I like many other people that are on this platform long ago embraced the concept of voluntarism as my ideal goal for the future. I do not so much use the terms anarchy or embrace many of the concepts of it that try to force it into a box. I truly only have a limited set of criteria for my concept of this future.
- Everything involves voluntary choice.
- Each individual is responsible for their choices.
- Rights are only things that you can do without other people having to do it for you.
- My choices are not more important than the choices of someone else. If I make a choice it cannot be a choice to override the choice of someone else for themselves.
- Non-Aggression Principle. I will not use force against another either physical or coercive but I will defend myself and my property. I may also defend someone else who is being attacked.
- Observing human nature I recognize a very small set of rules which cannot be violated must exist. Enforcement of these rules should be accomplished in as decentralized a form as we can come up with. An example of such a rule would be the definition of property. It is at the core of behavior. Can a person take something if you are not currently using it at that moment, or is it yours? These are rules that are foundational and there must be a way to insure their protection. They should not be able to simply be overrun by a mob that decides they can do so. This is the challenge. Accomplishing this yet remaining decentralized is not an easy thing to do.
- Strive to give equality of opportunity but do not expect equality of outcome as that is impossible to achieve and is very simple to prove why.
- Plan for the future as well and look beyond ourselves to try to insure a path for our progeny in the future.
- Strive for a decentralized system where any votes and decisions are of equal weight for each person. People should not be able to centralize more and more power such that their vote effectively is worth more than another persons. This is required to avoid cronyism, corruption, and ultimately centralization in just another form. That does not mean it cannot still have problems.
In a quick brainstorming that is more or less my "utopian" world. I don't actually believe in the concept of a utopia. That world view above will have problems that must be overcome. It will fail. It will have to deal with corruption that naturally occurs over time. There is no perfect system. It will have to weather cronyism which if things are kept truly decentralized without power concentration should be minimized.
I don't view my ideal world as being problem free. It will have problems. I simply currently think it is an approach that can adapt to problems and hopefully recover from them. The main goal would be to learn from the mistakes and successes in history and to embrace opportunities that technology currently presents us.
For years now I've said we have the tools where we could have a voluntary society where we crowdfund the things we wish to support, subscribe to the services we want, etc. Things like kickstarter, gofundme, patreon, subscribestar, givesendgo, etc. show pathways to doing this.
Yet they also illustrate actively the dangers of centralization.
Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Patreon have all taken ideological stances and banned, censored, or oppressed some views while hypocritically advertising and amplifying other views that are actually actively guilty of the things that they claimed were the reason they were censoring the others.
They show what happens with centralization and it is guaranteed overtime to happen in every case to every organization, entity, etc.
People control these platforms. What happens when these people decide they need to control the narrative and only allow things they personally agree with? Essentially this is simply another form of cronyism. It is similar to a government blocking some businesses while giving expedited access to others. Most of the historical examples anti-capitalist people trot out are actually examples of the government doing this. In a truly capitalist environment a monopoly will be short lived if it has problems and people do not like it unless some CENTRALIZED power (aka Government) decides it can block competitors that seek to start up, and essentially keep the monopoly going due to favorable exchanges with the entities it is facilitating the monopoly for. (aka fascism)
The root of the problem there is the centralization. A central agency that gets to decide who is allowed to win, and who is not even allowed to play. This aspect of centralization will ALWAYS over time corrupt any ideology, government, organization, religion, etc. It does so simply by giving some humans the ability to dictate what other humans are allowed to think, do, talk about, participate in, etc.
For a truly free future we should do our utmost to avoid centralization whenever we can find a way to do so.
The emotional appeal will be usually pushed out to justify centralization.
If we had a crowdfunding platform that was truly decentralized what would stop a person from choosing to subscribe to a service that provides them heroin?
Nothing. Their choice. Their consequences.
Then it will turn to. "That would lead to drug addicts who then steal from other people, drive their vehicles and kill other people, etc."
That is called PRECRIME. We should never act as though a crime has been committed before it occurs. We should never throw all people into the same basket and treat them as guilty.
Instead they should be treated as individuals. If a person steals from another, kills another, etc. then you handle that incident directly. You do not centralize guilt and extend it to everyone else.
Another example:
I despise drunk driving. Yet I know there is a lot of it.
I've also heard people claim they can drive fine drunk.
While I think it is a stupid choice, the person is responsible for the consequences. If they never fail in their driving then so be it.
I do recognize the increased danger to others yet ultimately I am willing to accept such danger in exchange for freedom.
I recognize that reality is dangerous. I know that in trying to mitigate every possible crime and treat them as though they WILL happen I am likely to give up freedom and lead towards the path of centralization.
Freedom is risky.
Slavery is safe.
I will accept the risk. How about you?
I was inspired by current events to write this. I will edit this post and add links to a few news articles that inspired me.
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