beka valentinethe last few days of governmental deconstruction only go to prove my point about the vulnerabilities inherent in relying on the state for things that you should be doing as mutual aid via ad hoc working groups
we have spent so much time asking for permission, or worse, begging others to do things for us, that we have become completely and utterly helpless in the face of them just saying "no"
marymessallAs if ad hoc working groups can't be taken over by assholes.
The government is HOW we do mutual aid, traditionally. But people have to do the work to run it, and when you put malevolent people in charge of running things, they abuse that power. It doesn't matter if you call the thing they're in charge of "government" or "ad hoc working group" or "charity board." The point is to keep bad actors away from the systems we create to help each other.
Licho@marymessall
Each of the groups would have to be taken over separately by independent assholes. We're talking thousands of separate informal groups. It's a completely different structure than a hierarchal top-down structure of the govt. Way more resilient and self governed.
Dunno. Sounds like federalism to me. We already have thousands of different county and city agencies... The federal government just coordinates & shifts funding between them. And that's good! Because that lets people from areas which haven't recently been hit by disasters share resources with those who have! It lets richer areas share with poorer areas! It prevents wasteful duplicate efforts. It allows people to warn each other about threats & coordinate solutions.
Your working groups will be much more effective if they work together. Just like the 50 states are stronger together. Heck, individual "soviets" (working groups) banded together to form "soviet socialist republics" and then those formed the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (the USSR) - which got taken over by Stalin.
There are no short cuts. There is no system that is proof against malevolent people acting from within the system.
@marymessall
The answer here is to stay inefficient. If there's a trade-off between stability and efficiency, maybe efficiency is not that important.
Also, I'm really sceptical if it's actually true that federalism improves efficiency. And I'm really sceptical if the Soviet Union was ever a voluntary union - the Marxist Leninist people who have started were always wannabe dictators. They destroyed The First International to form The Second International without the anarchists because they saw through them. The new aristocracy of Soviets was cloaking themselves with the narratives that the anarchist socialists have created, twisting them to legitimize their authoritarian state. Stalin didn't come out of nowhere.
Efficiency is important, though. Because when we're talking about distribution of aid, "inefficiency" means people who need aid not getting it.
And so groups will appeal to other groups for help. Structures will be put in place to enable cooperation.
We're a social species. And because we are, we can do so much more than any of us could alone. We can help so many more people.
But also because we're social, we're vulnerable. The only solution is eternal vigilance.
@marymessall
You don't seem to realize that a state is an involuntary, violent entity. It's not like people have just come together to form a state. Last time that happened was the ancient Greece, and those were city states. The European countries all came to existence by warlords (calling themselves princes) violently subjugating defenseless villages for tribute. This is what the states are. The lousy imitation of mutual aid is the bare minimum they can get away with, with well intentioned people carrying the system at a great personal sacrifice.
Too many people seem to think "government" is the only kind of threat. But anything which fills the role of government can be the same kind of threat. Or really there are three roles: defense against external threats, policing of internal threats, and provision of aid. All human societies need all three of those. Government can do all 3. But in some times/place religious institutions have done one or more of those. In some times/places the mafia does those things.
Sometimes it's warlords. Sometimes it's gangs. In company towns it's the corporation. Sometimes it's neighborhood watches and charity groups.
Sometimes those functions are divided among different organizations (which still work together.)
But someone has to fill those roles. And whoever fills them has power. And whoever has power can abuse it.
We can build systems in which it's harder to abuse power, but none in which it is impossible.
@marymessall
Ok, I get what your point is. Yeah. Maybe. I still think such a massive and sudden shift as what is happening in the US wouldn't be happening now if it wasn't for the concentration of power. It's easy to subvert a single institution. It's not easy to subvert a thousand independent, independently funded ones, in a peer to peer system.
@marymessall @beka_valentine or rather it's not easy but when it happens everything collapses at once.
Actually I agree, but I think power in the US is not actually as concentrated as Trump pretends it is. He can't actually do a lot of the things he's claiming to have done. And I think our different state and local governments will show him that he can't. Eventually.
@marymessall
Hope you're right
CySo you're in favor of disbanding the US military? Good to know.
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Ciggy Bringer of SmokeUnlike a State, you can hit the bricks and try again with another set if the current one is corrupted. That's a feature and not a defect.
@marymessall lol no. bye