From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person’s freedom is another person’s slavery.
If you bring it back to the roots of life’s purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.
You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like “your rights stops where my nose begin”. At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.
But “on an evolutionary level” isn’t really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.
It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.
But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.
From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.
When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they’ll feel free but others won’t.
You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you’re looking for is one where you’ll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.
The best way to resolve the the corruption issue is to not allow any individual to hold power […[.
That’s part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).
But going back to the corruption thing. It’s not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc…
Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.
What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.
Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.
The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.
Eventually, the “democracy + regulation” does get captured, and while it’s pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.
If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.
As for Libertarian, I don’t know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don’t know what “True” libertarian is. When there’s actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.
But the few discussions I’ve had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that’s a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won’t even deny it if you straight up ask them. They’re sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.
But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There’s no way this won’t immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.
From most perspectives, freedom is power. And one person’s freedom is another person’s slavery.
If you bring it back to the roots of life’s purpose: to procreate exponentially. It always comes down to doing better than your neighbor.
You can come up with all the moral rules of thumbs you like, like “your rights stops where my nose begin”. At the end of the day, if what John is doing enables him to procreate exponentially faster than Jack. Then Jack (on an evolutionary level) will perceive John as evil.
But “on an evolutionary level” isn’t really a real thing. It manifests itself in our dreams and feelings. Like how we get envious of people who do better than us or how we feel pride when we do better than others.
It gets complicated because of the effectiveness of cooperation. Which is where things like altruism, compassion and empathy come from.
But even here, evolution tries to pierce through it with things like hypocrisy, subconscious bias and tribal allegiance.
From this context, I believe that for most people freedom is a feeling they get when they do better than the people around them, when they are more powerful than them. It makes for a good slogan, because everyone wants to feel free, the theory says that everyone can be free, but the practice is that not everyone can feel free.
When you use freedom as your theoretical basis of government, it sounds good. But in practice, people will have slightly different interpretation of what freedom means to them, one where they’ll feel free but others won’t.
You might think now, that we should simply work on a clear and objective definition for freedom, but that definition you’re looking for is one where you’ll feel free, but many others will feel oppressed.
That’s part of it, probably the biggest part of it. You also want a system that can come to a consensus through compromise when resolving social issues. You also want a system that is efficient and powerful (to compete against other societies).
But going back to the corruption thing. It’s not enough, people can organise around an ideal to oppress entire groups. You can have a system where not individual or small group of individual hold power, but one where the whites can oppress the blacks, or the Christians can oppress the Atheists, etc…
Creating a system that substantially reduces corruption is insanely difficult. Corruption is the lynchpin of all the alternate systems being proposed, none are as good as the current system of capitalism + regulation + democracy.
What that system does, is it pretty much gives up on trying to eliminate corruption. Instead it tries to redirect its energies and minimize the damage it causes.
Basically, someone trying to become powerful in a capitalist system, is sort of cajoled into working hard to improve society.
The democracy + regulation aspect is what minimizes the damages caused.
Eventually, the “democracy + regulation” does get captured, and while it’s pretty bad compared to how these systems should work, they still tend to perform their function to some extent.
If you contrast this with something like communism or socialism. Those seeking power immediately start by dismantling the systems that prevent corruption. The pressure is so strong, the system will collapse almost instantly, and I think history shows this to be the case.
As for Libertarian, I don’t know. You always got someone who will show up telling you that you don’t know what “True” libertarian is. When there’s actually 200 different true libertarian and each requires 10,000 hours of study to fully understand.
But the few discussions I’ve had has been enough to convince me that the vast majority are either some kind of survivalist or people who see themselves as effective local business leaders. They just think that’s a system that will shift the balance of power in their favor and many of them won’t even deny it if you straight up ask them. They’re sick of feeling oppressed and they want to become the oppressor.
But generally, it seems to me that most Libertarian systems fail to account for bad state actors. These libertarian systems tends to favor a system that shifts the balance of power to local groups. But has no system in place to keep that power local. There’s no way this won’t immediately lead to civil war, with the winner setting up a dictatorship.