I consider myself an objective, pragmatic individualist. I am as indifferent to pleas for anarchy as I am to pleas for the greater good. All I care about are my individual rights and sustainability. In order to protect my individual rights, I have to be an advocate of your individual rights as well. So through no altruistic tendencies of my own, I still have a vested interest in protecting your rights. In my assessment of governance, I have determined that there are far too many people who literally crave leadership by others for Anarchy to be a practical solution for large populations. What I mean by that is that most people, on some level, literally desire direction from others, and if they dont get it from a formal entity (aka: government) they will accept it from whatever informal variety arises (aka: warlords and such). So it does not matter that I deem peaceful Anarchy as the best theoretical solution to the question of governance, there are far too few people that would actively participate in such a system to make it practically viable. The rub is that while most people are literally incapable of governing themselves, at least to some degree, most people are also just as incapable of governing others with any semblance of justice. So when one designates authority to another in an effort to craft a functional society, less than noble persons will always look to conscript that authority, no matter how small it is, for their nefarious ends. This always results, ultimately, in the corruption of whatever system one has put in place for the just governance of a society, and in the inevitable oppression of the citizenry of that society. This is unavoidable in the long run, as there has never been a government that hasnt ultimately failed its population. The only ones that havent are the ones currently in the process. The question then that arises is how does one craft a system of social order that doesnt either rapidly (totalitarianism) or slowly (democracy) degrade into the oppression of the population in which it supposedly serves? And the answer to that question is that one doesnt. Perfection is not for this world, and unless one believes in the divine, perfection is not for any world. So the pragmatist looks at this reality and says: How can I make a social order work as beneficially for me for as long as possible, knowing full well that whatever social order I choose, it is ultimately doomed to fail, if not me, then certainly my progeny somewhere down the line? The answer to that question is Minarchy. A government restricted to the protection of the rights of the individual, and nothing else. While this system, as I have already conceded, will ultimately fail just like any other system, all one has to do is look at the world of the last 300 years in comparison to the world of before that, look at a world that has had governments committed, even marginally, to the protection of individual rights, look at the world before these ideals became relatively commonplace, look at the prosperity that the great western democracies have experienced, look at how the common mans lot has greatly improved, look at the technological innovation that has been relatively commonplace since the concept of individual rights took a front seat in political philosophy, and look at the places around the globe that havent had the implementation of such a political philosophy to see that the concept of a minarchistic government, even poorly implemented, has been far and away the most beneficial thing that has ever happened to humanity. I believe that ultimately we can even have a voluntarily funded government, although I doubt that will come about until after the next bloody political revolution or two. Utopia is not for this world, and utopian thinking has no place in rational, pragmatic discourse. Dont let your mind wander to how things could be if only people behaved better - the governors and the governed. Focus on the objective reality that exists, and try to picture the social order that is best equipped to deal with the severe inadequacies of humanity. That is the social order that we should strive for, and pragmatic thought is the only means of getting there. #TheJovialDissident
Posted on: Sat, 01 Nov 2014 15:46:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015