Why Must You Be Governed?
Remembering what Proudhon said skews me toward a certain outlook in regards to being governed:
If I could choose to be governed or not, I would prefer to be without all of the above. I say this because, as an adult, I do not require the paternal authority of other men to get through the day. Having been weened I believe I can operate and cooperate without the looming threat of State violence and appropriation dictating the bounds of right and wrong action.
Statism implies the opposite, that to be governed is required. And because statism is regnant, one can assume that most people require such an intervening institution to impinge on their lives in such a manner. Perhaps they need the Law to show them right from wrong, to teach them how to interact with others. Perhaps they need other peoples wealth to subsidize and furnish their existence. Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts. This bothers me because if the State were to collapse tomorrow, it is those that need to be governed that the rest of us would have to watch out for.
Maybe Im missing something, so the question remains. Why must you be governed?
To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.
General Idea of the Revolution in the 19th Century
If I could choose to be governed or not, I would prefer to be without all of the above. I say this because, as an adult, I do not require the paternal authority of other men to get through the day. Having been weened I believe I can operate and cooperate without the looming threat of State violence and appropriation dictating the bounds of right and wrong action.
Statism implies the opposite, that to be governed is required. And because statism is regnant, one can assume that most people require such an intervening institution to impinge on their lives in such a manner. Perhaps they need the Law to show them right from wrong, to teach them how to interact with others. Perhaps they need other peoples wealth to subsidize and furnish their existence. Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts. This bothers me because if the State were to collapse tomorrow, it is those that need to be governed that the rest of us would have to watch out for.
Maybe Im missing something, so the question remains. Why must you be governed?
Comments (223)
Because nothing happens in a vacuum. Political development is tied in with historical development. We were never in a "state of nature" that is a thought experiment. Rather, we always had communities of a variety of cultural practices. You might say from one perspective that the Native American tribes were "free".. But then you take a closer look and realize that there were immensely restrictive practices on what one can do or not do without becoming an outcast, etc. So have humans ever lived "free" from their fellow man? I'd say no.
So in this "modern" time, we have states that developed due to peculiarities of kingdoms of European conflicts, feudalism giving way to mercantilism, colonization, and the idea of nation united under language and culture rather than religion or territory. But within this current system, states developed as a result of a king uniting various territories or (mainly) Western European countries carving out territories from tribes or previous empires. Within these kingships and colonies, feudal lords and merchant-classes who controlled the resources had interests to protect. They wanted to make sure their property was protected. They wanted to make sure that there was someone around to punish wrongdoers. Methods were developed such as courts and judges and juries for this purpose. Taxes were needed to raise armies and pay knights or sheriffs or strongmen of varieties working on behalf of the crown or council. In order for the lords and the merchants to have their property protected and to gain more wealth, they needed roads. As land was parcelled, they needed a proper way to distribute it. What wasn't in someone's possession was the "kingdoms" and owned by the king. They parcelled it out for favors and allegiance.
As the merchant class began to have more power, they overthrew the lords as ruling class and developed their own councils that the king could not ignore and had to listen to. Some places threw off the king altogether. Merchants, craftsmen, and independent farmers became dominant. They increased the towns and the cities. Most of the farm laborers continued so or became laborers for more wealthy merchants who used land and resources to start corporations and enterprises. With the Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment came improved technology. This technology created immense wealth but also a variety of externalities.. Ideas about protecting consumers who might not know the harms were percolating. Ideas of creating social safety nets for the elderly or the poor who could not afford it were promoted. The ideas of following certain safety codes in construction and water consumption were thought of, and on it goes for many thousands of things.
So to sum it up, we have always been "governed" in some way. The modern form started with the rise of the merchants, the Scientific Revolution, and the increase in technology. With this increase in knowledge and technology was a need for more nuanced understanding of how to survive, which included things like safety nets, consumer protections, health care, and the like. The things that were not even around prior to the Scientific Revolution (so weren't even a consideration). Then add the classical merchant interests of protecting one's capital, property, and territory, along with the other classical things such as courts of law and protection of territory.
Perhaps much of this could be addressed voluntarily in a simple, isolated agrarian society, but I find it hard to imagine it could in one like what we have now.
I appreciate the effort it took to write that down, and find little to disagree with. But Im just asking why you yourself must be governed.
Rather, I was asking why you must be governed. Can I extrapolate from your answer that you require the State to protect you?
I just cant see how man in his government form is the only one capable of providing or funding such services.
According to Hobbes, the state of nature is a war of each against all others. The need for authority is not in order to satisfy a compulsion that some people suffer but others do not; it is to stop the violence of that war.
Rousseau saw the state of nature as the home of the 'noble savage' who was peaceful and moral as created. The social contract forced man into a way of life that lost this original goodness.
How the State is to be conceived as necessary or not is dependent upon competing notions of Human Nature.
That is why you better start prepping NOS. Get a lot of guns and know how to use them. It's gonna be a major investment now but it will be worth it when you need to acquire/take resources in a world in which all proof of ownership is forfeit. You'll have to defend your property through violence (you'll be your own police/governor).
The world isn't fair with a functional state nor is it fair in its absence. The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. It's soaked with blood.
Thanks.. Because I like having clean drinking water, construction codes, educational institutions offered to everyone, safety nets, courts of law, police protection, protection against invasion, etc. and that are accountable to a democratic process and the informed electorate.
And I can't see how it can be otherwise.
Sure you can. Private schools, private roads, private insurance, private firefighting, private healthcare, private charity, private armies, .the model of voluntarily exchange for such services has been in effect since time immemorial. The idea that a man must be in government before he can provide any such services is damn near ludicrous.
Im not so sure of that. History is replete with state violence and democide. There is not one human right that the state has not violated. They can and have taken as much property as they wish, and in fact claim ownership and jurisdiction upon entire territories. See what happens when you dont pay your property taxes. Your proof of ownership in any state system is contingent on what the state wants to do with your property, nothing more or less.. Id much rather defend my own property than be subject to what amounts to slavery.
Because you cant be trusted.
Very true, Paine. Both Rousseau and Hobbes believed in the social contract. Perhaps this belief, despite its lack of evidence, persists as the undercurrent of statism.
But the government can?
No more, no less. Humans just cant be trusted.
Who wouldn't? We live in the state of anarchy, in which there is no law, and in particular, no law against setting oneself up as a governor or mafia boss. So feel entirely free to hide from the watchers, to disobey the rulers, and do what thou wilt. Tell them I said it was ok.
