"We need for Government to stop protecting the bankers"
Tereza, what is your opinion about the criticism of money lending? Some people say it is all bad, that that banking practice ought not to be allowed.
A second thing, more like a comment. Subsistence economies sounds bad to me. I think that's because there is an element of tragedy and looming disaster, like the story of the Messenians losing against the Spartans. I know that economics is the dismal science, but this idea of "different economies" is good, it creates hope. It's almost not "economics."
Part of the problem is the general demoralization caused by monocrop central planning, where the only product is debt. But people finding a way to live and produce according to their values is much better: as people experience by themselves what works and what does not work, each on his own way, their values become reinforced or corrected in a natural and harmonious way. That's the good times.
Right now the world looks like Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan: There are no values or prosperity or hope.
Great questions, CAR23! Let me start with debt, which is something Mathew and I talked about in our 3-hr phone conversation but not this one. I think mortgage debt is a brilliant invention but it serves the wrong purpose. You're born into a family who feeds and shelters you for a couple of decades while another generation teaches you and has built the house and infrastructure where you live.
That incurs a debt, but not to the bankers. You shouldn't be able to claim a house, live in it, and give nothing back. You owe it to the previous generation to enable them to live in comfort and dignity, and to pass on the gift in a better form to the next generation. So my system calibrates that debt and distributes it as a monthly dividend to every person in the community, a way of buying your goods and services. So you have a myriad of ways to repay that debt and a myriad of people to provide it to.
Subsistence economies have gotten a bad rap but it really just means an economy where people can provide their basic needs for themselves. Food is something we need 2-3X a day (personally, I like fourth breakfast in the hobbit tradition). So I think everyone should be involved in some way in food production, with neighborhoods having land outside the city where they share responsibility for crops and animal husbandry, rather than 'illegal' immigrants who our lives depend on while we pretend they're cheating us.
As an anarchist I say absolutely nothing regarding a "president".
Anarchism is the big smear because it admits this simple fact: we don't need a state to govern free people. In fact the only ones who truly need such a entity are the ruling class, and they exist in every state regardless of ideological forms.
Thanks for watching this, Art, and catching my reference to your comment. I'll check out the Iain Davis article. What I say is that in a well-designed system, it doesn't matter who the leaders are because you've set it up so any harm by a bad leader is temporary and reparable, while any gains by a good leader are perpetuated and replicable.
So if the commonwealth has the ability to generate dollars to buy out any land, resources, property, services or infrastructure within their borders, and transfer that into a debt to itself in its own currency, no one can permanently sell the rights to anything. They would be foolish to, because it could be bought back at a price set by the commonwealth.
And therefore, as you point out, there's no reason to have leaders. I would see people being voluntary members of committees in areas of their interest. Decisions would be pushed down to the lowest possible level and put to a vote.
Yes scale is very important (human scale) in order to have rules without rulers.
Iain Davis did a series on democracy which would comport with the notion of random jury structures whereby laws are determined through a random selection of jurors (nor judge) that approve or disapprove of laws based on a case. I think you've mentioned having read David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything which mentions shared and temporary tribal leaders. This touches on some of what Davis covers. Davis's piece is worthwhile reading on this topic.
Thanks for sending this Davis article, Art. It clarifies something that's been confusing me. I write about Solon in my book and why he subverted the direct democracy, aka anarchy, through representative democracy. But people have been mentioning a random selection of assembly members, and this clarifies that was after Solon.
He makes a lot of really important points. It's interesting that jury selection now includes a lecture that even if you disagree with a law, when you see its application, you must decide based on the law and not change it.
I completely agree with you that scale matters. When he talks about applying this system to national laws, he loses me. I also looked to see what he defined as inalienable rights. He refers to the UNDHR, which I've argued are consumer rights that require someone else to produce without owning the product of their own labor. I say that there's only one positive human right--to belong to a community with access to land. Everything else is the right to be free from.
"I say that there's only one positive human right--to belong to a community with access to land. Everything else is the right to be free from."
Agree.
I like the idea of the jury process, rotation and random with no judge to determine by cases whether a law should stand or not. This would be the means to establishing rules.
I found that an intriguing idea too and was surprised I'd never heard of it that way. Under the original Articles of Confederation, disputes between States were decided by a random selection from the ones not involved, so 3 out of the remaining 8 perhaps. So there couldn't be agreements ahead of time to side with one or the other.
But I also liked the idea presented in The Dawn of Everything from indigenous societies where whole clans would offer gifts and make reparations for a wrong done by one of their members, and then they would deal with that member. If the harm is done in a different 30M-person region, that's the group that would make reparations, or one 300K-person commonwealth to another. The penalty for not making reparations (and making sure it couldn't happen again) might be breaking off trade or closing borders or something decided by the larger body. So it puts the responsibility at the smallest level to deal with their own.
Great ideas. I think the Constitutional Convention is rightly described as a coup which undermined the Articles of Confederation. We were left with an oligarchical system of elite control. Add this the overwhelming push to create technocracy and you have what we've got now.
In terms of anarchism I highly recommend following the work on Winter Oak if you're not already. https://winteroak.org.uk/
That was a very interesting conversation.
"We need for Government to stop protecting the bankers"
Tereza, what is your opinion about the criticism of money lending? Some people say it is all bad, that that banking practice ought not to be allowed.
