One of the best science fiction stories ever written was Isaac Azimov’s Foundation series. It takes place in the distant future, in a vast galactic empire (which was the basis for the Empire in Star Wars) and follows a man named Hari Seldon who realizes the empire will collapse in a few years. Instead of trying to save the empire, which he knows is futile, he gathers together scientists, researchers, and other smart people in hidden enclaves to retain knowledge during the phase of barbarism to follow the empire’s collapse. Their goal is to then build the next empire afterwards.
The first three books in the series are really fantastic and I strongly recommend you read them if you’re of higher intelligence and you enjoy sci-fi.
The concept of these books has always intrigued me, more so now, since I myself am living in a real-life collapsing empire that is destined for failure regardless of what anyone does. I’m really not interested in any changes to current Western culture, since Western culture is destined for collapse regardless, both economically and culturally, as I’ve shown at my blogs many times over many years. Changing this law or that, voting in this politician or kicking that one out, none of that is going to accomplish anything other than give certain groups of people emotional warm fuzzies for a while.
That being said, I think it would be a very interesting thought experiment to map out what a brand new nation would look like, if we started from scratch. Now that is an intriguing concept.
“Thought experiment” is the important part. I am not Hari Seldon. I’m just some guy with a few blogs who’s written a few books. I’m not trying to save the world here, no do I care. I don’t literally want to start a new nation, nor do I care. I have better projects to work on. I just think it would be a very interesting, thought provoking, and educational thought experiment to describe exactly how to form a new nation if everything was deleted and we could start over, this time doing it right.
I know for a fact that at some point in the next 30-60 years, there will be new nations built from the wreckage of what was once parts of the Western world. There will also likely be virtual nations built in whatever the future version of what the internet will be; some kind of virtual world. So even though this is purely a thought experiment, it’s not completely hypothetical either.
This article is the first in what will probably be a long series of exactly what I, and we, would do if we started a nation from scratch. I say “we,” since I don’t have all the answers, so I’m happy to crowdsource the ideas to you. If you have any ideas on how to make this hypothetical nation a better place to live, provided they’re within the following framework I outline, then I will happily integrate them into this plan. Any time I talk about this, leave comments on how you would make this nation a better, more efficient place to live.
Since this is my blog and since I’ll be putting in most of the work here, I will be the chief architect and its chief “founding father,” and I will design a nation based on what I think is best for a prosperous, free society with your input. That means this nation will be a strongly libertarian leaning nation based on small government, free markets, peace, few regulations, extreme personal freedom, rule of law, low taxes, and property rights. The federal government will be tiny, with no welfare state at all, though individual cities can institute their own welfare programs if they wish. Its mandate will be to provide its citizens with the most amount of freedom and the highest level of standard of living by recognizing and avoiding the mistakes made by other nations in the past (i.e. our present).
Therefore, I will only listen to suggestions that are directly compatible with a nation like that. I will ignore any suggestions that make the nation more authoritarian, socialist, communist, welfare state, left-wing, right-wing, theocratic, nationalist, or alt-right. You ardent left-wingers or right-wingers are more than welcome to start your own blogs and design your own nations. I’m for freedom.
I will call this nation Ascendia, for lack of a better name.
First we have to cover geography. Since Ascendia is a hypothetical nation, it is not located anywhere specific on the Earth, but for the sake of parameters, I will assume the following when designing it:
- Big nations don’t work very well, so Ascendia will be a small nation, about 32,000 square miles, which is about the size of Ireland.
- It’s population will be about 6 million people; a nice, workable number. That’s about the size of nations such as Lebanon, Singapore, and Denmark. I will assume that if there were more people than this within its geographic region, they would create a different sovereign nation. As its founding father, I wouldn’t want Ascendia to have more than about 6 million people, for various reasons I will describe later in future articles.
- It will have a large coastline for trade, as well as harbor cities, but will not be an island (since it’s statistically unlikely to be so).
- I will assume that, since this is a Western Civilization 2.0 nation, the population will be predominantly white. All other races will live there and will be welcome, but assume that at least 70% of the population is white, and this percentage will be reflected in its government as well. Of all the races in the world, white people are the most statistically likely to embrace a small government, capitalist nation anyway. As to which white race it is, I don’t know, nor care. Assume a mix.
- There are several different major cities in the nation, as well as rural areas. These will all be “free cities,” able to govern themselves largely independently of other cities and the federal government, a concept I will explain later.
