In creating a political philosophy anew

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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As my prior attempt at this was drowned in crap,
‘‘An attempt at political philosophy’’, I am going to get these
out before it too is drowned in nonsense…

In reading the Declaration of Independence, one notices
something interesting… (I am not pretending to be the
first to notice this) in the second paragraph, the key
paragraph as far as I am concerned, it says this:

‘‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that
all men are created equal, that they are endowed by
creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are life, liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,
THAT TO SECURE THESE RIGHTS, Government
are instituted among men…’’

That these rights existed before, before the creation
of government…that these rights exist prior to the
existence of government is a very important point…
and the point of government is to secure and maintain
these rights, extend them if possible… let us look
at these rights anew and see if we can make some
sense of them…

‘’…with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are
Life…‘’

there are certain criteria that all life must follow in order to
exists, that to be and remain life, life must be engaged with
the bodily necessities, of food, water, shelter, health care,
education, and love…in order for life to exist, it must,
MUST have these things… so the first part of these
unalienable rights is to maintain existence… to have
and to hold onto our life…recall these rights existed
before, before the existence of the government…
and the point of the government is to help secure these rights,
of food, water, shelter, education, health care and love…
and right here lies the justification of the welfare state…
to help ensure our right to existence, which includes food,
water, shelter, education, and health care and of course, love…

and to those who say that the welfare state is wrong because
it causes people to ‘‘slack off’’ is irrelevant, it doesn’t matter
if people are ‘‘gaming’’ the system, (and here I point out that
Musk is getting roughly 10 million dollars a day in government
assistance, so try to tell me that the ‘‘welfare queen’’ is the
real problem, when the system is gamed by the wealthy
and powerful along with their companies… business
subsidies are roughly 181 billion dollars or 0.7% of the
entire American GDP a year)
So that is one point, that to aid for those who need
to meet their own ‘‘unalienable’’ rights, the government
must intervene to ensure that the right to life is preserved…

and what is the second unalienable right listed, ahhh yes,
the right to liberty…and what does that mean?
the right to liberty is basically the right to self-ownership…
we have liberty if we can determine our own fate, in our
own terms, with our own tools…and what does this
right to liberty entail? The right to be who I am…
to choose my own needs as I define it, not as it is
defined by others…and one of the clear ‘‘unalienable’’
rights is for me, to choose whom I love…
one of the basic aspects of existence is love, it is
as much a bodily need as it is a psychological need…
and one of the primary, as explained by the declaration,
primary needs is liberty… the liberty/choice is to love…
to tell me who I can or cannot love violates both the spirit
and letter of the declaration of Independence… if I cannot
choose who I can love, or no love, then I don’t have
liberty… which is one of those unalienable rights we
had before, before the government…the point of the
government is to secure our unalienable rights, among
which is liberty… or self-ownership… If I am unable to
choose who I can love, I don’t have self-ownership…
I am, for all intents and purposes, a slave…and no one
ever chooses to be a slave… which also means relinquishing
one of our unalienable right, liberty… a right which existed
before the government…

and the third enumerated right listed, is the right to happiness…
in the minds of the founding fathers, as influenced by Locke,
thought the right to happiness, is the right to property…
in the minds of the founding fathers, they were one and
the same, the pursuit of happiness meant the pursuit of
property… as I have been in all three states of ‘‘property’’’
which means I have owned a place, I have rented a place
and I have been homeless… and the ownership of property
fulfill one of the psychological needs, that of safety/security…
the ownership of property can also mean the means to
create wealth/profits… think of farms and factories…
but not always, sometimes property used to create wealth…
but that leads us to this question, is this need for the
pursuit of happiness/property, a universal, comprehensive trait
for everyone? the drive for property is not a universal trait…
it doesn’t fit into all our bodily or psychological needs per se…
its nice to have, but not necessary for us to exist like bodily needs
like breathing or food or water, education or our psychological needs
of love or of esteem… it can, but that doesn’t mean it has too fit
into our physical or psychological needs…but we do see,
and it is clear with animals like dogs and cats, is that we
do like to have/own small possessions… I spent my
childhood with a very large teddy bear… and dogs love
certain objects like stuff animals also… this need to own/possess
small objects is also one of our birthrights… but that doesn’t
always spread to large objects like trees or mountains…
we don’t always have this need to ‘‘own’’ all objects,
just some of them…