A second thing, more like a comment. Subsistence economies sounds bad to me. I think that's because there is an element of tragedy and looming disaster, like the story of the Messenians losing against the Spartans. I know that economics is the dismal science, but this idea of "different economies" is good, it creates hope. It's almost not "economics."
Part of the problem is the general demoralization caused by monocrop central planning, where the only product is debt. But people finding a way to live and produce according to their values is much better: as people experience by themselves what works and what does not work, each on his own way, their values become reinforced or corrected in a natural and harmonious way. That's the good times.
Right now the world looks like Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan: There are no values or prosperity or hope.
I think I'm interested in your book.
Great questions, CAR23! Let me start with debt, which is something Mathew and I talked about in our 3-hr phone conversation but not this one. I think mortgage debt is a brilliant invention but it serves the wrong purpose. You're born into a family who feeds and shelters you for a couple of decades while another generation teaches you and has built the house and infrastructure where you live.
That incurs a debt, but not to the bankers. You shouldn't be able to claim a house, live in it, and give nothing back. You owe it to the previous generation to enable them to live in comfort and dignity, and to pass on the gift in a better form to the next generation. So my system calibrates that debt and distributes it as a monthly dividend to every person in the community, a way of buying your goods and services. So you have a myriad of ways to repay that debt and a myriad of people to provide it to.
Subsistence economies have gotten a bad rap but it really just means an economy where people can provide their basic needs for themselves. Food is something we need 2-3X a day (personally, I like fourth breakfast in the hobbit tradition). So I think everyone should be involved in some way in food production, with neighborhoods having land outside the city where they share responsibility for crops and animal husbandry, rather than 'illegal' immigrants who our lives depend on while we pretend they're cheating us.
I agree.
Thank you for your answers.
As an anarchist I say absolutely nothing regarding a "president".
Anarchism is the big smear because it admits this simple fact: we don't need a state to govern free people. In fact the only ones who truly need such a entity are the ruling class, and they exist in every state regardless of ideological forms.
Thanks for watching this, Art, and catching my reference to your comment. I'll check out the Iain Davis article. What I say is that in a well-designed system, it doesn't matter who the leaders are because you've set it up so any harm by a bad leader is temporary and reparable, while any gains by a good leader are perpetuated and replicable.
So if the commonwealth has the ability to generate dollars to buy out any land, resources, property, services or infrastructure within their borders, and transfer that into a debt to itself in its own currency, no one can permanently sell the rights to anything. They would be foolish to, because it could be bought back at a price set by the commonwealth.
And therefore, as you point out, there's no reason to have leaders. I would see people being voluntary members of committees in areas of their interest. Decisions would be pushed down to the lowest possible level and put to a vote.
Yes scale is very important (human scale) in order to have rules without rulers.
Iain Davis did a series on democracy which would comport with the notion of random jury structures whereby laws are determined through a random selection of jurors (nor judge) that approve or disapprove of laws based on a case. I think you've mentioned having read David Graeber's The Dawn of Everything which mentions shared and temporary tribal leaders. This touches on some of what Davis covers. Davis's piece is worthwhile reading on this topic.
https://iaindavis.com/long-live-democracy/
Thanks for sending this Davis article, Art. It clarifies something that's been confusing me. I write about Solon in my book and why he subverted the direct democracy, aka anarchy, through representative democracy. But people have been mentioning a random selection of assembly members, and this clarifies that was after Solon.
He makes a lot of really important points. It's interesting that jury selection now includes a lecture that even if you disagree with a law, when you see its application, you must decide based on the law and not change it.
I completely agree with you that scale matters. When he talks about applying this system to national laws, he loses me. I also looked to see what he defined as inalienable rights. He refers to the UNDHR, which I've argued are consumer rights that require someone else to produce without owning the product of their own labor. I say that there's only one positive human right--to belong to a community with access to land. Everything else is the right to be free from.
"I say that there's only one positive human right--to belong to a community with access to land. Everything else is the right to be free from."
Agree.
I like the idea of the jury process, rotation and random with no judge to determine by cases whether a law should stand or not. This would be the means to establishing rules.
I found that an intriguing idea too and was surprised I'd never heard of it that way. Under the original Articles of Confederation, disputes between States were decided by a random selection from the ones not involved, so 3 out of the remaining 8 perhaps. So there couldn't be agreements ahead of time to side with one or the other.
But I also liked the idea presented in The Dawn of Everything from indigenous societies where whole clans would offer gifts and make reparations for a wrong done by one of their members, and then they would deal with that member. If the harm is done in a different 30M-person region, that's the group that would make reparations, or one 300K-person commonwealth to another. The penalty for not making reparations (and making sure it couldn't happen again) might be breaking off trade or closing borders or something decided by the larger body. So it puts the responsibility at the smallest level to deal with their own.
Great ideas. I think the Constitutional Convention is rightly described as a coup which undermined the Articles of Confederation. We were left with an oligarchical system of elite control. Add this the overwhelming push to create technocracy and you have what we've got now.
In terms of anarchism I highly recommend following the work on Winter Oak if you're not already. https://winteroak.org.uk/
Oh I got distracted by reading Walking with Goats, who's an excellent writer. I've tried to subscribe, I'll see if it works.
It sounds like you've already read my Constitution Convention Coup, but just in case we're just thinking alike: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-constitutional-convention-coup.
Looking forward to it!