Posts Tagged ‘liberty’

The solution to the Israel/Gaza war.

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

In face of yesterday’s global protests against Israeli attack on Gaza I found an article that puts things into an alternative perspective: “The Hollow Sound of Anti-Israel Protests”. It seems to justify Israeli attack on Gaza and portray Israeli strategy as the more positive one, which is something I don’t quite agree with, but it does point out an apparent lack of innocence on part of Hamas, which continuously espouses violent ways of solving the problem, apparently involving obliteration of all Jews.

I of course blame both the Israeli government and Hamas, for both are in fact terrorist mafias whom see violence as an acceptable way of solving perceived problems. Everything else is just a variation on the theme. Israeli forcefully imposes it’s fantasy of “jurisdiction” on to private palestinian property owners in a continuous campaign of terror. Hamas then imposes itself as the so called protector of these same palestinians, whether they asked for it or not, and then goes to bomb Israeli people and yet again provoke a violent response. And this goes on and on and would go on until either all israeli in the area or all palestinians, or at least members of Hamas, are obliterated. The way these people think about solutions, the only real solution is genocide.

Neither are the average palestinian and israeli people all that innocent, for their belief in violence as a sometimes morally justified way of solving problems is what fuels both Hamas and Israeli. If people stopped believing in violence without compromise, and therefore stopped believing in their governments as coercive entities, there would hardly be anyone left to wage a war. To stop believing in violent solutions is to open your eyes to all of the ways in which the problem can be settled peacefully.

And in fact, since to stop believing in all violence means to stop believing into such bullshit as jurisdiction, public property and collectivism, a big part of the whole problem would disappear by itself. There is then no border or claimed territories to bicker over. There are only individuals and their private property. Some of them may call themselves palestinian and others Israeli, but even that ceases to matter as much as it did.

The belief in violence as an acceptable way of dealing with those with whom you have a dispute with is the fundamental cause of all war, including this one. Complete rejection of this belief is the only solution. Voluntaryism.

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Zeitgeist Addendum: Truth mixed with lies

Saturday, January 10th, 2009

There is some serious talent behind the Zeitgeist movies. They may present the current top standard of the propaganda genre so it is perhaps somewhat comforting that what it propagates is not all lies and that what it presents does have the capability to make people rethink their beliefs and positions. Even to only make people start thinking about them at all is already some progress made. That’s what I would expect from anti-establishment propaganda after all.

However, Zeitgeist is still a terribly mixed bag of a lot of truth and just enough lies to make the whole thing seem dubious for recommendation. The important thing is to do your own thinking and your own research in order to discern fact from fiction. If you are capable of doing that and resisting the emotional appeals to acceptance of the author’s message, then I can recommend Zeitgeist, especially Zeitgeist Addendum.

What I based on my previous thinking and research consider as true in Zeitgeist Addendum are the claims presented with regards to how money is created and what money in fact represents – nothing but debt. It very clearly explains the inherent flaw of the system that is its complete dependence on perpetual and growing debt. It also, in my opinion, rightly concludes that monetary system as it has been set up leads to an illusion of scarcity that people believe as real. The result is this great and growing divide between the poor and the rich.

Inflation, as probably the most dangerous hidden tax, caused by the absurd fractional reserve banking system, combined with the fraud of interest and ignorance of the masses towards what money actually is, in fact makes most people living today in this ignorance into a modern form of slaves.

They work to get money because money is seen as the only means by which to purchase what they need, but money itself is a debt that must be repaid. In effect, even if you personally do not owe anybody any money, even if you never bought anything on credit or took a loan, you having the money that you have relies on somebody else owing that same amount of money to the banks. Basically, all money in existence is owed to the banks and if it were all repaid, money would cease to exist, and if it is not repaid it means that the banks will take the supposedly physical equivalent. Therefore, you effectively end up working to create wealth on which the banks already have a claim to, through the very money you earn by creating this wealth.