so, to bottom line this, this need, as described by
the declaration, the pursuit of happiness, isn’t necessarily
about property, but it can be a pursuit of an individual in
terms of their own nature, their own needs and wants,
to own their own pursuit of happiness, whatever that
happiness happens to be…
personally, I am driven by my own pursuit of happiness in
terms of seeking out knowledge and wisdom… that is my
‘‘nature’’…you are clearly free to pick and choose your own
terms of the pursuit of happiness… that is what it means
to have self-ownership… to be free to choose one’s own
pursuit of happiness, regardless of what it might be…
but this ownership of own happiness is not absolute or
unlimited, it has limits because of one of the basic
tenets of human existence, that we human beings are social
beings… and that we exist within a human society/state…
and we can only become who we are, within that state or
society…that is one of the basic tenets of Greek society,
that to be human, means to exists within a state/society such
as the city… that is the only way for one to become human,
not to be a barbarian is to live within a city…

but Kropotkin, it isn’t listed as a basic right to live within
a city, rights that are listed such as life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness, do not refer to these rights as you have suggested…

One of the basic if not the basic fundamental needs of being human
is the need to exist with our fellow human beings… for without
contact of other humans, we ourselves suffer, we suffer greatly…
that is why the punishment of solitary confinement is the harshest
punishment we give out… evolution has designed us to
exist socially, to be with other human beings…that is one
of the primary needs of being human… for all the other
psychological needs depend on our being with others…
to have as a need of esteem or of safety/security or of love,
all requires us to have other human beings in our lives…

So, the bottom line is that for us to achieve our own private
needs, bodily and psychological needs, requires us to
exists within a state or society…that is the underlining
principles that all other needs depends on… for we
cannot get our needs, either bodily or psychological needs
without the aid of others… and that means a state/society…

So, this leaves us with a two-track system… one is our
own personal needs, and that also requires us to maintain
the state/society in which we can only reach our own goals
and needs within…

If one wants to reduce the human condition down to
two parts, one begins with self-ownership/ freedom
and the other is the essential need to have a state/society
which allows us to reach our own needs… these two needs
are often in conflict… how far does our own self-ownership
take us and how far does the state/society go into our own
self-ownership?

Part of setting those boundaries, lies within documents such
as the declaration of impendence, and the Constitution…
what rights lie with us personally, as human beings, and
what rights lie with us collectively, as a state/society?
and part of the problem today lies within the fact that
the state/society has changed so dramatically as to be
completely different than what it was during the 1770’s…

Our own modern state/society is so different than what the
founding fathers faced as to be a completely different
environment… and we must adapt our '‘rules’ to
meet the ever changing world…and what does this mean
to us today, in modern America, 2026…

therein lies a tale…

Kropotkin

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Because human beings individually, cannot exists
without the state/society, the question of the relationship
between the individual and the state/society is one of
the key questions of life…

The state/society must in some fashion, help individuals
to achieve their already in place rights… the right to
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…which means
the right to both bodily and psychologically rights…
the right to food, water, shelter, health care and education in
bodily rights along with psychological rights of love, esteem,
safety/security, and self-ownership…

So, we can walk through the various political systems/
or isms… we have various political systems… the list
is rather well known… democracy, monarchy, oligarchy,
dictatorship, socialism, representative democracy, to name
a few political systems we have available to us…
a few around here have vocally advocated for a dictatorship…
but a political dictatorship clearly does not advocate for our
needs, either bodily or psychologically…we do not engage
in self-ownership within a dictatorship… our choices are
dictated to us, we exist for the good of the state, which
in practical terms means as human beings, we are
negated, devalued in terms of our very lives/existence
and our values are also devalued… that is nihilism 101…
a dictatorship is nihilism because it devalues human
beings and their values because the only values accepted
are values which make the state primary…
in other words, government of the state, for the state
and by the state… the individual exists only for the
benefit of the state and can be sacrificed for the
benefit of the state… and that again, is nihilism…
do we have basic rights, of rights that exists before
the government, of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Clearly not… what is good for the state is good for the
individual… which denies life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness for the individual…as there is no freedom,
self-ownership within a dictatorship, we can safely dismiss
having a dictatorship as a desirable political system…
it denies the rights of the individual with the exclusive
rights for the state…as the one, the individual
has no rights within a dictatorship… and we must dismiss
a dictatorship within these terms…

so, what is another possibility?

