[extropy-chat] Why I am No Longer a Libertarian Either...

[Robert Lindauer]

On Jul 25, 2005, at 7:52 PM, The Avantguardian wrote:

> Where in "establish
> justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the
> common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty"
> is there any mention of screwing the poor?

It's implied.  Google:/SLAVERY.  The blessings of liberty were supposed 
to be secured for "our posterity" - not that of the poor dominated 
underclass that contributed the labor and suffering to make America the 
great country it is today.

>  If it has
> become a system for screwing the poor, it is only
> because we either lack the clarity of our forefathers
> or delibrately thwart their vision, all the while
> paying lip service to their memories.

Certainly -some- people deliberately thwart the vision of the founding 
"fathers".  I'm not actually clear on whether or not any of them 
thought slavery was wrong, though.  There is, however, a continuous 
class of land-owning wealthy people in the United States who despite 
not having slaves have managed to surround themselves with the same 
level of comfort and security of their power structure as when they 
did.  They have, instead of literal slaves, effectively slaves.  
They're called the middle class.  The ones that live in tract houses 
that they "own" by paying rent to "the banks", that drive to work in 
cars that they're paying "the banks" for, that work for companies owned 
mostly by "the banks", that were educated in the "learn to work 
program" of the new deal.  "You are a slave neo, kept in a prison you 
can't see or touch or feel, a prison for your mind.  Free your mind!"

Since I've been meaning to write this obvious thing down -

Sometime ago, around the time of the Romans, the wealthy people of Rome 
realized that it was important to be able to control the masses without 
jeopardizing one's own power structure.  For this purpose were created 
the circuses and free bread was given to the mobs of angry people that 
roamed the streets of Rome because they had nowhere to go and blamed, 
rightly, the Government for it.  The Government of the time responded 
by taking the patriarchal role and giving them bread to eat and tickets 
to the circus so that they'd have someplace other than the Senate to 
go.  It was crude, but effective.  It gave smart people ideas about how 
it could be improved.

As time went on, a more scientific approach was taken by the wealthy 
people of the enlightenment who realized that a certain amount of 
intelligence was required to deal with this new world in a certain 
class of the underprivileged and so they implemented social sciences 
and social welfare programs in order to raise some of their herds from 
serfdom to merchant, military, engineer and artisan classes.  A certain 
further segment was required to provide education for them.  They 
invented, therefore, social sciences dedicated to the study of mankind 
in the name of "objective science" - but the pragmatic value of it 
remains inestimable.  The results are us - the people who are products 
of those experimental educational methods by which people were taught 
to perform their tasks well at the behest of their masters, and only a 
few were taught to be masters, and even fewer were taught how the 
system works to their advantage.  This is why, for instance, there is a 
considerable amount of the population that is capable of engineering a 
steel truss system capable of supporting a tank over an arbitrarily 
sized river and/or program computers while those same people often 
can't explain how their own government and economic systems -work-, 
much less give a cogent explanation for why the Americans decided a 
revolutionary war was a better idea than living under British rule.  We 
are very good at sitting behind desks and being told what to do ("F*ck 
you, I won't do what you tell me!") because from age 5 this is what we 
were taught to do.  Few of us have any idea what it would take to 
foment a revolution.

This systemic respect for established but arbitrary orders is 
invaluable for our modern society - it is, in a sense, its very fabric. 
  Without it our military-backed capitalist oligarchy would grind to a 
halt because people would probably decide to go to the 
beach/river/lake/mountain, get stoned and have some sex ... if they 
thought about it for 20 minutes objectively.  I know that for myself, 
in those few moments of sweet clarity that I get, I tend to just wander 
down to the coast...  REALLY - would you rather sit at your desk for 20 
more minutes and put out those TPS reports or would you rather go 
swimming?

Such thinking is not conspiracy theory - nobody needs to consciously 
say "hey, let's really screw the poor and form a secret society to do 
it"  (although I am somewhat convinced that this literally has 
happened).  Instead, the needs of the society that is created by the 
capitalist alienation of means of survival from the producers of those 
means (which is, strictly speaking, theft) are simply there and the 
capitalist acting rationally in (usually) his best interests pays 
people to be the way he needs them to be to make the game work for him. 
  He doesn't reward people for figuring out how to be freer, happier, 
healthier and wiser.  He pays them to make sure that everybody shows up 
to work on time and produces 10,000 cogs/hour, that the salespeople 
sell them, that the marketing people advertise them, etc.  The menial 
tasks we force ourselves to "enjoy" in order to simply not die of 
boredom.  The capitalist, in addition to hiring salespeople, also hires 
economists so he can predict which things would be best to alienate 
from people next (like fresh water in Los Angeles...), teachers to 
teach his laborers how to work, city planners to make sure they can get 
there on time, etc.  Does anyone REALLY believe that we'd have 8-lane 
freeways in Los Angeles if this weren't capitalism?  Would anyone drive 
from San Bernardino to Venice at 6:30 in the morning and come back at 
6:30 in the evening if they didn't HAVE TO?

