The Rules That Exist Are Those Enforced

(Note: This post follows on from last week's post.)

The thing that distinguishes the Law of Nature from the Law of Man is that the latter does not enforce itself. Even children grasp this fact, summarized so brilliantly in this playground retort: "Make me."

Government is about control. You can proclaim all the rules you want, but if you cannot compel compliance then your words are senseless blather and what respect you have soon drains away. When speaking of self-government, starting with the individual, we term this "discipline" and rightly regard a lack of it as a mark of poor character. Individuals do what they do not want to secure benefits or necessities they want or need. As it is for individuals, so it is for groups of any size.

The difference is that enforcement externalizes in groups. The rule-maker relies on enforcers to compel compliance. This is true when the rule is reasonable, right, and proper as when it is not; the reason it is so is because the power to compel compliance means removing the power to act from those one seeks compliance from.

This is why competent rule creation rests upon shaping the ability of those targeted to comply, instead of relying upon argument of any kind; if the capacity to disobey is crippled, depreciated, or eliminated then you need not rely on enforcers as often or as severely to gain compliance. Use technical means over other options whenever you can, because their opinion of the rules is irrelevant is they lack the means to defy it.

Go back to that retort: "Make me". That's what has to be kept in mind when you go about making rules; if you can't make them comply, then your rule will be defied. It is the same if the defiance is reasonable or not, because you lack the means to enforce your will. Control over others necessarily requires possessing the means to destroy what they value most, for otherwise you have nothing to negotiate with.

Make no mistake; enforcement is negotiation. You're using violence (actual or the threat thereof) to say "Compliance is your better option." If you are unable to do this, then your rules--for all intents and purposes--do not exist. Being unwilling is the same as being unable, with the sole difference being the speed of remedy.

This is the practical part of power being in the ability to act, and never in deliberation or judgement. There are plenty of people deliberating on anything and everything; they lack the ability to act, so their opinions can be (and often are) ignored as they can't act on them. Plenty of people make judgments, but also cannot act on them, and are just as impotent so they too get ignored. The open hand and the closed fist matter far more than tomes of law or the councils of the wise, as every man whose dealt with the unruly and predatory knows to his cost.

And it is because human predators exist that the rules must be enforced--and seen to be enforced; invisible enforcement is no enforcement--for them to have their desired effect. The unruly can be cowed; predators must be exterminated without mercy or hesitation, as they brook no other limit to their predation, and they regard non-resistance as weakness (and weakness as consent to their predations).

Fortunately, this is a solved problem. The issue now is the unwillingness to apply the solution.

Max Igan: Reclaiming the Earth-Steps Towards a Collective Awakening

Max Igan gave this presentation at the Open Mind Conference Copenhagen in Denmark, which occurred over the weekend of September 21st of 2014. You see this because, underneath all of the historical details of his argument (some of which I have issues with), he has a valid foundation: the real wealth of this planet is the whole of the population, and everything else is illusory- and therefore ephemeral and changeable. We can do what we need to do without the systems of control that prey upon us.

On Property

The anarchist community remains divided over the question of property. The more visible Anarcho-Capitalist wing is all about private property, unaware or unwilling what that term means in practice, while the Anarcho-Socialist (etc.) wing doesn't really unpack that term properly and thus gets tripped up when attempting to argue for their form of anarchism.

I will attempt to unpack that term.

"Property" is the word, in English, that we use to refer to items or locations of a discrete nature that can be accounted as belonging to one specific individual or group. The laptop I'm using to compose and publishing this post is property. The blog that I published this post at is property. The body I used to transmit my thoughts from my mind to this post is also property. The house I reside in, the food that I consume, the books that line my shelves, and so on- all of this is property.

"Private" is the word, in English, that we use to refer to items or locations that are specific to an individual or group and not available without pause to the population at-large. The above property? Private, all of it. The roads I travel on, however, are public property. The airwaves over which I'm using WiFi is also public property. So are the parks I live nearby, and visit as I wish, and so are the libraries.

The issue is not "public" vs. "private". The problem is "personal" vs. "private."

"Personal", in English and referring to things, means that the item or location is particular to a specific individual or entity. In practice, we use this word to refer to items that one holds, wears, uses, or occupies. Anything more abstract in terms of ownership trends over to "private", in practice, as we see when talking of patents, copyrights, trademarks, offices, and so on.

What all anarchists agree upon is that personal property is a self-evident thing. One can, and usually does, own those items that one holds, uses, wears, or occupies. The clothes that I wear are my personal property. The laptop I'm using is my personal property. The knives I carry and use are also my personal property, so is the bed that I sleep upon. Therefore, what these two camps fight over is not about personal property. They fight over what is beyond the personal; they fight over what is "private" property.

In short, they're fighting over what is otherwise deemed "capital". They're fighting over mills, kitchens, workshops, hospitals, laboratories, and other places where work is done--something is made or a service provided--as well as the tools (including abstract ones, like theorems and algorithms) used to make that work possible. It's a fight over what is actually personal and what is actually public, for all intents and purposes; it's a fight over those goods and services, and the systems used to distribute and administer them- specifically, over an individual vs. collective paradigm of anarchy and how to make it work.