Quoting NOS4A2
Private armies???? You can be the boss of a gang, sure, but gangs and armies are public - by definition. so it looks like your professed anarchism is just privatised government. We already got that, and it stinks bad.
What's to stop the super-rich buying up all of the main roads and charging sky-high prices to travel through (putting the price of everything up), or refusing anyone but their businesses access thereby holding a monopoly?
Even Adam Smith believed you needed regulation to keep the market competitive.
Name an effective comprehensive implementation of such a model. There hasn't ever been one in any but the smallest societies, if then. It's just another anarchist pipe dream.
But there's not much 'private' there, so @NOS4A2 would hate it.
Hobbes and Rousseau developed their views from sharply different visions of the qualities of natural man before civic institutions existed. What is your view of how those institutions appeared without a social contract of some kind?
If this 'statism' is a need for some and not for others, how did it get started amongst humans?
I didnt advocate for any of those, nor anarchism. Im speaking against the state, not for or against other forms of organization. They were examples of man using other, non-state, collective means to accomplish tasks deemed worthy of government only,
My own view is that states form through conquest and appropriation. They are imposed. Not one man agreed to any contract. This is because no such contract exists.
I use private in this sense to mean something doesnt have any official standing nor is it owned and controlled by any government. I see no nefarious connotations. Besides, I hardly see any difference between a state and any other criminal organization, except that one seeks to control me and the other doesnt, so if a private organization seizes power and the monopoly on violence I will naturally oppose it.
It already has.
Its the State. They formed when one group of predatory men sought to exploit the rest. There is nothing public about the State except that they do it all in the open.
As conceived of by Hobbes and Rousseau, the social contract is not an explicit agreement signed before participating in it. Rather, it is a condition developed through people's interaction with each other. The development of law and judgement in societies probably did have something to do with events of wars and subjugation. But you, like Rousseau, imagine a condition of Man that was happily minding its own business before the State crashed the party.
Whatever brought these institutions into being, framing it as a transition from a state of nature to living in a man-made world is to seek out what is human nature against the background of his circumstances, to borrow from Ortega y Gasset.
If it is not an explicit agreement then it is not a contract. Since a condition is not a contract, it is a poor analogy on Rousseaus part. Perhaps social condition better describes the state of affairs were in, since most of us are born into it, after all.
I cant imagine a state of nature, only social organizations that are voluntary and not ruled by this or that class. Rousseaus Social Contract is not only statist, but collectivist, which history has proven is a poor combination indeed. Submitting to the general will, being forced to be free, and all that, isnt the best look for the social contract theory in my mind.
Explicit contracts are only possible through institutions established to recognize them. It seems you would have the discussion of what brought civic institutions into existence be preceded by the institutions themselves.
Unspoken agreements where different people accept a set of conditions for the sake of their mutual continuance does not require signatures.
Or even the main consideration.
There's a deep poverty in such gross oversimplification. Worse, those who suffer from it may well not understand that they do so suffer.
And so the thread meanders on...
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, "if" but you don't get to choose, nobody does, any more than you get to choose the body, family, society or class you're born into, etc. "Why must you be governed?" You/we mustn't, just like you/we mustn't speak English. Instead: Why are you/we governed? Because, NOS, as your wannabe-gangster hero Individual-1 keeps saying the quiet part out loud: "They're mine, mine, mine ..." Wtf?! :mask:
You want to abolish the centralizing authority of the state? First abolish the ego-centralizing psychology in our social arrangements. In a post-Indigenous, imperialistic, overpopulated world, the realpolitik of cosmopolitan social contractualism, where it is effective, is the statist counterweught to 'failed state terrorism' or 'Dark Ages warlordism'. But what about a counterweight to "the tyranny of the state"? Democratize the economy as much as practically possible.
Political democracy in the absence of economic democracy (aka "economic autocracy" (becomes neoliberal corporatocracy)) has always been a failing project. Political autocracy (i.e. statist tyranny) is the manifest policing infrastructure required in order to protect economy autocracy. Read A. Smith closely. & Read P. Kropotkin closely. Read D. Schweickart & T. Picketty closely.
Yes, but you are claiming that when you do it, it isn't the state. The divine right of NOS to his private army etc. Privacy is itself government - thou shalt not forage in my garden. My agri-culture necessarily excludes you, and there can be no privacy without government. Privacy entails contractual agreement just as much as community. You and your insistence on your private property are the predatory and disagreeable government you complain of. Alas for you," To live outside the law you must be honest."
Later that night after I killed them in their sleep, I woke up in the morning happy that I had gained the sense of peace, and land, that they had. It was fun picking some of the tomatoes that had ripened and eating off of the land as God intended. I stayed for a few days until I got bored and moved on, but I don't think I'll ever quite forget the experience of being completely free and self-sufficient out there in the wilderness.
NOS, your problem is you see the world only through your viewpoint, and no one else's. Also, you believe, like the gentleman above, that there is nothing wrong with your viewpoint of the world. Many of us walk around as individuals thinking we have it all figured out. We don't. We need other people to point things out to us, and at times, stop us from doing terrible wrongs to others. People who participate in society without issue understand this.
Now I don't think you yourself are a bad person or that you would have done anything to those folks. But you have an incredibly high sense of your own self-worth and capability. You're the guy who believes they would survive the zombie apocalypse. You see the world's truth, and cannot understand why others do not. So of course to you, you see government as worthless. To help, you have to realize its not about you. You alone don't matter in the equation. Government is about people, every shade, and type. Government is about people who would not survive the zombie apocalypse, those who would enslave and kill others, and then people like you who would be just fine dodging zombies all day with your stockpile of food and water.
If you want to understand why people need to be governed, the answer is to meet more people. Government is a tool of the human race to ensure survival of groups of people. Different groups of people have different needs that good governments serve.
Im quite certain that you and I could come to some sort of agreement, neighbor to neighbor, and abide by that agreement without including a third party. We could abide by it because we have consciences and it is the right thing to do. Rather, if your agreements need to be governed by a third party, I fear your word probably means little.
I do not know what unspoken agreements you speak of. But if you speak them they are no longer unspoken. How can I agree to such an agreement?
I wouldnt do anything like a state. Ive only claimed that there are ways to organize without the state, on grounds of voluntary rather than involuntary cooperation, and only claimed such as a counter argument to the suggestion that a state is required. Unlike the state, I would not monopolize any of those activities, nor would I regulate anyones lives and livelihoods, that is, until they sought to regulate mine. If Unenlightened wants VIP access to my garden or other peoples things you might try asking nicely.