Meanwhile, the good capitalist has a little martini lunch and secretary 
mid-afternoon snack before going home to his 2.5 million dollar house 
in Bel Air or his apartment on the Park for a little swim and evening 
cocktails.  E.g. get high, go swimming, if you're lucky, have sex.    
He thinks lovingly of his workers and checks in every couple of hours 
to make sure they're still slaving away.  "Everything's okay here, 
boss."


>
> I had never heard of Kelo before but that sounds as
> horrible as the "whistle-blower" clauses in the USA
> PATRIOT Act. How did the legislature get so out of
> hand?

It was the courts, truly sad.

>> Nope. Government protects the rich and powerful
>> against the market. The
>> rich are free in a free market to TRY to take the
>> poor's last penny,
>> but without government, they have no way to enforce
>> such a goal, any
>> more than the masses can take what the rich already
>> have.
>
> But Mike, without government, the rich ARE the
> government. Before the King came, the Feudal Lords
> still screwed their peasants. After the King came, at
> least the Feudal Lords got screwed too albeit the
> peasants got screwed by both. Hell I am glad Paris
> Hilton has to worry about paying her taxes, because if
> not for that, she wouldn't have to worry about paying
> for anything, especially DVDs of herself. ;)


Here, I think, is where the hopelessness sets in.  But it's not so.  
You have to remember that the wealth of the wealthy is derived from the 
political-economic system designed to support it.  When the system goes 
away, so does the ability to maintain wealth.  Let's put it very 
plainly - if there were no official currency of the united states 
backed by american military might and the federal reserve system and 
someone offered to buy a piece of land from you for $5,000,000,000 in 
federal reserve notes would you sell it to them?  So what good is the 
power of the wealthy without the ability to sustain it militarily.


The point is well-taken that BEFORE there was an educated middle class, 
the very idea of becoming independent of one's kind/duke/lord was 
unthinkable.  They'd simply hunt you down and kill you if you tried to 
leave and they didn't want you to.  But in our modern society, hunting 
people down for their political views is considered illegal (not that 
it doesn't happen, google://David Kelly).  So the concession made by 
the wealthy in order to retain their wealth and have slightly more 
intelligent people is that they get to think of themselves as free.  
("If you think you're free, try walking into the local deli and pissing 
on the corned beef").  Or, indeed, sleeping all night in a publicly 
owned park, picking publicly owned flowers, showering in your White 
House.

But with people sufficiently educated to realize that they're paying 
rent to someone because their ancestor stole the land first (you don't 
think the United States PAID the Native Americans, do you?  You don't 
think the Gauls paid the Romans, do you?, you don't think that Exxon, 
Citigroup, Bank of America and GM got their money by playing nice, do 
you?) and then effectively enslaved them and their families for 
generations it -should- become somewhat easier to  at least awaken the 
notion that it is possible to convince enough people of the unfairness 
of the situation.  This was the beginning of the labor movement which 
is, as you can see, a consequence of there being a capitalist movement. 
  If you need intelligent serfs, some of them are going to get uppity.  
The labor movement is, in fact, the antithesis of industrial 
capitalism, caused by it and perpetuated by it.  As long as there is 
capitalism, there will be the labor movement.  It is, of course, in the 
best interests of capitalism to get rid of the labor movement as much 
as possible and so it is important for capitalist apologists to 
denounce the labor movement at every step.  You could almost hear the 
giggles in the NY Times coverage of the Union break-up today.    But 
it's not just the Times, it goes all the way back to high school, when 
the good christians conquered North America for the sake of truth, 
justice and Superman.

Back to the topic - Libertarianism holds a kind of promise - the 
idealistic hope of freedom.   It's a great idea - a free society where 
people can do what they like as long as they don't hurt other people.   
  But one should note that in the Libertarian utopias, capitalism, 
private property and military remain core values - effectively removing 
any genuine strength from the party qua opposition movement.  In the 
end, libertarianism is a joke - for people duped into following their 
idealistic side, they pay their $25 dues and think they're doing 
something about improving the state of our government while watching 
the shock-and-awe on Fox News.    Libertarianism is like Amway - a 
convincing salesperson can sell it to you, but in the end the promise 
far exceeds the reality.

Robbie Lindauer
(shameless plug) thetip.org