The Left always follows the siren call of consolidation and centralization of everything in the hands of a few "experts." The end result is always tyranny.
Our Founders believed that the diffusion of power and influence was the best guarantee of individual liberty. It's too bad succeeding generations of Americans forgot it.
The Left is confused about human nature. On the one hand, they consider it to be infinitely perfectable and practically unconstrained, but on the other hand, they seek to micromanage it with invasive, top-down control systems. This just creates the perfect opportunity for psychopaths and social strivers to hijack those movements and use those control-systems for their own malicious ends.
Our belief is that -- Distributism is the natural condition of mankind. Our belief is that, when we live together in peace, we become friends; and Distribution is a description of what "just happens" in consequence.
(This is not meant to be the same sort of "State of Nature" picture that the Liberals draw up. We are never, ever "pre-political"; just as individual men and women find their perfection in forming families (and so become more than we could be by ourselves), so families find their perfection in other families (and so become more than they could be by themselves). We are never, ever "pre-political".)
Even Aragorn dared not touch the ring. Even The best of men, those connected to the earth, those connected to family, and the love of green things, fine tabac etc. Frodo himself desired to keep power right at the precipice, right when all his sacrifice was assured victory, failed to throw power into the pit. Thus all men fail this test. Thus all civilizations must eventually fall, and great shall be the sound of their fall, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. The desire for force, the ego of pretending to more things we can't possibly know in literally everything, the desire for violence to make others behave, will only gradually be bred out of us I think. Maybe never in a wholesale fashion. Only individuals break free of this reality to ascend to something better in the next life.
In the olden days, being ‘on the left’ meant advocating for small and local initiatives—such as the slow food movement, reviving farmer’s markets, and embracing a ‘locavore’ lifestyle.
However, it seems that this ethos has shifted away from the decentralised model it once championed.
I love AA’s framing of returning to Trumpton, reviving local villages and small towns full of small businesses and community. These, by their nature, are often family run where everyone has skin in the game.
It’s curious to note who argues for top-down social engineering as the only solution to top-down social engineering.
I watch a couple of well respected podcasts, and I read a number of equally respected blogs... and this is the first time that I have ever known of anyone to advocate for a return to the "Articles of Confederation"... KUDOS & GOLF CLAPS to you, Sir! Well Stated... Well stated indeed!
I personally believe that we as a nation would be far better suited to instigate a change for the better if the benefits of those "Articles" were better known.
In my estimation the only true accomplishment of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution was to eliminate the sovereignty of 13 independent nations by bringing them under the authority of a corporate entity... aka the federal government.
You have put your finger on something important here—the ways in which there remains this faith in progress, in experts, in central power on the new (third new?) online right. There’s nothing conservative about it.
I generally agree, but the articles of confederation were a disaster and that was when America was a small, homogenous, much more competent group. Hamilton and the federalists were generally right.
You may be right. Here's my take on that: https://aghostinthemachine.substack.com/p/the-american-experiment-was-a-success. Regardless, the Constitution is practically dead letter in many ways. We've totally lost control of our government, and the folks who ultimately own and operate it are completely unaccountable.
It can be argued that the current state of the Left, which is repugnant not only to most sane humans but also to many older leftists themselves, is partly a result of a similar mistake. During WWII, when Karl Popper wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies in the backwoods of New Zealand, he argued in favor of «piecemeal social engineering», as opposed to the fascist/nazi/communist «utopian engineering». We'd do it differently, he said, in a pacifist way, and so on. This book has been massively influential, George Soros named his whole shop after it.
Well... the engineering was piecemeal until, all out of sudden, it wasn't.
When you become the thing you're fighting against, you lose; you cease to exist; you are conquered by the same evil that had previously conquered your former enemy. Hence the USA "winning the Cold War," only to become the USSR 2.0.
At the federal level, it's close, especially when it comes to “ensuring domestic tranquility” and all that. Less so at the state level, and by the time you get to the county or city level, people at the local level would be pretty much free to organize themselves according to their needs and customs, meaning some could choose to be as libertarian as possible, while others choose to have their local government be more involved in social and economic matters. And if people in locales with a more libertarian culture want more government intervention, they can vote with their feet and move to a place that is governed in that way.
Creating a type of society with no real central authority, something that only lasted a few years under the articles of confederation, using a methodology that's never been done before.
