Statism requires a central planner at the core of society. Sounds a lot like Intelligent Design to me. I'm joining the free Darwinians over here.

Self promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, August 30th, 2010 3:59pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter blankfist.

*quality

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It sounds easy enough in principal, but you can't just wish things like theft away. Like it, or want to believe it, or not, there are other people who will occasionally want to do you harm.

Faced with that realization, I wonder how the author of this video would respond. Someone comes in and holds his family hostage. He has an opportunity to stop it but must use violence as a means of self defense. Or perhaps there is no violence that would be required on his part. Perhaps he could end the situation with a call to the police but he won't because "Then the police would kidnap the criminal."

^Sounds like a lot of idealistic crap to me.

Assuming he's right about the situation, he still has offered no alternatives or answers as to how to run his newfound society. All we have to do is "Always do no harm to others," and voila' everything is perfect. Except, that would require that everyone adopt the same principal rather quickly to work.

And even if that idea was implanted in people's minds, if you put people in a situation where "it's him or me," survival instincts will trump morality more often than not.

Blank, while I agree with 90% of this, in presentation and explanation it's no better than the communists' utopia.

Excessive government sucks and liberty will always require vigilance, but no police? No armies? That only works for the wealthy who can afford tall castle walls and armed guards...guards who hopefully decide it's better to keep working for the rich man than kill him and take his place. Or an equally rich neighbor may decide to declare war to double his fortune, like the kings of old.

It's going to be a mess no matter what we do. One-third of the earth's population are clownboats who live to oppose the established order whatever it may be, and a third of that third don't care what happens at all.

People are hybrids of sheep and wolf and the threat of consequential violence keeps both beasts in line.

Like philosopher Dirty Harry said: I hate the goddamn system, but until someone comes along with changes that make sense, I'll stick with it.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

It sounds easy enough in principal, but you can't just wish things like theft away. Like it, or want to believe it, or not, there are other people who will occasionally want to do you harm.
Faced with that realization, I wonder how the author of this video would respond. Someone comes in and holds his family hostage. He has an opportunity to stop it but must use violence as a means of self defense. Or perhaps there is no violence that would be required on his part. Perhaps he could end the situation with a call to the police but he won't because "Then the police would kidnap the criminal."
^Sounds like a lot of idealistic crap to me.
Assuming he's right about the situation, he still has offered no alternatives or answers as to how to run his newfound society. All we have to do is "Always do no harm to others," and voila' everything is perfect. Except, that would require that everyone adopt the same principal rather quickly to work.
And even if that idea was implanted in people's minds, if you put people in a situation where "it's him or me," survival instincts will trump morality more often than not.


If we want to break this down into the base structure of things we can do that.

What is the purpose of an organism? That's easy. To reproduce and propagate its genes through offspring. With that in mind, what is the purpose of a complex organism such as a Human? That's simple too. To produce offspring. Now we come to the reason why religions, Ideas, and passions have such powerful hold on complex organisms. Simply knowing the real truth of the situation is a lonely proposition.

All this bullshit we argue about is created by the need to fill a vast expanse that all the eons of evolution couldn't fill except by providing the brainpower that the only apex predator to kill for pleasure, contains.

With all that in mind, what really matters? Nothing. So enjoy it.



The above is an argument from absurdity, I really didn't know what the fuck was going on in the video or what we're discussing here.

He is making a straw man and also some reducto ad absurdam. Idealist societys sound really good on paper but that doesnt mean that they can work out, especially on a large scale.

One thing is certain. The modern Democratic Socialist and the modern Conservative will fight tooth and nail to engineer society in their image, but let a Libertarian show up and the two statists will become best friends in defense of a large monolithic government.

I don't think the author thought this line of thinking all the way to the conclusion.

I'd like to write out all the things that are wrong with this video, but then i'd be putting more intellectual effort into critiquing the video, than the author put into it's creation.

I hope someone will choose to take care of the sewerage network in the lovely no-tax utopia.

The aggression principle gets more shit done...

What a load of hippie bullshit. Living in cloud castles thinking how wonderful it'd be to have a no-tax utopia is all nice and fine, but thinking that it's actually possible when humans are basically still just animals is stupid. They NEED a controlling government to make their life seem to have purpose, and to further the development of mankind. Maybe one day such a fool's dream would be possible, but not without limitless resources, energy and/or gene manipulation of human behaviour.