Note how no one can answer why they themselves need to be governed. I expected as much. Its always someone else who needs to be governed, like the murderer in your condescending fantasy. Someone else needs to be governed so I can drink clean water. Someone else needs to be governed because I dont want to be mugged. And because you cannot single out this someone else, everyone must be governed. To protect you from these bogiemen youre willing to put up with and justify despotism, whether hard or soft, on entire populations of people, so that you can carve out a safe habitat somewhere on the spectrum of slavery.
But your government is an actual murderer, slaver, liar, brigand, knave. The historical record makes this clear. So who protects you now?
Government is a tool of the human race to ensure survival of groups of people. No greater propaganda has been uttered. The state cares only for its own existence. There is no right it hasnt violated, no law it has not broken, no truth it hasnt suppressed, to benefit itself. Its not the institution you claim it is; it is an anti-social institution. Youre not participating in society; youre aggrandizing the state at the expense of society.
You and your bloody rules imposed by your bloody army.
It's you.
You and your desire to steal and appropriate anothers things is not unlike the States.
Its always someone else.
You silly boy! what makes it yours? Your own say so? Or do you have some kind of bill of sale or other social contract that bestows it on you?
My garden? Not because I say so, but because I can justify it. I built it, planted it, and tilled it. If you can justify why it is yours, perhaps you can have it.
Not just someone else. You.
Quoting NOS4A2
I'll have a crack. I'm a better gardener than you, so I deserve it.
Someone you do not know nor have ever dealt with. Another bogieman.
How do your gardening abilities justify you having another persons garden?
And what if I reject your justification? Well today we have a government, a court of law, a police to arbitrate between the two of us.
In you vision, it is a matter of whether I and my posse are strong enough to take your land from you if I reject your justification of owning it. And actually I quite fancy my chances there.
Never mind me, there are plenty of people around who will not care much for your justification that you should own your land. Good luck is all I can say.
A good criminal would surrender his weapon, would thrust both his wrists forward to be handcuffed, and walk quietly with the prison guards to his cell! :cool:
Its true. I would assume, perhaps wrongly, that you have a conscience, and some modicum of respect for the livelihood of others, their labors, and so on. Absent that we are at an impasse, and youll have to try and take it.
How does you having built it, planted it, and tilled it justify you having it?
I created it and nurtured it. It wouldnt exist had I not done so. How does your superior gardening abilities justify your claims to it?
So yes, I would say your assumptions are wrong and would lead to dominance of the the ones who can enforce there dominance.
How does you having created it and nurtured it such that it wouldnt exist had you not done so justify your claim to it?
Its true. And history does not look kindly on them.
But I also reject your notion that history does not look kindly on those who took things by force. Many of the kings of yore, that are legendary, did exactly that. And were rewarded for it through the perpetuation of their legend.
That is my justification. Now we weigh that against your justification, which I suppose is coming any moment now.
A state prohibits rule of the people. Its very function is the rule of some people.
By what process?
At least we have rule of the few who have to be selected in a ballot by the many.
Deliberation.
Alright. We have a big long discussion. We still disagree. Now what? Fisticuffs?
Shit, the appeal to justice? Let's invent a court and make with the justification - your private justification has no sway over me. But anyway, you lie. the garden was already there, all you did was tidy it. I liked it the way it was and you ruined it. Now get off my garden and stop ruining it with your wretched building and cultivation of my lovely wilderness.
Your description of a community formed through agreements amongst neighbors strongly resembles what Locke called the State of Nature. He takes up the question of how societies formed before explicit bodies of law appeared when he was challenged to show how the state of nature existed before civil structures.
Locke joins Hobbes and Rousseau in using the concept of a state of nature to propose how we transitioned from a prehistory without politics to a life lived through polity. What is your account of the transition? Or was it born directly from the forehead of Zeus?
Do you really disagree, though? Would you actually lay claim to a garden someone else has built and cultivated, and upon disagreeing, physically take what he has built and cultivated?
But yes, if theft is your aim, youll just have to take it, wont you?
Like Rousseau says, family is the first society. I suppose kinship could be considered natural, but then again to say state of nature is redundant, because every state is one of nature anyways.
Ah! The old 'you agree with me really though' argument. I wondered how long it would take to get there.
That you can't wrap your head around anyone thinking differently is your problem, don't project it onto others.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. As @unenlightened had already speculated...
Quoting unenlightened
I think the wilderness belongs to those who look after it best, so your crappy efforts fail to secure you your right of ownership I'm afraid.
Quoting NOS4A2
Of course. You ruined my wilderness. I'd definitely use what force I have at my disposal to requisition it and return it to its proper state.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not theft, your claim to ownership failed. It's my garden.
It was a question, actually, as evident by the question mark. Your efforts to skirt around it are obvious, because no one is stupid enough to act like a question was an argument.
Why is it your wilderness? Is my garden on your property?
Those political philosophers used the phrase 'state of nature' to distinguish it from life as a citizen with expressed rights within a state. They did not mean to suggest the latter was outside of what is possible by nature.
Your citing of Rousseau reminds me of Thatcher's view of society:
Not much interest in the history of communities there.
Nor should they be. Its a brute fact that such abstract terms are without a referent. As intimated, the collectivism in Hobbes or Rousseau, statism in general, is nothing to be proud of.
Dont you want to be free from Big Brother? Yet you never choose freedom you MUST go with being scrutinized, watched, collectivized. Why, why??
If only we could be more like John Galt.
But you yourself frame your concept of 'statism' as a violation of a preexisting condition. It is at least as abstract as any idea employed by Locke.
It was not intended to be condescending. You missed the point. The murderer does not think they are wrong. The murderer does not believe they need to be governed. They think they have no blind spots or need for others. But this simply isn't the case. No one is a one man perfect army. You and I are no different in our personal blindness and bias. WE need governing, because WE are no different from one another in our myopic view of our own perfection, capabilities, and self-sufficiency in relation to other people.
The only people who do not need governance are those who live in the woods somewhere away from other people. Whenever two or more people have to interact, fledgling governance begins. Perhaps its a mutually negotiated outcome. Perhaps its one person overpowering the other. Whatever happens, implicit and explicit rules in how you both interact with one another begin. And if one of you doesn't follow it? Consequences of some kind ensue.
