Dave Patterson: re/ rkm responds to foster

2012-10-09

Richard Moore

Bcc: FYI
rkm websitehttp://cyberjournal.org
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Begin forwarded message:

From: “Dave Patterson” <•••@••.•••>
Date: 8 October 2012 06:29:30 GMT+01:00
Subject: dave’s two cents …(Re: rkm responds to Foster

Dave’s two cents
 
Hi Richard, Have been following your exchanges with Foster et al – wanted to write, but kind of busy. But it is an important area of discussion, and I don’t see my take being mentioned elsewhere, so I’ll have a quick go.
 
Where I think the libertarian view fails re government is in simply labelling all government as ‘evil’, and having only one objective, stealing from the rich hardworking ‘freemen’, etc, basically – including ‘democracies’, their favorite whipping boy, which are designed (they like to say) so people can vote themselves free lunches by stealing from the hardworking capitalists, etc. It’s basically, in my opinion, a self-serving argument put forward by the rich – who are, by and large, predators preying on average people who just want to live together and work together peacefully – the rich are rich not by hard work, but by stealing from a lot of people in various ways – it’s they who steal from the farmers and other ‘real’ producers, not the other way around. The predators in our species see such average people as weak and not too smart and disinclined to violence as a means of achieving ends, and basically exploit/steal from them, either through violence and physical intimidation or lies of one type or another (convincing them there is a god, and the predator the priest to whom god speaks so the peasants must obey the priest, etc – or the modern bankers convincing the  simple minded peasants there is some godlike thing called money, and the peasants are all basically born owing money and must thus accept wage-slavery as their lot in life – both of these things depending of course on the gullibility and good nature of the peasants, who do not really want to believe ‘superior’ people such as priests and bankers would be lying to them so egregiously, so believe and obey rather than challenging – sorry for digressions, it’s a big topic that cannot be explained in sound bites, as you are no doubt well aware ). (and there are a couple of dominant strains of libertarians as well – the mass of followers, who might actually believe some of this nonsense after years of indoctrination (I myself thought Ayn Rand was great, when I first read her as a teenager – it was only when I got older and understood much more than I was being told by those in authority controlling me that I started waking up), and the leaders, who well understand what lies they are spreading, but have a very definite – and very much not friendly – objective – as explained next)
 
But “the government” – my brief analysis of ‘government’ would be something like this – in olden days (in the west, I understand your arguments about various earlier civilisations living peacefully together, but that does not seem to be any serious part of our western civilisations the last couple of thousand years) we had warlords, then kings, all ruling by violence – a kind of ‘government’, some group at the top of ‘society’ giving orders to those not of the ruling group. Over time, the peasants grew unhappy with such rulers and their excesses, and got the idea of banding together to oppose them – there are, more or less by definition, of course, many more peasants than rulers, so if they get themselves well-enough organised, they can resist those who would be king. Runymede is the exemplar people turn to, although of course that was one group of higher ‘nobles’ putting some restrictions on the king, and they all exploited the peasants – but the idea got around, and eventually the peasants themselves were telling all the nobles, ‘this far and no farther’. But to do that effectively, they had to organise effectively, and stay organised, or the predators would just come back and start doing predator things again – so a government of some kind had to be created to maintain some ongoing guard against predators. Of course, predators are drawn to ‘power’ like metal to a magnet, and it was not long before they began infiltraiting any kind of government the peasants could set up to oppose them, and eventually begin the various indoctrination things we are so controlled by today. And predators are much more ‘a-type’ personalities ready to actively do what is needed to get and keep power than your average b-type peasant, wanting only some peace as they go about their quiet lives, and much easier to get to heel, often resisting too little and too late the ongoing usurpation of their villages or countries.
 
To avoid the long and very nuanced story that could all lead to but whose broad outlines should be obvious enough, the end point is, the fact that predators infiltrait our governments and turn them to their own ends does not make the idea of government bad, as the original idea of somehow standing up to such predators is as valid as it ever was, it just means we need to be more intelligent and careful about how we run them – getting rid of government would simply throw the field open again to the predators, who are much more capable of the kind of things that are required to establish domination over others than we are, individually, to defend ourselves against them – they could easily take down the odd person strong enough to challenge them and/or for resistance to coalesce around, and then enslave the peasants openly which is, of course, their primary objective.  (what they have accomplished today, controlling people while making them believe they live in ‘democracies’, is a high accomplishment, really, and, as we are seeing, very difficult to fight against, when most of the peasants believe they live in a ‘democracy’)
 
And I think the same fundamental problem applies to your various ideas of ‘facilitated discussion’, wherein we try to solve our problems amicably – it’s a great idea for we peasants to work through our small differences, but the predators do not *want* amicable agreement, they want to be kings, and will do what they have to to achieve their goals, as they always have. 
 
The solution? Well, I’ve been long searching and thinking about this, as you have, and nothing obvious or easy comes to mind – but it seems to me it must involve some critical mass of intelligent, engaged, and courageous citizens who understand the danger of these predators, and can work together to face these predators and do what has to be done to control them – which is, I think, going to involve some form of organised government, both for predator control and to manage a complex modern society. (your facilitated meetings could be useful if they addressed this question … – but talking about what we want, without talking about how to overcome this most fundamental problem, seems to be one of the big problems we have today – lots of talk about what a better society would be like, almost none about how we are going to get there, which is, as I see it, the only question of importance at this time)
 
Anyway, a bit fast, and undoubtedly much left out, but I think the main ideas are clear enough – 
dave patterson
canada, thailand, green island