Kropotkin

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as for some other types of political systems to work out,
oligarchy has the exact same problems as a dictatorship…
rule for the few has the same problems as the absolute rule
of one… government of the few, for the few and by the few…
it does not and can not take into account the one, the
individual unless that individual is part of the oligarchy,
then it is permissibable…

What freedom that exists, exists only for those within
the oligarchy… it does not extend to those outside of
the oligarchy… my preexisting rights, rights that
exists before the state of government, are denied…
the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are
defined, as it is in a dictatorship, is defined as being
only for the good of the state that is owned and
operated by the oligarchs… if it doesn’t benefit those
oligarchs, it is forbidden… and that is why we reject,
as we have rejected a dictatorship, an oligarchy…
it denies the preexisting rights as defined by the
declaration… and must be rejected on those grounds…

Kropotkin

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and for other types of political systems, we have,
perhaps the oldest type of political system, monarchy…
and its faults are quite clear…
that sometimes, at the monarch convenience, that it
does take into account the one, the individual…
and their preexisting rights… but therein lies another
tale… what a monarch deems to be right today, can
be just as easily deemed to be wrong tomorrow…
at the whim of one person, we could have rights
today and no rights tomorrow… or as
King Louis XIV said,

""L’Etat, c’est moi’’

"I am the state’’

and how do we individually fit into a state that has but
one person, the monarch? Where are our prexisting
rights given that the state has but one person and that is
the only person who counts within the state…that is the
person with the rights, not us, but the state/monarch…
a monarchy is simply an inconsistent dictatorship…
what is law today, but maybe tomorrow, maybe,
might not be law… and all of that lies outside of
our own hands…we have no self-ownership of
the state… we have no self-ownership of the laws or
any morals or ethics within that state… for that is decided
upon by the monarch… we cannot pursue
life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness within a monarchy
for the same reasons, we cannot pursue it under
a dictatorship or an oligarchy… we have no access
to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness in a society or
state that is governed by a dictator or monarch…

so, let us continue…

Kropotkin

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So, let us continue, we have as our modern state,
a representative democracy…
which is defined by my handy-dandy dictionary as:

representative democracy is a political system in which
the citizens elect officials to create laws and policies
and make decisions on their behalf…

and that works until it doesn’t… as our representative
democracy has been bought and sold by politicians
working on behalf of those who bought and sold it…
and we can see this failure every day in the news…
or said another way, it is money that has destroyed
our representative democracy… remove money
and we might, MIGHT have a chance to return government
of being of the people, for the people, by the people…
and if big corporations and powerful individuals ‘‘own’’
the government, then the government isn’t concerned
with its individuals, the people… it is not
concerned with people attempting to achieve their own
bodily and psychological needs… for the prime point
of a corrupted representative democracy, such as ours,
isn’t the needs of the people, but the achieving of
the needs of those who have bought and sold
our democracy…

Kropotkin

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Your liberal unrestrained, unregulated, and unlimited extreme radical individualism is the most nihilistic political system on earth.

It is that ideology with promises of freedom and democracy that has delivered us a tyrannical political system of oligarchical billionaires instead. Such a system has delivered no freedom whatsoever where its political democracy is entirely laughable.

:clown_face:

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MrAuthoritarian:
Your liberal unrestrained, unregulated, and unlimited extreme radical individualism is the most nihilistic political system on earth.

It is that ideology with promises of freedom and democracy that has delivered us a tyrannical political system of oligarchical billionaires instead. Such a system has delivered no freedom whatsoever where its political democracy is entirely

K: Honestly, I think it’s cute how hysterical you get on these
tangents… take a few deep breaths, maybe do as I do…
take a gummy or in your case, maybe two…, chill out…you will
live longer if you don’t get so wound up about these things…
your blood pressure will thank you…
the number one killer in the world today is stress…
remember that… part of the reason I had to retire was stress
was killing me… I am slowly, slowly getting over the
PTSD that work gave me…

Kropotkin

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high iq actually.

free housing is therefore a Constitutionally protected right.

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In our understanding of the creation of a
political philosophy, one has to have certain values…
or said another way, what does it mean to be human?

Self ownership is an essential value of being human…
if we do not ‘‘self-own’’, we are not human…
that is the bottom line there… Kropotkin, prove that
point… if we do not self-own, then we have no
ability to act on our own, we have no freedom of
choice, if we do not self-own, then the needs that
all life has, can be reduced or even eliminated…
If I do not, cannot self-own, then my needs,
the basic needs can be denied to me, life,
all life and my life, is based upon having certain needs
met… food, water, shelter, education, health care,
even love, can be denied if I do not self-owned…
so, we have two points, one is that we must be
self-owned and two, we must be able to gain/reach
our own needs, needs which all life has…
as defined by the Declaration, ‘‘life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness’’…if we are owned by another,
be it own by one, two, many or the state, then we
can be denied our needs… as all life, ALL LIFE,
basic function is to meet its needs… to maintain
life, is one of the primary goals of existence…and the
basic way to achieve this is by being self-owned…

