well-paid NSA employees who put the Stasi to shame in their ruthless destruction of our rights, to the Silicon Valley CEOs who buy vacation houses with the money they make forging and selling chains to Fort Meade, to every single bastard at RSA who had a hand in taking the thirty pieces of silver, to the three star generals who routinely screw subordinates and get away with it (even as sergeants are given dishonorable discharges for the same thing), to the MIT cops and Massachusetts prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to suicide, to every drug court judge who sends 22 year olds to jail for pot…while high on Quaalude and vodka because she's got some fucking personal tragedy and no one understands her pain, to every cop who's anally raped a citizen under color of law, to every other cop who's intentionally triggered a "drug" dog because the guy looked guilty, to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, to every cop who has 50 state concealed carry even while the serfs are disarmed, to every politician, judge, or editorial-writer who has ever used the phrase "first amendment zone" non-ironically: this is how the system is designed to work.
The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to give the insiders their royal prerogatives, and to shove the regulations, the laws, and the debt up the asses of everyone else.
Burn it to the ground.
Burn it to the ground.
Burn it to the ground.
Merry Christmas.
[+] [-] javajosh|12 years ago|reply
I'm going to play devil's advocate and point out that the system does incentivize productivity - that is, it offers power to those who can produce the most, or the most innovative, products. It's true that Ivy League institutions churn out smart, loyal suits to staff these productive juggernauts once they get going, but "they system" still doesn't quite understand the magic that goes into getting them going, and so the startup world does exist, and it really is a full blown meritocracy (well, at least once you factor out information asymmetry particularly about finance, ownership, and the law).
So yes, the system is corrupt, but the people who are taking advantage of this corruption are, at least, normally not vetted by bloodline, but rather by the result of their actions. And this, perhaps, is the best we can hope for - and pray that these people have some morality (which is not selected for at all - the market seems perfectly willing to accept amorality that isn't illegal and which doesn't endanger profit).
[+] [-] raintrees|12 years ago|reply
I expect power structures and our economy to also experience significant change, although I will not conjecture for good or evil, just change. Those prepared may come out considerably better than those not. And with it, another chance to majorly rewrite the rule system.
The opportunity, as I see it, is that most current government bodies find the changes uncomfortable, so will likely pursue "kick the can down the road" policies, giving others a chance to set the tone, the beat, and the new rules.
But exciting times, regardless!
[+] [-] pdonis|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] schappim|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NIL8|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] seanalltogether|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maxk42|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vezzy-fnord|12 years ago|reply
The logistics of government have not changed that drastically. In fact, I would say the political climate today is among the worst and absolutely most surreal. Largely because sophisticated technology enables rights violations on scales that were once only a dream. Most of the world still writhes in poverty, but as per Dunbar's number, it is simply impossible for the average human to care.
What has happened in the Western world is that, while we may have toned down the medieval barbarism, the structures and social machinations that build up our society, are profoundly sick and volatile on so many layers, both implicitly and explicitly, like never before.
That said, there will always be time to spend looking under the microscope. Conflict necessitates innovation and discovery.
[+] [-] joewrong|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DonGateley|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lubujackson|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Luff|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Pacabel|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danielweber|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] coldtea|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pirateking|12 years ago|reply
- Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
[+] [-] cordite|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daphneokeefe|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1945|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blahbl4hblahtoo|12 years ago|reply
Obama rewrote the bankruptcy laws to help a union? Speaking of union's, firefighters are a problem now? Since when?
Ted Kennedy the murderer. The serfs are being disarmed? How about "cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs"...because (to the right wing mind) it's more likely that politicians are pulling the strings than business people...they make are jerbs! Plus one drudge point for saying that the Google guys are hypocrites (shocking) that voted for Obama.
RSA, a company that makes money, took money from a customer to do something that benefited the customer? That doesn't rise to the level of tragedy as the problems in the justice system.
Let's see the NSA is the Stasi...he also mentioned pre-revolutionary France...the right wing mind loves dreaming that we might have a revolution...and then all the "serfs" that haven't been "disarmed" will throw off their shitty jobs and fight fer freedum!
Here's a gem: "to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, "
Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag.
[+] [-] wissler|12 years ago|reply
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