In future articles, I will lay out the following aspects of this nation. Please let me know in the comments if you think I’ve forgotten anything important.
- Governmental structure / Constitution / Voting
- Taxes
- Monetary policy
- Foreign policy / Military
- Trade
- Social issues / laws
- Business issues / laws
- Free cities
- Immigration / residency
- Welfare / health care
- Environment
Much more on this to come. This is going to be fun.
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Zan
Posted at 06:03 am, 3rd December 2017Wow, this should be an interesting series, looking forward to it.
BTW, whatever happened to the piece you were going to write about on the Neil Strauss book (Truth) you were reading a while back?
Gil Galad
Posted at 06:08 am, 3rd December 2017Do you think it’s plausible that new nations developing after the collapse could retain many of the bad – or even the worst – stuff that is currently observed in the West? Here’s what I mean:
There are many things going really wrong in the West nowadays, but only some of them are what actually makes a collapse inevitable (eg the economic system, immigration policies, etc), while others might be at the same time very bad yet sustainable (I’m thinking of the authoritarian policies, infringement on private life, man hating, “how dare you say that you racist ableist transphobic” etc). Call it “highly sustainable evil” let’s say. Is it possible that some of those new nations will eschew the policies most strongly related to the collapse while still retaining some of the worst traits currently discussed in the RP/manosphere?
Mark
Posted at 06:27 am, 3rd December 2017Great thought experiment. Looking forward to it!
Sh1t L0rd
Posted at 07:32 am, 3rd December 2017Without using assumptions at what base of technological level from that nation will be build on, then it becomes difficult to do such type of thought experiment.
At best we could just using current world’s technological state as base level. Despite we had known that technological progress is not linear but exponential.
And I suppose we’re here talking about the future, right?
Brandon
Posted at 07:38 am, 3rd December 2017Cronos
Posted at 09:46 am, 3rd December 2017That book was SO awesome. The concepts layed down there will make you think for a long time.
A very important part was the idea that, once society reaches high enough numbers, the future can be predicted, or at least critical events in the future (for example, presidential elections)
This new nation should be very technologically advanced, so that the cost of living will be cheap. Use self-driving cars form the start. Use internet doctos for most normal diagnoses. Create online classes to replace traditional brick and mortar schools.
Looking foward to this series!
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 10:39 am, 3rd December 2017White people had to deal with winters. Therefore, they had to save food for the winter. Therefore, they had to think ahead. Therefore, they had to learn to play chess instead of checkers. This resulted in tremendous prosperity as a result of all that discipline and long term thinking. This led to the capitalistic work ethic and a hatred of laziness. This hatred of laziness transformed into a hatred of governmental force stealing the fruits of our hard labor (via taxation), which caused a hatred for welfare states.
European winters also motivated white people to train themselves and their children to think ahead even years in advance and start thinking about the general rules of nature and the universe, thus sparking curiosity and a desire to control nature by hacking into the scientific rules of existence, because we just couldn’t stand the cold.
Discovering these general rules of nature led to science and technology, and the development of objective and universalist leaning philosophies, which are more efficient than subjective moralities dependent exclusively on the current social context an individual may find themselves in.
Universalist philosophies go hand in hand with long term (what does it all mean?) thinking, and long term thinking goes hand in hand with prosperity, coincidentally the result of the original desire to think ahead and save food before it snows. Based on that European history, the CIA today has geniuses who think decades, or even centuries, in advance and tries to make plans accordingly.
Short answer to every aspect of white psychology: We hate the cold ice and just want to be warm.
Magnum
Posted at 10:49 am, 3rd December 2017when can I apply for my passport? 🙂
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:23 am, 3rd December 2017I’ll get around to it someday. I never finished the book (too beta to read) but I’ll finish it at some point.
Not just plausible, but likely. Most nations will do this wrong. Look at all the former Soviet countries. Almost all of them are authoritarian / socialist and learned nothing from the very predictable failure of the USSR. Only a tiny few like Estonia and Georgia are trying to do it right.
Ah, very good point. Yes, technically we’re talking about the future, but I’m going to cheat a little and say it’s the “near” future, and the the level of tech of this nation is equivalent to the Western world right now. It just makes it easier. (Think the X-Men movies; they’re set in the “near future” but the tech is pretty much the same as today.)