So, we have two basic propositions, one we are, or
must be self-owned, and two, the point of existence is
to meet our needs…

So, how do we organize ourselves to be able to meet our
needs? that is the question of government…
In a dictatorship, we are not self-owned, we belong
to the state…
in an oligarchy, we are not self-owned, we are owned/belong
to the few who are members of the oligarchy…
In a monarchy, the basic principle is ‘‘L’etat, c’est moi’’
from the Egyptian Pharoh to Louis X1V, ‘‘I am the state’’
was the operating principle of monarchy… how is one self-owned
if all is owned by the monarch? As the monarchy has traditionally
claimed since the Pharohs… and if one is not self-owned, then
the basic needs of life can be denied as the only voice, the only
one who is self-owned is the monarch, and his needs are the
only public/private needs that must be met… all other needs
can be and often are, denied…

So, how are we to engage with these two aspects of
existence, one to be self-owned, and two, to be able
to reach our private needs…and therein lies part
of the deal, we have both private and public needs that
must be met…

and how do we engage with our public needs?
What are those public needs and how do we navigate
them within our own private needs?

and now we reach the third part of being human, that
of our being a social creature… that human beings,
all human beings need/require the state/society…
we cannot on our own, achieve our own private needs
without, WITHOUT, the state/society… we cannot feed
or cloth or house, educate ourselves without the
state/society… our bodily needs demand that
we have a state/society to help us achieve our own
private needs… I cannot, for example, educate myself
as to what it means to be human… our becoming human,
as the Greeks knew, means we can only achieve becoming
human via the state/society… that is the truth, (one of anyway)
that the Greeks taught us… that to become human, requires,
demands a state/society for us to become…

let us look at Hobbes ‘‘State of Nature’’ which is
the war of all against all…there is no state or society
which allows us to achieve our own needs…the
‘‘State of Nature’’ in which there are no laws
or rights, leaves us spending our lives simply
engaged in this struggle of all against all…
If I am busy just trying to survive, I have no time
to reach my own possibilities or time to become
who I am… the point is the struggle to survive,
and nothing else… and that is the benefit of the
state/society… it frees us from the day to day struggle
to just survive… let us look at this from another
angle…

Animals spend their days in struggle to achieve their needs…
which is mostly the attempt at food and water…
the human needs are not needed within the animal world…
they have no need for the human basics, that of the sense
of belonging, or the need for esteem or safety/security that
human beings have…so, we can think of needs as being
‘‘progressive’’ which is to say, as we advance from animal to
becoming human, our needs expand… or said another way,
we are on a road, a journey from animal to becoming fully human…
that there are no possibilities for animals is to state the
obvious… in other words, animals cannot grow or become
something different, unlike human beings who have the
advantage of becoming something else… we have
possibilities that animals don’t have… for example,
animals cannot make plans to reach their possibilities…
I have the possibility of learning German or travel or
becoming the greatest philosopher of all time…
but animals, they don’t have those possibilities…
there is no chance for them to reach their possibilities
because they have no other possibilities…
and we return to our original point… in which we
cannot reach our own possibilities if we are not
self-owned and we are unable to meet our own
private needs… to say this another way, we must
have around us, a structure in place that allows
us to met or reach our own needs… that structure
is called government…
The value of the government is that it allows us to
reach or met our own needs…the government allows
us to reach our needs by allowing us to seek out our
needs… I cannot feed myself or educate myself,
that much is clear and that is the point of the government,
to allow the essential needs to be met…

(this need to educate, as being a ‘‘problem’’ of the government is
mostly understood as being the ‘‘Greek problem’’… education
of people was one of the major stumbling blocks of
the Greek society/state…and much discussion of the
Greeks revolved around this problem of education…
see ‘‘Paideia’’ by Warner Jaeger… the hatred the right
has for education, is clear by their attacks on public
education, both in the lower levels and the upper
levels, collage/universities, which is really an attack
on the possibilities that people can reach)

but we have one more aspect to work out, that
of a goal… what is the goal or purpose of existence?
to meet our needs can be considered to be the
bottom level of existence… that is the level of
animals… to met our needs…and nothing more…
but human beings are capable of so much more…
we can move the meaning of existence from mere
meeting our needs to becoming, which is to
say, becoming what is possible for us…
this is not possible for animals…
a dog can only be a dog, and a cat can only
be a cat, but a human being can become something
more than just animal… of just meeting our needs…
we can create… animals cannot do this… they cannot
draw or paint pictures, create music, write philosophy,
learn a new language, travel to distant places, animals
are limited, whereas human beings are not as limited…
we can reach possibilities that animals cannot…
animals can meet their needs but that is all they can do,
whereas I can become something more…but to
become something more, I need the state/society in order
to meet my needs but to become more…
animals don’t create a society/or a state, because
they don’t need to, they can meet their own needs
without a state/society… whereas we human being
cannot meet our needs without a state/society…

