My unpublished (100,000 word) book “The Financial Jigsaw”, is being serialised here weekly in 100 Issues by Peter J Underwood, author
Quote of the Week: “If people bought only what they needed, the economy would crash. The world is sustained by people who are stupid enough to believe that buying more things will give them more happiness.” – Nitya Prakash
This week we review what it means to have ‘freedom’ and the concept of a libertarian style of government. This article has a good description: Quote:
“Never has libertarian ruling-class theory been put more clearly or forcefully than in the words of Mill: there are two classes, Mill declared, “the first class, those who plunder, are the small number. They are the ruling Few. The second class, those who are plundered, are the great number. They are the subject Many.” Or, as Professor Hamburger summed up Mill’s position: “Politics was a struggle between two classes — the avaricious rulers and their intended victims.”
Here is the link to last week: Issue 74
Now that Brexit may be coming to a final conclusion, I will continue to provide weekly updates as events progress:
Brexit Update – 25th October 2019
The Brexit deadline remains 31st October 2019 and stays in place unless Boris can get Parliament to agree his new exit plan and he has now applied to the EU for an extension of Art 50 yet again. Boris continues his battle with Parliament this week, but the fact is that Brexit is all but dead. This article explains why it’s dead and the demise of the EU; quote:
“Whether the hard-core Remainers get their “People’s Vote” or not, and whichever of the carousel of undesirables happens to be Prime Minister when it all eventually wraps up, Brexit is dead. Parliament killed it.”
https://off-guardian.org/2019/10/20/brexit-parliament-tethers-britain-to-a-failing-experiment/
The claim that the Bill has passed Parliament is not true – check out this to clarify:
https://fullfact.org/europe/brexit-deal-not-passed-parliament/
Details of Parliament’s deliberations when sitting can be found here:
CHAPTER 13
The New Emergent Economy
“Winning is a habit. Watch your thoughts, they become your beliefs. Watch your beliefs, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character.” – Vince Lombardi
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” – Albert Einstein
“The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word ‘crisis.’ One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger — but recognize the opportunity.” ― John F. Kennedy
The Essence of Freedom as a libertarian concept
Freedom may be defined as the absence of coercion. Few people understand that government action is inherently coercive because government action requires taxation by force.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe describes a free society as the absence of aggression against one’s body and property: “A society is free, if every person is recognized as the exclusive owner of his own (scarce) physical body, if everyone is free to appropriate or “homestead” previously un-owned things as private property, if everyone is free to use his body and his homesteaded goods to produce whatever he wants to produce (without thereby damaging the physical integrity of other peoples’ property), and if everyone is free to contract with others regarding their respective properties in any way deemed mutually beneficial. Any interference with this constitutes an act of aggression, and a society is un-free to the extent of such aggressions.”
In The “Ethics of Liberty”, Murray Rothbard similarly defined freedom as the “absence of invasion by another man of any man’s person or property.” This encapsulates the critical libertarian concept of ‘negative liberty’, as opposed to the view of ‘positive liberty’ in the form of mastery over one’s person and surroundings generally favoured by “progressives.”
It means free people should be able to use their minds, bodies, and talents to advance their well-being (whether material, intellectual, or spiritual) as they see fit. It does not mean they can demand freedom from material want, or scarcity, or illness, or unhappiness, or unpleasantness generally.
It does not mean anyone owes them housing, medical care, food, or a “living wage.” It means the freedom to be left alone and this is the opposite of what our political masters want, which is to control and coerce the populace to suit their inherent selfish ends.
Governments in this case (i.e. states) are those organizations that have monopolized the use of force over any given geographical region according to the famous sociologist Max Weber in his book: “Politics as a Vocation”. Weber discusses the concept that states are no different from regular organizations as people coming together with a common goal.
But what sets states apart is their assertion of a ‘monopoly on violence’. It is technological developments that have driven the twentieth century advancements in bureaucracy and growth of big governments. Only when a crisis occurs will changes be effected because controls over the people have reached such an extreme stage today that no force of the ballot or otherwise will voluntarily overcome them.
The way of life of our ancestors can be reborn
Here is a word-for-word extract from an article by Joe Jarvis describing an old economic model and may be viewed at: http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/how-good-food-and-strong-social-ties-will-save-society/
“Today there is a mass market for culture. Consumers are sold an image to emulate, and accessories to compliment it. There are a few to choose from, but they are basically all part of the government-corporate-media conglomerate. Even rebelling against the status quo is typically done in a prescribed way, with plenty of products to help.
Yuval Noah Harari points out in his book “Sapiens” that this is largely by design. We have been lured away from the ties of community, family, and other small scale organic institutions. In their place, we are sold membership to consumer groups. We feel like we are a part of something, but our only real connection to others in the group is the similar products we buy–or make and sell.
Culture is much more unique than that. Using the internet, I have found communities that I would never have known existed if I was searching in the 1980’s. I found a group of people interested in Start-up Societies, which is exactly what I am talking about. People can now break off into micro-societies of their own formation. They can live alongside people with a strong sense of inclusion, without withdrawing from the rest of the world.
I expect this trend will only grow as people feel that corporate and government institutions have failed them. And I suspect it will make people quite happy. People will rediscover what it means to be a part of a group of their own choosing, not a forced commonality designed by government elites and corporate profiteers.
Just to reiterate, I do not advocate abandoning all the comforts of modern life and moving back into the woods, though at times I am tempted to do so. I am simply making the case that the pendulum has swung a bit too far on the industrial factory food and mechanized consumer community scale. We can bring it back to centre by exploring new ways to organize micro-societies.
For people who were social outcasts in ancient tribal groups, life must have been hell. But today, we can find communities to join, virtual or psychical, all around the world. It is not the luck of the draw; it is a matter of finding where you fit. And the same goes for healthy, diverse food options. They are available; it is just a matter of proper budgeting, and caring enough to find them. What I imagine personally is emulating a tribal group, while retaining modern comforts and technology.”
To be continued next Saturday
I donno bout dem urban connections being really helpful; the #1 individual requirement is adequate nutrition, ya’ll got a good handle on that? How about adequate fortifications and over lapping fire out to 800 yards?
Thanks Robert and I agree that food and defence is crucial. We will be covering some of these items shortly as we progress the Chapter.