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Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

ar.al

81–90 of 102 posts

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#81

The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top. That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized. The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional g…

The underlying issue is that while decentralization makes one more stable and less susceptible to unexpected crises in the long term, centralization is almost always stronger and more efficient in the short term. Diverse food supplies, separate cultures, multiple governments may be necessary for long term human survival, but historically, the monoculture gobbled those up as soon as it has the technology. That, and you could argue that for some problems, large scale cooperation is always going to be needed, and these problems could surface on the very, very long term; i.e., a decentralized world might be antifragile for most problems, but if a meteor hits the Earth, you'd wish it had been coordinated enough to colonize Mars.

The question is how we maintain decentralization even as all short-term goals push us towards monoculture, and without completely destroying the long-term benefits of large civilization (i.e., I'm not an anarcho-primitivist.) And the only answers I can think of are bizarre and science-fictional, but I suppose that doesn't mean they can't come true.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#82
post #76
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The factory-worker type who complains that his job moved to China, while he only buys the cheapest Chinese crap at Walmart, is not the future of the left. What about the poor Mexican farmer who couldn't make a profit because NAFTA stripped away tariffs of import and he now has little chance except to pay a smuggler to take him up north so he can wash toilets or pick cotton away from his family. Is he the future of…

The freedom of movement for capital without the freedom for movement of humans is the problem here—you seem to be indicating that without directly pointing at it.

Exactly. When corporations sell "globalization" they mean something other really than "we can all freely travel and be friends" unless "we" must means elites and other corporations.

Chomsky interestingly also predicted the influx of immigrants from Mexico after NAFTA years back: https://chomsky.info/secrets03/

For example he mentions:

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In addition, cheap US agricultural exports are expected to drive several million people off the land. That’s going to mean a substantial increase in the unemployed workforce in Mexico, which of course will drive down wages.

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I think there definitely was an influx of poor farmers being displaced looking for work. That didn't happen as an act of God or just randomly as it may seem. It was predicted and expected.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#83
post #76
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The factory-worker type who complains that his job moved to China, while he only buys the cheapest Chinese crap at Walmart, is not the future of the left. What about the poor Mexican farmer who couldn't make a profit because NAFTA stripped away tariffs of import and he now has little chance except to pay a smuggler to take him up north so he can wash toilets or pick cotton away from his family. Is he the future of…

The freedom of movement for capital without the freedom for movement of humans is the problem here—you seem to be indicating that without directly pointing at it.

Neoliberal globalization is precisely the free movement of capital and goods and services to exploit opportunities created by restrictions on the movement of people (whether as consumers or as labor).

Movement of people (labor) at the behest of capital (but not freely on their own)—e.g., various employer-sponsored work visas—is often part of that.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#84
post #5

We're really moving into the strange cyberpunk dystopian future when CEOs start writing bizarre manifestos about how they want to reshape the world like this. Really just a few years out from private corporate armies I think (Zuckerberg already has a small private army protecting him with heavy weaponry) and cyber wars and espionage and open defiance of governments. Like we all knew this was an option of where we wer…

>Really just a few years out from private corporate armies

This has been a thing for over a decade now. Blackwater/Xe/Academi. The guy who founded this company (and got the US kicked out of Iraq), is our Education Secretary's brother. He is being consulted to provide extra security for Trump outside of the Secret Service.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#85
post #11

I made a few tangential points regard globalization in a similar discussion. Basically wondering how globalization which was a very right wing corporatist idea (Sanders calls it a Koch brothers proposal here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 basically) became a favorite of the new left. And conversely anti-globalization was a top issue for the left along with TPP, NAFTA and other such stuff. I think it is r…

Ideas very similar to globalization have a long history in socialist thought. L'Internationale is a left-wing anthem for a reason. See also the conservative conspiracy theories about the New World Order. I'm not sure it's even true that the left wing anti-globalization movement is actually smaller rather than better dealt with at events like the G20 and/or perhaps less reported on.

>Ideas very similar to globalization have a long history in socialist thought.

Yes, it's important to note that Hitler started out as a Socialist, at the dawn of Socialist thought. He differed with them on the idea of globalization and multiculturalism. As it turns out that's a pretty huge ideological split, and in Hitler's case, it became a violent one. He basically said: "screw you guys, I'm going to start my own Socialist Party - with blackjack, and hookers. And racial purity, global war, and genocide."

That's why you get rightwingers accusing the Left of being "Nazis" because the "Z" in the NAZI acronym stood for the German word for Socialism.

As the Nazis began to gain ground in Germany; they used propaganda tools to tell Germans what they wanted to hear: "you're a 'master race', and all others are inferior", and "We'll get rid of these foreign influences, and degenerates of other races, who are the cause of all your problems!"