the need that human beings have for ways to limit
who they are, are, to my mind anyway, astonishing…
why this need to limit ourselves in regards to
religion, government and society… we have in
religion, god, who by being god, has ownership
of human beings, I cannot become who I am, if
I am owned by god… I cannot become human if
I don’t have freedom of action to become what
is possible for me… thus we also reject political
theories like dictatorship and monarchies…
and what is left?

the point of liberalism is that we own ourselves…
and that we can act as we see fit to become our
possibilities… is my ability to act as I see fit,
unlimited without any boundaries? No, we
have limits without liberalism… that we cannot
own another, that we seek out our own needs, but
don’t prevent others from achieving their own needs…

the value of a liberal government is to allow people to
reach their own needs, to achieve their own possibilities…
and within this, we can now see the point, value of the
welfare state… as a way to equalize people chances to
reach their own needs… to level the playing field, as it
were… I cannot reach my own possibilities if I am
constantly engaged in seeking our my needs… if I spend
my days seeking out food, water, shelter, education,
health care, I cannot seek out my own possibilities…

The role of government is a positive one in liberalism…
the role of government in conservatism is a far more
negative one… but all this comes down to the
point or reason for existence…is it a positive one
or is it a negative one? Liberalism says yes, conservativism
says no… within liberalism, we want others to meet
their needs and then go beyond that, for people to
seek out their possibilities… whereas in conservatism,
the goal is achieving one’s own personal need, regardless
of what others may or may not want/need… my needs are
above or superior to the needs of others, that is conservativism
101… my need for salvation, for example is greater than your
need for salvation…conservatism is the theory of one, and
liberalism is the theory of the many…

and which value has more application in the modern world?
liberalism or conservatism? as noted before, we cannot
reach our own needs without the aid of the state/society,
by that basis alone, we see the advantage of liberalism,
to reach my own needs, I must allow you the ability to
reach your needs…and vice versa… your ability
to reach your own needs is dependent on my ability
to reach my needs… we are not apart or independent
beings, we must exist within the state/society to reach
own our needs… the basic premise of
conservativism is wrong… that we can only achieve
our needs and wants by ourselves, not with the aid
of the state/society…

the ideal that the only ‘‘good’’ government is the least
government fails because we cannot achieve our own
private goals and needs without the state/society…
recall the Hobbes ‘‘State of Nature’’… that is what happens
without a state/society… we are so busy trying to reach
our needs that we cannot, cannot reach or achieve any
of our possibilities because we are so involved in
trying to reach our basic needs, we have no time
to become something more, we are just animals within
Hobbes ‘‘State of Nature’’…and within a limited government,
as suggested by conservatives, we are also unable to
reach our own needs… we spend much time, way to
much time engaging in trying to reach our needs without
the government/society providing us with the time
and space to reach our needs…in other words,
we must have the government/society in order to
reach our needs and then become something more…
to reach our possibilities…

so, within our current situation, the IQ45 attempt to
destroy the health system in America is wrong because
it forces us to spend our days in trying to get health care
that we can afford… it allows us to die under the current
system by preventing people from being able to afford
health care…
and that is the point of government… to be able to
allow us to reach our own personal needs of food,
water, shelter, health care, education… if we are
educated and feed and shelter by the efforts of the
government, that is a good thing… for one of the
points of existence is to reach our needs…
and the government is a major way for us to
reach our needs… thus we can state that
liberalism, not conservatism is the path into the
future… if the point of existence isn’t to reach our
needs, then what is the point? that is the question
that conservatives must answer… what is the point
of existence? and how do we reach that point?

Kropotkin

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let us further look at this concept of ‘‘self-ownership’’

That for self-ownership to be successful, it takes a village…
we cannot successfully self-own if we are not within
a state/society… for individually, we cannot succeed
without the state/society… for self-ownership requires,
demands a functional state/society to allow us to achieve
our own needs… but let us further work our self-ownership…
Given that we cannot successfully self-own without
the state/society, means that successful self-owning
requires us to keep the state/society strong and successful…

In successful self-ownership requires a strong, successful
state that allows us to achieve our own needs, but then we
are also required to help the state/society to succeed…
we are as successful as our state/society is successful…
in a failed state/society, we cannot achieve our own goals
of meeting our needs or becoming our possibilities…
we are way too busy in trying to achieve just our basic
necessities in a failed state/society…

