This is the what I wrote earlier:
"It is probably best not to twist my words, Schlack. It just makes your argument look quite disengeneous. Having lived in Europe and spent some of my early formative years there, I do not fault you for looking for a leader and a blue print. Unlike America, Europe does not have a tradition of individuals voluntarily self-organizing on a routine basis to deal with everyday things. In America individuals still volunteer for local projects, join volunteer organizations (e.g., fire departments and rescue squads, hospital assistents, charitable organizations) and do so without being instructed to do so by some "top-down" leader or authority figure.
yes and it was equally untrue when you first wrote it
CCPI Volunteering Ireland indeed Ireland does have a fine tradition of people joining together voluntarily to engage with issues, both local and lately international.
local people often create community groups. The Itish State has assisted this in the last 20 years or so by providing funding and training - through an indepependent training organisations. its been built into our partnership system.
Local Training Initiative it seems you only have your preconceptions of europe, re-inforced from your reading. and which europe are you talking about? the eastern europe than lanuished under soviet control and had no chance to organise independently?
are you talking of britain which has a fine tradtion of church organisations that fulfil much the same functions?
self organisation is part of all societies when theyre not prevented.
sometimes this takes the form of pressure groups to infomr the govt of the day and pressurise them into putting resources (that would be beynd the reach of the local group) into place. let me get this straight, you have lumped all this in together as is if it spewed forth from some "leader".
talk about not discussing in good faith. Please do some more research before pontificating on that which you dont know. I had the repsect for the US to find out a good deal before i first posted here.
The links above reflect the reality on the ground, not some abstract theory. there are many organsiations, both formal and ad hoc, both many issue and single issue, neighbourhood based, regional and national. some from govt initiatives, some from local people. a
messy human system built on
some intitated by local politicans with a particular interest - anti drugs groups from the 80s would be a perfect example.
a real local problem
ignored by the state and our so called leaders. acted themselves and forced the government to act.
the reality is your preconcieved model turned on its head with a whole load of other messy bits too.
There will be no blueprint nor will there be a "maximum leader" for directing 'The Plan'.
I see were back to the title of the thread, we got there in the End , Thanks Iss ;-)
who said anything about "maximum leader" or Overall "plan".
not that these are in themselves a bad thing. there are good plans and bad plans, there are good plans badly executed, and bad plans well exectuted.
some have been quite successful, some have been failures, some are the creation of huiman creativity using the tool of government and like any other human system, prone to corruption many influences both good and bad.
I have ploughed through many of the links you provided earlier, trying to get a handle on this whole stream of thought. i have found it to be long on theory, short on practicality.
There will be many experiments, some of which will fail and others which will succeed. And yes, it will be a slow, incremental process because a system based on individual liberty born of natural Rights will require persuasion .
great, im all for experimenting, im really in favour of small scale and local "democracy" type projects. i think thats the best way forward for people, but by itelef i think a system based only on that will fail. Also Human creativity is inspired as much by our boundaries as by our horizon. (just look at the creativity of tax evaders!!).
"Roads" is not a very good example
roads are a perfect example, new ones are always being built, new routes, and there are more places in the world than America.
the poiint about the roads and why i keep coming back to them is that roads will have to take a specific route (or selection of routes) depending on geography, effciency and the rest of the road system. there will always be competing ideas on where it should be built, not all will agree. land will have to be acquired for the building of a road, and this often means having to uproot people fom their homes and land. no amount of persuasion would work.
its a real world situation, where some people are going to be the losers and they would never agree to it, so in the end some form of coercion has been neccessary (e.g. compulsory purchase orders).
how then would this road fit into the wider road network? again another set of competing interests with winners and losers.
it would be nigh on impossible to route a road that satisfied everyone and didnt infringe upon somebodies rights. that will not change whether we have a libertarian society or not.
Some major milestones would be erecting a Constitutional wall of separation between commerce and state (and yes, that is a two-way separation), the rescinding of supracitizen status now held by government-created corporate legal entities, a decriminalizing of drug use and the release of all persons convicted under such laws, eliminating the Federal Reserve, establishing a free-market monetary system, et cetera. It's a start."
there is much to be lauded in such ideas, as ive said i wouldnt dismiss them, but i fail to see who any new system would be any less corrupt. No matter what system humans have had in place, they have always been corrupted by those with wealth and power. A libertairan system would be no different.
