You wanted serious, long comments Steemit, and here it is, my first one. Let's get into it - Permits, thoughts on the Individual versus the State.
Natural rights are already defined, and yes, we are all born free. That is the dilemma.
Seventeenth century political philosopher Hobbes finds the natural freedoms to be oppressive. In his justification of total state power, in the 1651 work Leviathan, Hobbes proposes that without an oppressive total monarch, the people tend to revert back to barbaric violence of the pirate kind.
Later political philosopher's try to limit the state's power to protect the people from cruel rulers, not just from each other. The right of resistance to state power was born, not by individuals but by the majority through a constitutionally restrained monarchy.
As a proof of the necessity of state power, revolutionary efforts to depose the state tend to turn back on it's citizens.
Let's say, you were just liberated in la Revolution, who would protect you from the revolutionaries?
A current example would be Mugabe and his freedom fighters after they kicked out white Rhodesia to create today's Zimbabwe. After the bloody coup, the military revolutionary group took over, urged by neighboring communist states. Now the Zimbabweans starve under a dictatorship, equal and free, as Mugabe siphons off state assets for private gain. He and his wife live in uber-luxury in the largest estate in Africa, while robbing the state tax coffers. Still the people of Zimbabwe choose their own local family tyranny. I don't fault them for that.
Hobbes dilemma underpins the state power that concerns you.
In America, the supposed land of the free, how valid is state power today? Are rulers still warranted? Can voluntarism liberate us from oppressive rule?
On anarcho-capitalist Steemit there is a game going around that no one needs government oversight. The corruption of the Fed is well established and is the justification for the replacement of fiat money, and the ruling class.
Let's entertain that thought experiment. Warning - the price of being wrong about your own currency can be very high. Would you want to pay the price of unforeseen chaos? The security of the people is the real goal.
Imagine the anarchist's effort to destroy the so-called oppressive state was met with deadly urban violence by the newly liberated citizens. Would you be ready to accept the personal cost of this violence? To your family and friends?
Anarchist states are rare but they exist. British Somalia is the usual test sample. With the failure of their government, the clan rules each person from the back of a pickup. You can apply to the local clan for protection, food and medicine if you need it. Maybe they will take pity, maybe not. Without state benefits, you are at your neighbors' mercy.
Recently a severe drought has created a famine in Somalia. The weakened state is powerless to feed people, with no shared stores of food. That would mean state taxes, and paid tax collectors.
You may want no business licenses, no building permits, no marriage licenses, no drivers licenses, no fines, no police, and no military. You claim permits and licensing is a protection racket, and there is no real protection, just fees.
Ok, yes indeed, the fees hurt. The removal of this permit infrastructure has impacts that are difficult to foresee.
What benefit you may get from the simplicity of working without the oversight, could be deleted by the costs of chaos long avoided.
The rates of the car, house and business insurance industry, is underpinned by the maintenance of standards of quality, and limits to risk. Without shared risk through insurance, commerce could not grow.
On the technical side, international engineering standards and their enforcement through inspections and licensing, have created the exploding international internet and computer revolution.
For things to work across space, they need standards.
As for Steem, blockchains are tamper-proofed apps. They assume constant attack and have evolved workarounds, like the forks. They are the digital expression of a conservative approach.
The creators of cryptocurrencies know that without mechanisms of control and consensus, their new currencies would fail. What strikes me as genius, is the way that conformance is bred into the crypto code, and does not require humans to enforce complance.
The world works on restrictive standards and conventions, while it struggles against them.
Without the carrot, the stick and even the fine, there is no compliance and no crypto liberation.
Enjoy the freedom.
Citation: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/hobbes-the-english-works-vol-iii-leviathan
RE: Licenses and Freedom