Which means we must work at keeping the state/society
being successful…that means keeping the state/society
strong by staying away from entropy… which is the loss
or reduction of energy in any particular system…now that
energy is provided within the state by taxes and a citizen’s
energy into the state as well as putting energy into
the society…which means paying taxes enough to
allow the state the resources to enable people
to reach their needs… as state is only as successful
as its citizens… and by failing people, the state also
fails itself…and thus by self-ownership, we acknowledge
that we can only survive if the state/society succeeds…
and that is our incentive for us to keep the state/society
strong and healthy… our own self-ownership depends
on a strong/healthy state… to achieve our own
possibilities requires us to have a strong, stable
state/society… to pay taxes, to insure strong
stable institutions like the State department
and the benefits of society security and housing
and programs like the SNAP and WIC programs
which ensure the success of individuals…
which in turn ensures the success of the state/society…
our own personal success requires the success
of the state/society…and vice versa…

two halves of one whole… us individually
and us collectively is required…

Kropotkin

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totally incorrect, many animals are social animals.

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so, we can guess that one of the primary
questions is this; what does this self-ownership
look like?

one of the aspects of self-ownership lies with our
ability to have the freedom to make choices…
If I cannot make my own free choices, if I do not
have ownership of my choices, I am ‘‘owned’’ by
another…we see this most clearly in economic
terms…in my ‘‘contract’’ with being employed,
the contract itself can be changed and modified
by the corporation, the rules can be changed without
any input from me, without any consent from me,
with my only recourse being to quit… otherwise
in economic terms, I am ‘‘owned’’ by the business…
in return for me services, I am paid X amount of dollars,
which is subject to change, my position is subject to
change, the details of my employment can be changed,
not by me, but by the company…
an example of this happened to me…

I was working at one store, and the manager, who hated me, and
without my consent, transferred me to another store… and my
only choice was to report to that store or quit…I had
no third choice… and that is very common in the work
world today…if I have no choice, if I am not allowed
to be autonomous, I am not free… I am owned…
and one were to argue that the company must make
decisions that best protect their profits, then it is profits
that is the goal, not my own choices, my own self-
ownership for that is not valid in our own economic
system, that of capitalism… we are not free or
have self-ownership in capitalism… there are
three aspects of capitalism, that of working, that
of producing and that of consumerism… we have
a choice, a pretend choice, but a choice within capitalism
as far as consumerism goes, but as a worker, or a producer,
we have no choices… for it is profits that are important,
not own choices, or our self-ownership…

(why do I say there is no choice within capitalism?
because in our buying choices, our allege freedom,
we have very limited choices… there are 6 media
corporations that own 95% of all the media, there are
but 5 corporations that make cereal, there are 6 automobile
companies… the truth is that we have very little choices
in terms of what we can buy/purchase, but therein lies
another brick in the world… why are our choices presented
as only choices to buy things, to make purchases
as our freedom is not much of a choice…
that we in some fashion, have freedom of choice
because we can buy a blue car instead of a red one?
and chances are that the choices of our cars are
also owned by the exact same company…
at one point in time, Ford owned mercury, Jaguar and
Land Rover, Volvo, Aston Martin, and held significant stake
of Mazda…How is that economic freedom?
and those who own BMW, also own Roll-Royce
and the Mini cooper… more freedom?

The truth is that economically, we have very little choices…
but let us return to political philosophy…
where are our choices when we have but two choices
as parties, (America has Democrats and Republicans/MAGA
and those are our choices in America, not much choice there)

the quest is to become human and the answer to how, lies
in our self-ownership… but there is another step that
we need to work out, that of laws and rights…

Kropotkin

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13

part of the conflict between the conservative/right
and liberals/left, is this difference between rights
and law… the right holds to laws… gods law is
one such law that the right holds onto… and the
law is above reproach… and here comes the
conservative hypocrisy… the law is for thee, not
for me…Witness the ongoing attempt to make
IQ45 above the law…and the lawbreaking that
has characterize this administration…

but the left has different priorities… that of rights…
the law however is a negative concept, thou shall not,
whereas rights are positive… he has the right to…
this viewpoint of the right, thou shall not, is
negative, which is to say, nihilism…
and the left, he has the right to be, gay, for example,
is positive, which is the opposite of nihilism…
and we have called this ''Ad meloria…
toward the better… the more people with rights,
that is toward the better… the law isn’t about morality…
and rights are about morality/ethics… we can see this
in times past when it was legal for slavery, it was legal
to consider women/wives as property, it was legal
to prevent black people the right to vote…
where the left believes that slavery is a violation
of the rights/self-ownership of people…
that to consider women property is to deny them
self-ownership… to prevent blacks from voting,
is to deny them self-ownership…the right to choose,
is the right to freedom and to deny that freedom,
is a violation of self-ownership…