As to why people use examples of others and not themselves, is because no one wants to admit their flaws. Because then the reply will be, "Well YOU might have those flaws, but I do not." This is incorrect. You have flaws Nos, plenty of them. I do as well. Our flaws and desires are different, and if we have to interact with each other, there are spoken and unspoken expectations and behaviors between us is there not? If you or I behave a certain way on these forums, will we not be reprimanded? Do you honestly think the forums would be a better place if there were no rules or moderators? That is basic governance. And it is absolutely needed for groups to work together with a mutual benefit.
Now, to be fair to you, perhaps you observe there can be negative consequences of governance. No one would dispute that. There are positives and negatives to almost every system and choice we have in life. To ignore the negatives and only see the positives, is as foolish as the other way around.
Governance is an absolutely needed tool/descriptor of relations between humanity. Like any tool, it can be used incorrectly. But its incorrect use does not mean we do not need the tool when the job calls for it.
The question...
Quoting NOS4A2
The answer...
Quoting Isaac
Not sure in what way that counts a 'skirting around'.
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes. I've explained that land rightly belongs to the person who will look after it best. In the case of your garden, that is me (I'm an excellent gardener), you've already done enough damage with your 'cultivation', so you should leave immediately.
I would say the State itself was a violation of sorts insofar as it was the organized means of exploitation imposed on others, but only that the preexisting condition to the state was no state. If I were to get concrete about it, I would point to those who act out its functions, its written laws, and so on. Statism is rather a belief or ideology, and I would argue the prevailing one.
And as is happening right now to indigenous people in the Amazon, sanctioned ironically by the government, and as has happened on every colonised continent over and over. This tyranny of property is exactly the social contract that @NOS4A2 thinks he is rejecting.
"Property is theft." Proudhon proclaimed. Because all property is stolen from the commons which is the Whole Earth. But Nos uses Proudhon only as it suits him, he is no anarchist himself as he admits, but an involuntary non-autocrat whining about his impotence.
There we go. You believe you are entitled to the figurative and literal fruits of anothers labor because you think you can do a better job. The corollaries of such a sense of justice are profound. A man has no right to use nature to provide for his own survival. The superior man has rights to the nature, the efforts, and by extension, the bodies of lesser men. And this sense of justice and property is why you need to be governed.
Do you not believe that a man has a right, as a matter of dignity and survival, to put effort into a place of nature for his own living?
Plenty of answers.
No. I'd turn your garden back to a state of nature. No appropriation of any fruit (figurative or otherwise), in fact a rejection of the fruits of your labour.
Quoting NOS4A2
Too right he doesn't. See . The 'use' of nature without proper constraint is just about to wipe out the planet's lungs.
The question is about what happens when we disagree over the proper treatment of some piece of land.
Yes, but I'm about to nick @NOS4A2's garden, so don't pull the plug just yet.
A right? Where do they come from? God? You get more and more desperately ambitious in your pronouncements. No, it is an insane suggestion that any man has a right to fence off land and reserve it to his own use without the agreement of his neighbours - which is to say, without entering into a social contract with his neighbours to mutually grant each other such and such rights and such and such redress. And should you wonder who is your neighbour, I refer you to the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Youd destroy my food, then, and any food-bearing plants I created, because you are a superior gardener. I still fail to see how one justifies the other. .
Rights come from men. Thats why Im asking you and not God. Will you destroy my garden, should there be no social contract? Is this why you need to be governed?
Oh, a social contract.
Quoting NOS4A2
I don't need to be governed. I said at the outset that I am an anarchist. But you need me to be governed.
We have not agreed to anything. No social contract. Just you coming upon my garden and deciding what to do next: destroy it, steal from it, or leave it alone. Theres always that other niggling option of voluntary cooperation, where we can work together towards a solution. How does one decide?
I dont want you to be governed, nor want to govern you.
Quoting NOS4A2
Therefore you have no right to your garden.
That there is logic. Allow me to sell you some.
I don't.
Now what?
Hang on. A minute ago you had s right to your garden because you tilled it. Now you're saying we could come to some arrangement?
What about the rainforest? Cycles the oxygen for everyone on the planet. You're going to need an awfully big hall to hold that meeting...
If only there were some system of representatives to simplify this mass negotiation process... Oh well, one can only hope...
Ill pass. I am by now well aware that you will not afford anybody a right to their own garden. What do you say to the Amazonian, then, given that they have stolen their village the commons? They have no right to keep their village?
Yes, just ask. Maybe we can trade, maybe I can donate, maybe we can till it together. Maybe Im naive but I thought theft and robbery would be the last resort, so consider me surprised.
I dont think he can. The state is by now so ubiquitous and so many dependant on it that its abolition would invariably lead to some form of tyranny as they scramble for new states. People would first need to shed statism as they did religion.
I will say what they generally say, that they do not own the forest, they belong to it.
Bullseye!
What, the whole planet? There's 7 billion of us. Through what mechanism ought we 'just ask'? One at a time?
Quoting NOS4A2
There's no theft and robbery until there's property. We're discussing who owns what so we cannot already be thieving and robbing it can we? We have yet to establish who's property it is.
I think the question is misleading. You will be governed, one way or another. You're never going to get a cooperative anarchy. Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos with their private militaries will just make all the rules. Anti-statism is a pipe dream.
So the only question is which kind of government is best. I would rather have a democracy than the neo-feudalism that your position would inevitably lead to.
-"Why Must You Be Governed?"
Environmental Challenges and Behavior of Individuals members affects the survival and flourishing of social species. That alone introduces the need of a center for Decision Making and Problem solving.
The important question is now "why must we be governed" but why we insist on using Pseudo Philosophical "solutions" to govern our societies.
I mean we have far more capable and modern systems to address behavior and problems.
Governing is the process of imposing rules and laws on populations. Laws are the "solution" we came up with when we don't really have a real technical solution for a problem.
The way we currently organize our societies is really primitive and it has failed miserably.
Sure we need people to guard the method, but they can not change the criteria or evaluation methods by which we accept Knowledge claims.
This is not true for our current Pseudo Philosophical governing systems. The goals are set by Constitutions but the people who "guard" the process, constantly change the criteria and methods arriving to results that are in direct conflict with the goals of a society.
i.e. Constitutions around the world talk about equality of citizens but our economic systems ignore that and excuses are used by some to gain even more (crisis).
The results are against the goals we are trying to achieve through governing our societies.