I have some guesses (like Jack’s stuff about cold weather) but I have not studied this in depth so I can’t answer this definitively. It’s not just historical events, it’s also biology. As the right-wingers correctly point out, there must be a reason Western civ rose to prominence and Africa is still mostly a shithole even after thousands of years. So I don’t know for sure why this is, I just know it is.
Right now. I am selling Ascendia passports for the low low fee of $100,000 each. Just send a money order to my address.
MoChnk
Posted at 12:27 pm, 3rd December 2017I’m of the exact same opinion as Jack. White people have changed their nervous system’s structure over the course of the millennia. Many nerves were withdrawn from the periphery and redirected to the brain to enhance its cognitive power for strategic thinking. That’s why, on average, black people have a better sense of rhythm and are better dancers than white people, and white people have a higher average IQ.
To any new reader who thinks this is racism: it’s not. This is just recognizing differences in races. It only becomes racism when you discriminate people based on these differences, which I totally reject.
John Smith
Posted at 12:49 pm, 3rd December 2017That sounds like a fun thought experiment!
How about Infrastructure? Or public services like Police and Fire?
Or do those fall under other headings?
Caleb Jones
Posted at 02:02 pm, 3rd December 2017Those are handled at the city level.
Macro Investor
Posted at 07:54 pm, 3rd December 2017The reason countries keep failing and rebuilding on the same broken model is simple. The same wealthy/powerful people do the starting over, and they’re model of gov is what benefits them most.
Sociopaths rise to power because they are the ones who want it. Most “normal” people just want to be left alone. So to have a lasting success, somehow sociopaths must be kept in check. The US constitution was fine for the first 60 years or so. Slowly but surely there was mission creep and small gov became big gov. A lot of that was because politicians learned that spending projects are easy to steal from, and voters like *free* things.
Here are lessons learned from how we got from small gov to this broken mess:
1. Don’t get into debt and let the bankers own you.
2. Don’t let corporations have rights like free speech which only belong to humans voters.
3. Always have a legal way to secede in case things go bad. Or perhaps automatically delete the gov every 10 years unless a majority vote to continue it.
4. Don’t allow money in politics. Either everyone donates the same amount, or nobody donates anything. Perhaps politics can only be a designated social media site and face-to-face meetings in the town square.
5. Term limits.
6. Members of one house of congress are chosen randomly, like jury duty.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 08:10 pm, 3rd December 2017I’ve already written the second part of this series, and in that article address this problem directly. As a teaser, you can’t fix that problem, but you can be honest about it.
I address that as directly well.
Great point. I will add this into the plan.
Not relevant in a constitutional government, unless said Constitution is ignored like it is today. I’ve addressed this.
I’ve addressed this, somewhat.
Same as item 2. Read this:
https://calebjonesblog.com/money-in-politics/
I’ve addressed this… but not in a way you will like.
As number 5.
J.K. Diego
Posted at 08:26 pm, 3rd December 2017Who are your neighbors? Are there military threats? A 6 million poulation like Singapore, does that mean you need conscription… the most anti-libertarian thing ever.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 09:03 pm, 3rd December 2017Don’t know, and not going to get into specifics on that because there are so many different possible scenarios, but I will definitely cover the country’s military and foreign policy.
Fuck no. This is a free country.
John
Posted at 10:05 pm, 3rd December 2017Limit Government to a small number of politicians, and services such as hospitals, police, fire brigade. Change the education system to focus more on helpling people choose a career path or starting a buisiness. Change the way people need to pay for expensive degrees that are not needed for certain jobs, I still think people should be qualified for certain jobs, don’t know the answer, maybe on the job training, be self taught but offer assistance with becoming self taught. Less taxes especially with property and paying tax when working for someone or for your business.
Dave from Oz
Posted at 11:10 pm, 3rd December 2017I’m not seeing criminal law in that list.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:37 pm, 3rd December 2017I’m not sure how that would strongly differ from any other Western country.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 04:16 am, 4th December 2017I strongly disagree with this, BD! So cities should have the right to steal my money and give it to losers? Fuck that!
How about instituting some private charitable programs? That way, whoever wants to voluntarily give may do so without any coercion or force upon me! Fair?
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 04:34 am, 4th December 2017Disagree again. The fire department should be a completely private entity. The government has no business putting out fires.
I sincerely believe that all infrastructure should be privatized as well, including the roads, bridges, highways, streets, and sidewalks, not to mention the sewage maintenance system and garbage collection.