It has been said, by Locke among others, that government
was created for the protection of property… that is how
conservatives consider government today… for the protection
of property… which is to say, the point of the law is to
protect property…hence the fight over giving women
equal rights, not as property, the fight to give equal rights
to black/minorities, not as property…

for the left, the reason for government is to ensure justice,
which as I have mentioned before, justice is equality…
whereas the right uses the government to protect property,
which is by its very nature, is not equal, which is to say,
not justice… as the right believes in property, it can then
easily see people as property… as it has in the past…
but the concept of self-ownership denies the idea
that people can be property… we on the left,
see people in terms of rights… and for there to be
justice, that people, all people have the exact same rights…
not as a legal concept, but as a moral/ethical concept…
being legal can deny justice and self-ownership,
it has done so in the past, whereas rights can
enclose all people into having the same rights,
all people can equally marry, all people can
pray to one, many or all or no gods…
to legally mandate who one can pray to, that maybe
legal but it isn’t freedom nor is it right…
that we can only marry a certain sex, or marry a
certain race can be made legal, voiding out same sex
marriage is certainly an attempt to be legal, but that
doesn’t make it right or moral…and given a choice
between being legal or being about rights/morality,
I will pick rights/morality every single time…something
being legal doesn’t make it morally right… so do we
practice the law or do we engage with morals/ethics?
for clearly the two, the law and rights, are two distinct
and separate items…

what is your preference? the law or rights?

Kropotkin

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image
image220×187 9.54 KB

some laws are “positive” such as… don’t burn down random buildings, don’t form corporate monopolies, etc. this goes without saying…

it seems negative and nihilism to say that all laws are negative…

wouldn’t it be a law to not bully gays? Isn’t that correct?

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MrAuthoritarian:
Your liberal unrestrained, unregulated, and unlimited extreme radical individualism is the most nihilistic political system on earth.

It is that ideology with promises of freedom and democracy that has delivered us a tyrannical political system of oligarchical billionaires instead. Such a system has delivered no freedom whatsoever where its political democracy is entirely laughable.

K: If we ignore the hysterical nature of this post, and we seek out
evidence for any ‘‘truths’’ within this post, we find that there
is nothing resembling ‘‘truth’’ within it… or we can see that
there is no evidence for MR. A, wild accusations…
however, given that, let us try this, let us take his accusations
seriously… how do we Liberalism has failed, as least
according the MR. A…Ok, what is next?
where do we go from here? What political, economic,
social and philosophical system should we adapt?
Despite his claims that he is a communist,
MR. A, has only really argued for dictatorships…
Is he really foolish enough to thing that the solution
to our myriad of problems can be solved by a
dictatorship? Liberal democracies can at least
point to a few successes, the U.S and India for
example…whereas dictatorships cannot point out
a single success…Dictatorships have a shelf life
of about three generations… then they implode…
The Soviet Union lasted roughly 70 years…or a bit
more than 3 generations… Nazi Germany, despite its
claims to be a 1,000 Riech, lasted 12 years…
Show me a dictatorship that lasted 50 or more years…
I’ll wait…and while I wait, we will discuss
dictatorships and their benefits…

For there is no actual benefit to having a dictatorship…
for one thing, there is no such thing as self-owning,
the state/dictator owns everything… one of the other
problems also lies with monarchy… that of the monarch/
dictator, can as he/she feels like it, they can change
the laws at will… so, what is legal today, is illegal
tomorrow… there is no consistency or continuity
within a monarchy or dictatorship…
can anyone else see any positives that lie within
a dictatorship? For I cannot…

let us try this, if you argue against liberalism, then
logically, you must be arguing for conservative
government… but how is that going to work in today’s
modern diverse and multiculturally society?
There have been conservative governments that
have lasted a very long time, China and Egypt,
for example, and yet, we can see how they failed…
there is no method of change or adaptation that
allows a conservative government to keep pace
with the changes within the environment…
A conservative government cannot allow changes
because any changes might disrupt or derail
the state/society… but without the ability to change
or adapt, there is no progress made within that society/
state… which is true with both China and Egypt…
We can see this with the Spanish Empire of the 15/16th
century… at one point in time, Spain was the leading
country in the West, which is to say, in the world…
but it turned conservative… which is to say it turned
the country into a conservative/Christian society/state…
and fairly quickly, Spain was no longer a player on
the world stage… it rapidly became irrelevant and
was no longer a voice in world politics…
and if the conservatives were to succeed in America,
turning America into a conservative/Christian society/state,
the US would also then become irrelevant to the world
stage… because that is the only way to go when a state/
society becomes conservative/Christian…There is no other
path for it to go down… it becomes stagnant and frankly,
pointless… the quote that best describes the conservative is
this: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over
and over again and expecting different results each time…
So, we have examined two possibilities, what about other
possibilities?

