Limits of State Power
POSTED BY: SergeantX
UPDATED: Sunday, December 14, 2025 21:53
VIEWED: 37205
PAGE 14 of 36
Quote:And your idea is that each company will have a committee who will decide that this company needs to be under the thumb of the government? Seems to me that no company is going to willingly decide that it will be controlled by the government unless doing so makes them more powerful, not less. So that’s not really an effective solution, or a solution at all.
Originally posted by SignyM:
The answer to your question is... I would propose that businesses and governments be run by self-elected boards and that no organization have a "unitary executive" ... President or CEO etc. I thought I had said that several times already. Is that clear enough for ya?
Nihil est incertius vulgo, nihil obscurius voluntate hominum, nihil fallacius ratione tota comitiorum.
Nothing is more unpredictable than the mob, nothing more obscure than public opinion, nothing more deceptive than the whole political system.
-- Cicero
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Quote:
Originally posted by SergeantX:
That would seem to be the national consensus. But it stands in sharp contrast to earlier sentiments:
I think Sig was saying it's better to be a well fed slave than a badly fed slave, because either way you're still a slave. But you know a well fed slave is undeniably better off than a slave that isn't well fed.
How well fed can be applied to the citizens of the soviet union, I have no idea though. Just pointing out that your dismissal doesn't address what Sig said.
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Whoa, good thread. How'd I miss this one?
Quote:
moved from the "end of free content" thread...
One of things libertarians fret about a lot is the idea the proper role of government. We believe that government should be a tool of last resort when solving our problems. So we want to limit government to a small set of necessary services. Thus the notion of constitutionally limited government.
I don't recall socialism or socialists ever setting out any concept of clear limits on government power. Obviously, that makes libertarians very nervous. The one thing that socialists are clear about is that government should be used to redistribute wealth. From one point of view, if the state lays claim to the fruits of our labor, other "rights" become a moot point.
So, what I'd like to do here is invite the socialists (or those who lean in that direction) among us to explain what they see as proper limits on government power. Are there any? What would you consider off-limits for the state, and more importantly, why?
Well, Sarge, to answer your question, I really don't like government much at all. I think any power structure carries with it the possibility of corruption. In fact, I think power structure itself may in fact BE a corruption, because generally a power structure must be maintained and enforced. Like Yin-Yang said, I identify myself as Anarcho-Socialist.
So things I consider off limits to the state are our bodies, our thoughts, our possessions, and determinations on how to use our time. Furthermore, I'd like to stipulate that no one person should own another person or have rights over their body, their thoughts, their possessions, or their time. I'd put in something here about "without some agreed upon limit on the extent of this control" because it's very hard for me to imagine child-rearing without some measure of parents and community being able to instruct the children, but I'm hesitant because of the abuse that could allow.
You also asked how a system would work without either government or economic controls.
I think that without government or wealth to motivate people, I think what'll motivate people is their survival, and then what they want to do. Any system with some degree of stability would first have to address those basic needs to a significant majority of the population, a la Maslow's hierarchy.
Syndicalism is a good start for determining how best to distribute those all important basic needs and reimburse the people who work to produce them. I've been hesitant to bring the idea up, because there's a lot of wariness when it comes to the idea of a union of workers, a lot of perfectly justified concerns over corruption and exclusion. But when married to the idea of basic necessity and socialism without government oversight and without any real need to redistribute wealth because people are starting OUT fairly equal, syndicalism works pretty well to fulfill that bottom rung of the ladder. Of course, efforts would need to be made to prevent the rise of a "party" of workers that doesn't represent the workers, like in state communism. The whole thing should be kept completely democratic, only with everyone having an equal vote, since democracy doesn't necessarily always mean EVERYONE.
And like I said, once people have food and livable conditions, I believe there will be people who will want to pursue other interests, such as technological or cultural progress, out of simple human curiosity and creativity, or a genuine desire to help other people and make life better.
I may sound like I'm rehashing SignyM's arguments here. I'm just trying to explain them in my perspective and to clarify the position.
Socialists argue that any society has an obligation to make sure that all it's population has, in the very least, their basic needs taken care of. This is because those who truly believe socialism (rather than abuse it) also believe that every person has intrinsic potential and that every person has a right to live.