The government’s only job should be to enforce the law against criminals and civil violators, not to pick up our socks.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 04:44 am, 4th December 2017What? You want hospitals to become government entities? That’s insane! Are you from Europe?
The fire department should be a private company.
Abolish the education system. Replace it with private schooling only. Repeal all compulsory education laws. Abolish “credentialism” and the bureaucracy. Make education, merit, qualification, and talent demonstrable based on empiricism only.
Abolish the concept of degrees. Replace them with empirically demonstrable talent.
I’m biased here, because I almost went bankrupt graduating law school. It shouldn’t be this way.
Yes, but people shouldn’t have to pay money that they don’t have to obtain qualifications. The job market should mirror the current criminal black market, and the criminal black market should be legalized.
Yes.
Yes. Bring back the concept of apprenticeship.
Trudodyr
Posted at 04:53 am, 4th December 2017What about education? By this I do not really mean some college system or government prescribing the amount of knowledge people have to have, but as you have demonstrated many times a lot of unhappiness in people’s lives is caused by their inability to think rationally and critically and to focus on results instead of emotions. As a founding father and architect of the new nation you could influence how people are educated about this from early age. I have no idea whether or how this is doable though, or whether it makes sense on governmental level, because you want small government and only a few rules.
One other thing to consider – symbols. Even though you do not want your country to be based on some kind of nationalism, you may want Ascendians to feel united and to be a part of something bigger. Would your country have some kind of ethos or motto or something like that? I guess this would be just written in the constitution. What about the flag?
Btw, the constitution of Ascendia could make an interesting separate article, but that would probably be too long.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 05:00 am, 4th December 2017Agree.
Disagree. Before the U.S. Supreme Court first began to declare that corporations are people in the 1970s, your speech wasn’t protected if you got paid for it. That means Hollywood movies, TV shows, talk shows, and even professional comedians could go to prison for what they said, since it was understood that if you’re being paid, it’s not speech, but “business.” That’s why the MPAA (which just gives ratings now), used to be called the “National Board of Censorship,” which would actually censor you.
But the Supreme Court in the 1970s said no, corporations are people. This means that you don’t lose your First Amendment rights just because you get paid for your speeches, or incorporate your own company and speak in that official professional capacity. These Court rulings paved the way for movies and TV shows being declared Free Speech, not to mention pornography.
Say that corporations are not people, and you could be imprisoned for making porn because porn than becomes business, not speech. Fuck that!
Agree.
Agree. Make strict laws against bribery.
Agree.
Not sure what this means or how it would work. You mean, involuntary Congress duty?
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 05:15 am, 4th December 2017That mainly has to do with their melanin. Blacks also have a superior intuition and are more easily able to tap in to the flow of things.
On average, left brain functioning.
Agree. Racism can only exist on an individual level. So if you think someone is stupid just because they’re black, then yeah, you’re a racist. You can’t be prejudiced against individual people based on their color alone, especially since there are exceptions to every rule. There are black people with genius level IQs and retarded white rednecks.
As individuals, all races should be treated equally, and just let the chips fall where they may. These are just general averages when talking about collective populations.
Gil Galad
Posted at 05:56 am, 4th December 2017Regarding the earlier discussion about white people and the relationship between white/nonwhite culture and biology, one would be hard-pressed to find peer-reviewed studies suggesting that it is evolution that wired “white people” (by any scientifically meaningful definition, which is tricky) to be biologically predisposed to found the 17th-20th century white culture and its core values. The bulk of human intelligence evolved before we even left Africa/the Middle East, 70k years ago, as evidenced by 1° observed behavioral modernity in archeology as early as 50-80kya, 2° the fact that children from today’s hunter-gatherer tribes *can* be raised and thrive in a modern context.
The other problem is that white supremacists usually justify this by vaguely pointing to “Europe” and “northern climates” as the factor that allowed natural selection to make whites smarter and/or disciplined or whatever, which is not the same as the much more mundane claim that if you put a population in a hard climate for a few generations they will develop a more hardened culture.
In the second case, this is just cultural, since there wasn’t enough time (by a huge margin) for natural selection to actually fixate *genetic* changes in the direction of more intelligence or discipline, it’s just a culture of high work ethic that gets passed on, not genes.