The theory further proposed is that all of the previous and current political and economic systems have been used in service of the minority of powerful people at the expense of the majority. The states were effectively never at the very top of the food chain, but the private interests. A system that actually seemed to enable the richest among us to gain the most power ever was the so called “free market capitalism” that originated in USA. The key reason may be the fact that freer markets tend to be more productive and more innovative and therefore creating more wealth and the fact that it’s expansive nature and tendency to cross borders led to its extension, in some form, across all of the world: globalization.

Of course, since the US version of free market capitalism had a state and therefore americans and the rest of the people in the world legitimized some forms of violence as moral, the profit motive that drives private interests combined with this legitimization of violence as good in some cases led to private interests quite willingly abusing the governments of the world to force their interests on others.

And this is where Zeitgeist Addendum authors make a key mistake. Zeitgeist describe all of the coercive ways in which governments operate in the interest of their private overlords’ profits, yet the only thing they blame is the profit motive and not these coercive ways.

And that’s where it all breaks loose. They begin with a tirade against the profit motive and self interest, completely and blindly dismissing the fact that without mass legitimization of violence through government, big profit driven private interests would not be able to do what they blame them to do. The monetary-ism they are describing cannot exist without legitimization of violence through government. Yet instead of portraying coercion as the problem they portray self-interest as the culprit, thus yet again making the same mistake pretty much all revolutionaries before them have made, and are now basing a movement on it.

Their solution seems very attractive, but considering the above also very misguided or at best vague. They speak of lack of scarcity caused by the technology. They speak of laws not being necessary as technological solutions are found to problems that laws would face. And they almost seem voluntaryist. They seem unwilling to force people into anything and even their method of persuasion, completely apolitical in nature, seems very in line with voluntaryism – the change being in the mind – order being emergent rather than established (forced) and so on. But unfortunately, they mix these noble intentions with false collectivist concepts such as common good.

It’s almost like some form of voluntaryist communism. I can sympathize, but everything that bases itself on unreal concepts may in some way be doomed to fail.

I believe it is not the profit motive that is the main culprit. It is the legitimization of coercion. To deny self interest is to deny self. Even if all humans were on some level one with others and the universe (and in some way I can see how that can be), on another level differences emerge which allow for different entities having different properties and therefore being distinct as what they are. We recognize human species as distinct from other species based on things by which we are different from others, yet common to each other. The same way we can recognize each human individual by what differs him from other human individuals.

If it weren’t so we would not be human individuals. Therefore to use this philosophy of oneness is to mistake the forest for the trees or from another perspective, the matter and energy we are all consisted off for the distinct individuals that these same matter and energy make us into. It is to see only a part of the picture. To deny self-interest is to deny the existence of self, but for a human individual to deny the existence of self would be immediately self-contradictory, because it is the self that made that denial.

Once the Venus Project and people behind Zeitgeist realize this and modify their message and strategy to include the recognition of individual self and his or her right to choose for self and consequently realizes that it is the coercion that is fundamental to the problems observed in the world today, I can join their movement. Otherwise I can only recommend you to tread carefully. They have some good practical ideas and they may motivate you to oppose the establishment, but keep in mind that you do not have to give up your self-interest for the vision of the world similar to the one they propose, or better, to become true.

You only need to reject coercion as a moral thing, in all instances in which it occurs.

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Define Freedom

Friday, January 2nd, 2009

A while ago I bought a domain name define-freedom.com and a friend at the same time got define-liberty.com. It’s been sitting idle, but I’ve just now put it to some use, albeit this should only be until I do something even better with it.

I’ve put up a nice animation that explains the philosophy of liberty. It’s possibly the best presentation of liberty out there so for people looking to define freedom or liberty I think it’s an excellent start. Check it out.

It is originally published here, but allows sharing under a creative commons license which is embedded in the animation itself, along with the due credits and links.

It might be easier for some people to refer to define-freedom.com or define-liberty.com (a friend is going to redirect it) when wanting to refer people to this presentation than to the longer URL at ISIL.org, as it is easier to remember. :)

In the future, however, the plan was to make it into a more “pro-active” site. The original idea was to make it into a question and answers guide which would encourage people to ask themselves the key questions that would lead them to define freedom by themselves. Instead of the site preaching to people and just throwing the claims out there, it would have them discover the answers they’re looking for by themselves, the answers that I believe every rational human being will reach when (s)he finally considers the right questions, those which they’re taught to avoid or never ask.

