I’ll probably revisit this theme quite a bit, but here’s the long and short of it; coercion is wrong. By this I refer to any person having the power to compel behavior from another, willingly or not. From what I gather, a lot of people feel this way with one enormous exception:
Government.
Government, it seems, is one part of life where it seems a majority believes has the right to force compliance from you. Steal from you. Kidnap you. Kill you (and your dog; usually first just so you know they mean business).
As a side note, so I don’t have any gotcha-style critiques, I personally have one exception to my own coercion rule, and that is in cases of self defense. I make that exception because it is in response to aggression initiated by another, and I separate it from policing, for reasons I’ll go into in detail at another time.
Digression. So, political power. Let’s start by saying all forms of collectivist governance have a major inherent flaw; they create nothing and have no resources of their own, so they have to get some. Here’s where you’re told that “taxation is the price we pay for living in a civilized society”, but even if this were true, what’s the magic number? Is it only a civilized level of taxation at 2%? 5%? 50? 90? No one has ever been able to answer that one for me. The best anyone has been able to come up with is that the minimum level of taxation is one that is able to provide services to the most disadvantaged people of a given society, which is a moving goalpost if ever I saw one. A turbocharged, drive-it-like-you-stole it, moving goalpost.
But what if “the people” are able to provide said services through voluntary donation and efficient provision of resources? What if we figure out how to feed everyone without stealing from anyone? Would that change the calculation? I’m not sure we’ll ever find out, because of political power. Once you give it, it’s almost impossible to take back. Usually the only way is revolution, because the next guy you elect is going to insist that whatever power has been granted is still needed and that the crisis has not, in fact, passed. Then, no matter how many people vote for repeal, it’s now canon.
That’s why I’m an anarchist. I don’t believe what I’ve been told. I don’t think I’m too dumb or lazy or uninformed to run my life, pick the causes I want to support, handle my own money, not kill people half a world away for the crime of living where some asshole my government doesn’t like is in charge, ya know, things like that.
I don’t need a “leader”. Neither do you. The beauty of my philosophy, though, is that if you truly don’t think you can run your life I’m sure you can find someone to do it for you. There’s no shortage of people that are absolutely certain that you’re doing it wrong and that their way is better. You can always sign up with them and let them run things for you if it makes you more comfortable. I’ll opt out of that, thanks.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back shortly to talk to you about more things that are wrong with the world, and maybe even how I’d fix them. As far as political power goes, in the US we need two things; a paradigm shift in the consciousness of the people to one of actual freedom, stop voting, (three things!) and be ready to defend ourselves against the inevitable retaliation from our protectors.