For the first case – real, biological differenciation through natural selection – , you’d need much longer timeframes, and you don’t have those for white people: Caucasians originated in central Asia, and included the Semitic, Hamitic and Indo-European groups together (read the wikipedia article Caucasian Race). Even the Indo-Europeans alone included ethnic groups that ended up having an inferior and less industrialized culture that true blue white people.
This and this source suggest that typical northern european pale skin may be as recent as 6-12k years ago. Whites evolved in the same general geographical area as today’s Persians, Turks, northern Indians, and to a lesser extent even Somalis, Arabs, Berbers, Tuaregs, etc. They only separated and started sticking in mostly colder climates around the arrival of the Nordic Bronze Age, about 1700 BC. That’s a very short timeframe for complex, behavior-related *biological* mutations to accumulate specifically in whites without being shared, due to climate similarity (since that’s the white supremacist argument) by other ethnic groups that didn’t end up with the level of development of white nations in the 17th to 20th centuries.
Same for appealing to Ice Age Europe as the catalyst: that was 30k to 13k years ago approximately, and the Homo sapiens populations that lived there in the last glacial episode included sub-groups that thrived post-Ice Age and others that didn’t, not just “whites”, so again, the argument doesn’t hold.
I rest my case. White superiority probably stems for the most part from the passing on of a culture of strong work ethic and education starting merely a few centuries ago, not biologically fixated differences that would have required much longer timeframes and longer isolation. The constant gene flow in Caucasian populations, including many of today’s non-whites and up to very recently, denies it. Also, check Jared Diamond’s book, Guns, Germs, and Steel.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 06:52 am, 4th December 2017Gil Galad – Define white supremacist.
joelsuf
Posted at 08:05 am, 4th December 2017I totally forgot about Strauss’ “sequel.” Although its probably every bit as predictable as any other “confession” that PUA scammers make; that they are done running around and see monogamy as the one TRUE way to be happy lol.
CrabRangoon
Posted at 08:49 am, 4th December 2017Great thought experiment. Honestly a big reason I got away from blogs like ROK is because these guys constantly post about “6 ways to save society!” or “Your duty as a man to save the west”, blah blah blah. These guys need to accept what is happening and adapt instead of this futile attempt to save anything. It’s never going to happen since most people are gleefully going along with all the insane policies that are driving us off the cliff.
Funny about Strauss’s book…so much like TL:DR we have T(oo)B(eta):DR hehe. That dude is a typical case of a player that burned out on it since it’s not sustainable and got oneitis. Pretty sure he cheated on this angel of his and wen crawling back on hands and knees like the true beta he is deep down. I have never in my life begged a girl to come back-if they leave, so be it. I might be sad for a bit but I’ll get over it. Begging for her to come back totally ruins your frame and makes her lose respect for you in the long run. She knows she has you by the balls now.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:26 am, 4th December 2017You’ll be (likely) able to vote in local elections and prevent the local government from doing this.
You also have the right to move to a different city that doesn’t do this.
The federal government is not going to boss the cities around, even if they do so with ideas that you and I agree with out the outset. That’s exactly what destroyed a once great America… the federal government bossing the states around, turning all the states into little copies of the federal government.
That is not a government function. But government messaging would encourage such a thing, absolutely.
Agree. That would be handled by private insurance companies.
I agree completely, but that will be up to each individual city.
That will be handled by the cities, the federal government would stay out of it completely, other than to design a general template that the cities would be encouraged (but not required) to follow. I will have a future article about that.
Yes. I’ll have to think about that. I’m happy to hear suggestions.
Of course, but I’m not an artist so someone else will have to come up with that.
Correct, I’m not going to have an article actually laying out the Constitution, but I will simply refer back to aspects of the Constitution as I go along.
Anon
Posted at 12:27 pm, 4th December 2017To those who want to privatize the police, fire brigades etc.: the problem here is with collateral damage. If cities are fully in charge of their own police departments, what’s to stop cities with lenient law enforcement from generating crooks that creep into all the other cities? If the fire brigades don’t put out fires in uninsured buildings, how else are they going to protect nearby insured buildings? If people are free not to get vaccinated, how to achieve herd immunity?
To some degree the government has to be collectivist, that’s unavoidable. What to do with violators of the social contract?
SomeCasual
Posted at 12:29 pm, 4th December 2017Will monogamy be illegal in this Caleb-JonesTown™?
hey hey
Posted at 12:35 pm, 4th December 2017What happens with Ascendia if a guy a la Pablo Escobar gets so much power that can control police/army and can literally buy the whole of Ascendia with his money?
