[sounds]

Actually it's interesting to watch you take the contrary position on an internet forum, but without a concrete call to action. That was his point: what are you going to _do_?

I work on a solution to this particular problem every day. I don't just write on the internet about it.

Put up or shut up.

[authatheist]

My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term.

People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether.

You have your activism, and I have mine.

[SixSigma]

Having no "leaders" wouldn't stop the phenomena of corporate surveillance.

A world with unfettered unregulated markets sounds more nightmarish to me than what we have now.

[authatheist]

Rulers monitor us to cement their power over us, but in a free society without political power, with free-flowing information available to all, companies would have to be careful about what they do, lest they lose their customers, ie. their income.

[loup-vaillant]

And, how would we make that happen? How, once you remove the rulers, do you prevent new ones from rising up? How do you prevent companies from flooding customer under a wealth of irrelevant information? How do you prevent things like cartels, now that there is no regulator?

It's all well and good to postulate a free society, but do you have any idea what a free society actually looks like? (Neither do I, by the way.)

[authatheist]

A tiny elite can't rule over millions if the millions are opposed to being ruled at all. Today, no one sees governments as the rulers they are, but everyone considers dictatorships illegitimate.

But from our point of view, what's the practical difference between being forced to comply with a King's royal edicts and being forced to comply with a bunch of politicians'?

Cartels can't be maintained in a free society. We know everyone participating in one is a scumbag, and the more lucrative the cartel's position is, the more motivated the participants are to betray the others (because there's lots of room for competing on price and taking away all the captive customers, thus making shitloads of money).

[loup-vaillant]

Or, the rest of the cartel can launch a denigration campaign against the defector, or poach the defector's employees, or other shady means that money can buy, even in a "free society". And of course, I wouldn't rule out outright criminal behaviour. I recall being told about a board meeting where they discussed triggering an "accident" to get rid of polluting chemicals, because it was cheaper than abiding to the countries safety laws. Totally illegal, very expensive if they get caught (both for the company and the board submerse themselves), but still within the bounds of a cynical cost/benefit analysis.

Cartels are a difficult thing to break. The light bulb cartel for instance still exist, even though it has officially been dissolved: light bulbs still only last a couple thousand hours, despite the existence of designs that can last 10 times longer. (Heck, that's one of the few things the centrally planned economy of the USSR got right: long lived light bulbs.)

Strength lies in numbers. Fascists knew that, popular movement know that, and cartels know that. Betraying the cartel is to fin yourself alone. The financial incentive may not overcome the need to be part of the same team. And sometimes, as is the case in the light bulb industry, it is not clear that you could actually take away the cartel's customers: light bulbs are fairly cheap, at face value. It's the planned obsolescence that's the real cost, and that cost is not disclosed to the customer.

You can only make your purchase decisions based on what you know. If the cartel is based on deceit, rather than on price regulation, it can be difficult to convince people based on durability concerns. People don't care about sustainability, because of hyperbolic discounting. (Why do you think we're trashing on the planet with little regard for future generations? It's not because of our rulers. It's because we just don't care about the future as much as we should.)

[SixSigma]

A govt. is a cartel with a history book.

[rhizome]

What are some historical examples of "waking" people up to a "fact?"

I'm not so sure lack of belief is enough to dissipate authority. As the old saying goes, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Within my lifetime, the surest way to invite a tiny war into your life is act as if political and/or legal authority doesn't exist. Hell, just implying that authority should change was enough to get projectiles and tear gas loosed in Ferguson MO.

[authatheist]

If a large enough percentage of people decide to disregard govts and forcefully defend themselves against their enforcers if necessary, then govts just cease to function and exist. I'm not saying we're there now, or even near a point where that's feasible, but it is one way out.

[loup-vaillant]

Good luck trying to convince people to merely get rid of their government. We need an alternative, and the mere lack of government is not it. It will be perceived as chaos, and few people actually want chaos.

In other words, even if we don't want rulers we still need rules. We need a system. Actually, we will have a system, anyway. even "no system" is a system. It's just not clear how it would actually work at the moment (possibilities ranges from "Libertarian Utopia" to "mob rule", including "gang rule" and "local warlords").

[authatheist]

We keep having to tell people that having no ruleRs doesn't mean having no ruleS. If by "no system" you mean "freedom", that's fine with me. Sure, we need rules and negative consequences for breaking them, but that does not require rulers.

[loup-vaillant]

You're different from that straw-man libertarian I once met.

"Freedom" is an ideal, not a mechanism. The question is, which mechanism promotes freedom?

Personally, I currently bet on democracy. Not representative governments, but democracy, which we don't currently have. Like in ancient Athens, where people where chosen by random trial, instead of elections. (Plus a host of checks and balances, before during, and after whatever short mandate was given.)

[im2w1l]

We are there now. "A no-go area or no-go zone is a region where the ruling authorities have lost control and are unable to enforce their sovereignty."

[rhizome]

but it is one way out

Is it really? When has it happened before?

[SixSigma]

Somalia