Ideologies |
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Summary...
Beyond survival, our biggest struggle is not with each other, but with our level of consciousness. Politics, however, is more about leveraging the maximum power from any geographical region. This normally involves managing the beliefs of the people to encourage technology and wealth creation. These are then used to consolidate power at home and to project power abroad.
Libertarianism - is a very seductive ideology - especially to the young. Its fundamental flaw lies in its foundation of property rights and failure to understand the nature of either the human mind or of space and time. Just as government rarely discusses its foundation of coercion, so libertarians rarely question their foundation of property. Once you accept certain axiomatic rules about people and property, libertarianism is easy to defend. The problem is that property rights are not axiomatic, they are an artificial set of man made rules. And people are not all made equal. Not by a long way. Thus, rigid property rights slant the board of life firmly to the advantage of the bright, the beautiful, the wilful and the inherited. First error. Existing resources & values are gobbled up long ago by prior generations, and any remaining scraps or opportunities must be created and fought over by each generation anew. Second error. The presumption being, that all men are created equal. They are not. A cripple & the idiot have no chance of winning resources against the bright, the wilful, or those who inherit great wealth or great genetics. It is like putting children up against athletes and then celebrating the inevitable victory as fair. It is not. The athletes will win every time. Freedom from coercion is something socialists like to forget. But using the guns of government to enforce man made property rules, is something libertarians like to forget. But that does not mean socialism is the answer - it is even worse.
Socialism - The problem with socialism is it tends to use the 'guns of government' to create a society of dependents. If only socialism would limit itself to just fixing the rules of private property. But it always preferes to trade freedom for equality by micromanaging our lives. In the process, it ends up corrupting the morals of the people and the many virtues of capitalism. The people are corrupted by being taught that extortion and coercion are virtuous when done by government employees. Wealth is generally transferred from its creators to consumers as entitlements (often in order to purchase votes). Rather than merely socializing the benefits that accrue from the privatization of our shared social reality. The necessary violence and coercion to bring this about is either invisible to them or rationalised away, and this is how we become corrupted. But once government violence has been rationalised away, there is no end to the subsequent uses to which it can be put in order to 'improve' society. Capitalism - When honest, is good at three things...
And these are no minor achievements. However, like libertarianism, it suffers from the inbuilt biases of private property, which favor prior generations and the genetically gifted at the expense of everyone else. It is also a thin ideology. It has little to say about freedom or justice. Which is why is so easily slides into bed with both fascism and socialism.
Statism - authoritarians, fascists etc. are not intrinsically harmful. For all governments can harm people. Every use of coercion has winners and losers. At least open statists are more honest about their means of power and so are less likely to corrupt the people with platitudes of justice, or claim legitimacy for their deeds. An all powerful ruler who genuinely loves mankind might be far better to live under than social democrats who secretly despise us.
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