Thats a misleading answer because it avoids the question outright and quickly enters fantasy. Elon musks private army will be of humanoid drones while Bezos rockets will look like dicks. They will maraud around the world spreading freedom while searching for weapons of mass competition. Public armies are controlled by democracy and history proves they have never taken or destroyed any property.
I thought it was the superior mans property.
That anarcho-capitalism could work is the fantasy.
I never said it could. Why do you personally need to be governed?
They do share the ethos built on the centrality of the ego. But Ayn is cool with institutions like Banks to keep her money. You need a government for that. Handshakes, winks, and nods just won't cut the bacon.
Ive never read Ayn Rand. Thats the hilarious part of the accusation.
You said this, which seems to be a description of anarcho-capitalism:
Quoting NOS4A2
The reality is that without some sort of centralised, democratically-elected regulator these private industries will effectively be the state by another name, making all the rules, with little to no accountability, and will likely lead to even more poverty, oppression, discrimination, and suffering.
They do shed statism when the state system collapses as it did at the end of the Bronze Age and when Rome fell. What follows is a dark age where warlords roam around destroying everything and paying for allegiance with loot.
The possibility of creating technology, universities, science, artists, philosophers, etc. only opens up when people adapt to the emergence of states again.
No, I thought it was the superior man's property, you thought it was the property of the one who tilled it. Thus we disagreed as to whose property it was.
You were about to enlighten me as to how we resolve that dispute between you, me, and the 7 million other people who have a legitimate say in what you (or I) do with our piece of rainforest without any formal system of representation.
There is a strong resemblance between your views regarding what amounts to the 'collective' and how that is opposed by an ethos of the individual as the measure of value:
What I can gather from your exposition goes further than this ethos and calls for a change in the future world order, perhaps something along the lines of: The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
Or perhaps your view of the state as an ideology is a peculiar interpretation of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals
The way that you phrase it, 'why must you be governed' presupposes it is personal choice rather than a condition that is either necessary or not. You have yet to explain how this came to be a matter of choice
I dont view the state as an ideology. I view statism as an ideology. Also, I do not nor have not called for a change in the future world order. I suppose my defense of basic human rights could be boiled down to the promotion of manners, in a Nietzschean sort of way. The state is the coldest of all monsters, and all that.
I just thought it was an interesting question. I think it is extremely rare that people think they need to be governed, as if they had no conscience, manners, or instinct. This so-called social contract is where all the egoism begins. Its a compact made with oneself, after all: I will be governed so that you will be governed. Like Rousseau said, it involves the complete alienation of the individual, together with all his rights, to the whole community. If he has already submitted to this idea, signed the social contract so to speak, he goes too far in believing everyone else has done the same.
Since you mentioned Gasset, how he portrays the attitude of the mass-man towards the state implies a more self-seeking and egoist view than I could ever endure.
Only a formal system of representation could come up with something like the Enclosure acts or the Decree on Land. Someone mentioned the Amazon earlier, and one can watch the formal system of representation sell the rainforest to the highest bidder, while all traditional and tribal claims are disregarded.
The resolution to the dispute between you and I is inevitably violence. Your claims to my garden are unreasonable; you seek to destroy what I have built and use to sustain myself; you refuse any peaceful resolutions. Youll just have to come and take it.
Well, that reply helps me distinguish your view from some kind of hyper libertarian credo.
The emergence of 'egoism' is where I question how the 'contract' is one that can be accepted or declined as an available option as you have described it. To have declined it at the beginning would mean continuing life lived as the 'natural man', antecedent to both ancient and modern societies. The life of the "mass man's" relation to the state is a modern problem. Rousseau, however, frames a theoretical origin of society in an inaccessible past.
That inquiry into the prehistorical brings out the contrast between such an initial contract and your speculation: "Perhaps the State is all that holds them from returning to some state of nature, like beasts." The ideology that supports a particular state is not the only form of association. If humans were dissolved back into a prehistory where all the agreements had to be made all over again, the 'statism' you describe would not be one of the options. The exchange for absolute liberty for life in a community could only be declined by a life of perfect solitude. We come back to where Aristotle said the only creatures that can live alone are either beasts or gods.
As the emergence from prehistory is not available to us as a given fact, speculation about it becomes a collection of origin stories. Rousseau's story intimates that there is something like a god in the natural man that is still alive even when in bondage. Locke speaks of an original politic that is available to us if we make the right conditions. Hobbes says that we only developed our better natures through association.
This conversation is reminding me that I haven't read Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality in over twenty years. I am going to give it another go.
The conquest theory of state, as I believe it anyways, is wholly influenced by Franz Oppenheimers The State. Its a refreshing deviation from the social contract theory. Anyways, thanks for the input and non-hostile discussion.
The pleasure was mine. I will check out Oppenheimer.
No, not like beasts. "Civilized" societies are more bestial. Statehood only took hold, it should be noted, in places where it could not be escaped.
Well there you have your answer. You, apparently, do not need to be governed, but I do because my behaviour is unreasonable. As you said...
Quoting NOS4A2
The utter stupidity of the question (as @Mikie has already pointed out) is that of course you don't think you need to be governed because you have your ideas of what right and wrong are and hopefully do what's right. The question of government is what you do with everyone else. Do you just (as you would) fight them, or do you come up with more peaceful ways of settling differences?
Most opt for the latter, using a system of representatives and agreeing that enforcing the will of the majority of those representatives is grim but necessary alternative to us all just fighting it out.
Your thread seems nothing more than another "wouldn't the world be great if everyone just agreed with me"
I dont think you need to be governed. I think youre an adult. I think your unreasonableness and propensity towards destroying anothers property is a silly ruse. Even your system of representatives would laugh in your face about your claims to my property.
You know I would choose peaceful resolutions because I suggested peaceful resolutions, but you wouldnt accept and would run to authorities, like most people. You would prefer a third party, the monopoly on violence, to fill in where your own morals and conscience and deliberation wouldnt. You need other men to do what you are unable.
Ah, back to the old "you agree with me really" argument. Your inability to imagine how other people might hold different views to you is your problem alone.
Quoting NOS4A2
As they would yours. Our current system of representatives tends to assume the holder of the appropriate legal document is the owner.