>> ^JiggaJonson:

It sounds easy enough in principal, but you can't just wish things like theft away. Like it, or want to believe it, or not, there are other people who will occasionally want to do you harm.
Faced with that realization, I wonder how the author of this video would respond. Someone comes in and holds his family hostage. He has an opportunity to stop it but must use violence as a means of self defense. Or perhaps there is no violence that would be required on his part. Perhaps he could end the situation with a call to the police but he won't because "Then the police would kidnap the criminal."
^Sounds like a lot of idealistic crap to me.
Assuming he's right about the situation, he still has offered no alternatives or answers as to how to run his newfound society. All we have to do is "Always do no harm to others," and voila' everything is perfect. Except, that would require that everyone adopt the same principal rather quickly to work.
And even if that idea was implanted in people's minds, if you put people in a situation where "it's him or me," survival instincts will trump morality more often than not.


You're right. My pacifist sister talks about great tragedies performed by people and said "they should have stopped him before all the killing and war began!" - but if you ask her how to stop a person who doesn't want to listen to kind words, she has no answer. A fully pacifist world might be ok, but if one single person decided not to be, you're boned.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

This is really well done, and an impassioned argument. He makes some great points.

I totally agreed with the first half where he's talking about systems that get overly complicated to the point of embarrassment - and then fail. I was immediately reminded of things like patent law and the current copyright system.

>> ^sillma:

What a load of hippie bullshit. Living in cloud castles thinking how wonderful it'd be to have a no-tax utopia is all nice and fine, but thinking that it's actually possible when humans are basically still just animals is stupid. They NEED a controlling government to make their life seem to have purpose, and to further the development of mankind. Maybe one day such a fool's dream would be possible, but not without limitless resources, energy and/or gene manipulation of human behaviour.


Actually, there already are enough resources for everyone to live wealthy.

The problem is that they are not shared, to the point that a few people have a hoard of resources, and a lot of people have much less than they need.

Did he ever use that evidence he kept claiming he was going to use?

Sounds a bit more like intelligent design to me.

We don't know how to fix what's wrong? Government did it!

Statists attack!

Greed for material goods and/or power will always be the problem with any system of government, there will be no 'utopia' until it can be accounted for. Building upon the core example of the video, its like trying to build a model of the solar system and forgetting about the sun.

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Self promoting this video back to the front page; last published Monday, August 30th, 2010 7:55pm PDT - promote requested by original submitter blankfist.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

This was the main idea of Communism. Distribution of wealth to all, based on need. IMO, the basic problem is that self interest, Adam Smith's old invisible hand - seems to always come around a fuck up the best intended ideas. >> ^looris:

>> ^sillma:
What a load of hippie bullshit. Living in cloud castles thinking how wonderful it'd be to have a no-tax utopia is all nice and fine, but thinking that it's actually possible when humans are basically still just animals is stupid. They NEED a controlling government to make their life seem to have purpose, and to further the development of mankind. Maybe one day such a fool's dream would be possible, but not without limitless resources, energy and/or gene manipulation of human behaviour.

Actually, there already are enough resources for everyone to live wealthy.
The problem is that they are not shared, to the point that a few people have a hoard of resources, and a lot of people have much less than they need.

Well, I thought he was suggesting in the video that initiating violence is wrong but defending yourself is okay. Very few pacifists are absolute pacifists in that they believe no violence should ever be done--not even in self-defense.

The response that most people have to the idea of pacifism (as seen in the posts for this vid) is that sometimes violence is justified. Maybe sometimes, like in immediate self-defense, it is. The problem I have with that standpoint though is that in practice often people are far to quick to resort to violence and to use extremely flaky logic to justify their actions. Take the invasion of Iraq: that was couched as a defensive action. In order to protect the U.S. from a terrorist attack, the U.S. would make a pre-emptive attack on Iraq.

I suppose that personally I feel that violence is only justified in extreme cases. And, when violence is justified, it should never be glorified because invariably, resorting to violence is going to sow the seeds of future violence. World War II is generally seen as a "justified war" from the viewpoint of Americans, for instance, but that war inadvertently planted the seeds of the Cold War, the Middle East conflict, and Vietnam conflict even as it was stamping out the flames of Fascism in Europe.

