Voluntarism

[prime]

Summarizing some debate from the Fediverse:

The only form of government that is in any way legitimate is one that exclusively defends natural rights.

1. The point of natural rights is that government is limited in what it can take from its citizens.

2. That alone is not enough; anarchy does not work; leadership is needed.

3. The simple answers are all wrong. We need more than just a big libertarian suburb.

1

Natural rights, expressed notably in the Bill of Rights, states that government is limited in depriving you of the rights that you have in nature without a good reason.

For example, getting convicted of a crime leads to the loss of rights; that is a good reason.

2

Anarchy does not work; societies evolved to have leadership because it is necessary to respond to foreign aggression, natural disasters, and opportunities (like the space program, from which many technologies emerged).

3

The libertarian/anarchist dream is that society exists as a suburb. Everyone has their own house, earns their own income, and resolves their own complaints.

This both denies the need for leadership and that the constant grinding burden of dealing with antisocial types will deplete society of its good people, who are outnumbered.

[prime]

If you mean something like "why doesn't it stop" or "how does it go on for so long" it's because it's based on need / dependency of people in order to keep their positions - best done by talking / corralling together.

The same as we could do at the bottom by talking to each other, forming friends, knowing we can do favours to coral and manipulate reality - they just have money as their focus which we don't have as strongly in any similar empire-building conversation or as investment in time etc to pay off somehow...

I tend to be really skeptical of any theory based on mass enlightenment, e.g. everyone wakes up tomorrow and is a Christian, humanitarian, or libertarian.

People do what rewards them more than other things, contingent on their knowledge.

This means that vast majority will take the shortest route to what they want today instead of what they need.

The idea of voluntarism -- that everyone just decides to be decent and talk it out -- is a type of fatalism. Namely, it will never happen, so it is a comfortable position to advocate, even as it saps you of hope because it will never happen.

We need leadership in addition to something like natural rights, balanced by organic culture and a notion of future goals of refinement.

This does not happen under bourgeois democracy. In fact, it does not happen in cities at all; living is too easy!

[prime]

I do think politics is a way of managing, organizing, and even generating power. Politics is a tool that we can use to give more structure and hopefully use power in a more constructive way. But the power exists outside of politics, separately from it.

If your neighbor is big and strong and could beat you up, then he has the power to walk over and take your money, make you cut his lawn, etc. He has that power.

So politics offers an alternative to that violence. It says you'r strong neighbor might refrain from stealing your money if, in the alternative, you both agree that you'll give up some of your money in taxes to do some of the things that your neighbor would like done. And that would happen in the context of compromise and mutual benefit where you'll get some things from him in the process.

Again, sadly, I must mention the myth of the informed consumer.

People would vote or demand a party today even if it meant starvation tomorrow.

Most are simply not capable of making these decisions.

[prime]

A politician can say whatever he wants to the public, can pass whatever laws he wants, can sign whatever proclamations he wants, but if others don't buy in to what he's saying, he's utterly powerless. Like so many laws that are blatantly ignored, so the politician is blatantly ignored.

Because politics doesn't have power on its own.

So it's not really about politicians telling people to do things like listen to each other, but about politicians seeing people willing to listen to each other, and maybe acting on that to invite them to follow that urge that they would accept, if that's really what you want them to be doing.

But mainly I don't think politicians have all that much room to act in that space. It's a lot different for a politician to ask people to pay taxes than to get people to have a chat. One is public, the other private.

The politician has to offer people a "solution." The people want this to be someone else subsidizing them, cleaning up, and giving them good warm fuzzy feelings.

Obviously that is not reality.

[prime]

the society we take for granted requires that most people agree to go along. otherwise, we'd need totalitarianism to make it function at all. and if everybody agreed to go along all the time, we could have a workable ancapistan. the first would be a nightmare, the latter boring as hell.

It makes no sense to think that everyone will agree on anything.

we're all limited in understanding and have different philosophies. there has to be a base level of agreement that we will accept other's understandings of the world and perspectives, or action becomes impossible. like the physical world, we have a set of assumptions that our social world will respond within certain bounds. the simplest example might be language.

And how clear is language? Not very, since people interpret it as is convenient for them.

society runs on shared subconscious notions that lay the foundations for our actions. the jailer is acting partly at least cause he thinks the system is legitimate, not just because he is getting paid. even if it was just that, he wouldn't care about the money if he didn't think others would take the currency for food etc. he assumes others see his work as legitimate, not partaking in criminal hostage taking.

Those shared notions are usually illusions because they must appeal to the lowest common denominator.

Otherwise the politician, businessman, or even guy talking at the pub loses his audience.

[prime]

How do you make the group work together? How do you enforce it? How do you get enforcers to enforce?

Even in the making you have to have buy-in. You have to convince the makers to make.

You reward the good, smite the bad, and leave everyone else alone. However, you have a goal and standards.

the ideal is to waste as little effort as possible on making anybody do anything. they do what's necessary somewhat because they want to and somewhat because they expect it will lead to reciprocal action by others that serves their interests. but that second part breaks down without free and fair elections, rule of law and verified facts (a sense that decision-making, dispute handling and reality determination in society is mostly legitimate).

Most people just want a paycheck and entertainment. They are easily bought.

[prime]

As Buckley saw it, "ideally, the Republican platform should acknowledge a domestic enemy, the State," and champion individual liberty. Yet the struggle with the Soviet Union, he cautioned, may require "Big Government for the duration—for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged . . . except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."

https://www.city-journal.org/article/conservatives-need-a-new-synthesis