Quoting NOS4A2
You've suggested nothing of the sort. I asked you how the 7 billion people with a legitimate interest in the use of the rainforest might peacefully resolve their differences with the legal owners who are currently destroying it (by cultivation, ironically), you've given me absolutely zip.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's not my morals and deliberation they're standing in for, it's the strength of my arm. I'm 56, and though I'd give you fair clip round the ear, I'm going to need some backup to take your garden.
So...
The agricultural companies in the rainforest till the land and claim it thereby as theirs. 7 billion people, preferring oxygen to soya, claim "hey, we were using that just as it was". Now what?
But Reagan said government is the problem.
End of discussion.
Another fruitful thread with the sociopathic corporatist.
Where do you think conscience and manners arise from? Do you think they're magic universals breathed into our beings by sole virtue of us being human? Isn't it obvious they're socially contextualized with part of that context being that we live in highly structured states? The Plains Indians were about as close to stateless as described by your delusional utopia. As it happens, they tortured their enemies to death as a matter of routine. Yes, they had consciences and manners, just not any that someone like yourself, riddled with state morality, would recognize.
Quoting Silvia parmigiani
Reads like satire.
Quoting Oppenheimer, The State
While that description of exchange might apply to Locke's 'natural' community, it is a complete misrepresentation of Rousseau's understanding of the natural man. The second part of the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men begins with:
Quoting Jean Jacques Rousseau, translated by Ian Johnston
The introduction of transactions between 'self-seeking individuals' is the beginning of inequality. The terms of that change from natural to social is the "Contract" Rousseau is referring to, not a deal between free agents for mutual gain.
Rousseau specifically addresses the difference of agency on either side of the contract in his discussion of amour propre. Here is a note of his on the matter:
Oppenheimer does go on to make interesting observations of how the 'state of nature' philosophers were used for other than their intended purposes but that is not worth pursuing until this fundamental mistake is addressed.
.
Because I was born into a society. That society that allowed the events of my safe birth to take place did not arise organically and is not a permanent, intrinsic feature of reality. Long story short, people think "biting the hand that feeds them" doesn't apply after it already did and allowed them to possess some semblance of independence. Doesn't work that way. In terms folks like that would best understand, every habitable inch on Earth is "taken" by people who vote "society" and they outnumber you. Sorry. lol
Is it the case that this kind of political discussion hinges mostly on a judgement made about human behavior?
Are you saying that when he told me:
Quoting NOS4A2
that he was not being honest?
It hinges on a fairly basic understanding of human behaviour, biology, society, culture, and history. There is no "manners" or "conscience" DNA that separates us from other humans who routinely tortured, raped and killed each other when it was to their advantage to do so. Our sense of ourselves as subjects, our experience of individuality, and our sense of morality may vary but are predominantly socially constructed. And the state is an intrinsic part of the social machine that has constructed us. It's entirely disingenuous then for this manufactured subject to imagine it can lift itself out of its own moral boots by its own moral bootstraps and declare it has no need of the source from and through which it speaks in any coherent moral tongue.
Quoting Paine
:zip:
You learn to separate the art from the artist. After all, were it not for the hectic world we live in and the idiosyncrasies it creates within ourselves we arguably wouldn't need art to begin with. A major unexamined tenet of popular non-deistic theist belief is in few words the idea that anything created or used for malice or ill-intent is or will ultimately be used for good (ie. workers of inequity produce naught, the lion will lay with the lamb, etc) and so encourage people to look for the good in everything and everyone, if not for strategic purposes and advancement of positive social change. Looking at things that way, that's not so bad now is it?
Not why should men be governed, but why must we be? It's a fair question, if not situation dependent. One asked by many an oppressed, decent man. Some of the obvious answers that may come to mind ie. burden sharing, united we stand divided we fall, teamwork makes the dream work, etc. may start to fall short to honest inquiry derived from pondering the numerous travesties committed by governments over the years as well as other, simpler forms of civilization that - while they were around - seemed to have done "just fine" with their own socially-derived customs and practices that purportedly kept most of the negative occurrences mentioned as rationale by supporters of "big government" at bay.
So, why must we be governed?
I don't object to a charitable reworking of the thread. And hey, the plasticity of individual morality and social norms in the face of varying societal and environmental contexts is an indelible mark of the adaptivity that has made us the undisputed kings of the animal kingdom. So, we need not be governed but we are better when we are if we define "better" by such prosaic considerations as security, health, life expectancy, shelter, etc. If, however, one's Trump card is "freedom" then one may take a long walk in the woods and just not come back...
"Governed," to the corporatist, is to be forever infantilized. Might as well be asking, "Why MUST you always need mommy around?"
That's the frame. And that's why it's stupid.
And there we have it. State morality.
Personally, I wasnt raised by the state, nor did I socialize with bureaucrats and politicians in my formative years. We have tried law, compulsion, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and statism of various kinds, but the result is nothing to be proud of.
It is interesting though to poke at this sentiment: Why must you be governed? I have manners and conscience, which are constant and impregnable, you clearly do not. Isn't this self-righteous "I", reflected in the social, the kernel of all "us" vs "them" mentalities? No doubt many of the rioters that attacked the Capitol believe they don't need to be governed, that they have manners and consciences, and were doing only what was necessary to protect themselves from the corrupt "other" and its "state morality". Sweep them back in time and they are a tribe of Plains Indians or Vikings, fully equipped with manners, consciences, and compassion (for their own), securing and protecting their interests; the torture, rape, and terror only a different level of necessity. We may even turn NOS's thesis on its head and say those who say they don't need to be governed, demonstrate the need for governance most as their projection on themselves of a false exception proves most pointedly the need for common rules. Of course, I don't need to be governed, I am of divine moral purity and have no need for state morality; it is you, the plebs, the evil ones, who require external constraints...
Please remember this line the next time you try to pull your "law and order" stuff. Not so much "defund the police" as just get rid of them completely. It'll be fine, really. :lol:
Thats an odd projection, especially since I have already admitted that I do not believe people actually need or want to be governed, that they wish only for others to be governed. The answers to the question have confirmed my suspicions. You keep mentioning the violence of aboriginals and Vikings, for instance, which serves as a good reminder that people need states to protect them the barbarians at the gates. Its invariably someone else who needs to be governed.
I have also explicitly assumed people here are adults, that they have fully developed moralities, so much so that I wager their professed hostility to anothers property is fake.
What is a "fully developed morality" and where does it come from under your view? Do you see it as present in most human adults in roughly equal proportion regardless of historical, cultural and political context? Or what are you trying to say? Please elaborate.