What is really important is stopping that cycle of violence--eradicating the roots of violence so that people don't ever feel the need to use violence to get what they want. To that end, I can get behind the idea expressed in the beginning of this vid that we should strive to create a world in which we don't initiate violence but still be free to defend ourselves if attacked. That's a start at the very least.

>> ^dannym3141:

You're right. My pacifist sister talks about great tragedies performed by people and said "they should have stopped him before all the killing and war began!" - but if you ask her how to stop a person who doesn't want to listen to kind words, she has no answer. A fully pacifist world might be ok, but if one single person decided not to be, you're boned.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

Totally agree that "preemptive self-defense" is some hardcore Orwellian bullshit. Amazing how much of the religious Right get behind the idea. Jesus said turn the other cheek, not "stab that guy in the belly because he looks like he might hurt me".
>> ^SDGundamX:

Well, I thought he was suggesting in the video that initiating violence is wrong but defending yourself is okay. Very few pacifists are absolute pacifists in that they believe no violence should ever be done--not even in self-defense.
The response that most people have to the idea of pacifism (as seen in the posts for this vid) is that sometimes violence is justified. Maybe sometimes, like in immediate self-defense, it is. The problem I have with that standpoint though is that in practice often people are far to quick to resort to violence and to use extremely flaky logic to justify their actions. Take the invasion of Iraq: that was couched as a defensive action. In order to protect the U.S. from a terrorist attack, the U.S. would make a pre-emptive attack on Iraq.
I suppose that personally I feel that violence is only justified in extreme cases. And, when violence is justified, it should never be glorified because invariably, resorting to violence is going to sow the seeds of future violence. World War II is generally seen as a "justified war" from the viewpoint of Americans, for instance, but that war inadvertently planted the seeds of the Cold War, the Middle East conflict, and Vietnam conflict even as it was stamping out the flames of Fascism in Europe.
What is really important is stopping that cycle of violence--eradicating the roots of violence so that people don't ever feel the need to use violence to get what they want. To that end, I can get behind the idea expressed in the beginning of this vid that we should strive to create a world in which we don't initiate violence but still be free to defend ourselves if attacked. That's a start at the very least.
>> ^dannym3141:
You're right. My pacifist sister talks about great tragedies performed by people and said "they should have stopped him before all the killing and war began!" - but if you ask her how to stop a person who doesn't want to listen to kind words, she has no answer. A fully pacifist world might be ok, but if one single person decided not to be, you're boned.

The problem I see here is that the video author is assuming that all the problems created are actually philosophical in nature. The big problem is the human mind and our nature.

We have been selected to first, fight or flight at any unknown variable. Second, evolution plays its core tenet: survival of the fittest (which has a part to play in all these examples). Third, you have resources--which in turn go back to number two. Lastly, reproduction comes into play.

Sillma and Crosswords touched on this. We have to figure out a solution to force a change in our predisposed evolution. Whether that be a biological or technological (or both) solution. What would any such society do about sociopaths? They, by definition, will not understand "being good".

I hope we can get to a semi-Utopian like society, but it will be a mammoth undertaking. The changes he talked about are far easier in comparison (physics and astronomy--oh, and since when was quantum mechanics not messy ). The Utopian change will require an upheaval at every facet of society: government, trade, religion, decisions, structural, biological, technological, industrial, etc...

/I'd like to live in a nice paradise, but this approach would require too much from the one source that made it in the first place.

This starts off interesting and then goes nowhere.

I think many systems are unnecessarily complex: government, legal, even videosift's queue; and I think a lot of good could be done by simplifying the tax structure, reducing the number of laws, and otherwise reducing complexity of systems so they are more efficient.

Certainly we could benefit from a more pacifist society but remember, Woodstock only lasted for 3 days. Eventually we need to provide food, services, protection, etc and a field full of muddy hippies won't provide any of that.

I hear Somalia is beautiful this time of year. No taxes. No government. Very peaceful.

Live the dream!

"It's not Somalia, it's Ronpaulia!"

Every human cell is selected to protect it's gene group and take as many resources - any way it can.

Maybe on an alien world ruled by creatures descended from herbivore herd reared animals.

...but passive herbivores lack the fatty proteins from killing and eating to develop significant intelligence.

The only thing I feel needed to be added to this discussion is my disagreement with this video.

The world isn't fair.

Deal with it.

*dead

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