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 01:48 pm, 4th December 2017Who said anything about privatizing the police? The one and only job of government is precisely to enforce the laws, thus prohibiting human rights violations. No one should have to pay ransom to a private company to avoid getting murdered.
I do agree though that the rich should enjoy the option of hiring private police (or “Free Will Protection Agencies,” as I would call them) if they believe that the governmental police is too slow or incompetent. But the taxpayer funded human rights protection agents are still necessary to protect the poor against free will violators.
Uh….city governments are already fully in charge of their own police departments now. What are you talking about?
Who said they’re against a federal police force also? I would be okay with that. Again, free will protection and the prevention of human rights violations is pretty much the only job of government.
By putting the fire out at the insured buildings if the fire spreads from the uninsured one. The private fire department will have ways of containing the fire to the uninsured building only.
Also, I believe technology will eventually eliminate the need for human firefighters. Every building can have automatic sprinklers installed which spray ammonium phosphate. Computers can double as smoke detectors and automatically or on command respond to fires via the evacuation of oxygen from the burning room, temperature control, and other methods.
Just let capitalism do its work without some Bernie Sanders jackass fucking everything up “for the children.”
Well, the people who get vaccinated will be immune. The people who won’t, won’t. There is no desire for herd immunity if the herd doesn’t want it. Let people make their own choices.
What social contract? The government should only be involved in law enforcement against human rights violations (with few exceptions).
blueguitar
Posted at 01:56 pm, 4th December 2017Interesting idea about creating a new government. Here are some suggestions:
1. Write the laws in the clearest and simplest language. Clear writing means using simple sentence structures. The 2nd amendment to the US Constitution would be an example of a non-simple sentence structure.
2. Make it partially a republic and partially a democracy.
Democracy – for example, any citizen over the age of 18 (no exceptions) can vote for president.
Then maybe create three legislative bodies. One possibility, based on a republic structure, the “rich” can vote and preside in one, the “middle-class” can vote and preside in another, and the “poor” can vote and preside in another. Three separate bodies might slow down creating new laws, and could provide socio-economic checks and balances. The democratic/republic split provides an additional checks-and-balances between executive and legislative branches.
Regarding questions about ethnic backgrounds, IQ, history, etc. Here are some observations to consider:
1. Check out Germs, Guns and Steel:
2. Naming the results for a test, “Intelligence Quotient (IQ)” is a great marketing strategy, among other things.
3. “Repeat after me, correlation does not equal causation.”
Post hoc ergo propter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc). Those who seek truth may wish to tread carefully, especially where many others have become stuck in quagmires of illogic. Check out: https://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/36/examples-for-teaching-correlation-does-not-mean-causation
4. Yes, there are some correlations between “IQ” and other things, but how statistically significant are they? And how many of the studies/test were correctly administered? I don’t know offhand. And probably most people who cite IQ in their arguments don’t either, at least statistically speaking (on multiple levels. For the record, I need to become more knowledgeable about statistics).
5. Also, check out the more recent ideas about of intelligence, such as the CHC Theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligence_quotient
Gil Galad
Posted at 01:59 pm, 4th December 2017Reread the first paragraph of my comment, or even the first (long) sentence. I might rephrase it differently if the specific goal was definition, but it literally is right there.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 02:12 pm, 4th December 2017I’ve addressed that; you will see in upcoming articles.
Of course not. I believe in individual freedom. There will be no laws governing private behavior between adults.
Wait until I publish a few more articles about this.
It will be neither, though with elements of both. I describe what I mean in the next article.
John Smith
Posted at 04:44 pm, 4th December 2017@JOtB
So what you meant to say was the government’s only job’s should be enforcing the law against criminals and civil violators AND enforcing your prohibition on degrees. Right? Although I’m still not sure how abolishing degrees squares with privatizing education… ?
Just move to a city that doesn’t do that. It seems like one of the advantages of handling these things (welfare, fire police, infrastructure, etc.) at a local level is that you can get a lot of different case studies on what works in the real world and what doesn’t. It also gives people the opportunity to pick and choose the municipal gov’t that most closely suits their preferences.
Anon
Posted at 06:44 pm, 4th December 2017Jack is being Jack, and he’s failing to see that my neighbor building a fire-unsafe house next to mine infringes on my rights, my neighbor declining to vaccinate himself infringes on the rights of, say, my son who can’t get a vaccine due to allergy etc.