I assume that adults have some semblance of right and wrong which they develop as they age.
I'll repeat the question:
What is a "fully developed morality" and where does it come from under your view? Do you see it as present in most human adults in roughly equal proportion regardless of historical, cultural and political context?
If you can't answer this, you have no basis for anything you've said here.
A fully developed morality is a set of principles of conduct and behavior. It develops as one ages. Yes.
Again, you are saying nothing. Obviously morality pertains to conduct and behaviour and develops with age.
Here's the question:
Quoting Baden
Address the role of social, political and historical context re morality. Address its origin.
Eh, its the same nonsense dressed up in different clothes. Government bad. Individual good. Statism. Fruits of ones labor. Taxes. :yawn:
All you have to do is look at the results: voting for and defending the likes of Donald Trump. The rest is just elaborate rationalizations.
I wish. There's not even that. So far, utterly devoid of developed arguments. Says stuff, doesn't know what he's saying, can't back it up. Two-dimensionally political from every angle. That's why his threads are generally a waste of time.
Well you only say this because youre a statist, blinded by statist indoctrination.
Statism. Thats the real enemy.
There I just summed up this thread. And every one of his threads. One-trick pony.
And here you both are, wasting your time, in everyone of my threads. I just want to talk about this stuff. Why are you both here?
NOS was brought up in a state all his life, enjoyed all the benefits, but somehow managed to avoid getting one of those "state moralities" that he says we have. He seems to consider his non-state morality to be one of those things you can just refuse to define and whose origins require no theory or explanation. And in the same breath claims:
Quoting NOS4A2
The evidence suggests otherwise. But we'll try again for the third time.
Quoting Baden
This isnt an interview. Ive expressed my views and you can shit on them all you want. If you wish to speak in the topic Im all ears.
If you're unable to answer pertinent questions on a thread you started, don't start the thread. Anyhow, I'm out and will leave moderation to others.
Quoting NOS4A2
:up:
True, but answered so badly as to be completely meaningless. It appears as though you cannot answer the questions. That's fine of course, but it looks rather silly to pretend that you can answer meaningfully or reasonably.
Quoting Baden
Quoting Baden
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting Baden
Quoting NOS4A2
Quoting Baden
Quoting NOS4A2
:lol:
Heres how it works. You write a long clarification of misrepresented views like this:
You find a clausenot even a full sentence or argumentquote it out of context and shift focus so people like praxis and Xtrix have something to play with because they cannot offer much else. Sophistry doesnt work on everyone, unfortunately.
Even to simply point out theorys, like Kohlberg's theory of moral development, or more contemporary theories like moral foundations theory, would be a more meaningful response to the question than, and I quote, A fully developed morality is a set of principles of conduct and behavior. It develops as one ages.
And no, this isnt an interview, but I like to think that were at least marginally more interested in truth seeking than we are in playing stupid games.
Are you dreaming of the kind of world Marx thought we were headed toward? No governments? We're just not ready for that yet. All attempts so far to build communist nations failed disastrously.
Quoting Saul Alinsky (19091972) in 1971
Goes well with this and this, too.
I would prefer a government that doesnt operate as a criminal organization, a monopoly, and an anti-social institution.
I think Marx felt the same way.
"The long-term goal of world communism is an unlimited worldwide communist society that is classless, (lacking any exploitation of man by man), moneyless, (lacking a need for currency to regulate human behavior), and stateless, (lacking any violent compulsion of man by man)"
-- Wikipedia
So did many great thinkers. But he proposed achieving such ends through statist means. Thats why it has never worked, and we see that communist states are some of the most totalitarian in history.
Exactly. Were there non-statist means to achieve the non-state that you had in mind?
The prevalence and ubiquity of an institution is due to the state of mind that prevails towards it, the set of ideas in which men tend think about it. We only need to stop thinking in statist terms and the rest will follow.
I see. I'm not holding my breath.
I'm not convinced communism is realistic or feasible in general, at least not as the political philosophers mused, perhaps, in some respects, going all the way back to Plato's "Republic".
In small communities like kibbutzes, sure.
Yet, communism (again, like the philosophers mused) requires a kind of homogeneity or participation, which might explain why it has consistently failed in large communities.
The philosophers thought in terms of flattened class structure, proletariat rule, all that.
Supposed communist countries tend to become something else, something that (to me anyway) is a far cry from what the philosophers envisioned.
I think youre right on that one, and well said. It might be feasible if there is some degree of voluntary participation. But wherever Engels and Lenin proposed that the state would whither away has proven the opposite. It has only grown in power, and in inverse proportion to social power.
Lenin was right about the state as an apparatus of coercion, and noted its evil and exploitation; he was right that a state is unnecessary in a moral man; but his socialism as a necessary state of transition between capitalism and communism has proven worse than what came before it. People cannot be coerced towards a moral code, especially if you elect your revolution upon the skeleton of authoritarian institutions, where its essential functions of exploitation, control, and confiscation remain.
The communists of today still see the state as the apparatus that will emancipate the proletariat and help usher in communism, a la Lenin. We can call it state socialism or state capitalism, but its always state intervention on a totalitarian scale. In a way, it is what they imagined.
I think the founders of the US would have agreed for the most part. Their goal was to leave government some distance from the average person's life.
Their vision didn't work in the end though, due to the massive immorality of slavery. As I said, as a species, we're not ready to live without states.
Figured it be refreshing to post something from someone who knows what their talking about.
How much is the state involved in your day-to-day?
Pretty pervasively.
Do you require their presence?
Yes. I'm a healthcare worker. Without the massive load of regulations and financial support for healthcare, my profession wouldn't exist.
So they are not actually present or involved in your day-to-day.
Present as in Biden texting me about stuff? No?
Yes. You can operate in your day-to-day without some authority telling you what to do.
No. One of the main ways the US government controls healthcare is by Medicare funding. Few hospitals in America could run without it. In order to secure those funds, every hospital is careful to follow CMS rules, and JCAHO requirements. I acknowledge their authority to intimately guide my actions, and as a result, I am licensed.
You follow their rules for funding, not because you require an authority to govern your life. Presumably you would follow the rules according to any source of funding, not just state funding?
A fine example of magic thinking. Or it is magic not thinking?
How so?
Good question! What follows from not thinking in terms of the state?
If you lost your faith in religion would you still go to church?
If you lost your faith in the state wouldn't you still live in the state? It's institutions, its laws, its power would remain as they are.