Well, I think we're heading for that kind of world, whether we want to or not. Decentralization is bound to follow the kind of systemic collapse that we're almost certainly going to be facing in the (relatively) near future. Think of Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The main thing is that we understand the rationale for creating a "representative democracy" with checks and balances in the first place: not because everyone is so innately noble that he should participate in governing his fellow citizens, but because everyone is so inherently corruptible by power that nobody can be trusted with too much of it -- and *everyone* who would wield power must be accountable to those over whom such power is wielded, i.e., they must have real skin in the game. And that is incompatible with a supremely powerful central government lording it over hundreds of millions of people representing a variety of cultures and environments.
Even South Africa hasn't collapsed. That attitude towards power is liberal delusion so is doomed to failure. People who don't like power won't get their way.
South Africa didn't supply the navy that guaranteed global trade routes stayed open, or the world reserve currency. The USA's collapse will be quite a bit different than South Africa's.
As for power, that's the dilemma at the heart of the human condition, that no one can finally resolve, so it means conflict for every generation with temporary, at best, equilibriums. Most of the time things are out of balance. Today we're badly out of balance in favor of an extreme managerialism. Opposing that tendency is what is most needed right now.
thank you for your effort to contribute to the understanding of our society, it's past and future on this planet that we christians believe was created by it's Owner for His own pleasure, and that pleasure stems from, above all else, Love for Him and each other. He have given no indication that He is willing forgo at any time His ownership of any of us, or to become in any way less loving towards those that are His. But in genuine love one is always free to leave to suffer in His absence, the consequences of our own self will and determination. But if we stay with Him we will turn the other cheek like He did, suffer discomfort, become social outcasts and find our supreme happiness in our relationship with Him and each other, despite all else. So the question of how to organize, manage and control ourselves is for genuine christians a non-issue, for it's done already. All we look forward to is for every one that belong to Him to get aboard, and for His day that will be the end for all that is not His
The Left always follows the siren call of consolidation and centralization of everything in the hands of a few "experts." The end result is always tyranny.
Our Founders believed that the diffusion of power and influence was the best guarantee of individual liberty. It's too bad succeeding generations of Americans forgot it.
The Left is confused about human nature. On the one hand, they consider it to be infinitely perfectable and practically unconstrained, but on the other hand, they seek to micromanage it with invasive, top-down control systems. This just creates the perfect opportunity for psychopaths and social strivers to hijack those movements and use those control-systems for their own malicious ends.
Our belief is that -- Distributism is the natural condition of mankind. Our belief is that, when we live together in peace, we become friends; and Distribution is a description of what "just happens" in consequence.
(This is not meant to be the same sort of "State of Nature" picture that the Liberals draw up. We are never, ever "pre-political"; just as individual men and women find their perfection in forming families (and so become more than we could be by ourselves), so families find their perfection in other families (and so become more than they could be by themselves). We are never, ever "pre-political".)
Even Aragorn dared not touch the ring. Even The best of men, those connected to the earth, those connected to family, and the love of green things, fine tabac etc. Frodo himself desired to keep power right at the precipice, right when all his sacrifice was assured victory, failed to throw power into the pit. Thus all men fail this test. Thus all civilizations must eventually fall, and great shall be the sound of their fall, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. The desire for force, the ego of pretending to more things we can't possibly know in literally everything, the desire for violence to make others behave, will only gradually be bred out of us I think. Maybe never in a wholesale fashion. Only individuals break free of this reality to ascend to something better in the next life.
In the olden days, being ‘on the left’ meant advocating for small and local initiatives—such as the slow food movement, reviving farmer’s markets, and embracing a ‘locavore’ lifestyle.
However, it seems that this ethos has shifted away from the decentralised model it once championed.
I love AA’s framing of returning to Trumpton, reviving local villages and small towns full of small businesses and community. These, by their nature, are often family run where everyone has skin in the game.
It’s curious to note who argues for top-down social engineering as the only solution to top-down social engineering.
I watch a couple of well respected podcasts, and I read a number of equally respected blogs... and this is the first time that I have ever known of anyone to advocate for a return to the "Articles of Confederation"... KUDOS & GOLF CLAPS to you, Sir! Well Stated... Well stated indeed!
I personally believe that we as a nation would be far better suited to instigate a change for the better if the benefits of those "Articles" were better known.
Thanks for the feedback! If you look at the concerns voiced by the "anti-Federalists," basically everything they warned about came to pass.