I, too, lean greatly towards individualism, but we can’t abandon collectivistic ideas completely, and it’s very hard to decide where to draw the line.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 08:36 pm, 4th December 2017You need to think a little more creatively.
Private insurance companies in your free nation would offer “uninsured fire homeowner insurance” to insure yourself against a dumbass neighbor who refuses to get fire insurance.
But putting a gun to your neighbor’s head and forcing him at gunpoint to vaccinate his child isn’t the answer either. Schools and other private organizations are more than welcome to require vaccinations, and the government can entice citizens to get them via various incentives (tax incentives or otherwise), but the government can’t force people at gunpoint to do this; not in a free nation.
Always ask yourself, “Would you personally use a shotgun and go over to an innocent family’s house and force them to do X?” If the answer is no, you can’t have the government do it for you either.
It’s not hard for me. You draw that line as far out into the individualism zone as you possibility, humanly can, using maximum creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, even if it feels weird, even if it hurts, and even if it’s emotionally uncomfortable at first. Just because you can’t abandon collectivism 100% doesn’t mean you can’t get 99.9% there.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 11:43 pm, 4th December 2017No. I’m talking about repealing governmental requirements (licensing, paperwork, diplomas, credentials, etc…) and merging the private sector with the criminal black market, while legalizing said market. I’m not talking about making new laws criminalizing degrees. Just repeal the old laws requiring them (including the ridiculous concept of “driver’s licenses,” “medical licenses,” etc…).
If you want to live in a truly free country, there should be no institutional barriers to your success or anything you want to do. Your merit and qualifications should be demonstrated empirically with your raw talent. If you suck, your bad reputation will spread and the free market will destroy you.
All education should take on a more informal and casual capacity. Parents should mostly educate and homeschool their children on the basics. Rich parents may send their kids to private schools if they wish. But mostly, with the internet, most information is essentially free and most people who wish to succeed would be self-educated. And, of course, all compulsory education laws should be repealed.
When it comes to hard skills (performing brain surgery, etc…), people who already know how to do these things may take you on as an apprentice. For example, you can move in with a doctor and he’ll take you to work with him and teach you everything he knows. In exchange, you’ll do his dishes, mow his lawn, and perform other services for him. Rich people may go to private medical schools, but mostly, you shouldn’t have to spend money you don’t have to do what you want in life. There are many other ways if we just abolish the concept of “credentials” and bureaucratic paperwork from required expensive institutions.
Macro Investor
Posted at 09:37 pm, 5th December 2017You guys need to rethink this. Remember — your land only exists as an island surrounded by someone else’s. Do you want to pay a toll to cross your neighbor’s land, just to get the next neighbor’s land and his tolls?
The only way total privatization would work is if the roads are laid out before anyone moves in. Or there’d have to be assumed easements across all land.
Throughfare
Posted at 11:50 am, 6th December 2017Race doesn’t explain likelihood of economic success and success at building a nation.
As someone who has a lot of experience in Africa, for example, I can tell you there are a few black and North African ethnic groups there who have cultures similar to what we consider first-world, “white,” “western,” etc.. They value education, they are entrepreneurial, they save for the future and are against corruption. When they move to Western countries, they have the cultural attitudes to fit right in, and they generally do very well.
The problem these peoples have is that they are small ethnic groups placed within corrupt, violent, dysfunctional countries, and they don’t have the resources to assert their independence from the thugs who own their respective governments. (Well, every now and then there has been a success story where they manage to break free, but the failures have come at horrifying cost.)
Race does not predetermine economic and national success. Culture does. But what are the origins of the culture of Northern Europe that lead to possibly the most massive technological and economic success of all time, and lead to the foundation of the great so-called “mercantilist empires” (the Dutch, British, and now the American, Empires.)
For all the guys who are questioning what the social structure or culture factors are that lead to Western-style economic success and technology development, the theories that are most credible involve the Hajnal Line.
A great place to start researching the theory, for those interested, would be here
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2014/03/10/big-summary-post-on-the-hajnal-line/
Anon
Posted at 01:28 pm, 6th December 2017The Hajnal line is an interesting concept, but if it all comes down to inbreeding, can’t this be easily validated (or disproved) by genetic testing? Are there any such studies?
Matt T.