Kropotkin

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16

Thank you so much Doktor Kropotkin. Now I have been diagnosed with a case of the dumb. I’ll be seeing myself out now.

17

Damn. I am drawn to the headline of this thread like so many moths that aren’t dead. And yet I will not stand reading the constant returning at the end of the input window.

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18

The employer has rights and choices also.

The right to hire employees
Set business policy
Direct work
Terminate employment.

You had the freedom to choose your employer and leave if you are unhappy, but generally you are bound to adhere to the employer’s rules and direction, which you chose not to accept.
It was not your business and the employer had every right to manage it as was seen fit by them.
You come across as being narcissistic in this regard and believed your rights were above and beyond a normal employee.
You have all the time in the world to mull over different scenarios in the past at your previous work place, which will not be conducive to creating a more positive existence in the time of your “retirement”?
Why not seek further employment somewhere else, why did you not accept the transfer, why quit?

19

I have to agree with this @Peter_Kropotkin.

I like your posts and want to read them, but the way you try to manually format the text means it doesn’t look good on anything.

The site is adaptive, to any device really, so you don’t need to justify your own text. The only time you really need carriage return is to start a new paragraph.

Just an opinion.

20

In thinking about this, a great deal of government,
is to avoid, control or to contain conflict…government
could be called ‘‘conflict avoidance’’… and how
do we set up the government into better avoiding
conflict? one possibility is conflict avoidance at
the beginning… how do conflicts often begin?

One path is by having two sets of rights for one group
of people… an example of this, to allow medical care for
one set of people and prevent it in another set…
an example is preventing medical care for those who
are in transition from male to female, or female to male…
several states have passed laws preventing minors who
are transitioning from receiving medical care… and yet,
other youth of the same age are allowed to receive medical
care… the difference, medical care is denied based
on moral reasons, not medical reasons…and this
misguided policy is the source of conflict…
The path to conflict resolution is by having the same rules/policies
for everyone… you can’t have different rules for some people
but not for all people…people want to become who they are,
and by arbitrary rules/policies, they are prevented from this
becoming… and that is a source of conflict that is unnecessary…
if we allow actions that is available to some, but not all, that
is a source of conflict…

Another example is this drive to cull the voting rights of
people, but not all people… the drive to limit or remove
voting rights to people based on the color of their skin
or where they live is wrong and a source of conflict…
if some are allowed to vote, then all must be allowed to vote…
and if some are not allowed to vote, then the reasons must
be made clear and transparent… The removal of the right
to vote from those who are convicted of a crime, that has some
logic to it, but it doesn’t make it right… for what that does,
removal of voting rights, is to make a person far less invested
in the state/society… and that loss of investment is, in part,
part of the failure or conflict within America today…

If you want to create a ‘‘better’’ America, then you must
get more, not less people invested in America…
the real path to Making America Great, is by increasing
the number of people invested in its success…
the MAGA/party and conservatives are engaged in making
less people invested in America, and that is creating/generating
a great deal of conflict in America today…
If young people cannot have what us boomers have, which
is a good paying job, a chance at buying a house, a chance
to having a good life, then why should they be invested in
the health and welfare of America?

The path to MAGA is by increasing the investment people
have in America…not as conservatives/MAGA have done,
which is decrease the average person’s investment in our
state/society… this can be done in any number of ways…
by increasing voting rights, by making moral choices
that make no sense… for example, by taking away rights
from gays or trans people… what is their incentive to
engage in the American dream if they are unable to be who
they are? the path to a ‘‘better’’ America lies within increasing,
not decreasing/limiting rights… to engage with gays or trans
or people of color, with the exact same rights as all other
Americans… that is the path to ending conflict in America today…
That is the path to ending disillusionment in America today…
if you want to make America great, you must first begin with
inclusion of all Americans, which is to say inclusion in
political, social, economic and philosophical life…

the bottom line is that as long as we practice exclusion,
we will continue to have/face conflict in America today…
conservatives practice exclusion and liberals practice inclusion…
and as long as conservatives practice exclusion on moral grounds,
we will continue to have conflict within America…

Kropotkin

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