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RE: "Mixed Mental Arts" - Episode #346 - Getting to the Root of the Problem- Lawrence Lessig

in #politics6 years ago

Any form of government, defined as a group with special protections and double standards under the law, is tyrannical. When this nation state was formed, politicians were not paid. Government was local and community based. The people in charge were volunteers and quality leaders that the people voluntarily followed.

Sure, we can compromise. I'll settle for local government only. ;-) Even that is corrupted though, and even that can be tyrannical. With even that small amount of government, I should still be able to reject ideas being forced upon me as long as I am peaceful and doing no harm to my neighbors. That's not what people want though. Instead, they want government to control me, and they want me to abide by their beliefs based on religion, etc.

No thanks. I'll pass.

Also, to get back to your original point, the government should leave me alone... as long as I'm doing no harm to others or their property. That is how this nation was founded too. People minded their own business, and there were not books upon books of laws and taxes. We are VERY far from that today. We've already given plenty of ground too, so my idea of a compromise will probably be very far away from the average person's.

The original settlers of this nation did exactly what I am proposing. They walked away from their governments to go somewhere else where their individual liberty was maximized. There are currently multiple efforts ongoing to do the same in a modern sense too. You have free cities, private cities, sea steading, and organizations like Liberland. Yes, walking away is reasonable. Yes, being left alone when we do is also reasonable.

The main problem is getting the current governments of the world to respect our individual liberty and allows us to be free. The British certainly didn't like the idea 200 years ago, right? Sadly, we still have monarchies and dictatorships, so I'm not holding out hope that we'll see a quality solution any time soon. That doesn't mean we should give up though either. I will always fight for maximizing individual liberty. As long as I'm fighting for it, I'm doing right. Anyone else fighting for it is automatically my friend too.

Anyone fighting to stop it is my enemy.

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I would only argue that although the British surely didn't like the idea of renegades leaving the old system to start a new one, I believe we are essentially in the SAME situation right now, and that it is becoming LESS possible to go off to some "new world" - although space travel would provide that option. The point is that with time LESS and less "new world" options become available (in the "real world" sense of the term) and so the main point that I am arguing is that we need to harness TECHNOLOGY (like blockchain) to chip away at the root cause which creates the situation where humans develop the need/desire to escape from other humans who are abusing their power. You make some great points, and I am merely pondering those points thinking out loud ...

There are already private cities and other autonomous regions. That's one option. I don't like isolated areas, so sea steading and even small islands seem impractical to me. Liberland is working on purchasing or leasing lands from already existing nation states as another option. You have fairly independent groups like the Cossacks in Russia to consider as well. For their services, they are pretty much left alone to govern themselves. We are definitely far away from leaving this planet, so I hope to solve the current problem with options like the ones I just listed. Perhaps there are other options as well that we just haven't figured out yet though.