Im not so sure about that. The Catholic Church, once the most dominant influence in the west, has no such power. Centuries of reformation is all it took.
So is your argument that "we only need to stop thinking in statist terms and the rest will follow" in a few centuries of "reformation"?
Sure. If you have a better idea Im all ears.
I require the funding, so I follow the rules, plus following the rules saves lives.
There isn't any source of funding other than the government, not that could do what Medicare does.
A better idea than thinking that not thinking in statist terms will lead to a "reformation" in a few centuries that will do away with the state?
Well since you are convinced we should do away with the state, thinking in terms of how to do away with it and what to replace it with. I dont see how you could do the former without thinking in terms of the state, which is not the same as your misguided, myoptic, caricature of the state, and the latter cannot be accomplished by replacing people as they are with people as you want them to be.
You position reminds me of that of a privledged child who wishes mommy and daddy would just go away so he could do whatever he wants.
Your position sounds like that of a person who can't think through an issue.
If one thinks through an issue it should be apparent that despite the restrictions imposed by the state we enjoy many benefits that most would not be willing to give up.
His question is whether people need state governance in order to enjoy those things. Marx said ultimately, no. What do you say?
Historically, hospitals have been funded from many sources, much of which were not from the government.
Im not convinced we should do without the state. Im only convinced the state should not operate like a criminal organization.
Your position reminds me of the happy slave myth.
Which lives would you like to stop saving so we can go back to historic practices?
I was speaking of funding, not practices. I assume that had you worked in one of those places you wouldnt require a public authority to govern your day-to-day.
NOS has faith in what he calls a
Quoting NOS4A2
If all or even most people were self-governing then there would be no need for governments. Do you share his faith?
You didnt develop any ideas, principles, and corresponding behaviors as you grew up? How do you survive?
So is it that you are not opposed to statism but rather to particular practices of the state?
Quoting NOS4A2
I have not stated a position. I recognize that we enjoy certain benefits being citizens of a state, but do not accept your view that citizens are slaves.
American healthcare, as we know it today, wouldn't be possible without Medicare funding.
You want to go back to 1960s funding, but keep the same level of care? I don't think that's going to work.
I won't live to see it, but I heartily commend those whose optimism creates such bold visions of what we could be.
I did, but did so within a state that promoted equality and the values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is evident that not everyone in this state abides by these principles, at least when it comes to how they treat others.
Im opposed to both, though I have always admitted my own statism.
Slaves had certain benefits. Their master would feed and house them, for example.
And there is not one single value the that it hasnt violated. It also promotes war, racism, brigandage, robbery, you name it.
Are we to conclude from this that whatever your hope for the future may be, you recognize the need for the state today?
I didnt say I want to go back to any sort of funding, only pointing out government funding isnt required for healthcare.
Sure.
Quoting NOS4A2
I just told you it is. Without Medicare, most US hospitals would have to close their doors.
They do. But those who are not slaves often, but not always, enjoy greater benefits. In any case, it does follow that being a citizen is to be a slave.
And I just disagreed with you for the reasons I stated.
I don't think you're particularly well informed on the issue, then.
Are you claiming that without the state these things would not occur?
No, Im just wondering if you developed ideas, principles, and corresponding behaviors in a state that promotes war, slavery, bigotry, imperialism, you name it.
Its a point of fact that government was not required for healthcare, only that it has developed a monopoly on it.
Yes, the United States. But since you agree that these things would occur even without the state, and that you are not convinced we should not do without the state, then your argument seems to be not that we should not think in statist terms but that the state has a legitimate role and we should think of ways to improve it.
Authority of any kind has to prove its legitimacy, especially state authority. It hasnt. So I dont think it has a legitimate role, nor do I think they can be improved. I do think we should stop thinking in statist terms.
The human species hasn't ever had the kind of healthcare we have now. It's fairly expensive stuff. Do you know of a case where contemporary, state of the art healthcare is paid for entirely privately?
And yet you say that we should not do without the state. Does this mean you accept that it should have a role, albeit illegitimate?
We have private healthcare where I live. Meanwhile, our public healthcare system is collapsing.
I think abolishing the state is a bad idea so long so long as people believe the state is required to govern their affairs.
There's a private hospital? A private ICU? Privately paid heart surgery? If so, all your neighbors are deeply in debt, which is different kind of slavery.
Or it's not as privately funded as you think.
Im only aware of private clinics, with laws varying across provinces. Provincial laws here prohibit staying overnight in a private clinic, for example, limiting access to healthcare. Meanwhile public emergency rooms are shutting their doors, unable to hire nurses and doctors, pushing back surgeries, and so on, putting entire communities at risk.
If a person has a stroke, heart attack, is severely injured in some way, etc., they'll need advanced care that probably wouldn't be available to the community if private insurance is the only source of funds.
It's a problem we've never had to deal with before. If we took the role of funder and administrator away from the government, we'd have to give it to some other entity who would be pretty much identical to the government.
The same this happening here. It's a labor shortage.
Im not so sure about that. If the monopoly on healthcare were to fall, Im sure men could devise some other scheme that doesnt involve them becoming state agents.
The shortage here is entirely state manufactured. Around 2,500 health-care employees have been fired around the province for refusing to get vaccinated, for example. This was during a time when it was all hands on deck, so to speak, the system already overwhelmed. Its no wonder people dont want to work there anymore. At any rate, so-called universal healthcare loses its wring when very few can access it.
Sounds like the state by some other name. This isn't the only issue where centralized control is important. Telecommunications, highways, community owned forests, defense, etc. Anytime an issue comes up that effects everyone, you're going to need something like a state. States allowed us to become what we are now.
It's either go backwards or forge ahead into the unknown. I have a feeling climate change is going to make that decision for us.
Quoting NOS4A2
It's partly state manufactured here in that the way the US addressed the pandemic turned the healthcare system upside down. Staff doesn't have to hang around and take abuse for low wages now. The pandemic sort of emancipated healthcare workers. Vaccination wasn't the issue here because people could get religious exemptions.
Quoting NOS4A2
A man in the UK recently died because he couldn't get an appointment with an ENT for an ear infection. He developed a brain abscess. It was partly related to their tele-health system, but it can also take a year or two to get a non-emergent appt. with an ENT in the UK. I'm actually a little horrified at how badly state-run healthcare can be, like the doctors in the UK who decided that women don't need pain meds for birth. Some women got suicidal after delivering. :grimace:
You can't legislate compassion.