Posted at 04:05 pm, 6th December 2017Just my two cent(imeters) here… make the metric system the official system of units. Much less time thinking about unit conversions and even non-mathy people can multiply and divide by 10 easily.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 07:45 pm, 6th December 2017Fantastic idea and I agree completely. Done.
Matt T.
Posted at 04:55 pm, 7th December 2017One of the current problems with the US tax code is that it penalizes people who work and rewards people who don’t work. The middle class has the highest rates and the poor and upper classes have the lowest rates. That incentivizes people to work “just enough to get by”. If you don’t work, you’re not taxed. The more you work, the more you’re taxed. The more you own, the less you’re taxed.
Instead, the incentives should promote work, productivity, and efficiency. Taxes should not penalize anyone. It should either be a consumption tax (toll roads, fee for police services) and/or a flat income tax. This way, the more you work, the more you make (without the diminishing returns).
david
Posted at 08:49 pm, 8th December 2017First and foremost, some rules for the government (federal and local):
No fiat money. Currency must be backed by precious metal.
No printing or tampering with the quality or quantity of our money.
No loaning to foreign entities with citizen taxes or dues.
No bailouts of any kind for banks or businesses.
If we’re anti-globalist, and we don’t win the petrodollar, we probably won’t be filthy rich as a nation. (At first). So let’s make immigration extremely difficult. Maybe match Denmark’s 2 generation rule or only base immigration on job skill needs. (example: doctors, clean energy scientists, IT, etc. People with skills our labor force lacks.)
I’m happy with that. Now I can start my business in peace, knowing very well no one will bail me, and I don’t have to bail them out.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:06 pm, 8th December 2017It will be, though not a 1-to-1 ratio.
I’ve addressed that. Coming soon.
Not sure what you mean. If you mean the government should not buy foreign bonds, I’d have to think on that one.
Already done.
Actually, I’m going to do it the other way around, as I described here.
joelsuf
Posted at 09:35 am, 9th December 2017Um, yeah. We can. And should have decades ago. Crazy little thing called Obsolete Biological Wiring, Collectivism is part of that.
joelsuf
Posted at 09:44 am, 9th December 2017Fixed, JOTB 😉
No barriers, institutional or otherwise. Or laws. If you do bad things (or things that others would consider bad), your bad reputation will spread and you’ll truly die alone. Which should happen to people more, specifically statists. I’m pretty sure after roughly six millennia of moral subjugation, we have the tools to rule ourselves.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 08:05 pm, 9th December 2017Caleb, can you please tell Joelsuf to stop slandering me by doctoring my quotes and attributing words to me that I never said? I told him to stop before but he won’t listen. This is approaching defamation at this point. Much appreciated.
Caleb Jones
Posted at 11:26 am, 10th December 2017He didn’t break any of the Five Rules, so no. I agree that jokingly doctoring quoted comments is irritating, but how about you take your diapers off and be the libertarian you say you are (which you aren’t) and figure it out among yourselves instead always trying to appeal to authority to solve your problems.
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 12:47 pm, 10th December 2017Begging your pardon good sir, but defamation would still violate civil law even in the most libertarian society.
The only time I ever appeal to authority is when my rights have been violated – in this case, my right not to be slandered via the malicious faking of my own words.
Thanks for nothing!
Anon
Posted at 06:04 pm, 10th December 2017You say he attributed words you never said to you.
Instead he posted a number of words (every single one of which you did in fact say and in that order), never attributed them to anyone, and made it clear that the gray box is not an exact quote of anyone’s phrasing.
I disagree with Caleb, I think the diapers are in fact called for : )
Jack Outside the Box
Posted at 03:20 am, 11th December 2017Don’t be pedantic. First, this wasn’t the first time he’s done something like this. Second, he doctored the quote by deleting the word “institutional,” thus changing the entire context and meaning of my message. In other words, defamation.
Wrong. He did right here:
I consider that an attribution. Also, did you read my own quote that you yourself just quoted? Read this part again:
Clearer now?
Cute. Except I’m not just referring to this incident. He has done this several times in the past. He takes a quote from me, omits words or phrases, adds words or phrases, or changes my words or phrases and substitutes different ones. In other words, defamation.
This has been an ongoing problem with him which I was reacting to. If it would have been just this one tiny thing above, I would have let it go. Otherwise, I agree that I’d be a cry baby.
Learn the full context of an issue before you make fun of someone.