Happy new year!

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“This is John Galt speaking…”

Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008

After being referred by a friend who is reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand to a speech made by a character in the novel called “John Galt” I’ve searched and ultimately stumbled on this series of videos which present an incredible dramatization of John Galt’s speech. For the sake of viewing convenience and because I think it contains so many ideas that I desperately wish the world of people to hear I’ve embedded all parts of the series made so far below. :)

Ayn Rand is usually credited as the originator of the philosophy of objectivism and had a lot to do with promoting the ideas of capitalism. She was not a voluntaryist which is evident from a brief part of this series where her character John Galt speaks of the proper role of government being only to defend against initiation of force, which is effectively the minarchist view (as close as one gets to voluntaryism without still entirely rejecting the idea of needing a coercive monopoly for anything). I don’t believe there needs to be a coercive monopoly on defense because that would mean forcing all who would want to compete in providing this service out of the market therefore making those who are supposed to merely defend against initiation of force, THE initiators of force themselves.

And while I’m at the few disagreements that I have with Rand, I have to mention I’m not entirely confident about objectivism either, at least according to my limited understanding of it as what seems to be a rather absolutist view of reality that might leave too little room for subjectivism. On the other hand I can come up with no real criticism for anything that is said in the Galt’s speech presented in the videos below as far as the philosophy goes and I realize that my acceptance of subjectivism goes only to the extent of accounting for the fact that each of us may perceive reality in somewhat different ways, have different preferences and so on.

In either case I can find no disagreement to the assertion that a human individual, his or her nature and belonging life, liberty and property are the beginning of all exploration. Before you can know the universe around you, it helps to know yourself and dare to be yourself without clearly self-nullifying delusions getting in the way, much of which is greatly explained below. So I’ll quit my babble and encourage you to click that big play button below. Give it a chance, you might just be hooked to go with it to the last part. I’ll update the post as the author uploads new parts.

Enjoy and.. think.


Part 1.


Part 2.


Part 3 & 4.


Part 5.


Part 6.


Part 7.


Part 8.


Part 9.


Part 10.


Part 12. (he skipped a number it seems)


Part 13.


Part 14 (with spoilers!).


Part 15.


Part 16.


Part 17.

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Think twice before you endorse violence

Sunday, November 30th, 2008

Before I go to sleep, here is something to ponder:



So in short, if you would say to me that government must be there to provide ANYTHING you will essentially be saying that you want to force me, by the threat of incarceration or death or any other kind of violence, to buy the service that you want.

At this point any statement which calls in the need for government to do something is equally disgusting to me as a statement like “I would like to rape you or hire someone to rape you every day”.

Now think about that before you go on to march for your pet “cause” like “free government healthcare for all” or “net neutrality legislation” or “proprietary software should be illegal” (yes, that’s for you Richard Stallman).

Statists disgust me.

Good night

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I took the red pill.

Wednesday, November 26th, 2008

I was owned, stripped like a slave without even realizing it. Not anymore. I am not anybody’s property.

Statism is dead. I killed it. Did you?

Watch this and then tell me.



Are you awake now?

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End The Fed

Monday, November 24th, 2008

It’d be a start. Let the central bank of a super power like USA fall and the conception of central banking and with it fractional reserve banking would be wounded. This crisis has largely been caused by the inherent injustices and impossibilities built in the central banking system. Creating wealth out of nothing. It’s nothing that it’s gonna come back to, coldly slapping us in the face today demanding that we wake up. We can’t live in the la la land anymore.

So instead of drooling over their brand new Great Leader Mr. Socialist Obama americans should wake the hell up from this trance and at the very least listen to one politician which actually makes sense (acts very much unlike a common politician): Ron Paul -> http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=3qsJjTaekA8&feature=related

Digg

End The Fed.

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