I include even people who should be considered criminal
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Quote:
Originally posted by SignyM:
The answer to your question is... I would propose that businesses and governments be run by self-elected boards and that no organization have a "unitary executive" ... President or CEO etc. I thought I had said that several times already. Is that clear enough for ya?
And once the self-elected boards are voted into power, none of them will ever covet, try to maintain, or abuse that power, of course.
Your communal business/government model has the same problem libertarian or anarchist systems have, you need to have a large percentage of the people with the proper mindset. If people either aren't interested in participating in the running of their business or government, or don't have the skills to participate usefully, you'll end up with the boards accreating more and more power. Then you're back to the same old same old.
Everyone doesn't think the same way, so any model that relies on a large consensus to work, isn't gonna work. And you can't really force everyone to think the same way. The best you can do is give folk the freedom to find one of many possible situations that is as close to their liking as possible.
If you want a business that runs on your communal model, find like-minded folk and start one. Don't try to force everyone else into the same mold.
"Keep the Shiny side up"
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"But, as rue pointed out, economic power is completely dependent on government. The power represented by the numbers in their ledgers completely evaporates without a proactive government to support it. And I'm not talking merely protecting property rights."
This is a mistatement. You can't have ANY economic system - even a libertarian one - without government - but it's not completely about guns and force. Sure guns and force (laws) factor into it - property rights and contract law, for example. But you also need currencies, infrastructure, technical standards (even consensus ones), a publicly available place from which to borrow money - just to name a few.
Without these large scale socially-defined structures, you end up with local economies dependent on local resources - wood, bone, hide, stone - and iron if you are lucky - a very primitive lifestyle indeed.
And on the other side, once formed, business becomes government - with all the power of life and death of government - but without the feedback control available through the vote.
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Silence is consent.
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Surprisingly relevant to the topic, especially given the source!
Out of the mouths of Madmen...
http://www.cracked.com/article_17216_5-most-popular-safety-laws-that-d
ont-work.html
Also, that "public safety" crap concerning red light cameras has been prettymuch exposed for the dangerous profit-making scheme it always was from the beginning.
-F
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Quote:Er... no. How did you figure THAT? I don't want companies to be under the direct control of government. What I want are feedback loops, checks and balances, which keep power dispersed as much as possible.
And your idea is that each company will have a committee who will decide that this company needs to be under the thumb of the government?
I think I may have confused people with what I want because there are two tracks: what I think is do-able in the immediate future, and what I want in the ideal world. Immediately, I think we should have single-payer health care. Immediately, we should divorce money from political campaigns by making media time freely available to all candidates. Immediately, we should shower money on NPR. Immediately, we need to government to invest in infrastructure - especially emerging green technologies. WHY? Because the so-called free-market system has fucked everything up immensely.
But ideally? I'd like to see and end to concentrations of power, whether it is money, laws, guns, the power of the pulpit or what-have you.
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We should have strapped him into a glider, filled it nose heavy w/ explosives, and dropped his Allah lovin' ass into a large, empty field. After which, release wild boars into the area so they could make good use of his remains. Now THAT's justice.- rappy
Yeah, that's what Sheikh Issa said. Seems you both have a lot in common.- signy
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I think I've actually read that article. The language made me laugh, and then I felt very depressed for a while about the state of things.
"Mixed Martial Art Courtroom..." *smiles*
You know, speaking of the Amber Alert, Utah's trying to come up with their own version now. I suspect it'll be pretty ineffectual.
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"(Catalonians)... trended towards that degree of self-reliance and management... "
Or towards cooperation and mutuality.
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Silence is consent.
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As (probably) the only person to have belonged to a co-op -
If the bylaws are written correctly, it'd be VERY hard to 'abuse' power in a coop. The co-op that I belonged to ran under direct democracy.
Since every member is a voting member, it would be very difficult for anyone to have the time and resources to actually coerce enough people to coerce the vote to abuse their power in the co-op.
Unless of course you are a font of ideas that you can sell very well. In which case, you 'abuse' your power by persuading others to go along. And if your ideas test out over over time as being generally good ideas, you'll probably get a better listening-to over time.
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Such is the horror of abuse of power in a co-op.
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