At the time, REAL socialists ran counter protests, and would even riot at Nazi meetings and demonstrations, and there was a lot of civil violence over this issue. (Which is today, romanticized heavily by the far-left, anarchist, and 'antifa' movements). In their minds, WWII was a large-scale playing out of this conflict, between Soviet Socialists, and German Nazis, who lost. The result was the bombing of much of Europe (and especially Berlin) to Rubble. Millions dead.

The rise of America's free-enterprise system was seen as a repudiation of these two extremes of thought (Socialism vs Nazism). And became an extreme viewpoint all it's own. It became what the Socialists, and Nazis were rebelling against, and now we're repeating the whole thing all over again.

I think anyone who thinks they are "left wing" AND anti-globalist, is ignorant of history, and quite confused. Part of that is due to the anti-globalist propaganda, which mostly uses the argument: "these foreigners are causing all your problems - let's build a wall and get rid of them". (can't really argue for 'racial superiority'; because it's so easily disproven - very nearly nobody who thinks they're "Aryan" can actually trace their ancestry back long enough to make a case that they're not a mongrel just like the rest of us - the only way they can accept this ideology is to be in denial).

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#86
post #62
post #9

Preface: I might be too influenced by Adam Curtis. But what I find most interesting about this reply/rant, is that it - like most of left, always seems to envision a world without power. And you can't confront entrenched power, without seizing power, and using it to transform society.

As soon as I saw it was Aral, I knew the direction that the article was headed. He has good intentions, but humans are naturally hierarchical - from the family upwards. Fighting against hierarchical power is a losing battle.

So authoritarianism is dictated by the "Law of Nature"?

Fuck that.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#87
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. Fundamentally, the problem is that people are not angels. The left recognizes, correctly, that the people in power - the leaders - are not angels. So the left wants them gone - wants there to be nobody in power. The problem is that the people who are not in power also are not angels. Left to themselves, a fair number of them will find ways to harm (economically or even physically) people around…

People might not be angels, but they aren't devils either. The way I see it, left doesn't want people to have power. So it limits politician's power. And then, the financial/corporate interest seize all powers, and use it as they will.

Funny thing is: corporations really don't have ANY power. If the government doesn't like a corporation, they can simply pull the corporate charter. Corporate personhood is a legal fiction, allowed by law. There are some tortured legal arguments that it becomes "personal property" which can not be deprived without due-process - and in practice, this simply is never done anymore.

But any legal fiction can be simply signed-away into non-existence. There is no technical reason this can't happen. In theory.

The problem is, there is no political will to ever actually do it, even when it's necessary. Our entire facade of legality rests on political willpower.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, analogy time. The bigger the banks, the more centralized the banks, the more fragile the banking system. Same for governments. Systemic risk increases as you increase the system's complexity, and you increase its complexity when you centralize it.

> You've buried an awful lot in that sentence without justifying any of it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity

Explain what's missing then.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#89
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As soon as I saw it was Aral, I knew the direction that the article was headed. He has good intentions, but humans are naturally hierarchical - from the family upwards. Fighting against hierarchical power is a losing battle.

So authoritarianism is dictated by the "Law of Nature"? Fuck that.

No. Just hierarchical structures inherently are easier to control. In other words, hierarchies have less communication overhead.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#90
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The factory-worker type who complains that his job moved to China, while he only buys the cheapest Chinese crap at Walmart, is not the future of the left. What about the poor Mexican farmer who couldn't make a profit because NAFTA stripped away tariffs of import and he now has little chance except to pay a smuggler to take him up north so he can wash toilets or pick cotton away from his family. Is he the future of…

> What about the poor Mexican farmer who couldn't make a profit because NAFTA stripped away tariffs of import and he now has little chance except to pay a smuggler to take him up north so he can wash toilets or pick cotton away from his family. Is he the future of the left. That's what welfare and unions are for. Free trade deals are, overall, better for everybody. The solution is education and retraining, not protec…

I'm having a difficult time squaring your comments here in this line with your comment elsewhere on the thread about Taleb's ideas of anti-fragility and complex systems. Are you making a normative argument about how these "well designed, functional governments" should behave? Because if you are I'm having a hard time parsing how these governments behaving this way would be sufficiently different from how we got here (manifested by Trump, Brexit, FN, AfD) which seems to have exposed the world to some pretty serious systemic risk. Forgive me if I sound obtuse.

> Globalization doesn't mean letting companies evade taxes. That's a problem that precisely can't be solved individually, and has to be solved on a global level. It can be solved, and is being solved, worldwide.

I don't see this as being true at all, and it seem at odds with your earlier point about things "that just can't effectively be solved by bloated entities." There's elements of what you are saying that I agree with (anti-fragility, industrial inertia leading to stagnant workforces, the importance of retraining/education), but on the whole it seems a little one-foot-in-one-foot-out (which may have been intentional, if you're making a subtle point about hedging strategies.)

Again, apologies if I sound obtuse.

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