[verisimi]

You say remove - I say rollback.

The sentiment should be that we have less government - we should empower individuals, not monolithic state apparatus.

It would ideally be rolled back slowly, keeping a steady focus where governmental power is continuously eroded. However, I also think that things are so wildly out of kilter now, that it is far more likely that things could become even more tumultuous.

I even think the tumult is planned for - we are in a somewhat artificial and managed crisis - the co-ordinated global response to the virus, was calculate to devastate Western economies.

The plan - as I understand it - is for us to be brought to our knees so that we accept/want even global governance as an end to our suffering. At that point, when the deal is done, the crises will disappear as the global technocratic goals will have been achieved.

[748]

I understand your distrust towards "Big Corporations" aimed at maximizing profit.. But I wouldn't trust individuals with many things govmnts regulate. We may be talking in different contexts, but as it was mentioned above, almost all aspects need a governing body that has the overview of the general state of things in order to properly "reduce damage". Same thing with speed limits - some people claim there should be no speed limits at night. If assigned to individuals to decide on this, well, there will be no speed limits. I understand your frustration with dysfunctional govmnts, but it is important to remember that we live in a non-perfect world and most "individuals" are not trustworthy either. And if we have to chose between two evils - the govmnts and "individuals" - it is reasonable to chose the least evil, which is the govmnt. At least in present times, what will be in the future - I don't know. However I am in no way a politician or sociologist so I have no actual knowledge in this, I am just writing my opinion here and it is not my intention to change your mind.

[verisimi]

> And if we have to chose between two evils - the govmnts and "individuals" - it is reasonable to chose the least evil, which is the govmnt.

Although that may appear to be the choice it isn't in reality. If you believe that government is a real thing the answer is always more government. However, the reality is that you are an individual. Government is an idea we can believe, a means whereby the individual can pretend to hand over their personal authority, as a child does with its parents. In fact, as an adult, you are autonomous. You don't have to do what other entities tell you to do, unless you agree. Well, you might have to do it on account of the use of force (actual or implied), but if you think it is wrong it cannot become right. Implied use of force is what government does!

So, if some group writes a bunch or laws, and calls them 'the Law' and says it is 'good', and even appears to be subject themselves to it, if you think the law is wrong you do not have to follow it. You are in fact an individual, and only have to answer to yourself and your conscience.

'Government' has no interest in helping you become a fully fledged individual, hence we are all indoctrinated from day 0. They have us believing that the infrastructure they provide is good, the best we can do, etc - even if they couch it as 'government is a terrible system except for all the others'. Anarchy has such a bad name - why? Because it actively holds 'no leaders' as its central tenet.

Ultimately, we are individuals living in a moral world. We have been miseducated and misled into authorising others to do things on our behalf - this is government acting in a self-serving way, that ensures it gains ever increasing amount of power at individual's expense. And then I say the 'government acting in a self-serving way' I really mean those individuals that manage and benefit from the parasitic governance system.

Morality itself, comes down to the golden rule, which I think is best stated as:

Do not treat others in ways that you would not like to be treated.

This basically says, everything you want to do is fine - as long as you are not harming others. And it is fine to protect others who are being harmed.

For fun, here is a story that attempts to imagine an alternative reality:

https://www.corbettreport.com/mp3/andthentherewerenone.mp3

(Its great if you can get past the wierd narration, which I think works..)

[heavenlyblue]

> we should empower individuals

Does that mean that I now have to spend my time in the evening doing the "monolithic state apparatus'" job instead of going for a meal with my partner?

[nonrandomstring]

> Does that mean that I now have to spend my time in the evening doing the "monolithic state apparatus'" job instead of going for a meal with my partner?

Yes. Because we are all responsible. But guess what, you'd be sharing the job with 7 billion other people, so the total workload would be like 5 minutes on a Thursday morning every other month. Could you spare that?

Please read a book called "Leviathan" [1] by Thomas Hobbes and maybe a little of Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" [2] to balance it up.

The state is not your enemy, but also it is not your nanny, there to wipe your bottom and hold your feeding bottle because you "pay taxes".

There's plenty of time for dining out and being a responsible, participating citizen.

[1] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3207/3207-h/3207-h.htm

[2] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/46333

[heavenlyblue]

> Please read a book called "Leviathan" [1] by Thomas Hobbes and maybe a little of Jean Jacques Rousseau's "The Social Contract" [2] to balance it up.

The fact that you can bring up two books to support your opinion doesn't mean I agree with it. They are pretty much classics and anybody who was interested in philosophy would have already been familiar with it.

> Yes. Because we are all responsible. But guess what, you'd be sharing the job with 7 billion other people, so the total workload would be like 5 minutes on a Thursday morning every other month. Could you spare that?

You can't do serious politics spending 5 minutes on Thursday morning every other month. It takes me more time to plan my night commute back home on a Friday night.

[nonrandomstring]

> The fact that you can bring up two books to support your opinion doesn't mean I agree with it.

Of course. Besides, they are faulted books (and thinkers). It's not really my "opinion" I'm trying to get across so much as the "Western Ideal" (the thing we're all assumed to believe in and accept as a foundation of life). A pillar of that is shared responsibility through the proxy of the State.

Namely that the "State" is there to serve us because it is us. The ideas of a General Will, Social Contract etcetera are the reason we give legitimacy to parliaments, congress, politicians, local councils and even monarchs. They are servants.

Otherwise they're just "people in power to be fought". The only alternatives, understood since Aristotle, are undesirable forms of tyranny where armed revolution is the latent objective of all free men. The deal/contract is that we are also those servants ourselves )we share power and responsibility* to a proxy or figurehead in which we invest loyally/trust and some temporary decision making powers. That's the sense in which the state takes away the burden of daily politics, freeing us for work and living.

> You can't do serious politics spending 5 minutes on Thursday morning every other month.

Not literally. I was joking a little. That's a metaphor for the small effort required by all people to maintain a democratic government of the people.

If anything, internet communication has saddled us with the worry of global affairs and economics that the social contract was supposed to unburden us of. You spend far more time concerned with the affairs of monolithic governance than enjoying nice dinners out - just by reading the "news", and a give it much more mind than a peasant from 300 years ago ever would have.

Another problem is that people are told they have ever more responsibility (through markets) and are stripped of ever more power. Our governments shrug while we are helpless to change things.

In that sense the "Social Contract" is broken. In order to fix it we ought to to know at least what it is (because we've forgotten), hence I make the effort to explain that where I can.