The Basic Problem of Democracy (1919)

There's this idea that "because things have been playing out in a way, they'll keep being played out this way", despite the fact the increased means of production (call it "technology") change things fundamentally all the time.

It's very expensive to maintain the military. It's only possible nowadays as governments can impose taxation and due to the currency monopoly they can print as much money as they want to fund that sort of self-preserving activity, which is technically called "debt spending".

As decentralization spreads over, the management costs of taxation skyrocket, and the currency monopoly disappears. Without that governments can't fund their own activities. Which means they'll shrink progressively. As time goes by, they'll start failing at providing law and order, and private companies start providing protection, insurance and private arbitration services to people. Further down the road those companies in their aggregate will start protecting people from the state itself. The state then either becomes a company which some people voluntarily contract services from, or it vanishes.

I'm pretty sure someone would say that the "evil companies" would then merge and become another government, but that's only if that person missed the whole point: in the long term centralization is not economically viable, and in a non-regulated free market environment monopolies are not really possible. As those companies are voluntarily contracted by people, an attempt to fight their customers would be catastrophic as they'd unrecoverably lose their business to competitors.

Regarding the budget question - could we still vote on important issues and leave the rest up to the bureaucracy? i.e. The people have spoken. Make it so... If there is a major budgetary issue with a given decision, we vote on where to get the money...

Even if direct democracy wouldn't work officially - I think it would be interesting if there were a way to collect the general populations opinion on a matter at any given time and make it known. I'm surprised Facebook/Google hasn't done something like this yet. I bet you they would if some startup came along and tried to market an app like this.

See, no matter what people believe, which gods they pray for, what ideologies they follow and how they manage their lives, they inevitably increase the means of production. Even if a given person is dumb and useless, that person would still prefer cheaper goods to more expensive ones, therefore generating economic signals for investments in production improvements.

Increased means of production mean lower transaction costs. Lower transaction costs generate decentralization. Decentralization progressively make centralized regimes not viable.

[...]

As a result, democracy is merely one variety of bourgeois dictatorship, its fictitious political freedoms and democratic guarantees are a smokescreen designed to conceal its true identity. " [1]

In his "constructive part" [2] he carefully avoids talking about assemblies or votes. It is clear he does not know really how to solve conflicts and just hope none will arise.

He also mentions the need of an army to have a unity of command, but just specifies this must be decided quickly, without giving clear advice on how to do that without dreaded centralization nor democracy.

[1] http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/general.htm

[2] http://www.nestormakhno.info/english/newplatform/constructiv...

Let me help you a bit by over-simplyfing the logic:

- If I state an argument to you, it can either be true, false or indeterminate. No matter what argument you make to me in that regard, you'd end up agreeing with that argument, which means that specific argument is "a priori". Moreover, you can only reach a conclusion about my argument by being you, which means you need to have control over your own thoughts to achieve that conclusion (self-ownership)

- If we define ethics as the minimal set of rules that we agree upon in order to maintain our voluntarily stable pacific relationships over time and space, the only possible way we can achieve those ethics is through an argumentative process (I invite you to think of a refutation of that statement)

- Self-ownership can't be maintained (therefore invalidating the time and space requirement) without some means (food, water, shelter, etc). Those means are scarce, and can only be used by a single person at a time. So if we define property as something that is scarce (therefore delimitable) and is being used (therefore modified and protected), private property is a necessary requirement for sustaining self-ownership.

- In conclusion: A minimal system of ethics require arguments to be produced. Arguments require self-ownership to be produced. Self-ownership require private property to be sustained. Therefore if the aim is to achieve a minimal system of ethics that allow for the stable and pacific co-existence of individuals over time and space, the agreement on private property is required -- and that itself constitutes the minimal ethical.

That said, it doesn't mean that you'll agree with anything I exposed. By not agreeing, however, you are implicitly agreeing (by stating an argument). The moment you generate an argument, by the means of logic, you're agreeing on the minimal ethics of private property (although you may not be acting in alignment with that ethics).