The problem, as I see it, is that both sides are ignoring their respective fatal flaws. The An-Capitalists want a system that, whenever it arises (and it has, albeit unknowingly so most of the time), inevitably produces a new feudalism; this is the experience of American colonialism in what is now the Southern Atlantic states (including Florida, eventually) as well as Carribean colonies. Because power and influence, in practice, stems from wealth and that is derived from ownership of private property it means networks of socio-economic tension between haves (landowners, ultimately) and havenots (everyone else). This leads to the creation of a State by the haves to create a barrier between them and the havenots. The An-Collectivists want a system that, whenever it arises, turns into a snitch-cum-police state as a body inevitably arises to "adminster" things and that becomes a power base in itself; the "anarchist" society becomes Statist when this body reaches critical mass and uses propaganda and leg-breaking to enforce conformity.

In short, the former produces Facism or Inverted Totalitarianism. The latter creates classic Totalitarianism. (Or, if you will, Abusive Father-as-State vs. Abusive Mother-as-State; both are toxic and democidal.) Neither of these creates a sustainable anarchy. The fight over property, quite frankly, that they do cannot end any other way. That doesn't mean that there isn't another way out.

Acknowledge the difference between "personal" and "private". Personal property is self-evident manifestations of Natural Law. Private property is the fiction shat out of Man's ass, and inevitably requires the creation and perpetuation of the State to keep the illusion up and running; it has sweet fuck all to do with Natural Law. A strict individualist stance on what property is, and therefore how to deal with it, is how you navigate these seas between Scylla and Charybdis. Disavowal of both Capitalist and Collectivist ideas will go a long way towards putting down the problems that exists in Anarchism right now; instead, stick to the personal- "If you don't hold it, then you don't own it." is a very useful guideline to follow.

Working towards an alternative paradigm for when Empire falls.

So, What Kind of Anarchist Are You Mr. Walker?

Previously, I wrote at length as to why I am not an Anarcho-Capitalist. Today, it's the other side, and by that I mean the Anarcho-Syndicalists/Communists/etc.- in other words, the left-leaning sort.

The problem with the Anarcho-Capitalists (henceforth, "An-Cap(s)") is that they refuse to recognize Capitalism as the predatory thing that it is, which is why cronyism and gangsterism are inevitable developments and cannot help but lead to the creation of the State as a means of creating a differential edge that cannot be countered: the power of the State in service to their interests.

By comparison, the problem with Anarcho-Collectivists (as that is what synidcalism, communism and so on build their argument upon) is that they refuse to recognize that the same phenomenon that produces the centralization of power in the An-Cap paradigm still exists in the Anarcho-Collectivist paradigm (henceforth, "An-Col(s)"): the presence of the potential for centralized power draws predatory people who seeks that power and will do what it takes to get it, inevitably leading to corruption of the collective and its transformation into a new State.

Let me break that down.

The premise of the An-Cols is that practical sovereignty is only viable when one surrenders or sublimates their individual existence and identity into that of a group of some sort--a union, a village, a free company, etc.--which possesses the economic capital required to establish and maintain a truly autonomous community. The small religious commune is an An-Col manifestation. The worker-owned collective is an An-Col manifestation. The problem with these, and all others that conform to this pattern, is that these are not emergent gatherings that perform a function that Natural Law demands. You don't need a co-operative to cultivate land, grow food, establish a homestead and raise a family; you don't need a commune, a union, or any other formal social construct either.

The family and the homestead are naturally-occurring emergent organizations, existing to fulfill purposes necessary for individuals to survive and thrive, and when no longer necessary they dissolve as easily as they emerged. These lawful institutions, and these alone, are all that Mankind needs to overcome any challenge or achieve any goal. This is because these entities are most friendly to the development and refinement of the individual when functioning properly; all other institutions--especially the State--are poor copies of these two naturally-emerging institutions. Even when they function improperly, they function well enough to still be better than any artifice of Man. These poor copies lack the elements that prevent, for the most part, the creation of cults and other destructive mind controls that turn these things into gangs and then into new States as the transformation concludes and crystalizes into the end-stage of predatory paradigms.

That's right, folks: I am an Individualist. I see collectivism of all sorts as nothing more than openings for predatory personalities--psychopaths--to slip into positions of power within these collectives, turn them away from their original purpose and towards making them into personal fiefdoms. The end result is that these become cults--religious, business, political or otherwise--and cults inevitably turn their totalitarian authoritarianism away from their own and towards outsiders, which is usually when they become States. In other words, the An-Col path is also a sucker's path because it is nothing more than the creation of the conditions needed to create a cult or gang, and then grow it from there until it becomes the State and thus has become the thing it was made to destroy.

The Individualist path, which eschews Capitalism as being predatory inherently and Collectivism as being a self-destructive delusion, seeks nothing but mastery over oneself. The family naturally emerges because being a child is the first experience of being the student, and raising a child is the practice of being the mentor as dictated by life itself; the household naturally emerges as the most efficient way to collect and distribute the resources required to accomplish this task. As each child is a unique individual, only the unique attention of individual mentors is sufficient to fully develop one's abilities and discover one's method of employing them in this life. No form of collectivism permits this in practice (just as no capitalist system does in practice) as collectives see people as capitalists do--just human resources, one or two steps away from being proper money--and therefore cannot help but to violate the inherent rights of a child in service to unnatural demands of the predatory paradigm. It is child sacrifice to blood-thirsty demon-gods in all but name. Only by holding to the way of the Individual, perfectly sovereign in himself and acknowledging the same quality in all others, can one fulfill the potential to achieve true and real autonomy and freedom that Anarchism offers to Mankind.

This is what sort of Anarchist I am, and by walking this path I will live to see Empire fall.