In my estimation the only true accomplishment of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution was to eliminate the sovereignty of 13 independent nations by bringing them under the authority of a corporate entity... aka the federal government.
You have put your finger on something important here—the ways in which there remains this faith in progress, in experts, in central power on the new (third new?) online right. There’s nothing conservative about it.
I generally agree, but the articles of confederation were a disaster and that was when America was a small, homogenous, much more competent group. Hamilton and the federalists were generally right.
You may be right. Here's my take on that: https://aghostinthemachine.substack.com/p/the-american-experiment-was-a-success. Regardless, the Constitution is practically dead letter in many ways. We've totally lost control of our government, and the folks who ultimately own and operate it are completely unaccountable.
It can be argued that the current state of the Left, which is repugnant not only to most sane humans but also to many older leftists themselves, is partly a result of a similar mistake. During WWII, when Karl Popper wrote The Open Society and Its Enemies in the backwoods of New Zealand, he argued in favor of «piecemeal social engineering», as opposed to the fascist/nazi/communist «utopian engineering». We'd do it differently, he said, in a pacifist way, and so on. This book has been massively influential, George Soros named his whole shop after it.
Well... the engineering was piecemeal until, all out of sudden, it wasn't.
When you become the thing you're fighting against, you lose; you cease to exist; you are conquered by the same evil that had previously conquered your former enemy. Hence the USA "winning the Cold War," only to become the USSR 2.0.
I'm...confused. Isn't this just libertarianism?
At the federal level, it's close, especially when it comes to “ensuring domestic tranquility” and all that. Less so at the state level, and by the time you get to the county or city level, people at the local level would be pretty much free to organize themselves according to their needs and customs, meaning some could choose to be as libertarian as possible, while others choose to have their local government be more involved in social and economic matters. And if people in locales with a more libertarian culture want more government intervention, they can vote with their feet and move to a place that is governed in that way.
WB’s objective was achieved as soon as he got people to talk about WB. Every arriviste is the same.
How do you implement your utopian ideology without social engineering?
You missed the point. What utopian ideology am I trying to implement?
Creating a type of society with no real central authority, something that only lasted a few years under the articles of confederation, using a methodology that's never been done before.
Well, I think we're heading for that kind of world, whether we want to or not. Decentralization is bound to follow the kind of systemic collapse that we're almost certainly going to be facing in the (relatively) near future. Think of Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. The main thing is that we understand the rationale for creating a "representative democracy" with checks and balances in the first place: not because everyone is so innately noble that he should participate in governing his fellow citizens, but because everyone is so inherently corruptible by power that nobody can be trusted with too much of it -- and *everyone* who would wield power must be accountable to those over whom such power is wielded, i.e., they must have real skin in the game. And that is incompatible with a supremely powerful central government lording it over hundreds of millions of people representing a variety of cultures and environments.
Even South Africa hasn't collapsed. That attitude towards power is liberal delusion so is doomed to failure. People who don't like power won't get their way.
South Africa didn't supply the navy that guaranteed global trade routes stayed open, or the world reserve currency. The USA's collapse will be quite a bit different than South Africa's.
As for power, that's the dilemma at the heart of the human condition, that no one can finally resolve, so it means conflict for every generation with temporary, at best, equilibriums. Most of the time things are out of balance. Today we're badly out of balance in favor of an extreme managerialism. Opposing that tendency is what is most needed right now.
I just told you that South Africa hasn't collapsed at all despite the rulers being as a bad as possible. Collapse is a cope.
thank you for your effort to contribute to the understanding of our society, it's past and future on this planet that we christians believe was created by it's Owner for His own pleasure, and that pleasure stems from, above all else, Love for Him and each other. He have given no indication that He is willing forgo at any time His ownership of any of us, or to become in any way less loving towards those that are His. But in genuine love one is always free to leave to suffer in His absence, the consequences of our own self will and determination. But if we stay with Him we will turn the other cheek like He did, suffer discomfort, become social outcasts and find our supreme happiness in our relationship with Him and each other, despite all else. So the question of how to organize, manage and control ourselves is for genuine christians a non-issue, for it's done already. All we look forward to is for every one that belong to Him to get aboard, and for His day that will be the end for all that is not His
> Use centralized power to break up concentrations of power and distribute it as widely as possible.
This is not possible. Top-down decentralization will always fail. Decentralization is only possible bottom-up.
Why not both?